A Nobel prize for an ignoble deal?

by Jeff Jacoby

MOMENTS AFTER it was announced that the United States and its allies had reached a nuclear deal with Iran, the drums began beating for a Nobel Peace Prize. Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, tweeted happily: "I think the work of the Nobel Committee ... this year just got much easier." On Wednesday, a director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an influential think tank with ties to the Nobel organization, recommended that the 2016 prize be awarded to Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The Vienna deal is a capitulation to one of the worst regimes on Earth. Far from requiring the Iranians to dismantle their illicit nuclear program, the accord leaves almost all of it intact. In exchange for little more than a promise to delay its development of nuclear warheads, Tehran is rewarded with $150 billion in sanctions relief and, within a few years, the lifting of the UN embargo on conventional weapons and missile sales. The Islamic Republic is the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism, yet nothing in the agreement requires any change in its notorious behavior. And despite the regime's long record of treaty violations and deceit, the deal enables it to stall for almost a month before complying with a demand for access by inspectors — hardly the "anytime, anywhere, 24/7" inspections that the Obama administration had claimed it would insist on.

The White House wanted to sign a deal; Iran's rulers wanted to ensure their path to the bomb and nuclear legitimacy. Both got what they wanted. The consequences will be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, more Iranian terrorism and subversion, and a greater likelihood of war.

A Nobel peace prize — for that?

It wouldn't be the first time.

The Obama/Kerry willingness to concede anything for a nuclear deal with Iran has been likened to Neville Chamberlain's infamous Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938. Then too shameless capitulation was hailed as a triumph of peacemaking and diplomacy. Chamberlain was cheered as a hero in the press and on the street, and he won a resounding vote of confidence in Parliament. He was widely nominated for the Nobel peace prize, including by a dozen members of the Swedish parliament. Who knows — he might have received it, had Hitler waited just a little longer before invading Czechoslovakia.

All too often the Nobel Committee has seen fit to bestow its prestigious honor on men who negotiated "peace" accords that ended up undermining peace. In 1973, the prize was awarded to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho, lead negotiators of the Paris Peace Accords that purported to end the Vietnam War. In reality the Accords paved the way for US withdrawal, effectively abandoning South Vietnam to defeat and brutal occupation by the communist North.

The Locarno treaties of 1925, now largely forgotten, settled Germany's borders with Western Europe, and were extravagantly portrayed as guaranteeing that Germany would never again violate the peace. "France and Germany Ban War Forever," cheered The New York Times, and the Nobel Committee, intoxicated with the "spirit of Locarno," awarded peace prizes to the French, British, and German foreign ministers who negotiated the deal. Yet the treaties deliberately left Germany's eastern borders open to "revision." In essence, one Polish leader remarked bitterly, "Germany was officially asked to attack the east, in return for peace in the west." The promised peace was a mere bubble. The war Locarno facilitated would prove all too bloodily real.

The Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo Accords — presented in 1994 to Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres — was another blunder that looks even worse in retrospect. A peace prize for Arafat, an arch-terrorist and hatemonger who devoted his life to the destruction of peace? It was as contemptible a choice as the Nobel Committee has ever made. Of course, there's always next year.

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The Health Benefits of a Soda Tax Are Far Less Than Claimed

By William Shughart II

Imposing a tax on sugary drinks is bad policy. It doesn’t solve the health problems it purports to address, creates new problems and leads to waste in the public sector. Just because the idea has gained traction among voters does not make it defensible.

First and foremost, taxing sugary drinks does not reduce purchases enough to matter. Numerous studies find that consumption is persistent, despite higher taxes. That means health benefits will be vanishingly small. Proponents point to a recent soda tax in Mexico that supposedly reduced consumption, but that study has not been peer-reviewed—the finding was announced in a news conference, supported only by PowerPoint slides.

Taxes too low?

One important reason taxes don’t cut consumption much is that the taxes are often set too low to affect behavior. Why not set them higher? That introduces other problems. Set taxes high enough, and underground markets will arise, as they have for cigarettes in New York City.

Black markets aren’t the only way that people skirt high taxes. When a product becomes more expensive in one area, they simply go across the border and buy it in a neighboring spot where it’s cheaper. That’s likely why some retailers in Berkeley, Calif., which recently implemented a new soft-drink tax, did not initially pass the tax on to customers, and thus paid it out of their own pockets, according to some early reports. They feared losing business to stores in nearby cities if they charge customers the full price.

There are other reasons to reject soda taxes. Evidence is mounting that drinking diet soft drinks may be as bad as—or even worse than—sugary drinks. The human body apparently reacts the same way to artificial sweeteners as it does to “real” sugars. The pancreas pumps out insulin, but zero-calorie artificial sweeteners do not produce the energy rush that curbs appetites and satisfies cravings for sweetness. Yet these drinks aren’t subject to taxes on sugary beverages.

Squandered cash

Beyond that, there’s the matter of how these taxes are used. Selective taxes on sugary drinks and other modern “sins” (junk food, fast food) are revenue engines for the public sector. But the evidence suggests very little of the revenue ends up actually improving health outcomes. And the burden of paying for these measures falls most heavily on low-income households; budget constraints narrow the range of food choices open to them.

What’s more, wasteful rent seeking by advocates and adversaries of a selective tax can swamp its social benefits, if any. Suppose that a proposed tax is expected to raise $1 million in revenue over the medium term. Producers and retailers of soft drinks will be willing to spend up to $1 million to block the tax from being enacted; groups supporting programs financed by the revenue also will spend money to pass the tax. So, if $1 million (or more) is invested in lobbying, that sum is transformed into a social cost, which must be added to the already-heavy burden that every tax creates.

The argument that taxing sugary drinks helps to promote healthy lifestyles deflects attention from their actual effects. We don’t normally expect politicians to be truthful. But if they want to impose these taxes, they should be honest enough to admit that they will not end obesity or diabetes, but rather will generate more of other peoples’ money for profligate state governments to spend.

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The CSA and Symbols: Learning from History

Since a crazed, hate-filled and cowardly gunman killed nine black Christians in Charleston, South Carolina, the PC police have been in attack mode on anything associated with the Confederate States of America. The South Carolina General Assembly quickly voted to removed the Battle Flag from a Confederate Soldiers’ Memorial on the State House grounds. Now, critics want to destroy a massive carving on Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta featuring Confederate heroes Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Some are even demanding the rethinking of events associated with Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and others because they were slave owners.

Ben Hallman at the Huffington Post tells us how we are supposed to think: “The Confederacy was the most vile and harmful political invention in United States history. It was founded on the explicit principle that slavery is the ‘natural and normal condition’ of black people, and that they should be ruthlessly exploited to the benefit of their white masters.” Hallman and others see Confederacy as synonymous with slavery and racism, and tell us to despise all things Confederate. His is a very simplistic view of history.

Slavery was a horrible institution that most of us, thankfully, cannot begin understand. But if we are going to remove symbols and emblems associated with it, we better look at the Stars and Stripes before hunting down anything with the initials CSA. Slavery, of course, existed in the United States from colonial times until ratification of the 13th Amendment. Twelve presidents owned slaves at one time or another, including George Washington and U.S. Grant. Actually, slavery existed longer in the Union than the CSA, since the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to slaveholding states remaining loyal to the Union. For a good study on the war, causes, and effects, see Robert Higgs, “The Bloody Hinge of American History.” For anyone interested in the growth of the federal government under Lincoln and the Republicans, see Joseph R. Stromberg, “Civil War and the American Political Economy.” For a scholarly argument that war was not necessary to gain emancipation, see Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating the Slaves, Enslaving Free Men. A review of the book can be found here.

Of course, the Stars and Stripes has also presided over many horrific acts and policies dealing with removal of American Indians, imprisonment of Japanese Americans in WWII, and the torturing of prisoners at Gitmo. Such examples are abundant.

If we want to hold the USA and CSA to our modern standards and sensibilities, both will be found lacking. But in both the CSA and the USA we can find men and ideas worth studying and considering. Libertarians have long realized this. For example, Professor Randall Holcombe points to many provisions of the Confederate Constitution that limited government power and that would serve us well today. Robert E. Lee rightly remains internationally respected as a brilliant tactician, a gentleman, and man of honor. The Independent Institute has long championed William Lloyd Garrison, his demands for the abolition of slavery, and his contributions to liberty.

Bottom line: We need to pause before we banish all symbols of our past that don’t comport with modern thinking. Our history has rough edges and embarrassments we don’t want to repeat. But there’s plenty to learn from great men of the North and the South, the Blue and the Gray.

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Government’s Burden on Young Americans

The Independent Institute’s Love Gov videos offer an amusing look at the raw deal government policies give to America’s youth. In the videos, sometimes government tempts young people into bad deals, such as student loans, and other times it offers them little choice but to take bad deals, as with health insurance. But the videos understate the magnitude of forced transfers from younger Americans to elders.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up 60% of the federal budget, and those programs are transfers from the taxpayers who fund them to recipients. Social Security and Medicare are only for older Americans, and a major share of Medicaid also goes to older Americans. Younger Americans pay the taxes; older Americans get the benefits.

Things are getting worse for young Americans. As Jonathan Gruber noted, it is because of “the stupidity of the American voter” that Obamacare charges artificially higher premiums to younger people so that older people can have lower premiums.

So sure, government tempts young people to take out excessive student loans, to take on home mortgages beyond their abilities to afford them, and do other irresponsible things, but government also forces even the most responsible American youth to sacrifice some of their own well-being to support older Americans.

Government does many things. One is: it systematically plunders American youth for the benefit of older Americans. Is this fair? Ironically, programs that support the old at the expense of the young are more politically popular among the young than the old.

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Obama Acts to Head Off Crime Spree of ... the Elderly?

If there’s a singular purpose for Barack Obama and his cadres its limiting access to guns in as many ways as possible. The latest attempt is a push to prohibit Social Security recipients from owning firearms if they are judged mentally incompetent.

First let’s stipulate that nobody wants people who are mentally incompetent owning or using guns without at least some restrictions. But the question is the standard used. The Social Security Administration has never before participated in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, but, if the SSA begins using the same standards as the Department of Veterans Affairs, at least four million beneficiaries could see their gun rights eliminated by a bureaucrat.

We don’t want the government defining or deciding mental competence with standards that have nothing to do with crime. And especially not this administration. Indeed, given the Obama administration’s track record of disdain for American veterans — both through the bureaucratic shenanigans at the VA and in targeting veterans in DHS reports about extremism — it won’t be long before veterans are barred from owning firearms, or, conversely, their benefits are restricted if they’re gun owners.  Indeed, many veterans have already been judged “incompetent” when that’s clearly not the case. Now prohibitions could extend to the average Social Security recipient.

We’re forced to ask what problem Obama thinks he’s trying to solve. Our nation has not been under assault by senior citizens or veterans. It has been under attack from Islamic jihadists, and that’s the one thing Obama seems most reticent to address.

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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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Who are the haters?

My attention has just been drawn to what I gather is a popular 2012 rant on Daily Kos:  "An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America".   It is very amusing indeed.  I have often observed that if you want to know what is true about Leftists, you just have to look at what they say about conservatives.  They can't imagine that conservatives do not share their hostile emotions. They "project" onto others what is true of themselves.

So what are conservatives accused of in the article?  Hate.

The writer goes through a whole range of current conservative ideas and policies and asserts that they are motivated by hate.  No reasoning or evidence for each assertion is offered.  It is supposed to be self-evident, apparently.  And to the writer and other Leftists it presumably is.  That it could be otherwise motivated they are not capable of considering and they live anyway in a little mental bubble from which conservative discourse is zealously excluded.  They figuratively (and sometimes literally) run away from hearing conservative arguments.

Take just the first assertion of the rant:  "You hate gay people".  A typical Leftist sweeping assertion devoid of any nuance.  All the conservatives I know are essentially indifferent to homosexuals, though some think that homosexual marriage is destructive of social order.  So the writer is quite simply wrong.

Even conservative Christians make a point of saying that they do NOT hate homosexuals, though they do believe that the Bible is clear that homosexuality is a sin leading to condemnation by God, and that they therefore should do nothing to encourage it.  Even the notorious Fred Phelps used to say "GOD hates fags".  He didn't say "I hate fags".  And, theologically and exegetically, he was perfectly correct.  My late sister was a homosexual yet I find  nothing to criticize in what conservatives really do say about homosexuals

And the rest of the assertions in the Daily Kos rant are equally at variance with the real situation.

The big omission in the article therefore is any discussion of the full range of relevant evidence and reasoning on any issue.  In typical Leftist fashion, the writer tells only half the story.  If he told the whole story about any of the issues his balloon of rage about them would largely deflate.

The whole rant is an amazing example of intellectual incompetence but that is no surprise.  Hostile emotions are what drive the Left, not evidence and reason.

I am not big on tooting my own trumpet but if you want to see an argument backed up by a host of facts and careful deductions, my three part exposition on the nature of Leftism is here, here and here.  It's much more voluminous than the Daily Kos piece but that's because it considers the issues with proper care. I see no point in bare assertions like the Daily Kos piece.

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The Looming Reality of ObamaCare's Doctor Shortage

Doctors are walking away from ObamaCare, and they're not coming back

A new analysis finds that the health insurance plans offered on ObamaCare exchanges offer a choice of 34 percent fewer health care providers, on average, than plans offered on the private market. The report specifies that:

Specifically, the analysis finds that exchange plan networks include 42 percent fewer oncology and cardiology specialists; 32 percent fewer mental health and primary care providers; and 24 percent fewer hospitals. Importantly, care provided by out-of-network providers does not count toward the out-of-pocket limits put in place by the ACA.

This is not surprising. The decline in doctor availability has been a long-foreseen consequence of the Affordable Care Act. The Wall Street Journal reported that the number of doctors per capita is in decline for the first time in two generations, medical school admissions are down 6 percent, and the American Association of Medical Colleges has predicted a shortage of 160,000 physicians by 2025. The only people who didn’t see this coming are the ones who don’t understand that incentives matter.

One of the innumerable mistakes in the Affordable Care Act is the focus on the demand side of medicine, and specifically of insurance coverage. This is several steps removed from the actual problem that needs to be addressed: the cost and availability of health care. These variables fall fundamentally on the supply side of the equation. Lower barriers to entry in the medical profession would increase the number of doctors, and the resulting competition would drive prices down while simultaneously reducing wait times and making it easier to find a doctor.

By forcing more people to buy insurance plans, and regulating the pricing structure of these plans can charge, ObamaCare is driving more people towards doctors, while at the same time reducing doctors’ ability to get paid. Combined with other regulations in the law, like the costly requirement to digitize all medical records, is it any wonder that so many doctors are hanging up their stethoscopes - or failing to pick them up in the first place?

This new study reinforces what we already knew: ObamaCare has always been about insurance, not actual health care. But all the insurance in the world does no good if there are no doctors available to treat you.

The trend towards less choice that ObamaCare is forcing on consumers can only lead to higher prices and a lower quality of care. More long term, the implications of a health care system that disincentives people from becoming doctors is far more dire.

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Boehner Endorses Sentencing Reform; Bill Clinton Apologizes for His Role in Mass Incarceration

Yesterday House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) agreed with President Obama that Congress should address overincarceration:

"I've long believed that there needs to be reform of the criminal justice system.... We've got a lot of people in prison, frankly, who really, in my view, really don't need to be there. It's expensive to house prisoners. Sometimes, frankly, some of these people are there for what I'll call flimsy reasons".

Boehner specifically expressed support for the SAFE Justice Act, which would make the shorter crack sentences enacted in 2010 retroactive, eliminate federal penalties for simple possession of drugs in jurisdictions subject to state law, reserve mandatory minimum sentences for high-level drug traffickers, clarify that gun-related mandatory minimums can run consecutively only "when the offender is a true recidivist," give judges more discretion in sentencing people based on their responses to "reverse stings," encourage more use of diversion and probation, and offer prisoners time reductions in exchange for their participation in job training and other programs aimed at reducing recidivism. That's a pretty impressive package of reforms, and I have to say I'm surprised to hear that Boehner is on board.

"John Boehner's support for justice reform shows that momentum is growing in Congress," says FreedomWorks CEO Adam Brandon. "Not only that, but it's one of the few issues that transcends party lines and we can actually get something done. For too long, lawmakers have enacted big-government mandates that leave us with a skyrocketing prison population, high costs, and broken families. The status quo is unsustainable."

Another sign of the times: While attending the NAACP convention in Philadelphia on Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton apologized for a law he used to brag about: the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994—or, as Vice President Joe Biden proudly calls it, "the 1994 Biden Crime Bill." Among other things, that bill made drug sentences harsher, subsidized a nationwide prison-building boom, and expanded the application of the federal death penalty. "I signed a bill that made the problem worse, and I want to admit it," Clinton said on Wednesday. "In that bill, there were longer sentences, and most of these people are in prison under state law, but the federal law set a trend. And that was overdone; we were wrong about that."

That mea culpa is notably stronger than the one Clinton offered in his preface to a collection of essays on criminal justice reform that the Brennan Center published last spring:

"By 1994, violent crime had tripled in years. Our communities were under assault. We acted to address a genuine national crisis. But much has changed since then. It's time to take a clear-eyed look at what worked, what didn't, and what produced unintended, long-lasting consequences. So many of these laws worked well, especially those that put more police on the streets. But too many laws were overly broad instead of appropriately tailored."

Clinton's wife—who, as you may have heard, is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination—has been similarly inclined to make excuses for the draconian penalties she and her husband used to support, although she did concede in 2008 that those policies contributed to "an unacceptable increase in incarceration." Esquire's Charles Pierce suggests that the former president is "clearing his triangulations out of the way so that Hillary Rodham Clinton has a clearer road through the new politics of her party."

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Justice Reform: Something Bipartisan is Happening in Congress that Could Save Taxpayers Money and Keep Communities Safe

On July 14th and 15th the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a heavily attended hearings on justice reform. A common sentiment throughout the two-day event was gratitude for the truly bipartisan nature of the effort to restructure our justice system. Hopeful people are coming together from across party lines, as is rarely seen in Congress, to restore liberty and save billions in taxpayer dollars.

Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) opened the hearing by expressing concern at lacking employment opportunities for rehabilitated people, mandatory sentencing and mandatory minimum laws which incarcerate average citizens, the abuse of solitary confinement, and high rates of recidivism, or the number of people who return to prison after being released (up to 60% in some states).

These concerns were echoed repeatedly by members and witnesses in attendance. Also addressed were statistics about astronomically high incarceration rates in the United States (the highest rate of any country). According to Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), nearly one in three Americans has an arrest record, one in nine black children has an incarcerated parent, and the number of people currently incarcerated is greater than the population of 36 of our 50 states. One statistic that elicited murmurs from the overflowing crowd said that a new prison in built in America every 10 days.

One startling issue that continued to come up throughout the hearing is the fact that many people accused of crimes are unaware that their actions are illegal. Brett L. Tolman, co-chair of White Collar Criminal Defense and Corporate Compliance Practice Group and witness at the hearing, told the room that there are over 300,000 regulations; they are absolutely impossible to keep track of, even for those who study criminal law. Furthermore, with increasing frequency, crimes are classified as federal offenses, meaning many nonviolent offenders are drawn into the federal system, sometimes without even knowing that they had committed a crime. In fact, it is estimated that the average American commits three felonies a day.

Each member and witness had specific concerns about the state of our justice system. Gov. Jack Markell (D-DE) testified about overcrowding in our prisons, saying that many of the prisoners (as many as 40% of inmates in women’s prisons in his state) are pre-trial, and have yet to be convicted of a crime.

“You guys are preaching to the choir,” joked Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), in summary of a majority of the hearing. But simply because people are in agreement about serious problems in the justice system does not mean it will be easy to find a solution that effectively addresses problems while minimizing spending, and maximizing liberty and safety.

Booker lamented the ability to “take and seize the liberty of people to the extent that we have.”

Loss of liberty truly is the effect of over criminalization and federalization. We have created a system that dehumanizes people for nonviolent crimes and leaves good people at the mercy of harsh minimum sentences that are unfair and do not take into account the circumstances of the accused. It is big government in the courtroom.

Additionally, the prison system is fiscally unsustainable. The federal prison population has grown by almost 800 percent since 1980, rising from approximately 25,000 inmates to around 208,500 today. Funding for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which consumes 25% of the Justice Department’s overall budget, has almost doubled since 2000. We must be smarter with our money. It is limited and not being put to good use.

Jason Pye, Director of Justice Reform at FreedomWorks, wrote last week that “[r]estoring common sense to sentencing and rehabilitating offenders through innovative and state-tested means to reduce their risks of going back to prison” results in significant savings that are highly appealing to conservatives and libertarians. Pye explained:

Texas, for example, implemented sensible prison and sentencing reforms, though with a small upfront cost, that focused on rehabilitation and treatment as alternatives to incarceration. By disrupting the cycle of crime through reducing offenders' chances of entering the system again, Texas closed prisons and scrapped plans to build new prisons. These reforms produced $3 billion in savings and contributed to reductions in crime and repeat offender rates.

Booker told the members of the committee to “embrace solutions we already see working,” referring to policies in place in states like Texas and Georgia which have taken measures to reform their justice systems.

Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) repented that Georgia has historically been called “tough on crime,” adding air quotes for emphasis, and asserted that “that toughness hasn’t worked.” He went on to express his pride in reformed state laws which have allowed Georgia, a traditionally Republican state, to lead the way for justice reform on the national level.

Throughout the hearing there was a strong show of support for the proposed Safe, Accountable, Fair, and Effective (SAFE) Justice Act by many, including Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), and Kevin Ring, Director of Strategic Initiatives at Families Against Mandatory Minimums, who was a witness at the hearing and had himself been incarcerated.

In an official FreedomWorks statement, Pye called the SAFE Justice Act a “bipartisan reform effort that would address both sentencing reform and prison reform,” explaining that it “takes a different approach to sentencing reform by limiting mandatory minimum drug sentences to the highest-level drug offenders, which is in line with Congress’s original intent for the law. The bill would also give prisoners time credits for completing rehabilitative programming.”

We all have something to be excited about. In the words of Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD), this was “a landmark hearing.” Hopefully, those who have come together from across the political spectrum will be able to create real, positive change.

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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Left becoming disillusioned with the EU supergovernment

Greece bailout: breaking the spell for Europe's Left-wing parties.  Big government finally seen as oppressive

The EU establishment henceforth faces what it has always feared: a political war on two fronts. It has long been fighting an expanding coalition of free marketeers, parliamentary souverainistes and anti-immigrant populists on the Right.

After the scorched earth treatment of Greece over the past five months - culminating in the vindictive decision to impose yet harsher terms on this crushed nation just days after its cri de coeur in a referendum - it has now lost its remaining emotional hold on the Left.

This has been coming for a long time. We conservatives have watched in disbelief as one Socialist party after another immolates itself on the altar of monetary union, defending a "bankers' ramp", as the old Left used to call it.

We have seen the Left apologise for 1930s' policies, and defend a pro-cyclical fiscal regime imposed on Europe by a handful of "Ordoliberal" reactionaries in the German finance ministry.

By a twist of fate, the Left has become the enforcer of an economic structure that has led to levels of unemployment once unthinkable for a post-war social democratic government with its own sovereign currency. It has found ways to justify a youth jobless rate still running at 42pc in Italy, 49pc in Spain and 50pc in Greece. It has acquiesced in the Long Slump of the past six years.

It meekly endorsed the EU Fiscal Compact, knowing that it imposes a legal requirement on eurozone states to slash public debt - by 1.5pc of GDP in France, 2pc in Spain and 3.5pc in Italy and Portugal - every year for the next two decades. This is a formula for permanent depression. It outlaws Keynesian economics, and Classical economics. It is a doomsday construct.

This is what they have defended, because until now they dared not question the sanctity of EMU.

And so the once mighty Dutch Labour Party has been reduced to a pitiful relic. The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party has lost its Left wing to the rebel Podemos movement, freshly victorious in Barcelona. Support for France's socialist leader, Francois Hollande, has been cut to 24pc in the polls, as the French working class defects to the Front National.

Yet finally, events in Greece have broken the spell.

"Progressives should be appalled by the European Union's ruination of Greece," wrote Owen Jones in The Guardian. The new term "Lexit" is gaining currency.

The voices of the Left are uneasy. Their instincts are to oppose everything that Ukip [anti-EU conservatives} stands for. "At first, only a few dipped their toes in the water; then others, hesitantly, followed their lead, all the time looking at each other for reassurance," Mr Jones wrote.

Yet the cruelty on display in Brussels has trumped all. Mr Jones runs through the names.  "Everything good about the EU is in retreat; everything bad is on the rampage," says George Monbiot. The EU is being portrayed "with some truth, as a cruel, fanatical and stupid institution", says Nick Cohen.

Variants of this debate are stirring across Europe. Luigi Zingales, an adviser to Italy's premier Matteo Renzi, has become a flaming eurosceptic.  "This European project is dead forever. If Europe is nothing but a bad version of the IMF, what is left of the European integration project?" he wrote as Greece capitulated.

Whether or not it was a "coup", as the Twitterati alleged, there is no doubt that Syriza was compelled by financial coercion to abandon its election promises. It must even repeal all "fiscal" laws passed since January.

Without rehearsing 15 years of Greek controversy, let me just say that the country's crisis is a collective responsibility of the creditors, the EMU elites, the Greek oligarchy and, ultimately, of a jejune Alexis Tsipras.

The Troika bail-out in 2010 was intended to save the euro and European banks at a time when there were no defences against contagion. Greece was not saved. It was sacrificed. The roots of the "Greek Spring" can be traced to this original sin.

The EMU creditors never acknowledged their own guilt. They never made an honest attempt to negotiate with Syriza, even on matters of common ground. They demanded that the austerity terms of the prior Memorandum be enforced to the letter, hiding behind Pharisaical talk of rules.

Let us not forget that the European Central Bank brought about the final collapse by freezing emergency liquidity to the Greek banks, forcing Syriza to shut the lenders' doors, impose capital controls and halt imports.

It was a political decision - dressed up with technical flammery - and was arguably illegal. It is very hard to reconcile with the ECB's treaty duty to uphold financial stability. One plain fact is clear: technocrats brought an elected government to its knees.

We all know what the game was. Germany and its allies were determined to make an example of Syriza to discourage voters in any other country from daring to buck the system.

I doubt that this will work, even on its own narrow terms. Podemos remains defiant. It has accused the EU institutions and the Spanish government of committing an "act of terrorism".

It is, in any case, a double-edged strategy. Costas Lapavitsas, a Syriza MP, said the salient message of the past five months is that no radical government can pursue sovereign policies as long as it is at the mercy of a central bank able to switch off liquidity.

"It is now perfectly clear that the only way out of this is to break free of monetary union," he said.

SOURCE

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The Most Glaring Flaws in Obama's Iran Deal

The Obama administration's nuclear agreement with Iran has major flaws that could dangerously undermine the long-term national security interests of the United States and its allies.

Although the administration entered the negotiations pledging to cut off all pathways to a nuclear weapon, the agreement amounts to little more than a diplomatic speed bump that will delay, but not permanently halt, Iran's drive for a nuclear weapons capability.

The agreement in effect legitimizes Iran as a nuclear threshold state.

Once key restrictions on uranium enrichment expire in 10 to 15 years, Iran will have the option to develop an industrial scale enrichment program that will make it easier for it to sprint cross that threshold.

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Iran used red lines and deadlines to wear down the administration, which played a strong hand weakly.

The administration undermined its own bargaining position by making it clear that it wanted a nuclear agreement more than Tehran seems to have wanted one, despite the fact that Tehran needed an agreement more for economic reasons.

The administration's downplaying of the military option and front-loading of sanctions relief early in the negotiations reduced Iranian incentives to make concessions.

This gave the Iranians bargaining leverage they have used shrewdly.

Iran dug in its heels on key red lines proclaimed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, while the administration's red lines gradually became blurred pink lines.

Iran's nuclear infrastructure is left largely intact. Centrifuges will be mothballed but not dismantled.

Iran's illicit nuclear facilities Natanz and Fordow, whose operations were supposed to be shut down under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, have now been legitimized, despite the fact that they were built covertly in violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

Iran is essentially rewarded for cheating under the agreement. It gained a better deal on uranium enrichment than Washington has offered to its own allies.

Taiwan, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates were denied enrichment arrangements that Iran now has pocketed.

Instead of dismantling Iran's nuclear infrastructure, the agreement dismantles the sanctions that brought Tehran to the negotiating table in the first place.

This fact is not lost on our allies, friends and "frenemies" in the region.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who understandably sees Iran's potential nuclear threat as an existential issue, denounced the deal as "a historic mistake."

Sunni Arab states threatened by Iran are likely to hedge their bets and take out insurance by working to expand their own nuclear options.  Saudi Arabia already has let it be known that it will demand the same concessions on uranium enrichment that Iran received.

The Saudis have begun negotiations to buy French nuclear reactors and this civilian program could become the foundation for a weapons program down the line.

Other Arab states and Turkey are likely to tee up their own nuclear programs as a prudent counterweight to offset to Iran's expanding nuclear potential, after some of the restrictions on its uranium enrichment program automatically sunset.

The end result could be accelerated nuclear proliferation and a possible nuclear arms race in the most volatile region in the world.

Another major problem is verification of Iranian compliance. The administration's initial insistence on "anytime/anywhere" inspections was downgraded to "sometimes/some places."

Iran has up to 14 days to weigh the requests of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. If it decides to object, its objections would be relayed to an arbitration committee that would have 7 days to rule. If it rules against Iran, Tehran would have another 3 days to arrange an inspection.

This gives Iran up to 24 days to move, hide or destroy materials sought by inspectors. This is far from a foolproof system, particularly in light of Iran's long history of cheating.

Sanctions relief is another potential headache. Tehran would benefit by the release of about $150 billion of its money frozen in overseas accounts. Ultimately the Iranian economy would be boosted by tens of billions of dollars more through a surge of oil revenues as oil sanctions are lifted.

This could help Iran reshape the regional balance of power and establish hegemony over Iraq, Yemen, important oil resources and oil supply routes.

Much of this money will go to fund the Assad regime, Hezbollah, Yemeni Houthi rebels, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups funded by Iran.

This would rapidly lead to escalation of the wars, shadow wars and civil wars already taking place around the Middle East.

The dangers posed by Iran's enhanced ability to finance global terrorism would be compounded by the administration's last minute capitulation on the U.N. arms embargo, which will be gradually eased if Iran remains in compliance with the agreement.

This would allow Iran to upgrade its conventional weapons through imports from foreign suppliers and enable it to more easily arm its foreign allies and surrogates.

The bottom line is that the Obama administration now has signed an agreement that will expand Iran's power and influence, strain U.S. relations with its regional friends, weaken long-standing non-proliferation goals on restricting access to sensitive nuclear technologies and contribute to the evolution of a multi-polar nuclear Middle East.

SOURCE

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Wisconsin Supreme Court halts illegal  raids on conservatives

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has effectively killed the "John Doe" case which led to home raids and intimidation of a wide range of Wisconsin conservative activists.

Here is the key finding, which completely shreds both the legal theories and motives of the prosecutors, completely vindicates the targets, and praises those who fought back legally against prosecutorial misconduct:

"133 Our lengthy discussion of these three cases can be distilled into a few simple, but important, points. It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing. In other words, the special prosecutor was the instigator of a "perfect storm" of wrongs that was visited upon the innocent Unnamed Movants and those who dared to associate with them. It is fortunate, indeed, for every other citizen of this great State who is interested in the protection of fundamental liberties that the special prosecutor chose as his targets innocent citizens who had both the will and the means to fight the unlimited resources of an unjust prosecution. Further, these brave individuals played a crucial role in presenting this court with an opportunity to re-endorse its commitment to upholding the fundamental right of each and every citizen to engage in lawful political activity and to do so free from the fear of the tyrannical retribution of arbitrary or capricious governmental prosecution. Let one point be clear: our conclusion today ends this unconstitutional John Doe investigation."

Andrew Grossman, who filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case and who has served as counsel to Eric O'Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth (two of the targets of the investigation) in various federal civil rights litigation against the prosecutors, provided me with the following statement:

"Today's decision puts an end to one of the worst abuses of power ever seen in Wisconsin law enforcement. The next step will be holding those responsible accountable for their actions. The Court's recognition that the John Doe was a politically motivated "dragnet" of Gov. Walker's allies provides strong support for Cindy Archer's civil rights action against the Milwaukee prosecutors and lawsuits by potentially any of the other John Doe targets".

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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Obama: Happy Ramadan?

Islamist Murders Marines in Tennessee

Thursday morning, my daily email from Barack Obama’s White House propaganda machine, a message to all Americans about Ramadan:

“Michelle and I would like to extend our warmest wishes to Muslims in the United States and around the world celebrating Eid-ul-Fitr. As Muslims mark the end of [Ramadan], they are reminded that [it] is a time to reflect spiritually, build communally, and aid those in need. While Eid marks the end of Ramadan, it marks a new beginning for each individual — a reason to celebrate and express gratitude on this holiday. … The morning of Eid is marked with the call to prayer echoing through cities and towns across the globe. Millions of people head to local mosques for special Eid prayers followed by festive gatherings, gift exchanges, and feasts among friends, neighbors and families. As Muslim Americans celebrate Eid across America, the holiday is a reminder to every American of the importance of respecting those of all faiths and beliefs. … Michelle and I hope today brings joy to all of your homes. Eid Mubarak! [Happy Blessed Ramadan]”

A few hours after receiving that email, a colleague was joining me for a board meeting in Chattanooga. At a stoplight near our meeting location, he heard what he assumed were fireworks leftover from Fourth of July celebrations.

Moments later, a vehicle sped by him in the median. That vehicle was driven by an Islamic terrorist assailant, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. He had just fired on one military recruiting center with an AK-47, and was on his way to a second military post where he would kill four Marines: Sgt. Carson A. Holmquist, Staff Sgt. David A. Wyatt, Gunnery Sgt. Thomas J. Sullivan and Lance Cpl. Squire K. Wells. He also wounded three others: Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith, who remains in critical condition, a police officer and a fifth Marine — the latter two in stable condition. Notably, Sgt. Sullivan was on Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran, who earned two Purple Hearts in combat there. What Islamist insurgents could not accomplish in Iraq, one of their adherents accomplished in Chattanooga.

I passed by the site of the first assault a minute after my friend — before police were responding to the scene. I regret that I was not there a minute earlier to witness Abdulazeez drive by, because I know the sound of gunfire and had a helluva lot more firepower on board my truck than Muhammad had in his convertible sports car. As it was, police would not catch up with the assailant until after his second assault, where they shot Abdulazeez dead.

The deceased and injured at both facilities were unarmed — federal military installations are “gun-free zones,” including thousands of locations that have no security force protection, such as recruiting centers.

A DoD directive signed by Bill Clinton in 1993 prohibits military personnel from possessing arms on military bases, installations or offices. In other words, if my active-duty son carried a weapon on his person or in his vehicle onto his military installation, he would be charged with a felony.

Notably, the directive stipulates an exception: “When there is a reasonable expectation that life or DOD assets will be jeopardized of firearms are not carried.”

After Islamist Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad shot two Arkansas Army recruiters in 2009, and then Nidal Malik Hasan murdered 14 soldiers, security personnel and an unborn child at Fort Hood, Texas — and wounded 29 others — The Patriot Post made the case that military installations should NOT be “gun-free zones.” We insisted that Congress should immediately authorize weapons at all military installations that do not have their own security forces on station.

However, Obama and his then-Democrat controlled House and Senate would not act. Recall if you will that Obama refused to acknowledge that the Ft. Hood murders constituted an Islamist attack, and he denied combat death benefits or the awarding of Purple Hearts to families of victims there. Obama claimed it was “workplace violence,” and before the blood of our Patriots had dried he attempted to use that tragedy, as he always does, to further his gun confiscation agenda.

Once Republicans controlled Congress, they forced the issue, and the unarmed victims at Ft. Hood were duly recognized as combat fatalities and injuries. However, Obama’s DoD has yet to authorize military personnel at unprotected installations to possess the means to defend themselves against such assaults.

So, who was Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez?

Abdulazeez was a 24-year old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Kuwait, who had lived with his family in a quiet Chattanooga neighborhood since he was in elementary school. By most accounts, he was well-liked among his peers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, but came from a troubled home. In 2010, he traveled to Kuwait, Jordan and other unspecified areas of the Middle East and by many accounts, was “changed” when he returned. He graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) in 2012 and was seeking employment as an engineer. In May of 2013, he was actually hired by a Perry, Ohio nuclear power plant and worked on sight there for 10 days until there were unspecified issues with his background check. In the last year, neighbors report that his whole family became increasingly estranged. His only run-in with police prior to Thursday, was a DUI in April of this year.

In 2010, Abdulazeez’s sister Yasmeen, then a freshman at the UTC, was interviewed in the local paper about the tensions between Muslims and some of their peers. When she suspected others were curious about her, she said, “I’m not afraid to go straight toward them and ask them, ‘Do you really know what Islam is?’” It is no small irony that she then claimed, “There’s this misconception that Islam is a violent religion. Muslims are actually peaceful.”

Bassam Issa, who heads the mosque, Islamic Center of Greater Chattanooga, was quick to call the assault an act of “cowardice and hate,” adding, “We don’t see our community center as a ‘Muslim community.’ We are Chattanoogans first, and we see ourselves as part of the larger community of Tennesseans grieving today’s act.”

So why did Abdulazeez get into his car and head out on a mission to murder American military personnel Thursday morning?

We may never have a clear answer because he was on nobody’s watch list, though it is clear that his attack was framed in his Islamic rants.

The Obama administration has placed so many “religious profiling” restraints on law enforcement that it is easy for an Islamist to slip through the net.

Yes, in recent months Islamist attack plans have been thwarted by law enforcement, but, as just acknowledged by FBI Director James Comey in his congressional testimony about the domestic terror threat last week, “We are stopping these things so far, through tremendous hard work — the use of sources, the use of online under covers — but it is incredibly difficult. I cannot see [the FBI] stopping these indefinitely.” Comey added, “So it’s no longer that someone who’s troubled needs to go find this propaganda and this motivation. It buzzes in their pocket. So there is a device, almost a devil on their shoulder all day long saying, ‘kill, kill, kill, kill.’”

Indeed, in an column last year, “Islamic Jihad — Target USA,” I rhetorically asked, “How concerned should you be?” In answer to that question, I wrote, “The most likely near-term form of attack against civilians on our turf will be modeled after the conventional Islamist assaults in the Middle East, bombings and shootings, as we have now seen in Paris, London, Berlin, Sydney, Toronto, Boston, New York and Washington. This type of attack is low tech but effective in terms of instilling public fear with the long-term goal of civil acquiescence.”

It is this type of attack that Director Comey knows will get by the FBI gauntlet.

In his hollow response to the assault, Obama said, “A lone gunman carried out these attacks.” He concluded, “We take all shootings very seriously.” Even though he knew the name of the assailant, he did not mention his name, much less “Islamic” or “Muslim.”

Obama, blinded by his own Islamophilia, would like for you to believe Abdulazeez was a “lone gunman,” a “lone wolf shooter,” in an effort to disconnect the dots between this assailant and radical Islam and assert that there is no connection between Jihadi attacks in the West and the rise of Islamic extremism in the Middle East. That assertion is patently false.

Describing Islamists as “lone wolf” actors constitutes a lethal misunderstanding of the Jihadi threat. Describing their attacks as “criminal activity” or “workplace violence,” and then claiming it’s a “gun problem” as Obama has done after all such incidents, denies the fact that ALL such attacks are tied together by Islamist association.

In every case, those ties include mentors in local mosques and among Islamist peers, and yes, “propaganda buzzing in their pocket saying ‘kill kill kill kill.’”

The fact is, the blood of our Marines here in Chattanooga is on Obama’s hands.

Why?  These dots are easy to connect.

In 2008, Obama campaigned on “ending the war in Iraq.” In 2011, having rejected the Bush strategy of establishing a status of forces agreement (SOFA) to secure our hard-won gains in Iraq and the region, Obama declared, “Everything Americans have done in Iraq, all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding, the building and the training and the partnering, all of it has led to this moment of success. … We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” In 2012, amid the cascading failure of his domestic economic and social policies, Obama centered his re-election campaign on his faux foreign policy successes crafted around the mantras, “Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. I did,” and, “al-Qa'ida is on the run.”

Obama’s Iraqi victory narrative was just one more of his BIG lies, and this one with catastrophic consequences.

What Obama did was ignite an entirely new and far more dangerous war, one that is spreading across the Middle East and North Africa, and into the suburbs of Western nations, including Chattanooga, Tennessee.

This was a devastating assault, not only for the families of our murdered Marines but on our entire proud Chattanooga community of military Patriots. Please join us in prayer for their families and for the young female Navy recruiter who remains in critical condition.

And a couple Footnotes:

1. Terrorism or not? According to Bill Killian, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, the attack is “an act of terrorism.” According to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, “I think he was radicalized by these individuals in Syria. This is a new generation of terrorists.” According to Ed Reinhold, FBI Special Agent in Charge, East Tennessee (Knoxville): “We have not classified it as an act of terrorism. … We have no indication that Abdulazeez was inspired by or directed by anyone other than himself.” (Given that this horrendous attack happened on Reinhold’s watch, perhaps he is not quite ready to be transferred to the Fairbanks Alaska office.)

2. After receiving Obama’s White House Ramadan message yesterday, today’s message made no mention of the Tennessee assault, but solicited funds for the Democrat National Committee so that our next president will expand entitlement handouts: “We’ve got to do all we can over the next few months to make sure we elect Democrats who will fight for every single American at all stages of life.” I note, clearly, Obama and his Leftists don’t support “every single American at all stages of life.”

3. Thinking back on the violence in Charleston and the diversionary rush to remove the historic Confederate battle flag from all commercial and public venues, including National Military Parks, will Amazon and other online retailers purge their inventories of any and all Islamic symbols? Apparently, some people commit horrendous acts of violence and terror under the Islamic banner. Of course not, because most Muslims in our midst are productive citizens and people of peace, and those citizens should not be cast in with the lot of Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, anymore than those of us who honor the symbols of our Southern heritage should be cast in with a racist sociopath who murdered innocents in Charleston.)

SOURCE

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NYC very generous

 The $5.9 million settlement against the officer accused of killing Eric Garner was condemned Monday by of a top police union official for being obscene and politically motivated.

The record-high settlement was charged against Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who allegedly choked Garner, a black man, to death in 2014. Garner was heard shouting that he couldn't breathe as he was wrestled to the ground. The incident made national headlines and sparked a debate on police using excessive force and institutional racism. At the time Pantaleo caught Garner selling untaxed cigarettes.

The city will be responsible for paying the huge settlement. Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, called it shameful.

"Where is the justice for New York taxpayers?" Mullins told New York Post. "Where is the consistency in the civil system?"

SOURCE

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A deliberately blind bureaucracy

 The Veterans Affairs Department's system for verifying whether a veteran is alive or dead contributes to costly or embarrassing errors, including compensation being paid to veterans who have passed away and records indicating they had visited doctors after they died, according to an internal VA report.

The report, a review of the VA's death eligibility system, found that the department's medical records system lists as active patients 2.7 million veterans who are, in fact, dead.

But the VA can't expunge them from their rolls because the death notices came from sources such as the Social Security Administration, Medicare, the Defense Department and other government entities that the VA does not accept as proof of death.

The VA accepts only actual death certificates, a record of a death at a VA facility or a notification from the National Cemetery Administration as sufficient verification to remove a veteran from the system, according to department officials.

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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Goldstein-ing the American Right

Two paragraphs from a recent article entitled "The New Totalitarians Are Here" by U.S. Naval War College professor Tom Nichols should be required reading for those on the Right who believe accommodating the American Left's sensibilities has an endpoint.

Nichols refers to the recent attack on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas by has-been actor George Takei. Takei called Thomas a "clown in blackface" because Thomas cast a dissenting vote against the Court's decision to "discover" yet another previously unknown part of the Constitution, legalizing gay marriage - and trampling states' rights in the process. Nichols also takes on Quartz.com journalist Meredith Bennett-Smith, who insisted that a Washington Post column by Cathy Young, challenging the bogus feminist definition of campus rape, was written by a "horrendous rape apologist" who should never be printed in that paper again. To wit:

"I grant that overall, American political debate on all sides has become nastier and less tolerant. What makes these kinds of attacks, however, smack of totalitarianism - and I could reel off dozens more examples, but your computer would run out of pixels - is that people like Takei and Bennett-Smith are lighting their torches and demanding rough justice even on issues where they've already won. In other words, it isn't enough that Thomas was in the Court's minority, or that no college in America is bothering to listen to Young. They want Thomas and Young silenced, stripped of their status in their peer group, and to recant - even after being defeated in public on the issue at hand.

"That's terrifying, because it means that for a fair number of people in what's supposed to be a democracy, `winning' in any normal political sense simply isn't enough. They are not really trying to capture something as pedestrian as political equality, nor are they satisfied if they get it. They are not really seeking a win in the courts, or a legal solution, or a negotiated settlement. Those are all just merit badges to be collected along the way to a more important goal: what they really want, and what they in fact demand, is that you agree with them. They want you to believe."

And yet the Right continues to offer up merit badges such as the Confederate flag. So what does the Left do? On July 7, the Memphis city council voted unanimously to dig up the body of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest from its 110-year-old gravesite and move it to another location. An idiot columnist at the New York Post is insisting the "undeniably racist artifact" more familiarly known as the epic masterwork "Gone with the Wind" should be relegated to a museum, presumably never to grace TV or movie screens again. Several stores, sensitive to liberal orthodoxy, but apparently immune to its potential ramifications, ban the sale of Confederate flags, even as Nazi and Communist paraphernalia remain readily available.

At least until the left decides what other historical items are "more equal" than others. As if on cue in that regard, Salon columnist Nick Bromell is ginning up a campaign to make flying the Confederate flag anywhere a "hate crime."

Where's that Ministry of Truth when you really need it, right Nick?

Moving on to other unbelievers, it was apparently insufficient that the state of Oregon fine Sweetcakes bakery owners $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a lesbian couple in violation of their religious principles regarding marriage. The state's Bureau of Labor and Industries commissioner Brad Avakian also ordered the couple to "cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published, issued, circulated or displayed, any communication, advertisement or notice of any kind to the effect that any of the accommodations, advantages, services or privileges of a place of public accommodation will be refused, withheld or denied to, or that any discrimination will be made against any person on account of sexual orientation."

In other words, bakery owners Aaron and Melissa Klein are not just "wrong." They must be silenced, lest other people be influenced by that "wrongness."

Even established law gets no immunity from the leftist onslaught. Despite last year's Supreme Court decision in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, striking down the ObamaCare mandate requiring all businesses to supply birth control to their employees in violation of an owner's religious beliefs, the administration has once again crafted rules attempting to sidestep that decision. It insists that, as long as a business's healthcare plan provide such contraceptives for free, religious objections - and the principles from which they emanate - are rendered irrelevant.

This is exactly how the Left has proceeded with regard to voter ID. Despite a SCOTUS ruling affirming Indiana's right to require voter ID, and another decision eliminating the requirement that states "pre clear" any changes to their voting laws with the DOJ, that agency still filed lawsuits against Texas and North Carolina. That would be the same DOJ that has steadfastly refused to file a single lawsuit requiring states to clean up their voter rolls - when it's not actively seeking to prevent states from doing so.

In short, as far as the Left is concerned, there is no such thing as settled law if they disagree with it.

In fact, they've tried to criminalize it. Despite SCOTUS's Citizen's United decision tossing out the corporate and union ban on making independent expenditures and financing election-related communications, new documents released by the ever-reliable Judicial Watch (JW) reveal "the Obama DOJ initiated outreach to the IRS about prosecuting tax-exempt entities." The IRS also transmitted 1.25 million pages of confidential taxpayer information to the FBI. JW president Tom Fitton illuminates the implications. "The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama's opponents in jail before his reelection," he explains. "And this abuse resulted in the FBI's illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information. How can the Justice Department and FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?"

They can't. Moreover, the bet here is most American don't have a clue about this latest revelation, because our overwhelmingly leftist and utterly corrupt mainstream media have apparently been satisfied by President Obama's assertion that there's not "even a smidgeon of corruption" associated with this atrocity. That's because the mainstream media has virtually abandoned its role as government watchdogs that once defined their reason for being. Why the metamorphosis? Only useful idiots get the kind of access these pseudo-journalists crave, even if it means being roped off like cattle in the process.

And of course, in true keeping with the emergence of the New Totalitarians, yet another aspect of Orwell's prophesies has been realized. The American Left, and a number of conservatives whose own elitist tendencies have blinded them to the fool's errand of handing the Left ever more merit badges, have embraced "1984's" Two Minutes Hate. Their modern-day Emmanuel Goldstein?

Donald Trump.

Why the unmitigated rancor? To obscure Democrat/Republican collaboration on illegal immigration. Again, one might think that those who purport to represent conservative values would understand that aiding and abetting their own irrelevance is a politically suicidal agenda. But political suicide, along with the apparently anachronistic notion that American politicians should serve American interests, pales in comparison to campaign dollars, courtesy of transnationalist-minded contributors whose contempt for average Americans is palpable. Hence, GOP Judases are more than willing to join Democrat efforts to deconstruct this nation.

Until then, they have to deal with Trump, because this particular Emmanuel Goldstein has gained an uncomfortable traction with the public. And while the messenger may be flawed, the message itself resonates with millions of Americans. Americans sick to death of the bipartisan, wholesale lawlessness needed to maintain the bankrupt notion that millions of people here illegally are entitled to special consideration - again. Maybe the ruling class has forgotten the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act that attended the outright amnesty of 2.7 million illegals - for the last time - but the public has not.

And the illegal immigration issue further highlights the reality that there is no better example of the American Left's determination to ignore laws it doesn't like than their establishment of sanctuary cities that openly flaunt federal immigration law. And don't be fooled: While there is sudden and fashionable outrage against this totally despicable concept, the GOP will ultimately be as willing as the Left to drop the issue entirely once it recedes from the national consciousness.

And the word "fashionable" is spot-on accurate: Los Angeles became the first sanctuary city in the nation - in 1979.

Moreover, despite the national outrage elicited by the alleged murder of Kathryn Steinle by Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a man with seven felony convictions who had been deported five times, the Left remains steadfast in defending the policy. In other words, the interests of illegal aliens and their enablers take precedence over those of American citizens and legal immigrants. And if you don't like it, you're a bigoted, nativist, xenophobic Neanderthal who "must accept that you've sinned," explains Nichols. "You must discard your own values and accept the ideas of your betters. You must denounce yourself for undermining the construction of a better world. You, too, must love Big Brother."

Or be vilified as another Emmanuel Goldstein.

SOURCE

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Is the Civil War Over?

By Thomas Sowell

In the wake of the recent murders in a South Carolina church, the killer's hope of igniting a race war produced the opposite effect. Blacks and whites in South Carolina came together to condemn his act and the race hate behind it.

Some saw in the decision to remove the Confederate flag from in front of the state house a symbolic repudiation of the old South's racial past - and the end of the Civil War. But, unfortunately, wars do not end until both sides decide that it is over.

The black parishioners who expressed forgiveness toward the killer did more than most of us could do, and the whites who responded with solidarity did their part. Note how quickly this was done, by ordinary people of good will - black and white - without the "help" of racial activists like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.

Professional race hustlers have no incentive to see our current civil war end. They see in this shooting only an opportunity to escalate their demands.

Now there are rumblings of demands that statues of Robert E. Lee and other Southern leaders be destroyed - and if that is done, it will only lead to new demands, perhaps to destroy the Jefferson Memorial because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. And if that is done, no doubt there will be demands that the city of Washington be renamed, for the same reason.

In short, there is no stopping point, just unending strife as far out as the eye can see. And just what will that accomplish? It could ultimately accomplish the killer's dream of racial polarization and violence.

Neither blacks nor whites will be better off if that happens. With all the very real problems in this society, can we really spare the time and the wasted energy of trying to refight a Civil War that ended before our great-grandparents were born?

The past is irrevocable. We cannot change the smallest detail of what some people did to other people after both have gone to their graves.

Meanwhile, the old South has already changed. There is no way that the South of the mid-twentieth century would have elected a woman of Indian ancestry to be governor of South Carolina or a man of Indian ancestry to be governor of Louisiana, much less have Southern states that voted for a black President of the United States.

Perhaps the strongest evidence of the changes is that the black migrations out of the South a hundred years ago have now reversed - with younger and better educated blacks leading the new migrations from the North to the South. When people vote with their feet, that tells us a lot more than any polls.

If the past is out of our hands, what is in our hands today are the present and the future - and both have big challenges. Whatever policies or practices we consider need to be judged by their actual consequences, not by their rhetoric.

"Hate crime" laws are on some people's agenda. But what will such laws actually accomplish? A murderer deserves the death penalty, whether he killed someone of a different race or killed his own twin brother. All that "hate crime" laws can do is provide the murderer's lawyer with another ground on which to appeal the conviction or the sentence.

Trying to make up for the past with present-day benefits has a track record that shows many counterproductive consequences.

The federal government's pressures against schools to not discipline so many black males is another "benefit" for blacks that is far from beneficial. It means that a handful of hoodlums in a classroom can prevent all the other black children from getting a decent education, which may be their only chance for a decent life.

Another "benefit" for blacks that turns out not to be beneficial is giving the police orders to back off during ghetto riots. Whether in Baltimore recently or in Detroit back in the 1960s, the net result has been more people killed, most of them black, and a whole community put on the downward path of physical and social deterioration.

We need a lot more serious thinking about the present and the future, and a lot less time and energy spent on the past.

SOURCE

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Another Leftist ignoramus

Whenever conservatives are in power the Left regularly fling out accusations that conservatives are Nazis.  That the actual Nazis were socialists they ignore.

One particularly amusing example comes from Britain recently.  A prominent Leftist politician, Stephen Kinnock,  described  the British Conservative government's proposal to limit child tax credits to the first two children only  as reminiscent of Nazi-style `eugenics'.  The aim of the policy is to prevent mothers having big families so they can live on the resultant welfare payments.

As Tim Worstall points out, Kinnock got it precisely ass-backward.  The Nazis paid bonuses for extra children and awarded a gold medal for 7 of them.  And it was the Fabians more than anyone else who were into eugenics in the UK.

History always is awkward for the Left

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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Greece is a corrupt society that CANNOT pay its way

The negotiations over the last few months have been marked by a remarkable degree of public acrimony. Most of the other Eurozone governments have become increasingly and publicly exasperated with the Greeks and the expressions of hostility towards the Greek government from members of national parliaments have grown ever more outspoken. Some of the reasons for this are well known, above all the lack of a true European demos, which means there is not the kind of ultimate solidarity or shared interest that one finds in, for example, the United States. However there is another reason for the acrimony that has not received much attention. The creditors misunderstand what it is they are asking the Greek government and society to do. This lack of understanding is why any deal made now is likely to prove a disappointment.

The impression given by media reports is that this is all about debt, specifically the debts run up by the Greek state before 2009. Certainly there is a problem but it is one that is soluble and does not require the kind of fraught negotiations we have seen. The difficulty is that the fiscal state of Greece before the first bailout in 2010, and the underlying state of the Greek economy, are symptoms of a much more serious underlying problem. This is one not of debt but of competitiveness. Quite simply the Greek economy is not productive enough to support the levels of income and public spending that it now has, without significant capital inflows from outside Greece. Before 2008 these came in the form of private loans, since then in the form of bailouts (even if much of this has been recycled back to private creditors). Greek firms and individuals are simply not competitive with their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, above all in Germany. Being in the Euro means that they cannot adopt the traditional way of regaining at least some competitiveness by devaluing their currency. Instead they have to deflate internally and the attempt to do this has devastated economic life in Greece.

This is well known. It is the reason why the creditors are demanding that in return for a third bailout the Greek government introduce a series of reforms to public spending, the tax system, and the machinery of the Greek state, particularly its tax collecting apparatus. Successive Greek government have either refused to do this or have promised to do it and then failed to. This is why the rest of the Eurozone is becoming ever more exasperated. It is here, however, that the misunderstanding comes in to play.

What the creditors think they are asking for is major shift in public policy. They recognise that the shift they are asking for is radical and many realise in addition that it would involve a shift in the general ideological basis of Greek politics, in a more market liberal direction. However they are actually, without realising it, asking for something much more fundamental and radical.

One question that should be asked is why Greece got into a position that was so much worse than that of other ‘peripheral’ economies. Also, why has the performance of the Greek economy been so much worse than that of other countries that have had bailouts and austerity, such as Spain, Portugal, and Ireland? The answer lies in the fundamental nature of the Greek state and the political economy of which it is the central part.

Greek political culture is dominated by practices and institutions that certainly exist elsewhere in Europe but are not as dominant. The state has a narrow tax base, with powerful interests such as the Orthodox Church effectively exempt. The revenue collection apparatus is completely ineffective so that tax evasion is endemic at every level of income. This means that simply raising or extending VAT for instance is not enough because so many transactions are off the books. At the same time, the Greek state provides generous pensions and other benefits, which it cannot fund. The political system appears to be a modern democracy but is in fact a much older model. The key institution is clientilism: Political actors give out rewards to their clients in the shape of handouts and sinecures in the very large public sector. This is done much more directly than with the kind of interest group politics that we find in most countries and it is central to the whole way that politics works.

The extent of patronage means that the Greek government (whoever they are) does not have a modern, Weberian, bureaucracy to call on. Instead most of the people in the public service owe their positions to networks of patronage and these command their loyalty. The economy is highly regulated in ways that entrench settled interests and inhibit innovation. In particular a very wide range of occupations are subject to rules that make it very difficult for new entrants to get into those sectors. Because of the inefficiency and the existence of a plethora of rules that are irksome but ultimately unenforceable, corruption is endemic and widespread throughout Greek society. This system cannot maintain anything like the standard of living to which most Greeks aspire and as such it means that via membership of the Euro we have seen the development of an economy that depends upon inward transfers to a much greater degree than is the case in countries such as Spain and Ireland.

Given all this it becomes clear that what the creditors are asking for is much more than a shift in policy, no matter how sharp and dramatic. Policy shifts of that kind are part of the normal or regular political process and take place infrequently but still regularly in most polities. The shift brought about by Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979 is an example. What is needed in Greece, and what the creditors are asking for without realising it, is something more fundamental, a change in the very nature of the political system and in the entire nature of politics and government rather than a change of policy within a system. This is a regime change in the original and correct use of that term.

The point of course is that changes of this kind are extremely difficult and only happen rarely. Sometimes it requires a revolution as in France, on other occasions it takes place in the context of a fundamental crisis such as defeat in a major war. Very rarely can it happen when there is a near consensus in a society over what to do, as in Japan in the 1870s. The current Greek government is almost certainly aware of this but apart from ideological objections to part of the list of reforms, they are quite simply unable to do what is asked rather than unwilling because a change in the political order is simply very, very hard.

So the creditors are likely to be disappointed and will then become even more enraged. Moreover, being in the Euro makes any attempt at systemic change in Greece even more difficult than it would be already, because if removes a range of policy options that could alleviate some of the transition costs. As most economists of all persuasions now think, the best option is a managed Greek exit from the Euro. If this does not happen (as seems likely) then this is a production that will run for some time.

 SOURCE

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How to insult a "progressive"

Pat Condell's latest  --- superb



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An illegitimate union

By Walter E. Williams

The victors of war write its history in order to cast themselves in the most favorable light. That explains the considerable historical ignorance about our war of 1861 and panic over the Confederate flag. To create better understanding, we have to start a bit before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the war between the colonies and Great Britain. Its first article declared the 13 colonies "to be free, sovereign and independent states." These 13 sovereign nations came together in 1787 as principals and created the federal government as their agent. Principals have always held the right to fire agents. In other words, states held a right to withdraw from the pact — secede.

During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it, saying, "A union of the states containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."

In fact, the ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought they could not regain their sovereignty — in a word, secede.

On March 2, 1861, after seven states seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that read, "No state or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States."

Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here's a question for the reader: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?

On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, "Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty."

Both Northern Democratic and Republican Parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South's right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded states, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content." The New York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."

The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. We Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech: "It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense." Lincoln said the soldiers sacrificed their lives "to the cause of self-determination — that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth." Mencken says: "It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves."

The War of 1861 brutally established that states could not secede. We are still living with its effects. Because states cannot secede, the federal government can run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution's limitations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. States have little or no response.

SOURCE

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Truth is an existential threat to the US government

by LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD

The United States is not a constitutional republic. It is an oligarchy controlled by wealthy financiers who hire politicians to pass legislation beneficial to them and employ journalists to keep the citizens ignorant and compliant.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans believe in democracy. It is simply an ideological contest between two different forms of totalitarianism based on big government, where they represent only themselves in their pursuit of personal power and profit.

Over the last hundred years, the Democrat Party has moved farther and farther to the left, evolving from populism to Marxism and developing an operational model resembling that of the mafia. Its leaders are a gaggle of coffeehouse communists and unindicted felons, who seek the lifestyles of the rich and famous while practicing the politics of Joseph Stalin.

The Republicans are democratic only in the sense that they are willing to sell their votes to the highest bidder, where their political power and, ultimately, compensation from their rich donors increase proportionally with the expansion of government.

The federal government is now an industry competing with the private sector for revenues and resources, but, unlike the private sector, government is unconstrained by regulation and the rule of law.

The cost of public-sector pay and benefits, for example, which in many cases far exceed what comparable workers earn in the private sector, combined with hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities for retired government workers, are weighing down the economy.

The fundamental problem is public-sector collective bargaining. It is appropriate in the private sector, where workers bargain with private, profit-making corporations and where market forces provide an independent check on both sides' demands.

Yet there is an unholy alliance and a mutually beneficial relationship for money and votes between Democrats and public sector unions, which, in terms of government services, translate into higher costs, lower efficiency and, worst of all, less democracy.

Why are such illogical and dishonest policies allowed to continue? Because it is profitable.

To foster big government from which they personally benefit, the Democrats nurture a Marxist-type victim class, while the Republicans serve the affluent, both at the expense of the Middle Class, whose propensities toward liberty and accountability represent a threat to the hopelessly corrupt status quo that the two major parties and the media endeavor so vigorously to protect.

Ergo, the War on the Middle Class, now pursued by both Democrats and Republicans, albeit for different reasons.

As a consequence and, not surprisingly, today the main the activity of the federal government is lying. Barack Obama lied to get elected, lied to enact his policies and lied when those policies failed. In response, the Republicans added cowardice to their own set of lies.

As George Orwell noted: "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

That is why the political establishment and the media find Donald Trump so frightening; the danger that the truth might be spoken.

There is, however, a greater peril - when blatant and outrageous lies are no longer sufficient to soothe the electorate into complacency, such a government must begin to curtail liberty and oppress the people in order to sustain itself, an approach with which both Democrats and Republicans find agreement.

The United States is on the cusp of a second civil war, one to determine who should control the federal government. It is not a contest between the Democrats and Republicans or liberals and conservatives, but a battle between the entrenched power and tyranny of the bipartisan political-media establishment versus the rights and liberties of the American people.

Only the truth will set us free.

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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