Nostalgia for the good old coin-in-the-slot parking meter
Computerizing everything has appeal as a cost-saver to service providers but the report from Britain below says it has made life more difficult for us all. I agree. I used to be happy to park at a parking meter, drop a coin in the meter and be on my way. Such meters have now vanished from my environment. Instead there are computerized monsters with lots of buttons that I just don't get on with. I tried them a couple of times and failed to make them work for me. So I drove off and took my business to a supermarket that had free onsite parking. I always do that from the beginning now. No more parking meters for me!
And I too find voice-recognition software at the end of a phone line quite hopeless. I speak with a native Australian accent in Australia but I am still often not understood. So now I just say "bum" to every query and that usually gets me through to a human being a little faster
RICHARD WILSON
It was a freezing cold, blowy day and I had rather misjudged my outfit. My sweater was too thin and my coat not warm enough so, as I went to pay to park my car, I wanted to be as quick as possible.
It used to be simple enough. I would buy a ticket and stick it on my car windscreen; mission accomplished. Now, of course, it’s not so straightforward. Now, I have to negotiate with a computer for my ticket via my mobile phone.
First, I have to set up a credit card account but, according to the electronic apparatchik on the end of the telephone line, there’s a problem with my card. There isn’t, but it’s too late – it’s hung up on me.
I try again but press the wrong number. ‘Invalid response, please try again,’ it says. I try again. And again. Finally, I think I have beaten it, only to be told: ‘Your parking has failed.’ We have reached an impasse. The voice tells me I need assistance – even it agrees I need the help of a real person.
I am put through to a human being and my account is set up within moments and I can now finally purchase my ticket – more than 15 minutes after I first stepped out of the car.
This is just one of many services that have become mechanised in recent times. Everywhere I turn, humans are being replaced by machines. So when Channel 4’s Dispatches team asked me to help make a programme on the issue, I didn’t hesitate. What I discovered shocked me.
In truth, I found it quite sinister. Before making Richard Wilson On Hold, I had thought the amount of automation creeping into society was a bit of a worry. Now I am not just appalled at the extent of it – but at the companies that inflict it upon us.
Retailers and local authorities claim this technology is an improvement, that it provides a better service that benefits us all. But is that true? We took four automated systems – parking meters, checkouts and two different types of phonelines – and tested them to see whether they are more efficient.
I quickly discovered that cashless parking is of little benefit to me. Yet the benefits to the authorities are obvious. They don’t have to collect any money, nor do they have to count it or bank it, which saves them a fortune in administration costs.
So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that in the past five years more than 100 authorities across England – two-thirds – have adopted pay-by-phone parking. Councils in England already make nearly £1.5 billion in parking fees and fines; now they can make even more. Very often they also receive a call-handling commission from the phone service they use.
And worse, in some instances, the phone service provider receives a commission too. A percentage of the extra money the council makes is not spent on us, the taxpayer, but is passed on to the private companies which manage the parking system.
So while they make ever more money, I’m the one doing all the work, taking all the pain – and paying for the privilege.
As part of our investigation, we surveyed 2,000 people and asked them which self-service system most annoyed them. Fifty per cent said automated telephone lines were the biggest nuisance – so we set up our own call centre with nine students and five volunteers from Age UK.
One of the things I have learned is the way in which automation alienates elderly people. For a lot of them, going to the shop is the highlight of their day, but now they don’t even get to talk to the shop assistant when they’re there. They also find the increased reliance on computerised phone lines challenging. Many have problems with their hearing and for arthritis sufferers it can be difficult to keep up with all the numbers you are asked to press. Our volunteers made 400 calls over three days to eight of the country’s largest banks and utility companies. We wanted to see how long it took before each call was answered by a human voice.
In fairness, the banks performed very well. Halifax responded within 40 seconds, Barclays in 28.
The energy companies came out bottom. One volunteer had to wait nearly half an hour to speak to Southern Electric, while E.ON took 58 minutes 17 seconds to answer.
When we contacted E.ON, they said their average waiting time was 59 seconds and they provided a range of alternative helpline numbers for customers. They also said they were upgrading their entire phone network soon.
However, it’s not just the time wasted I object to – it took 14 people 27 hours and 42 minutes to make 400 calls – it’s the cost. These companies use ‘non-geographical’ numbers that may incur costs that an 0800 number would not. We estimated that the call to E.ON would have cost £4.41 on a landline, £6.96 on a mobile.
A spokesman from Which? told me: ‘The costs of calls may not be apparent to you when you pick up the phone. More and more of us are using mobile phones when we are contacting utilities, banks and so on. ‘It could be costing you 40p a minute if you are using an 0844 number. They are premium rate numbers and Which? feels strongly that they are inappropriate for customers.’
At least our volunteers got through to a human voice, albeit by an often tortuous route. The telephone system I personally find most annoying is the automated voice recognition service increasingly used by cinemas, airlines and train companies.
In the TV programme, I try to book a cinema ticket. The computer asks me which film I’d like to see.
I tell it: ‘The Adventures Of Tintin.’
‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?’ it responds.
I repeat: ‘The Adventures Of Tintin.’
‘Johnny English Reborn?’ it asks.
I try once more: ‘The Adventures Of Tintin.’
It replies: ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin.’
‘No, we don’t,’ I say, before slamming down the phone in frustration.
Now, I know I have a Scottish accent but it is hardly broad. And I don’t think RADA would be too happy to think one of its students couldn’t make himself understood by such a thing.
I visited Martin Russell, a voice recognition expert, and he told me the system works best if it’s a voice or an accent it has heard before. He said: ‘The computer has an expectation about how every word in its vocabulary will be pronounced. It builds that expectation by listening to recordings of lots of people speaking. If all of the recordings it hears are from people in the south-east of England, then it would expect you or any other user to speak as if you came from the south-east of England.’
So now it appears that this machine might even be racist, too.
They could improve the service by increasing the database of recordings – but that would cost more and, as ever, this is all about the money.
I interviewed Rob Crutchington, sales director at Encoded, a leading provider of automated phone systems. He explained that the average salary for a phone operator is £15,000 plus a further £10,000 in recruitment and training fees. In contrast, an interactive phone service might cost £5,000 and can answer 60 to 120 calls simultaneously. The savings are substantial. Once again, the benefits for the service provider are clear, the benefits to the consumer less so.
It was a depressingly similar story when we looked at the self-service checkouts which are sprouting up in supermarkets everywhere. They were introduced in 2002 and there are now 21,000 of them. Supermarkets insist these checkouts benefit us, that they offer us a more efficient, quicker system.
We put their claims to the test, sending teams of two shoppers to four supermarkets. Each person had an identical shopping list of ten items. One went to the automated till, the other to the old-style checkout. The automated tills were slower every time, often considerably more so.
At Marks & Spencer, a self-service meltdown meant the automated checkout clocked up a time of 13 minutes – more than ten minutes longer than it took at the staffed till.Yet stores will continue to introduce more and more of them because they save money.
We spoke to a former supermarket manager from Morrisons who did not want to be named. He said that the chain had calculated it could save £5 million by introducing computerised checkouts in 120 stores. And that’s just in the first year – profits increase over time as they no longer have the cost of installing the equipment.
Automation doesn’t help us – I failed to find any benefits. If anything, it makes us miserable. Yet automated Britain will continue apace – whether we want it or not.
More HERE
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SOPA becoming election liability for backers
To the ranks of same-sex marriage, tax cuts and illegal immigration, add this to the list of polarizing political issues of Election 2012: the Stop Online Piracy Act.
The hot-button anti-piracy legislation that sparked a revolt online is starting to become a political liability for some of SOPA’s major backers. Fueled by Web activists and online fundraising tools, challengers are using the bill to tag its congressional supporters as backers of Big Government — and raise campaign cash while they’re at it.
Among the fattest targets: SOPA’s lead author, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and two of its most vocal co-sponsors, Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has also felt the wrath of SOPA opponents.
Even GOP presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum were asked by voters recently to weigh in on the bill (neither gave definitive answers, though activists have interpreted Santorum’s response as more sympathetic to SOPA than Romney’s).
It’s a stretch to think SOPA will cost any of the longtime incumbents backing the bill their seats. The legislation would give government new powers to shutter websites that peddle counterfeit products and pirated copies of movies and music.
But there are signs the issue, long the domain of think tanks and intellectual property lawyers, could become a real factor in some races.
Prominent conservative blogger Erick Erickson, for one, has promised to make life miserable for any GOP lawmaker who gets behind the bill. His first target: Blackburn.
“I love Marsha Blackburn. She is a delightful lady and a solidly conservative member of Congress,” Erickson wrote on his widely read blog, Red State. But “I am pledging right now that I will do everything in my power to defeat her in her 2012 re-election bid.”
Erickson went on to implore the left and right to “unite and pledge to defeat in primaries every person named as a sponsor” of SOPA and suggested that both sides create a fund dedicated to supporting challengers running against SOPA supporters.
“Killing SOPA is that important,” Erickson wrote.
In Ryan’s case, critics pounced after the powerful congressman issued a vague statement that they interpreted as supportive of the bill. Using the social news site Reddit, they launched an online campaign— dubbed “Operation Pull Ryan” — to unseat him.
Ryan’s Democratic opponent, Rob Zerban, seized on the uproar. After lambasting the bill during an interview on Reddit, Zerban raked in about $15,000 in campaign donations, according to campaign manager Lisa Tanner.
The uproar wasn’t lost on Ryan. On Monday, he issued a statement opposing SOPA in no uncertain terms. While the bill “attempts to address a legitimate problem,” Ryan said, it would open the door to “undue regulation, censorship and legal abuse.”
SOPA is making waves in other House races, too.
Goodlatte’s primary challenger in Virginia’s 6th District, Karen Kwiatkowski, claimed on her website that SOPA “will dramatically increase the federal government's role in our lives.” She asked people to contribute to her campaign and “send Bob Goodlatte a message.”
Kwiatkowski, who describes herself as a “conservative constitutionalist Republican,” told POLITICO that Goodlatte’s support for the bill was “bought and paid for” by content companies that “don’t want to adapt their business models [and] don’t want to invest in protection for their material.” That includes language software company Rosetta Stone, she said, which is based in the district.
She estimated that 20 percent — or roughly $5,000 — of the donations she received in December was attributable to SOPA. Kwiatkowski has raised about $30,000 total.
More HERE
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Even Obama opposes SOPA
He probably sees that in a year's time there may be a Republican president who might use it against Democrats
The Obama administration said Saturday that it strongly opposed central elements of two congressional efforts to enforce copyrights on the Internet, all but killing the current versions of legislation that has divided both political parties and pitted Hollywood against Silicon Valley.
The comments by the administration's chief technology officials, posted on a White House blog Saturday, came as growing opposition to the legislation had already led sponsors of the bills to reconsider a measure that would force Internet service providers to block access to websites that offer or link to copyrighted material.
"Let us be clear," the White House statement said, "online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy." But, it added, "We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."
The bills under consideration in Congress were designed to combat the theft of copyrighted materials by preventing U.S. search engines such as Google and Yahoo from directing users to sites that allow for the distribution of stolen materials. They would cut off payment processors such as PayPal that handle transactions.
The bills would also allow private citizens and companies to sue to stop what they believed to be theft of protected content. Those and other provisions set off fierce opposition among Internet companies, technology investors and free speech advocates, who said the bills would stifle online innovation, violate the First Amendment and even compromise national security by undermining the integrity of the Internet's naming system.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Sunday, January 15, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Everything Is At Stake, All Right
On this we can agree with President Obama: Everything he stands for is at stake in 2012
Obama told 500 fawning sycophants in Chicago that he is unrepentant about his policy agenda and intends to treat us to more of the same, much more, in a second term. Obama said, "Everything that we fought for is now at stake in this election." Lest there be no mistake, he repeated the message in the smaller settings of private homes.
We can endlessly debate whether he is such a devoted ideologue that he's blind to his policy failures, whether he's willing to sacrifice the economy and the fiscal integrity of the United States for his perceived higher good of radical redistribution, or whether he really intends to do harm, but these are moot questions anymore. Under any of these possibilities, the fact remains that he is hellbent on accelerating his present course, not reversing it, on dictating, not working within his constitutional constraints, much less building a bipartisan consensus.
Hubris and defiance are his trademarks, not humility. He said, "If you're willing to work even harder in this election than you did in the last election, I promise you, change will come."
This should send cold chills up our spines. By "change," he means more of his unpopular, failed agenda. He has repeatedly indicated that he is frustrated with the process of republican government and that he would be much more comfortable as a dictator.
He has also said many times that he believes his goals are so important that he intends to implement them with or without Congress, through executive or administrative usurpations. He has done more than talk; he has acted in contravention of the Constitution and intends to continue in that vein.
What he might do in a second term is frightening to those who believe in freedom and equality of opportunity, that our current pattern of discretionary and entitlement spending is not just unsustainable but also guaranteed to destroy the country, and that we cannot preserve our freedom if we persist on a course of unilateral disarmament.
Just consider how brazenly Obama has pursued his unpopular agenda even while facing re-election. Think how he joked about having made a hollow promise of shovel-ready jobs when there is no such thing and how he is unchastened by the colossal waste of Solyndra and pursuing more of the same. Consider how he cavalierly refuses to account for his promise to keep unemployment capped at 8 percent and how he assured us, on his honor, that his designated stimulus cop, Vice President Joe Biden, wouldn't allow a dollar of waste to go unpunished in his stimulus plan. Chew on his refusal to listen to the public when it resoundingly rejected Obamacare, rebuffing his agenda in the U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts and again in the 2010 congressional elections. Ponder his petty partisanship, bullying, demonizing and class warfare and his frequent invocation of the race card. Can you conceive of how he'd act as a four-year lame duck?
You all surely heard Obama, thinking he was speaking only to friends, boast that he was for a single-payer plan but that it might take 15 years to implement it. Remember this when his supporters tell you Obamacare won't degenerate into socialized medicine. Those waivers he unilaterally issued to buy off companies now won't be available next time around when the full force of Obamacare rains down its dark waters.
Think about his Independent Payment Advisory Board, which will have 15 bureaucrats once Obamacare is up and running, when he won't have to worry about 2016. Before you pooh-pooh this, you'd better do your research on his health care mentors' (e.g., Tom Daschle, Donald Berwick) philosophy about the macabre rationing of health care for the aged.
So, call me an alarmist if you will, but I think it's almost irrational not to be very concerned about an Obama second term. Even if you don't subscribe to some of the horror scenarios of death panels and the like, how about his intention to continue to press forward with his radical green agenda despite the fact that it won't work to reduce global temperatures and despite the public's opposition to it?
More importantly, how about his absolute refusal to restructure entitlements or his refusal to lead his party's Senate to pass a budget after 1,000 days? Or his insistence on another stimulus package when unemployment -- even using the distorted metrics the administration is now using -- is still at 8.5 percent and it would add another half-trillion dollars to the national debt?
By rights, Obama shouldn't get 10 percent of the vote in November. Even those who want to punish the "wealthy" should understand that once you completely gnaw off the hand that feeds you, you will starve, too.
SOURCE
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Gingrich attacks to help Romney
Believe it or not, Newt Gingrich is doing Mitt Romney a favor. Gingrich has spent the past week attacking Romney’s tenure as the head of Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney helped found in the 1980s. Through his own words and a propagandistic documentary produced by Winning Our Future, a well funded pro-Newt Super PAC run by a former campaign aid, Gingrich has attempted to paint Romney as a heartless, out of touch, capitalist monster—the King of Bain—whose firm made millions through mass firings and layoffs.
The campaign, however, has mostly backfired. Gingrich has united the conservative chattering class against him enough that Winning Our Future's major financial backer, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, has distanced himself from the documentary, and Gingrich has called for its producers to either edit the film or "pull it off the air and off the internet entirely." In the process, Gingrich has managed to generate the one thing that the Romney campaign has failed to win or buy for itself: sympathy.
But what’s good for Romney may be bad for the rest of us. Gingrich’s attacks aren’t just helping to unite conservatives in defense of Romney, they’re distracting from the very real flaws in Romney’s record.
Gingrich’s criticisms of Romney’s time at Bain Capital have backfired in part because they’re straight out of the liberal playbook. Indeed, they amount to attacks on the essence of capitalism: creative destruction. That’s especially true of Romney’s Bain Capital, which was spun out of Bain and Co., an early player in the world of high-end management consulting, in the mid 1980s. Most private equity firms at the time relied primarily on financial engineering to increase the value of the companies they worked with.
But according to Stephen Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, Bain Capital’s innovation was marshalling the tools of management consulting in hopes of transforming companies into entities that weren’t just better financed, but better run. Private equity firms, Kaplan wrote in a 2008 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, “applied performance-based managerial compensation, highly leveraged capital structures, and active governance to the companies in which it invested.” Overall, the strategy seems to have been a success: The “evidence suggests that private equity activity creates economic value on average.” For all practical purposes, Gingrich is attacking Romney for having run a business that helped create value.
The attacks on Romney aren’t just misguided; they’re also inaccurate, relying on factual errors and quotes taken out of context. Here’s just one example: The half hour documentary funded by the Gingrich-supporting Super PAC Winning the Future tells the story of UniMac, a Florida company that made laundry equipment. The documentary leads viewers to think that UniMac was bought and shut down by Bain through another firm, Raytheon, that was Bain under a different name. But as CNN Money’s Dan Primack noted earlier this week, Bain and Raytheon weren’t the same thing. Raytheon bought UniMac in 1994, then merged it with other companies. Bain didn’t buy that unit until four years later.
Even the timing and delivery of Gingrich’s attacks will likely help Romney in the long run. If Romney wins the nomination, the Obama campaign will have a harder time using Bain’s record against him. Not only will they be old news, they’ll be associated with a disreputable, discredited Republican candidate.
Meanwhile, Gingrich’s attacks have distracted people from the true problems with Romney’s record—his long history of flip-flops, his enthusiasm for technocratic fiddling, his unimpressive Medicare reform proposal, his significant role in passing the Massachusetts health care overhaul that served as the model for ObamaCare, and the weakness of his plan to undo ObamaCare through federally granted waivers to the states.
Gingrich’s suicide run ultimately tells us more about his own desperate political narcissism than it does about Mitt Romney, whose business career is the best part of his record. There are plenty of reasons to complain about Romney, but his time at Bain isn’t one of them.
SOURCE
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Voter ID: Necessary or Discriminatory?
You need a proper form of government ID to drive a vehicle, buy alcohol or tobacco products, and even to apply for welfare assistance, so why not require an ID to vote?
That’s the line of thinking of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who, along with South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, are filing suit against the U.S. Department of Justice, which recently rejected the state’s new Voter ID law, enforcing provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Last May, South Carolina state lawmakers passed a law requiring voters show a valid, state-approved photo ID before they cast a ballot. But the U.S. Justice Department rejected the law saying it discriminated against minority voters.
But when you need a valid form of government ID in so many other daily situations, how is it discriminatory to ask for one before exercising your right to vote?
States like Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Kansas, Tennessee and, if approved by the Department of Justice, Texas, all have strict photo ID voting laws. South Carolina hopes to join them.
Supporters of voter ID say it helps to prevent voter fraud. “Voting in this country is one of our most valuable honors and rights as U.S. citizens,” says Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG). “If people lose trust in the voting system then our entire democracy and the framework of our government is lost. Requiring voters to show a valid ID is an easy step to take that keeps people’s trust in the system.”
On the other hand, many agree with the concerns coming from the U.S. Justice Department that voter ID can lead to discrimination.
When voter ID was passed in Mississippi last year, many felt it was an attack on non-whites. “Our analysis shows that Mississippi’s voter ID law is another example of a law with a racially discriminatory effect being implemented over minority voters’ strong objections,” Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the Huffington Post. “Seventy-five percent of minorities in the state said no to having to comply with what amounts to a modern-day poll tax in order to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”
Voter ID is a contentious topic that clearly strikes a nerve with those who are adamantly against it as well as those who fully support it, which is likely why many states have no voter ID laws at all.
But despite the arguments for or against voter ID, America’s past does contain allegations and some possible shreds of proof of voter fraud.
One such controversial election was in 1984 in Indiana’s 8th district. The election battle was so tight between Rep. Frank McCloskey (D-IN) and Republican-challenger Rick McIntyre that the results were decided upon in Congress. After a recount of votes by Indiana’s Secretary of State that ruled McIntyre the winner, the Democratic-controlled House refused to seat either candidate until it conducted its own investigation. With a task force leading the investigation composed of two Democrats and one Republican, McCloskey took his seat in the House where he was claimed the winner by only four votes. Republicans temporarily left the House Chamber in protest.
In another instance, during the 1996 Congressional elections, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) came under fire of Republicans as she took her place in the House replacing former incumbent Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-CA) in California’s 46th district.
House sources to this day say former Rep. Dornan’s seat was stolen from him. The House Oversight Committee, then led by Republicans, launched an investigation into the race and found that non-U.S. citizens voted in the election, possibly attributing to Rep. Sanchez’s lead over Dornan.
Speculation still ensues over recent elections such as now Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) winning over former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) in the 2008 Senate election in Minnesota State. Also, the Washington State governor’s race of 2004 was decided by 133 votes out of 2.8 million cast. Recounting the votes a third time was the ticket for Democrat Christine Gregoire who was declared a winner by a state judge even after losing in two separate recounts against Republican Dino Rossi.
These states that want a strict voter ID law want to protect the rights of voters and the honor of the voting system. Their objective is not to discriminate.
What happens when citizens lose trust in a nation’s government is they become subjects instead of citizens. In the words of Joseph Stalin: “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” Those words should never ring true in America.
SOURCE
Doubts about Harry Reid's most recent win might also have been mentioned above
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U.S. Veteran’s unemployment rate soars above 13 percent
By Rebecca DiFede — In the 236 years since its birth, our great nation has been involved in a great many battles that have forever changed the course of history, both for us and for our allies and foes. Needless to say, America wouldn’t be what it is without the brave men and women who sacrificed everything to fight for our freedom.
Recently, President Obama ended the war in Iraq and welcomed home thousands of brave young Americans. However upon their return home and start of their transition into civilian life, they were faced with a startling realization: there are no jobs.
According to a press release from Generation Opportunity, a non-profit dedicated to helping Americans create a better future, unemployment around veterans aged 18-29 has increased to 1 in 3 for the last quarter of 2011, up from 1 in 5 in the last quarter of 2010.
The overall unemployment rate for young veterans rose to a whopping 13.1 percent at the end of December, and 43 percent of those employed are unsatisfied with their current employment. These are the people whose decision to serve helped ensure that our Constitution still has meaning, and meanwhile they struggle to find jobs in an economy that’s barely afloat.
Only 36 percent of veterans aged 18-29 believe that there is the right leadership in Washington, and a hefty 69 percent think current leadership fails to represent their interests. Yet another example that illustrates the tides of favor slowly beginning to pull away from the shores of our illustrious president.
2012 has begun, and the battle for control of the high seas of this nation is a tough one. With our captain failing to make good on his promises time and time again, it seems that the smell of electoral mutiny is in the air.
As more and more of our nation’s youths fall into unemployment — 77 percent of whom already have or will delay a major life change because of economic reasons — thus increases the already widespread dissatisfaction with the current administration.
More HERE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
****************************
On this we can agree with President Obama: Everything he stands for is at stake in 2012
Obama told 500 fawning sycophants in Chicago that he is unrepentant about his policy agenda and intends to treat us to more of the same, much more, in a second term. Obama said, "Everything that we fought for is now at stake in this election." Lest there be no mistake, he repeated the message in the smaller settings of private homes.
We can endlessly debate whether he is such a devoted ideologue that he's blind to his policy failures, whether he's willing to sacrifice the economy and the fiscal integrity of the United States for his perceived higher good of radical redistribution, or whether he really intends to do harm, but these are moot questions anymore. Under any of these possibilities, the fact remains that he is hellbent on accelerating his present course, not reversing it, on dictating, not working within his constitutional constraints, much less building a bipartisan consensus.
Hubris and defiance are his trademarks, not humility. He said, "If you're willing to work even harder in this election than you did in the last election, I promise you, change will come."
This should send cold chills up our spines. By "change," he means more of his unpopular, failed agenda. He has repeatedly indicated that he is frustrated with the process of republican government and that he would be much more comfortable as a dictator.
He has also said many times that he believes his goals are so important that he intends to implement them with or without Congress, through executive or administrative usurpations. He has done more than talk; he has acted in contravention of the Constitution and intends to continue in that vein.
What he might do in a second term is frightening to those who believe in freedom and equality of opportunity, that our current pattern of discretionary and entitlement spending is not just unsustainable but also guaranteed to destroy the country, and that we cannot preserve our freedom if we persist on a course of unilateral disarmament.
Just consider how brazenly Obama has pursued his unpopular agenda even while facing re-election. Think how he joked about having made a hollow promise of shovel-ready jobs when there is no such thing and how he is unchastened by the colossal waste of Solyndra and pursuing more of the same. Consider how he cavalierly refuses to account for his promise to keep unemployment capped at 8 percent and how he assured us, on his honor, that his designated stimulus cop, Vice President Joe Biden, wouldn't allow a dollar of waste to go unpunished in his stimulus plan. Chew on his refusal to listen to the public when it resoundingly rejected Obamacare, rebuffing his agenda in the U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts and again in the 2010 congressional elections. Ponder his petty partisanship, bullying, demonizing and class warfare and his frequent invocation of the race card. Can you conceive of how he'd act as a four-year lame duck?
You all surely heard Obama, thinking he was speaking only to friends, boast that he was for a single-payer plan but that it might take 15 years to implement it. Remember this when his supporters tell you Obamacare won't degenerate into socialized medicine. Those waivers he unilaterally issued to buy off companies now won't be available next time around when the full force of Obamacare rains down its dark waters.
Think about his Independent Payment Advisory Board, which will have 15 bureaucrats once Obamacare is up and running, when he won't have to worry about 2016. Before you pooh-pooh this, you'd better do your research on his health care mentors' (e.g., Tom Daschle, Donald Berwick) philosophy about the macabre rationing of health care for the aged.
So, call me an alarmist if you will, but I think it's almost irrational not to be very concerned about an Obama second term. Even if you don't subscribe to some of the horror scenarios of death panels and the like, how about his intention to continue to press forward with his radical green agenda despite the fact that it won't work to reduce global temperatures and despite the public's opposition to it?
More importantly, how about his absolute refusal to restructure entitlements or his refusal to lead his party's Senate to pass a budget after 1,000 days? Or his insistence on another stimulus package when unemployment -- even using the distorted metrics the administration is now using -- is still at 8.5 percent and it would add another half-trillion dollars to the national debt?
By rights, Obama shouldn't get 10 percent of the vote in November. Even those who want to punish the "wealthy" should understand that once you completely gnaw off the hand that feeds you, you will starve, too.
SOURCE
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Gingrich attacks to help Romney
Believe it or not, Newt Gingrich is doing Mitt Romney a favor. Gingrich has spent the past week attacking Romney’s tenure as the head of Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney helped found in the 1980s. Through his own words and a propagandistic documentary produced by Winning Our Future, a well funded pro-Newt Super PAC run by a former campaign aid, Gingrich has attempted to paint Romney as a heartless, out of touch, capitalist monster—the King of Bain—whose firm made millions through mass firings and layoffs.
The campaign, however, has mostly backfired. Gingrich has united the conservative chattering class against him enough that Winning Our Future's major financial backer, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, has distanced himself from the documentary, and Gingrich has called for its producers to either edit the film or "pull it off the air and off the internet entirely." In the process, Gingrich has managed to generate the one thing that the Romney campaign has failed to win or buy for itself: sympathy.
But what’s good for Romney may be bad for the rest of us. Gingrich’s attacks aren’t just helping to unite conservatives in defense of Romney, they’re distracting from the very real flaws in Romney’s record.
Gingrich’s criticisms of Romney’s time at Bain Capital have backfired in part because they’re straight out of the liberal playbook. Indeed, they amount to attacks on the essence of capitalism: creative destruction. That’s especially true of Romney’s Bain Capital, which was spun out of Bain and Co., an early player in the world of high-end management consulting, in the mid 1980s. Most private equity firms at the time relied primarily on financial engineering to increase the value of the companies they worked with.
But according to Stephen Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, Bain Capital’s innovation was marshalling the tools of management consulting in hopes of transforming companies into entities that weren’t just better financed, but better run. Private equity firms, Kaplan wrote in a 2008 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, “applied performance-based managerial compensation, highly leveraged capital structures, and active governance to the companies in which it invested.” Overall, the strategy seems to have been a success: The “evidence suggests that private equity activity creates economic value on average.” For all practical purposes, Gingrich is attacking Romney for having run a business that helped create value.
The attacks on Romney aren’t just misguided; they’re also inaccurate, relying on factual errors and quotes taken out of context. Here’s just one example: The half hour documentary funded by the Gingrich-supporting Super PAC Winning the Future tells the story of UniMac, a Florida company that made laundry equipment. The documentary leads viewers to think that UniMac was bought and shut down by Bain through another firm, Raytheon, that was Bain under a different name. But as CNN Money’s Dan Primack noted earlier this week, Bain and Raytheon weren’t the same thing. Raytheon bought UniMac in 1994, then merged it with other companies. Bain didn’t buy that unit until four years later.
Even the timing and delivery of Gingrich’s attacks will likely help Romney in the long run. If Romney wins the nomination, the Obama campaign will have a harder time using Bain’s record against him. Not only will they be old news, they’ll be associated with a disreputable, discredited Republican candidate.
Meanwhile, Gingrich’s attacks have distracted people from the true problems with Romney’s record—his long history of flip-flops, his enthusiasm for technocratic fiddling, his unimpressive Medicare reform proposal, his significant role in passing the Massachusetts health care overhaul that served as the model for ObamaCare, and the weakness of his plan to undo ObamaCare through federally granted waivers to the states.
Gingrich’s suicide run ultimately tells us more about his own desperate political narcissism than it does about Mitt Romney, whose business career is the best part of his record. There are plenty of reasons to complain about Romney, but his time at Bain isn’t one of them.
SOURCE
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Voter ID: Necessary or Discriminatory?
You need a proper form of government ID to drive a vehicle, buy alcohol or tobacco products, and even to apply for welfare assistance, so why not require an ID to vote?
That’s the line of thinking of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who, along with South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, are filing suit against the U.S. Department of Justice, which recently rejected the state’s new Voter ID law, enforcing provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Last May, South Carolina state lawmakers passed a law requiring voters show a valid, state-approved photo ID before they cast a ballot. But the U.S. Justice Department rejected the law saying it discriminated against minority voters.
But when you need a valid form of government ID in so many other daily situations, how is it discriminatory to ask for one before exercising your right to vote?
States like Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Kansas, Tennessee and, if approved by the Department of Justice, Texas, all have strict photo ID voting laws. South Carolina hopes to join them.
Supporters of voter ID say it helps to prevent voter fraud. “Voting in this country is one of our most valuable honors and rights as U.S. citizens,” says Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG). “If people lose trust in the voting system then our entire democracy and the framework of our government is lost. Requiring voters to show a valid ID is an easy step to take that keeps people’s trust in the system.”
On the other hand, many agree with the concerns coming from the U.S. Justice Department that voter ID can lead to discrimination.
When voter ID was passed in Mississippi last year, many felt it was an attack on non-whites. “Our analysis shows that Mississippi’s voter ID law is another example of a law with a racially discriminatory effect being implemented over minority voters’ strong objections,” Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the Huffington Post. “Seventy-five percent of minorities in the state said no to having to comply with what amounts to a modern-day poll tax in order to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”
Voter ID is a contentious topic that clearly strikes a nerve with those who are adamantly against it as well as those who fully support it, which is likely why many states have no voter ID laws at all.
But despite the arguments for or against voter ID, America’s past does contain allegations and some possible shreds of proof of voter fraud.
One such controversial election was in 1984 in Indiana’s 8th district. The election battle was so tight between Rep. Frank McCloskey (D-IN) and Republican-challenger Rick McIntyre that the results were decided upon in Congress. After a recount of votes by Indiana’s Secretary of State that ruled McIntyre the winner, the Democratic-controlled House refused to seat either candidate until it conducted its own investigation. With a task force leading the investigation composed of two Democrats and one Republican, McCloskey took his seat in the House where he was claimed the winner by only four votes. Republicans temporarily left the House Chamber in protest.
In another instance, during the 1996 Congressional elections, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) came under fire of Republicans as she took her place in the House replacing former incumbent Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-CA) in California’s 46th district.
House sources to this day say former Rep. Dornan’s seat was stolen from him. The House Oversight Committee, then led by Republicans, launched an investigation into the race and found that non-U.S. citizens voted in the election, possibly attributing to Rep. Sanchez’s lead over Dornan.
Speculation still ensues over recent elections such as now Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) winning over former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) in the 2008 Senate election in Minnesota State. Also, the Washington State governor’s race of 2004 was decided by 133 votes out of 2.8 million cast. Recounting the votes a third time was the ticket for Democrat Christine Gregoire who was declared a winner by a state judge even after losing in two separate recounts against Republican Dino Rossi.
These states that want a strict voter ID law want to protect the rights of voters and the honor of the voting system. Their objective is not to discriminate.
What happens when citizens lose trust in a nation’s government is they become subjects instead of citizens. In the words of Joseph Stalin: “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” Those words should never ring true in America.
SOURCE
Doubts about Harry Reid's most recent win might also have been mentioned above
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U.S. Veteran’s unemployment rate soars above 13 percent
By Rebecca DiFede — In the 236 years since its birth, our great nation has been involved in a great many battles that have forever changed the course of history, both for us and for our allies and foes. Needless to say, America wouldn’t be what it is without the brave men and women who sacrificed everything to fight for our freedom.
Recently, President Obama ended the war in Iraq and welcomed home thousands of brave young Americans. However upon their return home and start of their transition into civilian life, they were faced with a startling realization: there are no jobs.
According to a press release from Generation Opportunity, a non-profit dedicated to helping Americans create a better future, unemployment around veterans aged 18-29 has increased to 1 in 3 for the last quarter of 2011, up from 1 in 5 in the last quarter of 2010.
The overall unemployment rate for young veterans rose to a whopping 13.1 percent at the end of December, and 43 percent of those employed are unsatisfied with their current employment. These are the people whose decision to serve helped ensure that our Constitution still has meaning, and meanwhile they struggle to find jobs in an economy that’s barely afloat.
Only 36 percent of veterans aged 18-29 believe that there is the right leadership in Washington, and a hefty 69 percent think current leadership fails to represent their interests. Yet another example that illustrates the tides of favor slowly beginning to pull away from the shores of our illustrious president.
2012 has begun, and the battle for control of the high seas of this nation is a tough one. With our captain failing to make good on his promises time and time again, it seems that the smell of electoral mutiny is in the air.
As more and more of our nation’s youths fall into unemployment — 77 percent of whom already have or will delay a major life change because of economic reasons — thus increases the already widespread dissatisfaction with the current administration.
More HERE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
****************************
Friday, January 13, 2012
The New Authoritarianism
A firm hand for a “nation of dodos”
“I refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer,” said President Obama this week as he claimed new powers for himself in making recess appointments while Congress wasn’t legally in recess. The chief executive’s power grab in naming appointees to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board has been depicted by administration supporters as one forced upon a reluctant Obama by Republican intransigence. But this isn’t the first example of the president’s increasing tendency to govern with executive-branch powers. He has already explained that “where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead and do it ourselves.” On a variety of issues, from immigration to the environment to labor law, that’s just what he’s been doing—and he may try it even more boldly should he win reelection. This “go it alone” philosophy reflects an authoritarian trend emerging on the political left since the conservative triumph in the 2010 elections.
The president and his coterie could have responded to the 2010 elections by conceding the widespread public hostility to excessive government spending and regulation. That’s what the more clued-in Clintonites did after their 1994 midterm defeats. But unlike Clinton, who came from the party’s moderate wing and hailed from the rural South, the highly urban progressive rump that is Obama’s true base of support has little appreciation for suburban or rural Democrats. In fact, some liberals even celebrated the 2010 demise of the Blue Dog and Plains States Democrats, concluding that the purged party could embrace a purer version of the liberal agenda. So instead of appealing to the middle, the White House has pressed ahead with Keynesian spending and a progressive regulatory agenda.
Much of the administration’s approach has to do with a change in the nature of liberal politics. Today’s progressives cannot be viewed primarily as pragmatic Truman- or Clinton-style majoritarians. Rather, they resemble the medieval clerical class. Their goal is governmental control over everything from what sort of climate science is permissible to how we choose to live our lives. Many of today’s progressives can be as dogmatic in their beliefs as the most strident evangelical minister or mullah. Like Al Gore declaring the debate over climate change closed, despite the Climategate e-mails and widespread skepticism, the clerisy takes its beliefs as based on absolute truth. Critics lie beyond the pale.
The problem for the clerisy lies in political reality. The country’s largely suburban and increasingly Southern electorate does not see big government as its friend or wise liberal mandarins as the source of its salvation. This sets up a potential political crisis between those who know what’s good and a presumptively ignorant majority. Obama is burdened, says Joe Klein of Time, by governing a “nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive,” as the title of his story puts it, without the guidance of our president. But if the people are too deluded to cooperate, elements in the progressive tradition have a solution: European-style governance by a largely unelected bureaucratic class.
The tension between self-government and “good” government has existed since the origins of modern liberalism. Thinkers such as Herbert Croly and Randolph Bourne staked a claim to a priestly wisdom far greater than that possessed by the ordinary mortal. As Croly explained, “any increase in centralized power and responsibility . . . is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy. But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition” and the fact that “the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.”
During the first two years of the Obama administration, the progressives persuaded themselves that favorable demographics and the consequences of the George W. Bush years would assure the consent of the electorate. They drew parallels with how growing urbanization and Herbert Hoover’s legacy worked for FDR in the 1930s. But FDR enhanced his majority in his first midterm election in 1934; the current progressive agenda, by contrast, was roundly thrashed in 2010. Obama may compare himself to Roosevelt and even to Lincoln, but the electorate does not appear to share this assessment.
After the 2010 thrashing, progressives seemed uninterested in moderating their agenda. Left-wing standard bearers Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation and Robert Borosage of the Institute for Policy Studies went so far as to argue that Obama should bypass Congress whenever necessary and govern using his executive authority over the government’s regulatory agencies. This autocratic agenda of enhanced executive authority has strong support with people close to White House, such as John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, a left-liberal think tank. “The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and implement policy,” Podesta has written. “These authorities can be used to ensure positive progress on many of the key issues facing the country.”
Podesta has proposed what amounts to a national, more ideological variant of what in Obama’s home state is known as “The Chicago Way.” Under that system, John Kass of the Chicago Tribune explains, “citizens, even Republicans, are expected to take what big government gives them. If the political boss suggests that you purchase some expensive wrought-iron fence to decorate your corporate headquarters, and the guy selling insurance to the wrought-iron boys is the boss’ little brother, you write the check.” But the American clerisy isn’t merely a bunch of corrupt politicians and bureaucratic lifers, and the United States isn’t one-party Chicago. The clerisy are more like an ideological vanguard, one based largely in academe and the media as well as part of the high-tech community.
Their authoritarian progressivism—at odds with the democratic, pluralistic traditions within liberalism—tends to evoke science, however contested, to justify its authority. The progressives themselves are, in Daniel Bell’s telling phrase, “the priests of the machine.” Their views are fairly uniform and can be seen in “progressive legal theory,” which displaces the seeming plain meaning of the Constitution with constructions derived from the perceived needs of a changing political environment. Belief in affirmative action, environmental justice, health-care reform, and redistribution from the middle class to the poor all find foundation there. More important still is a radical environmental agenda fervently committed to the idea that climate change has a human origin—a kind of secular notion of original sin. But these ideas are not widely shared by most people. The clerisy may see in Obama “reason incarnate,” as George Packer of The New Yorker put it, but the majority of the population remains more concerned about long-term unemployment and a struggling economy than about rising sea levels or the need to maintain racial quotas.
Despite the president’s clear political weaknesses—his job-approval ratings remain below 50 percent—he retains a reasonable shot at reelection. In the coming months, he will likely avoid pushing too hard on such things as overregulating business, particularly on the environmental front, which would undermine the nascent recovery and stir too much opposition from corporate donors. American voters may also be less than enthusiastic about the Republican alternatives topping the ticket. And one should never underestimate the power of even a less-than-popular president. Obama can count on a strong chorus of support from the media and many of the top high-tech firms, which have enjoyed lavish subsidies and government loans for “green” projects.
If Obama does win, 2013 could possibly bring something approaching a constitutional crisis. With the House and perhaps the Senate in Republican hands, Obama’s clerisy may be tempted to use the full range of executive power. The logic for running the country from the executive has been laid out already. Republican control of just the House, argues Chicago congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., has made America ungovernable. Obama, he said during the fight over the debt limit, needed to bypass the Constitution because, as in 1861, the South (in this case, the Southern Republicans) was “in a state of rebellion” against lawful authority. Beverley Perdue, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, concurred: she wanted to have elections suspended for a stretch. (Perdue’s office later insisted this was a joke, but most jokes aren’t told deadpan or punctuated with “I really hope someone can agree with me on that.” Also: Nobody laughed.)
The Left’s growing support for a soft authoritarianism is reminiscent of the 1930s, when many on both right and left looked favorably at either Stalin’s Soviet experiment or its fascist and National Socialist rivals. Tom Friedman of the New York Times recently praised Chinese-style authoritarianism for advancing the green agenda. The “reasonably enlightened group” running China, he asserted, was superior to our messy democracy in such things as subsidizing green industry. Steven Rattner, the investment banker and former Obama car czar, dismisses the problems posed by China’s economic and environmental foibles and declares himself “staunchly optimistic” about the future of that country’s Communist Party dictatorship. And it’s not just the gentry liberals identifying China as their model: labor leader Andy Stern, formerly the president of the Service Employees International Union and a close ally of the White House, celebrates Chinese authoritarianism and says that our capitalistic pluralism is headed for “the trash heap of history.” The Chinese, Stern argues, get things done.
A victorious Obama administration could embrace a soft version of the Chinese model. The mechanisms of control already exist. The bureaucratic apparatus, the array of policy czars and regulatory enforcers commissioned by the executive branch, has grown dramatically under Obama. Their ability to control and prosecute people for violations relating to issues like labor and the environment—once largely the province of states and localities—can be further enhanced. In the post-election environment, the president, using agencies like the EPA, could successfully strangle whole industries—notably the burgeoning oil and natural gas sector—and drag whole regions into recession. The newly announced EPA rules on extremely small levels of mercury and other toxins, for example, will sharply raise electricity rates in much of the country, particularly in the industrial heartland; greenhouse-gas policy, including, perhaps, an administratively imposed “cap and trade,” would greatly impact entrepreneurs and new investors forced to purchase credits from existing polluters. On a host of social issues, the new progressive regime could employ the Justice Department to impose national rulings well out of sync with local sentiments. Expansions of affirmative action, gay rights, and abortion rights could become mandated from Washington even in areas, such as the South, where such views are anathema.
This future can already been seen in fiscally challenged California. The state should be leading a recovery, not lagging behind the rest of the country. But in a place where Obama-style progressives rule without effective opposition, the clerisy has already enacted a score of regulatory mandates that are chasing businesses, particularly in manufacturing, out of the state. It has also passed land-use policies designed to enforce density, in effect eliminating the dream of single-family homes for all but the very rich in much of the state.
A nightmare scenario would be a constitutional crisis pitting a relentless executive power against a disgruntled, alienated opposition lacking strong, intelligent leadership. Over time, the new authoritarians would elicit even more opposition from the “dodos” who make up the majority of Americans residing in the great landmass outside the coastal strips and Chicago. The legacy of the Obama years—once so breathlessly associated with hope and reconciliation—may instead be growing pessimism and polarization.
SOURCE
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Cost of Obamacare Regulations Underestimated by Billions of Dollars
The Obama Administration underestimated the costs of Obamacare regulations by billions of dollars says the non-partisan Mercatus Center at George Mason University in a working paper it issued on Monday. The study examines eight Obamacare regulations issued in 2010 that became law before public comment was allowed because of the brief timeline Obamacare gave for their implementation.
Mercatus carefully studied the required cost/benefit analysis used by the Administration. And it found that the Administration’s cost estimates tended to be underestimated while its benefit estimates tended to be overestimated. The result is that the cost of implementing these eight regulations may be billions of dollars more than the Obama Administration is willing to admit.
For example, Mercatus says that, “For the ‘Early Retiree Reinsurance Program’ rule, costs were underestimated by $9-$10 billion over four years. More accurately calculated benefits might have been about one-third as high as estimated.”
This comes as no surprise to us at Americans for Limited Government. We’ve caught the Obama administration artificially inflating Obamacare’s benefits before.
For instance, on September 7, 2010 we submitted a public comment that criticized the Obama Administration for “describ[ing] [the preventive services regulation] as having a cost-savings benefit while supplying insufficient evidence to back such a claim and ignoring evidence to the contrary.”
The Mercatus study confirms our criticism: “The selective review of the literature provided in the RIA gives the uninformed reader a false impression of the extent to which preventive health services are cost-saving. Literature reviews consistently have concluded that most clinical preventive services typically are not cost-saving.”
While the Mercatus Center’s working paper does not scrutinize the paperwork burden analysis of these regulations (we hope they will consider doing so in the future), we’ve found that the Administration also underestimates how much it will cost Americans to comply with the paperwork these regulations generate.
Of the eight regulations examined by the Mercatus study, we commented on six of them, and in three of those six we flagged errors in the Obama Administration’s paperwork burden cost calculations.
One such error is the Administration’s estimate of what it costs per hour for legal services. The Administration estimates that it costs $119 per hour to hire an attorney. Using the Laffey Matrix we estimate that the average billing rate for a Washington, DC attorney is more like $427 per hour. In just one regulation this mistake could amount to tens of millions of dollars. But even the billing rate for paralegals of $155 per hour is well above the Administration’s estimate for attorneys.
By underestimating the costs of Obamacare’s paperwork burden, the Obama Administration is also underestimating Obamacare’s implementation costs which will have to be borne by the American public.
Before Obamacare’s passage Nancy Pelosi prophesized, “[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it….”
The Obama Administration can continue to paint rosy pictures of Obamacare, but the more we find out what’s in it, the more we see it for what it really is.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
MS: Court blocks release of inmates pardoned by Barbour: "A judge has temporarily blocked the release of 21 inmates who'd been given pardons or medical release by Republican Haley Barbour in one of his final acts as governor. ... [Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood] said he believes Barbour might have violated the state constitution by pardoning some inmates who failed to give sufficient public notice that they were seeking to have their records cleared."
NJ: Lawmaker looks to update alimony rules: "Fairness must be put back into divorce court, an advocacy group in New Jersey is arguing, pushing legislation to update what it says are antiquated alimony laws that disproportionately favor the recipients of alimony, regardless of changing circumstances. 'Lifetime alimony and the family court system in New Jersey are driving real people to the brink,' Tom Leustek, president and founder of New Jersey Alimony Reform, told FoxNews.com."
No, Bain did not get a “bailout”: "Left-wing blogs and Mitt Romney’s presidential-primary rivals -- and who can tell those apart this week? -- have charged that Bain & Company, the firm Romney once headed, was the beneficiary of not one but two bailouts: one from the FDIC, and one from the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. These allegations are nakedly false."
Hurting the poor, helping the rich: "Coming from Randian roots, I have a deep appreciation for the virtues of business, and of wealth that has been earned. I do not consider myself to be a liberal-tarian. I usually agree with the Right and disagree with the Left. But the more I look around, the more I see that socialism is really a tool by means of which millionaire elites keep the poor masses from rising up."
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
****************************
A firm hand for a “nation of dodos”
“I refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer,” said President Obama this week as he claimed new powers for himself in making recess appointments while Congress wasn’t legally in recess. The chief executive’s power grab in naming appointees to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board has been depicted by administration supporters as one forced upon a reluctant Obama by Republican intransigence. But this isn’t the first example of the president’s increasing tendency to govern with executive-branch powers. He has already explained that “where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead and do it ourselves.” On a variety of issues, from immigration to the environment to labor law, that’s just what he’s been doing—and he may try it even more boldly should he win reelection. This “go it alone” philosophy reflects an authoritarian trend emerging on the political left since the conservative triumph in the 2010 elections.
The president and his coterie could have responded to the 2010 elections by conceding the widespread public hostility to excessive government spending and regulation. That’s what the more clued-in Clintonites did after their 1994 midterm defeats. But unlike Clinton, who came from the party’s moderate wing and hailed from the rural South, the highly urban progressive rump that is Obama’s true base of support has little appreciation for suburban or rural Democrats. In fact, some liberals even celebrated the 2010 demise of the Blue Dog and Plains States Democrats, concluding that the purged party could embrace a purer version of the liberal agenda. So instead of appealing to the middle, the White House has pressed ahead with Keynesian spending and a progressive regulatory agenda.
Much of the administration’s approach has to do with a change in the nature of liberal politics. Today’s progressives cannot be viewed primarily as pragmatic Truman- or Clinton-style majoritarians. Rather, they resemble the medieval clerical class. Their goal is governmental control over everything from what sort of climate science is permissible to how we choose to live our lives. Many of today’s progressives can be as dogmatic in their beliefs as the most strident evangelical minister or mullah. Like Al Gore declaring the debate over climate change closed, despite the Climategate e-mails and widespread skepticism, the clerisy takes its beliefs as based on absolute truth. Critics lie beyond the pale.
The problem for the clerisy lies in political reality. The country’s largely suburban and increasingly Southern electorate does not see big government as its friend or wise liberal mandarins as the source of its salvation. This sets up a potential political crisis between those who know what’s good and a presumptively ignorant majority. Obama is burdened, says Joe Klein of Time, by governing a “nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive,” as the title of his story puts it, without the guidance of our president. But if the people are too deluded to cooperate, elements in the progressive tradition have a solution: European-style governance by a largely unelected bureaucratic class.
The tension between self-government and “good” government has existed since the origins of modern liberalism. Thinkers such as Herbert Croly and Randolph Bourne staked a claim to a priestly wisdom far greater than that possessed by the ordinary mortal. As Croly explained, “any increase in centralized power and responsibility . . . is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy. But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition” and the fact that “the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.”
During the first two years of the Obama administration, the progressives persuaded themselves that favorable demographics and the consequences of the George W. Bush years would assure the consent of the electorate. They drew parallels with how growing urbanization and Herbert Hoover’s legacy worked for FDR in the 1930s. But FDR enhanced his majority in his first midterm election in 1934; the current progressive agenda, by contrast, was roundly thrashed in 2010. Obama may compare himself to Roosevelt and even to Lincoln, but the electorate does not appear to share this assessment.
After the 2010 thrashing, progressives seemed uninterested in moderating their agenda. Left-wing standard bearers Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation and Robert Borosage of the Institute for Policy Studies went so far as to argue that Obama should bypass Congress whenever necessary and govern using his executive authority over the government’s regulatory agencies. This autocratic agenda of enhanced executive authority has strong support with people close to White House, such as John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, a left-liberal think tank. “The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and implement policy,” Podesta has written. “These authorities can be used to ensure positive progress on many of the key issues facing the country.”
Podesta has proposed what amounts to a national, more ideological variant of what in Obama’s home state is known as “The Chicago Way.” Under that system, John Kass of the Chicago Tribune explains, “citizens, even Republicans, are expected to take what big government gives them. If the political boss suggests that you purchase some expensive wrought-iron fence to decorate your corporate headquarters, and the guy selling insurance to the wrought-iron boys is the boss’ little brother, you write the check.” But the American clerisy isn’t merely a bunch of corrupt politicians and bureaucratic lifers, and the United States isn’t one-party Chicago. The clerisy are more like an ideological vanguard, one based largely in academe and the media as well as part of the high-tech community.
Their authoritarian progressivism—at odds with the democratic, pluralistic traditions within liberalism—tends to evoke science, however contested, to justify its authority. The progressives themselves are, in Daniel Bell’s telling phrase, “the priests of the machine.” Their views are fairly uniform and can be seen in “progressive legal theory,” which displaces the seeming plain meaning of the Constitution with constructions derived from the perceived needs of a changing political environment. Belief in affirmative action, environmental justice, health-care reform, and redistribution from the middle class to the poor all find foundation there. More important still is a radical environmental agenda fervently committed to the idea that climate change has a human origin—a kind of secular notion of original sin. But these ideas are not widely shared by most people. The clerisy may see in Obama “reason incarnate,” as George Packer of The New Yorker put it, but the majority of the population remains more concerned about long-term unemployment and a struggling economy than about rising sea levels or the need to maintain racial quotas.
Despite the president’s clear political weaknesses—his job-approval ratings remain below 50 percent—he retains a reasonable shot at reelection. In the coming months, he will likely avoid pushing too hard on such things as overregulating business, particularly on the environmental front, which would undermine the nascent recovery and stir too much opposition from corporate donors. American voters may also be less than enthusiastic about the Republican alternatives topping the ticket. And one should never underestimate the power of even a less-than-popular president. Obama can count on a strong chorus of support from the media and many of the top high-tech firms, which have enjoyed lavish subsidies and government loans for “green” projects.
If Obama does win, 2013 could possibly bring something approaching a constitutional crisis. With the House and perhaps the Senate in Republican hands, Obama’s clerisy may be tempted to use the full range of executive power. The logic for running the country from the executive has been laid out already. Republican control of just the House, argues Chicago congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., has made America ungovernable. Obama, he said during the fight over the debt limit, needed to bypass the Constitution because, as in 1861, the South (in this case, the Southern Republicans) was “in a state of rebellion” against lawful authority. Beverley Perdue, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, concurred: she wanted to have elections suspended for a stretch. (Perdue’s office later insisted this was a joke, but most jokes aren’t told deadpan or punctuated with “I really hope someone can agree with me on that.” Also: Nobody laughed.)
The Left’s growing support for a soft authoritarianism is reminiscent of the 1930s, when many on both right and left looked favorably at either Stalin’s Soviet experiment or its fascist and National Socialist rivals. Tom Friedman of the New York Times recently praised Chinese-style authoritarianism for advancing the green agenda. The “reasonably enlightened group” running China, he asserted, was superior to our messy democracy in such things as subsidizing green industry. Steven Rattner, the investment banker and former Obama car czar, dismisses the problems posed by China’s economic and environmental foibles and declares himself “staunchly optimistic” about the future of that country’s Communist Party dictatorship. And it’s not just the gentry liberals identifying China as their model: labor leader Andy Stern, formerly the president of the Service Employees International Union and a close ally of the White House, celebrates Chinese authoritarianism and says that our capitalistic pluralism is headed for “the trash heap of history.” The Chinese, Stern argues, get things done.
A victorious Obama administration could embrace a soft version of the Chinese model. The mechanisms of control already exist. The bureaucratic apparatus, the array of policy czars and regulatory enforcers commissioned by the executive branch, has grown dramatically under Obama. Their ability to control and prosecute people for violations relating to issues like labor and the environment—once largely the province of states and localities—can be further enhanced. In the post-election environment, the president, using agencies like the EPA, could successfully strangle whole industries—notably the burgeoning oil and natural gas sector—and drag whole regions into recession. The newly announced EPA rules on extremely small levels of mercury and other toxins, for example, will sharply raise electricity rates in much of the country, particularly in the industrial heartland; greenhouse-gas policy, including, perhaps, an administratively imposed “cap and trade,” would greatly impact entrepreneurs and new investors forced to purchase credits from existing polluters. On a host of social issues, the new progressive regime could employ the Justice Department to impose national rulings well out of sync with local sentiments. Expansions of affirmative action, gay rights, and abortion rights could become mandated from Washington even in areas, such as the South, where such views are anathema.
This future can already been seen in fiscally challenged California. The state should be leading a recovery, not lagging behind the rest of the country. But in a place where Obama-style progressives rule without effective opposition, the clerisy has already enacted a score of regulatory mandates that are chasing businesses, particularly in manufacturing, out of the state. It has also passed land-use policies designed to enforce density, in effect eliminating the dream of single-family homes for all but the very rich in much of the state.
A nightmare scenario would be a constitutional crisis pitting a relentless executive power against a disgruntled, alienated opposition lacking strong, intelligent leadership. Over time, the new authoritarians would elicit even more opposition from the “dodos” who make up the majority of Americans residing in the great landmass outside the coastal strips and Chicago. The legacy of the Obama years—once so breathlessly associated with hope and reconciliation—may instead be growing pessimism and polarization.
SOURCE
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Cost of Obamacare Regulations Underestimated by Billions of Dollars
The Obama Administration underestimated the costs of Obamacare regulations by billions of dollars says the non-partisan Mercatus Center at George Mason University in a working paper it issued on Monday. The study examines eight Obamacare regulations issued in 2010 that became law before public comment was allowed because of the brief timeline Obamacare gave for their implementation.
Mercatus carefully studied the required cost/benefit analysis used by the Administration. And it found that the Administration’s cost estimates tended to be underestimated while its benefit estimates tended to be overestimated. The result is that the cost of implementing these eight regulations may be billions of dollars more than the Obama Administration is willing to admit.
For example, Mercatus says that, “For the ‘Early Retiree Reinsurance Program’ rule, costs were underestimated by $9-$10 billion over four years. More accurately calculated benefits might have been about one-third as high as estimated.”
This comes as no surprise to us at Americans for Limited Government. We’ve caught the Obama administration artificially inflating Obamacare’s benefits before.
For instance, on September 7, 2010 we submitted a public comment that criticized the Obama Administration for “describ[ing] [the preventive services regulation] as having a cost-savings benefit while supplying insufficient evidence to back such a claim and ignoring evidence to the contrary.”
The Mercatus study confirms our criticism: “The selective review of the literature provided in the RIA gives the uninformed reader a false impression of the extent to which preventive health services are cost-saving. Literature reviews consistently have concluded that most clinical preventive services typically are not cost-saving.”
While the Mercatus Center’s working paper does not scrutinize the paperwork burden analysis of these regulations (we hope they will consider doing so in the future), we’ve found that the Administration also underestimates how much it will cost Americans to comply with the paperwork these regulations generate.
Of the eight regulations examined by the Mercatus study, we commented on six of them, and in three of those six we flagged errors in the Obama Administration’s paperwork burden cost calculations.
One such error is the Administration’s estimate of what it costs per hour for legal services. The Administration estimates that it costs $119 per hour to hire an attorney. Using the Laffey Matrix we estimate that the average billing rate for a Washington, DC attorney is more like $427 per hour. In just one regulation this mistake could amount to tens of millions of dollars. But even the billing rate for paralegals of $155 per hour is well above the Administration’s estimate for attorneys.
By underestimating the costs of Obamacare’s paperwork burden, the Obama Administration is also underestimating Obamacare’s implementation costs which will have to be borne by the American public.
Before Obamacare’s passage Nancy Pelosi prophesized, “[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it….”
The Obama Administration can continue to paint rosy pictures of Obamacare, but the more we find out what’s in it, the more we see it for what it really is.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
MS: Court blocks release of inmates pardoned by Barbour: "A judge has temporarily blocked the release of 21 inmates who'd been given pardons or medical release by Republican Haley Barbour in one of his final acts as governor. ... [Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood] said he believes Barbour might have violated the state constitution by pardoning some inmates who failed to give sufficient public notice that they were seeking to have their records cleared."
NJ: Lawmaker looks to update alimony rules: "Fairness must be put back into divorce court, an advocacy group in New Jersey is arguing, pushing legislation to update what it says are antiquated alimony laws that disproportionately favor the recipients of alimony, regardless of changing circumstances. 'Lifetime alimony and the family court system in New Jersey are driving real people to the brink,' Tom Leustek, president and founder of New Jersey Alimony Reform, told FoxNews.com."
No, Bain did not get a “bailout”: "Left-wing blogs and Mitt Romney’s presidential-primary rivals -- and who can tell those apart this week? -- have charged that Bain & Company, the firm Romney once headed, was the beneficiary of not one but two bailouts: one from the FDIC, and one from the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. These allegations are nakedly false."
Hurting the poor, helping the rich: "Coming from Randian roots, I have a deep appreciation for the virtues of business, and of wealth that has been earned. I do not consider myself to be a liberal-tarian. I usually agree with the Right and disagree with the Left. But the more I look around, the more I see that socialism is really a tool by means of which millionaire elites keep the poor masses from rising up."
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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Thursday, January 12, 2012
In New Hampshire, 'acceptable' is pronounced 'winner'
by Jeff Jacoby
FOR ANYONE gauging the Republican presidential contest, this week's most significant poll results weren't the ones tabulated in New Hampshire last night. They were the ones released by Gallup yesterday morning.
To say such a thing is heresy, I realize, given the long months of New Hampshire campaigning and the media's obsessive focus on the state over the last few weeks. But more telling than Mitt Romney's long-expected victory in the Granite State -- he drew about 38 percent of the vote, followed at a considerable distance by Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman -- was Gallup's finding that among Republicans (and Republican-leaning independents) nationwide, only the former Massachusetts governor is regarded as an "acceptable" GOP nominee across the ideological spectrum.
A large majority of both conservative Republicans and moderate/liberal Republicans -- 59 percent in both cases -- told Gallup that a Romney nomination for president would be acceptable. No other candidate had majority support among moderate/liberals; and only Newt Gingrich (51 percent) and Santorum (50 percent) were deemed acceptable by at least half of the conservatives.
Granted, being seen as "acceptable" by most Republicans isn't the same as winning their hearts and minds. Romney has never fired the Republican base with enthusiasm, and the party's anyone-but-Romney contingent certainly hasn't thrown in the towel. According to Gallup's tracking polls, only 30 percent of Republican voters say that Romney is the candidate they would prefer to nominate. But that's after months in which conventional wisdom has insisted that Romney's ceiling of support was no higher than 25 percent. And it's significantly higher than anyone else in the field is drawing.
The old saw is that Democrats fall in love with their candidates while Republicans fall in line behind theirs. It's a dubious rule of thumb -- were Democrats in love with John Kerry in 2004? With Michael Dukakis in 1988? -- but this much is true: Conservative insurgents rarely win the GOP presidential nomination. The nod almost always goes to the party establishment's candidate.
This year that candidate is Mitt Romney. If Gallup's numbers are right -- and New Hampshire offers no reason to doubt them -- the GOP nomination is now his to lose.
SOURCE
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Independents Sour On Obama Despite Improving Economy
Americans are feeling better about the economy, but they aren't giving President Obama credit as he seeks re-election, according to the latest IBD/TIPP survey.
The Economic Optimism Index shot up 11% in January to 47.5, still below the neutral 50 level but the fifth straight monthly gain and the best reading since February 2011.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Leadership Index fell 3.3% to 46.7, little changed over the last several months despite less gloomy views on the economy.
Most ominously for Obama, the president's support fell considerably among independents, with their presidential reading tumbling 9.7% to 41.7. They disapproved of his job performance by 52%-39% in January vs. 46%-44% in December.
Obama will find it very difficult to win in November without substantial support from this key voting bloc. He won them 52%-44% over GOP candidate John McCain in 2008. The IBD/TIPP poll shows that 40% of independents think Obama deserves a second term while 52% prefer a "different candidate." The re-elect numbers across all voters are 45%-49%.
January's economic bounce may reflect typical "New Year hopes," says Raghavan Mayur, president of TIPP, a unit of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, IBD's polling partner.
However, recent data suggest that the U.S. economy is gradually firming, including manufacturing and jobs. It's unclear though if that can continue with Europe falling into recession and global growth slowing significantly.
Independents also reported improvement on the personal economic situation. Twenty-three percent of independents expected the quality of their life to improve in the next six months vs. 14% in December.
"There is a wide delta between how (independents) perceive their own economic situation vs. the nation's economic situation," said Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy at the center-left think tank Third Way. "They have a far sunnier view of their own personal finances than the nation's. That's something Obama needs to understand."
IBD/TIPP found mixed results on national issues. On the direction of the nation, 29% were satisfied vs. 69% unsatisfied, essentially unchanged from last month. On the issue of whether the U.S. economy will be better or worse in the next six months, a net 8% said it would be worse, though that's up from 22% in December.
Two other factors may be souring Obama's image among independents. Independents are worried about the deficit. In January, 55% of independents gave Obama a grade of D or F on handling the budget, up from 49% last month.
They also may have lost patience with the president on the economy. Independents were somewhat more satisfied with federal economic policies this month, 34%-64%, up from 30%-69% in December. But that is still a big deterioration from 44%-52% in January 2011.
It seems likely that for Obama's numbers to improve with independents, the economy will have to register some very strong growth in the next six months.
That becomes all the more crucial as the number of independent voters has grown over 320,000, or 3.4%, since 2008, according to a new Third Way study. The study shows that Republicans lost over 334,000 voters since 2008 while Democrats have lost over 834,000.
"This makes independents all the more important, more so than in any recent election," said Ellis. "The IBD/TIPP poll shows Obama has his work cut out for himself with independents. He hasn't yet closed the deal with them."
SOURCE
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Supreme Court Rejects Obama Administration Power Grab Over Churches in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC
The Supreme Court has rejected the Obama administration’s argument that it can dictate who churches hire as ministers or clergy in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Obama administration unsuccessfully argued that the government can dictate who churches hire, as long as it also subjects secular employers to the same dictates regarding who they hire (so-called rules of general applicability).
Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument would allow the government to ban a church or synagogue from hiring based on religion (defeating the whole purpose of religious freedom, which is to allow churches to promote their own religion) or sex (preventing the Catholic Church from having a male priesthood). No Supreme Court justice bought the administration’s argument, made on behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The Supreme Court unanimously found that such government control over who churches can hire would violate the religion clauses of the First Amendment.
If federal antidiscrimination laws covered churches’ hiring of clergy, as the Obama administration demanded, they would have to not just avoid discriminating based on things like sex or religion, but would also have to radically alter sensible hiring criteria by eliminating longstanding, neutral church practices that have the affect of inadvertently screening out more members of a minority group than of other groups (so-called “disparate impact” or “unintentional discrimination”).
For example, some branches of the Lutheran Church have hiring criteria for religious broadcasters on their radio programs, such as “knowledge of Lutheran doctrine,” and “classical music training,” that few minorities satisfy (only 2 percent of all people with Lutheran training are minorities, and only 0.1 percent of people with both Lutheran training and classical music training are minorities), given the Lutheran Church’s historical roots in overwhelmingly white areas like Germany, Scandinavia, and Minnesota. Even though they are happy to have black applicants, and do not treat black applicants worse based on their race, the EEOC could easily sue them for racially disparate impact if the Obama administration’s argument had been accepted. (The religion clauses of the First Amendment not only protect who churches hire as ministers, but also other people who serve as “voices of the church,” such as theology professors, and religious broadcasters on behalf of a church.)
We previously wrote about ways that the Obama administration is attacking religious freedom and separation of church and state at this link. We described how the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is wiping out jobs and discouraging hiring and job creation through onerous interpretations of federal employment laws, at this link.
The extreme position taken by the Obama Justice Department in the Hosanna-Tabor case is a reflection of ideologically-based hiring. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department has chosen to hire only liberal lawyers, not moderates or conservatives, for key Justice Department posts that are supposed to be non-political career appointments. Although many experienced lawyers are out of work in the current economic slump, the Obama Justice Department has hired many liberals who have no real-world legal experience, rather than hiring based on merit.
More commentary about the Hosanna-Tabor case can be found at this link. (The Obama administration suggested in its briefs that freedom of association could provide a theoretical check on government demands that institutions not hire based on specified criteria, even if — as it claimed — religious freedom does not limit the reach of employment laws that apply to both secular and religious employers. But this suggestion was disingenuous, since the administration and the EEOC have argued in other cases that free-association rights are outweighed and overridden by the government’s compelling interest in eradicating discrimination. And free-association defenses, unlike religious-freedom defenses, are generally losers, as the Supreme Court’s Hishon, Jaycees , and New York State Club Association decisions illustrate. Those rulings held that the government’s compelling interest in eradicating discrimination overrode the mere free-association rights of a law firm and various private clubs.)
SOURCE
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Why Liberals Favor Campaign Season Censorship
If people can be totally convinced by a few campaign ads, then the real objection is not advertising—but democracy itself
Liberals are nearly united against Citizens United. This means they are nearly united in favor of censorship. But that has not stopped the Supreme Court decision from being roundly denounced by everyone with progressive DNA – from the elderly solons at The New York Times to the youthful idealists of Occupy Wall Street.
Cities from Missoula to Miami have condemned the ruling. Now the prestige press has gotten in on the act, again.
Media outlets across the country have begun airing stories about how 2012’s campaign ads are the unholy spawn of 2010’s ruling. Already The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and the LA Times have run such stories. NPR has run a half-dozen. (“Illegal During Watergate, Unlimited Campaign Donations Now Fair Game,” ran the headline on one fair-and-balanced look at the issue.)
Media corporations such as those, which spend huge sums of money talking about politicians, just can’t stand it when non-media corporations get to do the same thing.
And lest anyone forget that is precisely what the case was about. In 2008 a nonprofit, incorporated group called Citizens United wanted to distribute a documentary about Hillary Clinton. But doing so during an election campaign would have violated a 2002 campaign-finance law prohibiting “electioneering communications” within 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election.
A law that forbids American citizens to urge the election or defeat of a political candidate raises some obvious First Amendment concerns. During oral arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that book publishers are corporations. He asked the government’s lawyer if the law could prohibit publishing a book that said, “Vote for X.”
Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart said yes—the government: “could prohibit the publication of the book.” Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21 and former head of Common Cause, later agreed that “a campaign document in the form of a book can be banned.”
To its credit, the ACLU did not side with liberal censors. The provision in dispute is “facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment,” the ACLU said, “because it permits the suppression of core political speech.” And that is just how the high court ruled.
You won’t learn much of that from the scare stories about the new “super PACs.” Instead, you’ll get endless variations on a single theme: Citizens United has made possible a torrent of “negative ads” from “outside groups.”
The theme’s unstated premise is that ostensibly unfortunate results should trump the First Amendment. This is not a wise line of argument for anyone who values a free press to make, but never mind. Are the results really unfortunate? For instance, what is wrong with negative ads? Often they do just what journalists claim is their most noble task: speaking truth to power. As a general rule, “attack” ads from opponents contain more useful information than positive ads from candidates. Positive ads show Candidate X striding manfully across sun-drenched fields while he recites a script about how much he loves America and wants to make it great again. Negative ads tell you how the guy voted.
But the ads are made by (eek!) “outside groups.” Outside of what, exactly? The campaigns themselves—along with the political parties’ paid apparatchiks—which do not like to have their monologues about their candidates’ wonderfulness interrupted. But The New York Times is an outside group. So is the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood, the Brady Campaign, and MoveOn.org—along with the Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, and the National Right to Life Committee. To term such organizations “outside” is to imply that elections are for the party pros, and everyone else should sit on the sidelines.
If this is the great unspoken wish of campaign “reformers,” then their great unspoken fear is that campaign ads might actually persuade. After all, if campaign ads never worked, then who spent what on them would not matter. This raises two possibilities. The first is that the people are so incredibly stupid a few 30-second spots can lead them by the nose. If that is the case, then the real objection is not advertising—but democracy itself.
The second possibility is that people are not stupid. They listen to competing cases from all sides and then choose according to their own interests and values. If that is the case, then the problem is, again, democracy itself. Why? Because every demand that A be prevented from speaking is, equally, a demand that all others be prevented from hearing. Hence the ultimate aim of rationing political speech is to make sure people who can think for themselves don’t have too much to think about.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
****************************
by Jeff Jacoby
FOR ANYONE gauging the Republican presidential contest, this week's most significant poll results weren't the ones tabulated in New Hampshire last night. They were the ones released by Gallup yesterday morning.
To say such a thing is heresy, I realize, given the long months of New Hampshire campaigning and the media's obsessive focus on the state over the last few weeks. But more telling than Mitt Romney's long-expected victory in the Granite State -- he drew about 38 percent of the vote, followed at a considerable distance by Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman -- was Gallup's finding that among Republicans (and Republican-leaning independents) nationwide, only the former Massachusetts governor is regarded as an "acceptable" GOP nominee across the ideological spectrum.
A large majority of both conservative Republicans and moderate/liberal Republicans -- 59 percent in both cases -- told Gallup that a Romney nomination for president would be acceptable. No other candidate had majority support among moderate/liberals; and only Newt Gingrich (51 percent) and Santorum (50 percent) were deemed acceptable by at least half of the conservatives.
Granted, being seen as "acceptable" by most Republicans isn't the same as winning their hearts and minds. Romney has never fired the Republican base with enthusiasm, and the party's anyone-but-Romney contingent certainly hasn't thrown in the towel. According to Gallup's tracking polls, only 30 percent of Republican voters say that Romney is the candidate they would prefer to nominate. But that's after months in which conventional wisdom has insisted that Romney's ceiling of support was no higher than 25 percent. And it's significantly higher than anyone else in the field is drawing.
The old saw is that Democrats fall in love with their candidates while Republicans fall in line behind theirs. It's a dubious rule of thumb -- were Democrats in love with John Kerry in 2004? With Michael Dukakis in 1988? -- but this much is true: Conservative insurgents rarely win the GOP presidential nomination. The nod almost always goes to the party establishment's candidate.
This year that candidate is Mitt Romney. If Gallup's numbers are right -- and New Hampshire offers no reason to doubt them -- the GOP nomination is now his to lose.
SOURCE
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Independents Sour On Obama Despite Improving Economy
Americans are feeling better about the economy, but they aren't giving President Obama credit as he seeks re-election, according to the latest IBD/TIPP survey.
The Economic Optimism Index shot up 11% in January to 47.5, still below the neutral 50 level but the fifth straight monthly gain and the best reading since February 2011.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Leadership Index fell 3.3% to 46.7, little changed over the last several months despite less gloomy views on the economy.
Most ominously for Obama, the president's support fell considerably among independents, with their presidential reading tumbling 9.7% to 41.7. They disapproved of his job performance by 52%-39% in January vs. 46%-44% in December.
Obama will find it very difficult to win in November without substantial support from this key voting bloc. He won them 52%-44% over GOP candidate John McCain in 2008. The IBD/TIPP poll shows that 40% of independents think Obama deserves a second term while 52% prefer a "different candidate." The re-elect numbers across all voters are 45%-49%.
January's economic bounce may reflect typical "New Year hopes," says Raghavan Mayur, president of TIPP, a unit of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, IBD's polling partner.
However, recent data suggest that the U.S. economy is gradually firming, including manufacturing and jobs. It's unclear though if that can continue with Europe falling into recession and global growth slowing significantly.
Independents also reported improvement on the personal economic situation. Twenty-three percent of independents expected the quality of their life to improve in the next six months vs. 14% in December.
"There is a wide delta between how (independents) perceive their own economic situation vs. the nation's economic situation," said Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy at the center-left think tank Third Way. "They have a far sunnier view of their own personal finances than the nation's. That's something Obama needs to understand."
IBD/TIPP found mixed results on national issues. On the direction of the nation, 29% were satisfied vs. 69% unsatisfied, essentially unchanged from last month. On the issue of whether the U.S. economy will be better or worse in the next six months, a net 8% said it would be worse, though that's up from 22% in December.
Two other factors may be souring Obama's image among independents. Independents are worried about the deficit. In January, 55% of independents gave Obama a grade of D or F on handling the budget, up from 49% last month.
They also may have lost patience with the president on the economy. Independents were somewhat more satisfied with federal economic policies this month, 34%-64%, up from 30%-69% in December. But that is still a big deterioration from 44%-52% in January 2011.
It seems likely that for Obama's numbers to improve with independents, the economy will have to register some very strong growth in the next six months.
That becomes all the more crucial as the number of independent voters has grown over 320,000, or 3.4%, since 2008, according to a new Third Way study. The study shows that Republicans lost over 334,000 voters since 2008 while Democrats have lost over 834,000.
"This makes independents all the more important, more so than in any recent election," said Ellis. "The IBD/TIPP poll shows Obama has his work cut out for himself with independents. He hasn't yet closed the deal with them."
SOURCE
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Supreme Court Rejects Obama Administration Power Grab Over Churches in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC
The Supreme Court has rejected the Obama administration’s argument that it can dictate who churches hire as ministers or clergy in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Obama administration unsuccessfully argued that the government can dictate who churches hire, as long as it also subjects secular employers to the same dictates regarding who they hire (so-called rules of general applicability).
Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument would allow the government to ban a church or synagogue from hiring based on religion (defeating the whole purpose of religious freedom, which is to allow churches to promote their own religion) or sex (preventing the Catholic Church from having a male priesthood). No Supreme Court justice bought the administration’s argument, made on behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The Supreme Court unanimously found that such government control over who churches can hire would violate the religion clauses of the First Amendment.
If federal antidiscrimination laws covered churches’ hiring of clergy, as the Obama administration demanded, they would have to not just avoid discriminating based on things like sex or religion, but would also have to radically alter sensible hiring criteria by eliminating longstanding, neutral church practices that have the affect of inadvertently screening out more members of a minority group than of other groups (so-called “disparate impact” or “unintentional discrimination”).
For example, some branches of the Lutheran Church have hiring criteria for religious broadcasters on their radio programs, such as “knowledge of Lutheran doctrine,” and “classical music training,” that few minorities satisfy (only 2 percent of all people with Lutheran training are minorities, and only 0.1 percent of people with both Lutheran training and classical music training are minorities), given the Lutheran Church’s historical roots in overwhelmingly white areas like Germany, Scandinavia, and Minnesota. Even though they are happy to have black applicants, and do not treat black applicants worse based on their race, the EEOC could easily sue them for racially disparate impact if the Obama administration’s argument had been accepted. (The religion clauses of the First Amendment not only protect who churches hire as ministers, but also other people who serve as “voices of the church,” such as theology professors, and religious broadcasters on behalf of a church.)
We previously wrote about ways that the Obama administration is attacking religious freedom and separation of church and state at this link. We described how the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is wiping out jobs and discouraging hiring and job creation through onerous interpretations of federal employment laws, at this link.
The extreme position taken by the Obama Justice Department in the Hosanna-Tabor case is a reflection of ideologically-based hiring. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department has chosen to hire only liberal lawyers, not moderates or conservatives, for key Justice Department posts that are supposed to be non-political career appointments. Although many experienced lawyers are out of work in the current economic slump, the Obama Justice Department has hired many liberals who have no real-world legal experience, rather than hiring based on merit.
More commentary about the Hosanna-Tabor case can be found at this link. (The Obama administration suggested in its briefs that freedom of association could provide a theoretical check on government demands that institutions not hire based on specified criteria, even if — as it claimed — religious freedom does not limit the reach of employment laws that apply to both secular and religious employers. But this suggestion was disingenuous, since the administration and the EEOC have argued in other cases that free-association rights are outweighed and overridden by the government’s compelling interest in eradicating discrimination. And free-association defenses, unlike religious-freedom defenses, are generally losers, as the Supreme Court’s Hishon, Jaycees , and New York State Club Association decisions illustrate. Those rulings held that the government’s compelling interest in eradicating discrimination overrode the mere free-association rights of a law firm and various private clubs.)
SOURCE
*************************
Why Liberals Favor Campaign Season Censorship
If people can be totally convinced by a few campaign ads, then the real objection is not advertising—but democracy itself
Liberals are nearly united against Citizens United. This means they are nearly united in favor of censorship. But that has not stopped the Supreme Court decision from being roundly denounced by everyone with progressive DNA – from the elderly solons at The New York Times to the youthful idealists of Occupy Wall Street.
Cities from Missoula to Miami have condemned the ruling. Now the prestige press has gotten in on the act, again.
Media outlets across the country have begun airing stories about how 2012’s campaign ads are the unholy spawn of 2010’s ruling. Already The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and the LA Times have run such stories. NPR has run a half-dozen. (“Illegal During Watergate, Unlimited Campaign Donations Now Fair Game,” ran the headline on one fair-and-balanced look at the issue.)
Media corporations such as those, which spend huge sums of money talking about politicians, just can’t stand it when non-media corporations get to do the same thing.
And lest anyone forget that is precisely what the case was about. In 2008 a nonprofit, incorporated group called Citizens United wanted to distribute a documentary about Hillary Clinton. But doing so during an election campaign would have violated a 2002 campaign-finance law prohibiting “electioneering communications” within 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election.
A law that forbids American citizens to urge the election or defeat of a political candidate raises some obvious First Amendment concerns. During oral arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that book publishers are corporations. He asked the government’s lawyer if the law could prohibit publishing a book that said, “Vote for X.”
Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart said yes—the government: “could prohibit the publication of the book.” Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21 and former head of Common Cause, later agreed that “a campaign document in the form of a book can be banned.”
To its credit, the ACLU did not side with liberal censors. The provision in dispute is “facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment,” the ACLU said, “because it permits the suppression of core political speech.” And that is just how the high court ruled.
You won’t learn much of that from the scare stories about the new “super PACs.” Instead, you’ll get endless variations on a single theme: Citizens United has made possible a torrent of “negative ads” from “outside groups.”
The theme’s unstated premise is that ostensibly unfortunate results should trump the First Amendment. This is not a wise line of argument for anyone who values a free press to make, but never mind. Are the results really unfortunate? For instance, what is wrong with negative ads? Often they do just what journalists claim is their most noble task: speaking truth to power. As a general rule, “attack” ads from opponents contain more useful information than positive ads from candidates. Positive ads show Candidate X striding manfully across sun-drenched fields while he recites a script about how much he loves America and wants to make it great again. Negative ads tell you how the guy voted.
But the ads are made by (eek!) “outside groups.” Outside of what, exactly? The campaigns themselves—along with the political parties’ paid apparatchiks—which do not like to have their monologues about their candidates’ wonderfulness interrupted. But The New York Times is an outside group. So is the AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood, the Brady Campaign, and MoveOn.org—along with the Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, and the National Right to Life Committee. To term such organizations “outside” is to imply that elections are for the party pros, and everyone else should sit on the sidelines.
If this is the great unspoken wish of campaign “reformers,” then their great unspoken fear is that campaign ads might actually persuade. After all, if campaign ads never worked, then who spent what on them would not matter. This raises two possibilities. The first is that the people are so incredibly stupid a few 30-second spots can lead them by the nose. If that is the case, then the real objection is not advertising—but democracy itself.
The second possibility is that people are not stupid. They listen to competing cases from all sides and then choose according to their own interests and values. If that is the case, then the problem is, again, democracy itself. Why? Because every demand that A be prevented from speaking is, equally, a demand that all others be prevented from hearing. Hence the ultimate aim of rationing political speech is to make sure people who can think for themselves don’t have too much to think about.
SOURCE
*************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
****************************
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Now investors pay to lend money to Britain, which has become a safe haven thanks to the eurozone crisis
Investors paid for the right to lend money to the UK yesterday, amid fresh fears over the future of the eurozone. The Government sold £700million of bonds – long-term IOUs – in an extraordinary auction that saw it charge lenders to take on the debt.
Governments usually have to pay to borrow on international money markets, but Britain’s austerity measures mean it has emerged as a safe haven while the single currency crisis rages.
Once inflation is taken into account, the interest rate charged by lenders for 35-year bonds hit minus 0.116 per cent – meaning the Government will make rather than lose money on the deal. By contrast, debt-stricken countries in the eurozone are being charged higher and higher rates to borrow.
To make matters worse, ratings agency Fitch warned yesterday that a number of countries – including Italy – could see their credit ratings downgraded by the end of this month. It claimed that Italy is the biggest cause for alarm – and added that bailed-out Greece could crash out of the single currency by the end of the year.
Yet as fears grow about the ability of many European nations to pay their way, Britain and Germany are emerging as the countries of choice for investors seeking shelter from the financial storm.
A source close to Chancellor George Osborne said of yesterday’s events: ‘This reinforces how our plan is delivering fiscal credibility, which in turn is delivering low interest rates for families and businesses up and down the country. Labour would put all that at risk.’
Michael Hewson, an analyst at CMC Markets, said the negative yield – the situation whereby investors must pay to lend – was ‘unusual but indicative of the times we are trading in’. He added: ‘Our economy is not immune to the eurozone troubles, but the UK won’t default because the Bank [of England] will print more money. Whether it will be the same value is another thing, but you will always get your money back.’
Another City analyst, David Buik of BGC Partners, agreed that the auction was a testament to Britain’s strength. ‘It is another classic illustration of a flight to quality created by an immeasurable slew of fear of the unknown,’ he said.
David Miller, a partner at Cheviot Asset Management, said investors ‘view Britain as a safe haven and a beacon of sanity in Europe’. He continued: ‘The low borrowing rate will give us a firm foundation for economic recovery.’
More HERE
**************************
As U.S. home prices fall, more borrowers walk away
When David Martin and his wife bought their north Seattle condo five years ago, they figured they had plenty of time to downsize if they needed to before they retired.
Now, with the property worth roughly $60,000 less than the balance of their mortgage, Martin, 68, has been giving serious thought to just walking away, a process lenders call "strategic default."
"Guilt and morality are one side, and objective financial analysis are on the other side," Martin said. "They're coming to two opposite conclusions. I wonder how many other people are struggling with the same question."
Strategic defaults like the one contemplated by Martin are on the rise. A survey last year by two Chicago-area finance professors, Paola Sapienza at Northwestern University and Luigi Zingales at the University of Chicago, found that roughly three out of 10 mortgage defaults in 2010 were by homeowners who could afford to make their payments, up from 22 percent in 2009.
Researchers point to a number of forces that are driving borrowers to walk away from their mortgages. At the top of the list is the estimated 12 million homes that are underwater, meaning the owners owe more than they are worth.
Until recently, borrowers like Martin and many industry analysts held out hope that a housing recovery would reverse the rising tide of "negative equity." But after stabilizing this summer, home prices began falling again, dropping 7.5 percent in the third quarter alone and leaving more homeowners underwater.
In the early stages of the housing bust, the main causes of defaults included unemployment or other financial setbacks and adjustable mortgages that reset to unaffordable levels, according to researchers. Now, five years into the housing recession, strategic defaults are growing as financially healthy borrowers learn of friends or family who have decided to walk away.
Researchers say strategic default is also more common among borrowers who feel no personal connection to the party on the other end of the transaction. Gone are the days when you walked into a bank and met with a lender who shepherded your application and congratulated you when the loan was approved, said Michael Seiler, a finance professor at Old Dominion University and a co-author of the MBA study.
"If you defaulted, it was like you were defaulting on your friend," he said. "Your kids might go to the same school. You all might go to the same church. And you're constantly reminded of who you're defaulting on."
That scenario is a far cry from the modern system of mortgage finance, where loans are sold over the phone or online, chopped up into pieces and then sold to multiple, anonymous investors. Many underwater homeowners who try to negotiate with their lender can't even find out who owns their loan.
"We're finding that people are much more willing to walk away when the other party is unknown or what you might call a 'bad bank,'" said Seiler. "Those are the ones that received a lot of bailout funds or were active in the subprime market, giving loans to people who couldn't afford them and they knew that."
The mortgage lending industry's widespread reluctance to modify loan terms has also changed homeowner attitudes about walking away, according to Maddux. "They feel much better about doing it if they've tried to contact the lender and the lender won't budge," he said. "They feel justified about it because they've tried to do their best to work it out."
Still, there are much more serious consequences to strategic default than pangs of guilt. Any loan default will damage a borrower's credit score. But some strategic defaulters are finding that the impact isn't as long-lasting as widely believed, according to Maddux. "You don’t destroy your credit, you wound your credit," he said. "Just like a wound, it heals over time."
Maddux said surveys of the roughly 8,000 customers who have signed up for his service in the last four years found that some strategic defaulters are able to restore their credit in as little as a year and a half.
"There's a process to strategic default and a lot of people don't know how to do it," said Kopcak. "They don't really know what their options are. People really need to talk to a lawyer who knows the process."
More HERE
*************************
Leftism Makes You Meaner
Only a fool believes that all those with whom he differs are bad people. Moreover, just about all of us live the reality -- often within our own family -- of knowing good and loving people with whom we strongly differ on political, religious, social and economic issues. That said, I have come to believe that the more committed one is to leftism, the more likely one is to become meaner.
Two examples in just the past week offer compelling evidence.
Prominent left-wing commentators used the way in which Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of one of their children to attack -- make that mock -- the former Pennsylvania senator.
In a lifetime of observing and participating in political debate, I have seen a lot of meanness. But one just assumes that some things -- not many, just some -- are off limits to political pundits and activists. Among these few things, one has to believe, is the death of a child. But I was wrong.
In 1996, Karen Santorum gave birth to a premature baby boy who died two hours later. After spending the night in the hospital with their baby son between them, the grieving parents brought the lifeless infant home for a brief period because, Santorum explained, it was important to them for their other children to "know they had a brother." The Santorums didn't want Gabriel Michael Santorum to be an abstraction to his siblings.
First, Alan Colmes on Fox News: "Once (voters) get a load of some of the crazy things he's said and done, like taking his 2-hour-old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real ..."
Colmes was then interrupted by Rich Lowry: "You are mocking him. They lost a child, Alan. That's very serious and it's not something you should be mocking on national TV." Colmes' response: "I'm not mocking the losing of the child. But what I'm saying is I think it shows a certain unusual attitude toward taking a 2-hour-baby home who died to play with his other children."
In addition to engaging in a cheap and mean shot, Colmes simply made up the notion that the Santorums had brought the baby home for their other children "to play with."
The next day, Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer-Prize winning left-wing columnist for The Washington Post, said on MSNBC, Santorum is "not a little weird. He's really weird. Some of his positions he's taken are just so weird that I think some Republicans are going to be off-put. Not everybody is going to be down, for example, with the story of how he and his wife handled the stillborn child whose body they took home to kind of sleep with and introduce to the rest of the family. It's a very weird story."
Four times Robinson calls Santorum "weird," using the story about the death of the child as evidence. He was wrong on an important detail -- the child was not "stillborn." And, like Colmes, he made up a mocking detail -- that they took the child home "to kind of sleep with."
The meanness of these comments is self-evident, as Alan Colmes realized and later apologized to Santorum. Robinson, on the other hand, never apologized -- as RealClearPolitics, which has no political agenda, correctly reported -- even though repeatedly challenged to do so on MSNBC.
I raise these issues for only one reason: to provide further evidence of my belief that leftism makes more than a few of its adherents meaner people.
I have had many interactions with Alan Colmes, and while we always differ, I never found him to be mean-spirited. I still don't think he is mean-spirited, and though I am not the directly offended party, like Santorum, I accept his apology, because I believe he meant it.
So why did he say what he said? Because leftism fills many of its adherents with contempt and hatred. It takes a person of great character and self-control to continually imbibe and mouth the mantras of the left -- that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, islamophobic, racist and bigoted -- and not become a meaner human being. If I believed just about everyone with left-wing views was despicable, I would be meaner, too.
In a previous column, I wrote about Thomas Friedman making one of the classic anti-Semitic libels when he wrote that the reason the Senate and the House gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing ovations was because "that ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby."
How does a Jew write an anti-Semitic libel? Because he's on the left. That was the reason Rep. Andre Carson said that members of Congress who support the Tea Party want to see blacks "hanging on a tree." Because he's on the left.
Leftists' meanness toward those with whom they differ has no echo on the normative right. Those on the left need to do some soul-searching. Because as long as they continue to believe that people on the right are not merely wrong but vile, they will get increasingly mean. The problem for the left, however, is that the moment it stops painting the right as vile, it has to argue the issues.
SOURCE
****************************
Retiring Mississippi governor pardons four savage killers
A disgusting RINO. He's got a very mixed record as a Republican. More like an old Southern Democrat. A real "Good ol' boy"
Governor Haley Barbour, who is not seeking reelection, outraged victims' families by pardoning four murderers, one of whom had been denied parole just two weeks earlier.
All four convicted killers were trusties who worked in the Governor's Mansion, cooking, cleaning, and performing other tasks. According to MSNBC, Barbour said back in 2008 that pardoning criminals who worked in the governor's home was a long standing tradition in Mississippi.
Neither Barbour, who leaves office today, nor the Mississippi government publicized the pardons. But the families of the victims were notified by the Mississippi Department of Corrections that the men had been released last Sunday. It was family members who went to the media.
The pardon that caused the greatest controversy was that of David Gatlin, 40. Gatlin had applied for parole; an application that was just denied by the Mississippi Parole Board on Dec. 27.
In 1993, Gatlin broke into a residence, put a gun to the head of his estranged wife, Tammy Ellis Gatlin, and pulled the trigger, killing her. At the time she was shot, she was holding her 2-month-old son. Gatlin then shot Tammy's friend, Randy Walker, also in the head. Walker survived his injuries.
In 1994 Gatlin was convicted and was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. He was also sentenced to 20 years in jail for aggravated assault and 10 years for residential burglary. But apparently Barbour was pleased with the work Gatlin did in the Governor's Mansion so he pardoned him. According to the Mississippi Department of Corrections, Gatlin had been working at the governor's residence since Nov. 19, 2009.
The Jackson Clarion-Ledger quoted Crystal Walker, Randy Walker's wife, as saying her family was notified last Friday that Gatlin had been denied parole. The next day they found out he was about to be pardoned. Said Crystal: "On parole he'd at least have to check in and have some supervision. Now he could live beside us, or we could run into him at Walmart. You're always looking over your shoulder."
Tiffany Ellis Brewer, Tammy's sister, said: "He shot her in the head while she was holding a baby. He's a cold-blooded murderer."
But according to Barbour, Gatlin "proved to be a diligent and dedicated workman."
The other three killers pardoned by the governor were Joseph Ozment, Anthony McCray, and Charles Hooker. All three men committed murder in the early 1990s. McCray killed his wife while Ozment killed a man in the course of a robbery.
The state's Democrats announced they will be introducing legislation to prevent future governors from doing what the outgoing Republican governor did. Under the proposals, public hearings would have to be held before someone with a felony conviction could receive a pardon.
SOURCE
**************************
ELSEWHERE
Obama’s power grab sets precedent Democrats will regret: "What's next? Appointing executive branch officials when the Senate is taking a lunch or bathroom break? In November 2007, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared the Senate in pro forma session for the two-week Thanksgiving break. Every three days, a handful of senators would gavel the Senate into session and gavel it out just a few minutes later. ... Republicans were furious at this deliberate ploy to keep Bush from making recess appointments by never declaring a formal recess."
Why the movie studios and record companies want to kill YouTube — SOPA ain’t what you think it is!: "In 10 years it’s a dead cinch Freddie will be directing more and better full-blown movies. No question. Will there be a studio as his 'master?' I’d bet against it! He might well cut deals with direct-to-online outlets like Hulu, or sell exclusive-for-a-while rights to anybody from Netflix to DirecTV, and later break out completely into theaters. THIS is the threat the major media sees out of Youtube -- not piracy!"
*************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
****************************
Investors paid for the right to lend money to the UK yesterday, amid fresh fears over the future of the eurozone. The Government sold £700million of bonds – long-term IOUs – in an extraordinary auction that saw it charge lenders to take on the debt.
Governments usually have to pay to borrow on international money markets, but Britain’s austerity measures mean it has emerged as a safe haven while the single currency crisis rages.
Once inflation is taken into account, the interest rate charged by lenders for 35-year bonds hit minus 0.116 per cent – meaning the Government will make rather than lose money on the deal. By contrast, debt-stricken countries in the eurozone are being charged higher and higher rates to borrow.
To make matters worse, ratings agency Fitch warned yesterday that a number of countries – including Italy – could see their credit ratings downgraded by the end of this month. It claimed that Italy is the biggest cause for alarm – and added that bailed-out Greece could crash out of the single currency by the end of the year.
Yet as fears grow about the ability of many European nations to pay their way, Britain and Germany are emerging as the countries of choice for investors seeking shelter from the financial storm.
A source close to Chancellor George Osborne said of yesterday’s events: ‘This reinforces how our plan is delivering fiscal credibility, which in turn is delivering low interest rates for families and businesses up and down the country. Labour would put all that at risk.’
Michael Hewson, an analyst at CMC Markets, said the negative yield – the situation whereby investors must pay to lend – was ‘unusual but indicative of the times we are trading in’. He added: ‘Our economy is not immune to the eurozone troubles, but the UK won’t default because the Bank [of England] will print more money. Whether it will be the same value is another thing, but you will always get your money back.’
Another City analyst, David Buik of BGC Partners, agreed that the auction was a testament to Britain’s strength. ‘It is another classic illustration of a flight to quality created by an immeasurable slew of fear of the unknown,’ he said.
David Miller, a partner at Cheviot Asset Management, said investors ‘view Britain as a safe haven and a beacon of sanity in Europe’. He continued: ‘The low borrowing rate will give us a firm foundation for economic recovery.’
More HERE
**************************
As U.S. home prices fall, more borrowers walk away
When David Martin and his wife bought their north Seattle condo five years ago, they figured they had plenty of time to downsize if they needed to before they retired.
Now, with the property worth roughly $60,000 less than the balance of their mortgage, Martin, 68, has been giving serious thought to just walking away, a process lenders call "strategic default."
"Guilt and morality are one side, and objective financial analysis are on the other side," Martin said. "They're coming to two opposite conclusions. I wonder how many other people are struggling with the same question."
Strategic defaults like the one contemplated by Martin are on the rise. A survey last year by two Chicago-area finance professors, Paola Sapienza at Northwestern University and Luigi Zingales at the University of Chicago, found that roughly three out of 10 mortgage defaults in 2010 were by homeowners who could afford to make their payments, up from 22 percent in 2009.
Researchers point to a number of forces that are driving borrowers to walk away from their mortgages. At the top of the list is the estimated 12 million homes that are underwater, meaning the owners owe more than they are worth.
Until recently, borrowers like Martin and many industry analysts held out hope that a housing recovery would reverse the rising tide of "negative equity." But after stabilizing this summer, home prices began falling again, dropping 7.5 percent in the third quarter alone and leaving more homeowners underwater.
In the early stages of the housing bust, the main causes of defaults included unemployment or other financial setbacks and adjustable mortgages that reset to unaffordable levels, according to researchers. Now, five years into the housing recession, strategic defaults are growing as financially healthy borrowers learn of friends or family who have decided to walk away.
Researchers say strategic default is also more common among borrowers who feel no personal connection to the party on the other end of the transaction. Gone are the days when you walked into a bank and met with a lender who shepherded your application and congratulated you when the loan was approved, said Michael Seiler, a finance professor at Old Dominion University and a co-author of the MBA study.
"If you defaulted, it was like you were defaulting on your friend," he said. "Your kids might go to the same school. You all might go to the same church. And you're constantly reminded of who you're defaulting on."
That scenario is a far cry from the modern system of mortgage finance, where loans are sold over the phone or online, chopped up into pieces and then sold to multiple, anonymous investors. Many underwater homeowners who try to negotiate with their lender can't even find out who owns their loan.
"We're finding that people are much more willing to walk away when the other party is unknown or what you might call a 'bad bank,'" said Seiler. "Those are the ones that received a lot of bailout funds or were active in the subprime market, giving loans to people who couldn't afford them and they knew that."
The mortgage lending industry's widespread reluctance to modify loan terms has also changed homeowner attitudes about walking away, according to Maddux. "They feel much better about doing it if they've tried to contact the lender and the lender won't budge," he said. "They feel justified about it because they've tried to do their best to work it out."
Still, there are much more serious consequences to strategic default than pangs of guilt. Any loan default will damage a borrower's credit score. But some strategic defaulters are finding that the impact isn't as long-lasting as widely believed, according to Maddux. "You don’t destroy your credit, you wound your credit," he said. "Just like a wound, it heals over time."
Maddux said surveys of the roughly 8,000 customers who have signed up for his service in the last four years found that some strategic defaulters are able to restore their credit in as little as a year and a half.
"There's a process to strategic default and a lot of people don't know how to do it," said Kopcak. "They don't really know what their options are. People really need to talk to a lawyer who knows the process."
More HERE
*************************
Leftism Makes You Meaner
Only a fool believes that all those with whom he differs are bad people. Moreover, just about all of us live the reality -- often within our own family -- of knowing good and loving people with whom we strongly differ on political, religious, social and economic issues. That said, I have come to believe that the more committed one is to leftism, the more likely one is to become meaner.
Two examples in just the past week offer compelling evidence.
Prominent left-wing commentators used the way in which Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of one of their children to attack -- make that mock -- the former Pennsylvania senator.
In a lifetime of observing and participating in political debate, I have seen a lot of meanness. But one just assumes that some things -- not many, just some -- are off limits to political pundits and activists. Among these few things, one has to believe, is the death of a child. But I was wrong.
In 1996, Karen Santorum gave birth to a premature baby boy who died two hours later. After spending the night in the hospital with their baby son between them, the grieving parents brought the lifeless infant home for a brief period because, Santorum explained, it was important to them for their other children to "know they had a brother." The Santorums didn't want Gabriel Michael Santorum to be an abstraction to his siblings.
First, Alan Colmes on Fox News: "Once (voters) get a load of some of the crazy things he's said and done, like taking his 2-hour-old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real ..."
Colmes was then interrupted by Rich Lowry: "You are mocking him. They lost a child, Alan. That's very serious and it's not something you should be mocking on national TV." Colmes' response: "I'm not mocking the losing of the child. But what I'm saying is I think it shows a certain unusual attitude toward taking a 2-hour-baby home who died to play with his other children."
In addition to engaging in a cheap and mean shot, Colmes simply made up the notion that the Santorums had brought the baby home for their other children "to play with."
The next day, Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer-Prize winning left-wing columnist for The Washington Post, said on MSNBC, Santorum is "not a little weird. He's really weird. Some of his positions he's taken are just so weird that I think some Republicans are going to be off-put. Not everybody is going to be down, for example, with the story of how he and his wife handled the stillborn child whose body they took home to kind of sleep with and introduce to the rest of the family. It's a very weird story."
Four times Robinson calls Santorum "weird," using the story about the death of the child as evidence. He was wrong on an important detail -- the child was not "stillborn." And, like Colmes, he made up a mocking detail -- that they took the child home "to kind of sleep with."
The meanness of these comments is self-evident, as Alan Colmes realized and later apologized to Santorum. Robinson, on the other hand, never apologized -- as RealClearPolitics, which has no political agenda, correctly reported -- even though repeatedly challenged to do so on MSNBC.
I raise these issues for only one reason: to provide further evidence of my belief that leftism makes more than a few of its adherents meaner people.
I have had many interactions with Alan Colmes, and while we always differ, I never found him to be mean-spirited. I still don't think he is mean-spirited, and though I am not the directly offended party, like Santorum, I accept his apology, because I believe he meant it.
So why did he say what he said? Because leftism fills many of its adherents with contempt and hatred. It takes a person of great character and self-control to continually imbibe and mouth the mantras of the left -- that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, islamophobic, racist and bigoted -- and not become a meaner human being. If I believed just about everyone with left-wing views was despicable, I would be meaner, too.
In a previous column, I wrote about Thomas Friedman making one of the classic anti-Semitic libels when he wrote that the reason the Senate and the House gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing ovations was because "that ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby."
How does a Jew write an anti-Semitic libel? Because he's on the left. That was the reason Rep. Andre Carson said that members of Congress who support the Tea Party want to see blacks "hanging on a tree." Because he's on the left.
Leftists' meanness toward those with whom they differ has no echo on the normative right. Those on the left need to do some soul-searching. Because as long as they continue to believe that people on the right are not merely wrong but vile, they will get increasingly mean. The problem for the left, however, is that the moment it stops painting the right as vile, it has to argue the issues.
SOURCE
****************************
Retiring Mississippi governor pardons four savage killers
A disgusting RINO. He's got a very mixed record as a Republican. More like an old Southern Democrat. A real "Good ol' boy"
Governor Haley Barbour, who is not seeking reelection, outraged victims' families by pardoning four murderers, one of whom had been denied parole just two weeks earlier.
All four convicted killers were trusties who worked in the Governor's Mansion, cooking, cleaning, and performing other tasks. According to MSNBC, Barbour said back in 2008 that pardoning criminals who worked in the governor's home was a long standing tradition in Mississippi.
Neither Barbour, who leaves office today, nor the Mississippi government publicized the pardons. But the families of the victims were notified by the Mississippi Department of Corrections that the men had been released last Sunday. It was family members who went to the media.
The pardon that caused the greatest controversy was that of David Gatlin, 40. Gatlin had applied for parole; an application that was just denied by the Mississippi Parole Board on Dec. 27.
In 1993, Gatlin broke into a residence, put a gun to the head of his estranged wife, Tammy Ellis Gatlin, and pulled the trigger, killing her. At the time she was shot, she was holding her 2-month-old son. Gatlin then shot Tammy's friend, Randy Walker, also in the head. Walker survived his injuries.
In 1994 Gatlin was convicted and was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. He was also sentenced to 20 years in jail for aggravated assault and 10 years for residential burglary. But apparently Barbour was pleased with the work Gatlin did in the Governor's Mansion so he pardoned him. According to the Mississippi Department of Corrections, Gatlin had been working at the governor's residence since Nov. 19, 2009.
The Jackson Clarion-Ledger quoted Crystal Walker, Randy Walker's wife, as saying her family was notified last Friday that Gatlin had been denied parole. The next day they found out he was about to be pardoned. Said Crystal: "On parole he'd at least have to check in and have some supervision. Now he could live beside us, or we could run into him at Walmart. You're always looking over your shoulder."
Tiffany Ellis Brewer, Tammy's sister, said: "He shot her in the head while she was holding a baby. He's a cold-blooded murderer."
But according to Barbour, Gatlin "proved to be a diligent and dedicated workman."
The other three killers pardoned by the governor were Joseph Ozment, Anthony McCray, and Charles Hooker. All three men committed murder in the early 1990s. McCray killed his wife while Ozment killed a man in the course of a robbery.
The state's Democrats announced they will be introducing legislation to prevent future governors from doing what the outgoing Republican governor did. Under the proposals, public hearings would have to be held before someone with a felony conviction could receive a pardon.
SOURCE
**************************
ELSEWHERE
Obama’s power grab sets precedent Democrats will regret: "What's next? Appointing executive branch officials when the Senate is taking a lunch or bathroom break? In November 2007, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared the Senate in pro forma session for the two-week Thanksgiving break. Every three days, a handful of senators would gavel the Senate into session and gavel it out just a few minutes later. ... Republicans were furious at this deliberate ploy to keep Bush from making recess appointments by never declaring a formal recess."
Why the movie studios and record companies want to kill YouTube — SOPA ain’t what you think it is!: "In 10 years it’s a dead cinch Freddie will be directing more and better full-blown movies. No question. Will there be a studio as his 'master?' I’d bet against it! He might well cut deals with direct-to-online outlets like Hulu, or sell exclusive-for-a-while rights to anybody from Netflix to DirecTV, and later break out completely into theaters. THIS is the threat the major media sees out of Youtube -- not piracy!"
*************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
****************************
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Obama’s lost labor force
Or how to lie with statistics
Since Barack Obama assumed office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total population over age 16 has grown by 5.845 million to 240.5 million, and yet, since then, the civilian labor force has actually shrunk by 349,000 — from about 154.2 million to 153.8 million.
This is a startling contradiction, and it is at the heart of why the unemployment rate is much higher than the 8.5 percent being reported.
The problem is that the measured civilian labor force participation rate has fallen from 65.7 percent to 64 percent since Jan. 2009, reflecting people who have lost hope and simply stopped looking for work. If those people were still counted, the actual civilian labor force would be 4.176 million higher than is reported at about 158 million.
Based on this analysis, the number of unemployed is actually closer to 17 million instead of the 13 million reported jobless. That is simply astounding.
Instead of 8.5 percent, the effective unemployment rate should be closer to 10.9 percent, and the underemployed closer to 17.4 percent, or 27.3 million. This is what we mean when we say that the unemployment rate is no longer a valid economic indicator.
Propaganda is not going to get the real unemployed into jobs. It’s not going to help families keep their homes. It’s not going to help college graduates to enter the work force. We’re nowhere near where we should be, and it’s Obama’s fault.
It’s his regulatory burdens that are being imposed through the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) carbon endangerment finding and through Obamacare. It is he who is insisting on raising taxes on job creators, and playing class warfare to cobble together a constituency that wants to apparently take from their employers’ purses. It is Obama who has refused to get the nation’s crushing debt load under control, where the $15.2 trillion national debt is nearly larger than the entire economy.
To get the economy moving again, the government needs to slash corporate tax rates, which are the highest in the world of advanced economies. It is imperative that the regulatory overkill come to an end. The dollar needs to be strengthened to lower costs and stabilize energy and food costs. The debt needs to be paid down and retired, and the budget balanced. Onerous federal securities laws and state-by-state blue sky laws need to be repealed that make it cost-ineffective for new businesses to raise capital.
In short, it must become competitive to do business here in America again. And that will probably not happen so long as Obama is in office. It is clear the nation needs new leadership that is intent on actually creating jobs and restoring hope, instead of ignoring the despair of Obama’s lost labor force.
SOURCE
*********************
Obama Supports the Muslim Brotherhood
Not only is the Obama administration, as I’ve written for the last year, favoring radical Islamist forces — despite the fact that these are anti-Western, pro-terrorism, building dictatorships, and openly antisemitic and anti-Christian — but now even the establishment media is admitting it.
A friend of mine said, “Oh, they are probably saying that the Brotherhood is sounding radical publicly but privately reassuring U.S. officials that they are moderate.”
“No,” I replied. “That’s the old way of doing things when it was important to be, or at least to pretend to be, somewhat balanced. Now they say that the Brotherhood sounds moderate both publicly — ignoring all evidence to the contrary — and privately. Those who disagree are merely Republicans trying to defeat Obama in the election, and so should be ignored. The mass media today in such matters is worse than our worst nightmares of a decade ago.”
And so for the first time in U.S. history an American government, to the applause of the vast majority of the mass media, is backing an anti-American authoritarian movement. Here’s how the New York Times explains it:
Any serious foreign policy analyst should see three red flags in the above sentence.
First, of course the U.S. government must deal with Egypt’s government, but that doesn’t mean it should publicly proclaim that the Brotherhood is a nice group and give what amounts to an unconditional endorsement of it.
Indeed, the Obama administration and media are using a cheap trick. They confuse the proper, responsible policy of dealing with those in power while doing something quite beyond that: a self-destructive policy of rushing to insist that sworn enemies of freedom and the United States are really nice guys and there’s no problem with having them in power.
As I’ve written before, it’s possible to elect a dictatorship. The Egyptian people have a right to do so, but that doesn’t mean the West should like it.
Doesn’t anyone remember that the Obama administration has been apologizing for all the bad regimes America supported in the past? Now Obama is using the exact same argument: claiming that we must be nice to them because they are in power. What’s the difference between that and the historic relationship to the Mubarak regime? At least Mubarak supported U.S. interests. These people don’t. They have openly supported murdering Americans, especially in Iraq!
In 1979, an Islamist revolution occurred in Iran. The United States quickly recognized that new regime and tried to be buddies with it. We all know how that worked out.
Second, why should the burden of reversing “decades of mistrust and hostility” be exclusively on the United States? Doesn’t the Brotherhood, which benefits from U.S. engagement, need to do that also or even beforehand? Why is there no conditionality here, no hint that the Obama administration or New York Times understands how hostile the Brotherhood has been and continues to be? If the U.S. president won’t demand a quid pro quo (something in exchange for his concessions), who is going to look after U.S. interests?
Third, by saying the Brotherhood was “once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to United States interests,” the author suggests this is no longer true. We know that the Obama administration thinks the Brotherhood has changed. Yet there is no evidence in terms of deeds, ideology, or statement made in Arabic that the Brotherhood has done so.
Thus, Obama has given away all U.S. leverage and assets beforehand, just as he did by announcing a year ago, during the revolution’s opening days, that he would be happy to accept a Muslim Brotherhood government.
So the Brotherhood’s moderation is assumed. The science is settled; the debate is over.
Wow, yes that’s it. The Obama administration believes what the Brotherhood says and not what has been said by Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and others including many moderate Egyptians. No one has bothered to look at the actual radical record of Brotherhood lawmakers in the last parliament! Obama has chosen his friends and he’s on the wrong side.
This is nonsense. Of course, the military has used force, though rarely deadly force. But what evidence is there that the military wants “permanent political powers”? On two occasions it put forth some demands and then retreated within a few hours when pushed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet even when moderates protested in the thousands, the army either ignored them or broke up the demonstrations.
Doesn’t this tell you something?
In fact, the administration has only criticized and pressured the army, not the Islamists. So here’s an understatement:
It only took a year to figure that out. Yes, the Brotherhood gains more support because of U.S. policy. Some Egyptians argue the Americans back the Brotherhood, so they might as well join the winning side. Others argue that the Brotherhood has intimidated the Americans, so they are heroes who should be supported.
In other words, Obama isn’t just observing but is affecting events. Now, note how the Obama administration avoids this issue:
“It would be `totally impractical’ not to engage the ‘Brotherhood because of U.S. security and regional interests in Europe,’ a senior administration official” said. But we are not talking about holding talks, we’re talking about becoming apologists for Islamism, a position announced and defended in a detailed explanation by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It is entirely predictable that as the revolutionary Islamists take anti-American and dictatorial stances, the Western media will underreport them and the Obama administration will ignore them, if only to defend the mistaken ideas they hold and the mistaken policy Obama has staked out.
Notice the use of the word “engage.” Earlier, the Obama administration spent much of its effort engaging Iran and Syria, claiming this was necessary. One thing about this president, and the complicit media, is that they never examine past failures when the precise same strategy is repeated (domestic example: “stimulus” followed by “jobs bill”).
How do we supposedly know the Brotherhood is moderate? Because that is what it tells the Western journalists and diplomats. But that’s not what it tells the Egyptian people or its own members: “the official said.…`They’ve been very specific about conveying a moderate message’….” Indeed, the State Department tells us that the Brotherhood has pledged to maintain “universal human rights” and previous Egyptian government commitments, presumably the peace treaty with Israel.
And, of course, the Brotherhood would never lie to U.S. officials in secret, easily deniable and non-binding chats that run totally contrary to the policies its leaders have advocated every day for decades (including the same week as this New York Times article appeared) and that fit its ideology. The fact that they doubt Obama would do anything about it if they trampled those commitments also makes them less likely to keep such promises.
The fact that Senator John Kerry is leading this effort is even scarier. He has been wrong about every Middle Eastern issue, notably his failed engagement policy with Syria and Iran. Might Kerry learn something from this experience about how radical forces can lie to you and manipulate you into supporting their repressive regimes? Of course not.
Will anyone in the mass media compare Kerry’s positions on engaging Iran and Syria with his making the same mistake now by engaging the Arab Islamists?
Again, of course not. So the public won’t hear people say: Hey, hasn’t this policy already failed twice under this administration?
Kerry’s foolishness is endless. He told the reporter, “The Brotherhood’s leaders said they were eager to work with the United States and other Western countries, especially in economic areas.” Oh, they want American money. If that doesn’t prove they’re moderate, what does?
And here’s an interesting twist, the kind of thing that makes the New York Times the kind of newspaper it is:
Did you catch that? First, the Republicans (boo!) will criticize Obama without any basis and, second, the real mistake was that the United States (Bush?) should have engaged Islamists even sooner!
So the idea that Obama is wrong about the Brotherhood is dismissed as mere partisanship. Thus, there need be no actual discussion of whether this charge is true! The Times readers are conditioned to reject anything associated with Republicans. The idea that Obama let (I prefer the words “helped,” cheered,” and “declared harmless”) Islamists take over a pivotal ally is now officially banished. And if you hear someone say otherwise, know that he is a Republican trying to sabotage Obama so ignore that person. Immediately put hands over ears.
Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, is the person quoted as arguing that the United States missed chances to build ties to “moderate Islamists” earlier. Should America apologize for keeping the Brotherhood waiting? And what about the effort to build ties with “moderate Islamists” like Hizballah, the Iran regime, and Syria’s government which is not Islamist but allied with the Islamist bloc?
But here’s Hamid’s really interesting point: “Now the Brotherhood knows it is in a stronger position and it is almost as if the U.S. is chasing them and they are sitting pretty.”
Yes, that’s it. They view Obama policy not as one of friendship but of weakness. Thus, they will make no concession — except patience and mouthing soothing words in English — in the pursuit of their radical, anti-American agenda.
SOURCE
************************
Bibi and Barack
Personality conflicts between the American president and the Israeli prime minister don’t bode well for the US-Israel relationship.
Barack Obama has an Israel problem. Almost three years in, the US president still can’t decide whether he wants to pander to the Israeli prime minister or pressure him. The approach of the 2012 elections makes the former almost mandatory; the president’s reelection may make the latter possible.
Buckle your seat belts. Unless Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu find a way to cooperate on a big venture that makes both of them look good, and in a way that allows each to invest in the other, the US-Israel relationship may be in for a bumpy ride.
The president’s view of Israel is situated in two fundamental realities. The first is structural and is linked to the way Obama sees the world; the second is more situational and is driven by his view of Netanyahu and Israeli policies. Together they have created and sustained a deep level of frustration bordering on anger.
Unlike his two predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn’t in love with the idea of Israel.
Intellectually he understands and supports the pro-Israeli trope – small democratic nation with dark past confronts huge existential threats – but it’s really a head thing.
Clinton and Bush were enamored emotionally with Israel’s story and the prime ministers who narrated it.
Clinton sat at the feet of Yitzhak Rabin – the authentic leader and hero in peace and war – as a student sits in thrall of a brilliant professor. (Some even said like a son to a father). “I had come to love him,” the former president wrote in his memoirs, ”as I had rarely loved another man.”
And George W. Bush, though often frustrated in the extreme with Ariel Sharon, loved his stories of biblical history and more contemporary war tales. Bush reacted – as he did on so many issues – from his gut, certainly when it came to Israel’s security. While flying with Sharon over Israel’s narrow waist, the then-governor said, “We have driveways in Texas longer than that.”
The tendency to look at Israel analytically instead of emotionally, and to view the conflict through a national-interest prism rather than some sort of moral filter, dovetails with Obama’s poisonous relationship with Netanyahu. Obama doesn't like him, doesn’t trust him and views him as a con man. The Israeli prime minister has frustrated and embarrassed Obama and gotten in the way of the president’s wildly exaggerated hopes for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he’s been pursuing with more enthusiasm than viable strategy since his inauguration. To make matters worse, when the president went after a settlements freeze, Netanyahu called his bluff and Obama backed down – a terrible humiliation.
In the end, the Barack-Bibi relationship is likely headed south because the trust and capacity to give each other the benefit of the doubt has long ago evaporated.
More HERE
*************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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)
****************************
Or how to lie with statistics
Since Barack Obama assumed office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total population over age 16 has grown by 5.845 million to 240.5 million, and yet, since then, the civilian labor force has actually shrunk by 349,000 — from about 154.2 million to 153.8 million.
This is a startling contradiction, and it is at the heart of why the unemployment rate is much higher than the 8.5 percent being reported.
The problem is that the measured civilian labor force participation rate has fallen from 65.7 percent to 64 percent since Jan. 2009, reflecting people who have lost hope and simply stopped looking for work. If those people were still counted, the actual civilian labor force would be 4.176 million higher than is reported at about 158 million.
Based on this analysis, the number of unemployed is actually closer to 17 million instead of the 13 million reported jobless. That is simply astounding.
Instead of 8.5 percent, the effective unemployment rate should be closer to 10.9 percent, and the underemployed closer to 17.4 percent, or 27.3 million. This is what we mean when we say that the unemployment rate is no longer a valid economic indicator.
Propaganda is not going to get the real unemployed into jobs. It’s not going to help families keep their homes. It’s not going to help college graduates to enter the work force. We’re nowhere near where we should be, and it’s Obama’s fault.
It’s his regulatory burdens that are being imposed through the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) carbon endangerment finding and through Obamacare. It is he who is insisting on raising taxes on job creators, and playing class warfare to cobble together a constituency that wants to apparently take from their employers’ purses. It is Obama who has refused to get the nation’s crushing debt load under control, where the $15.2 trillion national debt is nearly larger than the entire economy.
To get the economy moving again, the government needs to slash corporate tax rates, which are the highest in the world of advanced economies. It is imperative that the regulatory overkill come to an end. The dollar needs to be strengthened to lower costs and stabilize energy and food costs. The debt needs to be paid down and retired, and the budget balanced. Onerous federal securities laws and state-by-state blue sky laws need to be repealed that make it cost-ineffective for new businesses to raise capital.
In short, it must become competitive to do business here in America again. And that will probably not happen so long as Obama is in office. It is clear the nation needs new leadership that is intent on actually creating jobs and restoring hope, instead of ignoring the despair of Obama’s lost labor force.
SOURCE
*********************
Obama Supports the Muslim Brotherhood
Not only is the Obama administration, as I’ve written for the last year, favoring radical Islamist forces — despite the fact that these are anti-Western, pro-terrorism, building dictatorships, and openly antisemitic and anti-Christian — but now even the establishment media is admitting it.
A friend of mine said, “Oh, they are probably saying that the Brotherhood is sounding radical publicly but privately reassuring U.S. officials that they are moderate.”
“No,” I replied. “That’s the old way of doing things when it was important to be, or at least to pretend to be, somewhat balanced. Now they say that the Brotherhood sounds moderate both publicly — ignoring all evidence to the contrary — and privately. Those who disagree are merely Republicans trying to defeat Obama in the election, and so should be ignored. The mass media today in such matters is worse than our worst nightmares of a decade ago.”
And so for the first time in U.S. history an American government, to the applause of the vast majority of the mass media, is backing an anti-American authoritarian movement. Here’s how the New York Times explains it:
The Obama administration has begun to reverse decades of mistrust and hostility as it seeks to forge closer ties with an organization [the Muslim Brotherhood] once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to United States interests.
Any serious foreign policy analyst should see three red flags in the above sentence.
First, of course the U.S. government must deal with Egypt’s government, but that doesn’t mean it should publicly proclaim that the Brotherhood is a nice group and give what amounts to an unconditional endorsement of it.
Indeed, the Obama administration and media are using a cheap trick. They confuse the proper, responsible policy of dealing with those in power while doing something quite beyond that: a self-destructive policy of rushing to insist that sworn enemies of freedom and the United States are really nice guys and there’s no problem with having them in power.
As I’ve written before, it’s possible to elect a dictatorship. The Egyptian people have a right to do so, but that doesn’t mean the West should like it.
Doesn’t anyone remember that the Obama administration has been apologizing for all the bad regimes America supported in the past? Now Obama is using the exact same argument: claiming that we must be nice to them because they are in power. What’s the difference between that and the historic relationship to the Mubarak regime? At least Mubarak supported U.S. interests. These people don’t. They have openly supported murdering Americans, especially in Iraq!
In 1979, an Islamist revolution occurred in Iran. The United States quickly recognized that new regime and tried to be buddies with it. We all know how that worked out.
Second, why should the burden of reversing “decades of mistrust and hostility” be exclusively on the United States? Doesn’t the Brotherhood, which benefits from U.S. engagement, need to do that also or even beforehand? Why is there no conditionality here, no hint that the Obama administration or New York Times understands how hostile the Brotherhood has been and continues to be? If the U.S. president won’t demand a quid pro quo (something in exchange for his concessions), who is going to look after U.S. interests?
Third, by saying the Brotherhood was “once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to United States interests,” the author suggests this is no longer true. We know that the Obama administration thinks the Brotherhood has changed. Yet there is no evidence in terms of deeds, ideology, or statement made in Arabic that the Brotherhood has done so.
Thus, Obama has given away all U.S. leverage and assets beforehand, just as he did by announcing a year ago, during the revolution’s opening days, that he would be happy to accept a Muslim Brotherhood government.
So the Brotherhood’s moderation is assumed. The science is settled; the debate is over.
The reversal also reflects the administration’s growing acceptance of the Brotherhood’s repeated assurances that its lawmakers want to build a modern democracy that will respect individual freedoms, free markets and international commitments, including Egypt’s treaty with Israel.
Wow, yes that’s it. The Obama administration believes what the Brotherhood says and not what has been said by Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and others including many moderate Egyptians. No one has bothered to look at the actual radical record of Brotherhood lawmakers in the last parliament! Obama has chosen his friends and he’s on the wrong side.
And at the same time it underscores Washington’s increasing frustration with Egypt’s military rulers, who have sought to carve out permanent political powers for themselves and used deadly force against protesters seeking an end to their rule.
This is nonsense. Of course, the military has used force, though rarely deadly force. But what evidence is there that the military wants “permanent political powers”? On two occasions it put forth some demands and then retreated within a few hours when pushed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet even when moderates protested in the thousands, the army either ignored them or broke up the demonstrations.
Doesn’t this tell you something?
In fact, the administration has only criticized and pressured the army, not the Islamists. So here’s an understatement:
…As the Brotherhood moves toward an expected showdown with the military…over who should control the interim government — the newly elected Parliament or the ruling military council — the administration’s public outreach to the Brotherhood could give the Islamic movement in Egypt important support. It could also confer greater international legitimacy on the Brotherhood.
It only took a year to figure that out. Yes, the Brotherhood gains more support because of U.S. policy. Some Egyptians argue the Americans back the Brotherhood, so they might as well join the winning side. Others argue that the Brotherhood has intimidated the Americans, so they are heroes who should be supported.
In other words, Obama isn’t just observing but is affecting events. Now, note how the Obama administration avoids this issue:
“It would be `totally impractical’ not to engage the ‘Brotherhood because of U.S. security and regional interests in Europe,’ a senior administration official” said. But we are not talking about holding talks, we’re talking about becoming apologists for Islamism, a position announced and defended in a detailed explanation by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It is entirely predictable that as the revolutionary Islamists take anti-American and dictatorial stances, the Western media will underreport them and the Obama administration will ignore them, if only to defend the mistaken ideas they hold and the mistaken policy Obama has staked out.
Notice the use of the word “engage.” Earlier, the Obama administration spent much of its effort engaging Iran and Syria, claiming this was necessary. One thing about this president, and the complicit media, is that they never examine past failures when the precise same strategy is repeated (domestic example: “stimulus” followed by “jobs bill”).
How do we supposedly know the Brotherhood is moderate? Because that is what it tells the Western journalists and diplomats. But that’s not what it tells the Egyptian people or its own members: “the official said.…`They’ve been very specific about conveying a moderate message’….” Indeed, the State Department tells us that the Brotherhood has pledged to maintain “universal human rights” and previous Egyptian government commitments, presumably the peace treaty with Israel.
And, of course, the Brotherhood would never lie to U.S. officials in secret, easily deniable and non-binding chats that run totally contrary to the policies its leaders have advocated every day for decades (including the same week as this New York Times article appeared) and that fit its ideology. The fact that they doubt Obama would do anything about it if they trampled those commitments also makes them less likely to keep such promises.
The fact that Senator John Kerry is leading this effort is even scarier. He has been wrong about every Middle Eastern issue, notably his failed engagement policy with Syria and Iran. Might Kerry learn something from this experience about how radical forces can lie to you and manipulate you into supporting their repressive regimes? Of course not.
Will anyone in the mass media compare Kerry’s positions on engaging Iran and Syria with his making the same mistake now by engaging the Arab Islamists?
Again, of course not. So the public won’t hear people say: Hey, hasn’t this policy already failed twice under this administration?
Kerry’s foolishness is endless. He told the reporter, “The Brotherhood’s leaders said they were eager to work with the United States and other Western countries, especially in economic areas.” Oh, they want American money. If that doesn’t prove they’re moderate, what does?
And here’s an interesting twist, the kind of thing that makes the New York Times the kind of newspaper it is:
“The administration’s willingness to engage with the Brotherhood could open President Obama to new attacks by Republicans who are already accusing him letting Islamists take over a pivotal ally. Some analysts, though, said the overtures amounted to a tacit admission that the United States should have begun such outreach to the region’s Islamist opposition long ago.”
Did you catch that? First, the Republicans (boo!) will criticize Obama without any basis and, second, the real mistake was that the United States (Bush?) should have engaged Islamists even sooner!
So the idea that Obama is wrong about the Brotherhood is dismissed as mere partisanship. Thus, there need be no actual discussion of whether this charge is true! The Times readers are conditioned to reject anything associated with Republicans. The idea that Obama let (I prefer the words “helped,” cheered,” and “declared harmless”) Islamists take over a pivotal ally is now officially banished. And if you hear someone say otherwise, know that he is a Republican trying to sabotage Obama so ignore that person. Immediately put hands over ears.
Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, is the person quoted as arguing that the United States missed chances to build ties to “moderate Islamists” earlier. Should America apologize for keeping the Brotherhood waiting? And what about the effort to build ties with “moderate Islamists” like Hizballah, the Iran regime, and Syria’s government which is not Islamist but allied with the Islamist bloc?
But here’s Hamid’s really interesting point: “Now the Brotherhood knows it is in a stronger position and it is almost as if the U.S. is chasing them and they are sitting pretty.”
Yes, that’s it. They view Obama policy not as one of friendship but of weakness. Thus, they will make no concession — except patience and mouthing soothing words in English — in the pursuit of their radical, anti-American agenda.
SOURCE
************************
Bibi and Barack
Personality conflicts between the American president and the Israeli prime minister don’t bode well for the US-Israel relationship.
Barack Obama has an Israel problem. Almost three years in, the US president still can’t decide whether he wants to pander to the Israeli prime minister or pressure him. The approach of the 2012 elections makes the former almost mandatory; the president’s reelection may make the latter possible.
Buckle your seat belts. Unless Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu find a way to cooperate on a big venture that makes both of them look good, and in a way that allows each to invest in the other, the US-Israel relationship may be in for a bumpy ride.
The president’s view of Israel is situated in two fundamental realities. The first is structural and is linked to the way Obama sees the world; the second is more situational and is driven by his view of Netanyahu and Israeli policies. Together they have created and sustained a deep level of frustration bordering on anger.
Unlike his two predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn’t in love with the idea of Israel.
Intellectually he understands and supports the pro-Israeli trope – small democratic nation with dark past confronts huge existential threats – but it’s really a head thing.
Clinton and Bush were enamored emotionally with Israel’s story and the prime ministers who narrated it.
Clinton sat at the feet of Yitzhak Rabin – the authentic leader and hero in peace and war – as a student sits in thrall of a brilliant professor. (Some even said like a son to a father). “I had come to love him,” the former president wrote in his memoirs, ”as I had rarely loved another man.”
And George W. Bush, though often frustrated in the extreme with Ariel Sharon, loved his stories of biblical history and more contemporary war tales. Bush reacted – as he did on so many issues – from his gut, certainly when it came to Israel’s security. While flying with Sharon over Israel’s narrow waist, the then-governor said, “We have driveways in Texas longer than that.”
The tendency to look at Israel analytically instead of emotionally, and to view the conflict through a national-interest prism rather than some sort of moral filter, dovetails with Obama’s poisonous relationship with Netanyahu. Obama doesn't like him, doesn’t trust him and views him as a con man. The Israeli prime minister has frustrated and embarrassed Obama and gotten in the way of the president’s wildly exaggerated hopes for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he’s been pursuing with more enthusiasm than viable strategy since his inauguration. To make matters worse, when the president went after a settlements freeze, Netanyahu called his bluff and Obama backed down – a terrible humiliation.
In the end, the Barack-Bibi relationship is likely headed south because the trust and capacity to give each other the benefit of the doubt has long ago evaporated.
More HERE
*************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. 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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