The more I learn about the cadre of czar loons that surround the President, the more I am beginning to believe that Obama has an agenda to radically transform America into his warped and twisted view of reality.
You won’t find this czar on the front pages of any newspaper, but you really should. His name is Kevin Jennings. Fifty-three House Republicans on Thursday, Oct. 15th, urged the President to fire his "safe schools czar," citing their concerns that Kevin Jennings wants to promote a "homosexual agenda" and that as a schoolteacher years ago he did not report that a young student told him he was romantically involved with an older man.
Jennings, the founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has described in writings and speeches how a high school student confided to him in 1988 that he was having a relationship with an older man.
I won’t get into the details of all of this because it just would add accelerant to the smoke and fire surrounding a number of Obama’s closest advisors. However, after the controversy surfaced, Jennings -- the director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools -- admitted late last month that he "should have handled [the] situation differently" when the boy confided in him.
House Republicans, operating under the assumption that the student was 15 years old when Jennings spoke with him, accused the safety czar of "ignoring the sexual abuse of a child."
They added that Jennings has "played an integral role in promoting homosexuality and pushing a pro-homosexual agenda in America’s schools," and they criticized Jennings for "his own history of unrepentant drug and alcohol abuse."
To which Jennings replies that his past drug use makes him qualified to help students and teachers confronting those issues.
Yup, that’s like asking Bernie Madoff to head up Bank of America.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
It’s Bush’s Fault
I kid you not. Senator Roland Burris said: “You know who is to blame for us losing the Olympics? Bush.” Senator Rowland Burris of Illinois, the Senator who was appointed to fill President Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat, blamed George Bush for Chicago not getting the Olympics in 2016. Burris stated in an interview, shortly after the announcement, that the image of the U. S. has been so tarnished in the last 8 years that, even Barack Obama making an unprecedented pitch for the games could not overcome the hatred the world has for us as a result of George Bush.
Yup, there you have it. Even the awesome-charismatic-gifted speaker-messiah come to save us-chief apologizer for the U.S.-mess cleaner upper-rootin’ tootin’ Mr. President Obama himself couldn’t persuade the Euro Olympic Committee that Chicago was the place for the 2016 Olympics.
Gosh, he played the game well. Oh well, it’s not about winning or losing, but how you play the game.
Now let’s see…Bush was complicit in 9/11 according to loons like Van Jones, former Obama czar. Bush caused Katrina. Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq. Bush caused the recession. Bush stole his own election. Bush loved to listen in on phone conversations of U.S. citizens. I think if a Democrat accidentally ran over a puppy in their own driveway, they would blame Bush for not requiring a leash law, or for not funding the organizaton to control the pet population.
Let’s face it. For the rest of our natural lives, George W. Bush has been, is, and will be the cause of everything bad in America. Get used to it. History revisionists will tell the tale forever.
But, as we wait for things to improve under the “Change President,” we are entering an unprecedented 10 trillion dollar debt load, moving toward a nationalized-everything-that-moves country, and a list of ever-changing promises of “savings by spending” global mentality that finally has been rejected in the latest German elections.
Gee, I just can’t wait to get up every morning!
Yup, there you have it. Even the awesome-charismatic-gifted speaker-messiah come to save us-chief apologizer for the U.S.-mess cleaner upper-rootin’ tootin’ Mr. President Obama himself couldn’t persuade the Euro Olympic Committee that Chicago was the place for the 2016 Olympics.
Gosh, he played the game well. Oh well, it’s not about winning or losing, but how you play the game.
Now let’s see…Bush was complicit in 9/11 according to loons like Van Jones, former Obama czar. Bush caused Katrina. Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq. Bush caused the recession. Bush stole his own election. Bush loved to listen in on phone conversations of U.S. citizens. I think if a Democrat accidentally ran over a puppy in their own driveway, they would blame Bush for not requiring a leash law, or for not funding the organizaton to control the pet population.
Let’s face it. For the rest of our natural lives, George W. Bush has been, is, and will be the cause of everything bad in America. Get used to it. History revisionists will tell the tale forever.
But, as we wait for things to improve under the “Change President,” we are entering an unprecedented 10 trillion dollar debt load, moving toward a nationalized-everything-that-moves country, and a list of ever-changing promises of “savings by spending” global mentality that finally has been rejected in the latest German elections.
Gee, I just can’t wait to get up every morning!
Friday, September 25, 2009
World Peace Visionary or the U.S.’s Naysayer?
This week, as the Senate debated some 600 amendments to the proposed healthcare reform, the President was front and center on the world stage.
On Wednesday (Sept. 23rd), the President laid out his four goals for the world in his address to the UN General Assembly: “Today, let me put forward four pillars that I believe are fundamental to the future that we want for our children: non-proliferation and disarmament; the promotion of peace and security; the preservation of our planet; and a global economy that advances opportunity for all people.”
Sounds like a true visionary, and if that will become the legacy of the President, wonderful. However, he was addressing the UN, seeking its cooperation. In an ideal world, with leaders whose only motivation would be peace and the advancement of opportunity for all, the President’s four goals would be worthy of universal agreement.
However, as Steve Hayes, senior writer for "The Weekly Standard" pointed out… “ The United Nations is a broken institution. You have Muammar Qaddafi, a rogue dictator, a crazy man, speaking -- supposed to speak for 15 minutes, ends up speaking for some 90 minutes…The United Nations was never able to enforce its resolutions on Iraq. It is not able to enforce its resolutions on Iran. It is not even able to keep Muammar Qaddafi from talking for more than 15 minutes.”
Hayes’ evaluation notwithstanding, Qaddafi did highlight the ineffectiveness of the UN. At one point, Qaddafi grabbed hold of the UN charter and threw it over his shoulder in obvious disdain, and chastised the international body for failing to intervene or prevent some 65 wars since the U.N. was founded in 1945.
However, back to the President’s address…as he welcomed the repeated applause of the world community, he had this to say:
“No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.”
I guess he was talking about NATO in his reference to “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.” I have no idea what the “divisions of nations of the South and the North” means, other than the U.S. and Latin America…or maybe between North Korea and South Korea. The President often uses these Ciceronian metric cadences with words that one glosses over without understanding what he means…if he even knows what he means.
It is no wonder that former Speaker, Newt Gingrich, the only Ph.D. historian ever to serve in the House, turns to Charles Krauthammer for his insights into the political news of the day.
Krauthammer had this to say about that portion of the President’s speech:
“You had a president of the United States actually saying no nation can or should try to dominate another.
“I will buy the ‘should try to’ as kind of adolescent wishful thinking, but no nation can dominate another? What planet is he living on? It is the story of man. What does he think Russia is doing to Georgia?
“But the alarming part is what he said in the same paragraph where he said that it is -- makes no sense anymore-- quote, ‘The alignments of nations that are rooted in the cleavages of the cold war.’
“Well, NATO is rooted in the cleavage of the cold war. The European Union is rooted in the cleavage of the cold war. Our alliances with Japan and Korea and the Philippines, our guarantees to Taiwan and Eastern Europe are all rooted in the cleavage of the cold war.
“Interesting noun, incidentally. So he is saying that is all now irrelevant. What does he think our allies are going to think who hear this?
“Obama's speech is alarming because it says the United States has no more moral right to act or to influence world history than Bangladesh or Sierra Leone.
“It diminishes the United States deliberately and wants to say that we should be one nation among others, and not defend the alliance of democracies that we have in NATO, for example, or to say as every president has said before Obama that we stand for something good and unique in the world.
“And it is not the equivalent, for example, of the alignment of Chavez with Ecuador and Bolivia and Nicaragua and Russia and Cuba and Iran.”
Rhetoric will never achieve the four lofty goals of the President. Nor will abrogating our country’s destiny to lead the world of friendly nations in its never-ending confrontation with those countries and movements which wish us harm.
Obama will have friends in the world community, but his kind of friends may ultimately turn into what they already are…our worst enemies.
On Wednesday (Sept. 23rd), the President laid out his four goals for the world in his address to the UN General Assembly: “Today, let me put forward four pillars that I believe are fundamental to the future that we want for our children: non-proliferation and disarmament; the promotion of peace and security; the preservation of our planet; and a global economy that advances opportunity for all people.”
Sounds like a true visionary, and if that will become the legacy of the President, wonderful. However, he was addressing the UN, seeking its cooperation. In an ideal world, with leaders whose only motivation would be peace and the advancement of opportunity for all, the President’s four goals would be worthy of universal agreement.
However, as Steve Hayes, senior writer for "The Weekly Standard" pointed out… “ The United Nations is a broken institution. You have Muammar Qaddafi, a rogue dictator, a crazy man, speaking -- supposed to speak for 15 minutes, ends up speaking for some 90 minutes…The United Nations was never able to enforce its resolutions on Iraq. It is not able to enforce its resolutions on Iran. It is not even able to keep Muammar Qaddafi from talking for more than 15 minutes.”
Hayes’ evaluation notwithstanding, Qaddafi did highlight the ineffectiveness of the UN. At one point, Qaddafi grabbed hold of the UN charter and threw it over his shoulder in obvious disdain, and chastised the international body for failing to intervene or prevent some 65 wars since the U.N. was founded in 1945.
However, back to the President’s address…as he welcomed the repeated applause of the world community, he had this to say:
“No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold. The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.”
I guess he was talking about NATO in his reference to “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.” I have no idea what the “divisions of nations of the South and the North” means, other than the U.S. and Latin America…or maybe between North Korea and South Korea. The President often uses these Ciceronian metric cadences with words that one glosses over without understanding what he means…if he even knows what he means.
It is no wonder that former Speaker, Newt Gingrich, the only Ph.D. historian ever to serve in the House, turns to Charles Krauthammer for his insights into the political news of the day.
Krauthammer had this to say about that portion of the President’s speech:
“You had a president of the United States actually saying no nation can or should try to dominate another.
“I will buy the ‘should try to’ as kind of adolescent wishful thinking, but no nation can dominate another? What planet is he living on? It is the story of man. What does he think Russia is doing to Georgia?
“But the alarming part is what he said in the same paragraph where he said that it is -- makes no sense anymore-- quote, ‘The alignments of nations that are rooted in the cleavages of the cold war.’
“Well, NATO is rooted in the cleavage of the cold war. The European Union is rooted in the cleavage of the cold war. Our alliances with Japan and Korea and the Philippines, our guarantees to Taiwan and Eastern Europe are all rooted in the cleavage of the cold war.
“Interesting noun, incidentally. So he is saying that is all now irrelevant. What does he think our allies are going to think who hear this?
“Obama's speech is alarming because it says the United States has no more moral right to act or to influence world history than Bangladesh or Sierra Leone.
“It diminishes the United States deliberately and wants to say that we should be one nation among others, and not defend the alliance of democracies that we have in NATO, for example, or to say as every president has said before Obama that we stand for something good and unique in the world.
“And it is not the equivalent, for example, of the alignment of Chavez with Ecuador and Bolivia and Nicaragua and Russia and Cuba and Iran.”
Rhetoric will never achieve the four lofty goals of the President. Nor will abrogating our country’s destiny to lead the world of friendly nations in its never-ending confrontation with those countries and movements which wish us harm.
Obama will have friends in the world community, but his kind of friends may ultimately turn into what they already are…our worst enemies.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Healthcare and the President’s 30th speech on the subject
As many Americans did, I watched the President deliver his touted speech to members of Congress and the country Sept. 9th. It was an eloquent and masterful composition of ideas on improving the healthcare system. No one has ever doubted both the need for healthcare reform and the eloquence of the 44th leader of our country.
Cleverly drawing from ideas of Sen. McCain, and implying his outreach for compromise with Republicans in Congress, and promising competition in the private health insurance field, was there anything new in his 30th speech on the subject?
Sadly, no.
Just an unusual outburst after Obama stated: "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."
"You lie!" Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted from his seat on the Republican side of the chamber. Apology offered and accepted. Racial implications? Crazy. Apologize to the House? Crazier.
If you’ve ever watched the non-stop outbursts from MPs when the House of Commons meets with the Prime Minister in Britain, our presidential addresses to both houses of Congress seem like sermons in places of worship…no dialogue allowed.
However, was the President totally truthful in his speech?
Obama was correct when he said his plan wouldn’t insure illegal immigrants; the House bill expressly forbids giving subsidies to those who are in the country illegally. Conservative critics complain that the bill lacks an enforcement mechanism, but that hardly makes the president a liar.
The president said “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” But the House bill would permit a “public option” to cover all abortions, and would also permit federal subsidies to be used to purchase private insurance that covers all abortions, a point that raises objections from anti-abortion groups. That’s true despite a technical ban on use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortion coverage.
The president repeated his promise that his plan won’t add “one dime” to the federal deficit. But legislation offered so far would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Economist Martin Feldstein takes a hard look at "the exploding path of fiscal deficits," which would be made far worse by Obamacare. So much for a reform that pays for itself. He writes:
“For starters, $1 trillion of extra debt-financed spending would cause the government to pay about $300 billion of extra interest in the next decade. Moreover, the CBO's method of estimating the cost of such a program doesn't recognize the incentives it creates for households and firms to change their behavior.
“The House health-care bill gives a large subsidy to millions of families with incomes up to three times the poverty level (i.e., up to $66,000 now for a family of four) if they buy their insurance through one of the newly created "insurance exchanges," but not if they get their insurance from their employer. The CBO's cost estimate understates the number who would receive the subsidy because it ignores the incentive for many firms to drop employer-provided coverage. It also ignores the strong incentive that individuals would have to reduce reportable cash incomes to qualify for higher subsidy rates. The total cost of ObamaCare over the next decade likely would be closer to $2 trillion than to $1 trillion.”
The president overstated the degree of concentration in the insurance industry. He said that in 34 states the "insurance market" is controlled by five or fewer companies, but that’s true only of insurance bought by small groups, not the entire "insurance market."
Obama said his plan won’t “require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.” It’s true that there’s no requirement, but experts say the legislation could induce employers to switch coverage for millions of workers.
But on to any new ideas in his speech….
Tort reform? No. Nothing new there.
The ability to purchase health insurance plans across state lines? No. While promising competition to drive down premiums in the private health insurance industry, he carefully avoided what could truly drive down the cost of private health insurance by not mentioning THAT change.
As a conservative I am not too far away from the president in three areas: No pre-existing conditions, affordable catastrophic health care with a kick-in of a form of Medicaid subsidies to private insurance companies derived from filing tax returns, and mandated catastrophic coverage for young adults. $50 a month is around the going rate in Michigan. Young adults spend that on a couple of movies. One of the areas where I differ from many conservatives lies not only in mandated health coverage in two areas: First, if someone should not want to purchase their own health insurance (as in requiring the purchase cost for a driver’s license to drive,) they should be taxed 2X, or more, the cost of catastrophic health insurance premiums to help cover costs incurred should they need medical care. Second, if the 12 million illegals file income tax returns, they should qualify to purchase private health insurance. However, no illegal, unless given a waiver, would ever do that for fear of deportation. In the meantime, the Supreme Court has ruled that, in true emergencies, healthcare cannot be denied illegals, costing the U.S. taxpayer billions each year.
If the President wants healthcare reform, it has to be done incrementally to correct the present system with true bipartisan dialogue. To throw HR3200 to the American public as the preferential outline for reform, which still is the President’s preferred plan as far as I could tell from his speech, is to offer a plan that certainly all conservatives reject, as well as an increasing number of senior citizens and small businesses.
Cleverly drawing from ideas of Sen. McCain, and implying his outreach for compromise with Republicans in Congress, and promising competition in the private health insurance field, was there anything new in his 30th speech on the subject?
Sadly, no.
Just an unusual outburst after Obama stated: "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."
"You lie!" Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted from his seat on the Republican side of the chamber. Apology offered and accepted. Racial implications? Crazy. Apologize to the House? Crazier.
If you’ve ever watched the non-stop outbursts from MPs when the House of Commons meets with the Prime Minister in Britain, our presidential addresses to both houses of Congress seem like sermons in places of worship…no dialogue allowed.
However, was the President totally truthful in his speech?
Obama was correct when he said his plan wouldn’t insure illegal immigrants; the House bill expressly forbids giving subsidies to those who are in the country illegally. Conservative critics complain that the bill lacks an enforcement mechanism, but that hardly makes the president a liar.
The president said “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” But the House bill would permit a “public option” to cover all abortions, and would also permit federal subsidies to be used to purchase private insurance that covers all abortions, a point that raises objections from anti-abortion groups. That’s true despite a technical ban on use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortion coverage.
The president repeated his promise that his plan won’t add “one dime” to the federal deficit. But legislation offered so far would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Economist Martin Feldstein takes a hard look at "the exploding path of fiscal deficits," which would be made far worse by Obamacare. So much for a reform that pays for itself. He writes:
“For starters, $1 trillion of extra debt-financed spending would cause the government to pay about $300 billion of extra interest in the next decade. Moreover, the CBO's method of estimating the cost of such a program doesn't recognize the incentives it creates for households and firms to change their behavior.
“The House health-care bill gives a large subsidy to millions of families with incomes up to three times the poverty level (i.e., up to $66,000 now for a family of four) if they buy their insurance through one of the newly created "insurance exchanges," but not if they get their insurance from their employer. The CBO's cost estimate understates the number who would receive the subsidy because it ignores the incentive for many firms to drop employer-provided coverage. It also ignores the strong incentive that individuals would have to reduce reportable cash incomes to qualify for higher subsidy rates. The total cost of ObamaCare over the next decade likely would be closer to $2 trillion than to $1 trillion.”
The president overstated the degree of concentration in the insurance industry. He said that in 34 states the "insurance market" is controlled by five or fewer companies, but that’s true only of insurance bought by small groups, not the entire "insurance market."
Obama said his plan won’t “require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.” It’s true that there’s no requirement, but experts say the legislation could induce employers to switch coverage for millions of workers.
But on to any new ideas in his speech….
Tort reform? No. Nothing new there.
The ability to purchase health insurance plans across state lines? No. While promising competition to drive down premiums in the private health insurance industry, he carefully avoided what could truly drive down the cost of private health insurance by not mentioning THAT change.
As a conservative I am not too far away from the president in three areas: No pre-existing conditions, affordable catastrophic health care with a kick-in of a form of Medicaid subsidies to private insurance companies derived from filing tax returns, and mandated catastrophic coverage for young adults. $50 a month is around the going rate in Michigan. Young adults spend that on a couple of movies. One of the areas where I differ from many conservatives lies not only in mandated health coverage in two areas: First, if someone should not want to purchase their own health insurance (as in requiring the purchase cost for a driver’s license to drive,) they should be taxed 2X, or more, the cost of catastrophic health insurance premiums to help cover costs incurred should they need medical care. Second, if the 12 million illegals file income tax returns, they should qualify to purchase private health insurance. However, no illegal, unless given a waiver, would ever do that for fear of deportation. In the meantime, the Supreme Court has ruled that, in true emergencies, healthcare cannot be denied illegals, costing the U.S. taxpayer billions each year.
If the President wants healthcare reform, it has to be done incrementally to correct the present system with true bipartisan dialogue. To throw HR3200 to the American public as the preferential outline for reform, which still is the President’s preferred plan as far as I could tell from his speech, is to offer a plan that certainly all conservatives reject, as well as an increasing number of senior citizens and small businesses.
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Fairness Doctrine
“In Venezuela, with Chavez, you really had an incredible revolution — democratic revolution — to begin to put in place things that were going to have impact on the people of Venezuela. The property owners and the folks who were then controlling the media in Venezuela rebelled — worked, frankly, with folks here in the US government — worked to oust him. He came back and had another revolution, and Chavez then started to take the media very seriously in his country.”
Words of a Chavez supporter? Commentary by pro-Chavez talk radio host in Venezuela? Not really.
They are comments by Obama’s new “Diversity Czar,” Mark Lloyd. Mark Lloyd, newly appointed Chief Diversity Officer of the Federal Communications Commission, has called for making private broadcasting companies pay licensing fees equal to their total operating costs to allow public broadcasting outlets to spend the same on their operations as the private companies do.
Huh? Licensing fees equal to their total operating costs? That’s a 100% charge to fund public broadcasting. Who the heck pays 100% of operating costs to the government to fund a competitive corporation in our society? WIAA in Interlochen would benefit, not for broadcasting classical music, but for providing more of public broadcasting. So would CMU’s public broadcasting station in Mt. Pleasant. That is if they were dumb enough to see what’s really going on here: Silence conservative talk radio.
Lloyd presented the idea in his 2006 book, “Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America,” published by the University of Illinois Press.
Lloyd’s hope is to dramatically upgrade and revamp the Corporation for Public Broadcasting through new funding drawn from private broadcasters.
The CPB is a non-profit entity that was created by Congress and that currently receives hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies each year. In fiscal 2009, it is receiving an appropriation of $400 million.
“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) must be reformed along democratic lines and funded on a substantial level,” Lloyd wrote in his book.
“Federal and regional broadcast operations and local stations should be funded at levels commensurate with or above those spending levels at which commercial operations are funded,” Lloyd wrote. “This funding should come from license fees charged to commercial broadcasters. Funding should not come from congressional appropriations. Sponsorship should be prohibited at all public broadcasters.”
Along with this money, Lloyd would regulate much of the programming on these stations to make sure they focused on “diverse views” and government activities.
“Local public broadcasters and regional and national communications operations should be required to encourage and broadcast diverse views and programs,” wrote Lloyd. “These programs should include coverage of all local, state and federal government meetings, as well as daily news and public issues programming.
“In addition, educational programs for children and adults, and diverse, independent personal and cultural expression should be encouraged,” he wrote.
Hey, I’m all for fairness in politics, news reporting, and the like. This garbage is coming from the guy who now has power to make his version of “diversity” stick.
A famous leader, whose name begins with “S” and who lived in Russia, once said ““Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.”
If you, as a liberal who believes in the radical agenda our president is laying out for this country, wanted to promote that agenda…the death of conservative talk radio would be one more step in state-run domination of the news…all in the name of “fairness and diversity.” How hypocritical and how dangerous, as the advisors to Obama seek to control one more media outlet.
Words of a Chavez supporter? Commentary by pro-Chavez talk radio host in Venezuela? Not really.
They are comments by Obama’s new “Diversity Czar,” Mark Lloyd. Mark Lloyd, newly appointed Chief Diversity Officer of the Federal Communications Commission, has called for making private broadcasting companies pay licensing fees equal to their total operating costs to allow public broadcasting outlets to spend the same on their operations as the private companies do.
Huh? Licensing fees equal to their total operating costs? That’s a 100% charge to fund public broadcasting. Who the heck pays 100% of operating costs to the government to fund a competitive corporation in our society? WIAA in Interlochen would benefit, not for broadcasting classical music, but for providing more of public broadcasting. So would CMU’s public broadcasting station in Mt. Pleasant. That is if they were dumb enough to see what’s really going on here: Silence conservative talk radio.
Lloyd presented the idea in his 2006 book, “Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America,” published by the University of Illinois Press.
Lloyd’s hope is to dramatically upgrade and revamp the Corporation for Public Broadcasting through new funding drawn from private broadcasters.
The CPB is a non-profit entity that was created by Congress and that currently receives hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies each year. In fiscal 2009, it is receiving an appropriation of $400 million.
“The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) must be reformed along democratic lines and funded on a substantial level,” Lloyd wrote in his book.
“Federal and regional broadcast operations and local stations should be funded at levels commensurate with or above those spending levels at which commercial operations are funded,” Lloyd wrote. “This funding should come from license fees charged to commercial broadcasters. Funding should not come from congressional appropriations. Sponsorship should be prohibited at all public broadcasters.”
Along with this money, Lloyd would regulate much of the programming on these stations to make sure they focused on “diverse views” and government activities.
“Local public broadcasters and regional and national communications operations should be required to encourage and broadcast diverse views and programs,” wrote Lloyd. “These programs should include coverage of all local, state and federal government meetings, as well as daily news and public issues programming.
“In addition, educational programs for children and adults, and diverse, independent personal and cultural expression should be encouraged,” he wrote.
Hey, I’m all for fairness in politics, news reporting, and the like. This garbage is coming from the guy who now has power to make his version of “diversity” stick.
A famous leader, whose name begins with “S” and who lived in Russia, once said ““Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.”
If you, as a liberal who believes in the radical agenda our president is laying out for this country, wanted to promote that agenda…the death of conservative talk radio would be one more step in state-run domination of the news…all in the name of “fairness and diversity.” How hypocritical and how dangerous, as the advisors to Obama seek to control one more media outlet.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Are We Headed Toward a Form of Eugenics?
The term eugenics comes from the Greek roots for "good" and "generation" or "origin" and was first used to refer to the "science" of heredity and good breeding in about 1883. Within 20 years, the word was widely used by scientists who had rediscovered the work of Gregor Mendel. Mendel had meticulously recorded the results of cross-breeding pea plants, and found a very regular statistical pattern for features like height and color.
Local eugenics societies and groups sprang up around the United States after World War I, with names like the Race Betterment Foundation. The war had given many Americans a greater fear of foreigners, and immigration to the United States was still increasing. In 1923, organizers founded the American Eugenics Society, and it quickly grew to 29 chapters around the country. At fairs and exhibitions, eugenicists spread the word and hosted "fitter family" and "better baby" competitions to award blue ribbons to the finest human stock -- not unlike the awards for prize bull and biggest pumpkin.
Eugenics was seen as such a great idea that the government got into the act. In 1924, the Immigration Act was passed by majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. It set up strict quotas limiting immigrants from countries believed by eugenicists to have "inferior" stock, particularly Southern Europe and Asia. President Coolidge, who signed the bill into law, had stated when he was vice president, "America should be kept American. . . . Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."
Well, folks, it looks like we are back at this idiocy again. Enter our “regulatory czar” Cass R. Sunstein. Mr. Sunstein, who for years was a colleague of Mr. Obama at the University of Chicago, co-authored a book with Richard Thaler, also of the University of Chicago, entitled “Nudge” in 2008.
In their book and in a blog (nudges.wordpress.com), Mr. Thaler and Mr. Sunstein favor nudging people to save more, eat better, weigh less, invest more sensibly, pay down debt, avoid hazardous mortgages, drive safely and wear bike helmets — a list that expands as new ideas and new problems conducive to nudging emerge.
Brilliant! Common sense…no? Orwellian? Lots of opinions about Sunstein, who now has real power to “nudge” people into “better” choices in their daily lives.
Let’s suppose that we have a single-payer health care system in the U.S. The question of prioritizing costs comes before Mr. Sunstein. As “regulatory czar” he has influence with the President.
Now, if we look at Obama’s remark the other day about “grandma” taking a pill rather than getting a pacemaker, we can see where Sunstein’s influence might suggest that the elderly are a fiscal drain on the new health care system. And are we going to have a plethora of “baby boomers” that will fall into that category!
So, let’s see where this scenario leads us…Twenty-year olds are less likely to need pacemakers, expensive medication, etc. However, at about age 55, according Sunstein’s own research, costs for health care begin to increase.
Now comes the eugenics part. If we had less elderly folks, the government could cover all the health care needs of the active, pre-60s workers. So, maybe this fact would necessitate extending Medicare benefits to those who turn 70, instead of 65…how about the broken Social Security system? Let’s not give benefits until a person turns 68 or 70. In a worst case scenario, let’s just authorize money for pain pills for the 85 year-old who needs a knee or hip replacement.
Oh, and by the way, let’s limit the number of children born so the government doesn’t have such a big health care bill.
Obama has appointed John P. Holdren as his science czar. This crazed maniac penned a book with Paul and Anne Ehrlich in 1977 titled Ecoscience. In this book he mentions compulsory population-control laws, laws including compulsory abortion, and that these could be sustained under the existing constitution.
He also goes on about taking children from single mothers and placing them with married couples, adding a chemical that would sterilize humans to drinking water or to staple foods.
Below are some quotes by these goofballs from their book:
From page 786:
“One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.”
From pages 786-7:
“A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men. The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”
From pages 787-8:
“Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.”
From page 837:
“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”
From page 838:
“If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.”
Maybe as a 68 year-old male who has fathered nine children, I would have been required to exercise reproductive responsibility under a new health care system…gee, wouldn’t that have been nice…no sleepless nights, diaper changes, etc. Nah, my wife did all those things…
What kind of “nudge” will it take to get this President and his buddies out of the business of governance? Maybe voting him out of a second term would be a good start.
Local eugenics societies and groups sprang up around the United States after World War I, with names like the Race Betterment Foundation. The war had given many Americans a greater fear of foreigners, and immigration to the United States was still increasing. In 1923, organizers founded the American Eugenics Society, and it quickly grew to 29 chapters around the country. At fairs and exhibitions, eugenicists spread the word and hosted "fitter family" and "better baby" competitions to award blue ribbons to the finest human stock -- not unlike the awards for prize bull and biggest pumpkin.
Eugenics was seen as such a great idea that the government got into the act. In 1924, the Immigration Act was passed by majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. It set up strict quotas limiting immigrants from countries believed by eugenicists to have "inferior" stock, particularly Southern Europe and Asia. President Coolidge, who signed the bill into law, had stated when he was vice president, "America should be kept American. . . . Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."
Well, folks, it looks like we are back at this idiocy again. Enter our “regulatory czar” Cass R. Sunstein. Mr. Sunstein, who for years was a colleague of Mr. Obama at the University of Chicago, co-authored a book with Richard Thaler, also of the University of Chicago, entitled “Nudge” in 2008.
In their book and in a blog (nudges.wordpress.com), Mr. Thaler and Mr. Sunstein favor nudging people to save more, eat better, weigh less, invest more sensibly, pay down debt, avoid hazardous mortgages, drive safely and wear bike helmets — a list that expands as new ideas and new problems conducive to nudging emerge.
Brilliant! Common sense…no? Orwellian? Lots of opinions about Sunstein, who now has real power to “nudge” people into “better” choices in their daily lives.
Let’s suppose that we have a single-payer health care system in the U.S. The question of prioritizing costs comes before Mr. Sunstein. As “regulatory czar” he has influence with the President.
Now, if we look at Obama’s remark the other day about “grandma” taking a pill rather than getting a pacemaker, we can see where Sunstein’s influence might suggest that the elderly are a fiscal drain on the new health care system. And are we going to have a plethora of “baby boomers” that will fall into that category!
So, let’s see where this scenario leads us…Twenty-year olds are less likely to need pacemakers, expensive medication, etc. However, at about age 55, according Sunstein’s own research, costs for health care begin to increase.
Now comes the eugenics part. If we had less elderly folks, the government could cover all the health care needs of the active, pre-60s workers. So, maybe this fact would necessitate extending Medicare benefits to those who turn 70, instead of 65…how about the broken Social Security system? Let’s not give benefits until a person turns 68 or 70. In a worst case scenario, let’s just authorize money for pain pills for the 85 year-old who needs a knee or hip replacement.
Oh, and by the way, let’s limit the number of children born so the government doesn’t have such a big health care bill.
Obama has appointed John P. Holdren as his science czar. This crazed maniac penned a book with Paul and Anne Ehrlich in 1977 titled Ecoscience. In this book he mentions compulsory population-control laws, laws including compulsory abortion, and that these could be sustained under the existing constitution.
He also goes on about taking children from single mothers and placing them with married couples, adding a chemical that would sterilize humans to drinking water or to staple foods.
Below are some quotes by these goofballs from their book:
From page 786:
“One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.”
From pages 786-7:
“A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men. The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”
From pages 787-8:
“Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.”
From page 837:
“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”
From page 838:
“If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.”
Maybe as a 68 year-old male who has fathered nine children, I would have been required to exercise reproductive responsibility under a new health care system…gee, wouldn’t that have been nice…no sleepless nights, diaper changes, etc. Nah, my wife did all those things…
What kind of “nudge” will it take to get this President and his buddies out of the business of governance? Maybe voting him out of a second term would be a good start.
Friday, July 31, 2009
The International Tragedy of Abortion
There has been a steady focus for years on whether a political party or politician supports abortion here in the U.S. The Democratic party’s platform is pro-abortion and the Republican party’s is pro-life. However, as I cited in a previous post, the country is moving more toward a pro-life position, with over half the population expressing disagreement with the practice.
However, the abortion scenario abroad is mind-boggling. The BBC reports that in China there are 13 million abortions each year, compared to 20 million births. In many cases women are restricted to just one child, although in rural areas some couples can have two children if the first is a girl. This policy, begun in the 1970s, has forced young women to seek abortions. In its front-page story, the China Daily said the high number of abortions was "cause for concern", adding that many women who have abortions are single and aged between 20 and 29. Women are complaining that they are pressured into terminating their pregnancies.
As horrendous as China’s disposal of human life in the womb is, Russia’s abortion rate is worse. There are often more abortions annually in Russia than live births. The latest figures from the UN and the CD for one recent year show that 1.8 million abortions were performed compared to 1.5 million births.
Natural family planning, where necessary, is common sense. The massive international slaughter of innocent children in the womb is self-destructive behavior at its unthinkable worse. I wonder how much of this international tragedy can be laid at the feet of the Supreme Court justices who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade because, even today, America leads the world in setting social mores.
What pro-abortion advocates in government do here and now in the U.S. contributes in ways unseen, in my opinion, toward an increasing international disregard for human life in its earliest stages.
However, the abortion scenario abroad is mind-boggling. The BBC reports that in China there are 13 million abortions each year, compared to 20 million births. In many cases women are restricted to just one child, although in rural areas some couples can have two children if the first is a girl. This policy, begun in the 1970s, has forced young women to seek abortions. In its front-page story, the China Daily said the high number of abortions was "cause for concern", adding that many women who have abortions are single and aged between 20 and 29. Women are complaining that they are pressured into terminating their pregnancies.
As horrendous as China’s disposal of human life in the womb is, Russia’s abortion rate is worse. There are often more abortions annually in Russia than live births. The latest figures from the UN and the CD for one recent year show that 1.8 million abortions were performed compared to 1.5 million births.
Natural family planning, where necessary, is common sense. The massive international slaughter of innocent children in the womb is self-destructive behavior at its unthinkable worse. I wonder how much of this international tragedy can be laid at the feet of the Supreme Court justices who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade because, even today, America leads the world in setting social mores.
What pro-abortion advocates in government do here and now in the U.S. contributes in ways unseen, in my opinion, toward an increasing international disregard for human life in its earliest stages.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The Credit Card President
The other day I got to thinking about the future of the country under the Obama administration. That we are headed for unsustainable debt for future generations I take for granted. The move is afoot for a socialization of medical care in this country. Not that the poorer among us should not have access to quality care…it is how that should be accomplished.
As my twin sons had to leave their parents’ health care program due to graduation from college, we investigated several options. What we came up with was a form of catastrophic health care called “Young Adult Blue.” The plan has an annual deductible of $1000, a co-pay of 30% of BCBSM-approved amount, two other co-pay stipulations, with a 70% coverage after co-pays for medical emergencies, tests, EKGS, etc., plus a $5,000,000 lifetime coverage for under $50 a month.
The plan isn’t for everyone, and prescription costs are not covered, nor are doctor visits, but it does provide a safety net for catastrophic events that could otherwise bankrupt a young adult for life.
However, Obama’s plan is insidious in that his promotion of it is full of promises which provide little more than his word as a guarantee. Over half of the population, recently polled, are against it.
Something will get to his desk for his signature, but even Democrats are finding this overhaul of the finest health care system in the world not the right fit in this economy. It has been estimated that the Obama proposal would increase federal spending by about $1.17 trillion over the 2010-19 period.
Following right behind this initiative of the president is his “green energy” plan. The bill, which Obama has said will reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and clean the air, calls for a reduction of carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020, and for 20 percent of the nation's energy to be renewable – such as wind and solar – by 2020. The bill, in its current form, could potentially cause rates to go up by 5 to 15 percent by 2016.
The U.S. House approved Obama's plan in a 219-212 vote. Its successful future in the Senate is a bit more dubious. We’ll have to wait until September for their vote.
Republicans in the House were overwhelmingly against the measure, arguing it would destroy jobs in the middle of a recession, while burdening customers with a new tax in the form of higher energy costs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis estimates the cost of the president's plan to homeowners would, on average, be approximately $175 to $180 a year after tax credits and rebates were taken into account.
If the plan is adopted it will be a “Johnny-come-lately” version of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 which my global issues classes debated. The problem today is that India, China, and Mexico have said they’re more interested in economic growth that in curbing carbon emissions.
So, while well-intentioned, the effect of the “cap and trade” policy in the U.S. on the globe may be a lot less than hoped and a lot more money out of U.S. households for electricity.
Who’s going to run this proposed program to curb emissions? “Green czar” Van Jones. Born in 1968 in rural West Tennessee, Van Jones earned a B.A. degree from the University of Tennessee at Martin and then attended Yale Law School. During his years at Yale, Jones served as an intern with the San Francisco-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR), which views the United States as an irredeemably racist nation and "champions the legal rights of people of color, poor people, immigrants and refugees, with a special commitment to African-Americans."
Jones says that he first became politically radicalized in the aftermath of the deadly April 1992 Los Angeles riots which erupted shortly after four L.A. police officers who had beaten the infamous Rodney King were exonerated in court. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th," says Jones, who is black, "and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."
Jones was arrested during the L.A. riots and spent a short time in jail. "I met all these young radical people of color," he recalls, "I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary."
I guess people can change political philosophy or at least modify it, as Jones apparently has, but, again, it’s the cost of the program that gives me pause.
Obama seems to see his role as destined to change American society into a socialist state. He has an unlimited appetite for using future generations’ wages with his own method of payment … the credit card called the U.S. Treasury.
Mr. President, you are the “Credit Card President” of a country that has run out of credit.
As my twin sons had to leave their parents’ health care program due to graduation from college, we investigated several options. What we came up with was a form of catastrophic health care called “Young Adult Blue.” The plan has an annual deductible of $1000, a co-pay of 30% of BCBSM-approved amount, two other co-pay stipulations, with a 70% coverage after co-pays for medical emergencies, tests, EKGS, etc., plus a $5,000,000 lifetime coverage for under $50 a month.
The plan isn’t for everyone, and prescription costs are not covered, nor are doctor visits, but it does provide a safety net for catastrophic events that could otherwise bankrupt a young adult for life.
However, Obama’s plan is insidious in that his promotion of it is full of promises which provide little more than his word as a guarantee. Over half of the population, recently polled, are against it.
Something will get to his desk for his signature, but even Democrats are finding this overhaul of the finest health care system in the world not the right fit in this economy. It has been estimated that the Obama proposal would increase federal spending by about $1.17 trillion over the 2010-19 period.
Following right behind this initiative of the president is his “green energy” plan. The bill, which Obama has said will reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and clean the air, calls for a reduction of carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020, and for 20 percent of the nation's energy to be renewable – such as wind and solar – by 2020. The bill, in its current form, could potentially cause rates to go up by 5 to 15 percent by 2016.
The U.S. House approved Obama's plan in a 219-212 vote. Its successful future in the Senate is a bit more dubious. We’ll have to wait until September for their vote.
Republicans in the House were overwhelmingly against the measure, arguing it would destroy jobs in the middle of a recession, while burdening customers with a new tax in the form of higher energy costs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis estimates the cost of the president's plan to homeowners would, on average, be approximately $175 to $180 a year after tax credits and rebates were taken into account.
If the plan is adopted it will be a “Johnny-come-lately” version of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 which my global issues classes debated. The problem today is that India, China, and Mexico have said they’re more interested in economic growth that in curbing carbon emissions.
So, while well-intentioned, the effect of the “cap and trade” policy in the U.S. on the globe may be a lot less than hoped and a lot more money out of U.S. households for electricity.
Who’s going to run this proposed program to curb emissions? “Green czar” Van Jones. Born in 1968 in rural West Tennessee, Van Jones earned a B.A. degree from the University of Tennessee at Martin and then attended Yale Law School. During his years at Yale, Jones served as an intern with the San Francisco-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR), which views the United States as an irredeemably racist nation and "champions the legal rights of people of color, poor people, immigrants and refugees, with a special commitment to African-Americans."
Jones says that he first became politically radicalized in the aftermath of the deadly April 1992 Los Angeles riots which erupted shortly after four L.A. police officers who had beaten the infamous Rodney King were exonerated in court. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th," says Jones, who is black, "and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."
Jones was arrested during the L.A. riots and spent a short time in jail. "I met all these young radical people of color," he recalls, "I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary."
I guess people can change political philosophy or at least modify it, as Jones apparently has, but, again, it’s the cost of the program that gives me pause.
Obama seems to see his role as destined to change American society into a socialist state. He has an unlimited appetite for using future generations’ wages with his own method of payment … the credit card called the U.S. Treasury.
Mr. President, you are the “Credit Card President” of a country that has run out of credit.
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Colosseum..Site of Bread and Circuses
On a recent trip to Rome, I visited the Colosseum. Emperor Vespasian began its construction around 70 AD, coincidentally the same year Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by the Romans. What remains of the Roman amphitheater was, in its heyday until the sixth century, capable of seating 50,000 spectators.
It provided entertainment in the form of gladiatorial contests, races, slaughter of Christians, animal hunts, mock naval battles, and a place for the public dole of bread. It was hoped that by appeasing the crowds with bread and circuses, they would not rebel against the emperors.
The images of what went on in this, the largest Roman edifice, can only be in the realm of conjecture today, but the movie “The Gladiator” brought the debauched history of Rome’s central attraction to life again.
Fast forward to 2009. We have many great stadiums in our country for the entertainment of the public with such benign contests as baseball, football, and soccer. And there are the special nights for free baseball hats and other promotional gimmicks. I once went to a Pistons game at the Palace where pizzas were thrown to the crowd. However, the chief entertainment for the evening was when the helium-filled balloons that were released caught fire in the skylights. Anyway…I digress.
There are plenty of opinions around on whether or not rich Americans pay too much, or too little, income tax. But CNN Money’s Jeanne Sahadi talked about the hard numbers April 15th of this year, and wrote:
“The U.S. tax code is progressive, meaning that higher-income tax filers pay more in taxes than those lower down the income scale.”
Morally, I have no problem with a progressive tax. The wealthy should pay more than the poor widow in the Gospel. Offsetting the burden on the wealthy is the fact that their accountants have the knowledge to take advantage of ever tax loop hole available, so the sting isn’t as bad as it seems.
But just how much more should the wealthy pay than those in the middle class?
The highest earners pay the lion’s share of the dollars Uncle Sam collects.
The top fifth of households made 56% of pre-tax income in 2006 but paid 86% of all individual income tax revenue collected, according to the most recent data available from the Congressional Budget Office.
Narrowing in further: The top 1% of households, which made 19% of pre-tax income, paid 39% of all individual income taxes.
The trend is similar if you count income taxes, social insurance taxes, excise taxes and corporate income taxes (such as capital gains) combined. The top fifth of households paid 69% of all federal taxes. The top 1% paid 28%.
Still think the rich should be paying more income tax? What if someone were to argue that low- and middle-income tax filers aren’t paying enough taxes?
From the CNN senior writer:
“A Tax Foundation survey found 56% of Americans think the amount of federal income tax they pay is too high.
“Those most likely to feel that way, according to the survey, include those making between $35,000 and $50,000.”
Once the various tax breaks to which they’re entitled are counted, the burdens of low- and middle-income tax filers as a group has been fairly low.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that for 2009, 43% of tax units (most of which are lower income households that may or may not file a return) will have no income tax liability or will have a negative income tax liability, meaning the government will actually pay them.
Brian Griffiths of the U.K. recently wrote a piece for the London Times on Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, a 44-page document titled "Caritas in Veritate" or "Charity in Truth." In the Catholic tradition, encyclicals are open letters written by the pope to the bishops of the church, addressing big issues ranging from dangers to the world at large or the souls of church members. Lord Griffiths of Forestfach is a trustee of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Trust and Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
According to Griffiths, the encyclical suggests six major ways to make global capitalism more human.
First, it calls for “the management of globalization” and a reform of international economic institutions. They are needed “to manage the global economy, to revive economies hit by the crisis, to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis . . . to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration”. Not surprisingly, for this huge task we need “a true world political authority” through reform of the United Nations.
Next, there needs to be greater diversity among the enterprises that create wealth: mutual societies, credit unions and hybrid forms of commercial organization.
Third, globalization has weakened the ability of trade unions to represent the interests of workers, something that needs to be reversed.
Fourth, the scandal of inequality requires countries to increase the proportion of GDP given as foreign aid.
Fifth, because the environment is the gift of the Creator we have an intergenerational responsibility to tackle climate change.
Finally, everyone involved in the market, traders, producers, bankers — even consumers — must be alert to the moral consequences of their actions. “Development is impossible without upright men and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely attuned to the common good.”
As a theologian, I agree in principle with the encyclical’s main proposals.
However, as a voting citizen of the greatest free market country, I have always had a theory about liberal political parties, here and abroad. A liberal politician, in order to get elected, promises to help those on the bottom of the economic ladder. Fair enough. So, if, as we approach the coming time when half the population will not pay any income tax, but actually gets a low-income subsidy, the trend toward keeping liberals in office may continue because the votes will be there.
On the other hand, conservatives oppose bailouts, higher welfare, and more government. Yet, if those who pay income tax falls below 50% and those who do not surpasses 50%, it doesn’t take a political genius or a theologian to figure out that we are headed for bread and circuses once again.
I don’t think Benedict had this in mind.
It provided entertainment in the form of gladiatorial contests, races, slaughter of Christians, animal hunts, mock naval battles, and a place for the public dole of bread. It was hoped that by appeasing the crowds with bread and circuses, they would not rebel against the emperors.
The images of what went on in this, the largest Roman edifice, can only be in the realm of conjecture today, but the movie “The Gladiator” brought the debauched history of Rome’s central attraction to life again.
Fast forward to 2009. We have many great stadiums in our country for the entertainment of the public with such benign contests as baseball, football, and soccer. And there are the special nights for free baseball hats and other promotional gimmicks. I once went to a Pistons game at the Palace where pizzas were thrown to the crowd. However, the chief entertainment for the evening was when the helium-filled balloons that were released caught fire in the skylights. Anyway…I digress.
There are plenty of opinions around on whether or not rich Americans pay too much, or too little, income tax. But CNN Money’s Jeanne Sahadi talked about the hard numbers April 15th of this year, and wrote:
“The U.S. tax code is progressive, meaning that higher-income tax filers pay more in taxes than those lower down the income scale.”
Morally, I have no problem with a progressive tax. The wealthy should pay more than the poor widow in the Gospel. Offsetting the burden on the wealthy is the fact that their accountants have the knowledge to take advantage of ever tax loop hole available, so the sting isn’t as bad as it seems.
But just how much more should the wealthy pay than those in the middle class?
The highest earners pay the lion’s share of the dollars Uncle Sam collects.
The top fifth of households made 56% of pre-tax income in 2006 but paid 86% of all individual income tax revenue collected, according to the most recent data available from the Congressional Budget Office.
Narrowing in further: The top 1% of households, which made 19% of pre-tax income, paid 39% of all individual income taxes.
The trend is similar if you count income taxes, social insurance taxes, excise taxes and corporate income taxes (such as capital gains) combined. The top fifth of households paid 69% of all federal taxes. The top 1% paid 28%.
Still think the rich should be paying more income tax? What if someone were to argue that low- and middle-income tax filers aren’t paying enough taxes?
From the CNN senior writer:
“A Tax Foundation survey found 56% of Americans think the amount of federal income tax they pay is too high.
“Those most likely to feel that way, according to the survey, include those making between $35,000 and $50,000.”
Once the various tax breaks to which they’re entitled are counted, the burdens of low- and middle-income tax filers as a group has been fairly low.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that for 2009, 43% of tax units (most of which are lower income households that may or may not file a return) will have no income tax liability or will have a negative income tax liability, meaning the government will actually pay them.
Brian Griffiths of the U.K. recently wrote a piece for the London Times on Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, a 44-page document titled "Caritas in Veritate" or "Charity in Truth." In the Catholic tradition, encyclicals are open letters written by the pope to the bishops of the church, addressing big issues ranging from dangers to the world at large or the souls of church members. Lord Griffiths of Forestfach is a trustee of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Trust and Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
According to Griffiths, the encyclical suggests six major ways to make global capitalism more human.
First, it calls for “the management of globalization” and a reform of international economic institutions. They are needed “to manage the global economy, to revive economies hit by the crisis, to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis . . . to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration”. Not surprisingly, for this huge task we need “a true world political authority” through reform of the United Nations.
Next, there needs to be greater diversity among the enterprises that create wealth: mutual societies, credit unions and hybrid forms of commercial organization.
Third, globalization has weakened the ability of trade unions to represent the interests of workers, something that needs to be reversed.
Fourth, the scandal of inequality requires countries to increase the proportion of GDP given as foreign aid.
Fifth, because the environment is the gift of the Creator we have an intergenerational responsibility to tackle climate change.
Finally, everyone involved in the market, traders, producers, bankers — even consumers — must be alert to the moral consequences of their actions. “Development is impossible without upright men and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely attuned to the common good.”
As a theologian, I agree in principle with the encyclical’s main proposals.
However, as a voting citizen of the greatest free market country, I have always had a theory about liberal political parties, here and abroad. A liberal politician, in order to get elected, promises to help those on the bottom of the economic ladder. Fair enough. So, if, as we approach the coming time when half the population will not pay any income tax, but actually gets a low-income subsidy, the trend toward keeping liberals in office may continue because the votes will be there.
On the other hand, conservatives oppose bailouts, higher welfare, and more government. Yet, if those who pay income tax falls below 50% and those who do not surpasses 50%, it doesn’t take a political genius or a theologian to figure out that we are headed for bread and circuses once again.
I don’t think Benedict had this in mind.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Nah, It Couldn’t Happen Again…
As an American History teacher for a few years, I became aware of significant historical moments that almost changed the governance of our country.
One such time was FDR’s Fireside Chat on Reorganization of the Judiciary, March 9, 1937. Like today the country had a very popular President. Like today the country was in a recession. Like today, the Democrats held majorities in both houses of Congress. Like today, the Supreme Court was often split 5-4 on various decisions. I could go on …
Fast forward to 2013. Let’s assume President Obama wins re-election the year before. You can substitute our present president’s remarks with those of FDR in 1937. The years and communication technology were different, but…
“I am reminded of that evening in March, four years ago, when I made my first radio report to you. We were then in the midst of the great banking crisis. In 1933 you and I knew that we must never let our economic system get completely out of joint again-that we could not afford to take the risk of another Great Depression.
“We also became convinced that the only way to avoid a repetition of those dark days was to have a government with power to prevent and to cure the abuses and the inequalities which had thrown that system out of joint.
“We then began a program of remedying those abuses and inequalities-to give balance and stability to our economic system, to make it bomb-proof against the causes of 1929.
“Today we are only part-way through that program- and recovery is speeding up to a point where the dangers of 1929 are again becoming possible, not this week or month perhaps, but within a year or two.
“National laws are needed to complete that program. Individual or local or state effort alone cannot protect us in 1937 any better than ten years ago.
“It will take time - and plenty of time - to work out our remedies administratively even after legislation is passed. To complete our program of protection in time, therefore, we cannot delay one moment in making certain that our national government has power to carry through.
“Four years ago action did not come until the eleventh hour. It was almost too late. But since the rise of the modern movement for social and economic progress through legislation, the (Supreme) Court has more and more often and more and more boldly asserted a power to veto laws passed by the Congress and by state legislatures…
“What is my proposal? It is simply this: whenever a judge or justice of any federal court has reached the age of seventy and does not avail himself of the opportunity to retire on a pension, a new member shall be appointed by the president then in office, with the approval, as required by the Constitution, of the Senate of the United States.
“That plan has two chief purposes. By bringing into the judicial system a steady and continuing stream of new and younger blood, I hope, first, to make the administration of all federal justice, from the bottom to the top, speedier and, therefore, less costly; secondly, to bring to the decision of social and economic problems younger men who have had personal experience and contact with modern facts and circumstances under which average men have to live and work. This plan will save our national Constitution from hardening of the judicial arteries.
“The number of judges to be appointed would depend wholly on the decision of present judges now over seventy, or those who would subsequently reach the age of seventy.
“If, for instance, any one of the six justices of the Supreme Court now over the age of seventy should retire as provided under the plan, no additional place would be created. Consequently, although there never can be more than fifteen, there may be only fourteen, or thirteen, or twelve. And there may be only nine...”
There are similarities between the direction our current President is taking this country and the rhetoric of FDR. The “New Deal” president wanted to stack the Court to be more favorable to his agenda…thus the proposal to add SC justices up to a total of fifteen.
After FDR’s first election in 1932, his Recovery Act cut pensions of retired Supreme Court pensions by 50%. Any similarities between the present administration’s desire to cut and cap salaries of CEOs who receive government bailout money?
Consider the dazzling speed of Obama’s proposals. Consider the urgency with which he described the need for the 2nd stimulus package. Consider the physical impossibility of legislators to have the time to read the language of the 2nd stimulus package with its many “pork” addenda. Reread the FDR fireside chat. Note the urgency it conveys and the unabashed grab for more power.
Consider the passage of HR 2454 "The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009". Its goal, as stated from its official title, is "To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy."
HR 2454 is downloadable in a PDF file which counts out at 1,201 pages. Rep. Henry Waxman, a sponsor of the bill, was asked during a hearing if he had read it. He admitted that he had not, nor, in my opinion, did any House member have time to before the vote June 26th.
I am tempted to ask if we even need Congress. We have an administration that is leading this country into the world of FDR, the one U.S. dictator this country elected four times.
The legislation this Congress has passed since January 20th , and will pass in the upcoming months, will be challenged in the courts.
Let’s hope that the American people stand up before the fast-forwarded speech of 2013 and decide that we too need a Supreme Court as a check and balance against out-of-control legislative and judicial branches. Oops, I forgot, the President nominates Supreme Court justices.
Nah, it couldn’t happen again…
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One such time was FDR’s Fireside Chat on Reorganization of the Judiciary, March 9, 1937. Like today the country had a very popular President. Like today the country was in a recession. Like today, the Democrats held majorities in both houses of Congress. Like today, the Supreme Court was often split 5-4 on various decisions. I could go on …
Fast forward to 2013. Let’s assume President Obama wins re-election the year before. You can substitute our present president’s remarks with those of FDR in 1937. The years and communication technology were different, but…
“I am reminded of that evening in March, four years ago, when I made my first radio report to you. We were then in the midst of the great banking crisis. In 1933 you and I knew that we must never let our economic system get completely out of joint again-that we could not afford to take the risk of another Great Depression.
“We also became convinced that the only way to avoid a repetition of those dark days was to have a government with power to prevent and to cure the abuses and the inequalities which had thrown that system out of joint.
“We then began a program of remedying those abuses and inequalities-to give balance and stability to our economic system, to make it bomb-proof against the causes of 1929.
“Today we are only part-way through that program- and recovery is speeding up to a point where the dangers of 1929 are again becoming possible, not this week or month perhaps, but within a year or two.
“National laws are needed to complete that program. Individual or local or state effort alone cannot protect us in 1937 any better than ten years ago.
“It will take time - and plenty of time - to work out our remedies administratively even after legislation is passed. To complete our program of protection in time, therefore, we cannot delay one moment in making certain that our national government has power to carry through.
“Four years ago action did not come until the eleventh hour. It was almost too late. But since the rise of the modern movement for social and economic progress through legislation, the (Supreme) Court has more and more often and more and more boldly asserted a power to veto laws passed by the Congress and by state legislatures…
“What is my proposal? It is simply this: whenever a judge or justice of any federal court has reached the age of seventy and does not avail himself of the opportunity to retire on a pension, a new member shall be appointed by the president then in office, with the approval, as required by the Constitution, of the Senate of the United States.
“That plan has two chief purposes. By bringing into the judicial system a steady and continuing stream of new and younger blood, I hope, first, to make the administration of all federal justice, from the bottom to the top, speedier and, therefore, less costly; secondly, to bring to the decision of social and economic problems younger men who have had personal experience and contact with modern facts and circumstances under which average men have to live and work. This plan will save our national Constitution from hardening of the judicial arteries.
“The number of judges to be appointed would depend wholly on the decision of present judges now over seventy, or those who would subsequently reach the age of seventy.
“If, for instance, any one of the six justices of the Supreme Court now over the age of seventy should retire as provided under the plan, no additional place would be created. Consequently, although there never can be more than fifteen, there may be only fourteen, or thirteen, or twelve. And there may be only nine...”
There are similarities between the direction our current President is taking this country and the rhetoric of FDR. The “New Deal” president wanted to stack the Court to be more favorable to his agenda…thus the proposal to add SC justices up to a total of fifteen.
After FDR’s first election in 1932, his Recovery Act cut pensions of retired Supreme Court pensions by 50%. Any similarities between the present administration’s desire to cut and cap salaries of CEOs who receive government bailout money?
Consider the dazzling speed of Obama’s proposals. Consider the urgency with which he described the need for the 2nd stimulus package. Consider the physical impossibility of legislators to have the time to read the language of the 2nd stimulus package with its many “pork” addenda. Reread the FDR fireside chat. Note the urgency it conveys and the unabashed grab for more power.
Consider the passage of HR 2454 "The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009". Its goal, as stated from its official title, is "To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy."
HR 2454 is downloadable in a PDF file which counts out at 1,201 pages. Rep. Henry Waxman, a sponsor of the bill, was asked during a hearing if he had read it. He admitted that he had not, nor, in my opinion, did any House member have time to before the vote June 26th.
I am tempted to ask if we even need Congress. We have an administration that is leading this country into the world of FDR, the one U.S. dictator this country elected four times.
The legislation this Congress has passed since January 20th , and will pass in the upcoming months, will be challenged in the courts.
Let’s hope that the American people stand up before the fast-forwarded speech of 2013 and decide that we too need a Supreme Court as a check and balance against out-of-control legislative and judicial branches. Oops, I forgot, the President nominates Supreme Court justices.
Nah, it couldn’t happen again…
Custom Search
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Say It Ain't So, Joe
I would think it rare that a conservative like myself would agree with our VP Joe Biden on much, but remember his famous comment which seemed like a political gaffe...last Oct. 19th?
"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee said in a Seattle fundraiser, "it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
Well, in the trial of corruption that led to the downfall of Chicago Black Sox back in 1921, on the second day of Shoeless Joe Jackson's testimony, a group of small boys were gathered at the courtroom entrance. One asked, "It isn't true, is it, Joe?" He responded, "Yes, boys, I'm afraid it is." By the time this report reached the west coast, it had become: "Say it ain't so, Joe!"
We are not even into month six of the Obama administration, and prophetic Joe who runs off at the mouth like a leaky faucet was not plagiarizing anyone, like he did in his 1988 presidential campaign…forcing Biden to withdraw from the race.
Biden’s prophetic prediction back in October is coming true. Not only is his boss being tested by an unexpected recession, but overseas he faces critical mass issues with North Korea’s unabashed “in your face” actions to the U.S. in detonating an underground nuclear device on May 25th. Officials in South Korea said they had detected a tremor consistent with those caused by an underground nuclear explosion.
The country's Yonhap news agency reported that the North had test-fired three short-range missiles from a base on the east coast immediately after the nuclear test.
Expect more fireworks from North Korea on July 4th. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that the military has set up additional defenses around Hawaii, consisting of a ground-based mobile missile system and a radar system nearby.
Gates spoke after Japan's Yomiuri newspaper reported that North Korea might test-fire a Taepodong-2 missile with a range of up to 4,000 miles sometime around the 4th of July. The missile would fly over Japan but would not be able to reach Hawaii, which is about 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers) from the Korean peninsula.
The latest news today is that North Korea may test medium-range missiles instead of the Taepodon-2, but if it goes through with Gates' prediction...I have to say with the kids in the courtroom…to our VP: “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee said in a Seattle fundraiser, "it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
Well, in the trial of corruption that led to the downfall of Chicago Black Sox back in 1921, on the second day of Shoeless Joe Jackson's testimony, a group of small boys were gathered at the courtroom entrance. One asked, "It isn't true, is it, Joe?" He responded, "Yes, boys, I'm afraid it is." By the time this report reached the west coast, it had become: "Say it ain't so, Joe!"
We are not even into month six of the Obama administration, and prophetic Joe who runs off at the mouth like a leaky faucet was not plagiarizing anyone, like he did in his 1988 presidential campaign…forcing Biden to withdraw from the race.
Biden’s prophetic prediction back in October is coming true. Not only is his boss being tested by an unexpected recession, but overseas he faces critical mass issues with North Korea’s unabashed “in your face” actions to the U.S. in detonating an underground nuclear device on May 25th. Officials in South Korea said they had detected a tremor consistent with those caused by an underground nuclear explosion.
The country's Yonhap news agency reported that the North had test-fired three short-range missiles from a base on the east coast immediately after the nuclear test.
Expect more fireworks from North Korea on July 4th. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that the military has set up additional defenses around Hawaii, consisting of a ground-based mobile missile system and a radar system nearby.
Gates spoke after Japan's Yomiuri newspaper reported that North Korea might test-fire a Taepodong-2 missile with a range of up to 4,000 miles sometime around the 4th of July. The missile would fly over Japan but would not be able to reach Hawaii, which is about 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers) from the Korean peninsula.
The latest news today is that North Korea may test medium-range missiles instead of the Taepodon-2, but if it goes through with Gates' prediction...I have to say with the kids in the courtroom…to our VP: “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Could the European Elections Be Telling Us Something?
Now that the Obama administration and the tail-wagging Dems in Congress have decided to go down the road to European socialism, it is interesting to take a look at the recent European Union’s elections .
EU's biggest-ever election concluded June 7th and social democrats got the worst results ever in their election history.
The European Parliament election in June 2009 was the biggest trans-national election in history.
About 375 million European citizens were eligible to vote. But the voter turnout was a record low in the June elections to the European Parliament (43.09%). After these turnout rates, results started to be discussed.
In Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic, the center right won the elections.
In Britain, PM Gordon Brown's political fortunes have spiraled downward with the electoral drubbing the ruling Labour party has suffered in recent days, but the party's slide has been years in the making -- rooted in a nasty internal split, divisions over the Iraq war, a deep recession and a steady drip of scandal.
Labour finished third in elections for seats in the European Parliament -- behind not just the opposition Conservatives, but also the fringe UK Independence Party, a weak showing for the party that has governed the U.K. since Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997. Labour captured just 15.7% of the vote, its lowest share of a national vote since 1910.
The results are widely seen as further evidence that Labour will be ousted by the Conservatives and their leader, David Cameron, in U.K. general elections that must be held within the next year, and have added to pressure on Mr. Brown to step aside sooner than that.
Now maybe one could care less about Europe’s politics, and I am not going to give a primer on how the EU was morphing into a U.S. of Europe, but let’s focus on the main reason for Europe’s shift to the right. Spending, borrowing, and more spending…to escape the world-wide economic recession.
Couple that with financial scandals in Britain and you have the perfect recipe for “throwing the ninnies out.”
I can’t help bring up our own spending scandals. Obama’s approval rating is still an unbelievable 67%, despite his plans to bury our descendants in unpayable debt. What is more to the point of “scandal” is the influence lobbyists still have on Congress, both Republicans and Democrats.
USA TODAY undertook the first comprehensive analysis of the lobbying reports and found 2,759 payments, totaling $35.8 million, were made in 2008. The money went to honor 534 current and former lawmakers, almost 250 other federal officials and more than 100 groups, many of which count lawmakers among their members.
The total cost is roughly equivalent to what the U.S. government spends to operate Yellowstone National Park each year.
Most of the money — about $28 million — went to non-profit groups, some with direct ties to members of Congress. In two cases, USA TODAY found, the donations to non-profits associated with a member of Congress came in response to a personal appeal for funds from the lawmaker.
The money came from companies, trade associations and labor groups that lobby Congress and the government on a range of issues, from seeking a share of last year's $700 billion financial bailout package to trying to shape the debate on climate change.
The donations cover various activities — from a golf tournament that raises money for a lawmaker's non-profit to gifts to the alma mater of a powerful House committee chairman.
Most people are unaware of this end-run violation of basic ethics…just as in Britain most were not aware of what the MPs were doing. (MPs are Members of Britain’s House of Commons, not MEP’s, aka members of the European Union Parliament.)
The heart of the problem is that MPs, who are paid roughly $100,000 a year, work at Westminster in London, but generally live with their families in their constituencies. So they receive an allowance of about $30,000 for furniture, accessories, repairs and mortgage interest relief for a second home.
The accusation is that they have used the expense claims on their second home as an alternative income stream to pay for gardeners, chandeliers, dog food, wine, duck houses, and horse manure. Several MPs, most notably a senior member of Gordon Brown's cabinet, have been accused of changing the designation of their second home. That's a practice known as flipping, so that the allowance can then be applied to another property.
Here in the U.S., “You can still have a gala or something or the other for a charity and earn some favor with members of Congress, which is what the gift ban was put in place to avoid,” says Dan Danner, CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business and a veteran Washington lobbyist.
The spending demonstrates the subtle ways that special-interest groups try to sway lawmakers, without making "something as crass as a payoff," says Kenneth Gross, a former Federal Election Commission official.
USA TODAY singled out as examples of this practice donations such as the $40,000 AT&T gave in December to the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, which researches Alzheimer's. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., founded the non-profit, which is named for his late mother, and he is the honorary chairman of its board.
Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House energy committee, asked an energy company to donate to a foundation that bears his name. His daughter-in-law, Amy Barton, is the unpaid director.
Utility giant Exelon gave $25,000 to the non-profit last June and $50,000 in 2006, according to federal records and interviews with company officials.
Health care groups, for instance, give millions to the planned Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston. Pharmaceutical giant Amgen wrote the biggest check — $5 million in December — to the institute, which will honor Kennedy's more than four decades in Congress and promote the study of the U.S. Senate.
Aetna insurance company donated $50,000.
Of course, all of these contributions are legal, and, unlike the British abuses of power by many of their MPs, the organizations members of Congress have personally founded or support may actually help people, but they are yet another way for votes to be swayed to favor the donor’s interests.
I say thumbs up for term limits on members of Congress, or, if failing that, I agree with the Brits that it’s time to “throw the ninnies out.” Where is there a land where irresponsible spending by a socialist president, complacent lawmakers, and a lobbyist-influenced Congress does not exist? I guess it must be Oz. It isn’t here, or across the pond. But the times…they are a’changin…maybe as soon as 2010, but for sure in 2012.
EU's biggest-ever election concluded June 7th and social democrats got the worst results ever in their election history.
The European Parliament election in June 2009 was the biggest trans-national election in history.
About 375 million European citizens were eligible to vote. But the voter turnout was a record low in the June elections to the European Parliament (43.09%). After these turnout rates, results started to be discussed.
In Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic, the center right won the elections.
In Britain, PM Gordon Brown's political fortunes have spiraled downward with the electoral drubbing the ruling Labour party has suffered in recent days, but the party's slide has been years in the making -- rooted in a nasty internal split, divisions over the Iraq war, a deep recession and a steady drip of scandal.
Labour finished third in elections for seats in the European Parliament -- behind not just the opposition Conservatives, but also the fringe UK Independence Party, a weak showing for the party that has governed the U.K. since Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997. Labour captured just 15.7% of the vote, its lowest share of a national vote since 1910.
The results are widely seen as further evidence that Labour will be ousted by the Conservatives and their leader, David Cameron, in U.K. general elections that must be held within the next year, and have added to pressure on Mr. Brown to step aside sooner than that.
Now maybe one could care less about Europe’s politics, and I am not going to give a primer on how the EU was morphing into a U.S. of Europe, but let’s focus on the main reason for Europe’s shift to the right. Spending, borrowing, and more spending…to escape the world-wide economic recession.
Couple that with financial scandals in Britain and you have the perfect recipe for “throwing the ninnies out.”
I can’t help bring up our own spending scandals. Obama’s approval rating is still an unbelievable 67%, despite his plans to bury our descendants in unpayable debt. What is more to the point of “scandal” is the influence lobbyists still have on Congress, both Republicans and Democrats.
USA TODAY undertook the first comprehensive analysis of the lobbying reports and found 2,759 payments, totaling $35.8 million, were made in 2008. The money went to honor 534 current and former lawmakers, almost 250 other federal officials and more than 100 groups, many of which count lawmakers among their members.
The total cost is roughly equivalent to what the U.S. government spends to operate Yellowstone National Park each year.
Most of the money — about $28 million — went to non-profit groups, some with direct ties to members of Congress. In two cases, USA TODAY found, the donations to non-profits associated with a member of Congress came in response to a personal appeal for funds from the lawmaker.
The money came from companies, trade associations and labor groups that lobby Congress and the government on a range of issues, from seeking a share of last year's $700 billion financial bailout package to trying to shape the debate on climate change.
The donations cover various activities — from a golf tournament that raises money for a lawmaker's non-profit to gifts to the alma mater of a powerful House committee chairman.
Most people are unaware of this end-run violation of basic ethics…just as in Britain most were not aware of what the MPs were doing. (MPs are Members of Britain’s House of Commons, not MEP’s, aka members of the European Union Parliament.)
The heart of the problem is that MPs, who are paid roughly $100,000 a year, work at Westminster in London, but generally live with their families in their constituencies. So they receive an allowance of about $30,000 for furniture, accessories, repairs and mortgage interest relief for a second home.
The accusation is that they have used the expense claims on their second home as an alternative income stream to pay for gardeners, chandeliers, dog food, wine, duck houses, and horse manure. Several MPs, most notably a senior member of Gordon Brown's cabinet, have been accused of changing the designation of their second home. That's a practice known as flipping, so that the allowance can then be applied to another property.
Here in the U.S., “You can still have a gala or something or the other for a charity and earn some favor with members of Congress, which is what the gift ban was put in place to avoid,” says Dan Danner, CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business and a veteran Washington lobbyist.
The spending demonstrates the subtle ways that special-interest groups try to sway lawmakers, without making "something as crass as a payoff," says Kenneth Gross, a former Federal Election Commission official.
USA TODAY singled out as examples of this practice donations such as the $40,000 AT&T gave in December to the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, which researches Alzheimer's. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., founded the non-profit, which is named for his late mother, and he is the honorary chairman of its board.
Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House energy committee, asked an energy company to donate to a foundation that bears his name. His daughter-in-law, Amy Barton, is the unpaid director.
Utility giant Exelon gave $25,000 to the non-profit last June and $50,000 in 2006, according to federal records and interviews with company officials.
Health care groups, for instance, give millions to the planned Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston. Pharmaceutical giant Amgen wrote the biggest check — $5 million in December — to the institute, which will honor Kennedy's more than four decades in Congress and promote the study of the U.S. Senate.
Aetna insurance company donated $50,000.
Of course, all of these contributions are legal, and, unlike the British abuses of power by many of their MPs, the organizations members of Congress have personally founded or support may actually help people, but they are yet another way for votes to be swayed to favor the donor’s interests.
I say thumbs up for term limits on members of Congress, or, if failing that, I agree with the Brits that it’s time to “throw the ninnies out.” Where is there a land where irresponsible spending by a socialist president, complacent lawmakers, and a lobbyist-influenced Congress does not exist? I guess it must be Oz. It isn’t here, or across the pond. But the times…they are a’changin…maybe as soon as 2010, but for sure in 2012.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The Acorn Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree
One of the many used clichés is “the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.” A variant of the saying is “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” verifiable on the Hahnenberg farm with its 17 acres of apples. Both clichés have been used to mean a variety of things, chief of which is: "A child exhibits the same or very similar traits as his or her parents."
As a father of eight children, it’s a scary thought. Fortunately, the better traits of my children come from their mother. On the other hand, teaching has been my life-long profession…and, guess what? All but one of my children earned their undergraduate degrees in education. So, maybe there is some truth to the saying.
On a more serious note, there is some discussion on the tube about the organization ACORN, an acronym for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
The history of the organization is traceable back to Arkansas.
Started in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado, ACORN actually started off as the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, since that is where it had started. This particular ACORN was first in charge of clothing, food, furniture, and other needs of welfare individuals living in the area. During this time, ACORN grew and started a bigger movement in the area, uniting welfare and other poor individuals around important issues such as education, free school lunches, and emergency health care.
In the mid-70s ACORN expanded to the states of Texas and South Dakota, and began focusing not only on local issues, but larger national issues as well. In 1978, ACORN went to the Democratic National convention with an outline called the "People's Platform" listing things such as decreasing unemployment rates, protection of workers' rights, guarantee women's rights, and the protection of families.
Who runs ACORN today? Up until recently, Wade Rathke and his brother Dale held much power within ACORN. According to some reports, Dale embezzled close to $1 million from the organization. ACORN declined to press charges, a reimbursement deal was struck, and the Rathke brothers resigned, but Wade is still deeply involved. Bertha Lewis is currently the organization’s CEO.
Who is Bertha Lewis? For one thing, she has a passion for left-wing politics. Ms. Lewis, the executive director of the New York Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has logged thousands of miles collecting signatures, walking picket lines and getting out the vote. Ms. Lewis, 56, started down the road almost 20 years ago, fighting successfully for everything from squatters' rights to a higher minimum wage.
How does ACORN get money? Congressman John Boehner says ACORN affiliates in just 11 states have received more than $31 million in taxpayer funding, at least $11 million last year alone.
According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the Illinois Secretary of State, Project Vote’s purpose is to “lessen the burdens of government, promote the social welfare, lessen neighborhood tensions, eliminate prejudice and discrimination, combat community deterioration, and relieve the poor and distressed through educating the public about rights, privileges and opportunities in the area of civic participation, and all permitted activities incidental to or in furtherance of these purposes.”
Barack Obama served as Director for Project Vote in 1992. The organization, which works to register low-income and minority voters, was founded in 1982. Project Vote is affiliated with ACORN, and the two organizations work closely together. ACORN reported that “Project Vote, a nonpartisan voter registration organization, became the newest member of the ACORN family of organizations in 1994.” In an article posted on ACORN’s website in early October 2008, “ACORN and Project Vote announced the conclusion of the most successful nonpartisan voter registration drive in history, assisting more than 1.3 million Americans complete applications to register to vote in 21 states.”
In November 2007, Senator Obama addressed ACORN and thanked the organization for its work. While Obama has denied that he had any involvement with ACORN other than some legal work he did for them in 1995, his statements in 2007 suggest otherwise. In Senator Obama’s own words, “I've been fighting alongside Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”
So far, not much to raise eyebrows about an organization who, from its own website at www.acorn.org, has “an absolute commitment to organizing the poor and powerless plus a constant willingness and ability to break new ground.”
“From the beginning, when it brought together Black and white, welfare and working poor, ACORN defied expectations of what a community organization could be. It pioneered multi- racial and multi-issue organizing, led the way in electoral organizing, and branched into innovative housing development, community media and labor organizing.”
“No issue has been too large or small for ACORN. From the proverbial traffic light on the corner which often gives a neighborhood group its first taste of power to winning community reinvestment agreements from the nation’s largest banks, ACORN’s accomplishments have made a real difference in the lives of its members.”
“While some organizations have moved away from organizing low-income communities, ACORN has never wavered in its belief that without large scale organizations of poor people, progressive change is not possible in America.”
However, not is all well with ACORN. ACORN has been implicated in voter-fraud schemes in 15 states – some examples:
Last year, ACORN signed up 1.3-million voters nationwide and about 152,000 in Florida, mostly in Orange, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. ACORN estimates it flagged 2 percent of its Florida registrations as problematic because they were incomplete, duplicates or just plain bogus.
Mickey Mouse tried to register to vote in Florida; however, Orange County elections officials rejected Mickey’s application, which was stamped with ACORN’s logo.
Nevada officials raided ACORN's Las Vegas offices as part of a probe into voter-registration fraud - noting that some forms submitted by ACORN workers included the names of Dallas Cowboys players.
Officials in Lake County, Indiana, report that fully 1,100 of 2,000 new voter-registration forms delivered by ACORN were "suspicious."
In Washington state, officials recently closed an investigation into ballot cheating that resulted in prison terms.
ACORN submitted more than 800 phony registration forms in Independence, Mo., with one woman registering 10 times, using three birthdates, four different Social Security numbers and six different phone numbers.
In Vote Today Ohio, ACORN took advantage of a quirk in that state's law, which allowed people to register and vote on the same day without having to prove residency, to drive hundreds of people from homeless shelters and drug-rehab centers to the polls.
On May 28th, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, is demanding congressional hearings into the financial structure of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
"I don't think they've been examined in any significant way at all," he said.
King questions the actions of ACORN officials as well as the multitude of nonprofit activist groups that apparently overlap with ACORN and share the same headquarters address in New Orleans.
"This spider web, this myriad web of ACORN dollars and revenue streams, every bit of them should be looked at, all the corporations that they are networked with all of the boards of directors of those corporations, the inner locking connecting, the faces that are the same from board to board."
Chief among the groups to benefit from stimulus spending will be ACORN. ACORN's national political action committee, ACORN Votes, endorsed Obama for president last fall. ACORN national president Maude Hurd said Obama was "the candidate who best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about like stopping foreclosures."
You may also remember that during last year's primaries, the Obama campaign paid $832,598 to Citizens Services Inc., another ACORN affiliate, for get-out-the-vote activities.
As everyone who hasn't been in a coma for the last year knows, ACORN and President Obama go way back…all the way back to the big oak tree of social change.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Tortured History of the Kurds
Throughout the formation of the new Iraq, the term “Kurds” has been a frequent topic of the news. Along with Shiites and Sunnis, the Kurds comprise the three major factions that have been involved in negotiations toward a democratic Iraq.
Throughout the last eight years, the Kurds have generally been supportive of U.S. involvement in the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime. It was the Kurds, in northern Iraq, after all, that Saddam targeted for genocide with the use of chemical weapons.
In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern Iraq. The campaign was mostly directed at Kurds who sided with Iranians during the Iraq-Iran War. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 100,000 people), many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands. Hussein was reponsible for the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, and power stations.
But the genocide didn’t end there. In April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, he cracked down ruthlessly against several uprisings in the Kurdish north. His forces committed wholesale massacres and other gross human rights violations against the northern Kurds similar to the violations mentioned before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 20,000 to 100,000.
The term “Kurdistan” today refers to a region, predominately peopled by Kurds. In 1920, Turkey fell under the aegis of the League of Nations, which, in a 13 point treaty, wanted to punish the Turks for their being part of the Central Powers in World War I. The Central Powers consisted of the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire (also known as the Turkish Empire), and the Kingdom of Bulgaria. In the treaty, Turkey was to agree to “the establishment of local autonomy for Kurdistan” the boundaries of which were to be established by the English, French, and Italian governments. It also provided that the League could establish a free and independent Kurdistan at some point in the future should the Kurds request it.
The term Kurdistan is used today to refer to a land mass, depending on what sources are used, about the size of France. Kurdistan is split among several countries…Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Estimates place the Kurdish population in these countries at over 30 million. Kurds are the fourth largest ethnicity in the Middle East after Arabs, Persians and Turks. According to the CIA World Factbook, Kurds comprise 20% of the population in Turkey, 15-20% in Iraq, perhaps 8% in Syria, 7% in Iran and 1.3% in Armenia. In all of these countries except Iran, Kurds form the second largest ethnic group. Roughly 55% of the world's Kurds live in Turkey, about 20% each in Iran and Iraq, and a bit over 5% in Syria.
From a political standpoint, Iraqi Kurdistan is the only region which has gained official recognition internationally as an autonomous federal entity. Kurds in Iran are also officially recognized as a minority, although no Iranian territory is designated as ethnically Kurdish.
Kurdistan is a mountainous region with a cold climate and it receives enough annual precipitation to sustain temperate forests and shrubs. The region has an extreme continental climate—hot in the summer, bitterly cold in the winter. Despite this, much of the region is fertile and has traditionally exported grain and livestock to the cities in the plains. The plateaus and mountains of Kurdistan, which are characterized by heavy rainfall and in winter a heavy coat of snow, are a water reservoir for the Near and Middle East. Kurdistan is the source of the famous Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
There are vast oil and mineral resources in Kurdistan. Iraqi Kurdistan is estimated to have around 45 billion barrels of oil reserves making it sixth largest in the world, mostly recently discovered.
Most Kurds are bilingual or polylingual, speaking the languages of the surrounding peoples such as Arabic, Turkish and Persian as a second language. Kurdish Jews and some Kurdish Christians usually speak Aramaic as their first language. Aramaic is a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic rather than Kurdish.
The majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, with a minority being Shiites. The original religion of the Kurds was Yazidism, a religion greatly influenced by Jewish, Zoroastrian, Christian and Islamic beliefs. Christianity and Judaism is practiced, but in small numbers.
Because of the genocidal efforts of Saddam Hussein and his first cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, (dubbed "Chemical Ali" by Iraqi Kurds for his use of chemical weapons in attacks against them), Iraqi Kurds have been supportive of American intervention into Iraq following 9-11.
Why haven’t the Kurds, with their own cultural identity, been able to unify and demand independence?
The name of the game is the political stronghold Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria have, over the years, placed on any dream of independence. Agrarian by nature, many Kurds have dreamt of autonomy, but their nascent political aggressiveness has been no match for the control the four countries hold on them. There were recent skirmishes with Turkey by Kurdish rebels early in 2008 in northern Iraq, but the Bush administration agreed with the Iraqi government in supporting suppression of the Kurdish movement. Kurds periodically have held uprisings in all four countries, with little success.
The drive for Kurdish independence looks bleak for the future. It is a case of an ethnic group, with a long and tortured history, being denied its century-long promise of independence given by the forerunner of the United Nations…the League of Nations.
Throughout the last eight years, the Kurds have generally been supportive of U.S. involvement in the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime. It was the Kurds, in northern Iraq, after all, that Saddam targeted for genocide with the use of chemical weapons.
In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern Iraq. The campaign was mostly directed at Kurds who sided with Iranians during the Iraq-Iran War. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 100,000 people), many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands. Hussein was reponsible for the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, and power stations.
But the genocide didn’t end there. In April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, he cracked down ruthlessly against several uprisings in the Kurdish north. His forces committed wholesale massacres and other gross human rights violations against the northern Kurds similar to the violations mentioned before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 20,000 to 100,000.
The term “Kurdistan” today refers to a region, predominately peopled by Kurds. In 1920, Turkey fell under the aegis of the League of Nations, which, in a 13 point treaty, wanted to punish the Turks for their being part of the Central Powers in World War I. The Central Powers consisted of the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire (also known as the Turkish Empire), and the Kingdom of Bulgaria. In the treaty, Turkey was to agree to “the establishment of local autonomy for Kurdistan” the boundaries of which were to be established by the English, French, and Italian governments. It also provided that the League could establish a free and independent Kurdistan at some point in the future should the Kurds request it.
The term Kurdistan is used today to refer to a land mass, depending on what sources are used, about the size of France. Kurdistan is split among several countries…Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Estimates place the Kurdish population in these countries at over 30 million. Kurds are the fourth largest ethnicity in the Middle East after Arabs, Persians and Turks. According to the CIA World Factbook, Kurds comprise 20% of the population in Turkey, 15-20% in Iraq, perhaps 8% in Syria, 7% in Iran and 1.3% in Armenia. In all of these countries except Iran, Kurds form the second largest ethnic group. Roughly 55% of the world's Kurds live in Turkey, about 20% each in Iran and Iraq, and a bit over 5% in Syria.
From a political standpoint, Iraqi Kurdistan is the only region which has gained official recognition internationally as an autonomous federal entity. Kurds in Iran are also officially recognized as a minority, although no Iranian territory is designated as ethnically Kurdish.
Kurdistan is a mountainous region with a cold climate and it receives enough annual precipitation to sustain temperate forests and shrubs. The region has an extreme continental climate—hot in the summer, bitterly cold in the winter. Despite this, much of the region is fertile and has traditionally exported grain and livestock to the cities in the plains. The plateaus and mountains of Kurdistan, which are characterized by heavy rainfall and in winter a heavy coat of snow, are a water reservoir for the Near and Middle East. Kurdistan is the source of the famous Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
There are vast oil and mineral resources in Kurdistan. Iraqi Kurdistan is estimated to have around 45 billion barrels of oil reserves making it sixth largest in the world, mostly recently discovered.
Most Kurds are bilingual or polylingual, speaking the languages of the surrounding peoples such as Arabic, Turkish and Persian as a second language. Kurdish Jews and some Kurdish Christians usually speak Aramaic as their first language. Aramaic is a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic rather than Kurdish.
The majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, with a minority being Shiites. The original religion of the Kurds was Yazidism, a religion greatly influenced by Jewish, Zoroastrian, Christian and Islamic beliefs. Christianity and Judaism is practiced, but in small numbers.
Because of the genocidal efforts of Saddam Hussein and his first cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, (dubbed "Chemical Ali" by Iraqi Kurds for his use of chemical weapons in attacks against them), Iraqi Kurds have been supportive of American intervention into Iraq following 9-11.
Why haven’t the Kurds, with their own cultural identity, been able to unify and demand independence?
The name of the game is the political stronghold Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria have, over the years, placed on any dream of independence. Agrarian by nature, many Kurds have dreamt of autonomy, but their nascent political aggressiveness has been no match for the control the four countries hold on them. There were recent skirmishes with Turkey by Kurdish rebels early in 2008 in northern Iraq, but the Bush administration agreed with the Iraqi government in supporting suppression of the Kurdish movement. Kurds periodically have held uprisings in all four countries, with little success.
The drive for Kurdish independence looks bleak for the future. It is a case of an ethnic group, with a long and tortured history, being denied its century-long promise of independence given by the forerunner of the United Nations…the League of Nations.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Is Repairing Hubble Worth the Risks?
On Monday, NASA sent a crew of astronauts to install greatly improved instruments on the 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope.
According to NASA the 11-day mission will include five spacewalks during which astronauts will install two new instruments, repair two inactive ones and perform some component replacements. The mission is the final one to service the Hubble telescope and is expected to keep the telescope working until 2013 when the orbiting observatory will be replaced by the more powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
There are serious inherent risks in the Hubble repair mission.
First of all, there’s the ever-increasing amount of space junk in proximity to Hubble. Space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven will face increased danger from space junk because of Hubble's extremely high and littered orbit 350 miles up. Even innocuous things like nuts or bolts traveling at 18000 miles per hour could puncture space suits.They will need someone to come and get the cry-- fast -- if their ship sustains serious Columbia-type damage during launch or later in flight. They will not have the luxury of camping out at the international space station while awaiting rescue. The space station will be in another orbit and impossible to reach.
The current mission, once canceled because it was considered too perilous, does have an unprecedented safety net: another space shuttle on the launch pad. There is no guarantee, though, that NASA could pull off a rescue in time to save the Hubble crew. It would take three to seven days, at least, to launch a second shuttle.
Another danger is there will be no ability to check Atlantis to examine it for missing heat shield tiles from the distant ISS, the downfall of Columbia. A piece of insulating foam came off Columbia's external fuel tank during lift-off in January 2003, leaving a hole in the left wing. The shuttle disintegrated during re-entry over Texas on 1 February 2003, killing all seven of its crew.
Should a rescue mission be necessary, similar risks to the rescue shuttle vis-à-vis damaged tiles could result in the unthinkable.
Finally, the repair mission to Hubble will require everything to go just right.
"Hubble servicing missions can be compared to delicate dental work," said HST deputy program manager Mike Weiss of Goddard. "While the dentist fills your tooth or fits you for a crown, his assistant is at the ready handing him, or her, the right tools. Without an assistant the task would take much longer and the chance for errors would increase."
The HST team has spent months developing procedures and tools necessary for this last Shuttle servicing mission to Hubble. In the process they have successfully overcome many obstacles such as safely gaining access to failed circuit boards inside ACS, figuring out a way to pull out boards while wearing pressurized gloves, and installing a new cover on ACS once repairs are complete.
Is this mission worth the risks? Most everyone at NASA thinks so. I don’t.
Why? Just three days later, on May 14th, the European Space Agency will launch two even more advanced telescopes, named Herschel and Planck. Herschel will have the largest mirror ever put in space, 11.5 feet across, half again as big as Hubble's mirror. Planck will have the sharpest vision, detecting differences as small as two parts in a million.
Herschel, will sweep the entire sky every six months over a three-year period. It will build the most accurate map ever made of the cosmos. ''Planck will provide the deepest, clearest, sharpest and least obstructed view of the beginning of the universe ever seen,'' says Benjamin Wandelt, a Planck scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It will be ''a quantum leap in our ability to address fundamental questions about how the universe began.''
Then there is the planned JWST telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope will be a large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror. Launch is planned for 2014.
JWST will be the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.
The cost of this last mission to repair Hubble is projected to be $1.1 billion. Let’s not forget the potential 14 lives that will be put at risk.
Finally, According to NASA, Hubble has provided major scientific breakthroughs… Does it need to do more?
• The Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed that the universe is 13.7 billion years old.
• The HST has opened speculation that nearly all galaxies may harbor supermassive black holes.
• The HST has helped scientists determine the process of how planets are born.
• The HST detected the first organic molecule discovered on a planet outside our solar system.
• The HST detected a distant supernova that suggests the universe only recently began speeding up.
• The images of planets, galaxies, nebulae, novae, and, especially, the Ultra Deep Field below have changed forever how mankind can see the known universe. The Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, made from data accumulated over a period from September 24, 2003 through January 16, 2004. It is the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light, looking back approximately 13 billion years, or a little over half a billion years after the universe was created.
I think Hubble has done its service to mankind.
However, President Spock would probably approve, since money flows from Washington like water over Niagara.
According to NASA the 11-day mission will include five spacewalks during which astronauts will install two new instruments, repair two inactive ones and perform some component replacements. The mission is the final one to service the Hubble telescope and is expected to keep the telescope working until 2013 when the orbiting observatory will be replaced by the more powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
There are serious inherent risks in the Hubble repair mission.
First of all, there’s the ever-increasing amount of space junk in proximity to Hubble. Space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven will face increased danger from space junk because of Hubble's extremely high and littered orbit 350 miles up. Even innocuous things like nuts or bolts traveling at 18000 miles per hour could puncture space suits.They will need someone to come and get the cry-- fast -- if their ship sustains serious Columbia-type damage during launch or later in flight. They will not have the luxury of camping out at the international space station while awaiting rescue. The space station will be in another orbit and impossible to reach.
The current mission, once canceled because it was considered too perilous, does have an unprecedented safety net: another space shuttle on the launch pad. There is no guarantee, though, that NASA could pull off a rescue in time to save the Hubble crew. It would take three to seven days, at least, to launch a second shuttle.
Another danger is there will be no ability to check Atlantis to examine it for missing heat shield tiles from the distant ISS, the downfall of Columbia. A piece of insulating foam came off Columbia's external fuel tank during lift-off in January 2003, leaving a hole in the left wing. The shuttle disintegrated during re-entry over Texas on 1 February 2003, killing all seven of its crew.
Should a rescue mission be necessary, similar risks to the rescue shuttle vis-à-vis damaged tiles could result in the unthinkable.
Finally, the repair mission to Hubble will require everything to go just right.
"Hubble servicing missions can be compared to delicate dental work," said HST deputy program manager Mike Weiss of Goddard. "While the dentist fills your tooth or fits you for a crown, his assistant is at the ready handing him, or her, the right tools. Without an assistant the task would take much longer and the chance for errors would increase."
The HST team has spent months developing procedures and tools necessary for this last Shuttle servicing mission to Hubble. In the process they have successfully overcome many obstacles such as safely gaining access to failed circuit boards inside ACS, figuring out a way to pull out boards while wearing pressurized gloves, and installing a new cover on ACS once repairs are complete.
Is this mission worth the risks? Most everyone at NASA thinks so. I don’t.
Why? Just three days later, on May 14th, the European Space Agency will launch two even more advanced telescopes, named Herschel and Planck. Herschel will have the largest mirror ever put in space, 11.5 feet across, half again as big as Hubble's mirror. Planck will have the sharpest vision, detecting differences as small as two parts in a million.
Herschel, will sweep the entire sky every six months over a three-year period. It will build the most accurate map ever made of the cosmos. ''Planck will provide the deepest, clearest, sharpest and least obstructed view of the beginning of the universe ever seen,'' says Benjamin Wandelt, a Planck scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It will be ''a quantum leap in our ability to address fundamental questions about how the universe began.''
Then there is the planned JWST telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope will be a large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror. Launch is planned for 2014.
JWST will be the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.
The cost of this last mission to repair Hubble is projected to be $1.1 billion. Let’s not forget the potential 14 lives that will be put at risk.
Finally, According to NASA, Hubble has provided major scientific breakthroughs… Does it need to do more?
• The Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed that the universe is 13.7 billion years old.
• The HST has opened speculation that nearly all galaxies may harbor supermassive black holes.
• The HST has helped scientists determine the process of how planets are born.
• The HST detected the first organic molecule discovered on a planet outside our solar system.
• The HST detected a distant supernova that suggests the universe only recently began speeding up.
• The images of planets, galaxies, nebulae, novae, and, especially, the Ultra Deep Field below have changed forever how mankind can see the known universe. The Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, made from data accumulated over a period from September 24, 2003 through January 16, 2004. It is the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light, looking back approximately 13 billion years, or a little over half a billion years after the universe was created.
I think Hubble has done its service to mankind.
However, President Spock would probably approve, since money flows from Washington like water over Niagara.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
The Rise of Secularism in the U.S.
Secularism is a term used for the first time in the mid-nineteenth century to denote a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions, the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life. Anything that is above or beyond the present life should be entirely overlooked. Whether there is a God or not, whether the soul is immortal or not, are questions which at best cannot be answered, and on which consequently no motives of action can be based. A fortiori all motives derived from any organized religion are worthless. Such are the opinions of secularists.
A study done recently by the Episcopalian Trinity College in Connecticut found a significant decline in Christianity in the U.S. The drop has occurred dramatically over the past two decades, and those who do are increasingly identifying themselves without traditional denomination labels.
The survey of more than 54,000 people conducted between February and November of last year showed that the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped to 76 percent of the population, down from 86 percent in 1990. Those who do call themselves Christian are more frequently describing themselves as "nondenominational," "evangelical," or "born again," according to the American Religious Identification Survey.
The survey is conducted by researchers at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Posen Foundation. Conducted in 1990, 2001 and last year, it is one of the nation's largest major surveys of religion.
The increase in people labeling themselves in more generic Christian terms corresponds strongly with the decline in people identifying themselves as Protestant, the survey found. People calling themselves mainline Protestants, including Methodists and Lutherans, have dropped to 13 percent of the population, down from 19 percent in 1990. The number of people who describe themselves as generically "Protestant" went from approximately 17 million in 1990 to 5 million.
Meanwhile, the number of people who use nondenominational terms has gone from 194,000 in 1990 to more than 8 million. Northern New England has surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country; 34 percent of Vermont residents say they have "no religion." The report said that the country has a "growing non-religious or irreligious minority." Twenty-seven percent of those interviewed said they did not expect to have a religious funeral or service when they died, and 30 percent of people who had married said their service was not religious.
Another significant report on the status of religion in the U.S. comes from an extensive new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid. More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.
Although there are about half as many Catholics in the U.S. as Protestants, the number of Catholics nearly rivals the number of members of evangelical Protestant churches and far exceeds the number of members of both mainline Protestant churches and historically fringe Protestant churches.
Other surveys - such as the General Social Surveys, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago since 1972 - find that the Catholic share of the U.S. adult population has held fairly steady in recent decades at around 25%. What this apparent stability obscures, however, is the large number of people who have left the Catholic Church. Approximately one-third of the survey respondents who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic. This means that roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics. These losses, however, have been partly offset by the number of people who have changed their affiliation to Catholicism (2.6% of the adult population) but more importantly by the disproportionately high number of Catholics among immigrants to the U.S. The result is that the overall percentage of the population that identifies as Catholic has remained fairly stable.
So, what are the causes of these shifts in religious identification and the underlying move toward secularism?
First, we as Americans really do not like being told what to do. Believing in a God requires accountability and rules to one degree or another and some tend to resent that.
A second factor is that many in America view Christians as rigid, condescending, self-righteous, judgmental and hypocritical. The sordid tales of Swaggart, Bakker, Haggard, and the Catholic priesthood’s child abuse scandals are where some get their perception of leaders of Christianity.
Third, many believe that anything can be acceptable as long as society decides it is. The debate in this country over same-sex marriage would not have been imaginable in my youth. In my upbringing, marriage was between a man and a woman. Today, same-sex unions are becoming legal in several states, because the courts and state legislatures approve of the practice. This trend runs contrary to the traditional teachings of virtually all major world religions. Just to cite a few: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism.
Fourth, the desire for power among those who lead us in the political arena often leads to moral compromising. I have no intention of judging any specific person’s conscience in any of the attitudes I express in this column, but I will give some well-known examples of leaders whose religion teaches one thing, but whose political leadership contradicts the basic tenants of the religion they espouse and practice on Sundays.
Our Vice-President is a Catholic; our leader of the House of Representatives is a Catholic; our governor is a Catholic, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services was reared a Catholic in Ohio and Leland, Michigan, and so on…Their stance on abortion, for example, is publicly pro-choice. Most U.S. Catholic bishops find this inconsistency to be deplorable. The platform of the Democratic Party has been, in recent years, pro-choice. Many Catholics and evangelicals are one-issue voters, because they see abortion as the killing of innocent life. Many of these voters find that, biologically, it is incomprehensible that a 10 week-old fetus with all of its fingers and toes could be disposed of as nothing more than an inflamed appendix.
Fifth, in my experience as a public school administrator, I found that many young people equate morality with legality. Abortion is legal, so it’s okay. Divorce for virtually any reason is fine, as long as the legal paperwork is in order.
Sixth, public entertainers like Bill Maher and Howard Stern ridicule organized religion often. Hollywood itself is often a soap opera of drug addiction, failed marriages, promiscuous relationships, and disdain for anything morally binding. Books and movies like "The Da Vinci Code" call into question teachings of two thousand years. Never mind that Brown used obscure apocryphal writings to create a scenario that runs like a Rex Stout mystery novel, nor that, taking Brown's cue, Ron Howard and Tom Hanks have engaged in money-making efforts to perpetuate "religious" movies that are dismissed by emminent scholars as what they are...fictional rubbish. Yet such nonsense appears on big screens in Dolby sound and has an emotional, if not intellectual, impact on viewers. To Hanks' credit, he admitted "We play fast and loose with an awful lot of fact," in the Code's sequel, "Angels and Demons." No wonder biblical fundamentalists hold to literal interpretations of the Bible and are wary of any scholarly attempts to understand how the Bible came to be. Yet such fundamentalism runs counter to the idea of divinely-designed evolution, and, as such is rejected many biblical scholars.
Seventh, peer pressure among young people invades conscience with the mantra that “if everyone is doing it, it must be normal.” So, illicit drug use, violence, promiscuity, cheating in school, bigotry, and cynical racism become acceptable. And this is not just a problem among young adults.
Eighth, the role of television, the internet, the news media, and a host of growing technological wonders of communication have little regulation. Anyone’s opinion is just as good as anyone else’s. There are no absolutes in life the secularist might argue, no rock-solid moral truths upon which one can rely. I recently had a discussion with an agnostic who attempted to prove to me that 1 + 1 does not equal 2. In the mataphysical world, for example, if eternal verities do not exist, then religion and science itself fall apart. Maybe geometry has axioms you cannot prove? If you don't accept those primary, unproveable, axioms, there goes a big chunk of math out the window.
Ninth, there is such a rush in modern life to deal with a fast-moving world, that people have little time to reflect on the purpose of their existence, little time to read the wisdom philosophers and theologians have written down through the ages, and virtually no time to be silent and reflective for any length of time. There is little time to look up at the stars and wonder how they got there, little time to examine the beauty in nature and wonder if all of this just happened by chance, or whether there was a divine designer behind it all.
Tenth, Americans are a very impatient people. If one prays to God, and there seems to be no immediate answer, then forget God. We are Americans, after all, and anything is possible if we take control. We are a self-reliant people. No need for platitudinous preaching on the weekend. We can always pull ourselves up without divine help. Chance and serendipity are the rule..."Good luck" is a phrase that rules out a God who just might be watching over us, caring for us, and asking only that we seek His will.
Eleventh, the desire to experiment and try new things is the very nature of inquisitive minds. However, each of us desires to be "center stage" in life. So, whether its tatoos, body-piercing, pink hair, New Age belief in the "power" of gems, or whatever is the newest fad, it's all about "me" getting noticed. If I have a "Me" to adore, what place is there for a God?
Twelfth, true religion demands sacrifice and suffering. No one likes to embrace suffering as a means of self-purification. Many embrace mega-churches because of the promise of monetary success if one but tithes, not to God, but to an Elmer Gantry-type minister who preaches God's blessings in this life while coming to their church in a limousine from a multi-million dollar mansion.
Finally...and I could go on and on...“political correctness” often conflicts with religion and common sense. It is now almost politically "incorrect" to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Who would have ever thought that the “War on Terror” would be officially morphed into “Overseas Contingency Operation”…or “pregnant” into “parasitically oppressed”?
Alexis deTocqueville, an educated Frenchman who came to the U.S. in 1831 when he was only 25 years old, and spent quite some time in Michigan, later wrote Democracy in America, a two-volume study of the American people and their political institutions. He had some keen insights into our country relative to religion and our form of government.
I have selected a few quotes of his that may be of interest in this column. They do not always touch on the rise of secularism, but they touch on values and moral principles pertinent to our democracy.
"As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
"America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
"Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith."
"The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality."
"There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle."
"There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one."
"In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own."
"When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness."
It all boils down to what I see as the inherent danger of a democracy vis-à-vis religion: Democracy has the capability of marginalizing morality itself and installing the new state religion: Secularism.
A study done recently by the Episcopalian Trinity College in Connecticut found a significant decline in Christianity in the U.S. The drop has occurred dramatically over the past two decades, and those who do are increasingly identifying themselves without traditional denomination labels.
The survey of more than 54,000 people conducted between February and November of last year showed that the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped to 76 percent of the population, down from 86 percent in 1990. Those who do call themselves Christian are more frequently describing themselves as "nondenominational," "evangelical," or "born again," according to the American Religious Identification Survey.
The survey is conducted by researchers at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Posen Foundation. Conducted in 1990, 2001 and last year, it is one of the nation's largest major surveys of religion.
The increase in people labeling themselves in more generic Christian terms corresponds strongly with the decline in people identifying themselves as Protestant, the survey found. People calling themselves mainline Protestants, including Methodists and Lutherans, have dropped to 13 percent of the population, down from 19 percent in 1990. The number of people who describe themselves as generically "Protestant" went from approximately 17 million in 1990 to 5 million.
Meanwhile, the number of people who use nondenominational terms has gone from 194,000 in 1990 to more than 8 million. Northern New England has surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country; 34 percent of Vermont residents say they have "no religion." The report said that the country has a "growing non-religious or irreligious minority." Twenty-seven percent of those interviewed said they did not expect to have a religious funeral or service when they died, and 30 percent of people who had married said their service was not religious.
Another significant report on the status of religion in the U.S. comes from an extensive new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid. More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.
Although there are about half as many Catholics in the U.S. as Protestants, the number of Catholics nearly rivals the number of members of evangelical Protestant churches and far exceeds the number of members of both mainline Protestant churches and historically fringe Protestant churches.
Other surveys - such as the General Social Surveys, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago since 1972 - find that the Catholic share of the U.S. adult population has held fairly steady in recent decades at around 25%. What this apparent stability obscures, however, is the large number of people who have left the Catholic Church. Approximately one-third of the survey respondents who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic. This means that roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics. These losses, however, have been partly offset by the number of people who have changed their affiliation to Catholicism (2.6% of the adult population) but more importantly by the disproportionately high number of Catholics among immigrants to the U.S. The result is that the overall percentage of the population that identifies as Catholic has remained fairly stable.
So, what are the causes of these shifts in religious identification and the underlying move toward secularism?
First, we as Americans really do not like being told what to do. Believing in a God requires accountability and rules to one degree or another and some tend to resent that.
A second factor is that many in America view Christians as rigid, condescending, self-righteous, judgmental and hypocritical. The sordid tales of Swaggart, Bakker, Haggard, and the Catholic priesthood’s child abuse scandals are where some get their perception of leaders of Christianity.
Third, many believe that anything can be acceptable as long as society decides it is. The debate in this country over same-sex marriage would not have been imaginable in my youth. In my upbringing, marriage was between a man and a woman. Today, same-sex unions are becoming legal in several states, because the courts and state legislatures approve of the practice. This trend runs contrary to the traditional teachings of virtually all major world religions. Just to cite a few: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism.
Fourth, the desire for power among those who lead us in the political arena often leads to moral compromising. I have no intention of judging any specific person’s conscience in any of the attitudes I express in this column, but I will give some well-known examples of leaders whose religion teaches one thing, but whose political leadership contradicts the basic tenants of the religion they espouse and practice on Sundays.
Our Vice-President is a Catholic; our leader of the House of Representatives is a Catholic; our governor is a Catholic, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services was reared a Catholic in Ohio and Leland, Michigan, and so on…Their stance on abortion, for example, is publicly pro-choice. Most U.S. Catholic bishops find this inconsistency to be deplorable. The platform of the Democratic Party has been, in recent years, pro-choice. Many Catholics and evangelicals are one-issue voters, because they see abortion as the killing of innocent life. Many of these voters find that, biologically, it is incomprehensible that a 10 week-old fetus with all of its fingers and toes could be disposed of as nothing more than an inflamed appendix.
Fifth, in my experience as a public school administrator, I found that many young people equate morality with legality. Abortion is legal, so it’s okay. Divorce for virtually any reason is fine, as long as the legal paperwork is in order.
Sixth, public entertainers like Bill Maher and Howard Stern ridicule organized religion often. Hollywood itself is often a soap opera of drug addiction, failed marriages, promiscuous relationships, and disdain for anything morally binding. Books and movies like "The Da Vinci Code" call into question teachings of two thousand years. Never mind that Brown used obscure apocryphal writings to create a scenario that runs like a Rex Stout mystery novel, nor that, taking Brown's cue, Ron Howard and Tom Hanks have engaged in money-making efforts to perpetuate "religious" movies that are dismissed by emminent scholars as what they are...fictional rubbish. Yet such nonsense appears on big screens in Dolby sound and has an emotional, if not intellectual, impact on viewers. To Hanks' credit, he admitted "We play fast and loose with an awful lot of fact," in the Code's sequel, "Angels and Demons." No wonder biblical fundamentalists hold to literal interpretations of the Bible and are wary of any scholarly attempts to understand how the Bible came to be. Yet such fundamentalism runs counter to the idea of divinely-designed evolution, and, as such is rejected many biblical scholars.
Seventh, peer pressure among young people invades conscience with the mantra that “if everyone is doing it, it must be normal.” So, illicit drug use, violence, promiscuity, cheating in school, bigotry, and cynical racism become acceptable. And this is not just a problem among young adults.
Eighth, the role of television, the internet, the news media, and a host of growing technological wonders of communication have little regulation. Anyone’s opinion is just as good as anyone else’s. There are no absolutes in life the secularist might argue, no rock-solid moral truths upon which one can rely. I recently had a discussion with an agnostic who attempted to prove to me that 1 + 1 does not equal 2. In the mataphysical world, for example, if eternal verities do not exist, then religion and science itself fall apart. Maybe geometry has axioms you cannot prove? If you don't accept those primary, unproveable, axioms, there goes a big chunk of math out the window.
Ninth, there is such a rush in modern life to deal with a fast-moving world, that people have little time to reflect on the purpose of their existence, little time to read the wisdom philosophers and theologians have written down through the ages, and virtually no time to be silent and reflective for any length of time. There is little time to look up at the stars and wonder how they got there, little time to examine the beauty in nature and wonder if all of this just happened by chance, or whether there was a divine designer behind it all.
Tenth, Americans are a very impatient people. If one prays to God, and there seems to be no immediate answer, then forget God. We are Americans, after all, and anything is possible if we take control. We are a self-reliant people. No need for platitudinous preaching on the weekend. We can always pull ourselves up without divine help. Chance and serendipity are the rule..."Good luck" is a phrase that rules out a God who just might be watching over us, caring for us, and asking only that we seek His will.
Eleventh, the desire to experiment and try new things is the very nature of inquisitive minds. However, each of us desires to be "center stage" in life. So, whether its tatoos, body-piercing, pink hair, New Age belief in the "power" of gems, or whatever is the newest fad, it's all about "me" getting noticed. If I have a "Me" to adore, what place is there for a God?
Twelfth, true religion demands sacrifice and suffering. No one likes to embrace suffering as a means of self-purification. Many embrace mega-churches because of the promise of monetary success if one but tithes, not to God, but to an Elmer Gantry-type minister who preaches God's blessings in this life while coming to their church in a limousine from a multi-million dollar mansion.
Finally...and I could go on and on...“political correctness” often conflicts with religion and common sense. It is now almost politically "incorrect" to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Who would have ever thought that the “War on Terror” would be officially morphed into “Overseas Contingency Operation”…or “pregnant” into “parasitically oppressed”?
Alexis deTocqueville, an educated Frenchman who came to the U.S. in 1831 when he was only 25 years old, and spent quite some time in Michigan, later wrote Democracy in America, a two-volume study of the American people and their political institutions. He had some keen insights into our country relative to religion and our form of government.
I have selected a few quotes of his that may be of interest in this column. They do not always touch on the rise of secularism, but they touch on values and moral principles pertinent to our democracy.
"As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
"America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
"Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith."
"The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality."
"There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle."
"There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one."
"In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own."
"When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness."
It all boils down to what I see as the inherent danger of a democracy vis-à-vis religion: Democracy has the capability of marginalizing morality itself and installing the new state religion: Secularism.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The View of President Obama Abroad…
It was the universal drumbeat of the Democratic presidential candidates for the past two years that the Bush administration had alienated the world, especially Europe. While it is true that President Bush was not the darling of the average European throughout his tenure, it is accurate to say that he had, at the end of his administration, the respect of several leaders of Europe. Among them were: Blair and Brown of England; Merkel of Germany; Sarkozy of France; Berlusconi of Italy; Tusk of Poland; and Klaus of the Czech Republic.
President Obama campaigned on the promise to bring the U.S. into better relations with Europe and the world. In the G-20 summit in April, hosted by British PM Gordon Brown, Obama achieved a level of public approval that doubtless pleased the new president. However, his apologies for America’s past did not please conservatives here in the U.S.
Hungarian-born French President Nicolas Sarkozy was not all that impressed with Obama. The French President was more than critical of Obama in a candid conversation with members of Parliament saying “While US President Barack Obama is very intelligent and charismatic, he is not always at his best when it comes to decisions and efficiency… He has only been elected for two months and has never managed a ministry in his life.”
Previous reports including a controversial comment that “Obama is an empty suit.. and has an immature Iranian policy” alledged to have been made by Sarkozy as published in the Israeli publication, Haaretz, were later watered down by diplomatic double speak after the American press jumped on the French President. I would disagree that our President is an empty suit. It's what comes out of that suit that scares me.
Mirek Topolanek, who is running the EU presidency despite the collapse of his government in the Czech Republic, eight days before the G-20 meeting, warned the European Parliament that the Obama administration's stimulus package and financial bail-out "will undermine the stability of the global financial market. All of these steps, these combinations and permanency is the way to hell.”
However, publicly the President was warmly welcomed by most of the G-20 leaders. In Prague, following the G-20 summit, 20,000 people gathered to hear America’s new leader speak, and by all accounts Obama was a smashing success. His Czech appearance proved once again that he has the charm and tact it takes to work with any country—no matter how much it supports U.S. policies.
To the south of the U.S., at the April Summit of the Americas, the liberal press touted another marvel in world diplomacy when President Obama shook hands with Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez, who had this to say about President Obama less than a month before “He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he’s a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality.”
Over in Cuba, Raúl Castro had Obama pointing to “signs of progress” in relations of the U.S. with Cuba because of the Cuban leader’s statement that Cuba is willing to talk with the United States about "everything," including human rights and political prisoners.
However, before the press could digest that nice remark, brother Fidel Castro poured buckets of cold water on U.S. and Latin American leaders' speculation that we may be at the threshold of a new chapter in U.S.-Cuban relations. The former Cuban leader, who retired in 2006 but maintains loyalists in key positions of power, appeared to contradict his younger brother in written ''reflections'' published by Cuba's official press.
Fidel wrote that Obama had "misinterpreted" Raúl's remarks about Cuba's willingness to discuss human rights issues. According to Fidel, Raúl meant to say that Cuba would free political prisoners if the United States frees five Cubans convicted in the U.S. of spying for Cuba.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself. So much for Obama’s overtures to Iran to “make nice” with Israel and the rest of the world and abandon its goal of nuclear weapons.
After President Obama sought to engage Iran in talks on its nuclear program and other issues, Iranian leader Ahmadinejad, at a UN meeting in April, accused Israel of being the "most cruel and repressive racist regime" and blamed the U.S. invasion of Iraq on a Zionist conspiracy. So much for candidate Obama's pledge to engage our enemies with "no preconditions."
Over to Poland…. In February, Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons.
The letter to Russian President Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
The Poles placed great faith in the United States during the Bush administration. It took a huge risk trusting the U.S. to keep its word on the missile defense agreement. Now, that trust appears to have turned into a plea for continued support. However, the Obama administration appears to have other ideas, despite Secretary of State Clinton’s words recently: "As members of NATO, we take seriously our alliance commitments and I'm very confident that we will work through any issues that lie ahead -- on any front."
Poland wants the U.S. to honor its agreement to build a missile defense base in its country. Poland's president has said that scrapping the project to improve ties with Russia would be an unfriendly gesture toward Poland.
Then, there's China...Remember the February statement by Luo Ping, a director-general of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, explaining how China feels about having to continue to buy U.S. Treasuries:
“We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion… we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do….
The adulation of the new leader of the U.S. continues unabated in the liberal press here and abroad, but there have been, and will be, bumps ahead for the smiling, tele-prompted president. His "100 Days" news conference tonight was more of a campaign speech than a news conference with a predictable dozen or so questions, none of which touched on the economy. However, he was asked about FOCA...the bill to kill all anti-abortion state legislation. Reaffirming his pro-choice stance, at least he danced around the question, rather than answering it directly.
As an aside, over in the UK, in one of the responses to the You-Tube sensation British Conservative EU MP Daniel Hannan, who blogs daily for the UK Telegraph, "Catherine" wrote of PM Gordon Brown: "I wish Dear Leader would be quarantined if that would give us a break from seeing his face or hearing his blathering. Talk about overexposure."
I have difficulty keeping up with our own Dear Leader whose new ideas, the details of which change more often than the sun comes up each morning, have become obtrusive TV fare for millions of us in the U.S. Obama loves to appear on TV and he may pre-empt the daily soap operas with his own. If his first 100 days have him treading in more areas of the economy, foreign relations, and social issues than the feet of a centipede, let’s hope he doesn’t get tripped up. I’m sure he’s thought everything out, though, so there’s not much chance of mistakes in this administration. Right? You can take that to any of a number of our nationalized banks.
President Obama campaigned on the promise to bring the U.S. into better relations with Europe and the world. In the G-20 summit in April, hosted by British PM Gordon Brown, Obama achieved a level of public approval that doubtless pleased the new president. However, his apologies for America’s past did not please conservatives here in the U.S.
Hungarian-born French President Nicolas Sarkozy was not all that impressed with Obama. The French President was more than critical of Obama in a candid conversation with members of Parliament saying “While US President Barack Obama is very intelligent and charismatic, he is not always at his best when it comes to decisions and efficiency… He has only been elected for two months and has never managed a ministry in his life.”
Previous reports including a controversial comment that “Obama is an empty suit.. and has an immature Iranian policy” alledged to have been made by Sarkozy as published in the Israeli publication, Haaretz, were later watered down by diplomatic double speak after the American press jumped on the French President. I would disagree that our President is an empty suit. It's what comes out of that suit that scares me.
Mirek Topolanek, who is running the EU presidency despite the collapse of his government in the Czech Republic, eight days before the G-20 meeting, warned the European Parliament that the Obama administration's stimulus package and financial bail-out "will undermine the stability of the global financial market. All of these steps, these combinations and permanency is the way to hell.”
However, publicly the President was warmly welcomed by most of the G-20 leaders. In Prague, following the G-20 summit, 20,000 people gathered to hear America’s new leader speak, and by all accounts Obama was a smashing success. His Czech appearance proved once again that he has the charm and tact it takes to work with any country—no matter how much it supports U.S. policies.
To the south of the U.S., at the April Summit of the Americas, the liberal press touted another marvel in world diplomacy when President Obama shook hands with Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez, who had this to say about President Obama less than a month before “He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he’s a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality.”
Over in Cuba, Raúl Castro had Obama pointing to “signs of progress” in relations of the U.S. with Cuba because of the Cuban leader’s statement that Cuba is willing to talk with the United States about "everything," including human rights and political prisoners.
However, before the press could digest that nice remark, brother Fidel Castro poured buckets of cold water on U.S. and Latin American leaders' speculation that we may be at the threshold of a new chapter in U.S.-Cuban relations. The former Cuban leader, who retired in 2006 but maintains loyalists in key positions of power, appeared to contradict his younger brother in written ''reflections'' published by Cuba's official press.
Fidel wrote that Obama had "misinterpreted" Raúl's remarks about Cuba's willingness to discuss human rights issues. According to Fidel, Raúl meant to say that Cuba would free political prisoners if the United States frees five Cubans convicted in the U.S. of spying for Cuba.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself. So much for Obama’s overtures to Iran to “make nice” with Israel and the rest of the world and abandon its goal of nuclear weapons.
After President Obama sought to engage Iran in talks on its nuclear program and other issues, Iranian leader Ahmadinejad, at a UN meeting in April, accused Israel of being the "most cruel and repressive racist regime" and blamed the U.S. invasion of Iraq on a Zionist conspiracy. So much for candidate Obama's pledge to engage our enemies with "no preconditions."
Over to Poland…. In February, Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons.
The letter to Russian President Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
The Poles placed great faith in the United States during the Bush administration. It took a huge risk trusting the U.S. to keep its word on the missile defense agreement. Now, that trust appears to have turned into a plea for continued support. However, the Obama administration appears to have other ideas, despite Secretary of State Clinton’s words recently: "As members of NATO, we take seriously our alliance commitments and I'm very confident that we will work through any issues that lie ahead -- on any front."
Poland wants the U.S. to honor its agreement to build a missile defense base in its country. Poland's president has said that scrapping the project to improve ties with Russia would be an unfriendly gesture toward Poland.
Then, there's China...Remember the February statement by Luo Ping, a director-general of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, explaining how China feels about having to continue to buy U.S. Treasuries:
“We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion… we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do….
The adulation of the new leader of the U.S. continues unabated in the liberal press here and abroad, but there have been, and will be, bumps ahead for the smiling, tele-prompted president. His "100 Days" news conference tonight was more of a campaign speech than a news conference with a predictable dozen or so questions, none of which touched on the economy. However, he was asked about FOCA...the bill to kill all anti-abortion state legislation. Reaffirming his pro-choice stance, at least he danced around the question, rather than answering it directly.
As an aside, over in the UK, in one of the responses to the You-Tube sensation British Conservative EU MP Daniel Hannan, who blogs daily for the UK Telegraph, "Catherine" wrote of PM Gordon Brown: "I wish Dear Leader would be quarantined if that would give us a break from seeing his face or hearing his blathering. Talk about overexposure."
I have difficulty keeping up with our own Dear Leader whose new ideas, the details of which change more often than the sun comes up each morning, have become obtrusive TV fare for millions of us in the U.S. Obama loves to appear on TV and he may pre-empt the daily soap operas with his own. If his first 100 days have him treading in more areas of the economy, foreign relations, and social issues than the feet of a centipede, let’s hope he doesn’t get tripped up. I’m sure he’s thought everything out, though, so there’s not much chance of mistakes in this administration. Right? You can take that to any of a number of our nationalized banks.
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