President Obama has displayed for all to see the chip on his shoulder because he's half-black. He must be jealous of white-skinned people and want to hurt them (us). Without facts, he excoriated the police department of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Why? Because his good buddy, African American studies guru Gates (no relation to high-achiever Bill) said he was racial or is it racially? profiled. Obama's knee-jerk reaction was that his black friend was right and the white policeman was wrong ("acted stupidly").
I have been 100% right about the character (or lack thereof) of Mr. Obama. He apoligized to the world about America being a negative, power-mad, killing, unequal, greedy, polluting, war-mongering, racist country. He apologized for the way we won World War II. For Vietnam, for Iraq. But he did not apologize for his racist stand with respect to Mr. Professor Gates.
No more needs to be said.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Brilliant New Gas Tax Idea
The Wight Floating Consumer Gasoline Tax
I have conceived what I believe to be a brilliant idea. And an effective antidote to the "Cap-and-Trade-and-Tax" bill that just passed the House by a sliver.
The federal gas tax would be increased to some set number that increases the price of gasoline at the pump. The price could be set at, say, $4.00 a gallon. That price would be fixed by means of a floating federal gas tax. The tax would change periodically say, monthly, as the wholesale price fluctuates in the market, so the retail price of "regular" gasoline at the pump would be $4.00, set for some period of time, say two or three years, barring some unforeseen emergency.
The advantages would be overwhelming.
Consumers could budget based on a gasoline price they could count on staying the same. Operating businesses the same. This would relieve such incredible fluctuations we have been experiencing over the past. It is obvious no one can accurately predict gasoline prices, perhaps only the producers can impose some pricing, but even that is far from certain.
Higher prices, as has been demonstrated, will curtail miles driven and diminish the foreign oil purchased. This scheme would continue what has been started, but would stop the tendency for Americans and its politicians to devolve into our old ways. In the 1970's we all meant well with cutting driving, but when gasoline prices sunk, we began driving and driving bigger and bigger cars; SUVs were "invented" and purchased by the millions. It sometimes takes a stick along with a carrot to cause social change. This is a stick.
Now, the rest of the story.
Innovative ideas for alternative energy technologies could also count on an umbrella price to use when costing out the technologies. This could open vast market opportunities, based on a consistent market price. Inventors and innovators would come out of the woodwork. Entrepreneurs would jump at the opportunities and venture capitalists could invest based upon realistic business plans not wild guesses. The millions of jobs our politicians espouse could actually be created. Immense new wealth could be created.
Because of all these individuals creating technologies and companies, the government could concentrate on basic and applied research and let the ultimate successes be based on free-enterprise. Our government intends to use huge amounts of tax monies on alternative energy, raised, it seems from income taxes supported by both parties and candidates. With my plan, success and failure would be based on hundreds or thousands of possibilities, without politics and centralized control inserting itself to select winners. The tax money will be raised anyway, so why get it from users of energy?
To the extent the tax dollars pile up, government could more properly use motor vehicle taxes rather than income taxes for the desperately-needed infrastructure repair, update/replacement, and maintenance and rapid transit.
Would this be some burden on citizens? Yes. But it would be a more direct burden and one somewhat controllable by users. But it would point out problems to consumers and would not allow Democrats to pick and choose what companies and "alternative" energy technologies from which to extort campaign contributions. It would put power in the hands of citizens as a whole and not those who believe they should command citizens to do as they say. Political royalty. So this concept will NEVER be accepted by power-mad Democrats. End of sad story.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
He's Not a Socialist, He's a Pathetic, Needy Man
He's Not a Socialist, he's a pathetic, needy man with the reins of the greatest country ever invented in his inexperienced hands. President Obama is so predictable. Once he's taken power, he is a whirlwind of activity. Save Citibank; punish executives who get bonuses; reward the United Auto Workers union; announce you don't want to control General Motors while you seek to control General Motors; stiff the hundreds of retiree General Motors bond holders; stiff the Chrysler Corporation retiree secured-debt holders; get a "stimulus" package passed and borrow a trillion dollars to do so; give away Chrysler to a foreign auto manufacturer and, once again, reward the United Auto Workers; reward the Teamsters; propose a trillion-and-a- half-dollar "reform" -- actually takeover -- of the entire United States healthcare industry, arguably the largest industry in the world, after 100 days of thinking about it; spend a trillion dollars to "balance" the budget later on; change the emphasis of anti-trust to mirror that of Europe; take your First Lady to a Broadway show; dis Israel; suck up to Europe and the Middle East Muslims; boost the very unionism that sunk GM and Chrysler; bow to the Saudi king; print trillions of crisp electronic dollar bills and use them to "monetize" our debt by buying treasury securities; ambitiously attempt to overhaul the U. S. financial markets; ambitiously attempt to overhaul the U. S. healthcare market to mirror the failing European monopolies; ambitiously attempt to singlehandedly cool off the world (global warming that it) by restructuring through crippling and thoughtless regulations and onerous new taxes, all the while ignoring any scientist who disagrees witht he notion of man-made global warming; oh and it's just June 1.
Mr. President, you are so predictable. Are you afflicted with ADD? ADHD? Freneticity? Or are you simply an amateur, inexperienced person who confuses activity with achievement. You have been active, you have achieved nothing. And you say, "What we are not doing, what I have no interest in doing, is running GM." Huh? In the immortal words of Transgender Geraldine, "The Devil made me do it."
Good luck, sir. And welcome to the world of other romantic fools, David Buick, Ransom E. Olds, Louis Chevrolet, Robert and Louis Hupp, the Dodge brothers, the Studebaker brothers, the Packard brothers, the Duesenberg brothers, Charles W. Nash, E. L. Cord, John North Willys, Preston Tucker, William H. Murphy (of Cadillac fame, it originally designed by none other than Henry Ford); they join modern day failures like John DeLorean and Malcolm Bricklin.
While I posted this originally June 1, Peggy Noonan in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece mirrored my thoughts (June 27-28, 2009, page A 13: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124596573543456401.html] ). "To-Do List: A Sentence, Not 10 Paragraphs". Adding to hers, President Obama is a whirling dervel of activity, not understanding that activity is NOT accomplishement, of which he has little except spending to re-elect Democrats and calling it "stimulus". And it is clear that he listens to no one except his political advisors and drive to completely change America to become more "fair" -- as defined by neo-dictators.
The following is a post from July 1, 2009, which I am editing for brevity's sake. It is
Paul Rahe: Obama's tyrannical ambition [http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/07/023937.php?dsq=12039274#comment-12039274]
We have invited political historian Paul Rahe to write something for us on the themes of his timely new book Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect. Professor Rahe writes:
President Obama has one distinguishing feature. He is a man of rigid self-discipline. Politicians are a lot like actors: they tend to be vain; and, more often than the rest of us, they are presented with the temptations to which the vain are prone. Many--one thinks of Bill Clinton, John Edwards, John Ensign, and Mark Sanford--succumb. If, however, in his personal life as an adult, Barack Obama has strayed from the straight and narrow, we have heard nary a word.
It is, in fact, a sign of his astonishing self-discipline that we know next to nothing about his life apart from what he chose to impart in the two autobiographies he published. For a long time now, for longer than we can perhaps imagine, every move he has made has been carefully calculated, calibrated, and choreographed. In this regard, he is in the fullest sense what every politician aims to be: a self-made (one might even say a self-invented) man. It is easy to see why someone like Evan Thomas should think him a god.
Once in a while, however, when Obama gets separated from his teleprompter, the mask slips a tad. On the hustings, Joe the Plumber caught the candidate off guard and got him to admit the truth about his plans to effect a redistribution of wealth. Something of the sort happened again last week--when, at a carefully staged rally for the administration's health care proposal, to which the flacks who run ABC News tellingly invited no one who regards the current healthcare arrangement as even remotely satisfactory--President Obama responded to a question by acknowledging that his plan aimed to reduce medical costs by aligning "incentives" in such a fashion as to discourage the sick and the dying from undergoing "additional tests" or taking "additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."
Obama's choice of words was, as always, soothing. But anyone familiar with the healthcare debate will immediately recognize what he left unsaid. We all know that, wherever there is socialized medicine, there is rationing. Cutting costs is, in fact, its rationale, and this end is achieved by a refusal on the part of the government to pay for care that the bureaucrats judge uneconomic. Already now, in the semi-socialized system to which we have been made subject, those consigned to HMOs come up against gatekeepers charged with shaving costs by restricting care.
Why, we might ask, should one have to wait months or even years for a hip-replacement operation? Why should one be denied a cataract operation if one is over a certain age? What business is it of Barack Obama's whether I choose to spend my own hard-earned money on procedures thought to have only a limited chance of success? What gives him--or, for that matter, anyone else--the right to make decisions that are for me a matter of life and death?
Defenders of Obama's proposal will reply that I am misrepresenting his proposal. No one, they will say, will be forced to give up the health insurance they have. Technically, of course, this is true. But what President Obama calls the "incentives" will be structured in such a way that employers will no longer have to offer coverage, and to save themselves the expense (which is considerable), they will seize the opportunity to opt out, and then we will have no choice.
Perhaps we will then be left free to spend as we see fit the money left to us after we have paid for the government-run insurance program. Perhaps we will be able to go into the private market and pay for a hip-replacement operation, a cataract operation, or for tests and procedures that our doctor recommends but that the government-run insurance program refuses to pay for.
Here is where Obama's "incentives" reappear. The government-run insurance program will, for all practical purposes, be a monopsony--the sole purchaser. It will be in a bargaining position enabling it to dictate the price that it will pay, and, of course, it will pay very little. You, as an individual purchaser, will have no leverage at all; and, like those not covered by employer-sponsored insurance plans today, you will have to pay through the nose. Unless you are filthy rich, you may well have to wait your turn for that hip-replacement operation, forego that cataract operation, or do without those expensive tests and procedures. In sum, you will not be in the driver's seat.
To grasp what is at stake, one must step back and consider what sort of thinking underpins the drive for what is called "health care reform." There was a time in the United States when we lived under a regime of individual rights, and as individuals we assumed responsibility for our own welfare. We worked; we saved; and we took pride in looking after ourselves. Many of us still think in this fashion, but this is not the manner in which our masters now think. We may be the heirs of the men who adopted the Declaration of Independence; those who rule us are the offspring of the Progressives, and men of this temper have dominated our political life for almost a century now.
Back in 1912, when Woodrow Wilson successfully ran for the presidency, he told his compatriots, "We are in the presence of a new organization of society." Our time marks "a new social stage, a new era of human relationships, a new stagesetting for the drama of life," and "the old political formulas do not fit the present problems: they read now like documents taken out of a forgotten age." What Thomas Jefferson once taught is now, he insisted, quite out of date. It is "what we used to think in the old-fashioned days when life was very simple." Above all else, he hoped to persuade his compatriots to get "beyond the Declaration of Independence." That document "did not mention the questions of our day," he told them. "It is of no consequence to us. It is an eminently practical document, meant for the use of practical men; not a thesis for philosophers, but a whip for tyrants; not a theory of government, but a program of action"--once of use, outdated now.
For Montesquieu--the only figure, apart from Jefferson, whom he mentioned by name--Wilson had no use, and the constitution drafted under the influence of the Frenchman's great compendium of political wisdom The Spirit of Laws--with its separation of powers, checks and balances, and distribution of authority between nation and state--he regarded as hopelessly passé. "Government," he argued:
is not a machine; but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living things can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live. On the contrary, its life is dependent upon their quick co-operation, their ready response to the commands of instinct or intelligence, their amicable community of purpose. . . . There can be no successful government without the intimate, instinctive co-ordination of the organs of life and action. . . . Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. All that progressives ask or desire is permission--in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word--to interpret the Constitution according to Darwinian principle.
What Wilson and his heirs have accomplished is a surreptitious substitution of Hegel for Locke and of the modern adminstrative state with its vast array of administrative agencies (each combining the legislative, executive, and judicial powers) for the regime of self-government imagined by Montesquieu and brought into being by the American Founding Fathers. What our masters aim at--whether they be Republicans, like Teddy Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Thomas E. Dewey, and Richard Nixon, or Democrats, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Barack Obama--is what FDR termed "rational administration"; and over the years, in pursuit of this, they have adopted Wilson's convenient notion that ours is a "living constitution" subject to reshaping by the courts, and they have been willing not only to abandon federalism, the separation of powers, and checks and balances, but to run roughshod over the rights of individuals.
When "scientific racism" was the rage, Woodrow Wilson segregated the civil service, gave "The Birth of a Nation" his imprimatur, and thereby promoted Jim Crow in the North. He campaigned on behalf of the sterilization of criminals and insane asylum inmates, and the progressive jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes conferred judicial sanction on this gross violation of individual rights. All of this was done in the name of the public good. The rights of individuals were made to give way to a utilitarian calculus.
Scientific racism is no longer in fashion, at least for the time being; and we have thankfully become chary of sterilizing those who reside in our mental hospitals and prisons. But we have no principle restraining us from succumbing to either propensity, for our masters are still inclined to sacrifice the rights of individuals to what elite opinion at any given moment understands as the public good. There is no other way to explain their embrace of affirmative action and of the redistributionist ethic.
"To take from one," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association--'the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.'" It was on this foundation that Abraham Lincoln objected to slavery, and it is on this foundation that one can object to the health care reform proposed by our President. For this proposal is designed to take from those who have earned and to give to those who have not bothered to do so; and, by way of constraining "incentives," it will take from us the right to manage our own lives in a matter most dear to each and every one of us, and it will confer this responsibility on experts empowered to decide whether, given the cost of care, it is of greater value to society that we suffer or are cured, that we live or die.
It is easy enough to see why progressive doctrine should be attractive to our masters. Tyrannical ambition is nothing new, and throughout human history it has nearly always presented itself to men in the guise of idealism. We are all inclined to meddle in other people's business; we are all inclined to think that we know better; and higher education tends to inflate our vanity and to make us more inclined to lord it over those who are less well-instructed. Never for a moment does a Barack Obama stop to ask whether depriving us of responsibility for our own well-being is demeaning. He and his supporters know that they know better, and their putative wisdom in this regard constitutes for them an absolute claim to rule. The logic unfolding within the progressive impulse requires that there be a class of Guardians empowered to supervise our lives in every particular, and to an ever-increasing degree this is the reality with which we live.
It is less easy to see why ordinary citizens should find the administrative state and the progressive doctrine underpinning it attractive. It is less easy to understand why they should regard what Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, called "soft despotism" as alluring. To explain why the tyrannized should savor tyranny will require, I fear, another post.
Professor Rahe holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College. Some of the material in this post is adapted from Soft Despotism, which was released on April 16, the 150th anniversary of Tocqueville's death. Professor Rahe's book has been the subject of witty and learned reviews by Mark Steyn in The New Criterion, by William Voegeli in National Review, and by Harvey C. Mansfield in The Weekly Standard.
Mr. President, you are so predictable. Are you afflicted with ADD? ADHD? Freneticity? Or are you simply an amateur, inexperienced person who confuses activity with achievement. You have been active, you have achieved nothing. And you say, "What we are not doing, what I have no interest in doing, is running GM." Huh? In the immortal words of Transgender Geraldine, "The Devil made me do it."
Good luck, sir. And welcome to the world of other romantic fools, David Buick, Ransom E. Olds, Louis Chevrolet, Robert and Louis Hupp, the Dodge brothers, the Studebaker brothers, the Packard brothers, the Duesenberg brothers, Charles W. Nash, E. L. Cord, John North Willys, Preston Tucker, William H. Murphy (of Cadillac fame, it originally designed by none other than Henry Ford); they join modern day failures like John DeLorean and Malcolm Bricklin.
While I posted this originally June 1, Peggy Noonan in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece mirrored my thoughts (June 27-28, 2009, page A 13: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124596573543456401.html] ). "To-Do List: A Sentence, Not 10 Paragraphs". Adding to hers, President Obama is a whirling dervel of activity, not understanding that activity is NOT accomplishement, of which he has little except spending to re-elect Democrats and calling it "stimulus". And it is clear that he listens to no one except his political advisors and drive to completely change America to become more "fair" -- as defined by neo-dictators.
The following is a post from July 1, 2009, which I am editing for brevity's sake. It is
Paul Rahe: Obama's tyrannical ambition [http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/07/023937.php?dsq=12039274#comment-12039274]
We have invited political historian Paul Rahe to write something for us on the themes of his timely new book Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect. Professor Rahe writes:
President Obama has one distinguishing feature. He is a man of rigid self-discipline. Politicians are a lot like actors: they tend to be vain; and, more often than the rest of us, they are presented with the temptations to which the vain are prone. Many--one thinks of Bill Clinton, John Edwards, John Ensign, and Mark Sanford--succumb. If, however, in his personal life as an adult, Barack Obama has strayed from the straight and narrow, we have heard nary a word.
It is, in fact, a sign of his astonishing self-discipline that we know next to nothing about his life apart from what he chose to impart in the two autobiographies he published. For a long time now, for longer than we can perhaps imagine, every move he has made has been carefully calculated, calibrated, and choreographed. In this regard, he is in the fullest sense what every politician aims to be: a self-made (one might even say a self-invented) man. It is easy to see why someone like Evan Thomas should think him a god.
Once in a while, however, when Obama gets separated from his teleprompter, the mask slips a tad. On the hustings, Joe the Plumber caught the candidate off guard and got him to admit the truth about his plans to effect a redistribution of wealth. Something of the sort happened again last week--when, at a carefully staged rally for the administration's health care proposal, to which the flacks who run ABC News tellingly invited no one who regards the current healthcare arrangement as even remotely satisfactory--President Obama responded to a question by acknowledging that his plan aimed to reduce medical costs by aligning "incentives" in such a fashion as to discourage the sick and the dying from undergoing "additional tests" or taking "additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."
Obama's choice of words was, as always, soothing. But anyone familiar with the healthcare debate will immediately recognize what he left unsaid. We all know that, wherever there is socialized medicine, there is rationing. Cutting costs is, in fact, its rationale, and this end is achieved by a refusal on the part of the government to pay for care that the bureaucrats judge uneconomic. Already now, in the semi-socialized system to which we have been made subject, those consigned to HMOs come up against gatekeepers charged with shaving costs by restricting care.
Why, we might ask, should one have to wait months or even years for a hip-replacement operation? Why should one be denied a cataract operation if one is over a certain age? What business is it of Barack Obama's whether I choose to spend my own hard-earned money on procedures thought to have only a limited chance of success? What gives him--or, for that matter, anyone else--the right to make decisions that are for me a matter of life and death?
Defenders of Obama's proposal will reply that I am misrepresenting his proposal. No one, they will say, will be forced to give up the health insurance they have. Technically, of course, this is true. But what President Obama calls the "incentives" will be structured in such a way that employers will no longer have to offer coverage, and to save themselves the expense (which is considerable), they will seize the opportunity to opt out, and then we will have no choice.
Perhaps we will then be left free to spend as we see fit the money left to us after we have paid for the government-run insurance program. Perhaps we will be able to go into the private market and pay for a hip-replacement operation, a cataract operation, or for tests and procedures that our doctor recommends but that the government-run insurance program refuses to pay for.
Here is where Obama's "incentives" reappear. The government-run insurance program will, for all practical purposes, be a monopsony--the sole purchaser. It will be in a bargaining position enabling it to dictate the price that it will pay, and, of course, it will pay very little. You, as an individual purchaser, will have no leverage at all; and, like those not covered by employer-sponsored insurance plans today, you will have to pay through the nose. Unless you are filthy rich, you may well have to wait your turn for that hip-replacement operation, forego that cataract operation, or do without those expensive tests and procedures. In sum, you will not be in the driver's seat.
To grasp what is at stake, one must step back and consider what sort of thinking underpins the drive for what is called "health care reform." There was a time in the United States when we lived under a regime of individual rights, and as individuals we assumed responsibility for our own welfare. We worked; we saved; and we took pride in looking after ourselves. Many of us still think in this fashion, but this is not the manner in which our masters now think. We may be the heirs of the men who adopted the Declaration of Independence; those who rule us are the offspring of the Progressives, and men of this temper have dominated our political life for almost a century now.
Back in 1912, when Woodrow Wilson successfully ran for the presidency, he told his compatriots, "We are in the presence of a new organization of society." Our time marks "a new social stage, a new era of human relationships, a new stagesetting for the drama of life," and "the old political formulas do not fit the present problems: they read now like documents taken out of a forgotten age." What Thomas Jefferson once taught is now, he insisted, quite out of date. It is "what we used to think in the old-fashioned days when life was very simple." Above all else, he hoped to persuade his compatriots to get "beyond the Declaration of Independence." That document "did not mention the questions of our day," he told them. "It is of no consequence to us. It is an eminently practical document, meant for the use of practical men; not a thesis for philosophers, but a whip for tyrants; not a theory of government, but a program of action"--once of use, outdated now.
For Montesquieu--the only figure, apart from Jefferson, whom he mentioned by name--Wilson had no use, and the constitution drafted under the influence of the Frenchman's great compendium of political wisdom The Spirit of Laws--with its separation of powers, checks and balances, and distribution of authority between nation and state--he regarded as hopelessly passé. "Government," he argued:
is not a machine; but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living things can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live. On the contrary, its life is dependent upon their quick co-operation, their ready response to the commands of instinct or intelligence, their amicable community of purpose. . . . There can be no successful government without the intimate, instinctive co-ordination of the organs of life and action. . . . Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. All that progressives ask or desire is permission--in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word--to interpret the Constitution according to Darwinian principle.
What Wilson and his heirs have accomplished is a surreptitious substitution of Hegel for Locke and of the modern adminstrative state with its vast array of administrative agencies (each combining the legislative, executive, and judicial powers) for the regime of self-government imagined by Montesquieu and brought into being by the American Founding Fathers. What our masters aim at--whether they be Republicans, like Teddy Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Thomas E. Dewey, and Richard Nixon, or Democrats, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Barack Obama--is what FDR termed "rational administration"; and over the years, in pursuit of this, they have adopted Wilson's convenient notion that ours is a "living constitution" subject to reshaping by the courts, and they have been willing not only to abandon federalism, the separation of powers, and checks and balances, but to run roughshod over the rights of individuals.
When "scientific racism" was the rage, Woodrow Wilson segregated the civil service, gave "The Birth of a Nation" his imprimatur, and thereby promoted Jim Crow in the North. He campaigned on behalf of the sterilization of criminals and insane asylum inmates, and the progressive jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes conferred judicial sanction on this gross violation of individual rights. All of this was done in the name of the public good. The rights of individuals were made to give way to a utilitarian calculus.
Scientific racism is no longer in fashion, at least for the time being; and we have thankfully become chary of sterilizing those who reside in our mental hospitals and prisons. But we have no principle restraining us from succumbing to either propensity, for our masters are still inclined to sacrifice the rights of individuals to what elite opinion at any given moment understands as the public good. There is no other way to explain their embrace of affirmative action and of the redistributionist ethic.
"To take from one," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association--'the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.'" It was on this foundation that Abraham Lincoln objected to slavery, and it is on this foundation that one can object to the health care reform proposed by our President. For this proposal is designed to take from those who have earned and to give to those who have not bothered to do so; and, by way of constraining "incentives," it will take from us the right to manage our own lives in a matter most dear to each and every one of us, and it will confer this responsibility on experts empowered to decide whether, given the cost of care, it is of greater value to society that we suffer or are cured, that we live or die.
It is easy enough to see why progressive doctrine should be attractive to our masters. Tyrannical ambition is nothing new, and throughout human history it has nearly always presented itself to men in the guise of idealism. We are all inclined to meddle in other people's business; we are all inclined to think that we know better; and higher education tends to inflate our vanity and to make us more inclined to lord it over those who are less well-instructed. Never for a moment does a Barack Obama stop to ask whether depriving us of responsibility for our own well-being is demeaning. He and his supporters know that they know better, and their putative wisdom in this regard constitutes for them an absolute claim to rule. The logic unfolding within the progressive impulse requires that there be a class of Guardians empowered to supervise our lives in every particular, and to an ever-increasing degree this is the reality with which we live.
It is less easy to see why ordinary citizens should find the administrative state and the progressive doctrine underpinning it attractive. It is less easy to understand why they should regard what Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, called "soft despotism" as alluring. To explain why the tyrannized should savor tyranny will require, I fear, another post.
Professor Rahe holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College. Some of the material in this post is adapted from Soft Despotism, which was released on April 16, the 150th anniversary of Tocqueville's death. Professor Rahe's book has been the subject of witty and learned reviews by Mark Steyn in The New Criterion, by William Voegeli in National Review, and by Harvey C. Mansfield in The Weekly Standard.
Friday, June 26, 2009
E D U C A T I O N ? (No!)
These posts will concern education.
Democrats are certainly on the side of the students their union workers teach. Of course, that's why in Democratic-controlled New York City hundreds of public school teachers accused of myriad offenses from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid to...sit around or do whatever they want...because their union contract makes it almost impossible to fire them. They are sent to, not the hall, but off-school-site offices to wait for disciplinary hearings which take months even years. 700 or so of them get their pay of $70,000 or more, holidays, weekends and summer vacations. Union boss Ron Davis of the United Federation of (228,000) Teachers says teachers cannot be neglected on their due process. Indeed. New York's 1,100,000 students don't pay union dues or vote.
Since government has become fully involved in higher education, costs have blown up. The law of supply and demand. Pour government money in and prices go up. Total college costs are up 67% over the last decade at private colleges and 84% at public 4-year universities, that's 6.6% a year, 2.4 times U. S. consumer price increases. Did that money go to better teaching? Not at all. With administrators in charge of all this money, administration costs have skyrocketed twice that of teaching costs: the money went to empire building, bureaucrats' salary increases, student services (non-classroom), but not teachers. Actually most of the new instructor jobs created have been part-timers, "adjunct" faculty.
Especially the declining achievement in the United States and the vehement opposition to "reform" in the sense of chartering non-public schools ("charter sachools") in competition to public schools. Teachers unions bosses who, it seems, care first about retaining union-dues-payers by getting them public money and easier working conditions, and remotely about the success of the students themselves. All this speaks to the abuse of money and power by the unions and the Democratic Party, which depends on union bosses obtaining workers' dues to "invest" in the election of Democrats to enable union bosses to keep their cushy jobs.
While there are some isolated support of charter schools by Democrats, when that happens the unions do their best to shut them up. The mayor of Democratic forever Boston, Tom Menino actually changed and now supports "what works" -- privately chartered schools which accomplish increased achievement of students. Yes, predictably the union bosses went beserk. But for now Mayor Menino is firm, in part because of instances of abuse by crippling union-boss monopoly control over public schools. When ExxonMobil gave a struggling school a grant to reward teachers for their students' excelling, the union bosses sued and effectively killed the bonuses and the grant. This might put pressure and Democrat Governor Deval Patrick who, like President Obama, throws out words of support for charter schools with no mandates, no money to actually perform. Polls say his re-election in 2010 could be in jeopardy...THAT'S the only thing that could get a Democrat to act.
California has the highest teaching salaries in the U. S. And the second-LOWEST math and reading scores. Answer: (from the unions) get rid of testing. Answer: (from rational human beings) get rid of unions.
Most states have educational-union monopolies.
How does America stand up to its foreign competitors? Great, it's number 20 of 30 other countries, lagging Finland, Japan, Germany, Belguim and 19 others. But it's better in math, scoring 25 of 30...meaning only 4 are worse. Oops, I mean worse.
Democrats are certainly on the side of the students their union workers teach. Of course, that's why in Democratic-controlled New York City hundreds of public school teachers accused of myriad offenses from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid to...sit around or do whatever they want...because their union contract makes it almost impossible to fire them. They are sent to, not the hall, but off-school-site offices to wait for disciplinary hearings which take months even years. 700 or so of them get their pay of $70,000 or more, holidays, weekends and summer vacations. Union boss Ron Davis of the United Federation of (228,000) Teachers says teachers cannot be neglected on their due process. Indeed. New York's 1,100,000 students don't pay union dues or vote.
Since government has become fully involved in higher education, costs have blown up. The law of supply and demand. Pour government money in and prices go up. Total college costs are up 67% over the last decade at private colleges and 84% at public 4-year universities, that's 6.6% a year, 2.4 times U. S. consumer price increases. Did that money go to better teaching? Not at all. With administrators in charge of all this money, administration costs have skyrocketed twice that of teaching costs: the money went to empire building, bureaucrats' salary increases, student services (non-classroom), but not teachers. Actually most of the new instructor jobs created have been part-timers, "adjunct" faculty.
Especially the declining achievement in the United States and the vehement opposition to "reform" in the sense of chartering non-public schools ("charter sachools") in competition to public schools. Teachers unions bosses who, it seems, care first about retaining union-dues-payers by getting them public money and easier working conditions, and remotely about the success of the students themselves. All this speaks to the abuse of money and power by the unions and the Democratic Party, which depends on union bosses obtaining workers' dues to "invest" in the election of Democrats to enable union bosses to keep their cushy jobs.
While there are some isolated support of charter schools by Democrats, when that happens the unions do their best to shut them up. The mayor of Democratic forever Boston, Tom Menino actually changed and now supports "what works" -- privately chartered schools which accomplish increased achievement of students. Yes, predictably the union bosses went beserk. But for now Mayor Menino is firm, in part because of instances of abuse by crippling union-boss monopoly control over public schools. When ExxonMobil gave a struggling school a grant to reward teachers for their students' excelling, the union bosses sued and effectively killed the bonuses and the grant. This might put pressure and Democrat Governor Deval Patrick who, like President Obama, throws out words of support for charter schools with no mandates, no money to actually perform. Polls say his re-election in 2010 could be in jeopardy...THAT'S the only thing that could get a Democrat to act.
California has the highest teaching salaries in the U. S. And the second-LOWEST math and reading scores. Answer: (from the unions) get rid of testing. Answer: (from rational human beings) get rid of unions.
Most states have educational-union monopolies.
How does America stand up to its foreign competitors? Great, it's number 20 of 30 other countries, lagging Finland, Japan, Germany, Belguim and 19 others. But it's better in math, scoring 25 of 30...meaning only 4 are worse. Oops, I mean worse.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
THEY WORK FOR US?
Members of Congress and employees of government should have the same healthcare as we do, not better. They work for us. Write, call or email your Congress members and 5 of your friends and demand equivalent healthcare for all of us Americans. It's an outrage, Congress is not royalty.
Well, now that I've started, I've noticed that Congress and federal agencies are expected to spent upwards of $60,000,000 on a little-known perk unavailable to us common Americans. Old student loans taken out by Congressional staff people, and other government employees, can be paid off by...us, the taxpayers, disguised as "the government". It started as a little perk costing $1,000,000 in 2002. Steadily increasing, staff people working for Congress now get a maximum of $10,000 a year repayment of their student loans (primarily, of course, for law school) with a lifetime maximum of $40,000. This is, of course, in addition to "educational" programs paid for by us taxpayers for...Pilates and yoga and...the Senate's Vice-Presidential Bust Collection, whatever that is and haven't all the Veeps been men? Their busts are collected? Huh?
Congressman Jim McDermott (U. S. Rep, Dem, WA) earmarked $250,000 of "Obama's Stimulus money (oops, strike that, it's not Obama's money it's ours, the taxpayers!) to fix up the Rainier Club, exclusive enclave for the rich and famous because its rich members didn't want to...Jimmy Congressman, get real you bozo!
Well let's add perks. Congress' taxpayer-funded junkets rose ten times (1,000%) since 1995, with the Democrats taking control of Congress in 2007 and increasing them 50%. And spouses fly free but only on government planes, if they fly commerical spouses pay. You might wonder why the government has planes for Congress when airlines fly the same places. PERKS is the answer, cushy jobs that contribute to them fighting tooth and nail to keep the jobs. All with taxpayer money. Sixteen U. S. Airforce planes are dedicated to the lawmakers, and apparently one for Speaker Pelosi alone!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
"Wall Street Critic Inspired New Consumer-'Protection' Agency"
President Obama's idea for a new consumer-protection agency came from this one woman, Elizabeth Warren. She's another Harvard Law School professor who seem to have impregnated the Obama administration. But part of what she wants is to force banks and other financial institutions to offer simple, understandable instruments to the public. These would be "plain vanilla" and easily compared as to price and terms. It is a great idea. I would support something that is simple and understandable to the common person, unlike Medicare and the Federal Income Tax Code. And if Congress could keep their nit-picking, dirty hands off adding incremental items to grab campaign contributions. I am certain that is impossible for Congress to do, given history.
Butmy mantra: "Educate, don't regulate" could apply here if they weren't Democrats.
Ms. Warren's idea of simplicity should be extended to the healthcare industry. Medicare has over 150,000 pages of regulations. No wonder healthcare is so high priced (and growing 35% faster than other healthcare) and oblique. No one can understand its rules and regulations, most of which are wrong-headed attempts to legislate honesty, which in the end is impossible. Dishonest people will steal. Laws need to be clear and understandable unlike Medicare and the IRS). And punishment must be certain and tough. But Congress cannot stop putting in changes to benefit those who give them campaign contributions. Each change perverts the marketplace. ObamaCare or KennedyCare will simply add to all this gobblygook and continue increasingly expensive and increasingly unavailable healthcare. Their idea of cutting costs is cutting physicians' income and revenue from hospitals...certainly that's "reform".
Simplicity. Education not regulation. Important philosophies of rational beings.
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon has a markedly better idea for healthcare than either Obama's or Kennedy's. Read about it here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124545885464333145.html. If you care about the upcoming healthcare clusterfxxk read this article carefully.
And Safeway has used a market-based approach to make its non-union employees more healthy and keep their healthcare costs flat. An important strategy that our politicians will not read. Don't bother the Democrats with facts...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124536722522229323.html and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476804026308603.html
Butmy mantra: "Educate, don't regulate" could apply here if they weren't Democrats.
Ms. Warren's idea of simplicity should be extended to the healthcare industry. Medicare has over 150,000 pages of regulations. No wonder healthcare is so high priced (and growing 35% faster than other healthcare) and oblique. No one can understand its rules and regulations, most of which are wrong-headed attempts to legislate honesty, which in the end is impossible. Dishonest people will steal. Laws need to be clear and understandable unlike Medicare and the IRS). And punishment must be certain and tough. But Congress cannot stop putting in changes to benefit those who give them campaign contributions. Each change perverts the marketplace. ObamaCare or KennedyCare will simply add to all this gobblygook and continue increasingly expensive and increasingly unavailable healthcare. Their idea of cutting costs is cutting physicians' income and revenue from hospitals...certainly that's "reform".
Simplicity. Education not regulation. Important philosophies of rational beings.
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon has a markedly better idea for healthcare than either Obama's or Kennedy's. Read about it here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124545885464333145.html. If you care about the upcoming healthcare clusterfxxk read this article carefully.
And Safeway has used a market-based approach to make its non-union employees more healthy and keep their healthcare costs flat. An important strategy that our politicians will not read. Don't bother the Democrats with facts...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124536722522229323.html and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476804026308603.html
Judge Sonia Sotomayor...Justice? Spineless Republicans
An article in the Wall Street Journal On-line, June 29, 2009: "The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race. The ruling reverses a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals-court judge." So much for her "unbiased" racial decision making. Thrown out!
[http://online.wsj.com/home-page#mod=djemalertNEWS]
A newspaper article Saturday, June 20, 2009 indicated that Republicans were going to let the fact that Judge Sotomayer belongs to an all-influential-women's group pass and slide her nomination along. My response was a letter to the (unnamed) editor:
"So Republicans don't plan to object to Judge Sotomayor because she's a member of a discriminatory group which is apparently against the Judicial Code of Ethics. Judge Sotomayor cleverly described the group, Belizean Grove, as not being "invidious" in its discrimination. However the code apparently doesn't mention "invidious" but simply being discriminatotory, which an all-influential-women's club certainly is. It discriminates against men and un-influential women. By passing on this important issue, Republicans are approving of the double standard where Republican members of the Bohemian Club would be rejected out of hand. Republicans, if you want to get elected ever again, stand up for principles. Too many times you are apparently afraid of left-leaning media criticism (which comes anyway). You allow liberals to get away with chipping away at the rule of law, when they don't give conservatives an inch. That is why Barack Obama is president and Democrats controll Congress. Reject the judge and do it loudly. Americans want leaders!"
Superamerican
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. President Obama, with his selection of "empathy", "compassion" and "understanding" over, or at a par with, the Rule of Law in nominating Judge Sotomayer is showing an ignorance in abstract thinking. It is easy to sympathize with the downtrodden, the victim, the innocent and make a decision based on those emotions. But that directly leads to the destruction of the rule of law, under which the success of the United States of America has in part been based. Emotion equates to arbitrariness, and the rule of law was embraced to rid the newly-formed United States of America of the arbitrary decision-making of kings, nobility and bureaucrats. I feel sorry for a home-owner who can't make his mortgage payments. But the contract he signed under the rule of law is more important than his sad loss. Without the rule of law, one bureaucrat could feel sorry for the person and change his contract, another might not. Arbitrary. A company cannot make a contract not knowing if it will be held to be valid or not. Obama's ignorance, or, more charitably, naivety in not understanding the unintended consequence of this arbitrariness stunning.
Well what did you expect? President Obama is 100% a political animal, power is his life. Of course he'd politicize the Supreme Court. More troubling to me is the thought…the possibility that Judge Sonia Sotomayor might get there in order to shake things up. Meaning, perhaps that she'd use her apparently well-known temper and sometimes-scattered thought to disrupt, scramble, confuse, obstruct the workings of the court. Emotionalize it. Might she cause conservative justices to consider retirement as a result? Just a thought. But no doubt she'll be confirmed. Republicans are running scared that liberals will criticize them. Paint them as anti-Hispanic. Geeze, maybe the New York Times won't like them for thinking she's a non-Constitutional activist. But they'll shrink turtle-like into their shells and after she's confirmed, they'll spout out. Same old, same old losers! Where's the "Party of No!" Remember the Cheney. HE got Obama on the run. Go for it or stop complaining.
And Judge Sotomayer believes women, especially minorities, especially especially Hispanic women can make better decisions than white males. Roe v. Wade anyone? Brown v. Board of Education anyone?
While President Obama poses as a post-racial, race-neutral president, his actions -- Judge Sotomayer being case in point -- speak with forked tongue. (See that post for more.) She represents racism at its worst. It is her race and gender which make her attractive to Liberals. And that alone. See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124442662679393077.html
Here we come, the rule of emotion.
Oh, yes, she is a member of an elite all-women's club: the Belizean Grove. Federal judges pledged a code not to join any organization that descriminates by race, sex, religion or nationality. Of course SHE get a pass because she's empathetic. Be she a conservative, it would be all over for her nomination! But Democrats are above the law.
Superamerican
[http://online.wsj.com/home-page#mod=djemalertNEWS]
A newspaper article Saturday, June 20, 2009 indicated that Republicans were going to let the fact that Judge Sotomayer belongs to an all-influential-women's group pass and slide her nomination along. My response was a letter to the (unnamed) editor:
"So Republicans don't plan to object to Judge Sotomayor because she's a member of a discriminatory group which is apparently against the Judicial Code of Ethics. Judge Sotomayor cleverly described the group, Belizean Grove, as not being "invidious" in its discrimination. However the code apparently doesn't mention "invidious" but simply being discriminatotory, which an all-influential-women's club certainly is. It discriminates against men and un-influential women. By passing on this important issue, Republicans are approving of the double standard where Republican members of the Bohemian Club would be rejected out of hand. Republicans, if you want to get elected ever again, stand up for principles. Too many times you are apparently afraid of left-leaning media criticism (which comes anyway). You allow liberals to get away with chipping away at the rule of law, when they don't give conservatives an inch. That is why Barack Obama is president and Democrats controll Congress. Reject the judge and do it loudly. Americans want leaders!"
Superamerican
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. President Obama, with his selection of "empathy", "compassion" and "understanding" over, or at a par with, the Rule of Law in nominating Judge Sotomayer is showing an ignorance in abstract thinking. It is easy to sympathize with the downtrodden, the victim, the innocent and make a decision based on those emotions. But that directly leads to the destruction of the rule of law, under which the success of the United States of America has in part been based. Emotion equates to arbitrariness, and the rule of law was embraced to rid the newly-formed United States of America of the arbitrary decision-making of kings, nobility and bureaucrats. I feel sorry for a home-owner who can't make his mortgage payments. But the contract he signed under the rule of law is more important than his sad loss. Without the rule of law, one bureaucrat could feel sorry for the person and change his contract, another might not. Arbitrary. A company cannot make a contract not knowing if it will be held to be valid or not. Obama's ignorance, or, more charitably, naivety in not understanding the unintended consequence of this arbitrariness stunning.
Well what did you expect? President Obama is 100% a political animal, power is his life. Of course he'd politicize the Supreme Court. More troubling to me is the thought…the possibility that Judge Sonia Sotomayor might get there in order to shake things up. Meaning, perhaps that she'd use her apparently well-known temper and sometimes-scattered thought to disrupt, scramble, confuse, obstruct the workings of the court. Emotionalize it. Might she cause conservative justices to consider retirement as a result? Just a thought. But no doubt she'll be confirmed. Republicans are running scared that liberals will criticize them. Paint them as anti-Hispanic. Geeze, maybe the New York Times won't like them for thinking she's a non-Constitutional activist. But they'll shrink turtle-like into their shells and after she's confirmed, they'll spout out. Same old, same old losers! Where's the "Party of No!" Remember the Cheney. HE got Obama on the run. Go for it or stop complaining.
And Judge Sotomayer believes women, especially minorities, especially especially Hispanic women can make better decisions than white males. Roe v. Wade anyone? Brown v. Board of Education anyone?
While President Obama poses as a post-racial, race-neutral president, his actions -- Judge Sotomayer being case in point -- speak with forked tongue. (See that post for more.) She represents racism at its worst. It is her race and gender which make her attractive to Liberals. And that alone. See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124442662679393077.html
Here we come, the rule of emotion.
Oh, yes, she is a member of an elite all-women's club: the Belizean Grove. Federal judges pledged a code not to join any organization that descriminates by race, sex, religion or nationality. Of course SHE get a pass because she's empathetic. Be she a conservative, it would be all over for her nomination! But Democrats are above the law.
Superamerican
Friday, June 19, 2009
"This (Late) Bloomer Isn't Going To Apologize"
Ditto this (late) boomer, who isn't going to apologize:
OPINION: DE GUSTIBUS
JUNE 19, 2009
This Boomer Isn't Going to Apologize
Article
By STEPHEN MOORE
"Last weekend I attended my niece's high-school graduation from an upscale prep school in Washington, D.C. These are supposed to be events filled with joy, optimism and anticipation of great achievements. But nearly all the kids who stepped to the podium dutifully moaned about how terrified they are of America's future -- yes, even though Barack Obama, whom they all worship and adore, has brought "change they can believe in." A federal judge gave the commencement address and proceeded to denounce the sorry state of the nation that will be handed off to them. The enemy, he said, is the collective narcissism of their parents' generation -- my generation. The judge said that we baby boomers have bequeathed to the "echo boomers," "millennials," or whatever they are to be called, a legacy of "greed, global warming, and growing income inequality."
And everyone of all age groups seemed to nod in agreement. One affluent 40-something woman with lots of jewelry told me she can barely look her teenagers in the eyes, so overcome is she with shame over the miseries we have bestowed upon our children.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that graduation ceremonies have become collective airings of guilt and grief. It's now chic for boomers to apologize for their generation's crimes. It's the only thing conservatives and liberals seem to agree on. Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana, told Butler University grads that our generation is "just plain selfish." At Grinnell College in Iowa, author Thomas Friedman compared boomers to "hungry locusts . . . eating through just about everything." Film maker Ken Burns told this year's Boston College grads that those born between 1946 and 1960 have "squandered the legacy handed to them by the generation from World War II."
I could go on, but you get the point. We partied like it was 1999, paid for it with Ponzi schemes and left the mess for our kids and grandkids to clean up. We're sorry -- so sorry.
Well, I'm not. I have two teenagers and an 8-year-old, and I can say firsthand that if boomer parents have anything for which to be sorry it's for rearing a generation of pampered kids who've been chauffeured around to soccer leagues since they were 6. This is a generation that has come to regard rising affluence as a basic human right, because that is all it has ever known -- until now. Today's high-school and college students think of iPods, designer cellphones and $599 lap tops as entitlements. They think their future should be as mapped out as unambiguously as the GPS system in their cars.
CBS News reported recently that echo boomers spend $170 billion a year -- more than most nations' GDPs -- and nearly every penny of that comes from the wallets of the very parents they now resent. My parents' generation lived in fear of getting polio; many boomers lived in fear of getting sent to the Vietnam War; this generation's notion of hardship is TiVo breaking down.
How bad can the legacy of the baby boomers really be? Let's see: We're the generation that spawned Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, ATMs and Gatorade. We defeated the evils of communism and delivered the world from the brink of global thermonuclear war. Now youngsters are telling pollsters that they think socialism may be better than capitalism after all. Do they expect us to apologize for winning the Cold War next?
College students gripe about the price of tuition, and it does cost way too much. But who do these 22-year-old scholars think has been footing the bill for their courses in transgender studies and Che Guevara? The echo boomers complain, rightly, that we have left them holding the federal government's $8 trillion national IOU. But try to cut government aid to colleges or raise tuitions and they act as if they have been forced to actually work for a living.
Yes, the members of this generation will inherit a lot of debts, but a much bigger storehouse of wealth will be theirs in the coming years. When I graduated from college in 1982, the net worth of America -- all our nation's assets minus all our liabilities -- was $16 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. Today, even after the meltdown in housing and stocks, the net worth of the country is $45 trillion -- a doubling after inflation. The boomers' children and their children will inherit more wealth and assets than any other in the history of the planet -- that is, unless Mr. Obama taxes it all away. So how about a little gratitude from these trust-fund babies for our multitrillion-dollar going-away gifts?
My generation is accused of being environmental criminals -- of having polluted the water and air and ruined the climate. But no generation in history has done more to clean the environment than mine. Since 1970 pollutants in the air and water have fallen sharply. Since 1960, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh have cut in half the number of days with unsafe levels of smog. The number of Americans who get sick or die from contaminants in our drinking water has plunged for 50 years straight.
Whenever kids ask me why we didn't do more to combat global warming, I explain that when I was young the "scientific consensus" warned of global cooling. Today's teenagers drive around in cars more than any previous generation. My kids have never once handed back the car keys because of some moral problem with their carbon footprint -- and I think they are fairly typical.
The most absurd complaint of all is that the health-care system has been ruined by our generation. Oh, really? Thanks to massive medical progress in the past 30 years, the chances of dying from heart disease and many types of cancer have been cut in half. We found effective treatments for AIDS within a decade. Life expectancy has risen and infant mortality fallen. That doesn't sound so "selfish" to me.
Yes, we are in a deep economic crisis today -- but it's no worse than what we boomers faced in the late 1970s after years of hyperinflation, sky-high tax rates and runaway government spending. We cursed our parents, too. But then we grew up and produced a big leap forward in health, wealth and scientific progress. Let's see what this next generation of over-educated ingrates can do."
Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W13, Friday, June 19, 2009
OPINION: DE GUSTIBUS
JUNE 19, 2009
This Boomer Isn't Going to Apologize
Article
By STEPHEN MOORE
"Last weekend I attended my niece's high-school graduation from an upscale prep school in Washington, D.C. These are supposed to be events filled with joy, optimism and anticipation of great achievements. But nearly all the kids who stepped to the podium dutifully moaned about how terrified they are of America's future -- yes, even though Barack Obama, whom they all worship and adore, has brought "change they can believe in." A federal judge gave the commencement address and proceeded to denounce the sorry state of the nation that will be handed off to them. The enemy, he said, is the collective narcissism of their parents' generation -- my generation. The judge said that we baby boomers have bequeathed to the "echo boomers," "millennials," or whatever they are to be called, a legacy of "greed, global warming, and growing income inequality."
And everyone of all age groups seemed to nod in agreement. One affluent 40-something woman with lots of jewelry told me she can barely look her teenagers in the eyes, so overcome is she with shame over the miseries we have bestowed upon our children.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that graduation ceremonies have become collective airings of guilt and grief. It's now chic for boomers to apologize for their generation's crimes. It's the only thing conservatives and liberals seem to agree on. Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana, told Butler University grads that our generation is "just plain selfish." At Grinnell College in Iowa, author Thomas Friedman compared boomers to "hungry locusts . . . eating through just about everything." Film maker Ken Burns told this year's Boston College grads that those born between 1946 and 1960 have "squandered the legacy handed to them by the generation from World War II."
I could go on, but you get the point. We partied like it was 1999, paid for it with Ponzi schemes and left the mess for our kids and grandkids to clean up. We're sorry -- so sorry.
Well, I'm not. I have two teenagers and an 8-year-old, and I can say firsthand that if boomer parents have anything for which to be sorry it's for rearing a generation of pampered kids who've been chauffeured around to soccer leagues since they were 6. This is a generation that has come to regard rising affluence as a basic human right, because that is all it has ever known -- until now. Today's high-school and college students think of iPods, designer cellphones and $599 lap tops as entitlements. They think their future should be as mapped out as unambiguously as the GPS system in their cars.
CBS News reported recently that echo boomers spend $170 billion a year -- more than most nations' GDPs -- and nearly every penny of that comes from the wallets of the very parents they now resent. My parents' generation lived in fear of getting polio; many boomers lived in fear of getting sent to the Vietnam War; this generation's notion of hardship is TiVo breaking down.
How bad can the legacy of the baby boomers really be? Let's see: We're the generation that spawned Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, ATMs and Gatorade. We defeated the evils of communism and delivered the world from the brink of global thermonuclear war. Now youngsters are telling pollsters that they think socialism may be better than capitalism after all. Do they expect us to apologize for winning the Cold War next?
College students gripe about the price of tuition, and it does cost way too much. But who do these 22-year-old scholars think has been footing the bill for their courses in transgender studies and Che Guevara? The echo boomers complain, rightly, that we have left them holding the federal government's $8 trillion national IOU. But try to cut government aid to colleges or raise tuitions and they act as if they have been forced to actually work for a living.
Yes, the members of this generation will inherit a lot of debts, but a much bigger storehouse of wealth will be theirs in the coming years. When I graduated from college in 1982, the net worth of America -- all our nation's assets minus all our liabilities -- was $16 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. Today, even after the meltdown in housing and stocks, the net worth of the country is $45 trillion -- a doubling after inflation. The boomers' children and their children will inherit more wealth and assets than any other in the history of the planet -- that is, unless Mr. Obama taxes it all away. So how about a little gratitude from these trust-fund babies for our multitrillion-dollar going-away gifts?
My generation is accused of being environmental criminals -- of having polluted the water and air and ruined the climate. But no generation in history has done more to clean the environment than mine. Since 1970 pollutants in the air and water have fallen sharply. Since 1960, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh have cut in half the number of days with unsafe levels of smog. The number of Americans who get sick or die from contaminants in our drinking water has plunged for 50 years straight.
Whenever kids ask me why we didn't do more to combat global warming, I explain that when I was young the "scientific consensus" warned of global cooling. Today's teenagers drive around in cars more than any previous generation. My kids have never once handed back the car keys because of some moral problem with their carbon footprint -- and I think they are fairly typical.
The most absurd complaint of all is that the health-care system has been ruined by our generation. Oh, really? Thanks to massive medical progress in the past 30 years, the chances of dying from heart disease and many types of cancer have been cut in half. We found effective treatments for AIDS within a decade. Life expectancy has risen and infant mortality fallen. That doesn't sound so "selfish" to me.
Yes, we are in a deep economic crisis today -- but it's no worse than what we boomers faced in the late 1970s after years of hyperinflation, sky-high tax rates and runaway government spending. We cursed our parents, too. But then we grew up and produced a big leap forward in health, wealth and scientific progress. Let's see what this next generation of over-educated ingrates can do."
Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W13, Friday, June 19, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The World Needs a Policemen
Think carefully of your city. Wherever it is. (Mine is Seattle.) Think of it without policemen. Truly think. Walk out the door heading to, say, the grocery store. Pass a big guy and he decides to take your purse. Maybe he pushes you, hits you, whatever, and simply takes your purse. (My former mother-in-law was mugged and had her purse stolen a couple months ago. Age? 92. The police found the guy and took him off the streets.) Then think if there were no police. Who would you call? What would you do? You could call a meeting of your friends, or, say, the others in your apartment building. Get together and form a committee. And talk. And talk. And talk. Then put up a note for the perpetrator not to do it again. Done. Feel better? But what will stop him from walking the streets in search of his next victim?
Now let us consider the world. It had a policeman with the United States of America. Fresh from winning World War II for the world, crushing fascism, Nazism and the Axis; we were the power. Then came Korea. I guess it was a truce, but it put North Korea and China in check. Next was the domino theory in Vietnam. Many Americans didn't think it was appropriate to attempt to put those Communists in check. Our citizens demonstrated, rioted, sat in, be-ed in (or be-ined), and so on and forced the United States out of that conflict. And ever since that internal conflict, our uncivil-war, the United States has withdrawn from the role of policeman. Except Ronald Reagan as world policeman stared down the Soviet Union, shattering it in 1991. Then came 9/11. And once again the United States became the policeman to try and force Saddam Hussein out of power for fear he was near to producing weapons of mass destruction. (He had used poison gas on his countrymen in the past.) Our country was pretty unified. But the invasion was poorly managed. And the Left struck. Some now argue that President Bush and his advisors lied about the whole matter. Others think that Iraq was the wrong target. But there was deja vu Vietnam all over again. Barack Obama became president of the United States in part based on the war in Iraq. OurHe is continuing the emasculation of our country by the Left. Why? Women don't like masculinity? Minorities are afraid of power abused? What is wrong with strength? The United States mostly has used it for good. Obama has power and is using it to completely restructure the society of the United States. Why is that power good, and similar power used as the international policeman bad?
Senator Obama also ran, and since becoming president, has speechified that the cause of the "greatest recession since the Depression" was caused by free markets. Free markets in finance and mortgages with a lack of regulation. No effective policeman. We need a policeman, he says.
Well Mr. President, there is now a free-market in nuclear weapons and missiles capable of delivering them. But no policeman. Yes, there's the United Nations, a gaggle of committees that can't commit. Bureaucrats bloviating. Sending notes to potential perps. North Korea, Iran, Taliban-Pakistan, Syria, Libya, wherever. They could be perps who don't read notes. The United States has withdrawn into its turtle shell, peeking out and asking friends to get together and form a committee to...write a note, send a "message"? There is no regulation. No policeman. But the consequence you can't grasp or acknowledge is that at some point a nuclear weapon might be dropped on, say, Israel, to pick a name out of a hat. Then what, Mr. President? What then? Why is the Left afraid of power?
There is no policeman, and the United States now doesn't have the will to be it. To the danger of the world. You think global warming is a century in the future, Mr. President? A nuclear weapon will hasten that up. Please think carefully of your city, your country, your world.
Superamerican.
Now let us consider the world. It had a policeman with the United States of America. Fresh from winning World War II for the world, crushing fascism, Nazism and the Axis; we were the power. Then came Korea. I guess it was a truce, but it put North Korea and China in check. Next was the domino theory in Vietnam. Many Americans didn't think it was appropriate to attempt to put those Communists in check. Our citizens demonstrated, rioted, sat in, be-ed in (or be-ined), and so on and forced the United States out of that conflict. And ever since that internal conflict, our uncivil-war, the United States has withdrawn from the role of policeman. Except Ronald Reagan as world policeman stared down the Soviet Union, shattering it in 1991. Then came 9/11. And once again the United States became the policeman to try and force Saddam Hussein out of power for fear he was near to producing weapons of mass destruction. (He had used poison gas on his countrymen in the past.) Our country was pretty unified. But the invasion was poorly managed. And the Left struck. Some now argue that President Bush and his advisors lied about the whole matter. Others think that Iraq was the wrong target. But there was deja vu Vietnam all over again. Barack Obama became president of the United States in part based on the war in Iraq. OurHe is continuing the emasculation of our country by the Left. Why? Women don't like masculinity? Minorities are afraid of power abused? What is wrong with strength? The United States mostly has used it for good. Obama has power and is using it to completely restructure the society of the United States. Why is that power good, and similar power used as the international policeman bad?
Senator Obama also ran, and since becoming president, has speechified that the cause of the "greatest recession since the Depression" was caused by free markets. Free markets in finance and mortgages with a lack of regulation. No effective policeman. We need a policeman, he says.
Well Mr. President, there is now a free-market in nuclear weapons and missiles capable of delivering them. But no policeman. Yes, there's the United Nations, a gaggle of committees that can't commit. Bureaucrats bloviating. Sending notes to potential perps. North Korea, Iran, Taliban-Pakistan, Syria, Libya, wherever. They could be perps who don't read notes. The United States has withdrawn into its turtle shell, peeking out and asking friends to get together and form a committee to...write a note, send a "message"? There is no regulation. No policeman. But the consequence you can't grasp or acknowledge is that at some point a nuclear weapon might be dropped on, say, Israel, to pick a name out of a hat. Then what, Mr. President? What then? Why is the Left afraid of power?
There is no policeman, and the United States now doesn't have the will to be it. To the danger of the world. You think global warming is a century in the future, Mr. President? A nuclear weapon will hasten that up. Please think carefully of your city, your country, your world.
Superamerican.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Global Warming and Other Fortune Telling
Our government forecasters can't forecast weather a year ahead to spot hurricanes.
"Cap and Trade" was rammed barely through the U. S. House of Representatives: Last week, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (the 'Cap and Trade Energy Bill'), or H.R. 2454, was 946 pages long. Over the weekend, it ballooned to 1,201 pages with no explanation for how or why. Then on the day of the vote, Pelosi's House added another 255 pages to the bill at 3:00 AM (EST) and limited debate to three hours before passing this massive "national energy tax". Did each Member of the House read and carefully analyze the bill? Not a chance. Even so, myraid Democrats chose not to go along and only 8 Republicans boarded the Democratic ship of fools. Be clear: this has nothing to do with "global warming" and all about power...raw power of Democrats over others: us.
A recent (May 2009) Associated Press article stated that because of unusual circumstances, the government projections of when minorities will become the majority were wrong. By as much as a decade to more than three decades from now, so says David Waddington, the Census Bureau chief of projections. Whatever figures it projected are now subject to revision. So much for fortune telling. Global warming projections are just that. Projections by computers from keyboard inputs fingered in by humans. And I'd guess mostly humans who could be registered Democrats! And out a century. Get real, global warming is a method by which liberals gain and retain power over others. To many it has become an ineluctable belief in the end of civilization. Thomas Malthus thought the same thing. He was dead wrong! So are they. But who'll know, it's out a century and power is now! And see my post about a world policeman or lack thereof, which says that since there's no world policeman to keep nuclear weaponry and delivery systems under control a nuc dropped on, say, Israel would hasten global warming rapidly. Why has America neutered itself?
Well, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is now fiction. Or at least only on-line. I thought the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wasn't supposed to print fiction. The article "Less water, more heat forecast for state" is nothing but fiction. I mean, do you really think anyone can forecast 90 years ahead about anything? Anything? The national weather forecast can't even forecast hurricanes a year ahead. Give me a break, the only way you'd print this piece of garbage is to influence the spending of our tax dollars (my money) on programs to counteract these computer programs developed by liberals with agendas. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the worst economic times in twenty years and we should be looking ways to save money not throw it away on hallucinations.
Superamerican
The article about which I write (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Wednesday, February 11, 2009, Front Page):
Less water, more heat forecast for state
Report details climate change in Washington
By ROBERT McCLUREP-I REPORTER
Fewer cherries and apples -- but possibly more wheat.
More summer days when streams grow dangerously warm for salmon -- and worse winter floods flushing away or burying their eggs.
More people dying in King County from heat stress. Less drinking water in the summer. A quadrupling of the acreage burned statewide in summer wildfires.
But more electricity to heat our homes in the winter.
Those are a few of the effects projected for Washington by the first comprehensive look at how climate change is likely to affect the state by the end of the century.
Released early Wednesday, the study was ordered by the Legislature and carried out by 64 scientists, many affiliated with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington.
"This is the most detailed description of the effects of future climate change that we've ever had for any of the Northwest states," said Philip Mote, a report author and the outgoing Washington state climatologist.
On Thursday, the scientists plan to huddle with state officials to brief them on actions that can be taken to prepare for climate change and -- they hope -- blunt its worst effects. Many of the impacts outlined in the new report assume continued use of fuels whose emissions trap heat in the atmosphere. Those effects could at least theoretically be lessened through technological innovations or reduced fuel use.
The new study delves into some areas not researched thoroughly for Washington in the past: How a changing climate will affect agriculture, human health and the systems that carry away rainwater to prevent flooding.
"There's more work to do, but this is a first step," said Jeremy Littell, a forest ecologist who helped organize the report.
The picture is not uniformly grim. For instance, because winter storms are likely to bring more rain and less snow, we should see higher stream flows in the winter. That means we can make more hydropower -- a plus, since winter heating sometimes requires importing electricity.
But the flip side of that coin is that there will be less snow left around in the summer -- when we count on it to melt slowly, recharging reservoirs and dropping stream temperatures enough to keep salmon healthy. Plus, more people will be cranking up the air conditioning in the summer -- the very time Northwesterners now profit by selling the juice to sweltering Californians.
That kind of if-then-but scenario is played out in a number of sections of the report. For example, increased carbon dioxide, or CO2, and the increased productivity that comes with warmth should help forests grow more vigorously. On the other hand, the drier, hotter climate is likely to mean more fires -- not to mention increasing the range of the forest-shredding mountain pine beetle.
And it looks like overall, forests will grow better in the early decades of the century, as CO2 increases, but then show worse growth as the climate dries and warms, particularly in Eastern Washington. There are likely to be wide variations among sections of the state, though.
"It's one of those issues that, it very much depends on where you look," Littell said. "When you take it statewide, that's what we're looking at."
The report, titled "The Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment," pulls back from previous projections on whether we're likely to see more of the intense winter storms that caused flooding the past three years.
That's because when scientists examined whether intense downpours had increased over the last few decades, they saw little difference. However, the analysis did not include the storms that sparked state-of-emergency declarations the last three years. Also, two computer-based projections showed increases in intense storms are likely -- but disagreed on how much, and where, they are likely to occur.
So while on balance scientists still expect more of these cats-and-dogs downpours, they're not nearly as confident about that as, say, their projection that wildfires will increase from burning an average of 425,000 acres annually to 800,000 in the 2020s and 2 million in the 2080s.
Or look at agriculture. Dryland wheat farming is likely to benefit, because a major climate-warming gas is carbon dioxide, which helps plants grow more vigorously. That same CO2 benefit holds true for cherries and apples, but because the warming stands to exacerbate water shortages in the Yakima Valley, where many are grown, overall the state is likely to see lower yields.
For salmon, the picture is bleak -- but it depends on the species and its location.
"The stream conditions in the summertime are just looking to be deteriorating," said Nathan Mantua, a fish researcher who helped produce the report. "It's hard to see it any other way."
For sockeye and chinook that return to spawn in the summer, that could mean big trouble. Currently they seek deep water or other spots that stay cold longest. But some of those are likely to disappear as temperatures increase. And even fish that make it to cold water refuges may not be able to leave in time to swim to their spawning grounds before exhausting themselves and dying, Mantua said.
We already saw an example of the kind of thing that's likely in the extremely hot summer of 2004, Mantua said. Workers counted some 300,000 sockeye salmon swimming past the Ballard Locks on their way to Lake Washington. Biologists estimated only 100,000 made it to the spawning grounds. Maybe 20,000 or so got caught by anglers, Mantua said. The remainder presumably died, probably because of extremely warm temperatures in the Lake Washington Ship Canal.
Coho and steelhead are also likely to be affected, but at the other end of their lives, when they spend summers in fresh water before heading to sea.
On the other hand, pink salmon, chum salmon and fall-returning chinook aren't likely to be affected very much, because they're out at sea in the summer.
Human health is also likely to be affected. And while the picture in Washington may not be as dire as some other regions, "Climate change in Washington state will likely lead to larger numbers of heat-related deaths," the report says. "The greater Seattle area in particular can expect substantial mortality during future heat events due to the combination of hotter summer and population growth."
At the meeting Thursday to discuss courses of action, officials hope to begin sketching out steps to prevent as much damage as possible.
"Adapting to climate change must be seen as a continuous series of decisions and activities undertaken by individuals, groups, and governments rather than a one-time activity," the report says.
P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com. Read his blog on the environment at datelineearth.com.
"Cap and Trade" was rammed barely through the U. S. House of Representatives: Last week, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (the 'Cap and Trade Energy Bill'), or H.R. 2454, was 946 pages long. Over the weekend, it ballooned to 1,201 pages with no explanation for how or why. Then on the day of the vote, Pelosi's House added another 255 pages to the bill at 3:00 AM (EST) and limited debate to three hours before passing this massive "national energy tax". Did each Member of the House read and carefully analyze the bill? Not a chance. Even so, myraid Democrats chose not to go along and only 8 Republicans boarded the Democratic ship of fools. Be clear: this has nothing to do with "global warming" and all about power...raw power of Democrats over others: us.
A recent (May 2009) Associated Press article stated that because of unusual circumstances, the government projections of when minorities will become the majority were wrong. By as much as a decade to more than three decades from now, so says David Waddington, the Census Bureau chief of projections. Whatever figures it projected are now subject to revision. So much for fortune telling. Global warming projections are just that. Projections by computers from keyboard inputs fingered in by humans. And I'd guess mostly humans who could be registered Democrats! And out a century. Get real, global warming is a method by which liberals gain and retain power over others. To many it has become an ineluctable belief in the end of civilization. Thomas Malthus thought the same thing. He was dead wrong! So are they. But who'll know, it's out a century and power is now! And see my post about a world policeman or lack thereof, which says that since there's no world policeman to keep nuclear weaponry and delivery systems under control a nuc dropped on, say, Israel would hasten global warming rapidly. Why has America neutered itself?
Well, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is now fiction. Or at least only on-line. I thought the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wasn't supposed to print fiction. The article "Less water, more heat forecast for state" is nothing but fiction. I mean, do you really think anyone can forecast 90 years ahead about anything? Anything? The national weather forecast can't even forecast hurricanes a year ahead. Give me a break, the only way you'd print this piece of garbage is to influence the spending of our tax dollars (my money) on programs to counteract these computer programs developed by liberals with agendas. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the worst economic times in twenty years and we should be looking ways to save money not throw it away on hallucinations.
Superamerican
The article about which I write (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Wednesday, February 11, 2009, Front Page):
Less water, more heat forecast for state
Report details climate change in Washington
By ROBERT McCLUREP-I REPORTER
Fewer cherries and apples -- but possibly more wheat.
More summer days when streams grow dangerously warm for salmon -- and worse winter floods flushing away or burying their eggs.
More people dying in King County from heat stress. Less drinking water in the summer. A quadrupling of the acreage burned statewide in summer wildfires.
But more electricity to heat our homes in the winter.
Those are a few of the effects projected for Washington by the first comprehensive look at how climate change is likely to affect the state by the end of the century.
Released early Wednesday, the study was ordered by the Legislature and carried out by 64 scientists, many affiliated with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington.
"This is the most detailed description of the effects of future climate change that we've ever had for any of the Northwest states," said Philip Mote, a report author and the outgoing Washington state climatologist.
On Thursday, the scientists plan to huddle with state officials to brief them on actions that can be taken to prepare for climate change and -- they hope -- blunt its worst effects. Many of the impacts outlined in the new report assume continued use of fuels whose emissions trap heat in the atmosphere. Those effects could at least theoretically be lessened through technological innovations or reduced fuel use.
The new study delves into some areas not researched thoroughly for Washington in the past: How a changing climate will affect agriculture, human health and the systems that carry away rainwater to prevent flooding.
"There's more work to do, but this is a first step," said Jeremy Littell, a forest ecologist who helped organize the report.
The picture is not uniformly grim. For instance, because winter storms are likely to bring more rain and less snow, we should see higher stream flows in the winter. That means we can make more hydropower -- a plus, since winter heating sometimes requires importing electricity.
But the flip side of that coin is that there will be less snow left around in the summer -- when we count on it to melt slowly, recharging reservoirs and dropping stream temperatures enough to keep salmon healthy. Plus, more people will be cranking up the air conditioning in the summer -- the very time Northwesterners now profit by selling the juice to sweltering Californians.
That kind of if-then-but scenario is played out in a number of sections of the report. For example, increased carbon dioxide, or CO2, and the increased productivity that comes with warmth should help forests grow more vigorously. On the other hand, the drier, hotter climate is likely to mean more fires -- not to mention increasing the range of the forest-shredding mountain pine beetle.
And it looks like overall, forests will grow better in the early decades of the century, as CO2 increases, but then show worse growth as the climate dries and warms, particularly in Eastern Washington. There are likely to be wide variations among sections of the state, though.
"It's one of those issues that, it very much depends on where you look," Littell said. "When you take it statewide, that's what we're looking at."
The report, titled "The Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment," pulls back from previous projections on whether we're likely to see more of the intense winter storms that caused flooding the past three years.
That's because when scientists examined whether intense downpours had increased over the last few decades, they saw little difference. However, the analysis did not include the storms that sparked state-of-emergency declarations the last three years. Also, two computer-based projections showed increases in intense storms are likely -- but disagreed on how much, and where, they are likely to occur.
So while on balance scientists still expect more of these cats-and-dogs downpours, they're not nearly as confident about that as, say, their projection that wildfires will increase from burning an average of 425,000 acres annually to 800,000 in the 2020s and 2 million in the 2080s.
Or look at agriculture. Dryland wheat farming is likely to benefit, because a major climate-warming gas is carbon dioxide, which helps plants grow more vigorously. That same CO2 benefit holds true for cherries and apples, but because the warming stands to exacerbate water shortages in the Yakima Valley, where many are grown, overall the state is likely to see lower yields.
For salmon, the picture is bleak -- but it depends on the species and its location.
"The stream conditions in the summertime are just looking to be deteriorating," said Nathan Mantua, a fish researcher who helped produce the report. "It's hard to see it any other way."
For sockeye and chinook that return to spawn in the summer, that could mean big trouble. Currently they seek deep water or other spots that stay cold longest. But some of those are likely to disappear as temperatures increase. And even fish that make it to cold water refuges may not be able to leave in time to swim to their spawning grounds before exhausting themselves and dying, Mantua said.
We already saw an example of the kind of thing that's likely in the extremely hot summer of 2004, Mantua said. Workers counted some 300,000 sockeye salmon swimming past the Ballard Locks on their way to Lake Washington. Biologists estimated only 100,000 made it to the spawning grounds. Maybe 20,000 or so got caught by anglers, Mantua said. The remainder presumably died, probably because of extremely warm temperatures in the Lake Washington Ship Canal.
Coho and steelhead are also likely to be affected, but at the other end of their lives, when they spend summers in fresh water before heading to sea.
On the other hand, pink salmon, chum salmon and fall-returning chinook aren't likely to be affected very much, because they're out at sea in the summer.
Human health is also likely to be affected. And while the picture in Washington may not be as dire as some other regions, "Climate change in Washington state will likely lead to larger numbers of heat-related deaths," the report says. "The greater Seattle area in particular can expect substantial mortality during future heat events due to the combination of hotter summer and population growth."
At the meeting Thursday to discuss courses of action, officials hope to begin sketching out steps to prevent as much damage as possible.
"Adapting to climate change must be seen as a continuous series of decisions and activities undertaken by individuals, groups, and governments rather than a one-time activity," the report says.
P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com. Read his blog on the environment at datelineearth.com.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Thank You Dick Cheney / The Party of "NO!"
Dick Cheney delivered a speech last night (Thursday, May 21, 2009). He was forthright, unafraid, proud of what he did for his country and of his country and fiercely outspoken. Thank you, Mr. Cheney. Republicans seem to be afraid to speak out. They are defensive when attacked by the Left, rather than accepting it and attacking back. For example, when the left-leaning media and liberals labelled Republicans "The Party of No", Republicans blathered on about how they really weren't, blah, blah, blah, and hurriedly put out initiatives to prove they weren't. Defense is exactly where the Left wants Republicans. And they fall in lockstep like little Stepford Liberals. The "Party of No!" Yes we are, proudly.
Party of NO!
I am a proud member of the “Party of NO!” I have been joined by the citizens of the formerly-great State of California. Just say “NO!” Speak up loudly and proudly, Republicans.
No to Big Government
No to High Taxes
No to Huge Deficits
No to Crippling Regulations
No to Robbery of Freedoms
No to Empathetic Supreme Court Justices
No to the Democratic Party
(And from Californians, a resounding:
"No" to tax increase
"No" to supplemental educational payments
"No" to borrowing from the state lottery
"No" to taking money from adult mental-health programs
"No" to shifting tobacco tax money from kids
“Yes” to banning raises for state officials, which is a “no” to the raises
And at May 22, 2009 California Leads State Job Losses: 44 states lost jobs in April, led by California where employers slashed 63,700 positions)
Liberals label the Republican Party the "Party of “No!” Let’s proudly accept it.
A proud Member of the Party of “NO!”
Superamerican.
Seattle.
Party of NO!
I am a proud member of the “Party of NO!” I have been joined by the citizens of the formerly-great State of California. Just say “NO!” Speak up loudly and proudly, Republicans.
No to Big Government
No to High Taxes
No to Huge Deficits
No to Crippling Regulations
No to Robbery of Freedoms
No to Empathetic Supreme Court Justices
No to the Democratic Party
(And from Californians, a resounding:
"No" to tax increase
"No" to supplemental educational payments
"No" to borrowing from the state lottery
"No" to taking money from adult mental-health programs
"No" to shifting tobacco tax money from kids
“Yes” to banning raises for state officials, which is a “no” to the raises
And at May 22, 2009 California Leads State Job Losses: 44 states lost jobs in April, led by California where employers slashed 63,700 positions)
Liberals label the Republican Party the "Party of “No!” Let’s proudly accept it.
A proud Member of the Party of “NO!”
Superamerican.
Seattle.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Taking from the MANY to Enrich the FEW
This is a new, never-ending blog post. "Taking from the MANY to Enrich the FEW".
This will highlight steps, orders, laws and so on which takes money -- and rights -- from the many of politically-weak citizens and gives it to the few of Obama-favored, or perhaps to be more fair, Democrat-favored people, or special-interest groups, who can support, finance or otherwise re-elect Democrats, especially President Barack Obama.
Yesterday, the president ordered rigorous new federally-mandated gas mileage dictates for automobiles sold in the United States. 35.5 miles for each gallon of gasoline used by 2016. In part this was to preempt a smorgesbord of individual states rights. Many states, notably California, have established their own stringent standards by statute or threatened litigation. Obama-government-owned car industry entities agreed to the certainty of a single national diktat, as did others. That the technology isn't extant, nor consumer acceptance assured didn't matter; car companies can certainly simply make the cars lighter, thus killing more drivers. Of course, cars'll cost American consumers upwards of $1,300 more per car.
On the other hand, taking from consumers and giving to hugely-wealthy, jet-airplane-travelling trial- or tort- and class-action lawyer-supporters is Obama's order to allow exactly what the single auto-mileage standard stops: a gaggle of individual state laws to encourage said rich lawyers to sue companies. Oh, yes, to give our money to his supporters, Obama supports states' rights. Article, The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, May 21, 2009, page A 3:(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124285702885340713.html), "Shift Toward State Rules..." In a two-page order Obama reversed former-president Bush's 10-year encouragement of single federal standards on a variety of issues for simplicity's sake. Happily celebrating was the lobby for trial lawyers, the humorously-named American Association of Justice (for lawyers).
Maybe the grandest money redistribution scheme is the "American Clean Energy and Security Act". Which will take money from companies -- Democrat-leaning farmers are already exempt from emissions caps, but looking to grap some dough -- such as dirty oil refiners, coal miners, steel producers and distribute it where the most campaign contributions flow (in my belief). One such entity will doubtless be the General Electric Company, whose Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt sat next -- not sure if left side or right -- to god (President Obama) at a White House meeting May 20, 2009, of President Barack Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. General Electric owns the former National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and MSNBC both inarguably propaganda arms of the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration. (In other news, President Obama is backing an agreement for the U. S. to share nuclear technology with the United Arab Emirates which, if it passes Congress, could mean billions of dollars for bidder the General Electric Company. Abu Dhabi has renounced its right to make weapons materials and agreed to U. N. inspections. Could this spark a Mideast nuclear arms race? Who cares as long as NBC gets supported.) Back to the "cap and trade" bill. This could dwarf FDR in its ambition to re-engineer United States social behavior and economy; President Obama stated he's "excited about the opportunity."
This will highlight steps, orders, laws and so on which takes money -- and rights -- from the many of politically-weak citizens and gives it to the few of Obama-favored, or perhaps to be more fair, Democrat-favored people, or special-interest groups, who can support, finance or otherwise re-elect Democrats, especially President Barack Obama.
Yesterday, the president ordered rigorous new federally-mandated gas mileage dictates for automobiles sold in the United States. 35.5 miles for each gallon of gasoline used by 2016. In part this was to preempt a smorgesbord of individual states rights. Many states, notably California, have established their own stringent standards by statute or threatened litigation. Obama-government-owned car industry entities agreed to the certainty of a single national diktat, as did others. That the technology isn't extant, nor consumer acceptance assured didn't matter; car companies can certainly simply make the cars lighter, thus killing more drivers. Of course, cars'll cost American consumers upwards of $1,300 more per car.
On the other hand, taking from consumers and giving to hugely-wealthy, jet-airplane-travelling trial- or tort- and class-action lawyer-supporters is Obama's order to allow exactly what the single auto-mileage standard stops: a gaggle of individual state laws to encourage said rich lawyers to sue companies. Oh, yes, to give our money to his supporters, Obama supports states' rights. Article, The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, May 21, 2009, page A 3:(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124285702885340713.html), "Shift Toward State Rules..." In a two-page order Obama reversed former-president Bush's 10-year encouragement of single federal standards on a variety of issues for simplicity's sake. Happily celebrating was the lobby for trial lawyers, the humorously-named American Association of Justice (for lawyers).
Maybe the grandest money redistribution scheme is the "American Clean Energy and Security Act". Which will take money from companies -- Democrat-leaning farmers are already exempt from emissions caps, but looking to grap some dough -- such as dirty oil refiners, coal miners, steel producers and distribute it where the most campaign contributions flow (in my belief). One such entity will doubtless be the General Electric Company, whose Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt sat next -- not sure if left side or right -- to god (President Obama) at a White House meeting May 20, 2009, of President Barack Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. General Electric owns the former National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and MSNBC both inarguably propaganda arms of the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration. (In other news, President Obama is backing an agreement for the U. S. to share nuclear technology with the United Arab Emirates which, if it passes Congress, could mean billions of dollars for bidder the General Electric Company. Abu Dhabi has renounced its right to make weapons materials and agreed to U. N. inspections. Could this spark a Mideast nuclear arms race? Who cares as long as NBC gets supported.) Back to the "cap and trade" bill. This could dwarf FDR in its ambition to re-engineer United States social behavior and economy; President Obama stated he's "excited about the opportunity."
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Obama's further Hollywood ties
Endeavor Agency run by Ari Emanuel, the brother of Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, and the William Morris Agency, Jim Wiatt, CEO, will merge to become an organization that will bring further Hollywood muscle to the Obama Administration.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Dictator Wannabe Obama?
Our president, as has been widely publicized, believes America is a nasty, dirty, unfair nation that, apparently has never done anyone any good. Look at what America has done to the world's great Democracies, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua at the same time former president Bush diminished his new best friends, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega. It seems possible that the president of the United States looks up to these gentlemen and would like to be like them. They are widely loved in their countries, clearly. Or is it feared? Not too certain. We could go to their jails and ask. One thing is clear, Democratic-run states such as California and New York have replicated the successes of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua and let's throw in Argentina. Is the United States of America far behind?
Just asking.
Just asking.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Pirates from Somalia and Washington, D.C.
An uncharacteristically strong president allowed the United States Navy SEALS to kill three Somalian pirates who kidnapped the captain of the U. S. merchant ship Maersk Alabama and free the captain, Richard Phillips. The anarchical country of Somalia is controlled by independent warlords with no central government. Rampant crime is driven by poverty and virtually no commerce or industry. The start-up service industry of capturing and holding for ransom ships and crews has proven profitable, thus bringing it hockey-stick-like growth as ship owners pay millions of dollars in ransom to regain their ships, cargos and crews. A lack of defense mechanisms extend the safe operations of the pirates. It is easier and cheaper for the ship owners to pay rather than resist. Payment of ransom leads to more piracy, the costs of which are paid for ultimately by consumers...sort of taxation without representation.
An analogy might be trial lawyers extort business executives, and they pay and it gets worse.
Another analogy might be union bosses extort business executives, and they pay and it gets worse.
Another analogy might be Congress extorts seekers of favors, and they pay and it gets worse.
And the world gets corrupted.
Think about it: the world needs be rid of all pirates.
An analogy might be trial lawyers extort business executives, and they pay and it gets worse.
Another analogy might be union bosses extort business executives, and they pay and it gets worse.
Another analogy might be Congress extorts seekers of favors, and they pay and it gets worse.
And the world gets corrupted.
Think about it: the world needs be rid of all pirates.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
"Gregoire: Raise tuition 14%"
From the Seattle Times Front Page Wednesday, April 8, 2009. (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009001043_apwaxgrgregoirehighered2ndldwritethru.html)
Headline: "Gregoire: Raise tuition 14%"
I sent to the Seattle Times the following Letter, which hasn't been published:
The Return of the Company Store
Little understood is the relationship between increasingly higher college costs and government participation in higher education. In today's article, "Gregoire: Raise tuition 14%" it becomes starkly evident. Coming before Gov. Gregoire's proposal were "increases to federal Pell grants and education tax credits" from which, according to the article "families earning up to $160,00 would be no worse off" after the tuition increases "for the first year anyway". So here's how it works. The federal government takes some of the income tax money from citizens of Washington and turns around and offers some of it back for higher education. The state government seeing this "new money" coming into the state for higher education, raises the prices for said higher education. Everything's hunky dory except for the second year. Then perhaps grants aren't sufficient, so students and their families borrow from the government to pay for college. They become indebted -- financially and emotionally -- to the government. Like a company store. So think of the cause and effect (supply and demand) for the huge inflation in college costs, and remember it began when our federal government started interfering in higher education. This is the government we want?
http://www.periodictablet.com
Headline: "Gregoire: Raise tuition 14%"
I sent to the Seattle Times the following Letter, which hasn't been published:
The Return of the Company Store
Little understood is the relationship between increasingly higher college costs and government participation in higher education. In today's article, "Gregoire: Raise tuition 14%" it becomes starkly evident. Coming before Gov. Gregoire's proposal were "increases to federal Pell grants and education tax credits" from which, according to the article "families earning up to $160,00 would be no worse off" after the tuition increases "for the first year anyway". So here's how it works. The federal government takes some of the income tax money from citizens of Washington and turns around and offers some of it back for higher education. The state government seeing this "new money" coming into the state for higher education, raises the prices for said higher education. Everything's hunky dory except for the second year. Then perhaps grants aren't sufficient, so students and their families borrow from the government to pay for college. They become indebted -- financially and emotionally -- to the government. Like a company store. So think of the cause and effect (supply and demand) for the huge inflation in college costs, and remember it began when our federal government started interfering in higher education. This is the government we want?
http://www.periodictablet.com
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tax the Rich, Tax the Poor, and Lie About It
President Obama who promised only to tax the "rich" (as he defines it) is now dictating the largest federal tobacco tax increase ever. Everyone knows that such a tax hits poorer people far more than the middle class or rich people. New York Times, do you care that poor people are taxed much more than rich people? At least his tobacco tax won't go into the hands of trial lawyers. Now get this, Obama's "stimulative" Make Work Pay gives eight bucks a week to workers (and CEOs alike I guess) which will be burned up in a two packs a day smoker's lungs. So Mr. Obama thanks for stimulative cigarette smoking and burning the poor guy, ince slightly more than half of today's smokers (53%) earn less than $36,000 per year.
(Article in The Wall Street Journal, Monday, March 30, 2009, page B5:)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Tobacco users are facing a big financial hit as the largest federal tobacco tax increase ever takes effect Wednesday.
Tobacco companies and public-health advocates, longtime foes in the nicotine battles, are each trying to turn the situation to their advantage. Major cigarette makers raised prices in recent weeks, partly to offset any drop in profits once the per-pack tax climbs from 39 cents to $1.01. Medical groups, meanwhile, see a tax increase in the middle of a recession as a great incentive for smokers to quit.
President Barack Obama signed a health initiative soon after taking office to increase the tobacco taxes to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children. Other tobacco products, from cigars to pipes and smokeless tobacco, will also see similarly large tax increases. For example, the tax on chewing tobacco will go from 19.5 cents per pound to 50 cents. The total expected to be raised over the 4½ year health-insurance expansion is nearly $33 billion.
Separately, Congress is considering legislation to empower the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. That could lead to reformulated cigarettes. President Obama, who has struggled with his own cigarette habit, said he would sign such a bill.
Prospects for reducing the harm from smoking are better than they have been in years, said Dr. Timothy Gardner, president of the American Heart Association. "Every time that the tax on tobacco goes up, the use of cigarettes goes down," he said.
And speaking of taxes. Today is April 15, 2009. Tax Day. Let's see I have, of course, read the 70,320 pages (up 2-1/2 times, or 44,020 pages from 1984) that is almost 4 million words (up from 1.4 million in 2001!) and spent nearly the average 24 hours on the 1040 and related schedules...well, no, as with 60% of Americans I hired it out. The total cost: $90 billion a year. No, that's not just me, it's everyone. Now simplification so the average person knows what he is paying on, how much and where it goes. The flat-rate tax? The consumption tax? No so fast, say the politicians. Now I can reap campaign cash for making or only threatening to change the tax code. Why should I change that gravy train? And they don't. Extortion, you say?
(Article in The Wall Street Journal, Monday, March 30, 2009, page B5:)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Tobacco users are facing a big financial hit as the largest federal tobacco tax increase ever takes effect Wednesday.
Tobacco companies and public-health advocates, longtime foes in the nicotine battles, are each trying to turn the situation to their advantage. Major cigarette makers raised prices in recent weeks, partly to offset any drop in profits once the per-pack tax climbs from 39 cents to $1.01. Medical groups, meanwhile, see a tax increase in the middle of a recession as a great incentive for smokers to quit.
President Barack Obama signed a health initiative soon after taking office to increase the tobacco taxes to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children. Other tobacco products, from cigars to pipes and smokeless tobacco, will also see similarly large tax increases. For example, the tax on chewing tobacco will go from 19.5 cents per pound to 50 cents. The total expected to be raised over the 4½ year health-insurance expansion is nearly $33 billion.
Separately, Congress is considering legislation to empower the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco. That could lead to reformulated cigarettes. President Obama, who has struggled with his own cigarette habit, said he would sign such a bill.
Prospects for reducing the harm from smoking are better than they have been in years, said Dr. Timothy Gardner, president of the American Heart Association. "Every time that the tax on tobacco goes up, the use of cigarettes goes down," he said.
And speaking of taxes. Today is April 15, 2009. Tax Day. Let's see I have, of course, read the 70,320 pages (up 2-1/2 times, or 44,020 pages from 1984) that is almost 4 million words (up from 1.4 million in 2001!) and spent nearly the average 24 hours on the 1040 and related schedules...well, no, as with 60% of Americans I hired it out. The total cost: $90 billion a year. No, that's not just me, it's everyone. Now simplification so the average person knows what he is paying on, how much and where it goes. The flat-rate tax? The consumption tax? No so fast, say the politicians. Now I can reap campaign cash for making or only threatening to change the tax code. Why should I change that gravy train? And they don't. Extortion, you say?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Bumper Stickers For Sale, Proceeds to the U. S. Government
THE FOLLOWING BUMPER STICKERS ARE AVAILABLE FOR SALE. $1.00 EACH. MINIMUM QUANTITY 1,000,000,000,000 ALL PROCEEDS WILL BE DONATED TO THE U. S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
You have to fail to succeed, Barack Obama, 2009
______________________________________________
A Pretty Face, Silver Tongue, Empty Head and Black Heart
Barack Obama, America's First Quiche President
________________________________________
Beat a Liberal
Start a Company
_________________________________________
Want a Raise?
Drop the Union!
__________________________________________
Trickle-up Poverty
Cut up the Pie
Trickle-down Wealth
Grow the Pie
________________________________________
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
U. S. Heads to Poverty
Not only did I read this article, I bought the book ("Dead Aid" by Dambisa Moyo)! There are no revelations in it other than putting names and numbers on feelings I have had about much of our foreign aid for years. Like many harmful activities which have become trendy, mindless, yet harmful, foreign aid to Africa is not about to end. But in considering the "insidious aid culture which has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable…" one must draw an analogy to us here in the United States. Are we not a country dependent on governmental aid? Aid which doesn't come from faceless third-party countries, but from ourselves. We tax ourselves, hire elected officials (our "employees") who turn around and re-distribute all that money to...ourselves, keeping a sizeable amount for themselves. Hmmm. How is that different? And isn't it an "insidious aid culture" which is leaving us more dependent, not to mention debt-laden, and prone to upcoming almost guaranteed inflation? Aren't we more vulnerable to those holding all that debt? According to the author, Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian female who was educated and has worked only in the West, corruption costs Africa something like $50 billion a year. Is it too much of a stretch to ask: doesn't Congress in its own legal way threaten to pass laws, or not, and change taxation, or not, to demand campaign contributions? Is that corruption? Aid creates dependency; dependency strangles freedom. Dependency is the antithesis of freedom. Can you think of one small area in our country that the government's tentacles aren't wrapped around our freedoms? President Obama and the Democratic Congress intend to turn the octopus into a giant squid. As Ms. Moyo explained, we know what works (and what doesn't work) to reduce poverty and encourage growth. It is not where we are headed in the United States.
The parallel of the discovery of the need for rich countries to "save" the African continent from abject poverty and the emergence of the moral authority of the United States to save Negroes from racism, discrimination and poverty heaped upon them by centuries of slavery. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society were big screen displays of ridding our country of racism, discrimination and poverty. Not to matter that it didn't work even after 35 years, it was in the trying that mattered: the ability of citizens to feel good about themselves. Of course, the real goal was for Democrats to continue the charade of helping targeted segments of American voters to get votes. As rich, mostly western countries spread aid to Africa, America was spreading aid and changing laws to provide for African Americans. While the goals of the aid to Africa started out for political reasons, to wit to "win" the cold war through real estate, it morphed into a trendy thing for liberals to discuss over cocktail parties and for which to throw benefits. What both have in common is the establishment of gigantic bureaucracies which the members depend for income and to some extent their vary identites. Those bureacracies need to continue the dependency on government. And those dependencies guarantee poverty and a lack of opportunity for Africans and African Americans. Both are still endemic in the continent of Africa and in African American society in the United States.
Democratic policies have destroyed two generations of African Americans.
Cut the apron strings, which really are tentacles, and empower.
Democrats have used the words "poverty" and "Middle class stagnation" with great impact, they have been lying. According to official government figures, the best (lowest) poverty rate was -- get this -- in 1973, but percapita income is 50% higher today than in 1973, median family income (smaller families) 20%. Yet spending on "antipoverty" programs doubled. Consider what Democrats don't want known-- they use misleading numbers to obfuscate people's standards of living -- using consumption figures , what people actually buy and get, are far better now than then. Then 50% of the "poor" didn't have cars and today nearly 75% do, and 14% have two! Poverty? Today the "poor" spend more than than they get in income, assuming welfare like food stamps and earned income credits aren't "income", so why does the left-leaning government bureaucracy measure "income"? In order for Democrats to keep and get the votes of the poor. Democrats need to keep the "poor" (of course as Democrats define "poor") thinking they need aid; then the act of giving it to them keeps them voting Democrat.
And the Obama government plans to change the Bush emphasis on the free market and private companies to purchase for the government and will hire 13,00 new civil servants plus up to 30,000 more within five years to replace private contractors. More Democrats to vote to keep Democrats in power.
And then there's healthcare. But that's another story.
The United States needs real conservatives to right this listing ship of state. It needs a coda of growth not dependency. With Democrats continuing in power the entire United States population ultimately will end up like the African American generations of hopelessness and poverty.
The parallel of the discovery of the need for rich countries to "save" the African continent from abject poverty and the emergence of the moral authority of the United States to save Negroes from racism, discrimination and poverty heaped upon them by centuries of slavery. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society were big screen displays of ridding our country of racism, discrimination and poverty. Not to matter that it didn't work even after 35 years, it was in the trying that mattered: the ability of citizens to feel good about themselves. Of course, the real goal was for Democrats to continue the charade of helping targeted segments of American voters to get votes. As rich, mostly western countries spread aid to Africa, America was spreading aid and changing laws to provide for African Americans. While the goals of the aid to Africa started out for political reasons, to wit to "win" the cold war through real estate, it morphed into a trendy thing for liberals to discuss over cocktail parties and for which to throw benefits. What both have in common is the establishment of gigantic bureaucracies which the members depend for income and to some extent their vary identites. Those bureacracies need to continue the dependency on government. And those dependencies guarantee poverty and a lack of opportunity for Africans and African Americans. Both are still endemic in the continent of Africa and in African American society in the United States.
Democratic policies have destroyed two generations of African Americans.
Cut the apron strings, which really are tentacles, and empower.
Democrats have used the words "poverty" and "Middle class stagnation" with great impact, they have been lying. According to official government figures, the best (lowest) poverty rate was -- get this -- in 1973, but percapita income is 50% higher today than in 1973, median family income (smaller families) 20%. Yet spending on "antipoverty" programs doubled. Consider what Democrats don't want known-- they use misleading numbers to obfuscate people's standards of living -- using consumption figures , what people actually buy and get, are far better now than then. Then 50% of the "poor" didn't have cars and today nearly 75% do, and 14% have two! Poverty? Today the "poor" spend more than than they get in income, assuming welfare like food stamps and earned income credits aren't "income", so why does the left-leaning government bureaucracy measure "income"? In order for Democrats to keep and get the votes of the poor. Democrats need to keep the "poor" (of course as Democrats define "poor") thinking they need aid; then the act of giving it to them keeps them voting Democrat.
And the Obama government plans to change the Bush emphasis on the free market and private companies to purchase for the government and will hire 13,00 new civil servants plus up to 30,000 more within five years to replace private contractors. More Democrats to vote to keep Democrats in power.
And then there's healthcare. But that's another story.
The United States needs real conservatives to right this listing ship of state. It needs a coda of growth not dependency. With Democrats continuing in power the entire United States population ultimately will end up like the African American generations of hopelessness and poverty.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Government Support vs. Personal Responsibility: Letter to the Editor
A Letter to the Editor from your correspondent
Editorials / Opinion
Our network sites seattletimes.com Advanced
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March 20, 2009 4:21 PM
Tackling homelessness
Posted by Letters editor
Throwing money not the answer
["Group hopes to cut number of homeless families in state," Local News, March 19 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008884912_gateshomeless19.html ] argues against these blanket leftist schemes that throw money at perceived problems, thus extending the problems.
Carefully read about Jackilin Abiem. She has gotten pregnant twice and, so, can't find or afford an apartment. Now think if she hadn't gotten pregnant. Would her life and opportunities be better? What about her personal responsibility?
Certainly there are many people "down on their luck" from circumstances beyond their control. They should be assisted. But Ms. Abiem? I have trouble either feeling sorry for her or being supportive of spending tax money on encouraging unwed births.
Another article in Thursday's paper ("More kids born in '07; fewer moms married," News) states that 40 percent of births are to unwed mothers. I don't think that is necessarily good for society as a whole, to which Ms. Abiem's problems attest.
-- Theodore M. Wight, Seattle
The Original Article is:
Originally published Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 12:00 AM
NEW - Introducing a new blog
Gates Foundation joins others in goal to cut homelessness
A partnership of governments, businesses and nonprofits is pledging today to redouble its efforts to help the growing number of homeless families in Washington state. The pledge includes up to $60 million over 10 years by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
By Kristi Heim
Seattle Times staff reporter
COURTNEY BLETHEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES
The Gates Foundation and other partners have committed $60 million toward helping homeless families in Washington state. One family in particular is 25-year-old Jackilin Abiem, of Sudan, right, and her 17 month old son, Nassir Getdet. Abiem is expecting her second son to be born in two weeks to join her family at their home at Katherine's Place, a local nonprofit offering affordable housing and support services.
A partnership of governments, businesses and nonprofits is pledging today to redouble its efforts to help the growing number of homeless families in Washington state. The pledge includes up to $60 million over 10 years by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Partners in the Washington Families Fund vowed to reduce the number of homeless families by 50 percent over the next decade.
"I feel this is an opportunity right now, as much as I'm a realist about the economy," said Alice Shobe, deputy director of Building Changes, which administers the fund. "It is ambitious, but we have a vision about how to do it. We have the creativity and broad partnership to make it happen."
As the recession throws more people into poverty, "we must do more to help families achieve and maintain stability," said Gov. Chris Gregoire, who signed an agreement with King, Snohomish and Pierce counties and the cities of Seattle, Everett and Tacoma to collaborate with the private partners.
Created by the state Legislature in 2004, the Washington Families Fund has received contributions of more than $20 million — $12 million from the state and $8.3 million from 18 other partners, including the Gates Foundation, Boeing, Microsoft, the Campion Foundation, the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, the Ben B. Cheney Foundation and United Way. It has awarded $13 million in grants so far.
The Washington Families Fund has not yet revealed any new financial commitments other than the Gates Foundation's pledge.
Governments and private groups together spend about $200 million a year to address the problem in Washington state, but as economic conditions worsen, the number of homeless families keeps going up. About half of the state's estimated 22,000 homeless households are families with children.
Winter nights
The family of Jackilin Abiem, 25, was one of them. She arrived in 2001 as an orphan from Sudan after fleeing civil war and walking for three months across the country and eventually to a refugee camp. Once in Washington, she lived with two foster families, graduated from Garfield High School and landed her first job at McDonald's.
Abiem then worked for two years as a cook at a retirement home, but she never earned quite enough money to afford her own apartment. She became homeless after the youth housing where she was staying made her leave when she became pregnant.
She then bounced around, staying with four different friends and her foster mom through the birth of her son, Nassir. She remembers "window shopping" outside on winter nights as she waited for friends to get off work.
"When I was pregnant, I didn't have a place to live, so I was just running around between friends," she said. "It was hard for me to go house to house and to old friends. I keep them worried ... that I may give birth [at] their house."
Spending some nights with her foster mom in Mount Vernon and other nights with friends in South King County made it tough to be in West Seattle consistently for her job, and she lost that, too.
Abiem is now at Katharine's Place, in a transitional apartment for homeless families in Rainier Valley, but her two-year term ends in December. She is about to give birth to her second son. Katharine's Place had so many people on its two-year waiting list that it closed the list to new applicants in January.
Prevention
That reflects a rise in the number of homeless families in 2008 over 2007, especially in South King County.
"The trend lines have gone in the wrong direction, period," said David Bley, director of the Pacific Northwest Initiative at the Gates Foundation. "We need to go about tackling the problem differently than we have in the past."
For one thing, there's not enough emphasis on preventing homelessness by keeping people in affordable housing. Only 3 percent of the $200 million is used for prevention, he said.
"It feels totally out of whack from what we know works — it's easier to keep people in a home than put them back once they've lost one," Bley said.
Bley said other needed changes include providing permanent housing as soon as possible, rather than "transitional housing," and standardizing the fragmented systems used to determine what families need, so they get access to the same services no matter where they go for help.
"Some people will need a lot of services and some people will need nothing more than a rent subsidy," he said.
The program also will focus on improving the economic prospects of people with low incomes or no income, connecting them with work-force development and job training. And more money will be invested in getting better data on homeless families to understand the problem.
"It is difficult to assess progress if you don't have good numbers," Bley said, "and it is very difficult to serve individual parents and children well if no one is tracking their needs, the support they get and the progress they are making."
"Gains being lost"
The Gates Foundation has previously given $40 million in grants to help homeless families and learn how to better tackle the problem. Grants to help homeless families are part of the foundation's Pacific Northwest giving, which totaled $33 million in 2009.
While that money is only a fraction of the billions the foundation gives away globally, it does make it the largest private human-service grantmaker in the state, said T.J. Bucholz, Gates Foundation senior program officer.
Washington is studying the practices of other communities that have managed to reduce homelessness by 40 to 50 percent. But even the most effective programs are seeing some erosion of progress.
"That's what was really frightening about the current economic climate," Bley said. "We see a lot of those gains being lost in those communities that were very innovative."
However, he added, "there would be a lot more homeless families if we weren't doing this work."
Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com
Editorials / Opinion
Our network sites seattletimes.com Advanced
Northwest Voices Letters to the Editor
Welcome to The Seattle Times' online letters to the editor, a sampling of readers' opinions. Join the conversation by commenting on these letters or send your own letter of up to 200 words opinion@seattletimes.com.
E-mail Subscribe Blog Home
March 20, 2009 4:21 PM
Tackling homelessness
Posted by Letters editor
Throwing money not the answer
["Group hopes to cut number of homeless families in state," Local News, March 19 http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008884912_gateshomeless19.html ] argues against these blanket leftist schemes that throw money at perceived problems, thus extending the problems.
Carefully read about Jackilin Abiem. She has gotten pregnant twice and, so, can't find or afford an apartment. Now think if she hadn't gotten pregnant. Would her life and opportunities be better? What about her personal responsibility?
Certainly there are many people "down on their luck" from circumstances beyond their control. They should be assisted. But Ms. Abiem? I have trouble either feeling sorry for her or being supportive of spending tax money on encouraging unwed births.
Another article in Thursday's paper ("More kids born in '07; fewer moms married," News) states that 40 percent of births are to unwed mothers. I don't think that is necessarily good for society as a whole, to which Ms. Abiem's problems attest.
-- Theodore M. Wight, Seattle
The Original Article is:
Originally published Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 12:00 AM
NEW - Introducing a new blog
Gates Foundation joins others in goal to cut homelessness
A partnership of governments, businesses and nonprofits is pledging today to redouble its efforts to help the growing number of homeless families in Washington state. The pledge includes up to $60 million over 10 years by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
By Kristi Heim
Seattle Times staff reporter
COURTNEY BLETHEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES
The Gates Foundation and other partners have committed $60 million toward helping homeless families in Washington state. One family in particular is 25-year-old Jackilin Abiem, of Sudan, right, and her 17 month old son, Nassir Getdet. Abiem is expecting her second son to be born in two weeks to join her family at their home at Katherine's Place, a local nonprofit offering affordable housing and support services.
A partnership of governments, businesses and nonprofits is pledging today to redouble its efforts to help the growing number of homeless families in Washington state. The pledge includes up to $60 million over 10 years by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Partners in the Washington Families Fund vowed to reduce the number of homeless families by 50 percent over the next decade.
"I feel this is an opportunity right now, as much as I'm a realist about the economy," said Alice Shobe, deputy director of Building Changes, which administers the fund. "It is ambitious, but we have a vision about how to do it. We have the creativity and broad partnership to make it happen."
As the recession throws more people into poverty, "we must do more to help families achieve and maintain stability," said Gov. Chris Gregoire, who signed an agreement with King, Snohomish and Pierce counties and the cities of Seattle, Everett and Tacoma to collaborate with the private partners.
Created by the state Legislature in 2004, the Washington Families Fund has received contributions of more than $20 million — $12 million from the state and $8.3 million from 18 other partners, including the Gates Foundation, Boeing, Microsoft, the Campion Foundation, the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, the Ben B. Cheney Foundation and United Way. It has awarded $13 million in grants so far.
The Washington Families Fund has not yet revealed any new financial commitments other than the Gates Foundation's pledge.
Governments and private groups together spend about $200 million a year to address the problem in Washington state, but as economic conditions worsen, the number of homeless families keeps going up. About half of the state's estimated 22,000 homeless households are families with children.
Winter nights
The family of Jackilin Abiem, 25, was one of them. She arrived in 2001 as an orphan from Sudan after fleeing civil war and walking for three months across the country and eventually to a refugee camp. Once in Washington, she lived with two foster families, graduated from Garfield High School and landed her first job at McDonald's.
Abiem then worked for two years as a cook at a retirement home, but she never earned quite enough money to afford her own apartment. She became homeless after the youth housing where she was staying made her leave when she became pregnant.
She then bounced around, staying with four different friends and her foster mom through the birth of her son, Nassir. She remembers "window shopping" outside on winter nights as she waited for friends to get off work.
"When I was pregnant, I didn't have a place to live, so I was just running around between friends," she said. "It was hard for me to go house to house and to old friends. I keep them worried ... that I may give birth [at] their house."
Spending some nights with her foster mom in Mount Vernon and other nights with friends in South King County made it tough to be in West Seattle consistently for her job, and she lost that, too.
Abiem is now at Katharine's Place, in a transitional apartment for homeless families in Rainier Valley, but her two-year term ends in December. She is about to give birth to her second son. Katharine's Place had so many people on its two-year waiting list that it closed the list to new applicants in January.
Prevention
That reflects a rise in the number of homeless families in 2008 over 2007, especially in South King County.
"The trend lines have gone in the wrong direction, period," said David Bley, director of the Pacific Northwest Initiative at the Gates Foundation. "We need to go about tackling the problem differently than we have in the past."
For one thing, there's not enough emphasis on preventing homelessness by keeping people in affordable housing. Only 3 percent of the $200 million is used for prevention, he said.
"It feels totally out of whack from what we know works — it's easier to keep people in a home than put them back once they've lost one," Bley said.
Bley said other needed changes include providing permanent housing as soon as possible, rather than "transitional housing," and standardizing the fragmented systems used to determine what families need, so they get access to the same services no matter where they go for help.
"Some people will need a lot of services and some people will need nothing more than a rent subsidy," he said.
The program also will focus on improving the economic prospects of people with low incomes or no income, connecting them with work-force development and job training. And more money will be invested in getting better data on homeless families to understand the problem.
"It is difficult to assess progress if you don't have good numbers," Bley said, "and it is very difficult to serve individual parents and children well if no one is tracking their needs, the support they get and the progress they are making."
"Gains being lost"
The Gates Foundation has previously given $40 million in grants to help homeless families and learn how to better tackle the problem. Grants to help homeless families are part of the foundation's Pacific Northwest giving, which totaled $33 million in 2009.
While that money is only a fraction of the billions the foundation gives away globally, it does make it the largest private human-service grantmaker in the state, said T.J. Bucholz, Gates Foundation senior program officer.
Washington is studying the practices of other communities that have managed to reduce homelessness by 40 to 50 percent. But even the most effective programs are seeing some erosion of progress.
"That's what was really frightening about the current economic climate," Bley said. "We see a lot of those gains being lost in those communities that were very innovative."
However, he added, "there would be a lot more homeless families if we weren't doing this work."
Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com
Friday, March 20, 2009
Nero Hero of the Week III
NERO HERO OF THE WEEK III
(Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (15 December 37 – 9 June 68), born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, also called Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus)
While it may not be fact, it is a belief that has lasted over two thousand years: Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Well, that is what is happening in Washington, District of Columbia, right now. Especially in the White House and Halls of Congress. I feel it incumbent upon me to laud one person each week for fiddling while the United States of America burns. Some might argue that the burn is intentional and set by liberals and Democrats beginning with the inauguration Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. Others might simply state that the Chief Executive Officer, newly elected, of the United States of America (hereinafter defined as "US&A) is laughably and predictably acting as a neophite. In other words, with no experience in running anything and no experience in hiring exceptional -- or even unexceptional -- executives to report to him, he's floundering and with his fishy behavior the nation is going belly-up. And he seems to be copying a recent whale: former president George Bush, Junior.
While I stated that I would designate one person as Nero Hero of the Week each week, circumstances have caused me to designate a gaggle of geese: Congress and the Obama Administration for railing against legally-contracted bonuses to hard-working employees of the American International Group (AIG). These AIG people, including administration-appointed CEO Edward Liddy who is working for $1 a year, have been demonized by those who have caused this whole fiasco: Congressional Democrats and President Obama and his team of Keystone Kops...or is it the Three Stooges? OK, House of Representatives financial king-pin, Barney Frank, as far as I can see has never held a job other than political (including teaching at Harvard). Beginning in 1968 as Boston mayor Kevin White's Chief Assistant, Frank has suckled at the teat of the taxpayers since then. Frank was a steller, moral arbiter in 1990, when the House Ethics Committee recommended Frank be reprimanded because he "reflected discredit upon the House" by using his congressional office to fix 33 of Steve Gobie's parking tickets. Frank confirmed that he paid Gobie for sex, hired him with personal funds as an aide and wrote letters on congressional stationery on his behalf to Virginia probation officials. September 2003, Frank, then the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, opposed a Bush administration proposal for transferring oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from Congress and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to a new agency that would be created within the Treasury Department. In addition, Frank's former partner, Herb Moses, was an executive at Fannie from 1991 to 1998, where Moses helped develop many of Fannie’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs. In 1991, Frank pushed for reduced restrictions on two- and three-family home mortgages. Frank and Moses' relationship ended around the same time Moses left the company. Oh, did I mention, Frank is a homosexual who has used his power to pass laws favoring the homosexual affinity group. He also has been the recipient of substantial Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions. (And I don't know about Frank and Fannies, so to speak.)
Christopher John Dodd graduated in 1972, Dodd earning a Juris Doctor at the University of Louisville, one of the best known law schools in Louisville. (He is from Connecticut.) He dated at different times Bianca Jagger and Carrie Fisher and got suckle from taxpayers starting in 1975. He must have started practicing law in 1972 and certainly still is practicing because he hasn't gotten anything right so far, except being re-elected. Being a member of the so-called "Watergate class of '74, Dodd obviously learned from President Nixon when in June 2008 he stated: "I don't believe I did anything wrong" ["I am not a crook"] in being given a couple of below-market mortgages as a Friend of Angelo, CEO of Countrywide Financial Services, prime suspect in the meltdown of sub-prime mortgages, most of which were purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the prodding of Barney Fife (oops, I mean Frank) and Dodd. Sen. Dodd received more campaign contributions from AIG than any other candidate in 2008!
I don't know if it's the corruption (both Barney and Chrissie took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the financial industry they were laughably "regulating" -- Dodd is Chairman of the Senate Banking and Extortion Committee) or the complete lack of real-world experience in anything, that is most troubling about these two. Add President Obama, who, except for a brief unsuccessful stint at IBM (affirmative action? I don't know) has also been on the public dole all of his adult life.
Perhaps the rules of Congress that gives committee and sub-committee to those with seniority, not knowledge and experience should be to blame. In companies (a term the above three don't regard seriously) generally board of directors members are those with some experience and knowledge, especially in committees, such as audit. That Congress doesn't do this is disgraceful and I would submit one of the reasons the economic meltdown has occurred. To counter, inexperienced President Obama is mindlessly shovelling out future tax dollars to any squeeky, compaign contributing wheel in our country.
And Congress and the Administration are attempting to deflect blame by demonizing bonuses, those that approved them, except Congress and the Administration who did, and those who received them ("fiddling"or "playing the fiddle") while this economy, this country and the economies around the world burn. Burn to the ground. Yes Dictator Barack Nero and Congresspeople Barney and Chris Nero would be proud.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Break Union Monopolies
The Far-left Congress joins the Far-left president to impose on the American economy the most draconian shackles on its ability to create jobs, grow and provide tax income to the U. S. Government and for companies to be free to create products and services that consumers desire. Union bosses themselves say that this bill (the so-called "Employee Free Choice Act")would add 20 million more union members to their rolls, resulting in up to $12 billion more in forced union dues taken from the pockets of American workers. Where will these bosses spend all tht new money? On higher salaries, perks, vacations, cars for themselves and, most importantly, much will be spent to elect Far-left Democrats to continue the business-killing monopolies of unions.
What do unions really do?
Well first, The National Right to Work Committee recently reported "that union violence is responsible for at least 203 Americans deaths since 1975; 5,869 incidents of personal injury; and more than 6,435 incidents of vandalism and tens of millions of dollars in property damage."
Artificially jack up wages of a tiny minority of workers at the expense of more jobs. Artificially jack up prices, which amount to an additional tax on consumers, the proceeds of which line union leaders pockets and elect Far-left Democrats. Union leaders tell businesses how to manage their employees. The same employees who freely accept jobs created by these businesses. Why hobble business now? Well, union bosses using their members' dues elect Far-left Democrats.
"A study recently released by Dr. Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist with the non-partisan LECG Consulting Group, concluded that the unionization of 1.5 million existing jobs in just the first year after enactment of Card Check (as predicted by union leaders) would lead to an initial loss of 600,000 American jobs."
Recently union leaders in cahoots with Congress have triggered a possibly-devastating trade war with our third-largest trading partner and next-door neighbor, Mexico. Mexico has slapped tariffs on 89 products American companies ship there. From an added 10% to a killing 45% on a variety of products, including table grapes, wine, almonds, Christmas trees (liberals hate these anyway), pears from my Washington State, scrap batteries, some personal hygiene products and precious metal jewelry among other things. Why? To protect a perceived handful of Teamster jobs from Mexicans driving their trucks over the border as the North American Trade Agreement allows. Just to remind: it was trade barriers that helped start and continued The Great Depression. Check out this: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123742090606978583.html
Obviously union leaders are playing the strings of Obama the puppet and, of course, Democrats in Congress. Is Obama simply another Uncle Tom: "yessa, yessa, mastah! Please elect me!" When Obama talks of a strong economy and job saving and job creating, he is lying to America. Lying! And those same leaders to whom our president is so beholden have killed U. S. industries, steel, airlines, auto manufacturing and auto parts manufacturing, not to mention government entities such as Amtrak, the U. S. Postal Service. And unions have destroyed generations of African American kids who can't get decent educations, among other "students".
Cahoots?: From "The Audacity of Hope," "I owe those unions... When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don't mind feeling obligated."
Check out this link for a comment by a former U. S. Secretary of Labor: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123742166937078741.html
Another article in The Wall Street Journal (Monday, March 16, 2009, page A18 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123723839801146937.html ) describes what labor bosses have done to Germany, Italy and France; Margaret Thatcher turned them back in England, but those other three countries are competitively on the bottom rung and financially crippled by welfare to those who are not productive.
Now is the time Republicans need to stand up and fight for America: Break the job- and business-killing union monopolies. If business monopolies were broken a century ago, because of misuse of power, now is the time to apply those same considerations to the union monopolies. The first start is stopping the addendum to Obama's Elect Democrats in 2010 "stimulus bill which is the Employee No Choice Act. It must be stopped if there is to be any small chance of an economic comeback in the United States and the world.
What do unions really do?
Well first, The National Right to Work Committee recently reported "that union violence is responsible for at least 203 Americans deaths since 1975; 5,869 incidents of personal injury; and more than 6,435 incidents of vandalism and tens of millions of dollars in property damage."
Artificially jack up wages of a tiny minority of workers at the expense of more jobs. Artificially jack up prices, which amount to an additional tax on consumers, the proceeds of which line union leaders pockets and elect Far-left Democrats. Union leaders tell businesses how to manage their employees. The same employees who freely accept jobs created by these businesses. Why hobble business now? Well, union bosses using their members' dues elect Far-left Democrats.
"A study recently released by Dr. Anne Layne-Farrar, an economist with the non-partisan LECG Consulting Group, concluded that the unionization of 1.5 million existing jobs in just the first year after enactment of Card Check (as predicted by union leaders) would lead to an initial loss of 600,000 American jobs."
Recently union leaders in cahoots with Congress have triggered a possibly-devastating trade war with our third-largest trading partner and next-door neighbor, Mexico. Mexico has slapped tariffs on 89 products American companies ship there. From an added 10% to a killing 45% on a variety of products, including table grapes, wine, almonds, Christmas trees (liberals hate these anyway), pears from my Washington State, scrap batteries, some personal hygiene products and precious metal jewelry among other things. Why? To protect a perceived handful of Teamster jobs from Mexicans driving their trucks over the border as the North American Trade Agreement allows. Just to remind: it was trade barriers that helped start and continued The Great Depression. Check out this: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123742090606978583.html
Obviously union leaders are playing the strings of Obama the puppet and, of course, Democrats in Congress. Is Obama simply another Uncle Tom: "yessa, yessa, mastah! Please elect me!" When Obama talks of a strong economy and job saving and job creating, he is lying to America. Lying! And those same leaders to whom our president is so beholden have killed U. S. industries, steel, airlines, auto manufacturing and auto parts manufacturing, not to mention government entities such as Amtrak, the U. S. Postal Service. And unions have destroyed generations of African American kids who can't get decent educations, among other "students".
Cahoots?: From "The Audacity of Hope," "I owe those unions... When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don't mind feeling obligated."
Check out this link for a comment by a former U. S. Secretary of Labor: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123742166937078741.html
Another article in The Wall Street Journal (Monday, March 16, 2009, page A18 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123723839801146937.html ) describes what labor bosses have done to Germany, Italy and France; Margaret Thatcher turned them back in England, but those other three countries are competitively on the bottom rung and financially crippled by welfare to those who are not productive.
Now is the time Republicans need to stand up and fight for America: Break the job- and business-killing union monopolies. If business monopolies were broken a century ago, because of misuse of power, now is the time to apply those same considerations to the union monopolies. The first start is stopping the addendum to Obama's Elect Democrats in 2010 "stimulus bill which is the Employee No Choice Act. It must be stopped if there is to be any small chance of an economic comeback in the United States and the world.
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