Hillary on the brink of collapse

I hope this is true.  She is an utter fraud and a scumbag but people can be gullible

A PASSAGE from Ernest  Hemingway fits the moment. In “The Sun Also  Rises,” one character asks,  “How did you go bankrupt?” and another responds: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

The exchange captures Hillary Clinton’s red alert. She’s been going politically bankrupt for a long time, and now faces the prospect of sudden collapse.

If she’s got a winning defence, she better be quick about it. The ghosts of scandals past are gaining on her and time is not on her side.

The compelling claims that she and Bill Clinton sold favours while she was Secretary of State for tens of millions of dollars for themselves and their foundation don’t need to meet the legal standard for bribery. She’s on political trial in a country where Clinton Fatigue alone could be a fatal verdict.

After 25 years of corner-cutting and dishonest behaviour, accumulation is her enemy. Each day threatens to deliver the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It may already have happened and we’re just waiting for public opinion to catch up to the facts.

Meanwhile, her Houdini skills are being tested big time.

Hillary’s one big advantage is obvious — she’s the only serious contender for the Democratic nomination, and she beats most GOP opponents in head-to-head match-ups. But everything else weighs against her, including momentum.

Start with the fact that the sizzling reports of corrupt deals are coming from major news organisations that reliably tilt left. With supposed friends making the case against her, the tired Clinton defence that the ­attacks are partisan hit jobs has been demolished.

And after digging up so much dirt, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Reuters, Bloomberg News and others are not likely to be content with stonewalling and half-truths, especially given her recent lies about missing e-mails. No wonder the Times editorial page called on her to provide “straightforward answers” to the accusations.

I don’t see how she can meet that test. The outlines of cozy relationships and key transactions are not in dispute. The only issue is whether the millions the Clintons got amount to a quid pro quo.

On the face of it, that’s certainly what they look like. There are several deals we know of, and more could emerge, that put money in the Clintons’ pockets while helping businesses, including some loathsome international figures, make a killing. It is preposterous to argue that it’s all a coincidence.

Her position was further undercut when the family foundation announced it would refile five years of tax returns. In one three-year period, it omitted tens of millions in foreign contributions, reporting “zero” to the IRS. In another two-year period, it admitted to over­reporting government grants by more than $100 million.

A foundation aide described the errors as “typographical,” which is bizarre — and par for the Clinton course. To concede the errors during the firestorm must mean keeping them quiet was an even greater liability.

Sooner rather than later, Hillary will have to meet the press — but what can she possibly say to alter the storylines?

If history is a guide, she’ll insist she did nothing wrong, offer ambiguous answers to specific questions, take offence at persistent reporters and end by playing the victim. She’ll follow up with a fundraising pitch for money to keep “fighting for ­everyday Americans.”

To imagine that scenario is to realise it won’t fly, but I’m not sure what other options she has. She can’t tell the truth. It will sink her.

Nor can she credibly demand to be trusted, given her past. A recent Quinnipiac poll finds 54 per cent of Americans already say Clinton is not honest or trustworthy.

Swing-state surveys show similar lopsided findings and each new sordid revelation will deepen the trust deficit. At this point in her life, it would take a near-miracle to change people’s basic view of her.

Her best hope is that a missing ­ingredient remains missing — a Democrat who could take the nomination from her, the way Barack Obama did in 2008. None of those already in the race or committed to it — Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, even Joe Biden — comes close to measuring up.

The only possible rival who does is Elizabeth Warren, the fire-breathing senator from Massachusetts. Gender aside, she is everything Hillary isn’t — an anti-Wall Street conviction populist with a record to match her rhetoric.

A movement to draft her started before Hillary hit the fan, so Warren would begin with a built-in constituency. So far, though, she insists she’s not running.  Then again, that also could change suddenly.

SOURCE

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House, Senate Leaders Continue Fight Against Ambush Union Elections

House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN), Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN), House Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Chairman Phil Roe (R-TN), and Senate Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee Chairman Johnny Isakson (R-GA) today introduced legislation that will preserve long-standing union election procedures by safeguarding the right of workers to make informed decisions about union representation, ensuring the ability of employers to communicate with their employees, and protecting the privacy of workers and their families.

"Starting today, an ambush union election scheme will begin wreaking havoc on our nation's workplaces," said Chairman Kline. "Through his labor board, the president has endorsed new rules that will stifle employer free speech, cripple worker free choice, and jeopardize the privacy and safety of workers and their families. We promised that the fight against ambush elections wasn't over. That is why today I am pleased to join my House and Senate colleagues in introducing legislation that will rein in the board's unprecedented overreach, protect the rights of workers and employers, and preserve a fair union election process."

"The NLRB's ambush election rule forces a union election in a little as 11 days-before an employer and many employees even have a chance to figure out what is going on," said Sen. Alexander, chairman of the Senate labor committee. "Congress must act to stop this damaging rule, which sacrifices every employer's right to free speech and every worker's right to privacy-all for the sake of boosting organized labor."

"Unions and employers deserve a chance to make their case on unionizing," said Rep. Roe, "and employees deserve adequate time to consider the consequences of their decisions, but the ambush election rule unfairly rushes the decision-making process. The safeguards we are seeking to restore with these bills give employees the freedom to make an informed decision. It is unacceptable that the NLRB would force employers to disclose personal information, potentially opening the door for workers to be intimidated, threatened or coerced. Now, more than ever, we should be protecting the rights of workers, and my bill does just that by returning decision-making power to the employee and their families."

"The National Labor Relations Board continues to skew the playing field between management and labor," said Sen. Isakson. "I have been fighting against these unfair rulings by the NLRB since President Obama took office. This bill protects free speech and ensures that workers are afforded the opportunity to make informed decisions about their right to organize, while safeguarding their personal information and privacy. At a time when our economy and our middle class are trying to recover from a recession, the NLRB's ambush election policy is absolutely the wrong thing to do and I urge Congress to pass the Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act to restore a level playing field."

BACKGROUND: The NLRB's rule - which went into full effect April 14 - shortens the length of time in which a labor union certification election is held to as little as 11 days. In 2014, more than 95 percent of union certification elections occurred within 56 days. Furthermore, the median number of days from petition to election was 38 days. These numbers surpass the performance goals set by the NLRB itself. The rule gives employers essentially no time to communicate with their employees before a union election and undermines the ability of workers to make an informed decision. In addition, it forces employers to provide employees' personal information to union organizers without employees' consent.

SOURCE

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Five Years Later: ObamaCare Still Hurting America's Workplaces

From the House Committee on Education and the Workforce:

The Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions chaired by Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN) today held a hearing to explore the consequences of the president's health care law on the five year anniversary of its enactment.

"Health care reform should have been an opportunity to preserve and build on what works with commonsense, market-based reforms that would expand access to more affordable coverage," remarked Rep. Roe. "Instead, a costly government takeover of health care was imposed on the American people, and five years later the law continues wreaking havoc on families, businesses, and even schools. It's hard to recall a time when supporters of a law promised so much and delivered so little."

During the hearing, witnesses expressed continued concern with the negative impact of the law on the nation's workplaces, including:

* Reduced Hours for Workers - [ObamaCare's] definition of full-time employee is having an adverse impact on both employers and employees . According to [the Society for Human Resource Management] SHRM's March research survey, 20 percent of SHRM members' organizations have already reduced part-time hours to below 30 per week or are planning to do so in the following year to comply with the ACA. -  Sally Roberts, Director of Human Resources, Morris Communications Company
                   
* Uncertainty for Employers - For the past several years we have operated in a constant state of unknown . It seems as soon as we have some clarity on an issue, we come to realize that it was only a temporary extension or that we were guided in the wrong direction to begin with . [We] have no idea what to plan for because we don't know what changes to legislation or regulations will bring next year or beyond. - Skip Paal, Society of American Florists
                   
* Increased Health Care Costs - Although the [law] purports to lower health care costs for Americans, costs continue to rise for employers and employees alike. According to a recent survey, 77 percent of respondents said that their health care coverage costs increased from 2014 to 2015 . the [law's] current coverage requirements are increasing costs and restricting employer flexibility to offer a benefits package that best meets the needs of employees. - Sally Roberts, Director of Human Resources, Morris Communications Company
                       
* Loss of Existing Health Care Coverage - We are facing a troubling cycle in the world of employer sponsored care . Some employers will exit the system, but we believe that more will look to make serious changes in approach. These employer based changes typically include more cost-sharing components . the cost sharing then impacts the affordability of health care for employees, who will become unsatisfied with their employer sponsored care and look to Washington for answers. - Tevi Troy, President, American Health Policy Institute

"When it's all said and done - after all the broken promises, fewer jobs, lost wages, website glitches, and cancelled health care plans - 35 million individuals will still be without health insurance," concluded Rep. Roe. "The American people can no longer afford this costly mistake. It is time to move the country away from this government-run health care scheme and toward a more patient-centered health care system."

SOURCE

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Politicians, 'profiteers,' and public health

by Jeff Jacoby

NALOXONE ISN'T magic, but its power to rescue a heroin user from the brink of death can certainly seem miraculous. The anti-overdose drug, also known by the brand name Narcan, is easy to administer and has saved thousands of lives. First responders are often awestruck at how swiftly it can revive a dying addict.

"It's just incredible," the deputy fire chief of Revere, Mass., marveled in a public-radio interview last year. "There's somebody who's on the ground who's literally dead. They have no pulse. Sometimes they're blue, sometimes they're black. And you administer this stuff and sometimes in a minute or two or three, they're actually up and talking to you."

Free markets aren't magic either. Yet their ability to generate a life-saving drug like Naloxone, supplying quantities sufficient to make it widely available even when the need is great, can seem even more miraculous. That miracle is not enhanced when politicians rebuke the entrepreneurs who manufacture or distribute such wonder drugs for charging a price that the market will bear.

Politicians, for instance, like Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. She lists opiate abuse among her most urgent public concerns, yet is going out of her way to pick a fight with vendors who actually help make things better.

In recent years, drug overdoses have surpassed automobile accidents as the leading cause of death from injury in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control, opiate painkillers alone account for 16,000 fatalities annually; deaths involving heroin have increased fivefold since 2001.

Amid this grim crisis of opioid overdoses, Naloxone has been a godsend. While public-health experts debate the causes of the epidemic, officials nationwide have been moving rapidly to expand access to the drug. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that 30 states and the District of Columbia have adopted a variety of measures to facilitate the use of Naloxone. Among those measures: allowing it to be administered by non-medical personnel, paying for police and firefighters to carry supplies of the drug, and permitting pharmacies to dispense Naloxone without a prescription.

Of course, with demand for the medication skyrocketing, the price has climbed as well. The workings of economics apply to pharmaceuticals just as they apply to housing, bourbon, iPhones, or tickets to NFL playoff games. When demand for a product or service rises, the price of that product or service can't help but rise in response. That is especially true when the growth in demand has come about quickly or in unexpectedly short order. Heroin overdose rates have increased markedly since 2010, and only in the last year or two has there has been such a strong push by state and local authorities to equip first responders — police officers, sheriffs, firefighters, and even civilian bystanders — with Naloxone kits.

So it stands to reason that in Massachusetts, as in most other states, the price of Naloxone is up sharply. A 2-milliliter dose that used to cost the state $19.56 has more than doubled to $41.43. That's a sizeable increase, and it is putting a strain on public-safety and drug-treatment budgets.

The price spike may be unwelcome — no one likes to pay more for vital supplies — but it is hard to see anything unfair or unethical, let alone unlawful, about it. That hasn't stopped Healey from demanding that companies selling Naloxone in Massachusetts provide detailed explanations for the higher costs of the drug, and account for "any changes in prices over time" since the opioid crisis was declared a public emergency. Healey's spokesman insists the attorney general "isn't suggesting anything nefarious," and is simply conducting "a fact-finding mission." But the innuendo is all too obvious.

Healey has said she is just being "aggressive" and wants to be sure "that nobody is out there unnecessarily profiteering from a public health crisis." Yet who is the real "profiteer" here? The drug maker who responds to an unprecedented surge in demand for a critical medication by raising prices to ensure that inventories of the drugs aren't immediately depleted? Or the ambitious politician, who sees a chance to score political points by posing as a defender of the public against the very suppliers who are making available what the public needs?

Demand for Naloxone is way up; consequently the price of Naloxone is up. Eventually the price will fall, as new supplies come on line. In the meantime, thanks to the workings of the market, more lives are being saved.

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Israeli rescue team heads to Nepal

A Magen David Adom rescue team took off for Nepal on Sunday morning, and will set up a base of operations to assist earthquake victims.

The team, made up of doctors, paramedics, and headed by MDA head Eli Bin, took off from Sde Dov airport in Tel aviv, and was due to land at Kathmandu on Sunday evening.

It carries with it a range of medial equipment, medicines and baby food on a plane chartered for the mission.

Bin said members of the team would also arrive at the Chabad House in Kathmandu and provide assistance to hundreds of Israelis in the area who are unable to get in touch with their families back home.

MDA launched a donations drive on behalf of Nepal to assist hundreds of thousands of Nepalese citizens who have been left without a roof, food or water.

SOURCE

The Disgraceful Republican Cave-in on Loretta Lynch

Has the Left -- abetted by RINOs -- destroyed the rule of law in America?

Hillary Clinton didn't have such a bad week after all. Sure, she's reeling from the latest unseemly revelations about the Clinton Foundation family piggy bank. But they're only marginally worse than earlier unseemly revelations about the Clinton Foundation.

They are roughly on par with the revelations about how Mrs. Clinton obstructed Congress's Benghazi investigations by purging her unlawful private e-mail system, which was worse than her obstruction of the State Department's Benghazi investigation. Yet it may not have been as bad as the obstruction of justice that was a staple of her husband's administration.

Those obstructions, in turn, were on par with her husband's selling of a pardon to a fugitive fraudster on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List . . . which itself was not quite as bad as his awarding pardons to FALN terrorists - to ingratiate Hillary! with the New York Puerto Rican community (or at least the radicals therein) in preparation for her Senate campaign.

We could go on corruptio ad absurdum. But you get the point: Reeling is not so bad. Reeling is what Clintons do. The way they operate, it's what they have to do. They should change the Clinton Foundation's name to Reel Clear Politics.

But what difference, at this point, does it make? Not much. See, it wasn't that bad a week for Hillary because, even with all the reeling, there is a very good chance she will be the next president of the United States.

If that happens, we may remember this as the week that put her over the top. Or better, the week Republicans put her over the top, right after they got done putting Loretta Lynch over the top.

On Thursday morning, top Republican strategist Karl Rove proclaimed, "The dysfunctional Congress finally appears to be working again as the Founders intended." Just hours later, the GOP-controlled Senate confirmed as attorney general - i.e., as the chief federal law-enforcement officer of the United States - a lawyer who quite openly supports the systematic non-enforcement of federal law. In fact, Ms. Lynch also supports President Obama's blatantly unconstitutional usurpations of legislative authority, including most notoriously, of Congress's power to set the terms of lawful presence by aliens in our country.

Now, I happen to like Karl Rove - if you're looking for the Rove pi¤ata at the end of the Tea Party, you will not find it in my columns. But can someone as smart as he is really think Congress under Republican control is working as the Founders intended? The Founders intended Congress to rein in a president who behaved like a monarch. Anyone who has read the 1787 constitutional-convention debates knows they would have impeached and removed a president for a bare fraction of the malfeasance carried out by President Obama.

The Founders, moreover, thought oaths of office were serious business - having pledged their own lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the cause of liberty against great odds and a great power that would have put them to death had the revolution failed. They therefore required (in Article II, Section 1) that the president take an oath to execute the laws faithfully, and to preserve, protect, and defend a Constitution that Mr. Obama takes less seriously than his NCAA brackets. Beyond that, the Founders mandated (in Article VI) that oaths to support the Constitution also be taken by senators and executive-branch officers, among others.

So, in what we're now to believe is a functional Congress, Loretta Lynch, the president's nominee for attorney general, testified without compunction that she endorses and intends to facilitate the president's lawlessness and constitutional violations. With that knowledge, senators then had to consider her nomination.

If oaths mean anything, she should never even have gotten a vote. To repeat, the position of attorney general exists to ensure that the laws are enforced and the Constitution preserved; plus, each senator has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. So this was not a hard call.

Yet, Republicans were up to their now familiar shenanigans.

In October, while courting conservative support for the upcoming midterm election, Senator Mitch McConnell declaimed that any nominee to replace Eric Holder as "the nation's highest law-enforcement official" must, "as a condition of his or her confirmation," avoid "at all costs" Holder's penchant for putting "political and ideological commitments ahead of the rule of law" - including as it "relates to the president's acting unilaterally on immigration or anything else."

Turns out he was kidding.

Once the November election was safely won (including his own - McConnell won't face the voters again for six years), the majority leader swung into action, laboring behind the scenes to drum up support for Lynch. He not only whipped for Lynch from the shadows; by voting for her confirmation, he mocked any conservatives who'd been na‹ve enough to take his campaign rhetoric seriously.

In this he joined nine others on the roster of Republican senators who took an oath to uphold the Constitution then supported an attorney general who had vowed to undermine the Constitution: Orrin Hatch (Utah), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Susan Collins (Maine), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mark Kirk (Ill.), Thad Cochran (Miss.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), and Ron Johnson (Wis.).

That doesn't begin to quantify the perfidy, though. In order to get Lynch to the finish line, McConnell first had to break conservative opposition to allowing a final vote for her nomination. The majority leader thus twisted enough arms that 20 Republicans voted to end debate. This guaranteed that Lynch would not only get a final vote but would, in the end, prevail - Senators Hatch, Graham, Flake, Collins, and Kirk having already announced their intention to join all 46 Democrats in getting Lynch to the magic confirmation number of 51.

So, in addition to the aforementioned ten Republicans who said "aye" on the final vote to make Lynch attorney general, there are ten others who conspired in the GOP's now routine parliamentary deception: Vote in favor of ending debate, knowing that this will give Democrats ultimate victory, but cast a meaningless vote against the Democrats in the final tally in order to pose as staunch Obama opponents when schmoozing the saps back home. These ten - John Thune (S.D.), John Cornyn (Texas), Bob Corker (Tenn.), Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Pat Roberts (Kan.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Cory Gardner (Col.), Mike Rounds (S.D.), and Thom Tillis (N.C.) - are just as willfully complicit in Lynch's confirmation and her imminent execution of Obama's lawlessness.

This is not a Senate back to regular order. It is a disgrace, one that leads to the farce's final act: On Monday, Loretta Lynch will ceremoniously take the oath to uphold the Constitution she has already told us she will undermine.

This is not about immigration, amnesty, health care, and the full spectrum of tough issues on which reasonable minds can differ. It is about the collapse of fundamental assumptions on which the rule of law rests. When solemn oaths are empty words, when missions such as "law enforcement" become self-parody, public contempt for Washington intensifies - in particular, on the political right, which wants to preserve the good society and constitutional order the rule of law sustains.

In 2012, Barack Obama was reelected despite hemorrhaging support. Obama drew three-and-a-half million fewer votes than he had in 2008. He is president today because, despite deep dissatisfaction with his tenure, millions of former Republican supporters were too vexed by the party's insipidness to believe voting would make a difference. They stayed home.

The GOP, it seems, is going to great lengths to convince them that they were right. It may be that, for an entrenched Beltway political class, the important thing is to stay entrenched: better to play ball with the "opposition" party than to represent a base that wants Washington - the political class's source of power - pared way back.

SOURCE

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Minimum Wage Backfire

McDonald's already moving to automate orders to reduce worker costs

If there's a silver lining for McDonald's in Tuesday's dreadful earnings report, it is that perhaps union activists will begin to understand that the fast-food chain cannot solve the problems of the Obama economy. The world's largest restaurant company reported a 30% decline in quarterly profits on a 5% drop in revenues. Problems under the golden arches were global-sales were weak in China, Europe and the United States.

So even one of the world's most ubiquitous consumer brands cannot print money at its pleasure. This may be news to liberal pressure groups that have lately been demanding that government order the chain known for cheap food to somehow pay higher wages.

Unions have made McDonald's a particular target of their campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage and have even protested at corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill. The pressure was enough to cause CEO Don Thompson this summer to capitulate and endorse President Obama's call to raise the federal minimum to $10.10 an hour from $7.25. Many states have already enacted wage floors above the federal minimum.

If higher wages force higher prices on the menu, will union-backed activist groups agree to compensate McDonald's franchisees for futures sales declines? We're guessing not. So we'll offer the chain some free consulting and suggest that with sales slipping lately, higher prices probably aren't the way to draw more customers. Alternatively, McDonald's could cut its beef costs by changing its popular burger to a fifth-of-a-pounder and hope nobody notices.

The McDonald's earnings report on Tuesday gave a hint at how the fast-food chain really plans to respond to its wage and profit pressure-automate. As many contributors to these pages have warned, forcing businesses to pay people out of proportion to the profits they generate will provide those businesses with a greater incentive to replace employees with machines.

By the third quarter of next year, McDonald's plans to introduce new technology in some markets "to make it easier for customers to order and pay for food digitally and to give people the ability to customize their orders," reports the Journal. Mr. Thompson, the CEO, said Tuesday that customers "want to personalize their meals" and "to enjoy eating in a contemporary, inviting atmosphere. And they want choices in how they order, choices in what they order and how they're served."

That is no doubt true, but it's also a convenient way for Mr. Thompson to justify a reduction in the chain's global workforce. It's also a way to send a message to franchisees about the best way to reduce their costs amid slow sales growth. In any event, consumers better get used to the idea of ordering their Big Macs on a touchscreen.

Entry-level fast-food jobs have never been intended to support an entire family. So-called quick-service restaurants provide opportunities to lots of young people with few skills and limited experience. Across all industries, about two-thirds of minimum-wage workers who stay employed get a raise in the first year.

Amid a historically slow economic recovery, 1970s labor-participation rates and stagnant middle-class incomes, we understand that people are frustrated. Harder to understand is how so many of our media brethren have been persuaded that suddenly it's the job of America's burger joints to provide everyone with good pay and benefits. The result of their agitation will be more jobs for machines and fewer for the least skilled workers.

SOURCE

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New Arizona law blocks Obamacare enforcement mechanism

A bill signed into law by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey creates significant roadblocks for implementation of the Affordable Care Act, leaving the federal program without an enforcement mechanism in the state.

Sponsored by Rep. Justin Olson and Rep. Vince Leach, HB2643 prohibits the state of Arizona from "from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with the Affordable Care Act."

"If the federal government is going to enact a law, then the federal government needs to enforce that law," Olson said. "We're not going to do it."

The Senate approved HB2643 by a 16-10 vote with minutes remaining in the regular session. The House passed the legislation 34-24

PRACTICAL EFFECT

HB2643 not only blocks the state from setting up a state-run exchange, but also prohibits Arizona employees from helping residents enroll in a federally operated exchange.

The new law also bans "funding or aiding in the prosecution of any entity for a violation of the [federal health care] act." This will prohibit the Arizona Department of Insurance (DOI) from investigating or enforcing any of the federally mandated health insurance requirements in the PPACA.

Tenth Amendment Center national communications director Mike Maharrey said this will prove particularly problematic for the feds because state insurance departments and commissioners serve as the enforcement arm for insurance regulations in the states. When residents have issues with their mandated coverage in Arizona, they will have to call the feds.

"That's going to prove a bit problematic," Maharrey said. "Disputes about these mandates arise under federal, not state law. The federal Department of Health and Human Services can't commandeer the Arizona Department of Insurance to force it to investigate alleged violations of PPACA mandates. Congress passed a law and failed to establish any enforcement mechanism, unless you count IRS enforcement of the mandate penalty - or tax - or whatever they're calling it. I guess people can call the IRS with their insurance issues."

Additionally, the law expressly prohibits the state from "Limiting the availability of self?funded health insurance programs or the reinsurance or other products that are traditionally used with self?funded health insurance programs."

Self-insured health plans remain exempt from many of the taxes and mandates that Obamacare imposes on businesses and individuals. The NY Post called moving to these plans an "escape hatch." According to Jack Biltis at Forbes, "Moving to a partially self-funded (aka partially self-insured) plan allows an employer to overcome most of the burdensome regulations and taxes, potentially reducing insurance costs by 40 -80 percent."

Maharrey said the new Arizona law represents step toward doing what Congress won't - repealing the federal health care act.

"In Federalist 46, James Madison said states should refuse to cooperate with officers of the Union when the federal government passes `unwarrantable measures.' Obamacare is the epitome of unwarrantable. This tangle of regulations and mandates that seems to mostly benefit big insurance companies is a disaster of epic proportions and needs to be dismantled before it causes irreparable damage to the U.S. economy," he said. "Congress won't ever repeal it, but if enough states follow Arizona's lead, we can simply make the thing collapse under its own weight and open the door for a better approach to health care in America."

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Explaining terrorism

Below is an excerpt from "The Metapolitics of Terrorist Radicalization" by British academic Roger Griffin.  As a former inhabitant of academe, I am well aware of the way little isolated worlds of discourse arise among academics that are virtually incomprehensible to outsiders. They largely have a private language -- rather reminiscent of how identical twins speak to one another in their early years.  And Griffin inhabits such a bubble. One feels that he couldn't speak plain English if he tried.

Since the topic he addresses is an important one, however, it would seem important to see if he actually has something useful to say.  I therefore offer below what I think is the most lucid part of his offering on the topic.

In case even that bit is too obscure, however, perhaps I should have a stab at summarizing it.  And one reason why I am summarizing something from the way-out-Left is that what he says does have a certain amount in common with what conservatives say.  So let me put in my own words what I think he is driving at:

We all have two problems:  We need to makes sense of our world and we need to be close to at least some other people. To begin with the first of those:

We very much seek to understand what is going on in our world and why.  Religion is the clearest example of that.  It answers the big "WHY?". And when there is no clear answer that does make us uncomfortable.  And in the modern world with its many competing theories about everything it is hard to find clear answers.  All answers are under challenge. So that is a problem

The second problem is that people need connections with one-another.  And an important form of connection is having language, customs, beliefs, remembered history, traditions, tastes and attitudes in common.  We call that culture.  And we get on best with others with whom we have a common culture.

But the modern world has so much change in it that culture is constantly being destroyed.  One half of politics is in fact devoted to change and that has some effect but the major source of change is technological progress.  Just look at how interpersonal interactions have been transformed quite recently by the arrival of social media.  And look at how books have become a niche product.  One Kindle machine can replace them all.

The area where the Left have been particularly successful in culture destruction has been the way they have severed our connections with our past.  Kids now graduate from school with virtually no knowledge of what happened before they were born.  The Leftist domination of education and the media ensures that. And the history we get from movies and the like is often a substantially false one.

Yet people have a strong need for connection with their past.  We see that most vividly among the children of adoption.  They routinely move heaven and earth to find out what they can about their natural parents.  Being cut off from your past is distressing.  The way older people often develop an interest in genealogy and family history is a related phenomenon.  Yet the Leftist attack on anything traditional means that much of our past is swept away.

And a frustrated need for connection with our past explains something that is happening in my town even as I write.  A vast parade is winding its way through the streets of Brisbane.  It is the ANZAC day parade.  ANZAC day is Australia's day of remembrance of our war dead.  And people are thronging the streets to watch it, even though it also continuously broadcast on TV.  And what is probably most interesting is that the commemorations get bigger year by year -- with not only the old but also the young taking part.  It is in no danger of dying out.

So why do the young people go?  Very few of them have known someone who died in war.  They go because ANZAC day is the one day of commemoration of our past that the Left have not been able to ridicule out of existence.  So ANZAC day is the big chance for young people to connect with the past and those who went before them.  It is their chance to connect with something less transitory than their own lives.  They can feel part of a larger whole.  They can feel belonging.

So ANZAC day is a way that people can cope with change.  The past and the present reach out hands to one-another then.

We live in a world that is constantly being dislocated but somehow we mostly manage to cope with it.  ANZAC day is a peculiarly Australian custom but other countries have their own traditions that perform a similar function of remembrance.

But there are some people -- marginal people -- who fail to cope adaptively with the lack of social anchors.  They find or invent new anchors that connect them to other people.  And adopting beliefs that unite them with other people is a mainstream way of doing that. Shared beliefs both provide answers and provide connections.

The oldest such unifying belief is antisemitism.  Saying that the Jews are responsible for all ills is something that many people have been able to agree on for centuries.  It gave a sense of meaning and a feeling of understanding.  I spent some years on an up-close study of Australian neo-Nazis and something that stands out from that study is the way they identified one another.  A fellow antisemite was always described as someone who "knows the score"  -- i.e. someone who was part of a specially knowing circle having rare insight into the influence that Jews wield.  So it is no surprise that antisemitism is also a major feature of Islamic agitation.  It helps them to make sense of their own chaotic and oppressive civilization and makes them part of an agreed culture.  Whatever is wrong is the fault of the Jews.

And Islam does have a very strong and pervasive culture of its own. It answers the need for connectedness very well.  So it is no wonder that it attracts people who need that.  For people who feel left out for some reason, Islam offers an alternative home.  So it attracts converts among both Africans and, mainly in England, redheads.

Red hair is an accepted normal variation of hair color in most countries of Northern European origin but in England it is stigmatized -- probably because it is associated with the Scots and the Irish.  And the informal stigmatization of it is no mean thing.  Some redheads have been distressed enough to commit suicide.  So, again, marginality, disconnection from other people, is distressing and any possible solutions to the problem are eagerly sought.

So terrorism is a cry of both pain and anger -- pain at being poorly connected to other people and anger that most of the rest of the world does not share the beliefs that make sense of the world for the terrorist.

But, like much else, it is all a matter of degree: One has to feel REALLY alienated and REALLY dependent on a minority worldview to launch into terrorism.

And the role of social support is telling.  Homicidal and suicidal attacks by Muslims in the Western world are actually quite rare -- while they happen on a large scale more or less daily in the Islamic world.  If you are a Shi-ite among Shi-ites your loyalty to your particular belief system is enormously strengthened and can readily lead to the sacrifices ordained by that belief system when you confront Sunnis.  Social support is needed for Jihad as for much else.  Connectedness again rears its head.

In the West that degree of connectedness is absent but can be provided to a degree by the local mosque and living in a self-segregated Islamic bubble generally.

So, having identified the problem, how can we cope with it? It's rare for me to think that do-gooders actually do good but some  do-gooder approaches already underway are probably the only hope.  Drawing young Muslims into some sort of group activity could provide them with the fellowship they need and make them feel that the world is not too awful and worthy of destruction.

And Christian outreach could also play a part.  The more fundamentalist Christian groups such as Pentecostals and Jehovah's witnesses are good at outreach and provide a strong sense of fellowship to their members.  It's conceivable that they could draw in young Muslims who are searching for meaning and for social anchors. Let's hope for more Christian activity in that direction.

A probably more effective but unacceptable approach would be to apply to Muslims living in the Western world the sort of rules that are applied at present to Christians in Saudi Arabia -- ban Islamic literature, including Korans, and forbid any sort of Muslim gathering or meeting.  That should destroy the social support needed to develop Jihadis.

But the anger and dissatisfaction that drives Western Jihadis does not wholly come from within the Jihadi or even from his local mosque.  It comes from Western  Leftism.  Islamic teaching is intrinsically antagonistic to non-Muslims but Islam was fairly quiescent for a long time, with the Armenian genocide being the last twitch of it until recently. So why has it suddenly had a great eruption in recent years?  It was the influence of the Left.  It took the Left a long time to throw off patriotism, with JFK probably the last sincere patriot from the American Left in public life.  But once the dam was broken, the Leftist critique of modern Western life has been both scathing and extensive. And that gave new life to semi-somnolent Muslim rejection of Western ways.  The Leftist critique of Western civilization became incorporated into the Muslim critique and gave new life to it

And the Leftist really is in much the same boat as the Jihadi.  He finds his disconnectedness with his country and much else distressing and often expresses that as anger towards others. Conservatives all know the fury that Leftists evince in responding to any criticisms of their claims.  The fury is so great that if you publicly reject global warming or are critical of homosexualiy, you are likely to be forced out of your job.

And there have of course been Leftist terrorists -- particularly in Germany, Italy and Japan. The Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades and the Japanese Red Army were all alienated and deeply fanatical young people, quite like Jihadis in many ways.  Such groups are unlikely to re-emerge now because of the friendliness of the Left towards Muslims.  Murderously motivated young men and women of the Left these days would find it most convenient to join some Muslim cell.

Conservatives, by contrast, are under no such stresses and strains.  They feel connected with much around them. They feel connected with their family, their community, their churches and service organizations, military involvements and of course their country.  And they are proud of what their forebears have accomplished.  It is no wonder that in surveys of happiness conservatives always show up as much happier than Leftists

I expand on the importance of connectedness and the Leftist lack  of it here Below is an excerpt that shows how disconnected and marginal was one convert to Jihad:

The Islamic State recruiter cited as the inspiration of the alleged Anzac Day terror plot was an ­apprentice motor mechanic who was bullied and called “black boy”’ at school.

Before he was a high-profile member of Islamic State, Neil “Chris” Prakash was a paint-­sniffing, high-school dropout who was easily led by others and “scared of his own shadow”.

Throughout his teenage years, Prakash, whose mother was schizophrenic, lived off and on in the spare room of a friend’s house in a Melbourne bayside suburb, listening to rap music and tinkering with his prized Nissan Skyline.

His adopted family describe him as a social outcast who drifted from entry-level jobs to TAFE courses before his abrupt conversion to radical Islam.

“It was a complete shock,” said David, a father of four who ­befriended Prakash as a troubled teen. “The kid was so fragile, he was scared of his own shadow.”

SOURCE

And on a personal note, although my service in the Australian army was completely undistinguished, I am pleased to say that I have worn my country's uniform.  That is connectedness too


Culture imparts to individual lives a sense of purpose deriving from the certainty that they are ‘capable of transcending the natural boundaries of time and space, and in doing so, eluding death’.1 Threats to cultural integrity, whether endogenous or exogenous, can thus create the conditions for extreme violence. Assaults on the integrity or self-evidence of the nomos, for example, the challenge of radically conflicting conceptions of reality or insidious cultural colonization by another society or other ethnicities, ‘threaten to release the anxiety from which our conceptions shield us, thus undermining the promise of literal or symbolic immortality afforded by them’.2 This, the authors add, can lead to the response of ‘trying to annihilate’ those who embody divergent beliefs, an impulse fully enacted in ethnic cleansing (which frequently involves terrorism) and genocide (which cannot, since there is no third party to be terrorized by the killings).

A similar conclusion is arrived at by Jessica Stern in Holy Terror as the result of numerous in-depth interviews with ‘religious’ terrorists to establish patterns in their motivation:

Because the true faith is purportedly in jeopardy, emergency conditions prevail, and the killing of innocents becomes, in their view, religiously and morally permissible. The point of religious terrorism is to purify the world of these corrupting influences. But what lies beneath these views? Over time, I began to see that these grievances often mask a deeper kind of angst and a deeper kind of fear. Fear of a godless universe, of chaos, of loose rules and loneliness.3

Modernity, she realizes, ‘introduces a world where the potential future paths are so varied, so unknown, and the lack of authority so great that individuals seek assurance and comfort in the elimination of unsettling possibilities’.4

‘One-worlders, humanists, and promoters of human rights have created an engine of modernity that is stealing the identity of the oppressed’. Extremism is a response to ‘the vacuity in human consciousness’ brought about by modernity.5 In The Blood that Cries out from the Earth, James Jones stresses how modernization and globalization have failed to create a satisfying culture for millions in developing countries, such as Indonesia and the wider Islamic world generally, and has thus created a ‘spiritual vacuum’ which is the source of the appeal exerted by religious extremism.6

In the anomie of our postmodern, global society with its smorgasbord of options and lifestyles, a religious conversion provides clear norms, a preordained answer to the postmodern dilemma ‘who am I?’—and a sense of rootedness in a timeless tradition that transcends and feels more substantial than the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of contemporary communities of reference.7

It is significant that none of these authors distinguishes between the nomic crises emanating from the breakdown of an existing nomos and inspiring what we have termed Zealotic forms of defensive aggression, and the type of nomic crisis into which the denizens of modernity are born and which they sometimes go to extreme lengths to resolve by converting to violent forms of programmatic Modernism. Nevertheless, there is a significant degree of convergence between our approaches.

The fruitfulness of this line of inquiry into the roots of fanaticism is further reinforced by Eric Hoffer’s slim but ‘classic’ treatise on political and religious fanaticism, The True Believer, written in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War when the memories of the mass rallies of Hitler and Stalin were still vivid. This offers a number of insights into the intimate relationship between anomy and blind faith in mass movements and in their leaders—that apply just as well to the commitment of disaffected individuals to terrorist causes also.

For example, he writes that when ‘people who see their lives as irremediably spoiled’ convert to a movement ‘they are reborn to a new life in its close-knit collective body’.8 The drive to belong to a community of faith, secular or religious, which provides a sense of ultimate purpose missing from an atomized, anomic individual existence leads to the ‘selfish altruism’ described by Dipak Gupta as intrinsic to the terrorist persona, and epitomized in the members of the jihadi movement whose ‘acts of self-sacrifice transform them into god-like creatures, much beloved by God himself’.9

Hoffer goes so far as to relegate the importance of ideology to a secondary factor, stating ‘a rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises, but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence’.10 He sees all forms of self-surrender to a political cause as ‘in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoilt lives.’11

In the more clinical discourse of the post-9/11 social sciences, Arie Kruglanski endorses Hoffer’s assumption by arguing that extremist ideologies exert a particular fascination on individuals suffering from inner confusion and a troubled identity because they are formulated ‘in clear-cut definitive terms’ and offer a sense of ‘cognitive closure’.12

They thus provide an antidote to what we have called the liquid, liminoid quality of modernity. In an era where all certainties are in meltdown, extremism offers a protective shelter from what Walter Benjamin called ‘the storm of progress’. Kruglanski also contributed to an important multi-author paper which views ‘diverse instances of suicidal terrorism as attempts at significance restoration, significance gain, and prevention of significance loss.

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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FERGUSON Actors Quit Because of the Truth

An email from Phelim McAleer:

FERGUSON - The Play Well, it happened. They are trying to shut down the FERGUSON Play.

It's with great disappointment that I write to tell you that five actors quit this week because they didn't agree with the script. (The script is comprised entirely of Grand Jury testimony. No added lines. Just the truth.)

The Los Angeles Times covered the actors' leaving and my reaction. One actor, who said he didn't read the script before the first rehearsal and described himself as "very liberal, left-wing-leaning," said, "It felt like the purpose of the piece was to show, 'Of course [Darren Wilson] was not indicted — here's why.'"

The Los Angeles Times mentioned my "conservative" leanings three times in the short article, insinuating that I had an agenda.

But the play is Verbatim Theatre, word for word testimony heard by the Grand Jury. The only agenda is the truth. One actor had a problem with that:

"He claims that he wrote this to try to get to the truth of it, but everybody's truth is totally subjective," said Veralyn Jones. This is completely wrong. Veralyn Jones may not like it, but the truth is not subjective. It shines through the Grand Jury testimony.

I'm determined to fight this attempt at censorship by the theatre / Hollywood establishment. The show will go on. The truth about Ferguson will be told.

"The truth is the truth. If it doesn't fit in with their beliefs, they need to change their beliefs," I said to the Los Angeles Times. "There's got to be some actors in L.A. who aren't scared of controversy."

I won't lie to you. This is a crisis. It looks like I'm going to lose about half the cast a few days before the world premiere. I need to find and hire new actors right now. This will be time consuming and expensive.

Phelim's crowdfunding site is  here

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What Today's American Politics Tells Us

By Alan Caruba



There is something very disquieting occurring in American politics today. Most dramatically, the Democratic Party is offering a candidate who is a moral cesspool filled with lies and a history of behavior that would render anyone unthinkable for the highest office in the land. Something is very wrong when Hillary Clinton is, at this point, the only candidate for President the Democrats will be able to vote for and, worse, an estimated 47% of them will vote for her.

What we are witnessing is a Democratic Party that has been debauched by decades of socialism, an economic and political system that has failed everywhere it was implemented.

By contrast, what is being largely overlooked is the wealth of political talent—Rubio, Walker, Paul, et al---that the Republican Party has to offer as an alternative. Instead of obsessing over the different aspects of its candidates, we should be celebrating the fact that voters will be able to choose someone of real merit for whom to vote.

While the brain-dead media talks about the Republican candidates, seizing on every small element of the policies they are individually offering for consideration, the contrast with Hillary Clinton widens into a gap as large as the Grand Canyon. Her campaign thus far has been an exhibition of media manipulation. She talks of “income inequality” as if it has not existed from the dawn of time and is based on the socialist utopia of everyone being equally poverty-stricken. Who wants to live in a nation where you cannot become wealthy if you’re willing to take the risks and work hard to achieve it?

It is this gap between those concerned with the very real threats to our nation’s security and welfare that lies at the heart of the months ahead in the long political campaigns. We can, at the very least, give thanks that President Obama cannot run again. We must, however anticipate that he will do everything in his power to initiate or expand policies that do not bode well for the nation.

Why anyone would vote for a party that foisted ObamaCare on us, driving up the costs of healthcare though numerous taxes and impacting the healthcare industry in ways that have already caused many physicians to seek retirement or be forced to process their patients as rapidly as possible to pay their bills? The fact that the Republican candidate Sen. Ted Cruz is calling for the repeal of ObamaCare is reason enough to give him serious consideration.

Similarly, conservatives resist amnesty programs that would load the voting rolls with those who entered illegally and now, because they’ve been here for several years, we are supposed to consider them comparable to those who did so legally. Republican candidates who resist this understand that a nation with no real citizenship standards and borders that do not close off easy access rapidly ceases to be a nation. At the same time, these illegals are competing for jobs with those who are legal by birth and naturalization.

It’s a wonder to me that this nation is $18 trillion in debt, has over ninety million unemployed, and the nation continues to “redistribute” money from those who are working to those who are not. These programs are a huge magnet for the illegals, but it is the states that must struggle to fund their educational systems and Medicaid. Meanwhile our infrastructure goes old and in need of repair.

Beyond our shores, thanks to the foreign policies of the President, the United States is no longer the leader of the free world. As the Middle East slips into anarchy Obama wants nothing more than to give Iran the right to have its own nuclear weapons with which to pursue its hegemony of the region. Lift sanctions? Why would we want Iran to have more money to fund the terrorism that it uses to expand its influence? Closer to home, White House efforts to accept Cuba ignores its dictatorship, its record of providing weapons to our enemies, and years of hostility.

This represents a deliberate effort to undermine and weaken the moral principles on which our nation has been founded and risen to leadership in the past. Who is more widely criticized in our society than the evangelicals who have high moral standards and the Tea Party movement that is seeking to slow the obscene growth of the federal government?

We need to worry about a nation where marijuana is legalized and thus able to affects the mental capabilities of those who have used it since its heyday in the 1960s? Where is the need to reexamine the moral issues involved in the murder of babies in the womb? From 1973 through 2011, there were nearly 53 million legal abortions nationwide. In 2011, approximately 1.06 million abortions took place.

In March I noted that “More than a quarter of births to women of childbearing age—defined here as 15 to 44 years old—in the past five years were cohabiting couples, the highest on record and nearly double the rate from a decade earlier, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2011 to 2013.”

“And here’s a statistic that really caught my attention: “Cohabiting parents now account for a clear majority—59%--of all births outside marriage, according to estimates by Sally Curtin, a CDC demographer. In all, 40% of the 3.93 million births in 2013 were to unmarried women.” Moreover, “It is mostly white and Hispanic couples who are driving the trend, not black couples, experts say.”

This speaks to the breakdown of the institution that is most essential for a healthy, successful society, the dissolution or downgrading of marriage and the births that occur outside of it.

American politics—always a national debate on where we are and where we’re going, is critical to the future. Right now America is at risk of becoming a place where our founding morals, values, and traditions are being cast aside.

Your vote was never more important.

SOURCE

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Here Is How California's Obamacare Exchange Hid Mismanagement and Incompetence

Aiden Hill’s introduction to the secretive culture at Covered California came in his first days on the job. He had just been hired to head up the agency’s $120 million call center effort when he emailed a superior April 18, 2013, and got a text message in reply:

"Please refrain from writing a lot of draft contract language in government email … And don’t clarify via email … No email"

Later, concerned about contractor performance, Hill conducted an Internet search for “best practices” information to forward a superior. Afterward he got this text:

"Aiden—Please stop using government email for your searches"

Hill saw the text messages as a deliberate effort to avoid a paper trail subject to public disclosure. And he says some higher-ups grew increasingly upset by his efforts to flag alleged incompetence and waste.

“They stuck their head in the sand and pretended the contractors could fix things by the launch date, which they couldn’t and didn’t,” says a former Covered California call center manager who worked under Hill and asked not to be named to protect his status at a different state job. “It was always say that everything was fine and we’re going to make it through the process.”

The officials allege it was conflicts of interest that led some executives to tolerate “egregious taxpayer waste.”

“None of us wants to see … pockets lined of contractors that didn’t do what they were supposed to do but got paid every dime,” says a third Covered California official who still works at the agency.

An Associated Press report in 2013 found that millions in no-bid Covered California contracts went to firms with professional ties to agency Executive Director Peter Lee. At the time, a spokesman told AP that Covered California “was under pressure to move fast” to meet tight federal deadlines and “needed specialized skills.”

Covered California would not answer our questions about potential conflicts of interest.

AP also found Covered California uniquely positioned to keep its spending details secret—“the most restrictive” among the 16 state exchanges with “authority to conceal spending on contractors performing most of its functions … potentially shielding the public from seeing how hundreds of millions of dollars are spent.”

After Hill escalated his concerns about contractors, Covered California abruptly terminated his contract in August 2013. He left determined to expose the dysfunction, and did so during an unusual presentation at a public board meeting.

“I’m here to tell the board and the public that Covered California executives have been engaging in a cover up,” declared Hill at the Feb. 20, 2014, meeting, speaking from the audience during a question-and-answer period.

“They knew back in August of 2013 that there were serious readiness issues with Covered California. … When I and others persisted in challenging these contractor performance issues, our own contracts were prematurely terminated and we were threatened with legal action if we spoke out.”

After that public display, Covered California hired a law firm to conduct an independent investigation into allegations that management “engaged in a cover-up” and “knowingly allowed two contractors to engage in waste, fraud and abuse.”

The firm conducted 45 interviews with 25 witnesses. Last December, Covered California notified Hill that the independent probe concluded “the evidence did not support” any of his claims.

Hill calls the inquiry a sham and says investigators failed to interview key witnesses he suggested. Covered California declined to answer our questions on this topic, or any other.

Covered California: A Sales Organization

Kevin Knauss is a certified Covered California insurance agent and Affordable Care Act supporter. In spring of 2013, he says he was “jazzed” about the promise of Obamacare and began blogging “happy stuff.”

Since then, he has seen many success stories. One is a San Francisco graduate student with AIDS who had trouble getting insured until Obamacare. In December 2013, he not only was able to get a policy on the Covered California exchange, but he also got a tax dollar subsidy to help buy it. The very first week the policy took effect, he ended up with a two-week emergency hospital stay.

“He still had to pay the deductible, but he would have ended up owing a lot more money without insurance,” says Knauss. “And San Francisco General Hospital got paid.”

But Knauss has also seen a flip side. He’s been shocked by the amount of time he’s spent helping weary Covered California consumers.  “Early on, it wasn’t unusual to spend four hours during the day on hold with Covered California just trying to resolve minor issues,” he says.

Today, there’s less hold time but daily examples of confusion. “I’ve got one family … their Covered California account shows three different effective dates.” In another case, “I found out a woman’s plan had been terminated, but they couldn’t tell me why.”

Knauss’ once-cheerful blog has turned into a consumer chronicle of Covered California’s tribulations. He says the agency is masking its shortfalls because it is, in essence, a sales organization.

“I know their enrollment numbers aren’t right. They’re marketing themselves [to] generate fees.”

To some degree, state health insurance exchanges are forced to market themselves. After starting up using over a billion federal tax dollars, the law requires them to be self-supporting this year. To do so, Covered California collects commissions.

The agency wouldn’t answer questions on this topic, but previously indicated it planned to charge a 3 percent fee on premiums in 2014 and later hoped to reduce that to 2 percent. Because too few people enrolled, published reports say Covered California could not reduce its 2015 fee, and maintained it at $13.95 per person each month.

“I didn’t think it would turn into as much of a marketing machine and corporate entity. I thought there would be more transparency,” says Knauss.

Computer Bugs

Marketing Covered California can be tricky considering formidable obstacles are still dragging it down.

Design flaws involving the $454 million computer system are responsible for giant backlogs, misinformation and poor interface with California’s version of Medicaid coverage for the poor.

Computer glitches forced a delay in adult family dental plans and caused a confounding flurry of mail. One family reportedly received 18 notices in one day; 14 said they were covered and four said they were not. Consumer advocates found a customer who got 40 notices in less than a month.

And when tax season rolled around, 100,000 customers got inaccurate tax forms—or none at all. That mirrored similar problems at HealthCare.gov, which sent 800,000 incorrect tax statements.

Covered California wouldn’t answer our questions about various computer snafus. A spokesman previously told reporters, “We are dealing with a multitude of information that is going back and forth. … There can be discrepancies between what’s on our record and what is on the health plans’ records.”

The Big Picture

We asked Covered California to describe its accomplished goals, but the agency declined to do so. In a recent press release, the agency said that 800,000 households received federal subsidies last year to make health care more affordable. Subsidies averaged $436 per month.

“The assistance provided through the Affordable Care Act helped bring health coverage within reach for more than a million people, and it changed lives across the state,” Executive Director Lee said in a statement.

There’s little doubt that Covered California has improved circumstances for many formerly uninsured, like the graduate student with AIDS. But few predicted that would come at the expense of so many others now paying more for fewer choices and less coverage.

“In my case, it’s not looking good,” says Hill, the former Covered California project manager.  “While my coverage went down [due to Obamacare], my premium went up—by 71 percent,” he says. “So much for competition.”

More rate increases are ahead. A recent study found the vast majority of Covered California customers—84 percent—face premium hikes this year.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Social co-operation

I put up a post recently in which I looked at the now generally accepted sociological finding that social homogeneity promotes interpersonal involvement and trust.  Most notably in multicultural communities, social harmony and co-operation is damaged.

I thought therefore that I might add to my remarks on the subject by way of an anecdote.  The report is from a wise young mother who left the big smoke to live in a small country town in New Zealand.  There is one well-liked Chinese family there but everyone else is of British or Northern European ancestry. Many families have lived there for generations. It could reasonably be described as a Kiwi monoculture.  Nobody has to press "1" for English there. The young mother and her husband are well settled there now and both are  greatly pleased by the move.  She writes:

Last Thursday I returned home from swimming with H** [young daughter] when only 20 minutes after my return there was a knock at our door. It was one of the mum/swimming instructors at my door returning my phone that I had accidently left behind at the pool.

She told me one of the girls picked it up, gave it to her and she recognised the photo of H** on the phone and popped over to drop it off. Of course I was grateful and thanked her, I also told her I hadn't yet noticed that I had even lost the phone.

She saved me the stress and panic of realising I had lost it and it left me thinking about how wonderful living in a small town is. It is a lovely thought that H** will be under the watchful eyes of the people around us as we all know and look out for each other's kids.


Would that it were like that everywhere!  Anyone for New Zealand?  I have another favorite New Zealand story here.

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What the Left’s Moments of Condescension Reveal

Sometimes the left unwittingly throws gems our way. These come in rare moments of exasperation, rather than the usual poise the left displays. The transformation of America, after all, requires quiet, subtle movements, coordinated with high-minded propaganda. That’s why moments of condescending contempt, accompanied by the left’s sharpest weapon — mockery—are so revealing.

For example, during a recent White House press briefing, President Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, was asked whether Congress should have a say on the agreement with China that commits the United States to reducing its carbon output over the next 10 years. Rather than taking it to Capitol Hill, however, Secretary of State John Kerry submitted our “commitment” to the U.N.

In response to the questioner, Earnest said many members of Congress “deny the fact that climate change even exists. So I’m not sure they would be in the best position to decide whether or not a climate change agreement is one that is worth entering into.”

Earnest’s remarks show a contemptuous ignorance of the reasons behind our Constitution. The Senate’s involvement in international agreements that obligate the United States to sacrifices and the fulfillment of promises to foreign nations is not a mindless tradition, as Earnest implies.

In international affairs, Senate ratification of treaties indicates to the world that our commitments are not tied to the fancies or vanities of a single man, who will leave office after four or eight years. A concern for our nation’s reputation abroad—among the central issues Barack Obama campaigned on—requires that agreements be lasting, since respect from other nations comes in part from reliability and steadiness. Senate ratification provides this.

The Senate, as originally designed, was meant (insofar as possible) to preserve prudence in democratic politics by removing that body to a great extent from the influence of public opinion. This meant longer tenure in office and indirect election. This was done in order to create a deliberative body capable of seriously reflecting on the unknown continent of the future. As John Jay writes in Federalist No. 64, the Senate will possess “discretion and discernment,” as opposed to the “energy” of the executive.

The Senate should therefore be a kind of aristocratic class within a democracy. The advantage of this, as Tocqueville comments, is that “An aristocratic body is a firm and enlightened man who does not die.” Unlike the populace, sometimes taken in by manias, and unlike a particular president, who can be good or bad depending on the judgment of the electorate, the Senate should be more or less unchanging—a bastion of continuity in an unsteady sea of fears, hopes, and ambitions. For Madison in Federalist No. 63, the Senate possesses “sufficient permanency to provide for such objects as require a continued attention,” like foreign affairs.

When Earnest was asked to clarify his statement, he merely reiterated: “Well, again, I think it’s hard to take seriously from some members of Congress who deny the fact that climate change exists, that they should have some opportunity to render judgment about a climate change agreement.” That is, constitutional powers are revoked upon disagreement, making consent of the governed irrelevant.

Yet our political liberty is based on the consent of the governed, a notion often ignored by the left. For liberals, freedom is self-actualization, whereby what is actualized is some kind of consciousness hitherto oppressed by stigma. As such, consent is not only unimportant, but can indeed be an impediment to freedom.

Among the reasons for the left’s appeal is its seeming confidence. Unlike conservatives, the left need not argue about principles and interpret their complexities. Monolithic, moralistic declamations are designed to convince the wavering and silence the unsure. Airs of superiority appear to be knowledge itself.

This is a favorite tactic of the left, as demonstrated by the attempt by Rep. Raul Grijalva, D.-Ariz., to browbeat universities into investigating professors who disagree with his opinion on climate change, or by the president’s blaming his daughter’s asthma on climate change. This is the theater of high-minded condescension that seeks to convince through a mixture of mockery and threats.

The consequences are not small. Such demagogic arguments do not present a standard of judgment but rather deride serious deliberation. Mockery and condescension are easy moralistic indulgences not worthy of a free people.

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Gary Trudeau and other hypocritical Leftists ignore  the oppressed, despite their posturing

Tim Blair

The New York Times reports: "Italian police on Thursday charged 15 Muslim men with homicide aggravated by religious hatred after survivors of a migrant boat rescued in the Mediterranean told investigators that the men had menaced Christians on board and thrown a dozen Christians overboard to their deaths … The victims came from Ghana and Nigeria, the police said, while the accused are from Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal."

The crucial issue here – particularly if you’re Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau – is whether throwing Christians to their deaths is an example of punching down or punching up. I suspect he’d go with up, on account of Muslims being “non-privileged” and “a powerless, disenfranchised minority”, as Trudeau whined in his recent, pathetic attack on slaughtered Charlie Hebdo staffers:

"Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny – it’s just mean."

By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech …
Charlie Hebdo attacked with drawings. Their killers attacked with AK-47s. Trudeau is more upset about the former, as is New York artist Melanie West, a co-resident in Trudeau’s obscene moral abyss:

"Christianity is a religion that features a lot of people with a lot of global dominance, while on the other side, Islam is a faith that has been bludgeoned in order to justify the pillaging and imperial slaughter of the East. Within that context, a Western body blatantly disrespecting Islam (like when drawing the Prophet Muhammad) is dropping arrows from the top. They are driving salt into the wound. They’re punching down, and they shouldn’t be surprised when people get desperate and punch back."

Or, presumably, when Muslims throw Christians into the Mediterranean, possibly due to the massive global dominance of Nigerians and Ghanaians. Mark Steyn has far more to say on the topic of Trudeau and his disgusting kind, expressed far more eloquently than I ever could, but for now let me add this:

The likes of Trudeau and West are too fantastically, rigidly stupid to understand that “comfortable” and “afflicted” are not permanent conditions. For example, if “comfortable” millionaire crap cartoonist Trudeau were to have been visiting friends in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, he may have found himself rapidly converted to “afflicted”, what with all the burning jet fuel pouring over him.

Likewise, the “afflicted” Islamic terrorists aboard those 9/11 jets, who were already “comfortable” enough in terms of upbringing, education and careers, became more “comfortable” still as they carried out their martyrdom missions. One supposes, too, that the “afflicted” Muslims floating off the Italian coast were more than “comfortable” tossing Christians to their deaths.

Among many others, Trudeau, West and Australian Guardian illo-pullet Andrew Marlton probably dreamed for their entire lives of the moment when they would bravely stand up to confront a democracy-opposing, women-hating, homophobic, theocratic fascist power. But when that moment came, through extremist Islam, they licked power’s boots. They caved. They ran.

They not only punched down, they fell down, pleading, on their knees.

SOURCE

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Wisconsin's dirty prosecutors pull a Putin

Abusing law enforcement powers to punish political opponents is a crime

When Vladimir Putin sends government thugs to raid opposition offices, the world clucks its tongue. But, after all, Putin's a corrupt dictator, so what do you expect?

But in Wisconsin, Democratic prosecutors were raiding political opponents' homes and, in a worse-than-Putin twist, they were making sure the world didn't even find out, by requiring their targets to keep quiet.

As David French notes in National Review, "As if the home invasion, the appropriation of private property, and the verbal abuse weren't enough, next came ominous warnings. Don't call your lawyer. Don't tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends. ...

This was the on-the-ground reality of the so-called John Doe investigations, expansive and secret criminal proceedings that directly targeted Wisconsin residents because of their relationship to Scott Walker, their support for Act 10, and their advocacy of conservative reform."

Is this un-American? Yes, yes it is. And the prosecutors involved — who were attacking supporters of legislation that was intended to rein in unions' power in the state — deserve to be punished. Abusing law enforcement powers to punish political opponents, and to discourage contributions to political enemies, is a crime, and it should also be grounds for disbarment.

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The Clinton Pay-to-Play Foundation Unmasked

“Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,”  by Peter Schweizer, is due to hit the bookshelves soon, but Republican presidential candidates are already taking advantage. That’s because the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, was briefed on the book.

The New York Times obtained a copy, too, and reports that the “186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities … asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return.”

The Times quotes a passage in which Schweizer writes, “We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds.”

We know it’s shocking to consider that Hillary Clinton’s massive income and her record of “smart power” at the State Department might be tainted by these pay-to-play shenanigans, but Schweizer appears to have done his homework and provides numerous examples. Hillary’s use of private email servers was problematic in large part because she was able to cover up the Clinton Foundation’s dealings. No wonder she deleted tens of thousands of “personal” emails. And her response to the book is typical Hillary: It’s just part of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

SOURCE





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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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How the FDA Could Save Thousands of Lives

About 30,000 Americans suffer from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s disease—a horrible ailment that causes patients to gradually lose control of their muscles. Currently, there is no known cure for ALS, and the only drug approved for helping the afflicted adds at most just a few months to their lives. That’s why it’s vital that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accelerate the approval of a new drug that offers hope for ALS patients—GM6, developed by Pasadena-based Genervon Biopharmaceuticals.

More than 500,000 people have signed an online petition urging the FDA to approve the drug—thanks in part to the Ice Bucket Challenge, the campaign that went viral on YouTube last summer—so it’s conceivable that agency officials will soon override their overly cautious tendencies and issue an approval. But life and health shouldn’t have to come down to a publicity campaign. “In a free society, of course, dying patients shouldn’t have to petition bureaucrats for permission to take promising new drugs, so long as they understand there are risks involved,” Independent Institute Senior Fellow Benjamin W. Powell writes in National Review.

Under the current FDA approval process, too many regulations stand between life-enhancing pharmaceuticals and the patients who need them. Although these regulations, which include clinical trials that can take 12 years and cost $1 billion to complete, sometimes keep unsafe drugs off the market, they also prevent the terminally ill from getting drugs they need to extend their lives. Most of all, they usurp the ability of patients to decide, in consultation with their doctors, how much risk-taking is acceptable to them. “In the long term,” Powell writes, “the FDA should get out of the approval process, for the benefit of the rest of us.”

SOURCE

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There Is No Real Increase in Insured under Obamacare

Gallup has released the full results of its first-quarter survey of health insurance. It concludes that the proportion of uninsured Americans has collapsed to the lowest level ever: 11.9 percent.

Only the people who have employer-based benefits can be said to be paying for their own health insurance. They decreased 0.9 percentage points in the quarter.

People on Medicaid (which went up 2.1 percentage points) are simply on welfare. Lumping them in with people who have employer-based benefits is like lumping people getting welfare checks and people getting paychecks into the same group of “income recipients.” The respondents whom Gallup classifies as having “a plan paid for by self or family member” (which went up by 3.5 percentage points) are in Obamacare exchanges. Most of their premiums are paid by taxpayers, so they are mostly dependent, not independent with respect to having health insurance.

If we go back and compare the types of coverage in Q3 2013 to Q1 2015, we see that the proportion of those with employer-based benefits dropped from 44.4 percent to 43.3 percent; those on Medicaid jumped from 6.8 percent to 9.0 percent; and those with “self-paid” (actually, heavily subsidized Obamacare) plans spiked from 16.7 percent to 21.1 percent.

Here’s what I do not understand: The proportion of people aged 18 through 64 on Medicare increased from 6.4 percent to 7.3 percent. There are three ways to get Medicare if you are under 65: Receive Social Security Disability Benefits, suffer from End-Stage Renal Disease, or suffer from Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). I cannot see how Obamacare increased any of these three situations.

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Israel deserves our support for its morality alone

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." --  Benjamin Franklin

The left with few exceptions typically supports Palestinians, and usually at the expense of Jews. The right, with few exceptions, remains a staunch supporter of Israel; especially conservative Christians and the GOP.

But it is the middle, the independent voice that remains to be engaged, and to them I ask for their consideration as the world gets more dangerous, politics more divided, and the fate of the West increasingly hangs in the balance, when deciding if a choice must be made - whether to align with Israel or her adversaries - that they consider Israel as the righteous cause.

Let me engage the help of my fellow Philadelphian, Dr. Franklin, who once again demonstrates his prescience and ageless wisdom in that simple phrase. Any question about the veracity of his thoughts simply requires looking at neighboring enterprises - Palestinians and Israelis. Any objective observer would come to the same conclusion Dr. Franklin would if assessing the two peoples. Corruption, viciousness, violence and hatred rule the hearts and minds, policies and passions of many Palestinians. Were it not so, their masters, in the form of Hamas, PIJ, or similar, would not exist and prevail.

Compare this with people across the fence - Jews - most of whom are dedicated to education, farming, art, literature, inventing medical interventions, developing water treatment and technology advances that can benefit all mankind, and in so doing, enjoy democratic freedoms, a significantly higher standard of living, and, except when their aggressor neighbors are lobbing rockets into Jewish neighborhoods, or are bombing, knifing, running over or randomly beating to death people in Jewish cities, Israelis enjoy a significantly higher standard of living than their neighbors....  "a virtuous people capable of freedom!"

As readers of FSM have noted, over the years I've denounced the moral equivalence that the left, secular progressives, and the media are all too willing to extend to Palestinians in the media, the White House, and on college campuses, almost always at the expense of Israel.

For reasons that continue to escape rationale thought, Palestinians remain the cause célèbre among the salon set, the pseudo-intelligentsia, many democrats, including former President Jimmy Carter and academia.  Perhaps as Annette Benning's character in the film The Siege opines "they (Palestinians) seduce you with their suffering." Or perhaps it is the natural antipathy of the unsuccessful who are all too willing to become class warriors rebelling against successful enterprises like Israel, even if Jews' very success was obtained while defending against attacks by the so called underdogs, who behave more like wild, rabid dogs.  Perhaps it is part of the liberal mindset that wishful thinking makes all matters thus; the left are the peace makers, and any oppressed people must deserved to be rescued, regardless of the facts.

Well the facts in the Palestinian saga are pretty clear. Much of the suffering Palestinians face is mostly of their own doing, and at the hands of their own leaders, fueled by the politics of jealousy, defined by narrative that the plight of the average person in Gaza or the West Bank is because of Jews, allowing their leaders to exploit a mass of people easily manipulated through one unifying mindset - a hatred for one entity - Israel.  And in order to remain in power - Saul Alinsky style - you have to create an enemy class to engage, enrage, distract and mobilize the masses. Obama, the Alinsky-crats who now run the DNC, and folks like ISIS, Al Qaeda, Fatah, Hezbollah, Hamas, Moslem Brotherhood (starting to catch a theme here?) all exploit this strategy to most effective ends.

But do we stop and ask, especially as pertains to a failed social enterprise, such as perennially impoverished collections of people who have the resources to live better lives, how can a group of people emerge into a thriving society? There are lots of moving parts to a successful community - a democracy or any national enterprise. But paramount is the notion we all row the boat together, for a common purpose, a higher purpose. We need skilled people. We need to build things, not destroy them. We need to educate our people.  We need to have infrastructure and we need to be self sustaining - which means having things to sell in order to pay for things you need.

Well that pretty much defines how Israel grew up from a post WWII territory to a nation. Blood, sweat and tears were shared, but it happened. And while it is true Israel obtains military funding for her defense, she also is a pretty self sufficient nation with prodigious intellectual property being developed and commercialized, technology well sought after from China to Russia as well as the West.  She is the only nation in the region with perennial next century industries and companies.

Once when flying over the North-East part of Israel - a colleague looking out the window looking down at the ground which represented Israel and her ‘neighbors,' recognizing I had been here before, asked me how could I tell what was Israel compared to what wasn't. "That's simple" I replied...."if it is green and looks alive like something is growing, it's Israel, if it is lifeless, dark and barren, it isn't Israel!"

Hanging out at a café perched between Palestinian and Jewish neighborhoods the difference in appearance between school children was stunning. The Jewish kids were well kempt, in uniforms, carrying school books, or sitting down together reading from them on their front steps. The Palestinian kids of similar age looked unkempt, were not sporting books, instead sitting next to older men who were drinking, playing card or tile games, and languishing unproductive.

The difference in educational materials is breathtaking. Many of the teaching materials supplied by Hamas to Palestinian kids include such useful math problems like this example -"if you kill two Jews today and two tomorrow, how many have you killed in all?" The books are often laced with imagery that foster vilification of Jews from an early age. It is often more subtle than the math problem, but no less pervasive or destructive. Jewish kids on the other hand learn languages, science, literature, math, computers, and, well you get the idea.

It is painful to watch a generation of Palestinian kids where their God given talents and future are curtailed, and that these children will never reach their potential, instead being prostituted towards dark purposes. They will never enjoy the satisfaction of knowing what it is like to become a teacher, a physician, a lawyer, an inventor.  Suicide bombing is by definition a temp job, not a career.

And yet it doesn't have to be this way. Many years ago my colleagues and I flew to Israel from all over the world to support our Israeli friends who put together an amazing adolescent medicine conference. As part of the congress, young people from both sides of the divide revealed shared projects, and enjoyed early successes. Palestinian and Jordanian and Israeli teens working together; though nascent, their programs were making a difference. A short time later the 2nd intifada started. One has to wonder what might have evolved had the Palestinian leaders' hatred of Jews, fears of democracy and desire to keep power overruled their desire to create a nation for their people. But such is the hallmark of dictators, and tyrants.

In spite of the barrage of rockets sent from Gaza into civilian regions such as Sderot, Israel continues to supply much of the basic needs of that deadly region, even after abandoning it to the Palestinians in the hope self rule might foster pride in the region, pride in self, and evolution into a functional society. Hope clearly isn't a strategy, and Gaza has devolved into a region of despair, largely due to bad leadership,  citizens unwilling or lacking the courage to demand change from within, and decaying infrastructure.  The sickest of Gazans who cannot get adequate care in their region, are allowed to come to Israel for medicine and advanced intervention. Water, electricity are also supplied in part by Israel.

And yet the Jews continue to be denounced as occupiers, captors, tormentors. One must ask the Leftist apologists for Gaza - when is it the Palestinians' responsibility to grow up, stop expecting  handouts from the world, stand on their own two feet, stop blaming the Jews when they sit on a piece of Mediterranean front real estate that could become a resort? One has to ask would Gaza treat Jews as compassionately as Israel treats sick Palestinians.  We can't even get the fine friendly folks from Gaza to stop rocket attacks on Israeli citizens - unprovoked and unnecessary.

Israel would be the first to volunteer and help Gaze grow up, if Palestinians would only agree to live and let live. Israel and the US are almost always the first to show up in a global crisis - from Haiti to Japan to Turkey to, well you get the idea.

Does anyone worry about a generation of PTSD afflicted Jewish kids who, in addition to learning reading, writing, math and languages, learn such other useful skills - if a rocket alarm goes off, where are the closest hardened shelters you can reach in fifteen seconds? And yet in spite of decades of attacks, most Jews I talk with do not hate Palestinians, they pity them with compassion. They recognize a generation of Palestinian kids have had their youth stolen in an atmosphere of hatred.

The Israeli kids have had part of their youth stolen, too, under assault, and yet their lives are remarkably normalized because of the wisdom of a compassionate "virtuous" society folks from the North ‘adopt' i.e. bringing kids up from the South, out of harms way in the summer and other times where fun time is an essential component of youth.

And, every young person, except the Orthodox, joins the military. But no rational person could ever equate the army of Allah (Hamas) with the Israeli Defense Force. There are simple, noble truths why.  First and foremost the IDF is not charged with attacking or eliminating neighbor nations. If that were the case, Israel might have more territory! Hamas is chartered to eliminate Jews.

But there is one reason above all others that is the most telling argument going back to Ben Franklin why Israel ought to be supported by the democracies of the world, that the Left ought to shut up, get with the program, abandon supporting blood thirsty enterprises like Iran, Hamas, or Palestine until they learn to act like civilized people; the left ought to join with the grownups and support one of the most hunted and persecuted people on the planet - Jews.   Jews believe in the concept of righteousness - the notion of the moral being.  That could NEVER be ascribed to Hamas!

Imperfect as any other ethnicity, Jews none the less seem to have adopted their own mission statement - upholding the dignity of humanity.  This is why Jewish physicians offer the same medical care to a suicide bomber who was clinging to life, as the victims of that Palestinian bomber.

Several years ago I was at a small Israeli military base near ‘the front' - and had the opportunity to speak with the commanding officer who was in his early twenties.  Consider the responsibilities of this young adult. A man (adolescent) who was the same age as any recent college graduate in the US, this young Israeli officer was in charge of 100 troops. A colleague and I spoke with him about spending part of his adolescence in the IDF, and asked how it felt to be responsible for the lives of 100 people. The young man replied "I'm responsible for more than the lives of 100 soldiers. I'm responsible for the lives of my adversaries, too. They have mothers that love them like my troops do. I'm responsible to their parents as well as Israeli parents. That's why we must be moral and careful how we fight. I have to care about my troops and theirs."

"I have to care about my troops and theirs." Wow that is powerful stuff! And to me, this makes the IDF more formidable. Let's not lose sight of his resolve to defend the State of Israel; but within his marching orders is a moral imperative.

That sentence alone commends Israel to most favored nation status. It is an insight that captures a morality in a ‘virtuous people' as Franklin would likely describe were he joining me during my visits to Israel.

SOURCE



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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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