Persecution of Christians in Muslim lands
Fresh attacks against Christians marred Christmas Day as Pope Benedict led pleas by religious leaders for an end to persecution and for peace in the Middle East.
While record crowds flocked to Bethlehem, the Palestinian town where Jesus Christ was believed to have been born, hundreds also defied al-Qaeda threats and packed Our Lady of Salvation Cathedral in Baghdad for Christmas Mass.
Although there were no immediate reports of attacks against Christians in the Middle East, bombings in other parts of the world highlighted the threats facing believers.
A series of Christmas Eve church attacks and explosions left 38 people dead in Nigeria and six injured in the Philippines.
The situation was especially tense in the central Nigerian city of Jos, where at least 32 people died and a further 74 were injured, many as they were doing their Christmas shopping, police said. Sectarian unrest in the region has killed hundreds this year.
In Maiduguri, in northern Nigeria, suspected members of an Islamist sect that staged an uprising last year attacked three churches, leaving six people dead and one of the churches burnt down, an army spokesman said.
In the Philippines, a bomb in a church in Jolo injured six. The island is a bastion of Abu Sayyaf, a group linked to al-Qaeda.
In his Urbi et Orbi address, the Pope called for human rights to be respected in Afghanistan and Pakistan and an end to the turmoil in African trouble spots, and rebuked the Chinese government for what he said were the limitations placed on Christians living in China.
He reserved special mention for Christians in Baghdad after 44 worshippers and two priests were killed when Islamist militants laid siege to a church in Baghdad in October. "May the comforting message of the coming of Emmanuel ease the pain and bring consolation amid their trials to the beloved Christian communities in Iraq and throughout the Middle East," he said.
In Britain, the Archbishop of Canterbury also urged people to remember those who face persecution because of their Christian faith. "We may feel powerless to help, yet we should also know that people in such circumstances are strengthened simply by knowing they have not been forgotten," Rowan Williams, said.
SOURCE
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Useless shepherds: Cowardly Christian leaders fail to defend their flock
Jon Jay is dissatisfied with the occasional lame statements of the kind we see above (Spelling etc. tidied up a bit):
Let us just squarely address the silence of the "leaders" of Christendom on the slaughter of Christians generally, and specifically, the slaughter of Christian celebrants during the high holy season, by Islam, to advance the purposes of Islam.
This failure of Christian leaders, such as the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to address this issue is immoral, and it is sin. This craven silence, this eloquent indifference to the suffering of the faithful at the hands of Islam is cowardice in the face of attack, and such cowardice is immoral in the extreme.
It is immoral because it only encourages and incites islam to further outrage, outrages, i would note, that are perpetrated against the lambs in the flock as opposed to being directed at its "shepherds." it is one thing for the shepherd to turn the other cheek to the ravening wolf, ... , that is a personal choice on the part of the shepherd.
It is quite another matter for the shepherd to stand idly by while the innocent lambs of the flock are slaughtered. And, it is a matter of added sin and guilt for the shepard to make the way to the flock easier for the wolf, and moreover, to encourage the wolf to continuing his ravening attacks by not loosening the hounds in protection of the flock.
To stand by mute while these attacks occur, is immoral and it is grave sin for the Pope and the archbishop to remain silent in the face of such outrage.
How do these cowards meet their maker, with faces downcast in shame for their inaction, for their silence, for their very complicity in truckling with islam?
More HERE
Dan Friedman says: "Give them time. This is a tough one. It's going to take a while before they figure out how to blame it on the Jews"
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Some people know from experience where the Democratic party is heading
Many Russian immigrants to the "red borough" of Staten Island are flocking to the Republican Party, saying that the national Democrats' "socialistic" policies remind them too much of the top-down oligarchy they fled in their native land.
With many of the borough's Russian arrivers already owning businesses and active in civic organizations, their muscle could help the Island GOP solidify electoral gains made this year, when the party took back congressional and Assembly seats.
Businessman Arkadiy Fridman said that the newly formed Citizens Magazine Business Club, a confederation of more than 50 Russian-owned businesses here and in Brooklyn, has aligned itself with the Molinari Republican Club (MRC) in an effort to increase the Russian community's political and economic clout.
"We decided we had to support this club," said Fridman, a former Soviet Army officer who came to the United States in 1992. "They are very close to our political and business vision."
In the wake of the national GOP's big wins this year, when the party took back control of the House, Republicans everywhere are more confident that their bedrock message of smaller government and lower taxes will resonate with American voters.
Fridman said that the Democrats "are going in an absolutely different direction," focusing on "income redistribution" and rich-versus-poor "class war." "It's too socialistic," said Fridman, head of the non-profit Staten Island Community Center and president of Citizens Magazine, a public affairs publication. "It's very painful for us to see."
The Democrats' national losses were seen as a rejection of President Barack Obama's health care reform law and other initiatives that opponents say went too far in pushing government control on Americans.
The Big Brother approach reminds Fridman too much of what he left behind in the former Soviet Union. "It's the same rule like it was there," said Fridman, who estimates there are around 55,000 Russian immigrants here.
Michael Petrov of the Digital Edge data management firm in Bloomfield, said that he objects to the "micro-managing of the economy" he's seen from city as well as federal officials. "Government is affecting small business more and more," said Petrov, who came to the United States in 1994. "It's the same as what's happening in Russia."
The Citizens Club, formed earlier this month, looks to support and grow local businesses here; introduce Russian firms to the borough's existing business and political communities, and promote Russian community representatives to serve in elected office.
Former Borough President Guy Molinari, the MRC's namesake, said he'd noticed over the years that Russian immigrants here tended to register Republican. Molinari called the affiliation with MRC "a natural marriage."
"They want to be involved, be part of the community," Molinari said. "They come from a country where they weren't able to express themselves, didn't have the right to organize or vote. They appreciate it more than some of us who were born here."
Brooklyn attorney David Storovin said that the fact that the MRC is made up of business professionals "who are successful in their own right," also made the match an attractive one.
He said that he and other Russian immigrants are also drawn to the GOP's traditional veneration of flag and country.
Reflecting the American Dream ideal that has drawn immigrants here since the county's founding, Storovin said that many Russians are "grateful" for the religious, business and travel freedoms the United States provide, and want to show it. "We do feel patriotic," Storovin said.
More HERE
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If you are old and in poor health, Obama wants you to die
Socialized medicine can't afford you
When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.
Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.
Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.
The final version of the health care legislation, signed into law by President Obama in March, authorized Medicare coverage of yearly physical examinations, or wellness visits. The new rule says Medicare will cover “voluntary advance care planning,” to discuss end-of-life treatment, as part of the annual visit.
Under the rule, doctors can provide information to patients on how to prepare an “advance directive,” stating how aggressively they wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make health care decisions for themselves.
While the new law does not mention advance care planning, the Obama administration has been able to achieve its policy goal through the regulation-writing process, a strategy that could become more prevalent in the next two years as the president deals with a strengthened Republican opposition in Congress.
In this case, the administration said research had shown the value of end-of-life planning.
“Advance care planning improves end-of-life care and patient and family satisfaction and reduces stress, anxiety and depression in surviving relatives,” the administration said in the preamble to the Medicare regulation, quoting research published this year in the British Medical Journal.
The BMJ is a Leftist rag. The so-called "Liverpool pathway" for the ill elderly has caused much disquiet in Britain. It is probably helpful in some instances but when administered by a bureaucratized hospital system, it is too readily seized as an excuse to bomb out old people with drugs and let them die of thirst. There have been occasions when relatives have rescued their elderly family members from the Liverpool pathway and the relatives concerned have subsequently made a full recovery -- JR
Opponents said the Obama administration was bringing back a procedure that could be used to justify the premature withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from people with severe illnesses and disabilities. Mr. Blumenauer, the author of the original end-of-life proposal, praised the rule as “a step in the right direction.”
“It will give people more control over the care they receive,” Mr. Blumenauer said in an interview. “It means that doctors and patients can have these conversations in the normal course of business, as part of our health care routine, not as something put off until we are forced to do it.”
After learning of the administration’s decision, Mr. Blumenauer’s office celebrated “a quiet victory,” but urged supporters not to crow about it.
“While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet,” Mr. Blumenauer’s office said in an e-mail in early November to people working with him on the issue. “This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth.”
Moreover, the e-mail said: “We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists, even if they are ‘supporters’ — e-mails can too easily be forwarded.”
The e-mail continued: “Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”
Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate, and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, led the criticism in the summer of 2009. Ms. Palin said “Obama’s death panel” would decide who was worthy of health care. Mr. Boehner, who is in line to become speaker, said, “This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.” Forced onto the defensive, Mr. Obama said that nothing in the bill would “pull the plug on grandma.”
More HERE
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The people awoke in 2010
We had audacious hopes. We did not hope that the Republican Party would triumph at the polls. Instead we prayed for a constitutional check on this gravest threat to our system of ordered liberty since the Civil War. We prayed that Barack Obama’s progressive juggernaut would be stopped in its tracks.
The Republicans, as Sen.-elect Marco Rubio put it, won only “a second chance.” The shellacking the voters gave the president came not a minute too soon.
Never before have we had a president who publicly termed the Koran “Holy,” as President Obama did in Cairo. To say it is Holy, capital H, is to accept Muslim claims of supersession over Christian Scriptures.
We have never before had a president who publicly said Islam has been “revealed,” as he said also at Cairo. To say Islam is revealed goes beyond saying it began in the Mideast, or first appeared in that region. “Revealed” is a theologically and politically freighted word that means Mr. Obama thinks it was revealed by God.
Millions of Americans witnessed President Obama’s epic inauguration in Washington. The world little noted nor long remembered that, for the first time ever, Mr. Obama displaced the Jews. He said we are “a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers…”
Never before had the Jews been relegated to a lesser standing than Muslims in this country. The Jews have been our neighbors and fellow citizens since 1634. Jewish ideas and principles were embraced by the Pilgrims, and upheld by the Founders. Jefferson and Franklin even wanted the Great Seal of the United States to depict the Children of Israel leaving bondage in Egypt.
The week after his mid-term drubbing, President Obama went to the ends of the earth to denounce the building of apartments for Jews in Jerusalem. Although he was to visit Jakarta, Indonesia, for less than 24 hours, he used precious time in his boyhood home to argue that Israel must halt further construction.
For these and a hundred other reasons, millions of Americans prayed that Barack Obama would be checked, his headlong pursuits frustrated. While the media deplore the prospects of gridlock in Washington, for millions of American voters, deadlock would be preferable to advancing another step on the road to serfdom and dhimmitude.
We were audacious to put our hopes in the American people and in the greatest constitutional republic the world has ever seen. We were not disappointed. It is marvelous in our eyes.
More HERE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Sunday, December 26, 2010
One prominent Leftist who is not hostile to Christmas
The Christmas message from Julia Gillard below. She is the Prime Minister of Australia and an avowed atheist. Yet she obviously respects community traditions. No "Happy holidays" from her. The speech could have been made by a conservative. Australian Leftists do tend to be more moderate than their U.S. and U.K. counterparts
In the Gillard family, Christmas is a time for tradition. Everyone has the same job on Christmas Day. I always get to peel the potatoes and carrots. We eat the same food in the same order. Dad tells the same jokes!
We get a little older each year, and the presents for my niece and nephew have changed as the years go by, but not too much else does.
I hope this Christmas you are able to share your own special traditions with people who you love and who love you in return. Whether that’s time in church, or with your family, or at the cricket or on the beach, or helping others, I hope this Christmas is a special one.
Christmas is also a time when we reflect on what’s been. After lunch on Christmas Day, I think many of us have that quiet moment where we look around and think, "all in all, we’re lucky to have each other". Certainly, that’s how I feel about our country this Christmas.
We are all Australians, all people of this place, and as a people, as a nation, we have got so much to be grateful for. Through it all, there’s nowhere I’d rather be. We are still lucky.
For some I know Christmas this year is a sad time. We lost a lot of brave Australians this year: from the 2nd Combat Engineer Regiment, from the 2nd Commando Regiment, from the Special Air Service Regiment, from 6 RAR.
They died for us and I know every Australian has a special thought for their partners and children, their families, and their mates, this Christmas. We don’t forget.
Just as Christmas reminds us of the good things we have, it can be a tough time for some among us. So if your Christmas is a sadder one this year because of family problems, or illness, or the loss of a loved one, I hope you know that you’re never alone.
2010 has been an eventful year in our country’s life, but above all else, we shouldn’t forget the most wonderful thing that happened this year. The drought broke in the eastern states at last.
Of course, it’s never easy on the land, and I know that now it’s flooding which is making life hard in many places even today, but we’re grateful for some of the rain at least. We think of the farmers still in drought. We wish some of the rain would come your way now too.
I want to say something to Australians who have to work at Christmas to serve and protect us - our police and fire fighters, our ambulance officers and nurses, emergency personnel and of course our troops abroad. So many people sacrifice their Christmas Day to make life better for others. It’s hard to think of a more generous Christmas present than that. Thank you.
Finally, whether you’re going around the corner or across the country please drive safely. Don’t make next Christmas a sad anniversary.
For all Australians, my wish is that this Christmas, wherever you are in our country or overseas, you have the chance to do those special things that mean Christmas for you, with people who are special to you. I wish you the merriest of Christmases and the happiest of New Years.
SOURCE
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The Age of Uncertainty
Entrepreneurs fret daily over economic uncertainty. Case in point: Even with passage of the lame-duck tax deal, they still don’t know what their tax burden will be two years from now.
Approval of that deal lifted what The Wall Street Journal dubs the “world of the temporary tax code” to unprecedented heights. The Journal explains: "The U.S. will have no permanent regime governing levies on salaries, capital gains and dividends, the Social Security tax, as well as a slew of targeted breaks for families, students and other groups. This on top of dozens of corporate-tax provisions that already were subject to annual renewal."
All this uncertainty “complicates planning and discourages hiring and investment” because “businesses tend to be more reluctant to invest when they perceive high levels of uncertainty about various things, including taxes.”
One bitter fruit of all this uncertainty can be gleaned from a recent Federal Reserve study. The Fed calculated that skittish companies are now sitting on nearly $2 trillion of cash reserves rather than deploying those resources to expand payrolls, build new plants, or purchase new equipment. This is not only $130 billion higher than it was at the end of June but, as a percentage of total assets, the highest cash-reserve level in over half a century.
Two recent court decisions exemplify the full extent of the uncertainty created by the current administration. On December 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected a plea from the nation’s manufacturers to scuttle a regulatory initiative by the Environmental Protection Agency that would subject them to new regulatory burdens in a quixotic effort to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. “The EPA’s agenda,” the National Association of Manufacturers said in a statement, “places unnecessary burdens on manufacturers, drives up energy costs and imposes even more uncertainty on the nation’s job creators.”
The second court decision concerned the new health-care law. A federal judge in Virginia ruled that a crucial provision in Obamacare — the mandate that individuals purchase governmentally approved health insurance — violates the Constitution. “An individual’s personal decision to [purchase or decline to purchase] health insurance from a private provider,” District Court Judge Henry Hudson wrote, “is beyond the historical reach of the U.S. Constitution.” The fate of the policy now depends on the Supreme Court.
And regardless of the ultimate fate of the mandate, the statuary language of Obamacare bestows unprecedented discretionary power upon the federal bureaucrats charged with its implementation. John Hoff, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, explained: "While it is detailed in some instances, [the new health law] is largely aspirational; it directs the Administration to achieve various universally desired goals — better quality of health care, improved access to care, and increased efficiency of delivery. It constructs the scaffolding of federal control and gives the Administration very broad authority to achieve these aspirations. Each of the many actions taken to implement it will determine the shape of that control. Implementation will be technically difficult and politically charged."
This high degree of bureaucratic discretion, it is important to point out, affects the entire health-care sector, which now constitutes fully one-sixth of the economy.
At this stage, business executives or ordinary citizens trying to comprehend the implications of the new law might as well flip a coin or hire a fortune teller. How will the bureaucrats interpret this “aspirational” language? Will Judge Hudson’s decision be upheld on appeal? And what consequences will flow from all these unknowns? Will insurance rates skyrocket, encouraging consumers to forgo coverage until they need it, which in turn will cause insurers to increase premiums further in a never-ending insurance death spiral?
Should employers maintain their current health plans under the law’s “grandfather” clause, or just dump their employees into the new health exchanges where the cost of coverage might be prohibitive? And if the cost of coverage skyrockets, what about all those rosy projections of manageable subsidy costs from the Congressional Budget Office? Those dollar figures might jump by a few hundred billion — or more. Where will that money come from?
Then there’s the president’s on-again, off-again offshore-drilling policy. And what about employers who may face stacked union elections if the Department of Labor opts to circumvent Congress and implement card check (the number one item on Big Labor’s wish list) administratively?
This layered uncertainty looms as a Sword of Damocles over every business, every investor, and every head of household in America. It has suffocated the risk-taking, entrepreneurial spirit that has made America the exceptional nation in human history. For entrepreneurship hinges on intelligent risk-taking, not closing your eyes and plunging headfirst off the foggy cliff of government intervention and manipulation.
Our current and ongoing economic malaise arises from something we have not seen in America since the days of FDR’s failed New Deal. Our entrepreneurs — society’s economic risk-takers — have lost confidence — $2 trillion worth of confidence — in the federal government’s willingness to let them operate in a way that makes economic sense.
This is why the recent tax deal ultimately does nothing to improve our long-term economic outlook. True, the compromise was better than one potential option: a catastrophic increase in the tax burden that would have destroyed jobs, businesses, and lives. But the goals of this legislative exercise should have been more ambitious: One, create breathing room for entrepreneurs, families, and investors in the form of a reasonable tax and regulatory burden; and two, guarantee that Congress will remain faithful to these policies for the long haul. This would give our most productive citizens the confidence that if they make an investment that requires a long time horizon, they can count on a stable policy environment.
This would mean, among other things, a permanent extension of the Bush-era tax rates for everyone, putting an end to the most egregious regulatory initiatives now underway, consigning Obamacare to the dustbin of history, and allowing energy companies to identify, recover, and generate as much domestic energy as possible.
Our wealth creators will re-engage with our free-enterprise system only when these good policies are in place and stable. And we will know we have succeeded only when investors and businesses move that sidelined $2 trillion into new plants, equipment, and jobs.
SOURCE
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State House Shell Games
For years, trickery and quick fixes have just fed the spending habit. Today the budget holes are cavernous and an age of austeriy would seem both inevitable and likely soon
By STEVEN MALANGA
Over the past two years, states have faced accumulated budget deficits of some $300 billion. Federal stimulus money helped cover about two-thirds of that gap, but state governments have had to close the rest themselves. To do so, many have resorted to tricks and gimmicks that Thomas DiNapoli, New York State's comptroller, speaking about his own state's budget, described as a "fiscal shell game." Such shenanigans mortgage the future for quick fixes in the present, and are a bigger part of states' fiscal woes than most taxpayers know.
One common maneuver has been to fill budget holes with borrowed money. Arizona is Exhibit A. Since the housing bubble burst in 2007 and the state's economy began to contract, Arizona has borrowed approximately $2 billion, relying on new debt to close 17% of its budget deficits, according to a report in the Arizona Capitol Times newspaper on Oct. 8. Among the loans: $450 million that the state plans to pay back with future revenues from its lottery. The cost to the state over the next two decades will be about $680 million in principal and interest.
Arizona has also sold its state government buildings, including those that house its Assembly and Senate, to generate $1 billion in one-time revenue. But the sales were part of a gimmick: No buyer stepped forward to purchase the buildings. Instead, the state issued more than $1 billion of notes backed by the rents that it will pay on the buildings—at a cost of $1.5 billion over 20 years. The state remains in control of the buildings, and a financial trustee collects the state's payments and issues checks to buyers of the notes. Since the borrowing is technically being repaid by rents—not tax revenues, as in the case of lottery revenues—Arizona was able to borrow the money despite a provision in its constitution that explicitly limits state borrowing to just $350,000.
States don't only play the debt game in recessions. To make an annual contribution for public employees' retirements, Illinois borrowed $10 billion in 2003, depositing the sum in its pension funds. But in the boom years that followed, the state still failed to make adequate contributions. So Illinois had to borrow again in 2009, issuing some $3.5 billion in new debt at a cost of $4.5 billion in future principal and interest payments. This year, it borrowed yet another $4 billion for the same reason.
Some budget trickery betrays pledges made by lawmakers to taxpayers. One common example is "sweeps," when a state shifts money from accounts dedicated to specific purposes, like highway maintenance, into general accounts where the money can be spent on anything.
One honey pot is the tax revenue designated by federal law for upgrading 911 emergency-response systems. An August survey by the Federal Communications Commission reported that states redirected $135 million in these taxes last year to spending for other purposes. New York is a serial abuser: Since 1991, the Empire State has collected an estimated $600 million from its 911 tax. But only $84 million has actually gone to local officials for upgrading emergency services.
These fund transfers have become so routine that New York must now do "reverse sweeps." For example, New York created a fund 20 years ago to finance bridge and road construction and maintenance. But it often transfers money out of it and into the state's general accounts—only to replace what's been swept by borrowing more. About a third of the Dedicated Highway and Bridge Trust Fund's disbursements, or nearly $1 billion, now goes toward debt service, a figure projected to rise to 70% by 2014. And so New York is shifting tax dollars back from its hard-pressed general fund to help pay off the transportation account's debt.
In some states, fund transfers have provoked opposition, particularly in cases where the government grabbed money from accounts that are not taxpayer-funded. Since 1975, New Hampshire has operated a medical-malpractice insurance fund financed by physician premiums to provide them with liability protection when they have difficulty obtaining it elsewhere. The fund has built up a surplus of $140 million, and last year the state tried to seize and sweep $110 million of it into its general fund. But the doctors sued, and the state's Supreme Court blocked the transfer.
Now states are even casting a covetous eye at private bank accounts. This year Michigan decreased the time that money can sit unclaimed in a citizen's bank account before the state claims it to three years from 15. The state projected the move could provide its general fund with a one-time boost of $200 million.
Early-retirement plans also have turned into budget gimmicks. Michigan recently passed a retirement plan to provide generous additional benefits for up to 6,400 retirees who can step down at age 59. The plan supposedly will save the state's general fund around $80 million in salaries and benefits in its first year.
Sounds good in theory. But recent history shows the danger of this strategy. In 2002, New Jersey offered an early-retirement plan that 4,000 workers took advantage of. Although it saved the state budget $314 million, the retirement benefits were so rich that they cost the pension system $645 million.
Illinois, meanwhile, passed modest pension reforms earlier this year that apply to new workers. The savings won't materialize for years—but the legislation included language that allowed the state to calculate the future savings and apply up to $300 million toward closing this year's budget gap.
Time and again, the quick fix just feeds the spending habit. In 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised that California could get out of its hole with borrowed money, and voters approved $10.9 billion in deficit bonds. Relieved of its immediate financial squeeze, Sacramento discarded fiscal discipline and went on a binge, hiking spending by nearly a third, or $34 billion, over the next four years. Today the state is back in the hole, facing a $25 billion budget deficit over the next 18 months.
States keep hoping that tax revenues, which began to slump in 2008, will increase significantly and bail them out. But as a report by the National Association of Governors put it earlier this year, states now face "new austere realities."
In other words: fat chance. This new reality isn't going away, and elected officials had better wake up to it.
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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The Christmas message from Julia Gillard below. She is the Prime Minister of Australia and an avowed atheist. Yet she obviously respects community traditions. No "Happy holidays" from her. The speech could have been made by a conservative. Australian Leftists do tend to be more moderate than their U.S. and U.K. counterparts
In the Gillard family, Christmas is a time for tradition. Everyone has the same job on Christmas Day. I always get to peel the potatoes and carrots. We eat the same food in the same order. Dad tells the same jokes!
We get a little older each year, and the presents for my niece and nephew have changed as the years go by, but not too much else does.
I hope this Christmas you are able to share your own special traditions with people who you love and who love you in return. Whether that’s time in church, or with your family, or at the cricket or on the beach, or helping others, I hope this Christmas is a special one.
Christmas is also a time when we reflect on what’s been. After lunch on Christmas Day, I think many of us have that quiet moment where we look around and think, "all in all, we’re lucky to have each other". Certainly, that’s how I feel about our country this Christmas.
We are all Australians, all people of this place, and as a people, as a nation, we have got so much to be grateful for. Through it all, there’s nowhere I’d rather be. We are still lucky.
For some I know Christmas this year is a sad time. We lost a lot of brave Australians this year: from the 2nd Combat Engineer Regiment, from the 2nd Commando Regiment, from the Special Air Service Regiment, from 6 RAR.
They died for us and I know every Australian has a special thought for their partners and children, their families, and their mates, this Christmas. We don’t forget.
Just as Christmas reminds us of the good things we have, it can be a tough time for some among us. So if your Christmas is a sadder one this year because of family problems, or illness, or the loss of a loved one, I hope you know that you’re never alone.
2010 has been an eventful year in our country’s life, but above all else, we shouldn’t forget the most wonderful thing that happened this year. The drought broke in the eastern states at last.
Of course, it’s never easy on the land, and I know that now it’s flooding which is making life hard in many places even today, but we’re grateful for some of the rain at least. We think of the farmers still in drought. We wish some of the rain would come your way now too.
I want to say something to Australians who have to work at Christmas to serve and protect us - our police and fire fighters, our ambulance officers and nurses, emergency personnel and of course our troops abroad. So many people sacrifice their Christmas Day to make life better for others. It’s hard to think of a more generous Christmas present than that. Thank you.
Finally, whether you’re going around the corner or across the country please drive safely. Don’t make next Christmas a sad anniversary.
For all Australians, my wish is that this Christmas, wherever you are in our country or overseas, you have the chance to do those special things that mean Christmas for you, with people who are special to you. I wish you the merriest of Christmases and the happiest of New Years.
SOURCE
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The Age of Uncertainty
Entrepreneurs fret daily over economic uncertainty. Case in point: Even with passage of the lame-duck tax deal, they still don’t know what their tax burden will be two years from now.
Approval of that deal lifted what The Wall Street Journal dubs the “world of the temporary tax code” to unprecedented heights. The Journal explains: "The U.S. will have no permanent regime governing levies on salaries, capital gains and dividends, the Social Security tax, as well as a slew of targeted breaks for families, students and other groups. This on top of dozens of corporate-tax provisions that already were subject to annual renewal."
All this uncertainty “complicates planning and discourages hiring and investment” because “businesses tend to be more reluctant to invest when they perceive high levels of uncertainty about various things, including taxes.”
One bitter fruit of all this uncertainty can be gleaned from a recent Federal Reserve study. The Fed calculated that skittish companies are now sitting on nearly $2 trillion of cash reserves rather than deploying those resources to expand payrolls, build new plants, or purchase new equipment. This is not only $130 billion higher than it was at the end of June but, as a percentage of total assets, the highest cash-reserve level in over half a century.
Two recent court decisions exemplify the full extent of the uncertainty created by the current administration. On December 10, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected a plea from the nation’s manufacturers to scuttle a regulatory initiative by the Environmental Protection Agency that would subject them to new regulatory burdens in a quixotic effort to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. “The EPA’s agenda,” the National Association of Manufacturers said in a statement, “places unnecessary burdens on manufacturers, drives up energy costs and imposes even more uncertainty on the nation’s job creators.”
The second court decision concerned the new health-care law. A federal judge in Virginia ruled that a crucial provision in Obamacare — the mandate that individuals purchase governmentally approved health insurance — violates the Constitution. “An individual’s personal decision to [purchase or decline to purchase] health insurance from a private provider,” District Court Judge Henry Hudson wrote, “is beyond the historical reach of the U.S. Constitution.” The fate of the policy now depends on the Supreme Court.
And regardless of the ultimate fate of the mandate, the statuary language of Obamacare bestows unprecedented discretionary power upon the federal bureaucrats charged with its implementation. John Hoff, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, explained: "While it is detailed in some instances, [the new health law] is largely aspirational; it directs the Administration to achieve various universally desired goals — better quality of health care, improved access to care, and increased efficiency of delivery. It constructs the scaffolding of federal control and gives the Administration very broad authority to achieve these aspirations. Each of the many actions taken to implement it will determine the shape of that control. Implementation will be technically difficult and politically charged."
This high degree of bureaucratic discretion, it is important to point out, affects the entire health-care sector, which now constitutes fully one-sixth of the economy.
At this stage, business executives or ordinary citizens trying to comprehend the implications of the new law might as well flip a coin or hire a fortune teller. How will the bureaucrats interpret this “aspirational” language? Will Judge Hudson’s decision be upheld on appeal? And what consequences will flow from all these unknowns? Will insurance rates skyrocket, encouraging consumers to forgo coverage until they need it, which in turn will cause insurers to increase premiums further in a never-ending insurance death spiral?
Should employers maintain their current health plans under the law’s “grandfather” clause, or just dump their employees into the new health exchanges where the cost of coverage might be prohibitive? And if the cost of coverage skyrockets, what about all those rosy projections of manageable subsidy costs from the Congressional Budget Office? Those dollar figures might jump by a few hundred billion — or more. Where will that money come from?
Then there’s the president’s on-again, off-again offshore-drilling policy. And what about employers who may face stacked union elections if the Department of Labor opts to circumvent Congress and implement card check (the number one item on Big Labor’s wish list) administratively?
This layered uncertainty looms as a Sword of Damocles over every business, every investor, and every head of household in America. It has suffocated the risk-taking, entrepreneurial spirit that has made America the exceptional nation in human history. For entrepreneurship hinges on intelligent risk-taking, not closing your eyes and plunging headfirst off the foggy cliff of government intervention and manipulation.
Our current and ongoing economic malaise arises from something we have not seen in America since the days of FDR’s failed New Deal. Our entrepreneurs — society’s economic risk-takers — have lost confidence — $2 trillion worth of confidence — in the federal government’s willingness to let them operate in a way that makes economic sense.
This is why the recent tax deal ultimately does nothing to improve our long-term economic outlook. True, the compromise was better than one potential option: a catastrophic increase in the tax burden that would have destroyed jobs, businesses, and lives. But the goals of this legislative exercise should have been more ambitious: One, create breathing room for entrepreneurs, families, and investors in the form of a reasonable tax and regulatory burden; and two, guarantee that Congress will remain faithful to these policies for the long haul. This would give our most productive citizens the confidence that if they make an investment that requires a long time horizon, they can count on a stable policy environment.
This would mean, among other things, a permanent extension of the Bush-era tax rates for everyone, putting an end to the most egregious regulatory initiatives now underway, consigning Obamacare to the dustbin of history, and allowing energy companies to identify, recover, and generate as much domestic energy as possible.
Our wealth creators will re-engage with our free-enterprise system only when these good policies are in place and stable. And we will know we have succeeded only when investors and businesses move that sidelined $2 trillion into new plants, equipment, and jobs.
SOURCE
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State House Shell Games
For years, trickery and quick fixes have just fed the spending habit. Today the budget holes are cavernous and an age of austeriy would seem both inevitable and likely soon
By STEVEN MALANGA
Over the past two years, states have faced accumulated budget deficits of some $300 billion. Federal stimulus money helped cover about two-thirds of that gap, but state governments have had to close the rest themselves. To do so, many have resorted to tricks and gimmicks that Thomas DiNapoli, New York State's comptroller, speaking about his own state's budget, described as a "fiscal shell game." Such shenanigans mortgage the future for quick fixes in the present, and are a bigger part of states' fiscal woes than most taxpayers know.
One common maneuver has been to fill budget holes with borrowed money. Arizona is Exhibit A. Since the housing bubble burst in 2007 and the state's economy began to contract, Arizona has borrowed approximately $2 billion, relying on new debt to close 17% of its budget deficits, according to a report in the Arizona Capitol Times newspaper on Oct. 8. Among the loans: $450 million that the state plans to pay back with future revenues from its lottery. The cost to the state over the next two decades will be about $680 million in principal and interest.
Arizona has also sold its state government buildings, including those that house its Assembly and Senate, to generate $1 billion in one-time revenue. But the sales were part of a gimmick: No buyer stepped forward to purchase the buildings. Instead, the state issued more than $1 billion of notes backed by the rents that it will pay on the buildings—at a cost of $1.5 billion over 20 years. The state remains in control of the buildings, and a financial trustee collects the state's payments and issues checks to buyers of the notes. Since the borrowing is technically being repaid by rents—not tax revenues, as in the case of lottery revenues—Arizona was able to borrow the money despite a provision in its constitution that explicitly limits state borrowing to just $350,000.
States don't only play the debt game in recessions. To make an annual contribution for public employees' retirements, Illinois borrowed $10 billion in 2003, depositing the sum in its pension funds. But in the boom years that followed, the state still failed to make adequate contributions. So Illinois had to borrow again in 2009, issuing some $3.5 billion in new debt at a cost of $4.5 billion in future principal and interest payments. This year, it borrowed yet another $4 billion for the same reason.
Some budget trickery betrays pledges made by lawmakers to taxpayers. One common example is "sweeps," when a state shifts money from accounts dedicated to specific purposes, like highway maintenance, into general accounts where the money can be spent on anything.
One honey pot is the tax revenue designated by federal law for upgrading 911 emergency-response systems. An August survey by the Federal Communications Commission reported that states redirected $135 million in these taxes last year to spending for other purposes. New York is a serial abuser: Since 1991, the Empire State has collected an estimated $600 million from its 911 tax. But only $84 million has actually gone to local officials for upgrading emergency services.
These fund transfers have become so routine that New York must now do "reverse sweeps." For example, New York created a fund 20 years ago to finance bridge and road construction and maintenance. But it often transfers money out of it and into the state's general accounts—only to replace what's been swept by borrowing more. About a third of the Dedicated Highway and Bridge Trust Fund's disbursements, or nearly $1 billion, now goes toward debt service, a figure projected to rise to 70% by 2014. And so New York is shifting tax dollars back from its hard-pressed general fund to help pay off the transportation account's debt.
In some states, fund transfers have provoked opposition, particularly in cases where the government grabbed money from accounts that are not taxpayer-funded. Since 1975, New Hampshire has operated a medical-malpractice insurance fund financed by physician premiums to provide them with liability protection when they have difficulty obtaining it elsewhere. The fund has built up a surplus of $140 million, and last year the state tried to seize and sweep $110 million of it into its general fund. But the doctors sued, and the state's Supreme Court blocked the transfer.
Now states are even casting a covetous eye at private bank accounts. This year Michigan decreased the time that money can sit unclaimed in a citizen's bank account before the state claims it to three years from 15. The state projected the move could provide its general fund with a one-time boost of $200 million.
Early-retirement plans also have turned into budget gimmicks. Michigan recently passed a retirement plan to provide generous additional benefits for up to 6,400 retirees who can step down at age 59. The plan supposedly will save the state's general fund around $80 million in salaries and benefits in its first year.
Sounds good in theory. But recent history shows the danger of this strategy. In 2002, New Jersey offered an early-retirement plan that 4,000 workers took advantage of. Although it saved the state budget $314 million, the retirement benefits were so rich that they cost the pension system $645 million.
Illinois, meanwhile, passed modest pension reforms earlier this year that apply to new workers. The savings won't materialize for years—but the legislation included language that allowed the state to calculate the future savings and apply up to $300 million toward closing this year's budget gap.
Time and again, the quick fix just feeds the spending habit. In 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised that California could get out of its hole with borrowed money, and voters approved $10.9 billion in deficit bonds. Relieved of its immediate financial squeeze, Sacramento discarded fiscal discipline and went on a binge, hiking spending by nearly a third, or $34 billion, over the next four years. Today the state is back in the hole, facing a $25 billion budget deficit over the next 18 months.
States keep hoping that tax revenues, which began to slump in 2008, will increase significantly and bail them out. But as a report by the National Association of Governors put it earlier this year, states now face "new austere realities."
In other words: fat chance. This new reality isn't going away, and elected officials had better wake up to it.
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Saturday, December 25, 2010
Scrooge Was a Liberal
Ann Coulter
It's the Christmas season, so godless liberals are citing the Bible to demand the redistribution of income by government force. Didn't Jesus say, "Blessed are the Health and Human Services bureaucrats, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"?
Liberals are always indignantly accusing conservatives of claiming God is on our side. What we actually say is: We're on God's side, particularly when liberals are demanding God's banishment from the public schools, abortion on demand, and taxpayer money being spent on Jesus submerged in a jar of urine and pictures of the Virgin Mary covered with pornographic photos.
But for liberals like Al Franken, it's beyond dispute that Jesus would support extending federal unemployment insurance.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible, but it does nicely illustrate Shakespeare's point that the "devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."
What the Bible says about giving to the poor is: "Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." (2 Corinthians (9:7)
Being forced to pay taxes under penalty of prison is not voluntary and rarely done cheerfully. Nor do our taxes go to "the poor." They mostly go to government employees who make more money than you do.
The reason liberals love the government redistributing money is that it allows them to skip the part of charity that involves peeling the starfish off their wallets and forking over their own money. This, as we know from study after study, they cannot bear to do. (Unless they are guaranteed press conferences where they can brag about their generosity.)
Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks' study of charitable giving in America found that conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than liberals do, despite the fact that liberals have higher incomes than conservatives.
In his book "Who Really Cares?" Brooks compared the charitable donations of religious conservatives, secular liberals, secular conservatives and "religious" liberals.
His surprising conclusion was ... Al Franken gave the most of all!
Ha ha! Just kidding. Religious conservatives, the largest group at about 20 percent of the population, gave the most to charity -- $2,367 per year, compared with $1,347 for the country at large.
Even when it comes to purely secular charities, religious conservatives give more than other Americans, which is surprising because liberals specialize in "charities" that give them a direct benefit, such as the ballet or their children's elite private schools.
Indeed, religious people, Brooks says, "are more charitable in every measurable nonreligious way."
Brooks found that conservatives donate more in time, services and even blood than other Americans, noting that if liberals and moderates gave as much blood as conservatives do, the blood supply would increase by about 45 percent.
They ought to set up blood banks at tea parties.
On average, a person who attends religious services and does not believe in the redistribution of income will give away 100 times more -- and 50 times more to secular charities -- than a person who does not attend religious services and strongly believes in the redistribution of income.
Secular liberals, the second largest group coming in at 10 percent of the population, were the whitest and richest of the four groups. (Some of you may also know them as "insufferable blowhards.") These "bleeding-heart tightwads," as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof calls them, were the second stingiest, just behind secular conservatives, who are mostly young, poor, cranky white guys.
Despite their wealth and advantages, secular liberals give to charity at a rate of 9 percent, less than all Americans and 19 percent less than religious conservatives. They were also "significantly less likely than the population average to return excess change mistakenly given to them by a cashier." (Count Nancy Pelosi's change carefully!)
Secular liberals are, however, 90 percent more likely to give sanctimonious Senate speeches demanding the forced redistribution of income. (That's up 7 percent from last year!) We'll review specific liberals next week.
Needless to say, "religious liberals" made up the smallest group at just 6.4 percent of the population (for more on this, see my book, "Godless").
Interestingly, religious liberals were also "most confused" of all the groups. Composed mostly of blacks and Unitarians, religious liberals made nearly as many charitable donations as religious conservatives, but presumably, the Unitarians brought down their numbers, making them second in charitable giving.
Brooks wrote that he was shocked by his conclusions because he believed liberals "genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did" -- probably because liberals are always telling us that.
So he re-ran the numbers and gathered more data, but it kept coming out the same. "In the end," he says, "I had no option but to change my views."
Every other study on the subject has produced similar results. Indeed, a Google study of philanthropy found an even greater disparity, with conservatives giving 50 percent more than liberals. The Google study showed that liberals gave more to secular causes overall, but conservatives still gave more as a percentage of their incomes.
The Catalogue for Philanthropy analyzed a decade of state and federal tax returns and found that the red states were far more generous than the blue states, with the highest percentage of tightwads living in the liberal Northeast.
In his book "Intellectuals," Paul Johnson quotes Pablo Picasso scoffing at the idea that he would give to the needy. "I'm afraid you've got it wrong," Picasso explains, "we are socialists. We don't pretend to be Christians."
Merry Christmas to all, skinflint liberals and generous Christians alike!
SOURCE
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A new surge of Obamamania from the press
Hugh Hewitt
Wednesday's press conference may have starred President Obama fresh off his alleged big win on START and DADT, his losses on the Dream Act and the Omnibus spending bill, and the tie on the tax deal, but the big story was the eagerness of the White House Press Corp to revert to fawning treatment of their once-and-future leader.
"I think while they may be saying Merry Christmas," Mark Steyn told me on yesterday's broadcast, "but actually as far as they’re concerned, it’s Easter, that their messiah has risen from the dead, and now bestrides lame duck Washington like a colossus."
Even the leader of the rump group of real reporters at 1600, ABC's Jake Tapper, succumbed to the mood in the press room and congratulated the president on the passage of the repeal of the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. I don't think it is fair to attribute support for the repeal to Tapper on the basis of the remark, but reporters don't typically cheer the president's agenda anymore than they hiss at it.
Tapper's lapse may have been reflecting the loneliness of the holdout serious journalist when it comes to Obama. Yesterday's presser was a perfect example. The night before the press conference the president's Director of National Intelligence --James Clapper-- was stumped by Diane Sawyer's reference to Monday evening's arrests of a dozen terror suspects in Great Britain. Clapper blinked incomprehension when Sawyer asked him if the threat over there had any connections to the threat over here. An astonished Sawyer later returned to the subject and pressed Clapper, who admitted that he simply hadn't heard of the arrests, which had played nonstop on cable all day Tuesday and which I had discussed at length with New York Times London Bureau Chief on my Monday night show, --proving only that it wasn't exactly hard to get up to speed on the arrests even though they occurred across the Atlantic.
Imagine the press conference George W. Bush would have faced if either of his DNIs --John D. Negroponte or Michael Hayden-- had blanked on a major story with a network anchor the night before the questions rolled out. If either Bush appointee had been shown to be clueless about the smashing of a major terror ring in England on the week of Christmas, the tape would have rolled endlessly and the press would fairly have screamed questions about resignation demands at W.
Not this press corps and not this president. What conservatives saw yesterday was the first act in MSM's campaign to re-elect Barack Obama. The script isn't difficult to anticipate.
First, every Obama defeat --like the massive repudiation of the president's first two years in office and especially of Obamcare-- must be air brushed off the front page as quickly as possible.
Second, legislative defeats, like the ban on moving Gitmo detainees to the U.S. for trial which passed Wednesday, must not be mentioned unless, like the Dream Act, the MSM perceives political advantage in spinning the defeat in the president's direction.
Third, pratfalls by key members of Team Obama like James Clapper must vanish quickly and not be allowed to feed the public's obvious dismay with the competence of this Administration.
Next, prepare to present the GOP House as a band of rogue inquisitors eager to cobble together some sort of Whitewater II. Ignore the demands of Congress that out-of-control agencies like the FCC abandon unnecessary and ideological extreme initiatives like "net neutrality," and bury the baseline deficit from fiscal year 2007 --the last GOP budget-- of $160 billion versus the trillions spent in red ink since then.
Finally, keep all eyes off of the president's incredible record of weakness aboard, his hostility to Israel, and his inability to do anything about the rogue regimes of North Korea and Iran despite his many promises of engagement and a new start. The president's child-like approach to foreign affairs has left our friends with their heads shaking and our enemies with their hands clasping. The White House press corps, even with the Korean peninsula on the brink of all out war, must not press the president on the subject or on his manifest inability to bring any pressure to bear on the North Koreans or to do anything to stop the runaway nuclear proliferation of the gangster regime.
Wednesday's press conference featured the return of the media we saw throughout campaign 2008 --a blocking front for a hard-left president they approve of over drinks and to whose re-election they are resoundingly, and obviously, committed.
SOURCE
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Actually, Huck, It's Palin Who Gets It
Two names frequently bandied about as potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates engaged in a minor but revealing squabble this week. During what I assume was an action-packed episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on TLC, the former vice presidential candidate poked some gentle fun at first lady Michelle Obama's ubiquitous children's health crusade.
And this wasn't the first time Palin had disparaged the campaign and the school nutrition food bill that comes attached to it.
As you would expect, duty beckoned enlightened Americans everywhere to run to their keyboards and ridicule Palin. The few rational Republicans left in the country were called to action and gently explained to this crazy woman that children are the future -- which, evolutionarily speaking, is indisputable.
"With all due respect to my colleague and friend Sarah Palin, I think she's misunderstood what Michelle Obama is trying to do," retorted the once generously proportioned Mike Huckabee on a New York radio show. Obama, explained the former Arkansas governor, is "not trying to tell people what to eat or not trying to force the government's desires on people. She's stating the obvious, that we do have an obesity problem in this country."
(More like overstating the obvious, but that's another story.)
In this case, Huckabee is either confused or, judging from his prior work, the kind of guy who dismisses the distinction between convincing someone and coercing someone. Especially in those historical moments when "something needs to be done," which, as you know, can be often.
Now, if you believe, as the Obamas and countless others do, that local control and parental choice are disposable when the common good is threatened, then empowering Washington to dictate which foods are appropriate in bake sales, PTA functions and local school cafeterias probably sounds like a fantastic idea.
But the recently passed nutrition bill (the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, in Washingtonese), a key component to Mrs. Obama's plan to "end childhood obesity," is in fact both "telling people" what they should eat and "trying to force the government's desires on people."
So when Palin claims that the Obamas do not trust people "to make decisions for their own children," she is not unleashing some Bircher hyperbole; she is summing up the driving idea of two years of public policy and paraphrasing the first lady, who recently explained that when it comes to eating, "we can't just leave it up to the parents."
Mrs. Obama might be stating the obvious, but instead of placing the blame on parental incompetence or neglect or genes or whatever the reason is that kids are stuffing their little gullets with junk, she is feeding and creating myths to rationalize "action" -- whether we're talking about the lack of access to food (never have we had more access to food) or prohibitive prices (never has food -- including healthy fare -- been cheaper) or the plague of school lunches.
As for Huckabee, his history of intrusive legislation and alarmism over the crumbling salubriousness of the nation is obviously driven by his own experiences. And if you want to nag us or explain the ramifications of obesity, feel free. Certainly, potential presidents should have the ability to compromise, avoid ideological rigidity and be cognizant of national problems like obesity.
But foundational beliefs like an aversion to federal overreach into local decisions cannot be disposed of because kids happen to be part of the equation. And if Huckabee believes there's nothing wrong with the federal government controlling local school lunches and instituting national smoking bans, how many issues will he believe are more important than federalism?
Now, Sarah Palin may not always be the most sophisticated spokesperson for conservative ideology, but she is right on the money here. In fact, with all the sneering about her comments, she may want to turn to one of her favorite authors, C.S. Lewis, who also understood that "moral busybodies" who "torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Ann Coulter
It's the Christmas season, so godless liberals are citing the Bible to demand the redistribution of income by government force. Didn't Jesus say, "Blessed are the Health and Human Services bureaucrats, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"?
Liberals are always indignantly accusing conservatives of claiming God is on our side. What we actually say is: We're on God's side, particularly when liberals are demanding God's banishment from the public schools, abortion on demand, and taxpayer money being spent on Jesus submerged in a jar of urine and pictures of the Virgin Mary covered with pornographic photos.
But for liberals like Al Franken, it's beyond dispute that Jesus would support extending federal unemployment insurance.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible, but it does nicely illustrate Shakespeare's point that the "devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."
What the Bible says about giving to the poor is: "Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." (2 Corinthians (9:7)
Being forced to pay taxes under penalty of prison is not voluntary and rarely done cheerfully. Nor do our taxes go to "the poor." They mostly go to government employees who make more money than you do.
The reason liberals love the government redistributing money is that it allows them to skip the part of charity that involves peeling the starfish off their wallets and forking over their own money. This, as we know from study after study, they cannot bear to do. (Unless they are guaranteed press conferences where they can brag about their generosity.)
Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks' study of charitable giving in America found that conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than liberals do, despite the fact that liberals have higher incomes than conservatives.
In his book "Who Really Cares?" Brooks compared the charitable donations of religious conservatives, secular liberals, secular conservatives and "religious" liberals.
His surprising conclusion was ... Al Franken gave the most of all!
Ha ha! Just kidding. Religious conservatives, the largest group at about 20 percent of the population, gave the most to charity -- $2,367 per year, compared with $1,347 for the country at large.
Even when it comes to purely secular charities, religious conservatives give more than other Americans, which is surprising because liberals specialize in "charities" that give them a direct benefit, such as the ballet or their children's elite private schools.
Indeed, religious people, Brooks says, "are more charitable in every measurable nonreligious way."
Brooks found that conservatives donate more in time, services and even blood than other Americans, noting that if liberals and moderates gave as much blood as conservatives do, the blood supply would increase by about 45 percent.
They ought to set up blood banks at tea parties.
On average, a person who attends religious services and does not believe in the redistribution of income will give away 100 times more -- and 50 times more to secular charities -- than a person who does not attend religious services and strongly believes in the redistribution of income.
Secular liberals, the second largest group coming in at 10 percent of the population, were the whitest and richest of the four groups. (Some of you may also know them as "insufferable blowhards.") These "bleeding-heart tightwads," as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof calls them, were the second stingiest, just behind secular conservatives, who are mostly young, poor, cranky white guys.
Despite their wealth and advantages, secular liberals give to charity at a rate of 9 percent, less than all Americans and 19 percent less than religious conservatives. They were also "significantly less likely than the population average to return excess change mistakenly given to them by a cashier." (Count Nancy Pelosi's change carefully!)
Secular liberals are, however, 90 percent more likely to give sanctimonious Senate speeches demanding the forced redistribution of income. (That's up 7 percent from last year!) We'll review specific liberals next week.
Needless to say, "religious liberals" made up the smallest group at just 6.4 percent of the population (for more on this, see my book, "Godless").
Interestingly, religious liberals were also "most confused" of all the groups. Composed mostly of blacks and Unitarians, religious liberals made nearly as many charitable donations as religious conservatives, but presumably, the Unitarians brought down their numbers, making them second in charitable giving.
Brooks wrote that he was shocked by his conclusions because he believed liberals "genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did" -- probably because liberals are always telling us that.
So he re-ran the numbers and gathered more data, but it kept coming out the same. "In the end," he says, "I had no option but to change my views."
Every other study on the subject has produced similar results. Indeed, a Google study of philanthropy found an even greater disparity, with conservatives giving 50 percent more than liberals. The Google study showed that liberals gave more to secular causes overall, but conservatives still gave more as a percentage of their incomes.
The Catalogue for Philanthropy analyzed a decade of state and federal tax returns and found that the red states were far more generous than the blue states, with the highest percentage of tightwads living in the liberal Northeast.
In his book "Intellectuals," Paul Johnson quotes Pablo Picasso scoffing at the idea that he would give to the needy. "I'm afraid you've got it wrong," Picasso explains, "we are socialists. We don't pretend to be Christians."
Merry Christmas to all, skinflint liberals and generous Christians alike!
SOURCE
***********************
A new surge of Obamamania from the press
Hugh Hewitt
Wednesday's press conference may have starred President Obama fresh off his alleged big win on START and DADT, his losses on the Dream Act and the Omnibus spending bill, and the tie on the tax deal, but the big story was the eagerness of the White House Press Corp to revert to fawning treatment of their once-and-future leader.
"I think while they may be saying Merry Christmas," Mark Steyn told me on yesterday's broadcast, "but actually as far as they’re concerned, it’s Easter, that their messiah has risen from the dead, and now bestrides lame duck Washington like a colossus."
Even the leader of the rump group of real reporters at 1600, ABC's Jake Tapper, succumbed to the mood in the press room and congratulated the president on the passage of the repeal of the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. I don't think it is fair to attribute support for the repeal to Tapper on the basis of the remark, but reporters don't typically cheer the president's agenda anymore than they hiss at it.
Tapper's lapse may have been reflecting the loneliness of the holdout serious journalist when it comes to Obama. Yesterday's presser was a perfect example. The night before the press conference the president's Director of National Intelligence --James Clapper-- was stumped by Diane Sawyer's reference to Monday evening's arrests of a dozen terror suspects in Great Britain. Clapper blinked incomprehension when Sawyer asked him if the threat over there had any connections to the threat over here. An astonished Sawyer later returned to the subject and pressed Clapper, who admitted that he simply hadn't heard of the arrests, which had played nonstop on cable all day Tuesday and which I had discussed at length with New York Times London Bureau Chief on my Monday night show, --proving only that it wasn't exactly hard to get up to speed on the arrests even though they occurred across the Atlantic.
Imagine the press conference George W. Bush would have faced if either of his DNIs --John D. Negroponte or Michael Hayden-- had blanked on a major story with a network anchor the night before the questions rolled out. If either Bush appointee had been shown to be clueless about the smashing of a major terror ring in England on the week of Christmas, the tape would have rolled endlessly and the press would fairly have screamed questions about resignation demands at W.
Not this press corps and not this president. What conservatives saw yesterday was the first act in MSM's campaign to re-elect Barack Obama. The script isn't difficult to anticipate.
First, every Obama defeat --like the massive repudiation of the president's first two years in office and especially of Obamcare-- must be air brushed off the front page as quickly as possible.
Second, legislative defeats, like the ban on moving Gitmo detainees to the U.S. for trial which passed Wednesday, must not be mentioned unless, like the Dream Act, the MSM perceives political advantage in spinning the defeat in the president's direction.
Third, pratfalls by key members of Team Obama like James Clapper must vanish quickly and not be allowed to feed the public's obvious dismay with the competence of this Administration.
Next, prepare to present the GOP House as a band of rogue inquisitors eager to cobble together some sort of Whitewater II. Ignore the demands of Congress that out-of-control agencies like the FCC abandon unnecessary and ideological extreme initiatives like "net neutrality," and bury the baseline deficit from fiscal year 2007 --the last GOP budget-- of $160 billion versus the trillions spent in red ink since then.
Finally, keep all eyes off of the president's incredible record of weakness aboard, his hostility to Israel, and his inability to do anything about the rogue regimes of North Korea and Iran despite his many promises of engagement and a new start. The president's child-like approach to foreign affairs has left our friends with their heads shaking and our enemies with their hands clasping. The White House press corps, even with the Korean peninsula on the brink of all out war, must not press the president on the subject or on his manifest inability to bring any pressure to bear on the North Koreans or to do anything to stop the runaway nuclear proliferation of the gangster regime.
Wednesday's press conference featured the return of the media we saw throughout campaign 2008 --a blocking front for a hard-left president they approve of over drinks and to whose re-election they are resoundingly, and obviously, committed.
SOURCE
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Actually, Huck, It's Palin Who Gets It
Two names frequently bandied about as potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates engaged in a minor but revealing squabble this week. During what I assume was an action-packed episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on TLC, the former vice presidential candidate poked some gentle fun at first lady Michelle Obama's ubiquitous children's health crusade.
And this wasn't the first time Palin had disparaged the campaign and the school nutrition food bill that comes attached to it.
As you would expect, duty beckoned enlightened Americans everywhere to run to their keyboards and ridicule Palin. The few rational Republicans left in the country were called to action and gently explained to this crazy woman that children are the future -- which, evolutionarily speaking, is indisputable.
"With all due respect to my colleague and friend Sarah Palin, I think she's misunderstood what Michelle Obama is trying to do," retorted the once generously proportioned Mike Huckabee on a New York radio show. Obama, explained the former Arkansas governor, is "not trying to tell people what to eat or not trying to force the government's desires on people. She's stating the obvious, that we do have an obesity problem in this country."
(More like overstating the obvious, but that's another story.)
In this case, Huckabee is either confused or, judging from his prior work, the kind of guy who dismisses the distinction between convincing someone and coercing someone. Especially in those historical moments when "something needs to be done," which, as you know, can be often.
Now, if you believe, as the Obamas and countless others do, that local control and parental choice are disposable when the common good is threatened, then empowering Washington to dictate which foods are appropriate in bake sales, PTA functions and local school cafeterias probably sounds like a fantastic idea.
But the recently passed nutrition bill (the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, in Washingtonese), a key component to Mrs. Obama's plan to "end childhood obesity," is in fact both "telling people" what they should eat and "trying to force the government's desires on people."
So when Palin claims that the Obamas do not trust people "to make decisions for their own children," she is not unleashing some Bircher hyperbole; she is summing up the driving idea of two years of public policy and paraphrasing the first lady, who recently explained that when it comes to eating, "we can't just leave it up to the parents."
Mrs. Obama might be stating the obvious, but instead of placing the blame on parental incompetence or neglect or genes or whatever the reason is that kids are stuffing their little gullets with junk, she is feeding and creating myths to rationalize "action" -- whether we're talking about the lack of access to food (never have we had more access to food) or prohibitive prices (never has food -- including healthy fare -- been cheaper) or the plague of school lunches.
As for Huckabee, his history of intrusive legislation and alarmism over the crumbling salubriousness of the nation is obviously driven by his own experiences. And if you want to nag us or explain the ramifications of obesity, feel free. Certainly, potential presidents should have the ability to compromise, avoid ideological rigidity and be cognizant of national problems like obesity.
But foundational beliefs like an aversion to federal overreach into local decisions cannot be disposed of because kids happen to be part of the equation. And if Huckabee believes there's nothing wrong with the federal government controlling local school lunches and instituting national smoking bans, how many issues will he believe are more important than federalism?
Now, Sarah Palin may not always be the most sophisticated spokesperson for conservative ideology, but she is right on the money here. In fact, with all the sneering about her comments, she may want to turn to one of her favorite authors, C.S. Lewis, who also understood that "moral busybodies" who "torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Friday, December 24, 2010
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL WHO COME BY HERE
I plan to do some blogging in the next few days but not sure how much
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More Obamacare insanity: Sebelius' shameless attempt to jawbone insurers on costs
In early September, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius - throwing her new weight around after the passage of Obamacare - threatened the health insurance industry with a letter that spelled out "zero tolerance" for "unjustified rate increases."
This week, her agency unveiled a new rule that allows the federal government to decide what counts as an "unreasonable" rate increase. The upshot: If an insurance company increases the cost of a premium to above 10%, it may well feel the wrath of the feds.
There's just one problem: Under Obamacare, the federal government does not have the authority to block or overturn an insurance price increase. (Congress debated whether or not to give the Health and Human Services Department this authority during the crafting of the legislation, but it was ultimately rejected.) In point of fact, 43 states already regulate and approve rates in the individual or small business market through their insurance commissioners. This new law would let them continue to do their job - unless the federal government were to decide that their reviews weren't "effective." Once again, government is overreaching and telling private business what to do.
Stop for a moment and digest how silly all this is. Sebelius and her crew can scold insurance companies in public, but they have zero actual power to actually get a company to lower the objectionable cost. It's the politicization of price controls - big government at its strong-arming worst.
But there's a deeper problem here: The idea that our federal government, which is mandating that insurance companies to do more and more, can at the very same time be bullied by way of executive power to force them to charge less and less. We often decry "unfunded mandates" when they hit states and local governments; why should we just roll our eyes when the target is private industry? The disconnect within the Obama administration either reveals how little it cares about the laws of economics or how convinced it is that it can single-handedly rewrite them.
With the passage of Obamacare, the government slapped the managed care industry with a plethora of new must-do's: For example, requiring that the insurers cover young adults until they're 26 and banning them from denying coverage for anyone with preexisting conditions; mandating coverage of immunizations, and getting rid of lifetime limits.
To add all these new requirements, then in the same breath to tell insurers that they cannot raise premiums, is like telling General Motors that the cars it produces need to have side air bags, hybrid engines and state-of-the-art sound systems, but they can't raise a single sticker price.
SOURCE
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Labor department covering up union corruption
The Office of Labor Management Statistics (OLMS) was supposed to release an annual report tracking labor unions and evidence of corruption in union leadership in January 2010 but still hasn’t released the document.
OLMS, which falls under the Department of Labor, has released no such tracking report since George W. Bush’s administration, something that has the conservative nonprofit organization Americans for Limited Government (ALG) up in arms. ALG filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the 2009 report, and OLMS denied the group’s request by saying it needed more time to complete the report. Originally, however, those reports were publicly available on the OLMS website.
The report would tabulate the number of cases nationwide of union leader prosecution, the amount of funds they embezzle and the misuse of union funds. It also would keep track of indictments. Those statistics do exist elsewhere, as criminal and most civil court proceedings become public record after the cases close, but they’re difficult to track down as they’re in courthouses all over the country. The OLMS annual reports kept track of that information, allowing people to access it easily.
ALG’s current head of research, Don Todd, who led OLMS during the Bush administration, told The Daily Caller he doubts it would be too difficult for the Obama administration to release that information, as they’re supposed to keep track of it all year long. He also said that this administration’s failure to release the report is “freakishly incompetent.” He suspects politics is to blame.
“It’s got to be a political decision,” Todd said in a phone interview. “You know, I ran the agency during the Bush administration, and it’s the career people that put the thing together. So, the fact that it’s not out is a political decision.”
Todd said he thinks the decision to withhold that information comes from the Secretary of Labor’s office, though, not President Barack Obama. “I wouldn’t think it would reach anywhere near that high of a level,” Todd said, referring to why he doesn’t think Obama is calling these shots. “But, the Labor Department is pretty much owned by the union movement now. A lot of the people who work there are from the movement.”
More HERE
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A hero for the people
Everybody hates Tim Eyman.
That’s what you might think if you spent too much time listening to politicians in his home state of Washington, or perusing ill-mannered and condescending Internet postings smearing the “initiative-crazed madman” for seemingly single-handedly starving their Big Brothers in Olympia, the state’s quaint capital.
Legislators have compared Eyman to a terrorist and a pig — but, ever-so-generously, not “a terrorist pig.” He’s said to lack “one ounce of compassion” and to be “the state’s most infamous political liar.”
David Goldstein, a progressive blogger and former radio talk show host, filed an initiative in 2003 that read in part, “[B]e it resolved, That the citizens of the State of Washington do hereby proclaim that Tim Eyman is a Horse’s Ass.” Yet, Goldstein lacked the gusto to get the signatures required to put the measure to a vote.
In September, a comment on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website took it to another level: “Won’t someone just kill Eyman already?” But don’t feel threatened, as the author added, “Oh wait, only righties kill people over politics.” Tell that to Stalin, Mao, and the Weathermen.
Why all the vitriol? It seems too many Democrats and “lefties” don’t like democracy nearly so much as they like to proclaim . . . at least when they lose. At Eyman’s hands, they lose fairly often.
But is Eyman the actual deliverer of the hated coup-stick thwackings? Eyman has no powerful political position. He’s simply a voter and, more importantly, a proponent of initiative measures. Everything he’s accomplished has merely allowed the people of Washington to vote and make the final decision. Eyman explains:
I didn’t repeal the state motor vehicle excise tax (I-695 in 1999) and local vehicle fees (I-776 in 2002) . . . impose 1 percent limits on property tax collections by state and local governments (I-747 in 2001) . . . give the state auditor the authority to do comprehensive performance audits of state and local governments (I-900 in 2005) . . . re-impose a 2/3’s vote requirement for the Legislature to raise taxes (I-960 in 2007), the voters did.
Repeat that: Eyman did’t do those things, the voters did. Eyman calculates that the people of Washington have saved themselves $15.5 billion in taxes by voting for the successful initiatives that he has pushed, working through a group called Voters Want More Choices . . . which he leads along with Jack and Mike Fagan. (The Fagans were very active in battling Republican George Nethercutt in 2000, after the former congressman broke his pledge to serve only three terms in the other Washington.)
This November, Voters Want More Choices sponsored I-1053, a statewide measure requiring tax increases to be passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses of the legislature, and fee increases be passed by a majority. The measure was written in response to the legislature’s repeal of a similar initiative, I-960, passed by voters back in 2007. The more recent go-round garnered 64 percent of the vote — the most ever for an Eyman-proposed issue.
In his spare time, Tim took on the red-light camera industry in his home town of Mukilteo, north of Seattle. He overcame the resistance of local officials to even holding a vote on the issue, and his measure to require public approval before installing any cameras and limiting fines to $20 won 70 percent of the vote.
What’s most essential about Tim Eyman is his understanding of the importance of the initiative and referendum process. “Initiatives allow you to fundamentally change public policy in a really substantial way,” he told the Washington Times. “It is the ultimate in truth in advertising. You can’t hide what your proposal does. Initiatives can’t change their mind after the election — unlike politicians.”
Like America’s Founders, Eyman understands that, ultimately, the principle of who decides is more important than the actual decision. “This is not a debate over is a toll good or bad, is a ferry fare increase good or bad, are car tab fees good or bad,” he recently told the Everett Herald. “It’s a question of who should decide.”
Eyman wants voters to decide. Many politicians, and many who want a government unlimited by voters, disrespectfully disagree.
What befuddles his opponents the most is Eyman’s pluck. He admits that he’s a little “obnoxious” at times. But he says citizens don’t get anywhere without some sort of “battering ram.”
Worse still, he enjoys the battle. He told Seattle Times columnist Bruce Ramsey, “I take a mischievous glee in being the greatest thorn in the side of people who desperately need to be humbled.”
There are those who diminish Tim Eyman as being in the political process only to make money. But they are far removed from reality. A man of Eyman’s talents could make a lot more money in a different pursuit. It’s hard to imagine that his pension — if he has one, which I doubt — would rival those snagged by run-of-the-mill Evergreen State government employees.
In fact, to gain the funding necessary to place this year’s I-1053 on the ballot, Tim took a second mortgage out on his home for $250,000. He still owes $237,000. It’s not something someone “in it for the money” would do.
It is something freedom-lovers all across the country should help him pay off.
Eyman’s success is a testament to his smarts, his tenacity and his hard work. It also testifies to the ballot initiative process, whereby citizens can reform government and change the law by taking an issue to the ballot box for a decision by their fellow citizens.
Hate Tim Eyman? I adore the man.
SOURCE
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Dems Suggest the Bible Hates the Rich
Michael Medved
The debate over the extension of the Bush tax-rates revealed the deep hostility from many prominent Democrats toward Americans who have achieved financial success, and already carry the bulk of the income tax burden. Ironically, some liberals, including Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, even cited Biblical authority to back up their resentment of the rich. A favorite “proof text” for such attitudes comes from Matthew 19:24, where Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
The classic 1706 Christian commentary by Matthew Henry explains this passage by saying, “Rich people have great temptations to resist….more duties are expected of them than from others, which they can hardly do…It must be a great measure of divine grace that will enable a man to break through these difficulties.”
In other words, wealth comes with special challenges and responsibilities, but it is hardly a crime deserving of punishment or discouragement. Inconveniently for liberals who hate the rich, the Bible also says –in Leviticus 19:15- that the legal system must not favor the poor, or the rich.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Nomination of extreme Leftist to federal appeals court blocked: "A Cal law school dean's nomination to a federal appeals court appears to be dead, at least for now, under a deal struck between U.S. Senate Democrats and Republicans to break a year-end judicial confirmation logjam. Officials familiar with the deal said Democrats agreed not to seek votes on the nominations of Goodwin Liu, associate dean at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, and three others, while Republicans agreed to confirm at least 19 of President Barack Obama's noncontroversial nominees. The Senate has approved 10 judges in the past few days without a single dissenting vote as part of this deal"
Deadbeat states: "Socialism is secondary to state squandering — and a consequence of it. America is a debtor nation. The defining characteristic of the Unites States is debt — public and private; macro and micro, federal and state. I sincerely hope you are not invested in municipal bonds. The '$3 trillion municipal bond market, where state and local governments go to finance their schools, highways, and other projects,' is about to come crashing down."
Birthrate among US teens hits record low: "The rate at which U.S. women are having babies continued to fall between 2008 and 2009, federal officials reported Tuesday, pushing the teen birthrate to a record low and prompting a debate about whether the drop was caused by the recession, an increased focus on encouraging abstinence, more adolescents using birth control or a combination of those factors."
The enemy within: "In the early 1980s, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher emerged victorious from a war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands that propelled her to a landslide victory in the 1983 general election. On July 19, 1984, she gave a speech to the assembled legislators of her Conservative party, in which she said that she had defeated 'the enemy without,' but that 'the enemy within ... is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.' She was referring to government-sector unions, and specifically the mineworkers’ union, which was then attempting to hold Britain hostage."
The Golden Rule, reformulated: "Without humility, most people who are concerned about justice and compassion may get lost in moral dilemmas. Humility reminds us we might not have all the right answers or can foresee all the consequences. Humility reminds us that perhaps it's sometimes better to do nothing, and to tolerate the distasteful."
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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I plan to do some blogging in the next few days but not sure how much
*********************
More Obamacare insanity: Sebelius' shameless attempt to jawbone insurers on costs
In early September, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius - throwing her new weight around after the passage of Obamacare - threatened the health insurance industry with a letter that spelled out "zero tolerance" for "unjustified rate increases."
This week, her agency unveiled a new rule that allows the federal government to decide what counts as an "unreasonable" rate increase. The upshot: If an insurance company increases the cost of a premium to above 10%, it may well feel the wrath of the feds.
There's just one problem: Under Obamacare, the federal government does not have the authority to block or overturn an insurance price increase. (Congress debated whether or not to give the Health and Human Services Department this authority during the crafting of the legislation, but it was ultimately rejected.) In point of fact, 43 states already regulate and approve rates in the individual or small business market through their insurance commissioners. This new law would let them continue to do their job - unless the federal government were to decide that their reviews weren't "effective." Once again, government is overreaching and telling private business what to do.
Stop for a moment and digest how silly all this is. Sebelius and her crew can scold insurance companies in public, but they have zero actual power to actually get a company to lower the objectionable cost. It's the politicization of price controls - big government at its strong-arming worst.
But there's a deeper problem here: The idea that our federal government, which is mandating that insurance companies to do more and more, can at the very same time be bullied by way of executive power to force them to charge less and less. We often decry "unfunded mandates" when they hit states and local governments; why should we just roll our eyes when the target is private industry? The disconnect within the Obama administration either reveals how little it cares about the laws of economics or how convinced it is that it can single-handedly rewrite them.
With the passage of Obamacare, the government slapped the managed care industry with a plethora of new must-do's: For example, requiring that the insurers cover young adults until they're 26 and banning them from denying coverage for anyone with preexisting conditions; mandating coverage of immunizations, and getting rid of lifetime limits.
To add all these new requirements, then in the same breath to tell insurers that they cannot raise premiums, is like telling General Motors that the cars it produces need to have side air bags, hybrid engines and state-of-the-art sound systems, but they can't raise a single sticker price.
SOURCE
************************
Labor department covering up union corruption
The Office of Labor Management Statistics (OLMS) was supposed to release an annual report tracking labor unions and evidence of corruption in union leadership in January 2010 but still hasn’t released the document.
OLMS, which falls under the Department of Labor, has released no such tracking report since George W. Bush’s administration, something that has the conservative nonprofit organization Americans for Limited Government (ALG) up in arms. ALG filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the 2009 report, and OLMS denied the group’s request by saying it needed more time to complete the report. Originally, however, those reports were publicly available on the OLMS website.
The report would tabulate the number of cases nationwide of union leader prosecution, the amount of funds they embezzle and the misuse of union funds. It also would keep track of indictments. Those statistics do exist elsewhere, as criminal and most civil court proceedings become public record after the cases close, but they’re difficult to track down as they’re in courthouses all over the country. The OLMS annual reports kept track of that information, allowing people to access it easily.
ALG’s current head of research, Don Todd, who led OLMS during the Bush administration, told The Daily Caller he doubts it would be too difficult for the Obama administration to release that information, as they’re supposed to keep track of it all year long. He also said that this administration’s failure to release the report is “freakishly incompetent.” He suspects politics is to blame.
“It’s got to be a political decision,” Todd said in a phone interview. “You know, I ran the agency during the Bush administration, and it’s the career people that put the thing together. So, the fact that it’s not out is a political decision.”
Todd said he thinks the decision to withhold that information comes from the Secretary of Labor’s office, though, not President Barack Obama. “I wouldn’t think it would reach anywhere near that high of a level,” Todd said, referring to why he doesn’t think Obama is calling these shots. “But, the Labor Department is pretty much owned by the union movement now. A lot of the people who work there are from the movement.”
More HERE
**********************
A hero for the people
Everybody hates Tim Eyman.
That’s what you might think if you spent too much time listening to politicians in his home state of Washington, or perusing ill-mannered and condescending Internet postings smearing the “initiative-crazed madman” for seemingly single-handedly starving their Big Brothers in Olympia, the state’s quaint capital.
Legislators have compared Eyman to a terrorist and a pig — but, ever-so-generously, not “a terrorist pig.” He’s said to lack “one ounce of compassion” and to be “the state’s most infamous political liar.”
David Goldstein, a progressive blogger and former radio talk show host, filed an initiative in 2003 that read in part, “[B]e it resolved, That the citizens of the State of Washington do hereby proclaim that Tim Eyman is a Horse’s Ass.” Yet, Goldstein lacked the gusto to get the signatures required to put the measure to a vote.
In September, a comment on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website took it to another level: “Won’t someone just kill Eyman already?” But don’t feel threatened, as the author added, “Oh wait, only righties kill people over politics.” Tell that to Stalin, Mao, and the Weathermen.
Why all the vitriol? It seems too many Democrats and “lefties” don’t like democracy nearly so much as they like to proclaim . . . at least when they lose. At Eyman’s hands, they lose fairly often.
But is Eyman the actual deliverer of the hated coup-stick thwackings? Eyman has no powerful political position. He’s simply a voter and, more importantly, a proponent of initiative measures. Everything he’s accomplished has merely allowed the people of Washington to vote and make the final decision. Eyman explains:
I didn’t repeal the state motor vehicle excise tax (I-695 in 1999) and local vehicle fees (I-776 in 2002) . . . impose 1 percent limits on property tax collections by state and local governments (I-747 in 2001) . . . give the state auditor the authority to do comprehensive performance audits of state and local governments (I-900 in 2005) . . . re-impose a 2/3’s vote requirement for the Legislature to raise taxes (I-960 in 2007), the voters did.
Repeat that: Eyman did’t do those things, the voters did. Eyman calculates that the people of Washington have saved themselves $15.5 billion in taxes by voting for the successful initiatives that he has pushed, working through a group called Voters Want More Choices . . . which he leads along with Jack and Mike Fagan. (The Fagans were very active in battling Republican George Nethercutt in 2000, after the former congressman broke his pledge to serve only three terms in the other Washington.)
This November, Voters Want More Choices sponsored I-1053, a statewide measure requiring tax increases to be passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses of the legislature, and fee increases be passed by a majority. The measure was written in response to the legislature’s repeal of a similar initiative, I-960, passed by voters back in 2007. The more recent go-round garnered 64 percent of the vote — the most ever for an Eyman-proposed issue.
In his spare time, Tim took on the red-light camera industry in his home town of Mukilteo, north of Seattle. He overcame the resistance of local officials to even holding a vote on the issue, and his measure to require public approval before installing any cameras and limiting fines to $20 won 70 percent of the vote.
What’s most essential about Tim Eyman is his understanding of the importance of the initiative and referendum process. “Initiatives allow you to fundamentally change public policy in a really substantial way,” he told the Washington Times. “It is the ultimate in truth in advertising. You can’t hide what your proposal does. Initiatives can’t change their mind after the election — unlike politicians.”
Like America’s Founders, Eyman understands that, ultimately, the principle of who decides is more important than the actual decision. “This is not a debate over is a toll good or bad, is a ferry fare increase good or bad, are car tab fees good or bad,” he recently told the Everett Herald. “It’s a question of who should decide.”
Eyman wants voters to decide. Many politicians, and many who want a government unlimited by voters, disrespectfully disagree.
What befuddles his opponents the most is Eyman’s pluck. He admits that he’s a little “obnoxious” at times. But he says citizens don’t get anywhere without some sort of “battering ram.”
Worse still, he enjoys the battle. He told Seattle Times columnist Bruce Ramsey, “I take a mischievous glee in being the greatest thorn in the side of people who desperately need to be humbled.”
There are those who diminish Tim Eyman as being in the political process only to make money. But they are far removed from reality. A man of Eyman’s talents could make a lot more money in a different pursuit. It’s hard to imagine that his pension — if he has one, which I doubt — would rival those snagged by run-of-the-mill Evergreen State government employees.
In fact, to gain the funding necessary to place this year’s I-1053 on the ballot, Tim took a second mortgage out on his home for $250,000. He still owes $237,000. It’s not something someone “in it for the money” would do.
It is something freedom-lovers all across the country should help him pay off.
Eyman’s success is a testament to his smarts, his tenacity and his hard work. It also testifies to the ballot initiative process, whereby citizens can reform government and change the law by taking an issue to the ballot box for a decision by their fellow citizens.
Hate Tim Eyman? I adore the man.
SOURCE
**********************
Dems Suggest the Bible Hates the Rich
Michael Medved
The debate over the extension of the Bush tax-rates revealed the deep hostility from many prominent Democrats toward Americans who have achieved financial success, and already carry the bulk of the income tax burden. Ironically, some liberals, including Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, even cited Biblical authority to back up their resentment of the rich. A favorite “proof text” for such attitudes comes from Matthew 19:24, where Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
The classic 1706 Christian commentary by Matthew Henry explains this passage by saying, “Rich people have great temptations to resist….more duties are expected of them than from others, which they can hardly do…It must be a great measure of divine grace that will enable a man to break through these difficulties.”
In other words, wealth comes with special challenges and responsibilities, but it is hardly a crime deserving of punishment or discouragement. Inconveniently for liberals who hate the rich, the Bible also says –in Leviticus 19:15- that the legal system must not favor the poor, or the rich.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Nomination of extreme Leftist to federal appeals court blocked: "A Cal law school dean's nomination to a federal appeals court appears to be dead, at least for now, under a deal struck between U.S. Senate Democrats and Republicans to break a year-end judicial confirmation logjam. Officials familiar with the deal said Democrats agreed not to seek votes on the nominations of Goodwin Liu, associate dean at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, and three others, while Republicans agreed to confirm at least 19 of President Barack Obama's noncontroversial nominees. The Senate has approved 10 judges in the past few days without a single dissenting vote as part of this deal"
Deadbeat states: "Socialism is secondary to state squandering — and a consequence of it. America is a debtor nation. The defining characteristic of the Unites States is debt — public and private; macro and micro, federal and state. I sincerely hope you are not invested in municipal bonds. The '$3 trillion municipal bond market, where state and local governments go to finance their schools, highways, and other projects,' is about to come crashing down."
Birthrate among US teens hits record low: "The rate at which U.S. women are having babies continued to fall between 2008 and 2009, federal officials reported Tuesday, pushing the teen birthrate to a record low and prompting a debate about whether the drop was caused by the recession, an increased focus on encouraging abstinence, more adolescents using birth control or a combination of those factors."
The enemy within: "In the early 1980s, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher emerged victorious from a war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands that propelled her to a landslide victory in the 1983 general election. On July 19, 1984, she gave a speech to the assembled legislators of her Conservative party, in which she said that she had defeated 'the enemy without,' but that 'the enemy within ... is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.' She was referring to government-sector unions, and specifically the mineworkers’ union, which was then attempting to hold Britain hostage."
The Golden Rule, reformulated: "Without humility, most people who are concerned about justice and compassion may get lost in moral dilemmas. Humility reminds us we might not have all the right answers or can foresee all the consequences. Humility reminds us that perhaps it's sometimes better to do nothing, and to tolerate the distasteful."
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Conservative change in Britain
The old Leftist lie that conservatives were simply against all change still has legs even though Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher made it clear by their actions that it was only the simplistic and destructive changes proposed by the Left that conservatives oppose. So it is interesting to see below that Britain's present-day Conservatives also have lots of changes on their agenda
The Tory-led Coalition sees itself in revolutionary terms. Steve Hilton, who is David Cameron’s political guru, is supposed to have declared: ‘Everything must be changed by 2015. Everything.’ An odd thing, perhaps, for an alleged Conservative to have said.
Then there is Nick Boles, the staunchly Cameroon Tory MP for Grantham, who at a conference last week said that David Cameron and Nick Clegg want their ‘people power’ revolution to unleash ‘chaotic’ effects across the community. That sounds like Mao Zedong on a wild night.
During the election campaign Nick Clegg often said that he plans to ‘change Britain for good’, a call to arms he repeated at the Lib Dem party conference in September. I don’t know about you, but there is quite a lot about Britain which I like, and I am by no means sure that Mr Clegg’s transformed version would be preferable.
There is a good deal of this Maoist-type talk. And if you look at the Coalition’s proposals in various areas, there is a lot of frenetic activity of which Mao, as the creator of ‘permanent revolution’, would have warmly approved.
Andrew Lansley is turning the NHS inside out, though in opposition the Tories said another bureaucratic shake-up was the last thing it needed. Michael Gove is trying to create as many ‘free schools’ as possible. Ken Clarke is overhauling the judicial and prison systems. Iain Duncan Smith is embarking on the most sweeping welfare reforms for a generation. Eric Pickles wants to transfer powers from councils which think they know best to local communities.
The sheer speed and multiplicity of these reforms, combined with all the revolutionary rhetoric, has led some commentators to suggest that the Coalition is more radical even than Margaret Thatcher who, for all her zeal, actually proceeded quite cautiously, particularly during her first term of office.
Some people suggest that the theme uniting these bold plans is a smaller State. I doubt whether this is true. When all the cuts announced by the Chancellor have taken effect in 2015 — and this assumes, possibly wrongly, that they will be rigorously applied — government spending as a proportion of gross national product will have merely returned to the levels of 2007. That does not sound like a dramatically smaller State to me.
Others say that localism is another common theme. When Mr Boles enthused about the advantages of chaos he was trying to point out the vices of central planning. We can most of us agree with that. But I remain sceptical as to whether the reforms already announced will substantially shift power to local communities. Will electing police chiefs really have such an effect?
More HERE
************************
The Left's legislative rampage
Repudiated Congress implements the New Gay Army
Defeated congressional Democrats will leave town in the next two weeks having left behind Christmas presents few Americans will cherish. The national debt is $5,208,241,108,177.58 more now than it was when Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, was sworn in as House speaker. The U.S. military, already strained by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, faces transformation from the world's most powerful fighting machine into an organization where political correctness is more important than victory.
Saturday's Senate vote cleared the final hurdle for the repeal of President Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy designed to prevent homosexual conduct in the ranks. Battle lines will now form over how the homosexual advocacy policies will be implemented. Though the repudiated lawmakers who rammed the repeal through this weekend's session pretend they are simply latter-day Rosa Parkses seeking to end discrimination, there is no comparison. Since 2005, a mere 1 percent of Army discharges involved homosexual conduct. This issue isn't about retaining or recruiting qualified personnel for the military. This is part of the left's larger societal goal of using government to force others to embrace unorthodox personal lifestyle choices.
The implications are clear from a look at how the federal government treats issues of homosexuality. President Obama, for example, repeated his call for repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in his proclamation of June 2010 as "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month." It's inevitable that the same programs will be foisted on the military services. Troops can look forward to so-called pride parades on military bases and awareness days for the transgendered.
Everyone knows the sort of thing that might work in Greenwich Village or a San Francisco neighborhood doesn't go over well in a fighting force drawn largely from red state America - an area whose residents Mr. Obama once derisively referred to as the type who "cling to guns or religion." That's why implementing the New Gay Army means forcing soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to endure "diversity" training. Those who don't like it will be told to get out, as several senior military leaders have suggested already. Chaplains in particular will face the dilemma that preaching their faith will violate the new pro-homosexual code of conduct. As a result, far more are likely to leave or be thrown out of the military as a result of Mr. Obama's policy than were ever affected by Mr. Clinton's.
It's hard to see how that will do anything to strengthen the nation's defenses. It does, however, please the well-funded fringe groups that helped Mr. Obama secure his election victory in 2008. That win isn't likely to last beyond 2012. As with the strong-arm tactics employed to force through Obamacare, using a last-minute lame-duck session to enact a controversial policy won't earn many friends outside of left-wing activist circles. It's no wonder Mr. Obama's popularity continues to plunge.
America needs a president who will put military readiness and national security above special interests. That's not what we have in the White House these days.
SOURCE
*************************
Texas Just Got Bigger
OK, OK, enough with dancing on the bar, shooting pistols in the air, and whatever else Texans are legendarily credited with doing when they celebrate. News of the state's projected gain in congressional representation .affords opportunities for useful, not to mention sober, analysis of what makes a state really work.
We're gittin' them four new seats, boys, due in large measure to a engrained habit of welcoming capital, capitalists, and various other proponents of growth.
Population growth of 20.6 percent over the past decade has both a geographical and an economic basis. Proximity to Mexico has historically made Texas a major destination for Mexican immigrants. These immigrants come -- the economic angle emerges here -- because jobs in Texas are relatively plentiful.
Their plentitude draws more than just Mexicans. As the Dallas Morning News' Jim Landers points out, a yearly average of 80,000 Californians moved to Texas between 2006 and 2008. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana likewise contributed to the influx, Landers says.
Abundant resources -- land, petroleum, and so on -- create their own blessings; but a collateral blessing to Texas, in terms of creating attractions for population growth, is the state's taste for relatively small, relatively non-oppressive government. Save for the opposite disposition in states like New York and California, Texas, with its hot summers and taste for the un-chic, might not stand out so favorably among the other states.
Stand out it does. Texas doesn't even have a personal income tax. It accords to business such latitude as comports with observance of mainstream legalities. The state legislature meets just five months out of every 24. The state's almost uniformly liberal newspapers rag on business a bit, but few enough others do. It's a good place, Texas is, to make a living.
During the recession, housing values fell less than those in other states, and unemployment never reached 9 percent. Advantages of this sort get noised abroad, and newcomers start showing up. It is what Lenin called voting with your feet -- taking yourself and your family where you expect your discrete needs to be met.
More HERE
************************
Why Obama bailed out Wall St.
When it comes to big business and the economy, America is essentially a Fascist ("corporate") State with just a facade of democracy. The GOP and the Donks differ only in relatively small ways and that's the only choice you get. Witness GWB and the TARP. The Tea partiers want to make the GOP into a truly conservative party but they will almost certainly get swallowed up by the system
The political establishment, helped by the mass media and intelligentsia, has long played a game in this country. It consists in depicting the competition for power as between two blocs: one hostile to business in the name of social justice, the other friendly to business in the name of “the free market.” Each bloc’s talking points and pet projects are calculated in superficial ways to reinforce its signature theme. Whenever the blocs need to rally their respective bases, they accentuate their surface differences. The “antibusiness” bloc accuses its opponents of being, say, Wall Street lackeys, while the “pro-free-enterprise” bloc accuses its opponents of being, say, socialists.
It’s all a sham that serves each side’s interests. The rivals actually want two variations of the same thing: the corporate state, a system of economic privilege that transfers wealth via government from market entrepreneurs, workers, and consumers to well-connected business interests.
What we have are two factions of a single establishment. Differences in rhetoric notwithstanding, both are friends of and beholden to big entrenched manufacturers (military contractors lead the way) and big financial institutions. Neither faction wishes to do anything to undermine the interests of these businesses. And for their part, the business people have no desire to antagonize either side. They need one another: The politicians need the campaign funds and economic cooperation; the businesses need the subsidies, guarantees, low interest rates, and impediments to competition. The banks in particular need friendly relations with politicians (federal, state, and local) who float debt that brings big fees for bond underwriters. It’s one close and lucrative alliance (which is not to say the various parties agree on every detail). Thus it has been throughout American history. (Doubters should consult Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.’s classic, The Decline of American Liberalism.)
Enter Barack Obama. “For the most part, Obama had been good to the banks—really good. They’d gotten everything they wanted in terms of bailouts and handouts and reaped enormous profits because of it,” Gasparino writes. “. . . The fact of the matter is, when you strip away the name-calling and class warfare coming from the Obama administration, and when you ignore Wall Street’s gripes about the new financial reform legislation that will put a crimp in some of its profits, these two entities are far more aligned than meets the casual eye. They coexist to help each other—in an unholy alliance against the American taxpayer.”
Gasparino points out that Obama signaled his eagerness to be Wall Street’s friend at a meeting with the big players during his presidential campaign, and they came through with the money. Wall Street had no reason for remorse when they saw his economic appointments and advisers: Timothy Geithner (formerly of the New York Fed), Lawrence Summers (Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and former World Bank president), Paul Volcker (former Fed chairman), Robert Rubin (formerly of Goldman Sachs, later of Citigroup), Ben Bernanke (reappointed as Fed chairman), Rahm Emanuel (formerly of Goldman Sachs), and Greg Craig (a political insider who has gone on to represent Goldman Sachs from one of the nation’s top law firms). Many other Wall Street insiders, whose names are not so well known, have the President’s ear.
Gasparino’s thesis is confirmed by the essential continuity between the Bush and Obama administrations. Wall Street got first consideration beginning when the rotten fruit of bipartisan housing and monetary policies became apparent. If anything, the Obama team has substantively treated Wall Street better than the Bush team did. The Fed has gone into the business of allocating capital selectively, buying up mortgage-based and other “assets” of dubious value from institutions deemed too big to fail. One must guard against being deceived by political rituals. The Dodd-Frank financial “reform” is portrayed as the long-overdue taming of Wall Street, but no one who pays close attention believes that. The usual players will help write the myriad rules the new law calls for, and they are not likely to harm the insiders’ interests.
Sure, Obama bashed Wall Street last fall. No surprise: There was a campaign on and his party was in deep trouble; unemployment was stuck above 9.5 percent; and the disillusioned base needed rallying or it might not have shown up at the polls. The bigwigs at Goldman and the other firms may not be happy about the rhetorical roughing-up. They may even be concerned that a desperate Obama will do something in the short run that could reduce the growth of profits and executive pay. Such uncertainty is surely one reason for the reluctance to invest and slow recovery. But it’s unlikely that any big player fears that the future holds a radical anti-capitalist revolution.
The daily talk-radio and cable-news alarms about this being the most radical left-wing administration in U.S. history should be chalked up to base-rallying on the other side. As I suggested at the outset, the American political system capitalizes on the division in public opinion over the role of government by propagating the myth that there is a grand war raging between the advocates of Big Government and the advocates of Free Markets. In fact, it’s an intramural competition between two rival factions that favor government management of the economy—with a few differences in detail—on behalf of special interests.
Why the charade? All the better to exploit the productive classes, those that would be prospering in a freed market.
SOURCE
************************
ELSEWHERE
NATO denies US plans Pakistan escalation: "The NATO force in Afghanistan denied Tuesday that the American military intends to carry out ground raids inside Pakistan in pursuit of insurgent leaders hiding there. ... The New York Times reported in Tuesday's editions that senior U.S. military officials believe they will soon be authorized to send American special operations forces into Pakistan's tribal areas with the aim of capturing figures from the Taliban and a virulent offshoot organization, the Haqqani network."
The other way to repeal ObamaCare: "The repeal amendment, also known as the federalism amendment, would be a welcome step forward in reestablishing half of Madison’s double security to our rights. By allowing two-thirds of state legislatures to repeal any federal law or regulation, it would remind the federal government that ours is a federalist system; that federal power isn’t unlimited; and that the states have legitimate authority (not rights! — only people have rights) in all instances in which the Constitution’s enumerated powers don’t grant the federal government authority to act."
Britain outlaws ID cards: "The bill abolishing the National Identity Scheme is expected to gain royal assent later today. The Home Office said that it expected the identity documents bill would be passed into law on 21 December. As a result, existing ID cards will be invalid for use in a month's time."
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
The old Leftist lie that conservatives were simply against all change still has legs even though Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher made it clear by their actions that it was only the simplistic and destructive changes proposed by the Left that conservatives oppose. So it is interesting to see below that Britain's present-day Conservatives also have lots of changes on their agenda
The Tory-led Coalition sees itself in revolutionary terms. Steve Hilton, who is David Cameron’s political guru, is supposed to have declared: ‘Everything must be changed by 2015. Everything.’ An odd thing, perhaps, for an alleged Conservative to have said.
Then there is Nick Boles, the staunchly Cameroon Tory MP for Grantham, who at a conference last week said that David Cameron and Nick Clegg want their ‘people power’ revolution to unleash ‘chaotic’ effects across the community. That sounds like Mao Zedong on a wild night.
During the election campaign Nick Clegg often said that he plans to ‘change Britain for good’, a call to arms he repeated at the Lib Dem party conference in September. I don’t know about you, but there is quite a lot about Britain which I like, and I am by no means sure that Mr Clegg’s transformed version would be preferable.
There is a good deal of this Maoist-type talk. And if you look at the Coalition’s proposals in various areas, there is a lot of frenetic activity of which Mao, as the creator of ‘permanent revolution’, would have warmly approved.
Andrew Lansley is turning the NHS inside out, though in opposition the Tories said another bureaucratic shake-up was the last thing it needed. Michael Gove is trying to create as many ‘free schools’ as possible. Ken Clarke is overhauling the judicial and prison systems. Iain Duncan Smith is embarking on the most sweeping welfare reforms for a generation. Eric Pickles wants to transfer powers from councils which think they know best to local communities.
The sheer speed and multiplicity of these reforms, combined with all the revolutionary rhetoric, has led some commentators to suggest that the Coalition is more radical even than Margaret Thatcher who, for all her zeal, actually proceeded quite cautiously, particularly during her first term of office.
Some people suggest that the theme uniting these bold plans is a smaller State. I doubt whether this is true. When all the cuts announced by the Chancellor have taken effect in 2015 — and this assumes, possibly wrongly, that they will be rigorously applied — government spending as a proportion of gross national product will have merely returned to the levels of 2007. That does not sound like a dramatically smaller State to me.
Others say that localism is another common theme. When Mr Boles enthused about the advantages of chaos he was trying to point out the vices of central planning. We can most of us agree with that. But I remain sceptical as to whether the reforms already announced will substantially shift power to local communities. Will electing police chiefs really have such an effect?
More HERE
************************
The Left's legislative rampage
Repudiated Congress implements the New Gay Army
Defeated congressional Democrats will leave town in the next two weeks having left behind Christmas presents few Americans will cherish. The national debt is $5,208,241,108,177.58 more now than it was when Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, was sworn in as House speaker. The U.S. military, already strained by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, faces transformation from the world's most powerful fighting machine into an organization where political correctness is more important than victory.
Saturday's Senate vote cleared the final hurdle for the repeal of President Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy designed to prevent homosexual conduct in the ranks. Battle lines will now form over how the homosexual advocacy policies will be implemented. Though the repudiated lawmakers who rammed the repeal through this weekend's session pretend they are simply latter-day Rosa Parkses seeking to end discrimination, there is no comparison. Since 2005, a mere 1 percent of Army discharges involved homosexual conduct. This issue isn't about retaining or recruiting qualified personnel for the military. This is part of the left's larger societal goal of using government to force others to embrace unorthodox personal lifestyle choices.
The implications are clear from a look at how the federal government treats issues of homosexuality. President Obama, for example, repeated his call for repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in his proclamation of June 2010 as "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month." It's inevitable that the same programs will be foisted on the military services. Troops can look forward to so-called pride parades on military bases and awareness days for the transgendered.
Everyone knows the sort of thing that might work in Greenwich Village or a San Francisco neighborhood doesn't go over well in a fighting force drawn largely from red state America - an area whose residents Mr. Obama once derisively referred to as the type who "cling to guns or religion." That's why implementing the New Gay Army means forcing soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to endure "diversity" training. Those who don't like it will be told to get out, as several senior military leaders have suggested already. Chaplains in particular will face the dilemma that preaching their faith will violate the new pro-homosexual code of conduct. As a result, far more are likely to leave or be thrown out of the military as a result of Mr. Obama's policy than were ever affected by Mr. Clinton's.
It's hard to see how that will do anything to strengthen the nation's defenses. It does, however, please the well-funded fringe groups that helped Mr. Obama secure his election victory in 2008. That win isn't likely to last beyond 2012. As with the strong-arm tactics employed to force through Obamacare, using a last-minute lame-duck session to enact a controversial policy won't earn many friends outside of left-wing activist circles. It's no wonder Mr. Obama's popularity continues to plunge.
America needs a president who will put military readiness and national security above special interests. That's not what we have in the White House these days.
SOURCE
*************************
Texas Just Got Bigger
OK, OK, enough with dancing on the bar, shooting pistols in the air, and whatever else Texans are legendarily credited with doing when they celebrate. News of the state's projected gain in congressional representation .affords opportunities for useful, not to mention sober, analysis of what makes a state really work.
We're gittin' them four new seats, boys, due in large measure to a engrained habit of welcoming capital, capitalists, and various other proponents of growth.
Population growth of 20.6 percent over the past decade has both a geographical and an economic basis. Proximity to Mexico has historically made Texas a major destination for Mexican immigrants. These immigrants come -- the economic angle emerges here -- because jobs in Texas are relatively plentiful.
Their plentitude draws more than just Mexicans. As the Dallas Morning News' Jim Landers points out, a yearly average of 80,000 Californians moved to Texas between 2006 and 2008. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana likewise contributed to the influx, Landers says.
Abundant resources -- land, petroleum, and so on -- create their own blessings; but a collateral blessing to Texas, in terms of creating attractions for population growth, is the state's taste for relatively small, relatively non-oppressive government. Save for the opposite disposition in states like New York and California, Texas, with its hot summers and taste for the un-chic, might not stand out so favorably among the other states.
Stand out it does. Texas doesn't even have a personal income tax. It accords to business such latitude as comports with observance of mainstream legalities. The state legislature meets just five months out of every 24. The state's almost uniformly liberal newspapers rag on business a bit, but few enough others do. It's a good place, Texas is, to make a living.
During the recession, housing values fell less than those in other states, and unemployment never reached 9 percent. Advantages of this sort get noised abroad, and newcomers start showing up. It is what Lenin called voting with your feet -- taking yourself and your family where you expect your discrete needs to be met.
More HERE
************************
Why Obama bailed out Wall St.
When it comes to big business and the economy, America is essentially a Fascist ("corporate") State with just a facade of democracy. The GOP and the Donks differ only in relatively small ways and that's the only choice you get. Witness GWB and the TARP. The Tea partiers want to make the GOP into a truly conservative party but they will almost certainly get swallowed up by the system
The political establishment, helped by the mass media and intelligentsia, has long played a game in this country. It consists in depicting the competition for power as between two blocs: one hostile to business in the name of social justice, the other friendly to business in the name of “the free market.” Each bloc’s talking points and pet projects are calculated in superficial ways to reinforce its signature theme. Whenever the blocs need to rally their respective bases, they accentuate their surface differences. The “antibusiness” bloc accuses its opponents of being, say, Wall Street lackeys, while the “pro-free-enterprise” bloc accuses its opponents of being, say, socialists.
It’s all a sham that serves each side’s interests. The rivals actually want two variations of the same thing: the corporate state, a system of economic privilege that transfers wealth via government from market entrepreneurs, workers, and consumers to well-connected business interests.
What we have are two factions of a single establishment. Differences in rhetoric notwithstanding, both are friends of and beholden to big entrenched manufacturers (military contractors lead the way) and big financial institutions. Neither faction wishes to do anything to undermine the interests of these businesses. And for their part, the business people have no desire to antagonize either side. They need one another: The politicians need the campaign funds and economic cooperation; the businesses need the subsidies, guarantees, low interest rates, and impediments to competition. The banks in particular need friendly relations with politicians (federal, state, and local) who float debt that brings big fees for bond underwriters. It’s one close and lucrative alliance (which is not to say the various parties agree on every detail). Thus it has been throughout American history. (Doubters should consult Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.’s classic, The Decline of American Liberalism.)
Enter Barack Obama. “For the most part, Obama had been good to the banks—really good. They’d gotten everything they wanted in terms of bailouts and handouts and reaped enormous profits because of it,” Gasparino writes. “. . . The fact of the matter is, when you strip away the name-calling and class warfare coming from the Obama administration, and when you ignore Wall Street’s gripes about the new financial reform legislation that will put a crimp in some of its profits, these two entities are far more aligned than meets the casual eye. They coexist to help each other—in an unholy alliance against the American taxpayer.”
Gasparino points out that Obama signaled his eagerness to be Wall Street’s friend at a meeting with the big players during his presidential campaign, and they came through with the money. Wall Street had no reason for remorse when they saw his economic appointments and advisers: Timothy Geithner (formerly of the New York Fed), Lawrence Summers (Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and former World Bank president), Paul Volcker (former Fed chairman), Robert Rubin (formerly of Goldman Sachs, later of Citigroup), Ben Bernanke (reappointed as Fed chairman), Rahm Emanuel (formerly of Goldman Sachs), and Greg Craig (a political insider who has gone on to represent Goldman Sachs from one of the nation’s top law firms). Many other Wall Street insiders, whose names are not so well known, have the President’s ear.
Gasparino’s thesis is confirmed by the essential continuity between the Bush and Obama administrations. Wall Street got first consideration beginning when the rotten fruit of bipartisan housing and monetary policies became apparent. If anything, the Obama team has substantively treated Wall Street better than the Bush team did. The Fed has gone into the business of allocating capital selectively, buying up mortgage-based and other “assets” of dubious value from institutions deemed too big to fail. One must guard against being deceived by political rituals. The Dodd-Frank financial “reform” is portrayed as the long-overdue taming of Wall Street, but no one who pays close attention believes that. The usual players will help write the myriad rules the new law calls for, and they are not likely to harm the insiders’ interests.
Sure, Obama bashed Wall Street last fall. No surprise: There was a campaign on and his party was in deep trouble; unemployment was stuck above 9.5 percent; and the disillusioned base needed rallying or it might not have shown up at the polls. The bigwigs at Goldman and the other firms may not be happy about the rhetorical roughing-up. They may even be concerned that a desperate Obama will do something in the short run that could reduce the growth of profits and executive pay. Such uncertainty is surely one reason for the reluctance to invest and slow recovery. But it’s unlikely that any big player fears that the future holds a radical anti-capitalist revolution.
The daily talk-radio and cable-news alarms about this being the most radical left-wing administration in U.S. history should be chalked up to base-rallying on the other side. As I suggested at the outset, the American political system capitalizes on the division in public opinion over the role of government by propagating the myth that there is a grand war raging between the advocates of Big Government and the advocates of Free Markets. In fact, it’s an intramural competition between two rival factions that favor government management of the economy—with a few differences in detail—on behalf of special interests.
Why the charade? All the better to exploit the productive classes, those that would be prospering in a freed market.
SOURCE
************************
ELSEWHERE
NATO denies US plans Pakistan escalation: "The NATO force in Afghanistan denied Tuesday that the American military intends to carry out ground raids inside Pakistan in pursuit of insurgent leaders hiding there. ... The New York Times reported in Tuesday's editions that senior U.S. military officials believe they will soon be authorized to send American special operations forces into Pakistan's tribal areas with the aim of capturing figures from the Taliban and a virulent offshoot organization, the Haqqani network."
The other way to repeal ObamaCare: "The repeal amendment, also known as the federalism amendment, would be a welcome step forward in reestablishing half of Madison’s double security to our rights. By allowing two-thirds of state legislatures to repeal any federal law or regulation, it would remind the federal government that ours is a federalist system; that federal power isn’t unlimited; and that the states have legitimate authority (not rights! — only people have rights) in all instances in which the Constitution’s enumerated powers don’t grant the federal government authority to act."
Britain outlaws ID cards: "The bill abolishing the National Identity Scheme is expected to gain royal assent later today. The Home Office said that it expected the identity documents bill would be passed into law on 21 December. As a result, existing ID cards will be invalid for use in a month's time."
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Thursday, December 23, 2010
The Sad Limits of Realpolitik ("Realism" in politics)
Morality matters
Early in his service as President Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger paid a visit to his homeland. The West German government suggested to the press that Kissinger intended to visit some relatives. "What the hell are they putting out?" Kissinger vented to his aides. "My relatives are soap."
Blunt, and true. Kissinger had left Germany in August 1938 as a 15-year-old refugee, three months before Kristallnacht. His granduncle, three aunts and other relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.
So it is appalling to hear Kissinger, an epic life later, telling Nixon on a scratchy recording from March 1, 1973: "Let's face it: The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. It may be a humanitarian concern."
Some commentators have attempted to provide a psychological explanation for this incident, having to do with the struggles of a Jew in an anti-Semitic White House. But this effort is not necessary. Kissinger's words were not the expression of a quirk but of an argument. In 1969, he had publicly declared: "We will judge other countries, including communist countries, on the basis of their actions, not on the basis of their domestic ideologies." This is a commonplace assertion of a school of foreign policy called "realism" -- that only the external behavior of regimes really matters, that their internal conduct does not concern American interests. It is a view currently popular, even ascendant, among foreign-policy thinkers. Kissinger was merely being unsentimental in its application.
In response to the recent release of the recording, Kissinger said his words "must be viewed in the context of the time." That context was a debate over the Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1974. The Soviet government -- which both practiced anti-Semitism and resented the brain drain of Jewish departures -- had imposed heavy fines on emigres. Sen. Henry Jackson and Rep. Charles Vanik, supported by American Jewish groups, responded with legislation that linked normal trade relations with the Soviet Union (and other "non-market" economies) to the freedom to emigrate.
Kissinger believed that detente with the Soviet Union was of overriding importance and that human rights issues should only be raised quietly, on an unrelated diplomatic track. "The Jewish community in this country, on that issue," he told Nixon, "is behaving unconscionably. It's behaving traitorously."
But Jackson-Vanik turned out to be a pivot point in the Cold War. After an initial drop in emigration, the legislation exerted two decades of pressure on Soviet leaders, eventually resulting in higher emigration levels. It pressed one of the West's most powerful ideological advantages against the Soviet Union by demonstrating the weakness of a system that must build walls to keep its people from fleeing. This emphasis on human rights inspired not only Jewish refuseniks but other groups and nationalities that inhabited the Soviet prison.
Jackson-Vanik was both a rejection of Kissinger's realism and a preview of Reaganism. It asserted that oppressive regimes are more likely to threaten their neighbors, placing human rights nearer the center of American interests. It elevated standards of human dignity that were direct threats to regimes premised on their denial.
Henry Kissinger is not a simple villain, because he is not a simple anything. Complexity is his creed. In other circumstances, he was a friend to the state of Israel. He skillfully navigated a difficult patch in the Cold War. In later writings, he has recognized the role of idealism in sustaining American global engagement.
This 37-year-old quote does not characterize an entire career. But it illustrates the narrowness of foreign policy realism. It has a sadly limited view of power, discounting American ideological advantages in global ideological struggles.
Realists often hold a simplistic view of great-power relations, asserting that any humanitarian pressure on Russia or China will cause the whole edifice of global order to crumble. This precludes the possibility of a mature relationship with other nations in which America both stands for its values and pursues common interests.
And from this historical episode, it is clear that repeated doses of foreign policy realism can deaden the conscience. In President Nixon's office, a lack of human sentiment was viewed as proof of mental toughness -- an atmosphere that diminished the office itself. Realists are often dismissive of Manichean distinctions between good and evil, light and darkness. But in the world beyond good and evil, some may be lightly consigned to the gas chambers.
SOURCE
***********************
Looting Lorillard
A BOSTON JURY last week ordered Lorillard Inc., the tobacco company, to pay $71 million as compensation -- and another $81 million in punitive damages -- for the death of lifelong smoker Marie Evans, who died of lung cancer in 2002. Evans's son William, a Harvard-trained lawyer, claimed that Lorillard had hooked his mother on cigarettes by giving out free samples of Newports in the Boston neighborhood where she lived as a child in the 1950's and 1960's.
Lorillard denied the allegation, and apparently the only direct evidence for it was a videotaped deposition in which Marie Evans described how she began smoking at 13. But it doesn't seem implausible to me. The great majority of smokers take up the habit before turning 18, and even I can recall packs of cigarettes being handed out on Cleveland's Public Square in the late 1970's.
Yet even if it were true, how can it be just or moral to expropriate tens of millions of dollars from a company for distributing free samples of a lawful product? Why should Marie Evans's decision to smoke -- something she always knew was bad for her health -- entitle her son and estate to be showered with money? Reasonable people can debate whether cigarettes, already heavily regulated, should be banned outright. But it is not reasonable to hold tobacco companies liable for the foreseeable risks that smokers assume.
Lorillard never forced or tricked Marie Evans to use cigarettes; she became a smoker willingly. By her own account, she first received those free cigarettes when she was 9, and for years traded them for candy. Plainly it wasn't Lorillard that eventually got Evans to start smoking; if she could resist the lure of tobacco until she was 12, she could have resisted it at 13.
The demonizing of tobacco companies is popular, and who wouldn't rather think ill of Big Bad Tobacco than of a devoted mother who lost a terrible fight with lung cancer at the age of 54? But sorrow for Marie Evans and sympathy for her son don't alter reality: What turned her into a smoker was not a wicked corporation. It was a foolish choice she made as a teen-ager. People who willingly make foolish choices -- a category that includes most human beings, especially those of the teen-age persuasion -- ought not to be enriched for their foolishness.
Yes, smoking is addictive, but the addiction is not inescapable: Tens of millions of Americans have kicked the habit and nowadays most never start. Among those who do, there may conceivably be some so weak-willed, suggestible, or mentally deficient that they were literally incapable of refusing an invitation to smoke. Marie Evans -- a single mother who earned a degree from Northeastern University, rose through the ranks at Verizon to become a human-resources manager, and is described as "the determined one" by Michael Weisman, the lead plaintiff's lawyer in the suit against Lorillard -- was clearly not such a smoker.
"It's awful, what they did to my mom," Willie Evans told an interviewer this week. But "they" -- Lorillard -- did nothing very different from the countless other vendors who tempt us with products we would be well advised to resist, or at least to use in moderation. As a son who loved his mother and hated to see her suffer, Evans understandably hates the cigarettes that sickened and killed her. It's even understandable that he might hate the company that makes the cigarettes she favored. However, to turn her death into a legal pretext for looting that company does her memory no honor. Neither does Evans's claim that his mother "had no free will." Of course she had free will. And one of the ways she exercised it had tragic consequences.
What if Marie Evans had died from cirrhosis of the liver after drinking a six-pack of Budweiser every day for 40 years? Would her son be entitled to a fortune in damages from Anheuser-Busch? If she had been an incorrigibly reckless driver, who died in a crash caused by her speeding, would Willie Evans have sued the auto manufacturer whose commercials made fast cars so irresistible to his mother? If she had eaten her way to an early grave, would her son have gone after Nestle, Mars, and Hershey for getting her hooked on sweets long ago with a marketing strategy that targeted children?
The urge to blame others for our own self-destructive choices is as old as the power to choose. There is nothing admirable in yielding to that urge. Still less in rewarding those who do with $152 million.
SOURCE
***********************
Why the persisting high unemployment?
The Fed and its failed theories
While the Fed has pumped huge quantities of liquidity into the economy, the U.S. is paradoxically facing a credit crunch. As the accompanying chart indicates, banks have utilized their liquidity to pile up cash and accumulate government bonds and securities.
In contrast, bank loans have actually decreased — a credit crunch. And since credit is a source of working capital for businesses, a credit crunch acts like a supply constraint on the economy. Even though it appears as though the economy has loads of excess capacity, the supply-side of the economy is, in fact, constrained by the credit crunch. It is not surprising, therefore, that the economy is not firing on all cylinders.
To understand why, in the Fed's sea of liquidity, the economy is being held back by a credit crunch, we have to focus on the workings of the loan markets. Retail bank lending involves making risky forward commitments. A line of credit to a corporate client, for example, represents such a commitment. The willingness of a bank to make such forward commitments depends, to a large extent, on a well-functioning interbank market — a market operating without counterparty risks and with positive interest rates. With the availability of such a market, even illiquid (but solvent) banks can make forward commitments (loans) to their clients because they can cover their commitments by bidding for funds in the wholesale interbank market.
At present, the major problem facing the interbank market is the zero interest-rate trap. In a world in which the risk-free Fed funds rate is close to zero, banks with excess reserves are reluctant to part with them for virtually no yield in the interbank market. Accordingly, the interbank market has dried up — thanks to the Fed's zero interest-rate policy — and, with that, banks have been unwilling to scale up their forward loan commitments.
In short, the Fed's zero interest-rate policy has created a credit crunch that is holding back the economy. The only way out of this trap is for the Fed to raise the Fed funds rate to, say, two percent.
The Fed's interest-rate strategy is not the only thing holding back the U.S. (and international) economy. Regime uncertainty is so thick that you can cut it with a knife. The Fed — by embracing more quantitative easing — has generated uncertainty. Bond market participants, among others, anxiously ponder how and when the Fed will eventually drain liquidity from the economy. Bankers are also nervous. They have been called on to beef up their banks' capital positions. This they have done. But, will there be more mandates to increase bank capital? And, if this wasn't enough, the all-important bank regulations that will accompany the new Dodd-Frank bank legislation will take years to be written and finalized. It's not surprising that bankers, instead of making loans, are piling up excess reserves....
We must not forget that the Fed's ultra-low interest rates have not only produced a U.S. credit crunch, but also picked the pockets of prudent savers. For example, with "low" returns (and "low" discount rates), the unfunded liabilities of state pension funds in the U.S. have exploded and are estimated to reach $1 trillion by 2013. In the United Kingdom, actuaries are also having sleepless nights because of "low" yields (and "low" discount rates). Over half of the companies in the U.K. are projected to face bankruptcy if government bond yields remain at current levels.
More HERE
*************************
ELSEWHERE
Gaza: IDF fighter jets strike Hamas targets: "The IDF Spokesman unit on Tuesday confirmed that IAF aircraft attacked terrorist activity targets in the southern Gaza Strip. ... Palestinian sources claimed that the IDF attacked targets in the Gaza Strip belonging to the military wing of Hamas, Izzadin Kassam Brigade and eye witnesses reported that four people were injured during the attacks. The reports follow an incident in which a Kassam rocket landed near a kindergarten in a kibbutz near Ashkelon on Tuesday morning, injuring a 14-year-old girl."
After four decades, Harvard opens door to ROTC: "Harvard University will welcome ROTC back to campus now that Congress has repealed a ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, university president Drew Faust said. The move will end a four-decade standoff between one of the nation’s most prestigious universities and its armed forces. The tension began over the Vietnam War and continued in recent years as university administrators, faculty, and students objected to what they saw as discrimination against gays and lesbians." [It will be a while before the change will be implemented so Harvard sound like they are racing to get a monkey off their backs]
Census result: "The population of the United States grew 9.7% to 308.7 million people over the past decade -- the slowest rate of growth since the Great Depression -- the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday. In the 1930s, the population grew by just 7.3%. Comparatively, the nation added 13.2% more residents during the 1990s."
NJ: Mortgage firms face possible foreclosure freeze: "The chief judge of New Jersey's highest court ordered six leading mortgage lenders and servicers to face a possible freeze on their foreclosures in the state due to problems in handling documents, the Associated Press reported. ... [Supreme Court Justice Stuart] Rabner's order follows a report to the Supreme Court citing depositions and court filings in other states. It portrayed a system rife with abuse in the filing of foreclosures that include 'robo-signing,' in which employees signed hundreds of documents without checking them for accuracy." [There have been a lot of bungles]
Murkowski the RINO: "One of Pres. Obama's biggest supporters in the Senate in the past week is not even a member of his own party: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Murkowski supported the president's position on the Senate's four biggest votes since last Wednesday. She and fellow Alaska Sen. Mark Begich (D) voted in favor of the tax cut compromise and to invoke cloture on New START treaty, the Dream Act and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Both senators also voted in favor of the final repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell on Saturday. No Senate Republican voted for all four bills other than Murkowski."
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Morality matters
Early in his service as President Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger paid a visit to his homeland. The West German government suggested to the press that Kissinger intended to visit some relatives. "What the hell are they putting out?" Kissinger vented to his aides. "My relatives are soap."
Blunt, and true. Kissinger had left Germany in August 1938 as a 15-year-old refugee, three months before Kristallnacht. His granduncle, three aunts and other relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.
So it is appalling to hear Kissinger, an epic life later, telling Nixon on a scratchy recording from March 1, 1973: "Let's face it: The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. It may be a humanitarian concern."
Some commentators have attempted to provide a psychological explanation for this incident, having to do with the struggles of a Jew in an anti-Semitic White House. But this effort is not necessary. Kissinger's words were not the expression of a quirk but of an argument. In 1969, he had publicly declared: "We will judge other countries, including communist countries, on the basis of their actions, not on the basis of their domestic ideologies." This is a commonplace assertion of a school of foreign policy called "realism" -- that only the external behavior of regimes really matters, that their internal conduct does not concern American interests. It is a view currently popular, even ascendant, among foreign-policy thinkers. Kissinger was merely being unsentimental in its application.
In response to the recent release of the recording, Kissinger said his words "must be viewed in the context of the time." That context was a debate over the Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1974. The Soviet government -- which both practiced anti-Semitism and resented the brain drain of Jewish departures -- had imposed heavy fines on emigres. Sen. Henry Jackson and Rep. Charles Vanik, supported by American Jewish groups, responded with legislation that linked normal trade relations with the Soviet Union (and other "non-market" economies) to the freedom to emigrate.
Kissinger believed that detente with the Soviet Union was of overriding importance and that human rights issues should only be raised quietly, on an unrelated diplomatic track. "The Jewish community in this country, on that issue," he told Nixon, "is behaving unconscionably. It's behaving traitorously."
But Jackson-Vanik turned out to be a pivot point in the Cold War. After an initial drop in emigration, the legislation exerted two decades of pressure on Soviet leaders, eventually resulting in higher emigration levels. It pressed one of the West's most powerful ideological advantages against the Soviet Union by demonstrating the weakness of a system that must build walls to keep its people from fleeing. This emphasis on human rights inspired not only Jewish refuseniks but other groups and nationalities that inhabited the Soviet prison.
Jackson-Vanik was both a rejection of Kissinger's realism and a preview of Reaganism. It asserted that oppressive regimes are more likely to threaten their neighbors, placing human rights nearer the center of American interests. It elevated standards of human dignity that were direct threats to regimes premised on their denial.
Henry Kissinger is not a simple villain, because he is not a simple anything. Complexity is his creed. In other circumstances, he was a friend to the state of Israel. He skillfully navigated a difficult patch in the Cold War. In later writings, he has recognized the role of idealism in sustaining American global engagement.
This 37-year-old quote does not characterize an entire career. But it illustrates the narrowness of foreign policy realism. It has a sadly limited view of power, discounting American ideological advantages in global ideological struggles.
Realists often hold a simplistic view of great-power relations, asserting that any humanitarian pressure on Russia or China will cause the whole edifice of global order to crumble. This precludes the possibility of a mature relationship with other nations in which America both stands for its values and pursues common interests.
And from this historical episode, it is clear that repeated doses of foreign policy realism can deaden the conscience. In President Nixon's office, a lack of human sentiment was viewed as proof of mental toughness -- an atmosphere that diminished the office itself. Realists are often dismissive of Manichean distinctions between good and evil, light and darkness. But in the world beyond good and evil, some may be lightly consigned to the gas chambers.
SOURCE
***********************
Looting Lorillard
A BOSTON JURY last week ordered Lorillard Inc., the tobacco company, to pay $71 million as compensation -- and another $81 million in punitive damages -- for the death of lifelong smoker Marie Evans, who died of lung cancer in 2002. Evans's son William, a Harvard-trained lawyer, claimed that Lorillard had hooked his mother on cigarettes by giving out free samples of Newports in the Boston neighborhood where she lived as a child in the 1950's and 1960's.
Lorillard denied the allegation, and apparently the only direct evidence for it was a videotaped deposition in which Marie Evans described how she began smoking at 13. But it doesn't seem implausible to me. The great majority of smokers take up the habit before turning 18, and even I can recall packs of cigarettes being handed out on Cleveland's Public Square in the late 1970's.
Yet even if it were true, how can it be just or moral to expropriate tens of millions of dollars from a company for distributing free samples of a lawful product? Why should Marie Evans's decision to smoke -- something she always knew was bad for her health -- entitle her son and estate to be showered with money? Reasonable people can debate whether cigarettes, already heavily regulated, should be banned outright. But it is not reasonable to hold tobacco companies liable for the foreseeable risks that smokers assume.
Lorillard never forced or tricked Marie Evans to use cigarettes; she became a smoker willingly. By her own account, she first received those free cigarettes when she was 9, and for years traded them for candy. Plainly it wasn't Lorillard that eventually got Evans to start smoking; if she could resist the lure of tobacco until she was 12, she could have resisted it at 13.
The demonizing of tobacco companies is popular, and who wouldn't rather think ill of Big Bad Tobacco than of a devoted mother who lost a terrible fight with lung cancer at the age of 54? But sorrow for Marie Evans and sympathy for her son don't alter reality: What turned her into a smoker was not a wicked corporation. It was a foolish choice she made as a teen-ager. People who willingly make foolish choices -- a category that includes most human beings, especially those of the teen-age persuasion -- ought not to be enriched for their foolishness.
Yes, smoking is addictive, but the addiction is not inescapable: Tens of millions of Americans have kicked the habit and nowadays most never start. Among those who do, there may conceivably be some so weak-willed, suggestible, or mentally deficient that they were literally incapable of refusing an invitation to smoke. Marie Evans -- a single mother who earned a degree from Northeastern University, rose through the ranks at Verizon to become a human-resources manager, and is described as "the determined one" by Michael Weisman, the lead plaintiff's lawyer in the suit against Lorillard -- was clearly not such a smoker.
"It's awful, what they did to my mom," Willie Evans told an interviewer this week. But "they" -- Lorillard -- did nothing very different from the countless other vendors who tempt us with products we would be well advised to resist, or at least to use in moderation. As a son who loved his mother and hated to see her suffer, Evans understandably hates the cigarettes that sickened and killed her. It's even understandable that he might hate the company that makes the cigarettes she favored. However, to turn her death into a legal pretext for looting that company does her memory no honor. Neither does Evans's claim that his mother "had no free will." Of course she had free will. And one of the ways she exercised it had tragic consequences.
What if Marie Evans had died from cirrhosis of the liver after drinking a six-pack of Budweiser every day for 40 years? Would her son be entitled to a fortune in damages from Anheuser-Busch? If she had been an incorrigibly reckless driver, who died in a crash caused by her speeding, would Willie Evans have sued the auto manufacturer whose commercials made fast cars so irresistible to his mother? If she had eaten her way to an early grave, would her son have gone after Nestle, Mars, and Hershey for getting her hooked on sweets long ago with a marketing strategy that targeted children?
The urge to blame others for our own self-destructive choices is as old as the power to choose. There is nothing admirable in yielding to that urge. Still less in rewarding those who do with $152 million.
SOURCE
***********************
Why the persisting high unemployment?
The Fed and its failed theories
While the Fed has pumped huge quantities of liquidity into the economy, the U.S. is paradoxically facing a credit crunch. As the accompanying chart indicates, banks have utilized their liquidity to pile up cash and accumulate government bonds and securities.
In contrast, bank loans have actually decreased — a credit crunch. And since credit is a source of working capital for businesses, a credit crunch acts like a supply constraint on the economy. Even though it appears as though the economy has loads of excess capacity, the supply-side of the economy is, in fact, constrained by the credit crunch. It is not surprising, therefore, that the economy is not firing on all cylinders.
To understand why, in the Fed's sea of liquidity, the economy is being held back by a credit crunch, we have to focus on the workings of the loan markets. Retail bank lending involves making risky forward commitments. A line of credit to a corporate client, for example, represents such a commitment. The willingness of a bank to make such forward commitments depends, to a large extent, on a well-functioning interbank market — a market operating without counterparty risks and with positive interest rates. With the availability of such a market, even illiquid (but solvent) banks can make forward commitments (loans) to their clients because they can cover their commitments by bidding for funds in the wholesale interbank market.
At present, the major problem facing the interbank market is the zero interest-rate trap. In a world in which the risk-free Fed funds rate is close to zero, banks with excess reserves are reluctant to part with them for virtually no yield in the interbank market. Accordingly, the interbank market has dried up — thanks to the Fed's zero interest-rate policy — and, with that, banks have been unwilling to scale up their forward loan commitments.
In short, the Fed's zero interest-rate policy has created a credit crunch that is holding back the economy. The only way out of this trap is for the Fed to raise the Fed funds rate to, say, two percent.
The Fed's interest-rate strategy is not the only thing holding back the U.S. (and international) economy. Regime uncertainty is so thick that you can cut it with a knife. The Fed — by embracing more quantitative easing — has generated uncertainty. Bond market participants, among others, anxiously ponder how and when the Fed will eventually drain liquidity from the economy. Bankers are also nervous. They have been called on to beef up their banks' capital positions. This they have done. But, will there be more mandates to increase bank capital? And, if this wasn't enough, the all-important bank regulations that will accompany the new Dodd-Frank bank legislation will take years to be written and finalized. It's not surprising that bankers, instead of making loans, are piling up excess reserves....
We must not forget that the Fed's ultra-low interest rates have not only produced a U.S. credit crunch, but also picked the pockets of prudent savers. For example, with "low" returns (and "low" discount rates), the unfunded liabilities of state pension funds in the U.S. have exploded and are estimated to reach $1 trillion by 2013. In the United Kingdom, actuaries are also having sleepless nights because of "low" yields (and "low" discount rates). Over half of the companies in the U.K. are projected to face bankruptcy if government bond yields remain at current levels.
More HERE
*************************
ELSEWHERE
Gaza: IDF fighter jets strike Hamas targets: "The IDF Spokesman unit on Tuesday confirmed that IAF aircraft attacked terrorist activity targets in the southern Gaza Strip. ... Palestinian sources claimed that the IDF attacked targets in the Gaza Strip belonging to the military wing of Hamas, Izzadin Kassam Brigade and eye witnesses reported that four people were injured during the attacks. The reports follow an incident in which a Kassam rocket landed near a kindergarten in a kibbutz near Ashkelon on Tuesday morning, injuring a 14-year-old girl."
After four decades, Harvard opens door to ROTC: "Harvard University will welcome ROTC back to campus now that Congress has repealed a ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, university president Drew Faust said. The move will end a four-decade standoff between one of the nation’s most prestigious universities and its armed forces. The tension began over the Vietnam War and continued in recent years as university administrators, faculty, and students objected to what they saw as discrimination against gays and lesbians." [It will be a while before the change will be implemented so Harvard sound like they are racing to get a monkey off their backs]
Census result: "The population of the United States grew 9.7% to 308.7 million people over the past decade -- the slowest rate of growth since the Great Depression -- the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday. In the 1930s, the population grew by just 7.3%. Comparatively, the nation added 13.2% more residents during the 1990s."
NJ: Mortgage firms face possible foreclosure freeze: "The chief judge of New Jersey's highest court ordered six leading mortgage lenders and servicers to face a possible freeze on their foreclosures in the state due to problems in handling documents, the Associated Press reported. ... [Supreme Court Justice Stuart] Rabner's order follows a report to the Supreme Court citing depositions and court filings in other states. It portrayed a system rife with abuse in the filing of foreclosures that include 'robo-signing,' in which employees signed hundreds of documents without checking them for accuracy." [There have been a lot of bungles]
Murkowski the RINO: "One of Pres. Obama's biggest supporters in the Senate in the past week is not even a member of his own party: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Murkowski supported the president's position on the Senate's four biggest votes since last Wednesday. She and fellow Alaska Sen. Mark Begich (D) voted in favor of the tax cut compromise and to invoke cloture on New START treaty, the Dream Act and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Both senators also voted in favor of the final repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell on Saturday. No Senate Republican voted for all four bills other than Murkowski."
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone 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)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
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