Rebecca Hagelin
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
"Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy." - Psalm 82:3
"To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice." - Proverbs 21:3
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What beautiful scripture verses. The Bible is filled with verses that call on us to do all in our power as individuals to fight what is unjust and to show His mercy on the oppressed, down-trodden and broken-hearted.
But it is in such powerful callings that appeal to what is highest and best in us that the forces of evil often insidiously weave in their lies and hatred, perverting the meaning of the lovely words. Satan doesn't usually come to us through red cloak and dagger with flaming horns and hatred spewing from his mouth. He most often takes on the form, as the Bible warns us, of an "angel of light".
The latest such successful attempt to spread hatred and violence has been to take that wonderful call to "justice" and insert one word in front of it that makes it "better" - as in, "social justice".
The Left has long been a master of the use of verbiage and language. Who could be against "choice", for instance? We all want more "choices" right? The reality is that the attractive word of "choice" was cleverly chosen to hide the ugliness of what the choice is about - allowing mothers to freely kill their pre-born babies. (Watch for decent Americans everywhere to be swept up in the coming months - without ever critically thinking about it - into supporting one of President Obama's favorite government decrees, the 'Freedom of Choice Act", which would wipe out all parental notification, parental consent and informed consent laws passed on the state level.) It's so much easier in this busy world to just nod in agreement to lovely sounding terms than it is to painfully look beyond the headlines and clever jargon and discover the demons underneath the pretty packaging. After all, if you find evil....then you have to stop and fight it, right? Most prefer the peaceful life of ignorance.
David Kupelian, managing editor of WorldNetDaily.com, wrote one of the best books I've ever seen on how the Left uses clever wording and deceptive language to market their socialist ideas. It's a must-read for anyone scratching their heads over how those who believe in traditional Judeo-Christian values seem to always be playing catch-up in the war of ideas. In "The Marketing of Evil", Kupelian painstakingly documents the process and practices the Left has mastered to dupe good Americans into carrying the poisonous waters of socialism, immorality and...just plain evil.
Which brings me back to the now popular term, "social justice". The combination of these words makes one feel so good. But it's time to pull back the curtain and find out what the term has come to mean, how it has been able to gain such massive popularity, and who is behind it.
Can you say, "William Ayers"?
Yes, that William Ayers. The same guy that planted bombs in the Pentagon and US Capitol as part of his efforts to use hatred and violence to overthrow the free-market system and replace it with a socialist one through his now infamous organization, "Weather Underground". Government officials basically botched the investigation against him through the improper collection of evidence and Ayers walked away from his terrorist activities a free man. Later he proudly exclaimed, "Guilty as hell. Free as a bird."
Knowing that decent Americans were growing weary of the radical protests by liberals in the 60's and 70's, Ayers cleverly decided to adopt a new tactic for the spreading of his socialist agenda: use the massive government education system. Ayers knew that 89 percent of America's children are educated in the government schools. He knew that parents are often all-too-willing to just hand their kids over to "professional educators" eight hours a day without ever bothering to read their textbooks. He knew that many of the people who go into education do so with altruistic motives, and that if you capture them as young adults in education colleges you can easily warp their thinking. He knew that the teacher's union (NEA) is an incredibly left-leaning organization that pressures all teachers to follow the "status quo". He knew how easy it is to manipulate the hearts and minds of boys and girls who will be in the system the majority of their waking hours throughout their formative years. Yes, the path was very clear: systematically indoctrinate teachers through educational training programs and the books you give them, and you can use them to then produce an army of young men and women to carry forth revolution in just one generation. So, as Phyllis Schlafly documents in The Phyllis Schlafly Report, (available at www.eagleforum.org), "Ayers enrolled in Columbia Teachers College where he picked up a Ph.D., and emerged as a Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago." Since then, his influence in education has been remarkable - which of course, has made him incredibly influential in the culture at large, and especially among today's young adults - without their even knowing it. The Manhattan Institute's Sol Stern has said that William Ayers is one of the leaders in "bringing radical social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms."
The 2008 election saw that the young people in Evangelical churches had been duped by the teaching of Ayers' and company brand of "social justice". A whopping 32 percent of 18-29 year-old evangelicals voted for Barak Obama even though he advocates abortion on demand, including the killing of babies who have survived botched abortions. What was the attraction? Many of them listed Obama's concern for "social justice" as the reason for supporting the Senator who would-be savior. Among all 18-29 year-old voters, 2008 post-elections surveys reveal that a full 70 percent of them favor expanding the role of government and want the federal government to be more active.
What is Ayers brand of "social justice" that now permeates our schools and society at large? It is a perversion of what Scripture calls for. If you read his text books and those of his compatriots, you know that he uses the term to call for overthrowing the free-market system - which affords equal opportunity for everyone - and replacing it with a system that forces the "redistribution of wealth" - and he's not afraid to use violence, hatred and class warfare to do it. He believes that America as a nation is today unjust and oppressive. He freely admits that he is a "communist street fighter". His courses, recommended books (such as Queering Elementary Education) and theories are now widely adopted at teacher's colleges around the country. Part of Ayer's success has been to first teach such messages of hatred and racism in inner-city schools. But like everything else from the spread of violent rap music, to the "gangsta clothing" styles and the attitudes that go with them, to the problems of out of wedlock sex and pregnancy, when you take advantage of disadvantaged kids and feed the problems, those ills eventually spread into the suburban communities as well. (Star Parker, the founder of CURE - the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education - is an expert on the subject of how "The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner-cities, dysfunctional inner-city schools, and broken black families." She has also writes and speaks extensively on how such problems eventually spread throughout all of American culture.)
So, the next time you hear the phrase, "social justice", take time to question the one who is using it, and challenge them to read some of the resources I have mentioned above. Maybe their motives are pure and they are using the word "justice" in its classic, biblical sense. But chances are they have no idea that the vision of justice that has taken their hearts captive was perpetrated by a terrorist who is using their good will to spread his hatred and to bring forth a more authoritative government where the individual is held captive to a few elitists with ultimate power.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Alas, The Constitution
Bill Murchison
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The mind boggles, and then again, maybe it doesn't, having become what you might call boggle-proof over repeated assertions of federal government power to do this and do that, whatever you please, don't bother asking.
The newest proof -- anyway as of Monday -- was the Obama administration's plan to fix General Motors and Chrysler through bankruptcy filings and the Lord only knows what else.
At such a spectacle there wasn't room to wonder after the administration told the chairman of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, to scram, get lost.
Is there anything at all, we might ask at this dramatic passage in U.S. history, that the U.S. government doesn't feel fully empowered to do? Nothing suggests itself, which is a big part of the tragedy of our times.
I invite the reader to gaze higher than mere Events usually cause us to gaze, and to look at what is going on. Every supposed constitutional limit one can think of is falling without remark, far less protest. The American people seem to have made up their minds, presumably without bothering to exercise them, to the effect that the Constitution doesn't divide or limit power the way we were once taught.
That old piece of parchment carefully delineated powers. The federal government, by advance arrangement, could do specific things. Others it couldn't do. A role remained for the states, stipulated in the 10th amendment. Good taste and a healthy measure of modesty on the part of the executive and legislative branches were supposed to restrain the illegitimate exercise of powers illegitimately assumed.
Of course it never worked perfectly. Thomas Jefferson, anti-centralist as he was, stretched the meaning of the treaty power so that he might purchase Louisiana. It was a good lick, in many ways, but it showed that the Constitution, as a brake on the exercise of power, had its limits. Over the decades, the Constitution barely changed, save through the accretion of amendments like the one authorizing an income tax. What changed was the disposition of the Constitution's interpreters to decide that A Good Idea just had to be constitutional. Vigilance relaxed. Congress and the President got in the habit of doing pretty much what they wanted. Our luck was that much of the time they chose not to do the outrageous.
Like kick out a corporation executive? One could say that if Washington, D.C., was bankrolling GM, it could sure tell GM what to do. Some might recall under the circumstances the famous photo of two National Guardsmen, in 1944, carrying out of his Chicago office the obstreperous chairman of Montgomery Ward, Sewell Avery, who had refused a Roosevelt administration edict to allow unionization.
Well, it was wartime, you know. Earlier, The New Deal had started telling farmers what they could plant -- and couldn't plant. It was an emergency, you know. A problem with emergencies, like the present one, is that the habits of command and obedience become institutionalized. Freedom retreats and only occasionally dares stick its nose back inside the door. Not so government. Government never retreats. The more we ask of it, the more it gives. The more it gives, the more latitude for action it demands -- the more oversight of our affairs.
Mr. Justice James W. Reynolds' dire and dour formulation from New Deal days -- "the Constitution is gone" -- could ring in our ears like a funeral bell. Supposing that anyone remembered McReynolds and the now-quaint intention that in a free society measures to limit government were of the essence.
Alas, Sewell Avery. Alas, Rick Wagoner. Alas, Mr. Madison, Mr. Adams, Mr. Jefferson -- the whole powdered-wig contingent that worked to pen government, that bumptious contrivance, behind a wall of carefully specified duties and powers, in the interest of keeping freedom free. I somehow don't imagine that at the end of the present emergency we are going to find freedom nearly as free as it was just weeks -- - count 'em, weeks -- ago.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The mind boggles, and then again, maybe it doesn't, having become what you might call boggle-proof over repeated assertions of federal government power to do this and do that, whatever you please, don't bother asking.
The newest proof -- anyway as of Monday -- was the Obama administration's plan to fix General Motors and Chrysler through bankruptcy filings and the Lord only knows what else.
At such a spectacle there wasn't room to wonder after the administration told the chairman of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, to scram, get lost.
Is there anything at all, we might ask at this dramatic passage in U.S. history, that the U.S. government doesn't feel fully empowered to do? Nothing suggests itself, which is a big part of the tragedy of our times.
I invite the reader to gaze higher than mere Events usually cause us to gaze, and to look at what is going on. Every supposed constitutional limit one can think of is falling without remark, far less protest. The American people seem to have made up their minds, presumably without bothering to exercise them, to the effect that the Constitution doesn't divide or limit power the way we were once taught.
That old piece of parchment carefully delineated powers. The federal government, by advance arrangement, could do specific things. Others it couldn't do. A role remained for the states, stipulated in the 10th amendment. Good taste and a healthy measure of modesty on the part of the executive and legislative branches were supposed to restrain the illegitimate exercise of powers illegitimately assumed.
Of course it never worked perfectly. Thomas Jefferson, anti-centralist as he was, stretched the meaning of the treaty power so that he might purchase Louisiana. It was a good lick, in many ways, but it showed that the Constitution, as a brake on the exercise of power, had its limits. Over the decades, the Constitution barely changed, save through the accretion of amendments like the one authorizing an income tax. What changed was the disposition of the Constitution's interpreters to decide that A Good Idea just had to be constitutional. Vigilance relaxed. Congress and the President got in the habit of doing pretty much what they wanted. Our luck was that much of the time they chose not to do the outrageous.
Like kick out a corporation executive? One could say that if Washington, D.C., was bankrolling GM, it could sure tell GM what to do. Some might recall under the circumstances the famous photo of two National Guardsmen, in 1944, carrying out of his Chicago office the obstreperous chairman of Montgomery Ward, Sewell Avery, who had refused a Roosevelt administration edict to allow unionization.
Well, it was wartime, you know. Earlier, The New Deal had started telling farmers what they could plant -- and couldn't plant. It was an emergency, you know. A problem with emergencies, like the present one, is that the habits of command and obedience become institutionalized. Freedom retreats and only occasionally dares stick its nose back inside the door. Not so government. Government never retreats. The more we ask of it, the more it gives. The more it gives, the more latitude for action it demands -- the more oversight of our affairs.
Mr. Justice James W. Reynolds' dire and dour formulation from New Deal days -- "the Constitution is gone" -- could ring in our ears like a funeral bell. Supposing that anyone remembered McReynolds and the now-quaint intention that in a free society measures to limit government were of the essence.
Alas, Sewell Avery. Alas, Rick Wagoner. Alas, Mr. Madison, Mr. Adams, Mr. Jefferson -- the whole powdered-wig contingent that worked to pen government, that bumptious contrivance, behind a wall of carefully specified duties and powers, in the interest of keeping freedom free. I somehow don't imagine that at the end of the present emergency we are going to find freedom nearly as free as it was just weeks -- - count 'em, weeks -- ago.
A 'Truly Breathtaking' Departure
Larry Kudlow
Monday, March 30, 2009
Team Obama fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner Sunday afternoon, just a short time after Treasury man Tim Geithner told the television talk shows that some banks will need large amounts of new TARP-money government assistance -- even though the bankers don’t want it. Does this smack of big-time government planning and industrial policy? Another lurch to the left for economic policy?
Remember, as bad as Wagoner’s performance has been over the years, it was the federal government -- not shareholders or the board of directors -- that threw him under the bus. (By the way, GM’s board is being thrown under that same bus.) And I’m not arguing in favor of Wagoner or his board; they’ve made a zillion mistakes. But I am wondering if we’ve officially entered a new era of government-controlled business.
Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), probably the most knowledgeable man in Congress about the car bailout, and someone who argued months ago in favor of a pre-planned government-sponsored bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler, calls the Wagoner firing “a major power-grab by the White House on the heels of another power-grab from Secretary Geithner, who asked last week for the freedom to decide on his own which companies are ‘systemically’ important to our country and worthy of taxpayer investment, and which are not.” Corker calls this “a marked departure from the past,” “truly breathtaking,” and something that “should send a chill through all Americans who believe in free enterprise.”
Mr. Corker has hit the nail on the head. And I think his idea of “a truly breathtaking” government departure from American free enterprise -- whether it’s the banks or the bankrupt Detroit carmakers -- is exactly what caused stocks to plunge 250 points on Monday.
Incidentally, most of the big bankers who met with President Obama in the White House last Friday want to pay back their TARP money, not take more of it. But the Treasury is conducting stress tests that could stop the TARP pay-downs and force the banks to take more taxpayer funds in return for even more federal control.
The big bankers say they are profitable. And with an upward-sloping Treasury yield curve and some market-to-market accounting reform coming from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the outlook for banks should be getting better, not worse. So why is the Treasury jamming more TARP money down bankers’ throats, especially after announcing a new plan to use private capital to clean up bank balance sheets and solve the toxic-asset problem?
It kinda sounds like the Treasury doesn’t want to let go of its new uber-regulator status.
As for Detroit, the carmakers should have been in bankruptcy months ago. And it is a bankruptcy court that should have fired GM’s Wagoner and his board. Along with some serious pain for bondholders, bankruptcy would have broken the high-cost labor contracts with the UAW as well as carmaker contracts with dealers across the country. That’s what bankruptcy courts are for. They’re part of the free-market capitalist system.
Former SEC chair Richard Breeden is arguing against a systemic uber-regulator for banks, and in favor of special financial bankruptcy courts. Once again, the story is court-ordered restructuring, not government control by political bureaucrats who like their power so much they want to keep running the various companies in question.
And why isn’t Obama’s special auto task force ordering a replacement for Ron Gettelfinger, the UAW’s president? Weren’t their oversized pay and benefit packages a big part of the problem? Well, that’s never gonna happen. The election power of the union is too strong. But this does reveal the political nature of these government bailout operations.
Incidentally, in President Obama’s speech on Monday about the Wagoner firing, as well as in Treasury term sheets for GM and Chrysler, there are multiple references to “the next generation of clean cars,” to new CAFE-standard mileage increases, and to green power-train developments. All this is a big green climate-change priority for the new administration.
But the simple fact is, small, tinny, and expensive green cars just don’t work for consumers. And even if those cars are designed better, the cost structure of the carmakers will have to be brought down so far that UAW wages will be forced below those of the non-union shops in Detroit south (including Honda, Toyota, and other foreign carmakers who are now producing in the United States).
So add the green revolution to the industrial-policy plans of the White House. Expect a big increase in CAFE fuel standards, even though small cars are simply not profitable. And plan on bailout nation taking a new left-turn toward the kind of central planning that has held down economic growth in Europe and Japan for so very long.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Team Obama fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner Sunday afternoon, just a short time after Treasury man Tim Geithner told the television talk shows that some banks will need large amounts of new TARP-money government assistance -- even though the bankers don’t want it. Does this smack of big-time government planning and industrial policy? Another lurch to the left for economic policy?
Remember, as bad as Wagoner’s performance has been over the years, it was the federal government -- not shareholders or the board of directors -- that threw him under the bus. (By the way, GM’s board is being thrown under that same bus.) And I’m not arguing in favor of Wagoner or his board; they’ve made a zillion mistakes. But I am wondering if we’ve officially entered a new era of government-controlled business.
Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), probably the most knowledgeable man in Congress about the car bailout, and someone who argued months ago in favor of a pre-planned government-sponsored bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler, calls the Wagoner firing “a major power-grab by the White House on the heels of another power-grab from Secretary Geithner, who asked last week for the freedom to decide on his own which companies are ‘systemically’ important to our country and worthy of taxpayer investment, and which are not.” Corker calls this “a marked departure from the past,” “truly breathtaking,” and something that “should send a chill through all Americans who believe in free enterprise.”
Mr. Corker has hit the nail on the head. And I think his idea of “a truly breathtaking” government departure from American free enterprise -- whether it’s the banks or the bankrupt Detroit carmakers -- is exactly what caused stocks to plunge 250 points on Monday.
Incidentally, most of the big bankers who met with President Obama in the White House last Friday want to pay back their TARP money, not take more of it. But the Treasury is conducting stress tests that could stop the TARP pay-downs and force the banks to take more taxpayer funds in return for even more federal control.
The big bankers say they are profitable. And with an upward-sloping Treasury yield curve and some market-to-market accounting reform coming from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the outlook for banks should be getting better, not worse. So why is the Treasury jamming more TARP money down bankers’ throats, especially after announcing a new plan to use private capital to clean up bank balance sheets and solve the toxic-asset problem?
It kinda sounds like the Treasury doesn’t want to let go of its new uber-regulator status.
As for Detroit, the carmakers should have been in bankruptcy months ago. And it is a bankruptcy court that should have fired GM’s Wagoner and his board. Along with some serious pain for bondholders, bankruptcy would have broken the high-cost labor contracts with the UAW as well as carmaker contracts with dealers across the country. That’s what bankruptcy courts are for. They’re part of the free-market capitalist system.
Former SEC chair Richard Breeden is arguing against a systemic uber-regulator for banks, and in favor of special financial bankruptcy courts. Once again, the story is court-ordered restructuring, not government control by political bureaucrats who like their power so much they want to keep running the various companies in question.
And why isn’t Obama’s special auto task force ordering a replacement for Ron Gettelfinger, the UAW’s president? Weren’t their oversized pay and benefit packages a big part of the problem? Well, that’s never gonna happen. The election power of the union is too strong. But this does reveal the political nature of these government bailout operations.
Incidentally, in President Obama’s speech on Monday about the Wagoner firing, as well as in Treasury term sheets for GM and Chrysler, there are multiple references to “the next generation of clean cars,” to new CAFE-standard mileage increases, and to green power-train developments. All this is a big green climate-change priority for the new administration.
But the simple fact is, small, tinny, and expensive green cars just don’t work for consumers. And even if those cars are designed better, the cost structure of the carmakers will have to be brought down so far that UAW wages will be forced below those of the non-union shops in Detroit south (including Honda, Toyota, and other foreign carmakers who are now producing in the United States).
So add the green revolution to the industrial-policy plans of the White House. Expect a big increase in CAFE fuel standards, even though small cars are simply not profitable. And plan on bailout nation taking a new left-turn toward the kind of central planning that has held down economic growth in Europe and Japan for so very long.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Dawn of the Left
Obama’s pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel reveals the president’s radicalism.
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
Monday, March 30, 2009
If you still think that President Barack Obama is about hope and change and moms and apple pie and nothing objectionable or radical, consider his nominee for the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen.
Her record sets off many alarm bells. Some of them have to do with her views on abortion. Regardless of what the New York Times might say — they called her position on abortion “hardly unusual” in a recent glowing endorsement — you’d have to be doing a tour of women’s-studies courses to find a lot of people who agree with her that pregnancy is slavery.
Johnsen is former legal director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America in the hopes of fooling people). While there, in a case involving a Missouri law that limited the use of taxpayer money and state resources for abortion, Johnsen called restrictions on abortion “involuntary servitude,” arguing that with them, “the state has conscripted [an expectant mother’s] body for its own ends.” This is, she wrote, “forced pregnancy,” which is a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, the anti-slavery amendment. Pregnancy, she declared, “requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest” in the unborn child. She argued that a mother “is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not her own.”
That’s not unusual? It’s not unusual for her to be admired and endorsed by the president of the United States?
At the very least, it’s highly partisan, which presents a big problem. The little-known but highly influential position of heading the OLC requires serving as an “administration’s lawyer’s lawyer.” As former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explained the job in a recent piece for National Review on Johnsen, “It authoritatively interprets the law for the attorney general and, in doing so, drives administration legal policy.” It’s the most unideological post there is in a presidential administration. Which is why Johnsen should be the last person filling it. Besides her radically anti-life past, there’s also her record with the Clinton administration (where she served in — surprise — the Office of Legal Counsel), a résumé that suggests she’s anything but the breath of fresh air that President Obama has promised.
McCarthy, in his case against Johnsen, recounted her OLC record, one that the New York Times, for one, chose to overlook. McCarthy exposed the “particularly rich” hypocrisy of Johnsen’s recent condemnations of the Bush administration’s use of executive authority, showing how she ardently defended Clinton’s will to power when his administration did such things as “[invent] extraordinary rendition, [detain] Cuban refugees without trial at Guantanamo Bay, [conduct] warrantless national-security searches, and [attack] a foreign country without congressional authorization.”
It’s abundantly clear that a Republican nominee with Johnsen’s past would be roundly thrashed by the pundits and the public (probably unfairly and slanderously so, if recent history is any indication). Instead, led by the lefty cheerleaders at the Gray Lady, we’re engaged in a bout of knee-jerk Bush-bashing, while important questions such as who Johnsen is and what she’s said and done go unexamined.
If the Obama administration aims to de-politicize the Justice Department, as it claims, in selecting Johnsen it has picked an ideologue who would do just the opposite. (On her priority list: making sure that candidates for Bush-era DOJ positions who were passed over for leaning left get “special consideration” in the Obama administration.)
Johnsen’s nomination has been moved out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote and awaits a full-Senate test. She’ll need 60 votes to get confirmed. Remembering the circus foisted upon so many George W. Bush nominees, it’s hard to believe that Republicans and moderate Democrats will let her sail through to the OLC. Or so we have the audacity to hope.
The un-radicalism of the Obama administration is an untruth. And Johnsen’s place in line to fill an important seat there plays a significant role in exposing the “moderate Obama” myth that many Americans have bought into — most recently the Catholic University of Notre Dame, which is providing the president cover for his anti-life radicalism by having him speak at its commencement this May.
Senators should take a close look at this one. It’s their job.
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
Monday, March 30, 2009
If you still think that President Barack Obama is about hope and change and moms and apple pie and nothing objectionable or radical, consider his nominee for the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen.
Her record sets off many alarm bells. Some of them have to do with her views on abortion. Regardless of what the New York Times might say — they called her position on abortion “hardly unusual” in a recent glowing endorsement — you’d have to be doing a tour of women’s-studies courses to find a lot of people who agree with her that pregnancy is slavery.
Johnsen is former legal director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America in the hopes of fooling people). While there, in a case involving a Missouri law that limited the use of taxpayer money and state resources for abortion, Johnsen called restrictions on abortion “involuntary servitude,” arguing that with them, “the state has conscripted [an expectant mother’s] body for its own ends.” This is, she wrote, “forced pregnancy,” which is a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, the anti-slavery amendment. Pregnancy, she declared, “requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest” in the unborn child. She argued that a mother “is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not her own.”
That’s not unusual? It’s not unusual for her to be admired and endorsed by the president of the United States?
At the very least, it’s highly partisan, which presents a big problem. The little-known but highly influential position of heading the OLC requires serving as an “administration’s lawyer’s lawyer.” As former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explained the job in a recent piece for National Review on Johnsen, “It authoritatively interprets the law for the attorney general and, in doing so, drives administration legal policy.” It’s the most unideological post there is in a presidential administration. Which is why Johnsen should be the last person filling it. Besides her radically anti-life past, there’s also her record with the Clinton administration (where she served in — surprise — the Office of Legal Counsel), a résumé that suggests she’s anything but the breath of fresh air that President Obama has promised.
McCarthy, in his case against Johnsen, recounted her OLC record, one that the New York Times, for one, chose to overlook. McCarthy exposed the “particularly rich” hypocrisy of Johnsen’s recent condemnations of the Bush administration’s use of executive authority, showing how she ardently defended Clinton’s will to power when his administration did such things as “[invent] extraordinary rendition, [detain] Cuban refugees without trial at Guantanamo Bay, [conduct] warrantless national-security searches, and [attack] a foreign country without congressional authorization.”
It’s abundantly clear that a Republican nominee with Johnsen’s past would be roundly thrashed by the pundits and the public (probably unfairly and slanderously so, if recent history is any indication). Instead, led by the lefty cheerleaders at the Gray Lady, we’re engaged in a bout of knee-jerk Bush-bashing, while important questions such as who Johnsen is and what she’s said and done go unexamined.
If the Obama administration aims to de-politicize the Justice Department, as it claims, in selecting Johnsen it has picked an ideologue who would do just the opposite. (On her priority list: making sure that candidates for Bush-era DOJ positions who were passed over for leaning left get “special consideration” in the Obama administration.)
Johnsen’s nomination has been moved out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote and awaits a full-Senate test. She’ll need 60 votes to get confirmed. Remembering the circus foisted upon so many George W. Bush nominees, it’s hard to believe that Republicans and moderate Democrats will let her sail through to the OLC. Or so we have the audacity to hope.
The un-radicalism of the Obama administration is an untruth. And Johnsen’s place in line to fill an important seat there plays a significant role in exposing the “moderate Obama” myth that many Americans have bought into — most recently the Catholic University of Notre Dame, which is providing the president cover for his anti-life radicalism by having him speak at its commencement this May.
Senators should take a close look at this one. It’s their job.
Ignorance is no excuse
Ashley Herzog
Monday, March 30, 2009
Before the federal stimulus package lavishes billions of dollars on higher education, taxpayers should demand that universities stop turning out civically illiterate graduates. Studies show that college students have alarmingly limited knowledge of America’s history, government, international relations and economic system, and universities don’t teach them.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute discovered this a few years ago, when it began testing 14,000 randomly selected freshmen and seniors in basic civic literacy. The dismal results: seniors scored an average of 53.2 percent, just 1.5 points higher than the freshmen.
Fewer than half the seniors knew that the line “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” can be found in the Declaration of Independence. Only 60 percent managed to place the Civil War in the right time period. Fifty-three percent didn’t understand the concept of federalism; 40 percent couldn’t define the law of supply and demand; 78 percent didn’t know what a “public good” is. Forty-seven percent couldn’t explain how wealth is generated in a free market system. When questioned about basic American history, such as when the first colony was established at Jamestown, about half the students got it wrong.
As ISI put it, “Though a university education can cost upwards of $200,000, and college students on average leave campus $19,300 in debt, they are no better off than when they arrived in terms of acquiring the knowledge necessary for informed engagement in a democratic republic and global economy.” Despite the outrageously inflated cost of tuition, ISI found last November that college graduates, on average, knew little more about civics than their less educated peers.
It’s hard to blame students for their ignorance, since they don’t learn what colleges don’t teach. While there was no relationship between a school’s prestige and civic learning, there was a strong relationship between students’ scores and the number of classes required in economics, American history and political science.
Notably, at several elite schools (including Brown, Georgetown and Yale), where classes in basic history and economics are brushed aside in favor of trendier subjects like “queer theory,” the seniors actually scored lower than the freshmen. That’s right: students at these schools are paying up to $40,000 a year to become dumber. Inexpensive state schools, which generally stick to the basics and don’t offer as many courses in politically correct nonsense, did a better job than the Ivy League of increasing their students’ knowledge. Students at no-frills schools like Grove City College, the University of Mobile, and Central Connecticut State showed the greatest improvement between freshman and senior year.
What should be done? ISI recommends raising the number of required courses in history, political science and economics, and improving the assessment of learning outcomes in these subjects. This is important because, as ISI found, “students who demonstrated greater learning of America's history and institutions were more engaged in citizenship activities such as voting, volunteer community service, and political campaigns.”
Last summer, when I wrote a column encouraging students not to blow their tuition money on frivolous classes, liberal bloggers accused me of “promoting ignorance.” But at least I can place the Civil War in the correct decade—which is more than a lot of my peers can say.
College students, and the taxpayers who help subsidize their education, are not getting their money’s worth.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Before the federal stimulus package lavishes billions of dollars on higher education, taxpayers should demand that universities stop turning out civically illiterate graduates. Studies show that college students have alarmingly limited knowledge of America’s history, government, international relations and economic system, and universities don’t teach them.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute discovered this a few years ago, when it began testing 14,000 randomly selected freshmen and seniors in basic civic literacy. The dismal results: seniors scored an average of 53.2 percent, just 1.5 points higher than the freshmen.
Fewer than half the seniors knew that the line “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” can be found in the Declaration of Independence. Only 60 percent managed to place the Civil War in the right time period. Fifty-three percent didn’t understand the concept of federalism; 40 percent couldn’t define the law of supply and demand; 78 percent didn’t know what a “public good” is. Forty-seven percent couldn’t explain how wealth is generated in a free market system. When questioned about basic American history, such as when the first colony was established at Jamestown, about half the students got it wrong.
As ISI put it, “Though a university education can cost upwards of $200,000, and college students on average leave campus $19,300 in debt, they are no better off than when they arrived in terms of acquiring the knowledge necessary for informed engagement in a democratic republic and global economy.” Despite the outrageously inflated cost of tuition, ISI found last November that college graduates, on average, knew little more about civics than their less educated peers.
It’s hard to blame students for their ignorance, since they don’t learn what colleges don’t teach. While there was no relationship between a school’s prestige and civic learning, there was a strong relationship between students’ scores and the number of classes required in economics, American history and political science.
Notably, at several elite schools (including Brown, Georgetown and Yale), where classes in basic history and economics are brushed aside in favor of trendier subjects like “queer theory,” the seniors actually scored lower than the freshmen. That’s right: students at these schools are paying up to $40,000 a year to become dumber. Inexpensive state schools, which generally stick to the basics and don’t offer as many courses in politically correct nonsense, did a better job than the Ivy League of increasing their students’ knowledge. Students at no-frills schools like Grove City College, the University of Mobile, and Central Connecticut State showed the greatest improvement between freshman and senior year.
What should be done? ISI recommends raising the number of required courses in history, political science and economics, and improving the assessment of learning outcomes in these subjects. This is important because, as ISI found, “students who demonstrated greater learning of America's history and institutions were more engaged in citizenship activities such as voting, volunteer community service, and political campaigns.”
Last summer, when I wrote a column encouraging students not to blow their tuition money on frivolous classes, liberal bloggers accused me of “promoting ignorance.” But at least I can place the Civil War in the correct decade—which is more than a lot of my peers can say.
College students, and the taxpayers who help subsidize their education, are not getting their money’s worth.
Obama's Sights on Second Amendment
Janet M. LaRue
Monday, March 30, 2009
While campaigning for the U.S. Senate and then the presidency, Barack Obama said he believed in the individual right to bear arms.
Those aware of his record and rhetoric thought he might have been referring to his wife’s penchant for sleeveless attire, not the Second Amendment.
During his 2004 run for the Senate, Obama said “I think that the Second Amendment means something. I think that if the government were to confiscate everybody’s guns unilaterally that I think that would be subject to constitutional challenge.” No kidding.
He didn’t say it would be unconstitutional, just “subject to constitutional challenge.” Nor did he express any opposition.
During the presidential campaign, a case challenging Washington D.C.’s draconian gun laws was pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. The laws banned all handgun registrations, prohibited handguns already registered from being carried from room to room in the home without a license, and required all firearms in the home, including rifles and shotguns, to be unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.
In June, the Court released its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, holding that the laws violate the individual right to keep and bear arms unconnected to service in a militia as secured by the Fourth Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, emphasized that the individual right to bear arms pre-exists, and is independent of, the Constitution:
Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed . . . .”
Obama admitted in a Feb. 11, 2008, interview that he supported the handgun ban, and that it was “constitutional.” On June 26, he said he agreed with the Court’s decision, but added that the right to bear arms is subject to “reasonable regulations.” He never “explained” how an absolute ban on handguns is “reasonable,” or how he can agree with the ruling, which said it was unreasonable. Obama’s inconsistencies are numerous, as John R. Lott Jr has noted.
Obama continued to duck and cover by talking about getting illegal guns off the streets, background checks for children and the mentally ill, and attacking the NRA.
Since his election, finding mention of the Second Amendment on the White House Web site takes about as long as getting to the front of the line at a gun store. What is on the site could be engraved on a .22 shell casing.
WH: The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms. [Emphasis added.]
It’s far from the high caliber opinion of the Court or those of the Founders who fought for and secured the right:
- “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” James Madison, The Federalist 46
- “Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?” Patrick Henry
- “That the Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe on the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent “the people” of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” Samuel Adams
- “A free people ought ... to be armed.” George Washington
- “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” Thomas Jefferson
- “If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state.” Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 28
Despite the Heller ruling and his professed regard for the Amendment, Obama will push legislation to make possession and purchase of guns and ammunition as burdensome as the constitutionally comatose congressional majority will enact.
We should heed the warning of James Madison, “Father of the Constitution”:
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
Monday, March 30, 2009
While campaigning for the U.S. Senate and then the presidency, Barack Obama said he believed in the individual right to bear arms.
Those aware of his record and rhetoric thought he might have been referring to his wife’s penchant for sleeveless attire, not the Second Amendment.
During his 2004 run for the Senate, Obama said “I think that the Second Amendment means something. I think that if the government were to confiscate everybody’s guns unilaterally that I think that would be subject to constitutional challenge.” No kidding.
He didn’t say it would be unconstitutional, just “subject to constitutional challenge.” Nor did he express any opposition.
During the presidential campaign, a case challenging Washington D.C.’s draconian gun laws was pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. The laws banned all handgun registrations, prohibited handguns already registered from being carried from room to room in the home without a license, and required all firearms in the home, including rifles and shotguns, to be unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.
In June, the Court released its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, holding that the laws violate the individual right to keep and bear arms unconnected to service in a militia as secured by the Fourth Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, emphasized that the individual right to bear arms pre-exists, and is independent of, the Constitution:
Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed . . . .”
Obama admitted in a Feb. 11, 2008, interview that he supported the handgun ban, and that it was “constitutional.” On June 26, he said he agreed with the Court’s decision, but added that the right to bear arms is subject to “reasonable regulations.” He never “explained” how an absolute ban on handguns is “reasonable,” or how he can agree with the ruling, which said it was unreasonable. Obama’s inconsistencies are numerous, as John R. Lott Jr has noted.
Obama continued to duck and cover by talking about getting illegal guns off the streets, background checks for children and the mentally ill, and attacking the NRA.
Since his election, finding mention of the Second Amendment on the White House Web site takes about as long as getting to the front of the line at a gun store. What is on the site could be engraved on a .22 shell casing.
WH: The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms. [Emphasis added.]
It’s far from the high caliber opinion of the Court or those of the Founders who fought for and secured the right:
- “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” James Madison, The Federalist 46
- “Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?” Patrick Henry
- “That the Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe on the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent “the people” of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” Samuel Adams
- “A free people ought ... to be armed.” George Washington
- “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” Thomas Jefferson
- “If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state.” Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 28
Despite the Heller ruling and his professed regard for the Amendment, Obama will push legislation to make possession and purchase of guns and ammunition as burdensome as the constitutionally comatose congressional majority will enact.
We should heed the warning of James Madison, “Father of the Constitution”:
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
Sunday, March 29, 2009
How to Cure Your Daughter’s STD
Mike S. Adams
Monday, March 30, 2009
Dear Steve:
Thanks for writing me with your concerns about your daughter’s recent visit home from college. I don’t have a daughter but I can understand the concern you have after seeing such dramatic changes in her after just six months at a public university. After all, you didn’t save money for eighteen long years in order to pay someone to teach her to despise the values you taught for, well, eighteen long years.
First of all, I want you to understand that many of the crazy ideas you hear your daughter espousing are commonplace on college campuses. Nonetheless, it must have been shocking for you to hear that she supported Barack Obama in the last election principally because of his ideas about “the redistribution of wealth.” I know you were also disappointed to hear of her sudden opposition to the War on Terror and her sudden embrace of the United Nations. Most of all, I know you are disappointed that she has stopped going to church altogether.
Now that your daughter is not going to church it will be easier to get her to accept other policies based on economic and cultural Marxism. Socialist professors like the fact that average church attendance drops dramatically after just one year of college. God and socialism are simply incompatible. One cannot worship both Jesus Christ and Karl Marx.
But there is good news, Steve. I think I can implement a program that will cure your daughter’s Socialist Teaching Disorder (STD) in just a few short days. In case you were wondering, I define STD as the sudden infatuation with socialism brought on by exposure to pro-socialist ideas without a corresponding exposure to anti-socialist ideas. Although not recognized by the APA, this emotional disorder is running rampant at American universities.
The solution to your daughter’s STD is to be found in your decision to award her a sum of $4000 if she returns from her freshman year with a 3.5 GPA or above. Previously, you explained to me that you decided to do this for two reasons: 1) Your daughter had earned a $4000 scholarship, which meant you had the extra money, and 2) Your only son had gone to college five years ago and flunked out after one year.
Now that your daughter has maintained a 3.6 GPA (so far) you are happy. But you are unhappy that you are about to reward her newfound love of socialism when you had only intended to reward her studiousness. I have a solution that involves three steps. If you follow these steps (in order) we’ll have this little problem cured in no time:
1. When your daughter returns from college in early May (presumably with a GPA over 3.5) I want you to tell her that you lied. Put simply, when she asks about her $4000 just tell her that you never really had any intention of delivering on your promises.
This revelation will, no doubt, cause significant consternation and outrage. But when she protests, simply point out that her choice for president, Barack Obama, also lied to her. Note that his lies about earmarks and line-by-line analysis of the budget will probably end up costing her more than $4000. She might say, “But you’re my father.” If she does, respond by saying “But I’m not your president.” If things get too uncomfortable, just tell her the $4000 promise was technically “last year’s business.”
2. When your daughter has cooled down somewhat from the realization that her father is a confessed liar I want you to strike again. Since your son, now 23, still lives at home it will be possible for you to implement step two in the presence of both children. This step will involve simply taking out your wallet and writing a $2000 check to your son.
This action will, no doubt, cause even more consternation and outrage for your daughter. She may well point out that her brother is unemployed. She may also point out that he has been in rehab twice and that he once punched you in the face while under the influence of drugs. But, when she protests, simply say that it was Barack Obama who taught you to reward failure.
She may well say “But that’s half of the money I was supposed to get.” If so, point out that it is Barack Obama who would like to take other people’s money – at least half, if not more – and use much of it to reward bad behavior. By this time, she will probably hate socialism and the lesson will have saved you a lot of money.
But, just in case the point is not yet made, there is a third step to my plan. And this is where I get actively involved.
3. I’m going to take your daughter and the remaining $2000 - in the form of one hundred $20 bills – to the “hood.” Specifically, I am going to take her to places where crack cocaine is sold here in Wilmington in the middle of the afternoon. This will include grocery stores and actual crack houses. Don’t worry about your daughter’s safety as I will be armed with a .357 magnum loaded with 145-grain silver tipped hollow point bullets. When I approach a crack head I will first ask whether he paid income taxes last year. If he says “no” I will hand him $20.
If your daughter asks me why I give money to people who don’t pay taxes I’ll remind her that this is what President Obama does. Then I’ll ask her if she still believes in “spreading the wealth” without regard to individual merit.
By the end of the afternoon, I can guarantee your daughter will be cured of her STD. Sorry if I sound overly optimistic, Steve. I got my optimism from the same place I got my love of capitalism. I learned it from Ronald Reagan, not Barack Obama.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Dear Steve:
Thanks for writing me with your concerns about your daughter’s recent visit home from college. I don’t have a daughter but I can understand the concern you have after seeing such dramatic changes in her after just six months at a public university. After all, you didn’t save money for eighteen long years in order to pay someone to teach her to despise the values you taught for, well, eighteen long years.
First of all, I want you to understand that many of the crazy ideas you hear your daughter espousing are commonplace on college campuses. Nonetheless, it must have been shocking for you to hear that she supported Barack Obama in the last election principally because of his ideas about “the redistribution of wealth.” I know you were also disappointed to hear of her sudden opposition to the War on Terror and her sudden embrace of the United Nations. Most of all, I know you are disappointed that she has stopped going to church altogether.
Now that your daughter is not going to church it will be easier to get her to accept other policies based on economic and cultural Marxism. Socialist professors like the fact that average church attendance drops dramatically after just one year of college. God and socialism are simply incompatible. One cannot worship both Jesus Christ and Karl Marx.
But there is good news, Steve. I think I can implement a program that will cure your daughter’s Socialist Teaching Disorder (STD) in just a few short days. In case you were wondering, I define STD as the sudden infatuation with socialism brought on by exposure to pro-socialist ideas without a corresponding exposure to anti-socialist ideas. Although not recognized by the APA, this emotional disorder is running rampant at American universities.
The solution to your daughter’s STD is to be found in your decision to award her a sum of $4000 if she returns from her freshman year with a 3.5 GPA or above. Previously, you explained to me that you decided to do this for two reasons: 1) Your daughter had earned a $4000 scholarship, which meant you had the extra money, and 2) Your only son had gone to college five years ago and flunked out after one year.
Now that your daughter has maintained a 3.6 GPA (so far) you are happy. But you are unhappy that you are about to reward her newfound love of socialism when you had only intended to reward her studiousness. I have a solution that involves three steps. If you follow these steps (in order) we’ll have this little problem cured in no time:
1. When your daughter returns from college in early May (presumably with a GPA over 3.5) I want you to tell her that you lied. Put simply, when she asks about her $4000 just tell her that you never really had any intention of delivering on your promises.
This revelation will, no doubt, cause significant consternation and outrage. But when she protests, simply point out that her choice for president, Barack Obama, also lied to her. Note that his lies about earmarks and line-by-line analysis of the budget will probably end up costing her more than $4000. She might say, “But you’re my father.” If she does, respond by saying “But I’m not your president.” If things get too uncomfortable, just tell her the $4000 promise was technically “last year’s business.”
2. When your daughter has cooled down somewhat from the realization that her father is a confessed liar I want you to strike again. Since your son, now 23, still lives at home it will be possible for you to implement step two in the presence of both children. This step will involve simply taking out your wallet and writing a $2000 check to your son.
This action will, no doubt, cause even more consternation and outrage for your daughter. She may well point out that her brother is unemployed. She may also point out that he has been in rehab twice and that he once punched you in the face while under the influence of drugs. But, when she protests, simply say that it was Barack Obama who taught you to reward failure.
She may well say “But that’s half of the money I was supposed to get.” If so, point out that it is Barack Obama who would like to take other people’s money – at least half, if not more – and use much of it to reward bad behavior. By this time, she will probably hate socialism and the lesson will have saved you a lot of money.
But, just in case the point is not yet made, there is a third step to my plan. And this is where I get actively involved.
3. I’m going to take your daughter and the remaining $2000 - in the form of one hundred $20 bills – to the “hood.” Specifically, I am going to take her to places where crack cocaine is sold here in Wilmington in the middle of the afternoon. This will include grocery stores and actual crack houses. Don’t worry about your daughter’s safety as I will be armed with a .357 magnum loaded with 145-grain silver tipped hollow point bullets. When I approach a crack head I will first ask whether he paid income taxes last year. If he says “no” I will hand him $20.
If your daughter asks me why I give money to people who don’t pay taxes I’ll remind her that this is what President Obama does. Then I’ll ask her if she still believes in “spreading the wealth” without regard to individual merit.
By the end of the afternoon, I can guarantee your daughter will be cured of her STD. Sorry if I sound overly optimistic, Steve. I got my optimism from the same place I got my love of capitalism. I learned it from Ronald Reagan, not Barack Obama.
A Truth Not Self-Evident: Only Americans Should Make U.S. Laws
Kevin James
Monday, March 30, 2009
Zimbabwe should not be making American law.
Neither, for that matter, should France, India, Mexico, Switzerland or any other country. Only America should be making laws for Americans.
Incredibly, not everyone agrees with this principle. Astonishingly, some of the people who do not agree are justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Fortunately, a solution to the problem is being proposed.
In 2005, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment – which bans cruel and unusual punishment – prohibits the execution of murderers who committed their crimes before their eighteenth birthdays. As a former federal prosecutor, I disagreed with the ruling. The death penalty is appropriate in a few juvenile murder cases, and I trust juries to make the right decision. But worse than the high court’s result was its reasoning.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a bare 5-4 majority, supported his decision by citing to the laws of other countries. He illogically referred to a treaty called the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty the United States has never ratified. Justice Kennedy also mentioned statutes passed in the 1930s and ‘40s by the British Parliament. Funny, I thought one of the perks of the American Revolution was not having to listen to the British Parliament.
Justice Kennedy had been swayed by a growing liberal movement which argues that U.S. laws – including the Constitution itself – should match the laws of other, allegedly more enlightened countries. And, since Congressional Republicans won’t go along with the plan, leftist judges are the designated soldiers in this legal revolution.
One of the true believers is Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, who, in his desire to turn our country over to the “international community,” wrote one of the worst opinions I‘ve ever read. In a 1999 decision called Knight v. Florida, the Supreme Court declined to review the appeal of an inmate who argued that he had been on death row so long that the sentence was cruel and unusual. As you’ve probably guessed, the convict’s confinement was lengthy because he kept filing appeals!
Justice Breyer wanted to hear the case, and, to support his belief that lengthy death row imprisonment was unconstitutional, he cited any law he could get his hands on. He talked about Jamaican law; he riffed on the European Court of Human Rights; he dragged in the appellate courts of India. And, in what Justice Breyer must now consider to be an embarrassment, he cited the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe as an institution we should look to for constitutional guidance.
This must stop. Only Americans can decide the meaning of American laws. We passed them. We’ll decide how to enforce them. .
The use of foreign law in U.S. courts has other dangers. American judges are not trained in foreign legal systems, some of which are founded on different assumptions and values. Furthermore, liberal jurists cherry-pick, citing the foreign laws they agree with. Don’t expect Justice Breyer to be referring admiringly to Mexico’s taxation of remittances from illegal aliens north of the border.
Luckily, someone in a position to influence policy understands the need to keep our laws to ourselves. Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz is a professor at Georgetown University, and he has proposed a constitutional amendment that would forbid the courts from using foreign law to interpret or change the U.S. Constitution.
Professor Rosenkranz’s draft Twenty-Eighth Amendment is simple yet powerful: “This Constitution was ordained and established by the People of the United States, and so it shall not be construed by reference to the contemporary laws of other nations.”
In a scholarly but readable essay dubbed a “thought experiment” – you can download it for free from here after registering -- Professor Rosenkranz underlines a need to limit the discretion of judges. In their misguided internationalism, Justices Breyer and Kennedy are, he says, “declaring nothing less than the power of foreign governments to change the meaning of the United States Constitution.” A foreign government could even change its laws in the hope of changing U.S. laws.
In response, Justice Antonin Scalia said it best. “More fundamentally,” he wrote in a dissent to the juvenile death penalty case, “the basic premise of the Court’s argument – that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world – ought to be rejected out of hand.”
A constitutional amendment would do the job quite well.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Zimbabwe should not be making American law.
Neither, for that matter, should France, India, Mexico, Switzerland or any other country. Only America should be making laws for Americans.
Incredibly, not everyone agrees with this principle. Astonishingly, some of the people who do not agree are justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Fortunately, a solution to the problem is being proposed.
In 2005, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment – which bans cruel and unusual punishment – prohibits the execution of murderers who committed their crimes before their eighteenth birthdays. As a former federal prosecutor, I disagreed with the ruling. The death penalty is appropriate in a few juvenile murder cases, and I trust juries to make the right decision. But worse than the high court’s result was its reasoning.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a bare 5-4 majority, supported his decision by citing to the laws of other countries. He illogically referred to a treaty called the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty the United States has never ratified. Justice Kennedy also mentioned statutes passed in the 1930s and ‘40s by the British Parliament. Funny, I thought one of the perks of the American Revolution was not having to listen to the British Parliament.
Justice Kennedy had been swayed by a growing liberal movement which argues that U.S. laws – including the Constitution itself – should match the laws of other, allegedly more enlightened countries. And, since Congressional Republicans won’t go along with the plan, leftist judges are the designated soldiers in this legal revolution.
One of the true believers is Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, who, in his desire to turn our country over to the “international community,” wrote one of the worst opinions I‘ve ever read. In a 1999 decision called Knight v. Florida, the Supreme Court declined to review the appeal of an inmate who argued that he had been on death row so long that the sentence was cruel and unusual. As you’ve probably guessed, the convict’s confinement was lengthy because he kept filing appeals!
Justice Breyer wanted to hear the case, and, to support his belief that lengthy death row imprisonment was unconstitutional, he cited any law he could get his hands on. He talked about Jamaican law; he riffed on the European Court of Human Rights; he dragged in the appellate courts of India. And, in what Justice Breyer must now consider to be an embarrassment, he cited the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe as an institution we should look to for constitutional guidance.
This must stop. Only Americans can decide the meaning of American laws. We passed them. We’ll decide how to enforce them. .
The use of foreign law in U.S. courts has other dangers. American judges are not trained in foreign legal systems, some of which are founded on different assumptions and values. Furthermore, liberal jurists cherry-pick, citing the foreign laws they agree with. Don’t expect Justice Breyer to be referring admiringly to Mexico’s taxation of remittances from illegal aliens north of the border.
Luckily, someone in a position to influence policy understands the need to keep our laws to ourselves. Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz is a professor at Georgetown University, and he has proposed a constitutional amendment that would forbid the courts from using foreign law to interpret or change the U.S. Constitution.
Professor Rosenkranz’s draft Twenty-Eighth Amendment is simple yet powerful: “This Constitution was ordained and established by the People of the United States, and so it shall not be construed by reference to the contemporary laws of other nations.”
In a scholarly but readable essay dubbed a “thought experiment” – you can download it for free from here after registering -- Professor Rosenkranz underlines a need to limit the discretion of judges. In their misguided internationalism, Justices Breyer and Kennedy are, he says, “declaring nothing less than the power of foreign governments to change the meaning of the United States Constitution.” A foreign government could even change its laws in the hope of changing U.S. laws.
In response, Justice Antonin Scalia said it best. “More fundamentally,” he wrote in a dissent to the juvenile death penalty case, “the basic premise of the Court’s argument – that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world – ought to be rejected out of hand.”
A constitutional amendment would do the job quite well.
Will A Weaker America Be A More "Just" America?
Austin Hill
Sunday, March 29, 2009
President Barack Obama has no intention of helping to grow the United States economy. On the contrary, he is doing everything a President can do to weaken it.
I know that sounds harsh. Maybe it seems outrageously “partisan.” Maybe it just seems outrageous.
But after roughly ten weeks, Obama has consistently proposed ideas and plans (and in one case signing legislation) that will weaken the U.S. economy, not strengthen it. To attempt to view this man through the lenses of American prosperity, and to evaluate him with the same assumptions with which the behavior of other modern-day Presidents has been evaluated - - that growing the U.S. economy is a good and noble and necessary thing - - simply makes no sense.
Yet to assess this very different President with a very different set of assumptions in mind - - that American prosperity itself is a problem to be remedied, or that the U.S. has become an economic superpower at the expense of other nations - - only then does his economic behavior appear rational. And it is now clear that President Obama’s objective is to weaken the U.S.
I didn’t arrive at this conclusion quickly. After he won the election, there was a glimmer of hope that his policies could end-up being more rational than his promises, with the appointment of Clinton-era advisor Lawrence Summers and Reagan-era advisor Paul Volcker.
But soon, very harsh Obama realities set-in. Paul Volcker has not once spoken publicly since going to work for Obama, and beltway insiders (and just about everyone who works in the world of financial media) report that Volcker has a nice office at the White House, and has virtually no contact with the President. And while Lawrence Summers has been slightly more visible publicly, Obama’s economic proposals don’t emulate anything of the sort for which Summers is known.
During his campaign, President Obama liked to reiterate that he was being advised on economics by investment guru Warren Buffett. Buffett now deems Obama’s so-called “economic stimulus bill” as largely a waste of taxpayer dollars, and has expressed alarm over the national debt that Obama’s further plans will create. With the majority of the "stimulus bill" devoted to social welfare projects- - "free" condoms, childcare , “cricket control,” tatoo removal, and so forth - - and most funding for infrastructure projects delayed until 2011 and beyond (closer to Obama's re-election race), it's difficult to argue with Buffett's assessment.
Obama repeatedly reminds Americans of the tragedy that he faces, having “inherited” a $1.3 trillion deficit from the former President, yet he spent more than half that amount with the so-called “stimulus” bill during his first six weeks as President, and has now proposed a federal budget that spends $3.6 trillion more. He campaigned on a promise to take money away from “rich” Americans and re-distribute it to people who he deemed were deserving of it, yet there is no more wealth in government coffers for President Obama to re-distribute. He is now proposing to spend the wealth of future generations of Americans - - wealth that has yet to be created - - while confidently asserting along the way that he is reducing the federal deficit, not expanding it.
President Obama also campaigned on a promise to repair relationships between the U.S. and the rest of the world, relationships that he claimed President Bush had so horribly damaged. Yet on his economic proposals, alone, foreign governments are reacting with shock and horror to our new President.
China, the largest holder of U.S. federal debt, has expressed concern over America’s growing inability to pay its bills, and has suggested that it may be time to switch to a new global currency, and to abandon the American dollar. And Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, addressing the European Union last week, described Obama’s approach to the current economic crisis as “a way to hell” and predicted bad things for America’s economic future (could it be that this man who once lived under Communist rule knows something about the problems of ‘big government?”).
If we are to take seriously the many promises that Obama made as a candidate, it is not far-fetched to think that his efforts to weaken the U.S. economy are quite intentional.
For two years, Senator Obama campaigned across the country preaching the economics of“ getting even” - - a "strategy" to make conditions more "fair" for the less fortunate by punishing successful individuals and organizations. By every indication, he is now applying that same ‘strategy” to the United States, as it relates to the rest of the world, making the world a more “fair” and “just” playing field by weakening the strongest player on the field.
After a few short weeks, it is now apparent what President Obama is doing. Will the Democratic Congress allow the President to fulfill his dreams?
Sunday, March 29, 2009
President Barack Obama has no intention of helping to grow the United States economy. On the contrary, he is doing everything a President can do to weaken it.
I know that sounds harsh. Maybe it seems outrageously “partisan.” Maybe it just seems outrageous.
But after roughly ten weeks, Obama has consistently proposed ideas and plans (and in one case signing legislation) that will weaken the U.S. economy, not strengthen it. To attempt to view this man through the lenses of American prosperity, and to evaluate him with the same assumptions with which the behavior of other modern-day Presidents has been evaluated - - that growing the U.S. economy is a good and noble and necessary thing - - simply makes no sense.
Yet to assess this very different President with a very different set of assumptions in mind - - that American prosperity itself is a problem to be remedied, or that the U.S. has become an economic superpower at the expense of other nations - - only then does his economic behavior appear rational. And it is now clear that President Obama’s objective is to weaken the U.S.
I didn’t arrive at this conclusion quickly. After he won the election, there was a glimmer of hope that his policies could end-up being more rational than his promises, with the appointment of Clinton-era advisor Lawrence Summers and Reagan-era advisor Paul Volcker.
But soon, very harsh Obama realities set-in. Paul Volcker has not once spoken publicly since going to work for Obama, and beltway insiders (and just about everyone who works in the world of financial media) report that Volcker has a nice office at the White House, and has virtually no contact with the President. And while Lawrence Summers has been slightly more visible publicly, Obama’s economic proposals don’t emulate anything of the sort for which Summers is known.
During his campaign, President Obama liked to reiterate that he was being advised on economics by investment guru Warren Buffett. Buffett now deems Obama’s so-called “economic stimulus bill” as largely a waste of taxpayer dollars, and has expressed alarm over the national debt that Obama’s further plans will create. With the majority of the "stimulus bill" devoted to social welfare projects- - "free" condoms, childcare , “cricket control,” tatoo removal, and so forth - - and most funding for infrastructure projects delayed until 2011 and beyond (closer to Obama's re-election race), it's difficult to argue with Buffett's assessment.
Obama repeatedly reminds Americans of the tragedy that he faces, having “inherited” a $1.3 trillion deficit from the former President, yet he spent more than half that amount with the so-called “stimulus” bill during his first six weeks as President, and has now proposed a federal budget that spends $3.6 trillion more. He campaigned on a promise to take money away from “rich” Americans and re-distribute it to people who he deemed were deserving of it, yet there is no more wealth in government coffers for President Obama to re-distribute. He is now proposing to spend the wealth of future generations of Americans - - wealth that has yet to be created - - while confidently asserting along the way that he is reducing the federal deficit, not expanding it.
President Obama also campaigned on a promise to repair relationships between the U.S. and the rest of the world, relationships that he claimed President Bush had so horribly damaged. Yet on his economic proposals, alone, foreign governments are reacting with shock and horror to our new President.
China, the largest holder of U.S. federal debt, has expressed concern over America’s growing inability to pay its bills, and has suggested that it may be time to switch to a new global currency, and to abandon the American dollar. And Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, addressing the European Union last week, described Obama’s approach to the current economic crisis as “a way to hell” and predicted bad things for America’s economic future (could it be that this man who once lived under Communist rule knows something about the problems of ‘big government?”).
If we are to take seriously the many promises that Obama made as a candidate, it is not far-fetched to think that his efforts to weaken the U.S. economy are quite intentional.
For two years, Senator Obama campaigned across the country preaching the economics of“ getting even” - - a "strategy" to make conditions more "fair" for the less fortunate by punishing successful individuals and organizations. By every indication, he is now applying that same ‘strategy” to the United States, as it relates to the rest of the world, making the world a more “fair” and “just” playing field by weakening the strongest player on the field.
After a few short weeks, it is now apparent what President Obama is doing. Will the Democratic Congress allow the President to fulfill his dreams?
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Obama’s False Choice
A “chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is exactly what we need right now.
By Mark Steyn
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Writing in the Chicago Tribune last week, President Obama fell back on one of his favorite rhetorical tics: “But I also know,” he wrote, “that we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people.”
Really? For the moment, it’s a “false choice” mainly in the sense that he’s not offering it: “a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is not on the menu, which leaves “an oppressive government-run economy” as pretty much the only game in town. How oppressive is yet to be determined: To be sure, the official position remains that only “the richest five percent” will have taxes increased. But you’ll be surprised at the percentage of Americans who wind up in the richest five percent. This year federal government spending will rise to 28.5 per cent of GDP, the highest level ever, with the exception of the peak of the Second World War. The 44th president is proposing to add more to the national debt than the first 43 presidents combined, doubling it in the next six years, and tripling it within the decade. But to talk about it in percentages of this and trillions of that misses the point. It’s not about bookkeeping, it’s about government annexation of the economy, and thus of life: government supervision, government regulation, government control. No matter how small your small business is — plumbing, hairdressing, maple sugaring — the state will be burdening you with more permits, more paperwork, more bureaucracy.
And don’t plan on moving. Ahead of this week’s G20 summit in London, Timothy Geithner, America’s beloved Toxic Asset, called for “global regulation.” “Our hope,” said Toxic Tim, “is that we can work with Europe on a global framework, a global infrastructure which has appropriate global oversight . . . ”
“Global oversight:” Hmm. There’s a phrase to savor.
“We can’t,” he continued, “allow institutions to cherry pick among competing regulators and ship risk to where it faces the lowest standards and weakest constraints . . . ”
Just as a matter of interest, why not? If you don’t want to be subject to the punitive “oversight” of economically illiterate, demagogic legislators-for-life like Barney Frank, why shouldn’t you be “allowed” to move your business to some jurisdiction with a lighter regulatory touch?
Borders give you choices. Your town has a crummy grade school? Move ten miles north and there’s a better one. Sick of Massachusetts taxes? Move to New Hampshire, as thousands do. To modify the abortionists’ bumper sticker: “I’m Pro-Choice And I Vote With My Feet.” That’s part of the self-correcting dynamism of capitalism: For example, Bono, the global do-gooder who was last in Washington to play at the Obama inauguration, recently moved much of his business from Ireland to the Netherlands, in order to pay less tax. And good for him. To be sure, he’s always calling on governments to give more money to Africa and whatnot, but it’s heartening to know that, when it comes to his wallet as opposed to yours, Bono — like Secretary Geithner — has no desire to toss any more of his money into the great sucking maw of the government treasury than the absolute minimum he can get away with. I’m with Bono and Tim: They can spend their money more effectively than hack bureaucrats can. We should do as they do, not as they say.
If you listen to the principal spokesmen for U.S. economic policy — Obama and Geithner — they grow daily ever more explicitly hostile to the private sector and ever more comfortable with the language of micro-managed government-approved capitalism — which, of course, isn’t capitalism at all. They’ll have an easier time getting away with it in a world of “global oversight” where there’s nowhere to move to. Unfortunately, even then it won’t work. Think about it: It takes extraordinary skill to create and manage a billion-dollar company; there are very few human beings on the planet who can do it. Now look at Obama and Geithner, the two men currently “managing” more money than any individuals in human history: not billions, but trillions.
Notwithstanding the Treasury secretary’s protestations that the Yes/No prompt buttons of Turbo Tax were too complex for a simple soul such as himself, it’s no reflection on the hapless Geithner that he’s unable to fix the planet. When the Bolsheviks chose to introduce Russians to the blessings of a “command economy” 90 years ago, they were dealing with a relatively simple agricultural society largely contained within national borders. Obama and Geithner are trying to do it with a sophisticated global economy in which North American consumers, European bankers, Asian suppliers, Saudi investors, and Chinese debt-holders are more tangled than an octopuses’ orgy. Even with “global oversight” — with the Toxic Tims of Germany, Argentina, and India all agreeing on how to fix the game — it can’t be done.
Barack Obama, even when he’s not yukking it up on 60 Minutes, barely disguises his indifference to economic matters. He is not an economist, a political philosopher, a geopolitical strategist. He is the president as social engineer, the Community-Organizer-in-Chief. His plan to reduce tax deductions for charitable giving, for example, is not intended primarily to raise revenue, but to advance government as the distributor of largesse and diminish alternative sources of societal organization, such as civic groups. Likewise, his big plans for socialized health care, a green economy, universal college education: They’re about extending the reach of the state.
Unfortunately, all of it costs money he doesn’t have. So he has to borrow it, in your name. Where does the world’s hyperpower go to borrow more dough than anyone’s ever borrowed in human history? More to the point, given that, partly at the behest of Obama and Geithner, almost every other western government is ramping up national debt to cover massive bank bailouts and other phony-baloney “stimuli,” is there enough money out there to buy up the debt that’s already been run up? Last week, at the official British Treasury auction, investors failed to buy the full complement of so-called “gilt-edged” 40-year bonds. Two such auctions have already failed in Germany. The U.S. Treasury, facing similar investor reluctance to snap up $34 billion of five-year notes, was forced to increase the interest it will pay on them. The Chinese and the Saudis have long taken the view that it’s to their advantage to own as much of the western world as they can snaffle up, but it’s unclear whether even they have pockets deep enough for what America and the many Bailoutistans of Europe are proposing to spend.
In their first two months, Obama and Geithner have done nothing but vaporize your wealth, and your children’s future. What began as an economic crisis is now principally a political usurpation. And, to return to the president’s “false choice,” that “chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is exactly what we need right now. It’s the quickest, cheapest, fairest, most-efficient route to economic stabilization and renewal. A regimented and eternally forgiving global command economy with no moral hazard will destroy us all.
By Mark Steyn
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Writing in the Chicago Tribune last week, President Obama fell back on one of his favorite rhetorical tics: “But I also know,” he wrote, “that we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people.”
Really? For the moment, it’s a “false choice” mainly in the sense that he’s not offering it: “a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is not on the menu, which leaves “an oppressive government-run economy” as pretty much the only game in town. How oppressive is yet to be determined: To be sure, the official position remains that only “the richest five percent” will have taxes increased. But you’ll be surprised at the percentage of Americans who wind up in the richest five percent. This year federal government spending will rise to 28.5 per cent of GDP, the highest level ever, with the exception of the peak of the Second World War. The 44th president is proposing to add more to the national debt than the first 43 presidents combined, doubling it in the next six years, and tripling it within the decade. But to talk about it in percentages of this and trillions of that misses the point. It’s not about bookkeeping, it’s about government annexation of the economy, and thus of life: government supervision, government regulation, government control. No matter how small your small business is — plumbing, hairdressing, maple sugaring — the state will be burdening you with more permits, more paperwork, more bureaucracy.
And don’t plan on moving. Ahead of this week’s G20 summit in London, Timothy Geithner, America’s beloved Toxic Asset, called for “global regulation.” “Our hope,” said Toxic Tim, “is that we can work with Europe on a global framework, a global infrastructure which has appropriate global oversight . . . ”
“Global oversight:” Hmm. There’s a phrase to savor.
“We can’t,” he continued, “allow institutions to cherry pick among competing regulators and ship risk to where it faces the lowest standards and weakest constraints . . . ”
Just as a matter of interest, why not? If you don’t want to be subject to the punitive “oversight” of economically illiterate, demagogic legislators-for-life like Barney Frank, why shouldn’t you be “allowed” to move your business to some jurisdiction with a lighter regulatory touch?
Borders give you choices. Your town has a crummy grade school? Move ten miles north and there’s a better one. Sick of Massachusetts taxes? Move to New Hampshire, as thousands do. To modify the abortionists’ bumper sticker: “I’m Pro-Choice And I Vote With My Feet.” That’s part of the self-correcting dynamism of capitalism: For example, Bono, the global do-gooder who was last in Washington to play at the Obama inauguration, recently moved much of his business from Ireland to the Netherlands, in order to pay less tax. And good for him. To be sure, he’s always calling on governments to give more money to Africa and whatnot, but it’s heartening to know that, when it comes to his wallet as opposed to yours, Bono — like Secretary Geithner — has no desire to toss any more of his money into the great sucking maw of the government treasury than the absolute minimum he can get away with. I’m with Bono and Tim: They can spend their money more effectively than hack bureaucrats can. We should do as they do, not as they say.
If you listen to the principal spokesmen for U.S. economic policy — Obama and Geithner — they grow daily ever more explicitly hostile to the private sector and ever more comfortable with the language of micro-managed government-approved capitalism — which, of course, isn’t capitalism at all. They’ll have an easier time getting away with it in a world of “global oversight” where there’s nowhere to move to. Unfortunately, even then it won’t work. Think about it: It takes extraordinary skill to create and manage a billion-dollar company; there are very few human beings on the planet who can do it. Now look at Obama and Geithner, the two men currently “managing” more money than any individuals in human history: not billions, but trillions.
Notwithstanding the Treasury secretary’s protestations that the Yes/No prompt buttons of Turbo Tax were too complex for a simple soul such as himself, it’s no reflection on the hapless Geithner that he’s unable to fix the planet. When the Bolsheviks chose to introduce Russians to the blessings of a “command economy” 90 years ago, they were dealing with a relatively simple agricultural society largely contained within national borders. Obama and Geithner are trying to do it with a sophisticated global economy in which North American consumers, European bankers, Asian suppliers, Saudi investors, and Chinese debt-holders are more tangled than an octopuses’ orgy. Even with “global oversight” — with the Toxic Tims of Germany, Argentina, and India all agreeing on how to fix the game — it can’t be done.
Barack Obama, even when he’s not yukking it up on 60 Minutes, barely disguises his indifference to economic matters. He is not an economist, a political philosopher, a geopolitical strategist. He is the president as social engineer, the Community-Organizer-in-Chief. His plan to reduce tax deductions for charitable giving, for example, is not intended primarily to raise revenue, but to advance government as the distributor of largesse and diminish alternative sources of societal organization, such as civic groups. Likewise, his big plans for socialized health care, a green economy, universal college education: They’re about extending the reach of the state.
Unfortunately, all of it costs money he doesn’t have. So he has to borrow it, in your name. Where does the world’s hyperpower go to borrow more dough than anyone’s ever borrowed in human history? More to the point, given that, partly at the behest of Obama and Geithner, almost every other western government is ramping up national debt to cover massive bank bailouts and other phony-baloney “stimuli,” is there enough money out there to buy up the debt that’s already been run up? Last week, at the official British Treasury auction, investors failed to buy the full complement of so-called “gilt-edged” 40-year bonds. Two such auctions have already failed in Germany. The U.S. Treasury, facing similar investor reluctance to snap up $34 billion of five-year notes, was forced to increase the interest it will pay on them. The Chinese and the Saudis have long taken the view that it’s to their advantage to own as much of the western world as they can snaffle up, but it’s unclear whether even they have pockets deep enough for what America and the many Bailoutistans of Europe are proposing to spend.
In their first two months, Obama and Geithner have done nothing but vaporize your wealth, and your children’s future. What began as an economic crisis is now principally a political usurpation. And, to return to the president’s “false choice,” that “chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is exactly what we need right now. It’s the quickest, cheapest, fairest, most-efficient route to economic stabilization and renewal. A regimented and eternally forgiving global command economy with no moral hazard will destroy us all.
The AIG Bonus Brouhaha
Robert Murphy
Saturday, March 28, 2009
I have been resisting the growing tendency to label our current woes as the Great Depression II. The conventional statistics of our economy today are nowhere near the misery of the 1930s. However, the proposed 90% tax on certain executive bonuses has convinced me that we are in for a decade of stagnation.
To recap: Back in September 2008, the giant insurer AIG was on the brink of bankruptcy when the Federal Reserve rushed in with an $85 billion rescue package. (There have been subsequent bailouts, bringing the total infusion thus far to $170 billion.) At that point the government seized AIG, and among other things it replaced its CEO with Edward Liddy, the very person Congress was recently interrogating about the bonus payments.
The reason AIG was in such dire straits had nothing to do with its conventional insurance business, which remained strong. Instead, it was AIG’s Financial Products division that brought the corporation to its knees. This group had dabbled in complex assets tied to subprime mortgages, and been left holding the bag when borrowers began defaulting at much higher rates than expected.
Beyond directly holding some of these “toxic” assets, AIG was also crippled by its massive issuance of credit default swaps. These are insurance policies that guarantee the buyer a certain monetary payoff if “credit events” occur. For example, a hedge fund might hold $1 million in bonds issued by GM. To protect itself from a GM default on its bond payments, the hedge fund can buy a credit default swap from a company like AIG.
As the housing and financial markets deteriorated last summer, the companies who had bought credit default swaps from AIG became nervous. They worried that AIG would suffer so many claims that it couldn’t satisfy them all. So AIG’s counterparties insisted that AIG post collateral to back up their contractual obligations. It was these “margin calls” that finally killed the company.
Fast forward to the present. The scandal is that AIG paid $165 million in executive bonuses, with large sums going to some of the very people who worked in the Financial Products division that caused all the trouble. That is certainly a bit odd, especially considering that that money effectively came out of taxpayers’ pockets.
The public was right to be outraged. But the real problem was the bailout in the first place. No matter what AIG does, it will now be with taxpayer money. Obviously, even a company that the government seizes is still going to pay its employees, pay its heating and electric bills, and buy raw materials. If citizens don’t object when their government starts nationalizing companies like they do in South America, then the citizens shouldn’t be shocked when their tax dollars get spent by the government’s handpicked CEO.
By all accounts, these bonus payments were contractual obligations before AIG’s seizure. Now if the government had simply stayed out of it, and let AIG go into bankruptcy, then the standard and time-tested proceedings would have decided whether to prune back these payments. After all, when a company goes bankrupt, it means that it does not have enough assets to pay off all of its creditors. So some people have to take a hit. And perhaps a bankruptcy court would have decided that Financial Products executives should take the hit before those who had bought credit default swaps.
But the government didn’t let AIG go into bankruptcy, since the giant insurer was allegedly “too big to fail.” If a private buyer had come in and rescued AIG with an $85 billion loan, that buyer would have certainly insisted on all sorts of immediate cost-cutting reforms. Yet the federal government obviously wasn’t too concerned about its new toy.
Even though it is indeed outrageous for AIG executives to pocket those millions, it’s an even worse outcome if the government taxes it back from them. This would be an ominous precedent, where the IRS basically mugs an unpopular group just because it can.
Many financial institutions lost their heads during the housing boom. On a free market, they would have been ruined by their recklessness. Yet now these firms are kept alive, or rather, they are kept undead, as zombies. For now these giant companies all take their marching orders from DC politicians, about the only group I trust less than AIG executives.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
I have been resisting the growing tendency to label our current woes as the Great Depression II. The conventional statistics of our economy today are nowhere near the misery of the 1930s. However, the proposed 90% tax on certain executive bonuses has convinced me that we are in for a decade of stagnation.
To recap: Back in September 2008, the giant insurer AIG was on the brink of bankruptcy when the Federal Reserve rushed in with an $85 billion rescue package. (There have been subsequent bailouts, bringing the total infusion thus far to $170 billion.) At that point the government seized AIG, and among other things it replaced its CEO with Edward Liddy, the very person Congress was recently interrogating about the bonus payments.
The reason AIG was in such dire straits had nothing to do with its conventional insurance business, which remained strong. Instead, it was AIG’s Financial Products division that brought the corporation to its knees. This group had dabbled in complex assets tied to subprime mortgages, and been left holding the bag when borrowers began defaulting at much higher rates than expected.
Beyond directly holding some of these “toxic” assets, AIG was also crippled by its massive issuance of credit default swaps. These are insurance policies that guarantee the buyer a certain monetary payoff if “credit events” occur. For example, a hedge fund might hold $1 million in bonds issued by GM. To protect itself from a GM default on its bond payments, the hedge fund can buy a credit default swap from a company like AIG.
As the housing and financial markets deteriorated last summer, the companies who had bought credit default swaps from AIG became nervous. They worried that AIG would suffer so many claims that it couldn’t satisfy them all. So AIG’s counterparties insisted that AIG post collateral to back up their contractual obligations. It was these “margin calls” that finally killed the company.
Fast forward to the present. The scandal is that AIG paid $165 million in executive bonuses, with large sums going to some of the very people who worked in the Financial Products division that caused all the trouble. That is certainly a bit odd, especially considering that that money effectively came out of taxpayers’ pockets.
The public was right to be outraged. But the real problem was the bailout in the first place. No matter what AIG does, it will now be with taxpayer money. Obviously, even a company that the government seizes is still going to pay its employees, pay its heating and electric bills, and buy raw materials. If citizens don’t object when their government starts nationalizing companies like they do in South America, then the citizens shouldn’t be shocked when their tax dollars get spent by the government’s handpicked CEO.
By all accounts, these bonus payments were contractual obligations before AIG’s seizure. Now if the government had simply stayed out of it, and let AIG go into bankruptcy, then the standard and time-tested proceedings would have decided whether to prune back these payments. After all, when a company goes bankrupt, it means that it does not have enough assets to pay off all of its creditors. So some people have to take a hit. And perhaps a bankruptcy court would have decided that Financial Products executives should take the hit before those who had bought credit default swaps.
But the government didn’t let AIG go into bankruptcy, since the giant insurer was allegedly “too big to fail.” If a private buyer had come in and rescued AIG with an $85 billion loan, that buyer would have certainly insisted on all sorts of immediate cost-cutting reforms. Yet the federal government obviously wasn’t too concerned about its new toy.
Even though it is indeed outrageous for AIG executives to pocket those millions, it’s an even worse outcome if the government taxes it back from them. This would be an ominous precedent, where the IRS basically mugs an unpopular group just because it can.
Many financial institutions lost their heads during the housing boom. On a free market, they would have been ruined by their recklessness. Yet now these firms are kept alive, or rather, they are kept undead, as zombies. For now these giant companies all take their marching orders from DC politicians, about the only group I trust less than AIG executives.
Friday, March 27, 2009
American Mob Rule
We need a Socrates in Washington right now.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, March 26, 2009
In the last three months, we’ve been reduced to something like the ancient Athenian mob — with opportunistic politicians sometimes inciting, sometimes catering to an already-angry public.
The Greek comic playwright Aristophanes once described how screaming politicians — posing as men of the people — would sway Athenian citizens by offering them all sort of perks and goodies that the government had no idea of how to pay for.
The historian Thucydides offers even more frightening accounts of bloodthirsty voters after they were aroused by demagogues (“leaders or drivers of the people”). One day, in bloodthirsty rage, voters demanded the death of the rebellious men of the subject island city of Mytilene; yet on the very next, in sudden remorse, they rescinded that blanket death sentence.
Lately we’ve allowed our government to forget its calmer republican roots. We’ve gone Athenian whole hog.
Take the AIG debacle. The global insurance and financial-services company is broke and needed a federal loan guarantee of $180 billion to prevent bankruptcy. Some $165 million (about 1/1000th of that sum) had previously been contracted to give bonuses to its derelict executives.
That set off a firestorm in Congress. Politicians rushed before the cameras to demand all sorts of penalties for these greedy investment bankers. Soon, they passed an unprecedented special tax law just to confiscate 90 percent of these contracted bonuses.
Those who shouted the loudest for the heads of the AIG execs had the dirtiest hands. President Obama was outraged at their greed. But he alone signed their bonus provisions into law. And during the recent presidential campaign, no one forced him to accept over $100,000 in AIG donations.
Rep. Charles Rangel (D, N.Y.) was even more infuriated at such greed and helped pass the retroactive tax bill. Yet for years, the populist Rangel — who is in trouble over back taxes owed and misuse of his subsidized New York apartments — had tried to entice AIG executives to fund his Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D, Conn.) was the fieriest in his denunciations of Wall Street greed. Yet he was the very one who inserted the bonus provision into the bailout bill, despite later denying it. And Dodd has taken more AIG money than any in Congress — in addition to getting V.I.P. loan rates from the disgraced Countrywide mortgage bank.
Then there is the matter of blowing apart the budget. President Obama inherited from George Bush a $500 billion — and growing — annual budget deficit and a ballooning $11 trillion national debt. Obama nevertheless promised us an entirely new national health plan, bigger entitlements in education, and a vast new cap-and-trade energy program.
But there is a problem in paying for the $3.5 trillion in budgetary expenditures that Obama has called for in the coming fiscal year. Proposed vast additional taxes on the “rich” still won’t be enough to avoid tripling the present budget deficit — and putting us on schedule over the next decade to add another $9 trillion to the existing national debt.
During the Clinton years, we got higher taxes but eventually balanced budgets. During the Bush administration, we got lower taxes but spiraling deficits. But now during the era of Obama, we apparently will get the worst of both worlds — higher taxes than under Clinton and higher deficits than under Bush.
In other words, we — through our government — are spending money that we don’t have. We’re told the rich will pick up the tab, even though there are not enough rich with enough money to squeeze out the necessary amounts. Our new demagogues, though, are arguing that this is the only fair course of action. Meanwhile, these leaders — who have taken so much Wall Street money in the past — are driving us into fury to punish the guilty on Wall Street. This is truly the age of mindless mob rule.
Of course, we probably won’t hear any candidate in four years assure the voters, “I won’t take any more money from Wall Street and will give back any that I already got. And if elected, I promise four consecutive years of budget cuts to achieve each year $1.5 trillion in annual budget surpluses. Only that way can we get the national debt back down to the past ‘manageable’ 2008 sum of $11 trillion.”
We need such a Socrates in Washington right now, who would dare tell the American mob the truth of how we are descending into financial serfdom. But in this present mood, the aroused mob would first make him drink the hemlock.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, March 26, 2009
In the last three months, we’ve been reduced to something like the ancient Athenian mob — with opportunistic politicians sometimes inciting, sometimes catering to an already-angry public.
The Greek comic playwright Aristophanes once described how screaming politicians — posing as men of the people — would sway Athenian citizens by offering them all sort of perks and goodies that the government had no idea of how to pay for.
The historian Thucydides offers even more frightening accounts of bloodthirsty voters after they were aroused by demagogues (“leaders or drivers of the people”). One day, in bloodthirsty rage, voters demanded the death of the rebellious men of the subject island city of Mytilene; yet on the very next, in sudden remorse, they rescinded that blanket death sentence.
Lately we’ve allowed our government to forget its calmer republican roots. We’ve gone Athenian whole hog.
Take the AIG debacle. The global insurance and financial-services company is broke and needed a federal loan guarantee of $180 billion to prevent bankruptcy. Some $165 million (about 1/1000th of that sum) had previously been contracted to give bonuses to its derelict executives.
That set off a firestorm in Congress. Politicians rushed before the cameras to demand all sorts of penalties for these greedy investment bankers. Soon, they passed an unprecedented special tax law just to confiscate 90 percent of these contracted bonuses.
Those who shouted the loudest for the heads of the AIG execs had the dirtiest hands. President Obama was outraged at their greed. But he alone signed their bonus provisions into law. And during the recent presidential campaign, no one forced him to accept over $100,000 in AIG donations.
Rep. Charles Rangel (D, N.Y.) was even more infuriated at such greed and helped pass the retroactive tax bill. Yet for years, the populist Rangel — who is in trouble over back taxes owed and misuse of his subsidized New York apartments — had tried to entice AIG executives to fund his Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D, Conn.) was the fieriest in his denunciations of Wall Street greed. Yet he was the very one who inserted the bonus provision into the bailout bill, despite later denying it. And Dodd has taken more AIG money than any in Congress — in addition to getting V.I.P. loan rates from the disgraced Countrywide mortgage bank.
Then there is the matter of blowing apart the budget. President Obama inherited from George Bush a $500 billion — and growing — annual budget deficit and a ballooning $11 trillion national debt. Obama nevertheless promised us an entirely new national health plan, bigger entitlements in education, and a vast new cap-and-trade energy program.
But there is a problem in paying for the $3.5 trillion in budgetary expenditures that Obama has called for in the coming fiscal year. Proposed vast additional taxes on the “rich” still won’t be enough to avoid tripling the present budget deficit — and putting us on schedule over the next decade to add another $9 trillion to the existing national debt.
During the Clinton years, we got higher taxes but eventually balanced budgets. During the Bush administration, we got lower taxes but spiraling deficits. But now during the era of Obama, we apparently will get the worst of both worlds — higher taxes than under Clinton and higher deficits than under Bush.
In other words, we — through our government — are spending money that we don’t have. We’re told the rich will pick up the tab, even though there are not enough rich with enough money to squeeze out the necessary amounts. Our new demagogues, though, are arguing that this is the only fair course of action. Meanwhile, these leaders — who have taken so much Wall Street money in the past — are driving us into fury to punish the guilty on Wall Street. This is truly the age of mindless mob rule.
Of course, we probably won’t hear any candidate in four years assure the voters, “I won’t take any more money from Wall Street and will give back any that I already got. And if elected, I promise four consecutive years of budget cuts to achieve each year $1.5 trillion in annual budget surpluses. Only that way can we get the national debt back down to the past ‘manageable’ 2008 sum of $11 trillion.”
We need such a Socrates in Washington right now, who would dare tell the American mob the truth of how we are descending into financial serfdom. But in this present mood, the aroused mob would first make him drink the hemlock.
Rebooting America's Global Image Not Going Well
Mona Charen
Friday, March 27, 2009
One of President Obama's signature boasts was that his election would, to use his term, "reboot" America's image in the world. Addressing thousands of Germans last summer, Obama said, "In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world rather than a force to help make it right has become all too common." His election, he promised, would transform America's global image.
How's that project going? On the occasion of the Persian New Year, President Obama delivered a video message to the Iranian people and government, advisedly using the term "the Islamic Republic of Iran." The U.S., declared the president, desired a "new beginning" in relations with Iran, and would no longer engage in "threats" but seeks engagement that is "honest" and based upon "mutual respect." While cautioning that Iran could not assume its "rightful place in the community of nations" through "terror or arms," the president's message was otherwise strewn with rose petals.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's response was, well, a little less than enthusiastic. While the crowd chanted "Death to America," Khamenei demanded: "Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support of the Zionist regime?" Besides, the SL continued, "we don't know who is making decisions in America -- is it the president, the Congress, or some unknown people who pull the strings?" Khamenei further suggested that some American leaders have "demanded that our great and honorable nation be wiped out." President Obama might want to begin this "honest" dialogue by pointing out that it was Khamenei who spoke to a crowd chanting "Death to America." We don't do that sort of thing. In fact, they chant "Death to America" when their national soccer team scores a goal or when they've particularly enjoyed a concert. Their kids learn it in school -- rather as ours learn the Pledge of Allegiance. No American leader has ever called for Iran to be wiped out. But Iran's president has a little list of nations he threatens with genocide on a regular basis. The list consists of Israel, with the U.S. getting honorable mention from time to time.
President Obama wasn't fazed by Khamenei's response. At his news conference on March 24, he cited the Iranian reaction as a reason to be "persistent."
The new dawn for relations with Europe is slow to materialize, too. There was that unfortunate business with the prime minister of Great Britain, in which the president's team seemed unaware that Britain enjoys special status as primo inter pares of American allies. After British officials expressed dismay about the cool reception their leader received by the White House (and the tacky gift of DVDs), an unnamed administration official reportedly chided the British saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."
Nor is the new administration making a hit with the current president of the European Union. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek told the European Parliament that President Obama's economic policies represent "the road to Hell. ... Americans will need liquidity to finance all their measures and they will balance this with the sale of their bonds but this will undermine the liquidity of the global financial market. ... We need to read the history books and the lessons of history and the biggest success of the EU is the refusal to go this way." Other European leaders have pointedly declined President Obama's invitation to bankrupt their treasuries with deficit spending.
Secretary of State Clinton presented a cutesy "reset" button to the Russian ambassador. But apparently the State Department had gotten the Russian word wrong. Instead of "reset" it said "overcharge."
The North Koreans seem ready to launch a new long-range missile. And the Chinese, according to the Washington Post, have "the most active land-based ballistic and cruise missile program in the world." Recession notwithstanding, China is very aggressively increasing its military spending. Even by China's acknowledged account, military spending has increased 18 percent in the past year. But the Pentagon estimates that China spent twice as much -- between $105 billion and $150 billion on its military in 2008. In addition to missiles, China is pouring money into cyber warfare, a fleet of attack submarines, research and development on aircraft carriers, and a naval base on the southern island of Hainan, which would give the Chinese navy "direct access to vital international sea lanes ..." all while speculating about replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Perhaps we misunderstood Obama. Maybe instead of a reboot, we're just getting the boot.
Friday, March 27, 2009
One of President Obama's signature boasts was that his election would, to use his term, "reboot" America's image in the world. Addressing thousands of Germans last summer, Obama said, "In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world rather than a force to help make it right has become all too common." His election, he promised, would transform America's global image.
How's that project going? On the occasion of the Persian New Year, President Obama delivered a video message to the Iranian people and government, advisedly using the term "the Islamic Republic of Iran." The U.S., declared the president, desired a "new beginning" in relations with Iran, and would no longer engage in "threats" but seeks engagement that is "honest" and based upon "mutual respect." While cautioning that Iran could not assume its "rightful place in the community of nations" through "terror or arms," the president's message was otherwise strewn with rose petals.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's response was, well, a little less than enthusiastic. While the crowd chanted "Death to America," Khamenei demanded: "Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support of the Zionist regime?" Besides, the SL continued, "we don't know who is making decisions in America -- is it the president, the Congress, or some unknown people who pull the strings?" Khamenei further suggested that some American leaders have "demanded that our great and honorable nation be wiped out." President Obama might want to begin this "honest" dialogue by pointing out that it was Khamenei who spoke to a crowd chanting "Death to America." We don't do that sort of thing. In fact, they chant "Death to America" when their national soccer team scores a goal or when they've particularly enjoyed a concert. Their kids learn it in school -- rather as ours learn the Pledge of Allegiance. No American leader has ever called for Iran to be wiped out. But Iran's president has a little list of nations he threatens with genocide on a regular basis. The list consists of Israel, with the U.S. getting honorable mention from time to time.
President Obama wasn't fazed by Khamenei's response. At his news conference on March 24, he cited the Iranian reaction as a reason to be "persistent."
The new dawn for relations with Europe is slow to materialize, too. There was that unfortunate business with the prime minister of Great Britain, in which the president's team seemed unaware that Britain enjoys special status as primo inter pares of American allies. After British officials expressed dismay about the cool reception their leader received by the White House (and the tacky gift of DVDs), an unnamed administration official reportedly chided the British saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."
Nor is the new administration making a hit with the current president of the European Union. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek told the European Parliament that President Obama's economic policies represent "the road to Hell. ... Americans will need liquidity to finance all their measures and they will balance this with the sale of their bonds but this will undermine the liquidity of the global financial market. ... We need to read the history books and the lessons of history and the biggest success of the EU is the refusal to go this way." Other European leaders have pointedly declined President Obama's invitation to bankrupt their treasuries with deficit spending.
Secretary of State Clinton presented a cutesy "reset" button to the Russian ambassador. But apparently the State Department had gotten the Russian word wrong. Instead of "reset" it said "overcharge."
The North Koreans seem ready to launch a new long-range missile. And the Chinese, according to the Washington Post, have "the most active land-based ballistic and cruise missile program in the world." Recession notwithstanding, China is very aggressively increasing its military spending. Even by China's acknowledged account, military spending has increased 18 percent in the past year. But the Pentagon estimates that China spent twice as much -- between $105 billion and $150 billion on its military in 2008. In addition to missiles, China is pouring money into cyber warfare, a fleet of attack submarines, research and development on aircraft carriers, and a naval base on the southern island of Hainan, which would give the Chinese navy "direct access to vital international sea lanes ..." all while speculating about replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Perhaps we misunderstood Obama. Maybe instead of a reboot, we're just getting the boot.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Labor’s ‘Card Check’ Tricks
They’re not workers with a vote, they’re marks.
By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
At the end of the 19th century, unsuspecting workers were “shanghaied” — a practice originated in that Chinese city — to work on British ships, which desperately needed the labor. All manner of tricks were used to hoodwink the poor souls into service at sea. According to one legend, press gangs, or “crimps,” would put a coin — “the king’s shilling” — in a man’s drink. If the mark drank the ale only to see the coin at the bottom of an empty glass, it was too late and he was a member of the Royal Navy.
The proposed Employee Free Choice Act, colloquially known as “card check,” might be better named “The Democrats’ Shilling Act.” It would radically revise the National Labor Relations Act, primarily by diluting the practice of requiring workers to vote for unionization via an election with a secret ballot, and by changing the rules by which a government official can force labor rules on employers — making the choice to unionize less free. Basically, under card check, labor can unionize a company’s employees if 50 percent of workers sign a card saying they want to unionize. The cards can be signed in the presence of others, including union organizers.
Indeed, the press gangs prefer it that way.
There is a bloody spin war over whether card check abolishes the secret ballot or not. Pro-card-check forces insist that it doesn’t. Unfortunately, these voices include many mainstream reporters who consistently use the language preferred by Big Labor. They parrot the labor line that if 30 percent of workers sign a card asking for an election, they can have one.
But this ignores the unions’ crimp tactics. For starters, the cards are written in ways that make “predatory lending” mortgages seem like paragons of full disclosure.
The National Right to Work website shows an example of such a card. In big, bold letters on top, it says “Request for Employees Representation Election.” But after you fill out the relevant info, there’s the small print, authorizing the Teamsters to “represent me in all negotiations of wages, hours and working conditions.”
In other words, in many cases, workers who think they’re just voting for an election are in fact voting for unionization. The unions make it as difficult as possible to do the former without also doing the latter. Check a card, find the king’s shilling.
Also, if the number of cards is over 30 percent but below 50 percent, there still isn’t an election unless the organizers — not the workers — want it.
As Mickey Kaus, a one-man blogging crusader against card check, wrote, “No individual worker will know if his signed card will provide the 31 percent plurality or the 51 percent majority. Only the organizers know this. You could sign the card intending to provoke an election and discover that you actually prevented an election. There’s no way for ordinary workers to reliably game the system in order to ‘choose’ a secret ballot.”
Translation: They’re not workers with a vote, they’re marks.
“Since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy?” Teamsters president James Hoffa asked recently. “Town meetings in New England are as democratic as they come, and they don’t use the secret ballot. Elections in the Soviet Union were by secret ballot, but those weren’t democratic.”
It’s a funny argument primarily because it’s so stupid. But it’s particularly funny coming from the son of Jimmy Hoffa, who acted more like a KGB election monitor than a member of New England’s democracy-loving yeoman citizenry. Hoffa the Elder made his name beating up — and much, much worse — anyone who stood in the way of the Teamsters, including other unions. Today’s unions are less Mobbed-up than those of yesteryear to be sure, but they’re hardly above tactics that would be considered intimidating and coercive at a Connecticut school-board meeting.
Besides, if card check is no threat to the secret ballot, why is Hoffa kneecapping the latter?
Organized labor is not dead in America, nor should it be. But it’s simply not as important as it once was, because the government has an alphabet soup of agencies dedicated to protecting the rights of workers. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, OSHA, and the Family and Medical Leave Act make the need for unions far less acute.
This is good news for workers, especially liberals, but it’s bad news for unions because they need grievances to grow (and the Democrats need unions). In a recent Rasmussen poll, only 9 percent of nonunion workers who responded wanted to belong to a union. That’s quite a referendum.
The response from labor and the Democrats? If they won’t join, shanghai them.
By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
At the end of the 19th century, unsuspecting workers were “shanghaied” — a practice originated in that Chinese city — to work on British ships, which desperately needed the labor. All manner of tricks were used to hoodwink the poor souls into service at sea. According to one legend, press gangs, or “crimps,” would put a coin — “the king’s shilling” — in a man’s drink. If the mark drank the ale only to see the coin at the bottom of an empty glass, it was too late and he was a member of the Royal Navy.
The proposed Employee Free Choice Act, colloquially known as “card check,” might be better named “The Democrats’ Shilling Act.” It would radically revise the National Labor Relations Act, primarily by diluting the practice of requiring workers to vote for unionization via an election with a secret ballot, and by changing the rules by which a government official can force labor rules on employers — making the choice to unionize less free. Basically, under card check, labor can unionize a company’s employees if 50 percent of workers sign a card saying they want to unionize. The cards can be signed in the presence of others, including union organizers.
Indeed, the press gangs prefer it that way.
There is a bloody spin war over whether card check abolishes the secret ballot or not. Pro-card-check forces insist that it doesn’t. Unfortunately, these voices include many mainstream reporters who consistently use the language preferred by Big Labor. They parrot the labor line that if 30 percent of workers sign a card asking for an election, they can have one.
But this ignores the unions’ crimp tactics. For starters, the cards are written in ways that make “predatory lending” mortgages seem like paragons of full disclosure.
The National Right to Work website shows an example of such a card. In big, bold letters on top, it says “Request for Employees Representation Election.” But after you fill out the relevant info, there’s the small print, authorizing the Teamsters to “represent me in all negotiations of wages, hours and working conditions.”
In other words, in many cases, workers who think they’re just voting for an election are in fact voting for unionization. The unions make it as difficult as possible to do the former without also doing the latter. Check a card, find the king’s shilling.
Also, if the number of cards is over 30 percent but below 50 percent, there still isn’t an election unless the organizers — not the workers — want it.
As Mickey Kaus, a one-man blogging crusader against card check, wrote, “No individual worker will know if his signed card will provide the 31 percent plurality or the 51 percent majority. Only the organizers know this. You could sign the card intending to provoke an election and discover that you actually prevented an election. There’s no way for ordinary workers to reliably game the system in order to ‘choose’ a secret ballot.”
Translation: They’re not workers with a vote, they’re marks.
“Since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy?” Teamsters president James Hoffa asked recently. “Town meetings in New England are as democratic as they come, and they don’t use the secret ballot. Elections in the Soviet Union were by secret ballot, but those weren’t democratic.”
It’s a funny argument primarily because it’s so stupid. But it’s particularly funny coming from the son of Jimmy Hoffa, who acted more like a KGB election monitor than a member of New England’s democracy-loving yeoman citizenry. Hoffa the Elder made his name beating up — and much, much worse — anyone who stood in the way of the Teamsters, including other unions. Today’s unions are less Mobbed-up than those of yesteryear to be sure, but they’re hardly above tactics that would be considered intimidating and coercive at a Connecticut school-board meeting.
Besides, if card check is no threat to the secret ballot, why is Hoffa kneecapping the latter?
Organized labor is not dead in America, nor should it be. But it’s simply not as important as it once was, because the government has an alphabet soup of agencies dedicated to protecting the rights of workers. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, OSHA, and the Family and Medical Leave Act make the need for unions far less acute.
This is good news for workers, especially liberals, but it’s bad news for unions because they need grievances to grow (and the Democrats need unions). In a recent Rasmussen poll, only 9 percent of nonunion workers who responded wanted to belong to a union. That’s quite a referendum.
The response from labor and the Democrats? If they won’t join, shanghai them.
Mexico Isn’t a Failed State — Yet
But we need to protect ourselves now.
By Mark Krikorian
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Mexico is in trouble. The drug wars there have claimed more than 7,000 lives since President Calderón took office in late 2007. Police are being beheaded, politicians are being assassinated, and pundits are talking of Mexico’s becoming a “failed state.”
The potential consequences for the United States are very serious, much more serious than anything likely to happen in Afghanistan or Iraq. The violence has already started to spill over the border, and it is only a matter of time before an American police officer or Border Patrol agent or judge is beheaded. The even greater danger is massive refugee flows, inundating the Southwest with unprecedented numbers of Mexicans fleeing violence, few of whom would likely return, regardless of changed conditions at home.
But first, the good news: Mexico is not a failed state, and won’t be any time soon. In fact, the reason for the explosion of violence is precisely that the state is asserting itself, trying to end the cozy and corrupt arrangements that allowed drug cartels to buy all the pols and cops they needed to conduct their business unmolested. What’s more, the bulk of the violence is taking place in only three states (though two of them are on our border), while much of the country is relatively calm.
And there is as yet no mass emigration of the kind we saw from El Salvador, 25 percent of whose population fled during the civil war there in the 1980s. In fact, illegal immigration from Mexico has fallen significantly, initially because of tighter enforcement and now also because of the economic downturn here. In El Paso, for instance, the Border Patrol in 1993 apprehended an average of more than 1,000 illegal aliens a day; now it’s down to 38 a day.
But that’s pretty much it for good news, and the bad news is daunting. Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, in a December analysis, issued a dire warning:
The incoming Obama Administration must immediately focus on the dangerous and worsening problems in Mexico, which fundamentally threaten U.S. national security. Before the next eight years are past, the violent, warring collection of criminal drug cartels could overwhelm the institutions of the state and establish de facto control over broad regions of northern Mexico.
A failure by the Mexican political system to curtail lawlessness and violence could result [in] a surge of millions of refugees crossing the U.S. border to escape the domestic misery of violence, failed economic policy, poverty, hunger, joblessness, and the mindless cruelty and injustice of a criminal state.
What’s more, our military’s Joint Forces Command reported last fall:
In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.
Any country whose name follows the words “Pakistan and” is probably frakked. The report continues:
The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.
So, what do we do? Because the drug trade is driven by demand in the United States, drug legalization in the U.S. is often presented as the solution to the troubles in Mexico. While I’m sympathetic to looser rules for marijuana, that is not the answer. First, it would take years to change public consensus about drug laws, and more years for such a change to work its way through our federal system. And even if marijuana is decriminalized or even legalized, that’s just not going to happen with heroin or meth.
What’s more, drug use in Mexico itself is widespread and growing; McCaffrey’s report says that chronic drug consumption there has doubled since 2002. An estimated 20 percent of the cocaine that enters Mexico is consumed locally, and Tijuana’s 1.4 million people are estimated to include 100,000 meth addicts. There’s nothing reform of American drug laws can do to affect this.
But if not drug legalization, then what? Law-enforcement cooperation is appropriate, of course, and is ongoing; Congress last year authorized $1.6 billion over three years for the Mérida Initiative to provide anti-drug training and equipment to Mexican military and law-enforcement forces. Earlier this month, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Mexico and conferred with the heads of the army and navy there, who have lead roles in combating the cartels. Perhaps most popular with this administration is an effort to limit the southbound smuggling of guns and money; there have been calls for ratification of CIFTA, a treaty that, among other things, would limit gun smuggling in the Western Hemisphere.
Another factor that is not widely mentioned is that Mexico is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists. Several dozen reporters and editors covering the cartels have been murdered in recent years. Even if the government gave up trying to assert its authority against the cartels, the drug lords won’t rest until the media are also silenced.
And much of the lawlessness isn’t related to drugs at all. Mexico has now surpassed Iraq and Colombia as the world’s kidnapping capital, and this is mostly unrelated to the cartels. Kidnapping has been called a “national plague” and is a much more immediate concern to most ordinary Mexicans than the drug war. There are now “express kidnappings,” where passengers in unregistered cabs are grabbed and forced to use their ATM cards to withdraw money, and “virtual kidnappings,” where families are tricked into believing someone has been kidnapped. It has gotten so bad that a U.S. expert involved in negotiating the release of kidnapped people was himself kidnapped in December. There have even been calls for reinstating the death penalty to address the scourge.
Perhaps the deepest problem for the stability of the Mexican state, a problem untouchable by any kind of law enforcement, is widespread public disenchantment with the nation’s institutions. William & Mary professor George Grayson points to polling data showing “the public’s plummeting confidence in major judicial and political organizations” and “the citizenry’s ever greater sense of impotence to influence policy and policy makers.”
PROTECT OURSELVES
Basically, there’s not much we can do to “fix” Mexico, as our unsuccessful attempts at nation-building elsewhere should have taught us by now. Mexico is a proud, unique country, with its own strengths and customs, phobias and quirks; the challenge of this drug war is one that the Mexican state and society will have to meet largely on their own.
But while Mexico is undergoing this travail, we must protect ourselves, preventing the violence and disorder from crossing the border. And we must start preparing now for the mass refugee flows that are inevitable if the Mexican state ultimately fails the challenge and either cedes political control of much of the country to the cartels or disintegrates entirely in a replay of the multi-sided civil war called the Mexican Revolution.
How big could such a refugee crisis be? Estimates of the number of people who fled to the United States during the chaos of 1910–1920 range as high as 10 percent of the population; the equivalent today would be more than 10 million people. And that was at a time when the population of the six Mexican states that border on the U.S. accounted for only about 10 percent of Mexico’s total population, compared to nearly 20 percent today. Even if only 5 percent of Mexico’s people fled northward, that would amount to 5 million refugees, more than all Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, who have come over the past decade, and they would arrive all at once and mostly concentrate in the immediate vicinity of the border.
And even though illegal crossings are way down for now, we are increasingly seeing residents of border cities use their Border Crossing Cards (short-term, multiple-reentry visas used for shopping and the like) to get into the United States and then claim political asylum.
Job One in responding to the tumult in Mexico is real enforcement of the immigration laws — now. The immediate imperative is to keep the drug gangs from expanding their reach here and making a spillover of the violence more likely. As this map shows, the drug cartels already have a presence in nearly 200 American cities, from the West Coast to the East Coast, and all the way up to the Canadian border. For the somewhat longer term, it is essential to interrupt the migration streams as much as possible, and not create any new expectations of settlement in the U.S., to prevent the conditions for a future uncontrollable refugee surge from developing.
Some of the specific steps we need to take:
Finish the fence. It is astonishing that this shovel-ready project that would employ legions of idle construction workers from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere isn’t being completed, or even expanded. Instead, the permanent assignment of troops to patrol the border would seem to be unavoidable at this point; the public is way ahead of the elites on this, with a recent poll finding 79 percent of voters in favor of placing the military on the border.
Of course, policing the stretches between legal border-crossing points is only one part of border security. Trucks and trains legally crossing into the U.S. transport a large proportion of the narcotics and the illegal aliens, and we have been unwilling to exercise the necessary scrutiny, so as not to inconvenience business and frequent border-crossers.
Expand state and local cooperation with the feds. As with the fence, the modest progress made toward the end of the Bush administration in building cooperation between local jurisdictions and immigration authorities may be rolled back. The Obama Justice Department has started an investigation of colorful Maricopa County (Phoenix) Sheriff Joe Arpaio for “racial profiling,” a move clearly designed to have a chilling effect on local immigration-control efforts. What’s more, the Justice Department is reported to be considering removing civil immigration arrest warrants from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database (used by local police to check a motorist during a traffic stop, for instance). This would limit the ability of police to partner with the feds in identifying and removing illegal aliens, which is the Obama administration’s point; unfortunately, it’s precisely the wrong move.
Keep expanding E-Verify. This online tool enables employers to determine the legal status of new hires, and it has proven effective in denying jobs to illegal aliens. This is essential in the context of an unstable Mexico as a tool in persuading those considering flight that the U.S. is no longer an easy place to get into. Even in the short term, it is an important way of keeping gang members off balance and off the streets; research has shown that most gangsters can’t earn a living just off their criminal activities and thus have day jobs in landscaping, construction, and so on. The expansion of E-Verify would make it harder for them to remain here and easier for them to be detected and removed.
No amnesty. This is important again for two reasons. First, amnesty would give gangsters who are currently illegal immigrants much more freedom of action, comparable to the way the 1986 amnesty gave legal status to Egyptian illegal alien Mahmoud “The Red” Abouhalima, enabling him to freely travel to Afghanistan and receive his terrorist training, then re-enter the country and help lead the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. During the 2007 amnesty debate, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff estimated that 15 to 20 percent of the illegal population would be ineligible because of criminal records among other reasons, a large share of them undoubtedly gang members. While some of these undesirables would surely be screened out, there’s little doubt that the overwhelmed immigration bureaucracy would be pressured into rubber-stamping amnesty applications, granting legal status to many of the 15 to 20 percent identified by Chertoff.
It’s even more important to avoid amnesty under current conditions so as not to spark a refugee surge. During the congressional debates over amnesty in 2006 and 2007, there was evidence that merely debating the topic caused increased illegal immigration flows. In today’s situation, an amnesty for illegals already here could spark an unprecedented tide of people. We saw something like this happen in the Mariel Boatlift saga, albeit with what were tiny numbers compared to the potential rush of Mexicans. It began with five Cubans successfully breaking into the Peruvian embassy compound; when Peru refused to return them, Castro pulled out his guards, and in short order 10,000 people swarmed into the compound. Then, as Castro announced that the port of Mariel was open as an embarkation point for anyone who wanted to leave, word spread quickly, and more than 120,000 poured into the United States over a few months.
We might see a similar immigration surge in the coming months if the Obama administration caves in to the open-borders advocates and extends Temporary Protected Status (a kind of time-limited amnesty) to Haitian illegal aliens in south Florida. So far, the administration has resisted, understanding the risks; as a spokesman for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said this week, “There is no change in our policy on temporary protected status, and deportations to Haiti are continuing. And let me be clear: No one living in Haiti right now should be attempting to come to the United States in hopes that they will be granted TPS.”
Disengage border towns. As the example of border residents already starting to seek asylum suggests, the easy access to the United States that many millions of Mexicans already have is a huge vulnerability. The problems with the unique phenomenon of integrated border metropolises straddling the divide between the First and Third Worlds warrant separate treatment, but one change that is imperative to limit the fallout from Mexico’s Time of Troubles is to abolish the Border Crossing Card. These documents account for half of all entries into the U.S. by foreigners, and their reach was actually expanded by the Bush administration; where once they were valid in the immediate vicinity of the border for visits of no more than 72 hours, they now permit their users to remain for up to 30 days at a time, effectively allowing permanent residence. Abolishing this document would close an easy escape hatch for the 20 million people who live in Mexico’s northern border states.
Such a disengagement is not inconsistent with continued vigorous trade with Mexico. Last year we exported more than $150 billion worth of goods to Mexico and imported more than $200 billion. The United States is the main source of Mexico’s imports and the main destination of its exports, and there is no reason for this to change, especially considering that the chief entry points for such truck- and rail-borne trade are not the big, entangled border cities but smaller places like Laredo, because of its proximity to Monterrey, Mexico’s manufacturing hub. If anything, cutting back on the foot and auto traffic in El Paso and San Diego would free up resources to expedite (but also make more secure) U.S.-Mexico trade.
Send in the Marines? In the extreme, and unlikely, case of genuine state collapse and anarchy or civil war in Mexico, we’ll need to consider military action to prevent mass refugee surges. Caspar Weinberger imagined something like this in his 1993 book The Next War, which included a scenario of an invasion of Mexico to overthrow a Hugo Chávez–style dictator whose mismanagement and repression was driving huge numbers of people to flee.
But anarchy or civil war wouldn’t be amenable to such a solution. Instead, the military’s mission in the event of state failure would be to secure safe zones in northern Mexico (or possibly the Yucatán peninsula) where refugees would be housed, rather than allowing them into the United States, where the Obama administration, not to mention the ACLU, would ensure that they never had to leave. This would be the same approach used in the mid-’90s for Cubans and Haitians attempting to cross over on rafts, who were taken to Guantanamo, and by Australia in its “Pacific Solution.”
Mexico’s not done for yet, and the state may emerge stronger and more legitimate if it succeeds in establishing its dominance over the drug cartels. But while hoping for the best, we must prepare for the worst. If we don’t, President Obama could find that his first major foreign test won’t come from Iran, Russia, China, or North Korea but from our neighbor to the south.
By Mark Krikorian
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Mexico is in trouble. The drug wars there have claimed more than 7,000 lives since President Calderón took office in late 2007. Police are being beheaded, politicians are being assassinated, and pundits are talking of Mexico’s becoming a “failed state.”
The potential consequences for the United States are very serious, much more serious than anything likely to happen in Afghanistan or Iraq. The violence has already started to spill over the border, and it is only a matter of time before an American police officer or Border Patrol agent or judge is beheaded. The even greater danger is massive refugee flows, inundating the Southwest with unprecedented numbers of Mexicans fleeing violence, few of whom would likely return, regardless of changed conditions at home.
But first, the good news: Mexico is not a failed state, and won’t be any time soon. In fact, the reason for the explosion of violence is precisely that the state is asserting itself, trying to end the cozy and corrupt arrangements that allowed drug cartels to buy all the pols and cops they needed to conduct their business unmolested. What’s more, the bulk of the violence is taking place in only three states (though two of them are on our border), while much of the country is relatively calm.
And there is as yet no mass emigration of the kind we saw from El Salvador, 25 percent of whose population fled during the civil war there in the 1980s. In fact, illegal immigration from Mexico has fallen significantly, initially because of tighter enforcement and now also because of the economic downturn here. In El Paso, for instance, the Border Patrol in 1993 apprehended an average of more than 1,000 illegal aliens a day; now it’s down to 38 a day.
But that’s pretty much it for good news, and the bad news is daunting. Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, in a December analysis, issued a dire warning:
The incoming Obama Administration must immediately focus on the dangerous and worsening problems in Mexico, which fundamentally threaten U.S. national security. Before the next eight years are past, the violent, warring collection of criminal drug cartels could overwhelm the institutions of the state and establish de facto control over broad regions of northern Mexico.
A failure by the Mexican political system to curtail lawlessness and violence could result [in] a surge of millions of refugees crossing the U.S. border to escape the domestic misery of violence, failed economic policy, poverty, hunger, joblessness, and the mindless cruelty and injustice of a criminal state.
What’s more, our military’s Joint Forces Command reported last fall:
In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.
Any country whose name follows the words “Pakistan and” is probably frakked. The report continues:
The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.
So, what do we do? Because the drug trade is driven by demand in the United States, drug legalization in the U.S. is often presented as the solution to the troubles in Mexico. While I’m sympathetic to looser rules for marijuana, that is not the answer. First, it would take years to change public consensus about drug laws, and more years for such a change to work its way through our federal system. And even if marijuana is decriminalized or even legalized, that’s just not going to happen with heroin or meth.
What’s more, drug use in Mexico itself is widespread and growing; McCaffrey’s report says that chronic drug consumption there has doubled since 2002. An estimated 20 percent of the cocaine that enters Mexico is consumed locally, and Tijuana’s 1.4 million people are estimated to include 100,000 meth addicts. There’s nothing reform of American drug laws can do to affect this.
But if not drug legalization, then what? Law-enforcement cooperation is appropriate, of course, and is ongoing; Congress last year authorized $1.6 billion over three years for the Mérida Initiative to provide anti-drug training and equipment to Mexican military and law-enforcement forces. Earlier this month, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Mexico and conferred with the heads of the army and navy there, who have lead roles in combating the cartels. Perhaps most popular with this administration is an effort to limit the southbound smuggling of guns and money; there have been calls for ratification of CIFTA, a treaty that, among other things, would limit gun smuggling in the Western Hemisphere.
Another factor that is not widely mentioned is that Mexico is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists. Several dozen reporters and editors covering the cartels have been murdered in recent years. Even if the government gave up trying to assert its authority against the cartels, the drug lords won’t rest until the media are also silenced.
And much of the lawlessness isn’t related to drugs at all. Mexico has now surpassed Iraq and Colombia as the world’s kidnapping capital, and this is mostly unrelated to the cartels. Kidnapping has been called a “national plague” and is a much more immediate concern to most ordinary Mexicans than the drug war. There are now “express kidnappings,” where passengers in unregistered cabs are grabbed and forced to use their ATM cards to withdraw money, and “virtual kidnappings,” where families are tricked into believing someone has been kidnapped. It has gotten so bad that a U.S. expert involved in negotiating the release of kidnapped people was himself kidnapped in December. There have even been calls for reinstating the death penalty to address the scourge.
Perhaps the deepest problem for the stability of the Mexican state, a problem untouchable by any kind of law enforcement, is widespread public disenchantment with the nation’s institutions. William & Mary professor George Grayson points to polling data showing “the public’s plummeting confidence in major judicial and political organizations” and “the citizenry’s ever greater sense of impotence to influence policy and policy makers.”
PROTECT OURSELVES
Basically, there’s not much we can do to “fix” Mexico, as our unsuccessful attempts at nation-building elsewhere should have taught us by now. Mexico is a proud, unique country, with its own strengths and customs, phobias and quirks; the challenge of this drug war is one that the Mexican state and society will have to meet largely on their own.
But while Mexico is undergoing this travail, we must protect ourselves, preventing the violence and disorder from crossing the border. And we must start preparing now for the mass refugee flows that are inevitable if the Mexican state ultimately fails the challenge and either cedes political control of much of the country to the cartels or disintegrates entirely in a replay of the multi-sided civil war called the Mexican Revolution.
How big could such a refugee crisis be? Estimates of the number of people who fled to the United States during the chaos of 1910–1920 range as high as 10 percent of the population; the equivalent today would be more than 10 million people. And that was at a time when the population of the six Mexican states that border on the U.S. accounted for only about 10 percent of Mexico’s total population, compared to nearly 20 percent today. Even if only 5 percent of Mexico’s people fled northward, that would amount to 5 million refugees, more than all Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, who have come over the past decade, and they would arrive all at once and mostly concentrate in the immediate vicinity of the border.
And even though illegal crossings are way down for now, we are increasingly seeing residents of border cities use their Border Crossing Cards (short-term, multiple-reentry visas used for shopping and the like) to get into the United States and then claim political asylum.
Job One in responding to the tumult in Mexico is real enforcement of the immigration laws — now. The immediate imperative is to keep the drug gangs from expanding their reach here and making a spillover of the violence more likely. As this map shows, the drug cartels already have a presence in nearly 200 American cities, from the West Coast to the East Coast, and all the way up to the Canadian border. For the somewhat longer term, it is essential to interrupt the migration streams as much as possible, and not create any new expectations of settlement in the U.S., to prevent the conditions for a future uncontrollable refugee surge from developing.
Some of the specific steps we need to take:
Finish the fence. It is astonishing that this shovel-ready project that would employ legions of idle construction workers from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere isn’t being completed, or even expanded. Instead, the permanent assignment of troops to patrol the border would seem to be unavoidable at this point; the public is way ahead of the elites on this, with a recent poll finding 79 percent of voters in favor of placing the military on the border.
Of course, policing the stretches between legal border-crossing points is only one part of border security. Trucks and trains legally crossing into the U.S. transport a large proportion of the narcotics and the illegal aliens, and we have been unwilling to exercise the necessary scrutiny, so as not to inconvenience business and frequent border-crossers.
Expand state and local cooperation with the feds. As with the fence, the modest progress made toward the end of the Bush administration in building cooperation between local jurisdictions and immigration authorities may be rolled back. The Obama Justice Department has started an investigation of colorful Maricopa County (Phoenix) Sheriff Joe Arpaio for “racial profiling,” a move clearly designed to have a chilling effect on local immigration-control efforts. What’s more, the Justice Department is reported to be considering removing civil immigration arrest warrants from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database (used by local police to check a motorist during a traffic stop, for instance). This would limit the ability of police to partner with the feds in identifying and removing illegal aliens, which is the Obama administration’s point; unfortunately, it’s precisely the wrong move.
Keep expanding E-Verify. This online tool enables employers to determine the legal status of new hires, and it has proven effective in denying jobs to illegal aliens. This is essential in the context of an unstable Mexico as a tool in persuading those considering flight that the U.S. is no longer an easy place to get into. Even in the short term, it is an important way of keeping gang members off balance and off the streets; research has shown that most gangsters can’t earn a living just off their criminal activities and thus have day jobs in landscaping, construction, and so on. The expansion of E-Verify would make it harder for them to remain here and easier for them to be detected and removed.
No amnesty. This is important again for two reasons. First, amnesty would give gangsters who are currently illegal immigrants much more freedom of action, comparable to the way the 1986 amnesty gave legal status to Egyptian illegal alien Mahmoud “The Red” Abouhalima, enabling him to freely travel to Afghanistan and receive his terrorist training, then re-enter the country and help lead the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. During the 2007 amnesty debate, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff estimated that 15 to 20 percent of the illegal population would be ineligible because of criminal records among other reasons, a large share of them undoubtedly gang members. While some of these undesirables would surely be screened out, there’s little doubt that the overwhelmed immigration bureaucracy would be pressured into rubber-stamping amnesty applications, granting legal status to many of the 15 to 20 percent identified by Chertoff.
It’s even more important to avoid amnesty under current conditions so as not to spark a refugee surge. During the congressional debates over amnesty in 2006 and 2007, there was evidence that merely debating the topic caused increased illegal immigration flows. In today’s situation, an amnesty for illegals already here could spark an unprecedented tide of people. We saw something like this happen in the Mariel Boatlift saga, albeit with what were tiny numbers compared to the potential rush of Mexicans. It began with five Cubans successfully breaking into the Peruvian embassy compound; when Peru refused to return them, Castro pulled out his guards, and in short order 10,000 people swarmed into the compound. Then, as Castro announced that the port of Mariel was open as an embarkation point for anyone who wanted to leave, word spread quickly, and more than 120,000 poured into the United States over a few months.
We might see a similar immigration surge in the coming months if the Obama administration caves in to the open-borders advocates and extends Temporary Protected Status (a kind of time-limited amnesty) to Haitian illegal aliens in south Florida. So far, the administration has resisted, understanding the risks; as a spokesman for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said this week, “There is no change in our policy on temporary protected status, and deportations to Haiti are continuing. And let me be clear: No one living in Haiti right now should be attempting to come to the United States in hopes that they will be granted TPS.”
Disengage border towns. As the example of border residents already starting to seek asylum suggests, the easy access to the United States that many millions of Mexicans already have is a huge vulnerability. The problems with the unique phenomenon of integrated border metropolises straddling the divide between the First and Third Worlds warrant separate treatment, but one change that is imperative to limit the fallout from Mexico’s Time of Troubles is to abolish the Border Crossing Card. These documents account for half of all entries into the U.S. by foreigners, and their reach was actually expanded by the Bush administration; where once they were valid in the immediate vicinity of the border for visits of no more than 72 hours, they now permit their users to remain for up to 30 days at a time, effectively allowing permanent residence. Abolishing this document would close an easy escape hatch for the 20 million people who live in Mexico’s northern border states.
Such a disengagement is not inconsistent with continued vigorous trade with Mexico. Last year we exported more than $150 billion worth of goods to Mexico and imported more than $200 billion. The United States is the main source of Mexico’s imports and the main destination of its exports, and there is no reason for this to change, especially considering that the chief entry points for such truck- and rail-borne trade are not the big, entangled border cities but smaller places like Laredo, because of its proximity to Monterrey, Mexico’s manufacturing hub. If anything, cutting back on the foot and auto traffic in El Paso and San Diego would free up resources to expedite (but also make more secure) U.S.-Mexico trade.
Send in the Marines? In the extreme, and unlikely, case of genuine state collapse and anarchy or civil war in Mexico, we’ll need to consider military action to prevent mass refugee surges. Caspar Weinberger imagined something like this in his 1993 book The Next War, which included a scenario of an invasion of Mexico to overthrow a Hugo Chávez–style dictator whose mismanagement and repression was driving huge numbers of people to flee.
But anarchy or civil war wouldn’t be amenable to such a solution. Instead, the military’s mission in the event of state failure would be to secure safe zones in northern Mexico (or possibly the Yucatán peninsula) where refugees would be housed, rather than allowing them into the United States, where the Obama administration, not to mention the ACLU, would ensure that they never had to leave. This would be the same approach used in the mid-’90s for Cubans and Haitians attempting to cross over on rafts, who were taken to Guantanamo, and by Australia in its “Pacific Solution.”
Mexico’s not done for yet, and the state may emerge stronger and more legitimate if it succeeds in establishing its dominance over the drug cartels. But while hoping for the best, we must prepare for the worst. If we don’t, President Obama could find that his first major foreign test won’t come from Iran, Russia, China, or North Korea but from our neighbor to the south.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Why is it that when people want to describe particularly evil individuals or regimes, they use the terms "Nazi" or "Fascist" but almost never "Communist?"
Given the amount the human suffering Communists have caused - 70 million killed in China, 20-30 million in the former Soviet Union, and almost one-third of all Cambodians; the decimation of Tibetan and Chinese culture; totalitarian enslavement of North Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russians; a generation deprived of human rights in Cuba; and much more -- why is "Communist" so much less a term of revulsion than "Nazi?"
There are Mao Restaurants in major cities in the Western world. Can one imagine Hitler Restaurants? Che Guevara T-shirts are ubiquitous, yet there are no Heinrich Himmler T-shirts.
This question is of vital significance. First, without moral clarity, humanity has little chance of avoiding a dark future. Second, the reasons for this moral imbalance tell us a great deal about ourselves today.
Here, then, are seven reasons.
1. Communists murdered their own people; the Nazis murdered others. Under Mao about 70 million people died - nearly all in peacetime! - virtually all of them Chinese. Likewise, the approximately 30 million people that Stalin had killed were nearly all Russians, and those who were not Russian, Ukrainians for example, were members of other Soviet nationalities.
The Nazis, on the other hand, killed very few fellow Germans. Their victims were Jews, Slavs and members of other "non-Aryan" and "inferior" groups.
"World opinion" - that vapid amoral concept - deems the murder of members of one's group far less noteworthy than the murder of outsiders. That is one reason why blacks killing millions of fellow blacks in the Congo right now elicits no attention from "world opinion." But if an Israeli soldier is charged with having killed a Gaza woman and two children, it makes the front page of world newspapers.
2. Communism is based on lovely sounding theories; Nazism is based on heinous sounding theories.
Intellectuals, among whom are the people who write history, are seduced by words -- so much so that deeds are deemed considerably less significant. Communism's words are far more intellectually and morally appealing than the moronic and vile racism of Nazism. The monstrous evils of communists have not been focused on nearly as much as the monstrous deeds of the Nazis. The former have been regularly dismissed as perversions of a beautiful doctrine (though Christians who committed evil in the name of Christianity are never regarded by these same people as having perverted a beautiful doctrine), whereas Nazi atrocities have been perceived (correctly) as the logical and inevitable results of Nazi ideology.
This seduction by words while ignoring deeds has been a major factor in the ongoing appeal of the left to intellectuals. How else explain the appeal of a Che Guevara or Fidel Castro to so many left-wing intellectuals, other than that they care more about beautiful words than about vile deeds?
3. Germans have thoroughly exposed the evils of Nazism, have taken responsibility for them, and attempted to atone for them. Russians have not done anything similar regarding Lenin's or Stalin's horrors. Indeed, an ex-KGB man runs Russia, Lenin is still widely revered, and, in the words of University of London Russian historian Donald Rayfield, "people still deny by assertion or implication, Stalin's holocaust."
Nor has China in any way exposed the greatest mass murderer and enslaver of them all, Mao Zedong. Mao remains revered in China.
Until Russia and China acknowledge the evil their states have done under communism, communism's evils will remain less acknowledged by the world than the evils of the German state under Hitler.
4. Communism won, Nazism lost. And the winners write history.
5. Nothing matches the Holocaust. The rounding up of virtually every Jewish man, woman, child, and baby on the European continent and sending them to die is unprecedented and unparalleled. The communists killed far more people than the Nazis did but never matched the Holocaust in the systemization of murder. The uniqueness of the Holocaust and the enormous attention paid to it since then has helped ensure that Nazism has a worse name than communism.
6. There is, simply put, widespread ignorance of communist atrocities compared to those of the Nazis. Whereas, both right and left loathe Nazism and teach its evil history, the left dominates the teaching profession, and therefore almost no one teaches communist atrocities. As much as intellectuals on the left may argue that they loathe Stalin or the North Korean regime, few on the left loathe communism. As the French put it, "pas d'enemis a la gauche," which in English means "no enemies on the left." This is certainly true of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban communism. Check your local university's courses and see how many classes are given on communist totalitarianism or mass murder compared to the number of classes about Nazism's immoral record.
7. Finally, in the view of the left, the last "good war" America fought was World War II, the war against German and Japanese fascism. The left does not regard America's wars against communist regimes as good wars. The war against Vietnamese communism is regarded as immoral and the war against Korean (and Chinese) communism is simply ignored.
Until the left and all the institutions influenced by the left acknowledge how evil communism has been, we will continue to live in a morally confused world. Conversely, the day the left does come to grips with communism's legacy of human destruction, it will be a very positive sign that the world's moral compass has begun to correct itself.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Why is it that when people want to describe particularly evil individuals or regimes, they use the terms "Nazi" or "Fascist" but almost never "Communist?"
Given the amount the human suffering Communists have caused - 70 million killed in China, 20-30 million in the former Soviet Union, and almost one-third of all Cambodians; the decimation of Tibetan and Chinese culture; totalitarian enslavement of North Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russians; a generation deprived of human rights in Cuba; and much more -- why is "Communist" so much less a term of revulsion than "Nazi?"
There are Mao Restaurants in major cities in the Western world. Can one imagine Hitler Restaurants? Che Guevara T-shirts are ubiquitous, yet there are no Heinrich Himmler T-shirts.
This question is of vital significance. First, without moral clarity, humanity has little chance of avoiding a dark future. Second, the reasons for this moral imbalance tell us a great deal about ourselves today.
Here, then, are seven reasons.
1. Communists murdered their own people; the Nazis murdered others. Under Mao about 70 million people died - nearly all in peacetime! - virtually all of them Chinese. Likewise, the approximately 30 million people that Stalin had killed were nearly all Russians, and those who were not Russian, Ukrainians for example, were members of other Soviet nationalities.
The Nazis, on the other hand, killed very few fellow Germans. Their victims were Jews, Slavs and members of other "non-Aryan" and "inferior" groups.
"World opinion" - that vapid amoral concept - deems the murder of members of one's group far less noteworthy than the murder of outsiders. That is one reason why blacks killing millions of fellow blacks in the Congo right now elicits no attention from "world opinion." But if an Israeli soldier is charged with having killed a Gaza woman and two children, it makes the front page of world newspapers.
2. Communism is based on lovely sounding theories; Nazism is based on heinous sounding theories.
Intellectuals, among whom are the people who write history, are seduced by words -- so much so that deeds are deemed considerably less significant. Communism's words are far more intellectually and morally appealing than the moronic and vile racism of Nazism. The monstrous evils of communists have not been focused on nearly as much as the monstrous deeds of the Nazis. The former have been regularly dismissed as perversions of a beautiful doctrine (though Christians who committed evil in the name of Christianity are never regarded by these same people as having perverted a beautiful doctrine), whereas Nazi atrocities have been perceived (correctly) as the logical and inevitable results of Nazi ideology.
This seduction by words while ignoring deeds has been a major factor in the ongoing appeal of the left to intellectuals. How else explain the appeal of a Che Guevara or Fidel Castro to so many left-wing intellectuals, other than that they care more about beautiful words than about vile deeds?
3. Germans have thoroughly exposed the evils of Nazism, have taken responsibility for them, and attempted to atone for them. Russians have not done anything similar regarding Lenin's or Stalin's horrors. Indeed, an ex-KGB man runs Russia, Lenin is still widely revered, and, in the words of University of London Russian historian Donald Rayfield, "people still deny by assertion or implication, Stalin's holocaust."
Nor has China in any way exposed the greatest mass murderer and enslaver of them all, Mao Zedong. Mao remains revered in China.
Until Russia and China acknowledge the evil their states have done under communism, communism's evils will remain less acknowledged by the world than the evils of the German state under Hitler.
4. Communism won, Nazism lost. And the winners write history.
5. Nothing matches the Holocaust. The rounding up of virtually every Jewish man, woman, child, and baby on the European continent and sending them to die is unprecedented and unparalleled. The communists killed far more people than the Nazis did but never matched the Holocaust in the systemization of murder. The uniqueness of the Holocaust and the enormous attention paid to it since then has helped ensure that Nazism has a worse name than communism.
6. There is, simply put, widespread ignorance of communist atrocities compared to those of the Nazis. Whereas, both right and left loathe Nazism and teach its evil history, the left dominates the teaching profession, and therefore almost no one teaches communist atrocities. As much as intellectuals on the left may argue that they loathe Stalin or the North Korean regime, few on the left loathe communism. As the French put it, "pas d'enemis a la gauche," which in English means "no enemies on the left." This is certainly true of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban communism. Check your local university's courses and see how many classes are given on communist totalitarianism or mass murder compared to the number of classes about Nazism's immoral record.
7. Finally, in the view of the left, the last "good war" America fought was World War II, the war against German and Japanese fascism. The left does not regard America's wars against communist regimes as good wars. The war against Vietnamese communism is regarded as immoral and the war against Korean (and Chinese) communism is simply ignored.
Until the left and all the institutions influenced by the left acknowledge how evil communism has been, we will continue to live in a morally confused world. Conversely, the day the left does come to grips with communism's legacy of human destruction, it will be a very positive sign that the world's moral compass has begun to correct itself.
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