I'm Black, Don't Abort Me
By
Jason L. Riley
Updated Feb. 23, 2014 12:31 p.m. ET
"I'm Black, Don't Shoot Me," is the website headline of a column in Friday's Washington Post by Eugene Robinson.
"Please don't shoot my sons, either, or my brothers-in-law, nephews, nephews-in-law or other male relatives," writes Mr. Robinson. "I have quite a few friends and acquaintances who also happen to be black men, and I'd appreciate your not shooting them as well, even if the value you place on their lives is approximately zero."
The column is a response to last week's verdict in the Michael Dunn trial. Jordan Davis, a black 17-year-old, was shot dead in his car by Dunn during a dispute over loud music. Dunn was found guilty on three counts of attempted second-degree murder—three other teenagers were in the car with Davis and survived—and could spend the rest of his life in prison. But the fact that the jury hung on the first-degree murder charge stemming from Davis's death has some black liberals in high dudgeon.
Mr. Robinson sees Dunn, who is white, as representative of a larger society that places less value—"approximately zero"—on the lives of blacks, or at least those blacks we don't twice-elect president. Fellow black commentator Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic magazine couldn't agree more. "Jordan Davis had a mother and a father. It did not save him. Trayvon Martin had a mother and a father. They could not save him," writes Mr. Coates. "My son has a father and mother. We cannot protect him from our country, which is our aegis and our assailant. We cannot protect our children because racism in America is not merely a belief system but a heritage, and the inability of black parents to protect their children is an ancient tradition."
According to the latest Justice Department figures, blacks make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but represent 50 percent of homicide victims. Moreover, black offenders kill 90 percent of black murder victims. And in the vast majority of interracial crimes, the victim is white and the perpetrator is black. In 2008 there were about 520,000 interracial violent crimes reported, and 82.5 percent were black-on-white, while just 17.5 percent were white-on-black. Messrs. Robinson and Coates would have us believe that black people in America should be more fearful of the Michael Dunns and George Zimmermans than of fellow blacks. Which is preposterous.
What these crimes statistics don't show is how early the black-on-black violence begins. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has just released a report showing that more black babies in the city are aborted than born. In 2012, there were 6,570 more abortions than live births of black children. The other groups studied—whites, Asians and Hispanics—all had more live births than abortions. Blacks are 25 percent of New York's population, but the black babies aborted were more than 42% of all abortions.
Perhaps that might interest black liberals who want to downplay black-on-black violence and lecture us about the value that whites place on black lives.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
10 quotes that shred progressivism
10 quotes that shred progressivism from a best-selling British author who left the Left
Feb. 20, 2014 8:47am Benjamin
The below quotes come from award winning British journalist and best-selling author Melanie Phillips’ “Guardian Angel.” “Guardian Angel” tells the story of how Phillips started her career in British journalism on the Left in the late 1970s, only to become a stalwart Liberal culture warrior, as reflected in her positions on Islam, Israel, feminism, education, economics, environmentalism and a whole host of other issues that have earned her the wrath and contempt of European Leftists, particularly among media peers.
1. The “Chicago Way” (in London) ”I always believed in the duty of a journalist to uphold truth over lies, follow the evidence where it led and fight abuses of power wherever they were to be found. I gradually realised, however, that the left was not on the side of truth, reason, and justice, but instead promoted ideology, malice, and oppression. Rather than fighting the abuse of power, it embodied it.
Through demonising its enemies in this way, the left has undermined the possibility of finding common ground and all but destroyed rational discourse. This is because, as shown by its reaction to Lady Thatcher’s death, it substitutes insult and abuse for argument and reasoned disagreement.”
Through demonising its enemies…the left has…all but destroyed rational discourse.
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2. Leftist totalitarianism ”Moreover, while there were undoubtedly serious differences, the distinction between tankie totalitarians and the soft left served to mask the fact that the soft left was also totalitarian in its instincts. It may have recoiled from the tanks rolling into Hungary or Czechoslovakia, but it most certainly parked its own tanks on the lawns of British society. From there it proceeded to lay siege to the fortresses of Western culture, crushing all dissent beneath its tracks.”
3. The Overton Window ”More devastatingly still, by twisting the meaning of words such as liberal, compassion, justice and many others into their opposites, it has hijacked the centre-ground of politics. Left-wing ideology is now falsely said to constitute the moderate centre-ground, while the true centre-ground is now vilified as ‘the right’. This is as mind-bending as it is destructive, for it has introduced a fatal confusion into political debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Redefining the true middle ground of politics as ‘right-wing’ has served to besmirch and toxify the commitment to truth, reason, decency, and reality which characterises where most people happen to situate their thinking. At the same time, by loudly asserting that left-wing ideology is really ‘centrist’, the left has succeeded in presenting extremist, antisocial, or even nihilistic ideas as unarguably good, and all dissent is promptly vilified as ‘extreme’…For by asserting that it embodied the centre ground, what the left actually did was to hijack the centre ground and substitute its own extreme values — thus shifting Britain’s centre of political and moral gravity to the left, and besmirching as extremists those on the true centre ground. And something very similar has happened in the US, where language has been appropriated in order to engineer a seismic shift in attitudes, concealed by a mind-bending reversal of the meaning of words.”
4. The Middle Eastern double standard and Leftist racism ”In a leader conference one day, I asked why the Guardian appeared to be pursuing a double standard in its coverage of the Middle East. Why did it afford next-to-no coverage of Arab atrocities against other Arabs while devoting acres of space to attacking Israel for defending itself against terrorism? The answer I received from my colleagues that day stunned me. Of course there was a double standard, they said. How could there not be? The Third World did not subscribe to the same ethical beliefs as the West about the value of human life. The West therefore was not entitled to judge any mass killings in the Third World by its own standards. That would be racist.
The left actually abandons the oppressed of the world..all the time weeping crocodile tears for them
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I was most deeply shocked. The views they had just expressed amounted to pure racism. They were in effect saying that citizens of a Third World country were not entitled to the same assumptions of human rights, life, and liberty as those in the developed world.
But how could this be? This was the Guardian, shrine of anti-racism, custodian of social conscience, embodiment of virtue. How then could they be guilty of racism – and moreover, dress it up as anti-racism? Of course, this is the core of what we now know today as ‘political correctness’ – where concepts are turned into their polar opposite in order to give miscreants a free pass if they belong to certain groups designated by the left as ‘victims’. They are thus deemed to be incapable of doing anything wrong, while groups designated as ‘oppressors’ can do no right. According to this double-think it was simply impossible for the Guardian folk to be guilty of racism, since they championed the victims of the Third World against their Western capitalist oppressors. But when those Third World unfortunates became the victims of the Third World tyrants ruling over them, the left remained silent – since to criticise any Third World person was said to be ‘racism’. This twisted thinking is what now passes for ‘progressive’ thinking in Britain and America. Thus the left actually abandons the oppressed of the world to their fate, all the time weeping crocodile tears for them – while sanctimoniously condemning ‘the right’ for its heartlessness! It is this hijacking of language and thought itself that has done so much to destroy any common understanding of the political ‘centre ground’, the lethal confusion that has so unfortunately polarised political debate into vacuous caricatures that have precious little to do with reality…The really striking thing was that…Israel and Jew-bashing bigotry was strongest on the supposedly anti-racist left. As I noted in 2003, what was going on was a kind of Holocaust inversion with the Israelis being demonised as Nazis, and the Palestinians given a free pass as the ‘new Jews’. Hatred of the Jews now marched grotesquely behind the left’s banner of anti-racism and human rights, giving rise not merely to distortions, fabrications and slander about Israel, but mainstream media chat about the malign power of the Jews over America and world policy.”
5. Progressive education ”By now I had been looking for schools for my own children and I could see for myself that teaching had been hijacked by left-wing ideology. Instead of being taught to read and write, children were being left to play in various states of anarchy on the grounds that any exercise of adult authority was oppressive and would destroy the innate creativity of the child.
Galvanised by the reaction which suggested that things were far worse than I had realised, I wrote more about education. I wrote about the refusal to teach Standard English on the grounds that this was ‘elitist’. How could this be? I had seen firsthand in my own under-educated family that an inability to control the language meant an inability to control their own lives. My Polish grandmother had not been able to fill in an official form without help; my father just didn’t have the words to express complicated thoughts, and would always lose out against those who looked down at him from their educated pedestal. I also observed that those putting such pressure on these teachers from the education establishment were the supercilious upper middle classes, who had no personal experience whatsoever of what it was actually like to be poor and uneducated or an immigrant but were nevertheless imposing their own ideological fantasies onto the vulnerable – and harming them as a result. Teachers wrote to me in despair at the pressure not to impose
Standard English on children on the grounds that this was discriminatory. They knew that, on the contrary, this was to abandon those children to permanent servitude and ignorance…Most teachers, I wrote, were unaware that they were the unwitting troops of a cultural revolution, being now taught to teach according to doctrines whose core aim was to subvert the fundamental tenets of Western society.
A generation of activists had captured academia, and, in accordance with the strategy of cultural subversion advocated by Antonin Gramsci, had successfully suborned education to a far-left agenda.”
Most teachers…were unaware that they were the unwitting troops of a cultural revolution
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6. The negligent welfare state ”The experience of those years also told me that something was going very wrong with the welfare state.
It wasn’t just the lack of provision, which meant that the only care available for my mother from the local authority was a few hours a week with untrained carers who had been recruited off the street. It was also a callousness and indifference amongst the supposedly caring services. It was the hospital nurses who, when my mother broke her hip and through her feebleness was unable to move at all in her hospital bed, left her food and water unwrapped or out of reach and refused to make her comfortable; and the ward sister who, when I complained, told me with a straight face that my mother, who could barely put one foot in front of the other, had a short time before been ‘skipping round the ward’. I realised then that in the National Health Service, Britain’s sanctified temple of altruism, compassion, and decency, if you were old, feeble, and poor you just didn’t stand a chance.”
In the National Health Service…if you were old, feeble, and poor you just didn’t stand a chance.
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7. Environmentalism and fascism ”On the left, it was very obviously a new take on the usual anti-Western, anti-capitalist agenda; the West would have to give up consumerism and return to a barter economy to save the planet. Or something like that. But it was also a sanitised version of the disreputable and discredited dogma of population control, which had given rise to the eugenics movement and the semi-mystical worship of the organic, both of which had been deeply implicated in both the rise of Nazism and in ‘progressive’ thinking up to World War II. To me, the clear message of environmentalism was that the planet would be fine if it wasn’t for the human race. So it was a deeply regressive, reactionary, proto-fascist movement for putting modernity into reverse, destroying the integrity of science, and threatening humanity itself.”
[Environmentalism is] a deeply regressive..proto-fascist movement for putting modernity into reverse
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8. The disintegration of the family ”Surely, though, the essence of being progressive was to minimise harm and protect the most vulnerable? Yet this was simply tossed aside by left-wingers, who elevated their own desires into rights that trumped the emotional, physical and intellectual well-being of their children – and then berated as heartless reactionaries those who criticised them! The more this was being justified, the more it was happening. Rising numbers of people were abandoning their spouses and children, or breaking up other people’s families, or bringing children into the world without a father around at all. The left claimed that these activities made the women and children happy and were a refreshing change from the bad old days when simply everyone was miserable because marriage chained women to men who – as everyone with the correct view knew – were basically feckless wife-beaters and child abusers as well as being irrationally prejudiced against the opposite sex.
Since marriage, by and large, was a protection for both children and adults, I thought the state should promote it as a social good. For this I was told I was reactionary, authoritarian and, of course, right-wing. Yet how could it be progressive to encourage deceit, betrayal of trust, breaking of promises and harm to children?
On issues such as education and family, I believed I was doing no more than stating the obvious. To my amazement, however, I found that I was now branded an extremist for doing so. Astoundingly, truth, evidence, and reason had become right-wing concepts. I was now deemed to have become ‘the right’ and even ‘the extreme right’. And when I started writing about family breakdown, I was also called an ‘Old Testament fundamentalist’. At the time, I shrugged this aside as merely a gratuitous bit of bigotry. Much later, however, I came to realise that it was actually a rather precise insult. My assailants had immediately understood something I did not myself at the time understand – that the destruction of the traditional family had as its real target the destruction of Biblical morality. I thought I was merely standing up for evidence, duty and the protection of the vulnerable. But they understood that the banner behind which I was actually marching was the Biblical moral law which put chains on people’s appetites.
The destruction of the traditional family had as its real target…destruction of Biblical morality
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I had not yet realised that the left’s aggression towards any dissent or challenge is essentially defensive. They are either guilty about what they are doing because they know it is wrong, or else at some level at least they know that their intellectual position is built on sand. What matters to them above all is that they are seen to be virtuous and intelligent. They care about being seen to be compassionate. They simply cannot deal with the possibility that they might not be. They deal with any such suggestion not by facing up to any harm they may be doing, but by shutting down the argument altogether. That’s because the banner behind which they march is not altruism. It is narcissism.”
9. Forced paternal child support and sex roles ”the roles of the sexes were being reversed under a policy of enforced androgyny. Women were assuming the roles of both mothers and fathers while masculinity was being progressively written out of the cultural script, and men were being bullied into turning into quasi-women. Far from delivering greater freedom for women, however, this agenda was actually harming them along with their children as both family life and normative values were destroyed.
I saw this as nothing less than outright nihilism which threatened to destroy the West. If all common bonds of tradition, custom, culture, morality, and so forth were destroyed, there would no social glue to keep society together. It would gradually fracture into a set of disparate tribes with competing agendas, and thus eventually would destroy itself. And as I was coming to realise, just about every issue on which I was so embattled – family, education, nation, and many more – were all salients on the great battleground of the culture wars, on which the defenders of the West were losing hands down.”
10. 9/11, moral relativism and appeasement ”Like most others, I had not seen 9/11 coming. Yet two days earlier, in a column about the decline of Christianity in Britain, I wrote, ‘Liberal values will be protected only if Christianity holds the line as our dominant culture. A society which professes neutrality between cultures would create a void which Islam, with its militant political creed, would attempt to fill’
…For immediately after the Twin Towers collapsed, I realised that what the West was facing was different from ordinary terrorism; and different again from war by one state on another. This was something more akin to a cancer in the global bloodstream which had to be fought with all the weapons, both military and cultural, at our disposal. And yet in that moment I also realised that the West would flinch from this fight, because it no longer recognised the difference between good and evil or the validity of preferring some cultures to others, but had decided instead that all such concepts were relative. And so it would most likely take the path of appeasement rather than the measures needed to defend itself from the attempt to destroy it. And so it has proved.
All, however, is not lost. A culture can pull back from the brink if it tears off its suicidal blinders in time. This can still be achieved — but it requires a recognition above all of the paradox that so many fail to understand, that freedom only exists within clear boundaries, and that preserving the values of Western civilisation requires a robust reassertion of the Judeo-Christian principles on which its foundations rest. And that requires moral, political, and religious leadership of the highest order — and buckets of courage.”
Ukraine - Cival War Nears
Apocalypse soon: Ukrainian president reportedly flees Kiev
Russia is prepared to fight a war over the Ukrainian territory of Crimea to protect the ethnic Russian population and its military base there, a senior government official has told the FT.
“If Ukraine breaks apart, it will trigger a war,” the official said. “They will lose Crimea first [because] we will go in and protect [it], just as we did in Georgia.” In August 2008, Russian troops invaded Georgia after the Georgian military launched a surprise attack on the separatist region of South Ossetia in an effort to establish its dominance over the republic…
However, many government officials say in private that Ukraine falls inside Russia’s sphere of influence. “We will not allow Europe and the US to take Ukraine from us. The states of the former Soviet Union, we are one family,” said a foreign policy official. “They think Russia is still as weak as in the early 1990s but we are not.”
There is, in theory, a deal between Yanukovych and the opposition to reform the government, but Russia’s apparently not interested and neither are the Euromaidan protesters. They want Yanukovych to resign; meanwhile, the woman he defeated for the presidency four years ago could be out of prison within the next few days and ready to help lead the opposition. All the makings of civil war are present, in other words, from powerful national sponsors to ethnic tensions between Russian descendants living in the country and native Ukrainians. Someone just needs to give the word, whether Yanukovych or his boss. And even if Yanukovych resigns, depriving Putin of his proxy, the word may still come down. That’s what “Little Russia” means to Moscow.
Tomorrow President Viktor Yanukovych will take part in a Congress of the “Ukrainian Front” which is being organised by the Kharkiv governor, Mikhail Dobkin.
Sources at Kharkiv airport told Hvilya that the aeroplane carrying Yanukovych will land in Kharkiv within half an hour.
Furthermore, our sources in the Presidential Administration reported that all of the most combat ready of the Berkut and army forces have been transferred to Kharkiv and the southeast.
If what The Interpreter’s hearing is true, Yanukovych has left Kiev for the city of Kharkiv. Maybe that’s because he’s lost control of the capital or maybe, as the State Department claims, he’s gone to Kharkiv to, ahem, shore up support. Either way, though, there’s no scenario where the government simply abdicates and the opposition takes over. Russia won’t relinquish the country that easily. So either things are about to get even rougher in Kiev as Putin fills the power vacuum or Yanukovych is planning a new move. What does that mean? Naval War College prof John Schindler fears the worst:
Make no mistake: if Yanukovych announces the succession of a Moscow-backed "Eastern Ukraine" - Europe has a war on its hands. A major one.
Jphn Schindler
The speaker of the Crimean parliament has already said it’s possible the region would turn to Russia for “protection” if the country fractures. That’s likely to be one of the first flashpoints. What better way to celebrate a successful Olympics than with a big irredentist blowout on the peninsula?
If Russian tanks roll, how does the EU answer?
"Judge rips feds in Sherrod-Breitbart lawsuit."
"Judge rips feds in Sherrod-Breitbart lawsuit."
Now, this is interesting. From Josh Gerstein at Politico:
"Slow roll" is an intriguing expression to hear from a judge. It seems to originate in poker and to refer to some annoying taunting approaches to revealing your winning hand.
ADDED: Instapundit says:
A federal judge delivered a severe tongue-lashing to a Justice Department lawyer Thursday, slamming the Obama Administration for its handling of demands for government records in the libel lawsuit fired Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod filed against conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.Release the email! We here in Wisconsin are deluged with internal emails relating to Scott Walker. Freedom of information is a bitch.
During a 40-minute hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon repeatedly ripped into the government and DOJ trial counsel David Glass for resisting requests from both sides in the case for government files and e-mails that might be of use in the litigation....
At the outset of Thursday's hearing, Leon lit into Glass for filing a 21-page statement outlining the government's position—a filing submitted electronically just after midnight Thursday along with a stack of nine exhibits. The judge called it "a self-serving pleading, not requested by anyone" and repeatedly suggested it was filed for "public relations" reasons rather than because it might be useful to the court....Leon, by the way, is the judge who ruled last December that the NSA surveillance program is a likely violation of the 4th Amendment, saying "I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion' than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen...." He's a George W. Bush appointee and a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas.
"This is not a typical case.....This case involves someone who was fired by a cabinet officer....The government is not going to be able to slow roll this case," the judge insisted.
"Slow roll" is an intriguing expression to hear from a judge. It seems to originate in poker and to refer to some annoying taunting approaches to revealing your winning hand.
ADDED: Instapundit says:
I believe I said when this suit was filed that the discovery was likely to be interesting. If DOJ is stonewalling, it must be.David Lat, quoting the government's memo, says:
The government is willing to produce the evidence that is directly relevant to matters actually at issue in the litigation. But as a non-party, it doesn’t want to get dragged into this mess more than necessary....
Eighty-three categories of document requests, plus a raft of deposition subpoenas, issued to a third party? This sounds a bit like a fishing expedition to me.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Republicans open investigations into ObamaCare’s disaster sites
Republicans open investigations into ObamaCare’s disaster sites
By Jonathan Easley Republicans are launching investigations into three state-run ObamaCare exchanges that are failing disastrously.
Lawmakers are setting their sites on exchanges in Oregon, Maryland and Massachusetts, where Democratic governors embraced the healthcare law, and are demanding to know why their expensive online portals remain useless more than four months after launch.
On Wednesday, four Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to the Government Accountability
Office (GAO) requesting a review of the $304 million in federal grants that Oregon received to build its broken website.
“The catastrophic breakdown of Cover Oregon is unacceptable, and taxpayers deserve accountability,” wrote the group of lawmakers led by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.).
The scrutiny of the state enrollment portals is a shift from October, when the federal site, HealthCare.gov, was out of service but state-run exchanges in California, New York and even red Kentucky appeared to be humming along.
But several states are having major problems with their ObamaCare sites.
In Oregon, not even one person has yet to enroll online, leaving the state completely reliant on paper applications.
Walden and the other lawmakers are laying the groundwork to claw-back some of the state’s $304 million in grants if Oregon decides to abandon its state-run exchange and join the federal system.
“With the March 31 deadline for open enrollment fast approaching, the state of Oregon will need to make a decision on the fate of
Cover Oregon soon,” the letter to the GAO reads. “The catastrophic breakdown of Cover Oregon is unacceptable, and taxpayers deserve accountability.”
Despite the site problems, Oregon is more than halfway to its Congressional Budget Office estimate of having 64,000 enrollees by the end of March, according to an Avalere Health analysis.
Gov. John Kitzhaber (D-Ore.) told The Hill in an email that covering Oregonians would remain his focus.
“Congress will do what Congress will do just so long as it does not slow down the process of getting Oregonians healthcare,” he said.
“Already more than 225,000 Oregonians have enrolled in quality, affordable coverage, including more than 35,000 in private insurance plans.”
The governor’s office noted that it’s only the consumer portal that isn’t functioning properly, and said the state is “using large parts of the technology we purchased to calculate what people are eligible for, help them get access to financial assistance, and service their accounts.”
The website problems run deeper in Maryland, where state officials have been debating for months whether to abandon its faltering state-run exchange in favor of HealthCare.gov.
Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who is mulling a run for the White House in 2016, will have to answer to Reps. Andy Harris (R-Md.) and Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who on Wednesday sent a letter to Health and Human Services Inspector General (IG) Daniel Levinson asking for an investigation into Maryland’s exchange.
“By the end of the year, over $100 million federal dollars will have been spent on a project that should have cost much less, and doesn’t work,” they wrote. “As a result of the fact that Maryland appears willing to continue to waste tens of millions of more federal dollars, we ask that the investigation start immediately.”
Harris and Kingston accused state lawmakers and administration officials of ignoring warnings from auditors that Maryland site suffered from critical flaws and wouldn’t be ready to launch.
“Despite all of these warning signs, Maryland chose to continue to waste and abuse federal taxpayer money by opening up what they knew was a flawed exchange to the pubic,” they wrote. “Subsequent to the disastrous rollout, additional federal dollars continue to be spent attempting to fix what … might not even be fixable.”
Harris and Kingston also asked the IG to determine whether federal funds could be recouped on the project. Maryland has significantly underperformed its enrollment goals, signing up only 29,000 of the 77,600 that had been expected for the state by the end of March, according to Avalere.
A spokesman for O’Malley did not return a request for comment.
And Massachusetts, which was once the model for state-run healthcare exchanges, presently has the worst enrollment percentage in the country, having signed-up only 8,100, or 17 percent, of its expected total for 2014, according to Avalere.
The state’s healthcare exchange worked fine until it had to comply with the new healthcare law. Since October, the site has suffered frequent crashes and load problems.
The Boston Globe reported on Thursday that the state’s exchange director, Jean Yang, was reduced to tears at a board meeting while discussing the work her agency has done to overcome the challenges.
“These people came here to lead and innovate, and instead, they’re doing manual workarounds, and they are embarrassed to tell friends and family that they work for the Health Connector,” Yang said, according to the Globe.
“We have to work harder,” she said. “That means I need tell the staff members they’re not doing a good enough job, and I’m telling them that, even though they have been doing this tirelessly for months, and they’re exhausted.”
Yang said the state officials are working through a stack of 50,000 paper applications, each of which takes about two hours to process.
An official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told The Hill on Friday that the agency has extended a three-month waiver for Massachusetts that would allow it to continue enrolling those who had coverage from the previous exchange and are transferring to a new Connector plan.
Following the example of Democratic lawmakers in Washington, state officials in Oregon, Maryland and Massachusetts are standing behind the healthcare law in concept but are lashing out about the rollout.
“No one is angrier than I am about the issues with CoverOregon,” Kitzhaber said. “No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than I do. We do already have new CoverOregon leadership in place. And I won't hesitate to take further action to make this right. That's why I called in First Data to do an independent review of what went wrong and how.”
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/198474-republicans-open-investigations-into#ixzz2tgnfqed8
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
By Jonathan Easley Republicans are launching investigations into three state-run ObamaCare exchanges that are failing disastrously.
Lawmakers are setting their sites on exchanges in Oregon, Maryland and Massachusetts, where Democratic governors embraced the healthcare law, and are demanding to know why their expensive online portals remain useless more than four months after launch.
On Wednesday, four Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to the Government Accountability
Office (GAO) requesting a review of the $304 million in federal grants that Oregon received to build its broken website.
“The catastrophic breakdown of Cover Oregon is unacceptable, and taxpayers deserve accountability,” wrote the group of lawmakers led by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.).
The scrutiny of the state enrollment portals is a shift from October, when the federal site, HealthCare.gov, was out of service but state-run exchanges in California, New York and even red Kentucky appeared to be humming along.
But several states are having major problems with their ObamaCare sites.
In Oregon, not even one person has yet to enroll online, leaving the state completely reliant on paper applications.
Walden and the other lawmakers are laying the groundwork to claw-back some of the state’s $304 million in grants if Oregon decides to abandon its state-run exchange and join the federal system.
“With the March 31 deadline for open enrollment fast approaching, the state of Oregon will need to make a decision on the fate of
Cover Oregon soon,” the letter to the GAO reads. “The catastrophic breakdown of Cover Oregon is unacceptable, and taxpayers deserve accountability.”
Despite the site problems, Oregon is more than halfway to its Congressional Budget Office estimate of having 64,000 enrollees by the end of March, according to an Avalere Health analysis.
Gov. John Kitzhaber (D-Ore.) told The Hill in an email that covering Oregonians would remain his focus.
“Congress will do what Congress will do just so long as it does not slow down the process of getting Oregonians healthcare,” he said.
“Already more than 225,000 Oregonians have enrolled in quality, affordable coverage, including more than 35,000 in private insurance plans.”
The governor’s office noted that it’s only the consumer portal that isn’t functioning properly, and said the state is “using large parts of the technology we purchased to calculate what people are eligible for, help them get access to financial assistance, and service their accounts.”
The website problems run deeper in Maryland, where state officials have been debating for months whether to abandon its faltering state-run exchange in favor of HealthCare.gov.
Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who is mulling a run for the White House in 2016, will have to answer to Reps. Andy Harris (R-Md.) and Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who on Wednesday sent a letter to Health and Human Services Inspector General (IG) Daniel Levinson asking for an investigation into Maryland’s exchange.
“By the end of the year, over $100 million federal dollars will have been spent on a project that should have cost much less, and doesn’t work,” they wrote. “As a result of the fact that Maryland appears willing to continue to waste tens of millions of more federal dollars, we ask that the investigation start immediately.”
Harris and Kingston accused state lawmakers and administration officials of ignoring warnings from auditors that Maryland site suffered from critical flaws and wouldn’t be ready to launch.
“Despite all of these warning signs, Maryland chose to continue to waste and abuse federal taxpayer money by opening up what they knew was a flawed exchange to the pubic,” they wrote. “Subsequent to the disastrous rollout, additional federal dollars continue to be spent attempting to fix what … might not even be fixable.”
Harris and Kingston also asked the IG to determine whether federal funds could be recouped on the project. Maryland has significantly underperformed its enrollment goals, signing up only 29,000 of the 77,600 that had been expected for the state by the end of March, according to Avalere.
A spokesman for O’Malley did not return a request for comment.
And Massachusetts, which was once the model for state-run healthcare exchanges, presently has the worst enrollment percentage in the country, having signed-up only 8,100, or 17 percent, of its expected total for 2014, according to Avalere.
The state’s healthcare exchange worked fine until it had to comply with the new healthcare law. Since October, the site has suffered frequent crashes and load problems.
The Boston Globe reported on Thursday that the state’s exchange director, Jean Yang, was reduced to tears at a board meeting while discussing the work her agency has done to overcome the challenges.
“These people came here to lead and innovate, and instead, they’re doing manual workarounds, and they are embarrassed to tell friends and family that they work for the Health Connector,” Yang said, according to the Globe.
“We have to work harder,” she said. “That means I need tell the staff members they’re not doing a good enough job, and I’m telling them that, even though they have been doing this tirelessly for months, and they’re exhausted.”
Yang said the state officials are working through a stack of 50,000 paper applications, each of which takes about two hours to process.
An official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told The Hill on Friday that the agency has extended a three-month waiver for Massachusetts that would allow it to continue enrolling those who had coverage from the previous exchange and are transferring to a new Connector plan.
Following the example of Democratic lawmakers in Washington, state officials in Oregon, Maryland and Massachusetts are standing behind the healthcare law in concept but are lashing out about the rollout.
“No one is angrier than I am about the issues with CoverOregon,” Kitzhaber said. “No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than I do. We do already have new CoverOregon leadership in place. And I won't hesitate to take further action to make this right. That's why I called in First Data to do an independent review of what went wrong and how.”
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/198474-republicans-open-investigations-into#ixzz2tgnfqed8
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
Lefty Meltdown Leads Latin Revival.
Lefty Meltdown Leads Latin Revival.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD:
Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina are languishing in differing shades of turmoil, steadily losing ground to regional underdogs. The Pacific Alliance, an historic trade agreement between Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Colombia (and coming soon: Costa Rica), has the potential to recolor Latin America’s economic map and introduce some new regional powerhouses to the world stage. . . .
The newly formed bloc is made up of Latin America’s fastest growing economies. These states boast the region’s most competitive, business-friendly economies and the lowest inflation rates. Current transactions between these countries represent a mere 4 percent of their total trade; the potential for increased financial cooperation is immense. They have already eliminated 92 percent of trade tariffs.
The Latin Lefties are none too pleased with the new arrangement. Bolivian President Evo Morales called the alliance a Washington-led conspiracy. Brazil’s Lula and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa decried the Alliance as a neoliberal takeover.
But while these leaders sulk, their countries continue to disintegrate. Mass unrest continues to roil Venezuela; protestors are fed up with government corruption, media censorship, and a failing economy. An Argentinian inflation crisis threatens economic disaster. Brazil, which the WSJ called a “wilting giant”, faces yet another year of economic contraction. On top of that, the country’s 2014 World Cup preparations are foundering and civil unrest is growing more belligerent (and then there’s Brazil’s upcoming summer Olympics preparation to worry about).
Yes, their performance has been poor. A free-market approach would do better, but — as with here in America — a free-market approach offers less in the way of graft and self-importance to the political class.
Posted at 10:30 am by Glenn Reynolds
Lefty Meltdown Leads Latin Revival
Are we about to witness a big power shift in Latin America?
Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina are languishing in differing shades of turmoil, steadily losing ground to regional underdogs. The Pacific Alliance, an historic trade agreement between Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Colombia (and coming soon: Costa Rica), has the potential to recolor Latin America’s economic map and introduce some new regional powerhouses to the world stage. As The Atlantic points out, not all the credit goes to the underdogs:
One reason the Pacific Alliance may succeed is the increasingly urgent need to transcend the chronic failure to link Latin America’s economies.
The Alliance would never have become a priority for its four members if Brazil had offered a credible plan to further economic integration with its most trade-oriented Latin American neighbors. Or if Hugo Chávez had been less successful in making free trade a bad word. The late Venezuelan president prioritized political over economic integration, and he was not shy about using his country’s oil to scuttle “neoliberal free trade agreements.” The United States, meanwhile, was too distracted by emergencies abroad and hobbled by gridlocked politics at home to launch initiatives capable of inspiring Latin American leaders.
The newly formed bloc is made up of Latin America’s fastest growing economies. These states boast the region’s most competitive, business-friendly economies and the lowest inflation rates. Current transactions between these countries represent a mere 4 percent of their total trade; the potential for increased financial cooperation is immense. They have already eliminated 92 percent of trade tariffs.
The Latin Lefties are none too pleased with the new arrangement. Bolivian President Evo Morales called the alliance a Washington-led conspiracy. Brazil’s Lula and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa decried the Alliance as a neoliberal takeover.
But while these leaders sulk, their countries continue to disintegrate. Mass unrest continues to roil Venezuela; protestors are fed up with government corruption, media censorship, and a failing economy. An Argentinian inflation crisis threatens economic disaster. Brazil, which the WSJ called a “wilting giant”, faces yet another year of economic contraction. On top of that, the country’s 2014 World Cup preparations are foundering and civil unrest is growing more belligerent (and then there’s Brazil’s upcoming summer Olympics preparation to worry about).
The Pacific Alliance offers a glimmer of hope for a Latin revival. For all their leaders’ buoyant rhetoric and revolutionary zeal, the region’s past powerhouses have failed to deliver in many ways. If the Pacific Alliance is the start of something fruitful, it would be another nail in the Bolivarians’s coffin.
Published on February 17, 2014 3:51 pm
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD:
Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina are languishing in differing shades of turmoil, steadily losing ground to regional underdogs. The Pacific Alliance, an historic trade agreement between Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Colombia (and coming soon: Costa Rica), has the potential to recolor Latin America’s economic map and introduce some new regional powerhouses to the world stage. . . .
The newly formed bloc is made up of Latin America’s fastest growing economies. These states boast the region’s most competitive, business-friendly economies and the lowest inflation rates. Current transactions between these countries represent a mere 4 percent of their total trade; the potential for increased financial cooperation is immense. They have already eliminated 92 percent of trade tariffs.
The Latin Lefties are none too pleased with the new arrangement. Bolivian President Evo Morales called the alliance a Washington-led conspiracy. Brazil’s Lula and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa decried the Alliance as a neoliberal takeover.
But while these leaders sulk, their countries continue to disintegrate. Mass unrest continues to roil Venezuela; protestors are fed up with government corruption, media censorship, and a failing economy. An Argentinian inflation crisis threatens economic disaster. Brazil, which the WSJ called a “wilting giant”, faces yet another year of economic contraction. On top of that, the country’s 2014 World Cup preparations are foundering and civil unrest is growing more belligerent (and then there’s Brazil’s upcoming summer Olympics preparation to worry about).
Yes, their performance has been poor. A free-market approach would do better, but — as with here in America — a free-market approach offers less in the way of graft and self-importance to the political class.
Posted at 10:30 am by Glenn Reynolds
Lefty Meltdown Leads Latin Revival
Are we about to witness a big power shift in Latin America?
Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina are languishing in differing shades of turmoil, steadily losing ground to regional underdogs. The Pacific Alliance, an historic trade agreement between Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Colombia (and coming soon: Costa Rica), has the potential to recolor Latin America’s economic map and introduce some new regional powerhouses to the world stage. As The Atlantic points out, not all the credit goes to the underdogs:
One reason the Pacific Alliance may succeed is the increasingly urgent need to transcend the chronic failure to link Latin America’s economies.
The Alliance would never have become a priority for its four members if Brazil had offered a credible plan to further economic integration with its most trade-oriented Latin American neighbors. Or if Hugo Chávez had been less successful in making free trade a bad word. The late Venezuelan president prioritized political over economic integration, and he was not shy about using his country’s oil to scuttle “neoliberal free trade agreements.” The United States, meanwhile, was too distracted by emergencies abroad and hobbled by gridlocked politics at home to launch initiatives capable of inspiring Latin American leaders.
The newly formed bloc is made up of Latin America’s fastest growing economies. These states boast the region’s most competitive, business-friendly economies and the lowest inflation rates. Current transactions between these countries represent a mere 4 percent of their total trade; the potential for increased financial cooperation is immense. They have already eliminated 92 percent of trade tariffs.
The Latin Lefties are none too pleased with the new arrangement. Bolivian President Evo Morales called the alliance a Washington-led conspiracy. Brazil’s Lula and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa decried the Alliance as a neoliberal takeover.
But while these leaders sulk, their countries continue to disintegrate. Mass unrest continues to roil Venezuela; protestors are fed up with government corruption, media censorship, and a failing economy. An Argentinian inflation crisis threatens economic disaster. Brazil, which the WSJ called a “wilting giant”, faces yet another year of economic contraction. On top of that, the country’s 2014 World Cup preparations are foundering and civil unrest is growing more belligerent (and then there’s Brazil’s upcoming summer Olympics preparation to worry about).
The Pacific Alliance offers a glimmer of hope for a Latin revival. For all their leaders’ buoyant rhetoric and revolutionary zeal, the region’s past powerhouses have failed to deliver in many ways. If the Pacific Alliance is the start of something fruitful, it would be another nail in the Bolivarians’s coffin.
Published on February 17, 2014 3:51 pm
Reckless Unions
February 17, 2014
Reckless Unions
Pension reform could save cities on the brink of bankruptcy.
Public employee pension reform is a hot topic these days. This past week Rhode Island settled its dispute with the unions over its sweeping pension reform statute of 2011. Detroit and San Jose are wrangling over their own deals with their respective unions. Other cities and counties will follow. None of these jurisdictions can ignore the huge holes in their pension programs for both retired and active employees. One estimate puts the total amount of unfunded pensions in the United States at between $730 billion and $4.4 trillion, with the smart money betting on the higher estimates. Systematic deficits of this sort do not just happen. Fierce union pressure, bad economic circumstances, and unsound pension design all contribute to the bottom line.
Defined Benefits v. Defined Contributions
Start with some pension basics. Most public pension dollars are invested in defined benefit plans, under which the state, county, or municipality promises its workers a pension benefit based on a complex formula that combines years worked with salary earned. The risk of variation in the stock market, or changes in longevity, is therefore borne in the first instance by the government entity, which has lately faced heavier obligations on both counts.
The alternative system, a defined contribution plan, puts
the risk on the employee, whose payments are fully vested at the time
they are made. The individual worker is then left to adopt an investment
strategy to deal with the portfolio, subject to whatever distributional
and diversification constraints are incorporated in the plan. Defined
contribution plans leave no uncertain residual liabilities in the hands
of the government. Benefits vest at once, and workers are free to take
their pensions (like their individual retirement accounts) with them if
they change jobs. Private pension plans have moved sharply in the
direction of defined contribution plans.Public employee pension reform is a hot topic these days. This past week Rhode Island settled its dispute with the unions over its sweeping pension reform statute of 2011. Detroit and San Jose are wrangling over their own deals with their respective unions. Other cities and counties will follow. None of these jurisdictions can ignore the huge holes in their pension programs for both retired and active employees. One estimate puts the total amount of unfunded pensions in the United States at between $730 billion and $4.4 trillion, with the smart money betting on the higher estimates. Systematic deficits of this sort do not just happen. Fierce union pressure, bad economic circumstances, and unsound pension design all contribute to the bottom line.
Defined Benefits v. Defined Contributions
Start with some pension basics. Most public pension dollars are invested in defined benefit plans, under which the state, county, or municipality promises its workers a pension benefit based on a complex formula that combines years worked with salary earned. The risk of variation in the stock market, or changes in longevity, is therefore borne in the first instance by the government entity, which has lately faced heavier obligations on both counts.
The stresses on defined benefit plans are compounded enormously by the powerful role that unions play in negotiations. In boom times, government officials and unions both found it easier to use deferred compensation in the form of defined benefit plans to protect themselves from public criticism of generous compensation packages. Now, everyone knows that there is a problem, but no one can agree on a common cure. Any structural pension reform that requires union consent will lead to concessions that in practice will prove both too little and too late. Only unilateral modifications by the government employer can save the day. The question is this: How can the government best roll back pensions in ways that satisfy key economic requirements without running afoul of serious constitutional concerns?
The Economic Issues
The first problem with pensions is figuring out what the government employer’s liabilities are. The six-fold difference in estimates of total pension liability reflects the difficulties of that task. Pension obligations must be sustainable for the long run, requiring projections spanning generations. Figuring out rates of return is no picnic. Indeed, multiple market gyrations have left the Dow about 11 percent below 2000 levels in real terms, adjusted for inflation. The needed revenue is just not there.
Pension valuation also heavily depends on the precise formulas used to calculate the payoffs. Defenders of the current system point to the moderate annual pensions for retired workers. Detroit pensioners receive an average pension of $19,000 per year, hardly a princely sum. Their union defenders point to this low figure as evidence that these pensions should remain intact throughout the bankruptcy process.
But the correct conclusions depend not only on the annual payments, but also on the total burden any individual pension places on the overall system. Take a worker who retires after 25 years of service, whose pension equals, say, 75 percent of his last salary. That obligation could kick in at age 50, at which point the prudent pension plan administrator must shift its investment from equity to bonds to fund current obligations. But debt instruments unfortunately lower the overall rate of return. That same pension payable at age 65 is a pale shadow of the first plan, because the pension fund has an extra 15 years over which to accumulate the wealth needed to service the pension, and 15 fewer years over which the money has to be paid out. The crushing county or municipal debt comes from the total size of the obligation, not the yearly payments.
Similarly, this annual figure does not capture the worker’s position. Workers who retire early often take second jobs, which provide social security, whose own bizarre compensation formula favors parties who enter the workforce close to retirement.
The Legal Issues
The great legal challenge in all these cases is when the pension rights negotiated in the original employment contracts should “vest” so as to receive protection against unilateral variation by local governments. The Constitution in Article I, Section 10 commands with deceptive simplicity that “No state shall. . . pass any . . . law impairing the obligation of contracts.” Many state constitutions contain similar provisions. The issue came to a head in recent litigation in San Jose, where the estimated unfunded liability for the pension plan was put at $3.7 billion. Under the leadership of San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, San Jose adopted “Measure B” by referendum in 2012, which let the City trim, but not eliminate, pension benefits in order to release funds to restore key city services.
The unions promptly challenged Measure B in court, where they won a major victory before Judge Patricia Lucas, who held that Measure B violated the vested rights of union members. By way of full disclosure, I have given some informal advice to Mayor Chuck Reed about how to attack that decision on appeal. The gist of this dispute lies in the interaction between the key provisions of the San Jose City Charter and California case law on vested pension rights. San Jose has two defined benefit plans, one for uniformed services and one for its “civilian” employees. The Charter explicitly reserves to the San Jose legislature the right to “alter or amend” each plan unilaterally. However, this authority does not explicitly include the power to revoke the pension benefits. On its face, it appears that the Charter lets the City cut down pension benefits, without setting out a formula defining how to do so.
California pension law cases, without careful analysis, have evolved to freeze minimum pension levels for all employees the moment that they take their jobs. Workers may be dismissed or demoted from their jobs, but the pension structure is said to remain inviolate as a result of two key decisions. In Kern v. City of Long Beach (1947), the California Supreme Court held that a pension could not be repealed in its entirety just before a Long Beach fireman was about to retire, which would have stranded covered workers high and dry. Fair enough. However in 1955, and without serious reflection, that rule morphed in Allen v. City of Long Beach to require that any “changes in a pension plan which result in disadvantage to employees should be accompanied by comparable new advantages."
The gap between Kern and Allen is enormous, for while the former prevents the City from taking advantage of its workers, the second neuters the power of local governments to alter and amend, by wiping out all government flexibility to correct prior errors in pension program design or funding. That rigidity is exceedingly costly for two reasons: first, because of the obvious difficulties in making any once-and-for-all estimate of future pension benefits, and, second, because it creates a built-in ratchet whereby any future increase in pension benefits is permanently added to the base, without the possibility of further reduction. The upshot is a financial death spiral.
Clearly, the Charter language can only be made effective by finding some middle ground between total flexibility and total rigidity.
Indeed, that middle ground is constitutionally necessary in light on the well-established proposition in Stone v. Mississippi (1880): “All agree that the legislature cannot bargain away the police power of a State.” The legislature cannot permanently contract away its right to govern. This search for the middle ground ultimately rests on the notion of “good faith modification” that plays a central role in the ordinary law of contract by requiring anyone with the unilateral power to modify existing arrangements to take due regard of the interests of the other claimants on public funds. San Jose Measure B sought to do this by limiting the amount of pension reductions to
those needed to deal with its estimated $3.7 billion shortfall, without cutting off anyone entirely as in Kern.
To be sure, the determinations of good faith are difficult to make, but it is surely better to tolerate some ambiguity at the margin than to force the City, which has multiple fiduciary obligations, to make wholesale cuts in its current programs, cuts that might include the size of its police and fire forces, the maintenance of its parks and schools, and various welfare programs. In her opinion, Judge Lucas heroically sought to confine her inquiry to “one of law, not of policy,” and thus missed the key point that the pension straight jacket has political as well as legal consequences.
All of these consequences can be avoided ex ante by holding that pension rights “vest” only for work completed. Just that position, for example, is taken in the Michigan constitution, which in Article IX, Section 24 states: “The accrued financial benefits of each pension plan and retirement system of the state and its political subdivisions shall be a contractual obligation thereof which shall not be diminished or impaired thereby.” That definition is consistent with San Jose’s Measure B, and leaves it to another day to answer the question of whether federal bankruptcy law can force reduction in all unsecured claims, including those that are fully vested in retirees under state law (as Judge Steven Rhodes held could be done in the Detroit bankruptcy).
This correct definition of vesting is consistent with federal contracts clause jurisprudence that denies the government the unilateral power to alter and amend. Thus in United States Trust v. New Jersey (1977), the Supreme Court held that the state could not strip a secured lender of his right to the property pledged to the loan. Likewise in United States v. Winstar (1996), the Court applied ordinary principles of contractual interpretation to bind the government to its promise to count good will against the capital requirements of the bank when it assumed liabilities on which the federal government was guarantor.
The key ground of distinction is this: in both United States Trust and Winstar, the private party had performed in full, so that they had no option to leave the transaction if the government changed its terms. With the future pension, the workers do have the option to leave the job—an option they will exercise if the cutbacks are too extreme. There is in effect a self-help mechanism available to San Jose’s workers that was not available to either the United States Trust or Winstar. For good reason, the federal case had the open-ended “alter and amend” language found in the San Jose Charter. The faithful adherence to contractual language makes it equally imperative not to read into an agreement an “alter and amend” clause that is not there. But by the same token it makes it indefensible to take that same clause out of a charter.
San Jose and other local governments could be on the brink of bankruptcy. The unions are playing a reckless game. If they don’t back off, they may dig the bankruptcy hole deep enough that their fully accrued benefits could easily be put in jeopardy as well. California’s appellate court should affirm the constitutionality of Measure B, and avoid a far worse fate.
Richard A. Epstein, Peter
and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Laurence A.
Tisch Professor of Law at New York University, and senior lecturer at
the University of Chicago, researches and writes on a broad range of
constitutional, economic, historical, and philosophical subjects. He has
taught administrative law, antitrust law, communications law,
constitutional law, corporate law, criminal law, employment
discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law, health law,
labor law, Roman law, real estate development and finance, and
individual and corporate taxation. His publications cover an equally
broad range of topics. His most recent book, published in 2013, is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2013). He is a past editor of the Journal of Legal Studies (1981–91) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991–2001).
Letters to the editor may be sent to definingideas@stanford.edu. Editors reserve the right to reject or publish (and edit) letters.
‘I Can Do Whatever I Want’
‘I Can Do Whatever I Want’
William Kristol
February 24, 2014, Vol. 19, No. 23
On February 11, writing for the Washington Post,
Republican lobbyist Ed Rogers ably summarized the latest “bad week for
Obamacare.” The Congressional Budget Office concluded that Obamacare
will cause “a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of
about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024.” The CBO
also found that Obamacare would—after all the spending and disruption
and coercion—still leave about 31 million Americans uninsured a decade
after implementation. Then the
White House disregarded the plain text of
the law to carve out another delay in one of the law’s mandates, this
time for businesses with between 50 and 99 employees.
What’s more, as Rogers explained, the Obama administration
decided that employers who fall below 100 employees “must certify to
the IRS—under the threat of perjury—that the reasons for your employee
head count have nothing to do with your opposition to or avoidance of
Obamacare. . . . It’s jaw-dropping that if you fall below 100
employees, the burden will be on you to prove that you meant no
disrespect to Obamacare.”
Showing commendable disrespect to Obamacare (that’s still
legal for commentators, isn’t it?), Rogers concluded: “Obamacare is
failing in its original purpose of providing insurance for the
uninsured, it unnecessarily burdens American families and businesses,
and now the White House has opened the door to prosecuting those they
deem to be insufficiently committed to Obamacare. When will the
nightmare end?”
It’s a good question. It’s perhaps the central question of
American politics today. But the “nightmare” image can be misleading.
After all, we know how nightmares end. We wake up. But when we wake up
each morning, Obamacare is still here.
Obamacare isn’t a nightmare. It’s a comprehensive piece of
legislation passed by Congress. It won’t simply come to an end. It will
have to be comprehensively repealed by Congress. Until that can happen,
its provisions have to be limited and delayed as much as possible.
The
arbitrariness of its implementation has to be challenged and checked as
much as possible, and Americans have to be helped to escape from it to
the degree possible. All of this requires legislative action.
So it’s up to Congress to do what it can to save us from
the disaster that is Obamacare. It’s also up to Congress to do what it
can to defend the rule of law.
Touring Monticello last week with French president
François Hollande, Obama joked about breaking protocol: “That’s the good
thing as president. I can do whatever I want.”
Monsieur Hollande undoubtedly enjoyed Monsieur Obama’s bon mot, finding it, one suspects, très drôle.
But in America we have been inclined to take the rule of law rather
more seriously than our Gallic counterparts. In America we follow
Jefferson, not Napoleon. In
America the president cannot do whatever he
wants. It was the sage of Monticello who explained that the meaning of a
law “is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make
anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.” It’s perhaps an
injustice to metaphysics to call the Obama administration’s legal
sophistries “metaphysical subtleties.” But the reputation of metaphysics
will survive. The rule of law may not.
Unless, that is, our elected officials in Congress act to
defend the rule of law. We can’t depend on the courts to do this. They
are necessarily slow, passive, and limited in their reach. It’s Congress
that has the powers of oversight, of the purse, of confirmation, and of
legislation. It’s true that one chamber, the Senate, is of no use
because for the Democrats who control it party loyalty seems to have
trumped institutional responsibility. But the Republicans control the
House, the people’s House.
The Republican party’s “brand” has been tarnished in
recent years, we’re often told. That’s probably true. But perhaps part
of the solution is for the Republican party to go back to its roots as
the party of the rule of law and of equality before the law.
The Republican platform of 1860 put it well: “The present
Democratic Administration has far exceeded our worst apprehensions
. . . in its general and unvarying abuse of the power intrusted to it
by a confiding people.”
That, in a nutshell, is the case for a Republican Senate
in 2015—so we will have a Congress that can effectively check the Obama
administration’s “general and unvarying abuse of power.”
The 1860 platform goes on to say
That the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance which pervades every department of the Federal Government; that a return to rigid economy and accountability is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by favored partisans; while the recent startling developments of frauds and corruptions at the Federal metropolis, show that an entire change of administration is imperatively demanded.
That’s the case for a Republican president in 2017.
We don’t want to be too partisan. But there are times when
a political party can rise to the defense of a fundamental principle
that transcends partisanship. One such principle is the rule of law. The
historic mission of today’s Republican party is to defend and restore
it.
Monday, February 17, 2014
In Praise of the Establishment
In Praise of the Establishment
McConnell and Boehner have steered us right for a few months now.
Random Thoughts - Thomas Sowell
Random thoughts on the passing scene:
It is amazing how many people still fall for the argument that, if life is unfair, the answer is to turn more money and power over to politicians. Since life has always been unfair, for thousands of years and in countries around the world, where does that lead us?
I am so old that I can remember when sex was private. "Don't ask, don't tell" applied to everybody.
However fascinated the U.S. Supreme Court may be with the concept of "diversity," every one of the 9 justices has a degree from one of the 8 Ivy League institutions, out of the thousands of institutions of higher learning in this country. How diverse is that?
Despite the rhetoric, the goals or the intentions of the political left, the world they seek to create is a world where decisions are taken out of the hands of ordinary citizens and transferred to third parties. ObamaCare is the latest example of this trend, and can now join the long list of the "compassionate" catastrophes of the left.
It is fascinating to see academics full of indignation over the "exploitation" of low-wage workers by multinational corporations in Third
World countries, when it is common on their own academic campuses to have young men get paid nothing at all for risking their health, and sometimes their lives, playing football that brings in millions of dollars to the college and often gets coaches paid higher salaries than the president of the college or university.
I don't happen to like the idea of "stop and frisk." However, I like even less the idea of armed hoodlums going around shooting people.
Those who refuse to see that everything has a cost should be confronted with the question: "How many more young blacks are you willing to see shot dead, because you don't like 'stop and frisk'?"
If you think human beings are always rational, it becomes impossible to explain at least half of history.
The ancient Greeks understood that carrying any principle to extremes was dangerous. Yet, thousands of years later, some Western nations take tolerance to the extreme of tolerating intolerance among immigrants to their own societies. Some even make it illegal -- a "hate crime" -- to warn against intolerant foreigners who would like nothing better than to slit the throats of their hosts, but who will settle for planting a few bombs here and there.
How do the clever Beltway Republicans and their consultants explain how Ronald Reagan won two consecutive landslide election victories, doing the opposite of what they say is the only way for Republicans to win elections?
I don't know why it bothers me when I see a good-looking woman who could be truly beautiful if she only took the trouble. But I can recall a woman like that who was educated at Berkeley, and who apparently thought attention to her appearance was not hip.
Unfortunately, her husband met another woman, who had not gone to Berkeley, and who did not have this inhibition -- or many other inhibitions.
With his decision declaring ObamaCare constitutional, Chief Justice John Roberts turned what F.A. Hayek called "The Road to Serfdom" into a super highway. The government all but owns us now, and can order us to do pretty much whatever it wants us to do.
Anyone who wants to read one book that will help explain the international crises of our time should read "The Gathering Storm" by Winston Churchill. It is not about the Middle East or even about today. It is about the fatuous and irresponsible foreign policies of the 1930s that led to the most catastrophic war in human history. But you can recognize the same fecklessness today.
In a time of widespread disillusionment with both political parties, someone has noted that the only thing these parties say that is believed by the public are their accusations against each other.
Once, when I was teaching at an institution that bent over backward for foreign students, I was asked in class one day: "What is your policy toward foreign students?" My reply was: "To me, all students are the same. I treat them all the same and hold them all to the same standards." The next semester there was an organized boycott of my classes by foreign students. When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
It is amazing how many people still fall for the argument that, if life is unfair, the answer is to turn more money and power over to politicians. Since life has always been unfair, for thousands of years and in countries around the world, where does that lead us?
I am so old that I can remember when sex was private. "Don't ask, don't tell" applied to everybody.
However fascinated the U.S. Supreme Court may be with the concept of "diversity," every one of the 9 justices has a degree from one of the 8 Ivy League institutions, out of the thousands of institutions of higher learning in this country. How diverse is that?
Despite the rhetoric, the goals or the intentions of the political left, the world they seek to create is a world where decisions are taken out of the hands of ordinary citizens and transferred to third parties. ObamaCare is the latest example of this trend, and can now join the long list of the "compassionate" catastrophes of the left.
It is fascinating to see academics full of indignation over the "exploitation" of low-wage workers by multinational corporations in Third
World countries, when it is common on their own academic campuses to have young men get paid nothing at all for risking their health, and sometimes their lives, playing football that brings in millions of dollars to the college and often gets coaches paid higher salaries than the president of the college or university.
I don't happen to like the idea of "stop and frisk." However, I like even less the idea of armed hoodlums going around shooting people.
Those who refuse to see that everything has a cost should be confronted with the question: "How many more young blacks are you willing to see shot dead, because you don't like 'stop and frisk'?"
If you think human beings are always rational, it becomes impossible to explain at least half of history.
The ancient Greeks understood that carrying any principle to extremes was dangerous. Yet, thousands of years later, some Western nations take tolerance to the extreme of tolerating intolerance among immigrants to their own societies. Some even make it illegal -- a "hate crime" -- to warn against intolerant foreigners who would like nothing better than to slit the throats of their hosts, but who will settle for planting a few bombs here and there.
How do the clever Beltway Republicans and their consultants explain how Ronald Reagan won two consecutive landslide election victories, doing the opposite of what they say is the only way for Republicans to win elections?
I don't know why it bothers me when I see a good-looking woman who could be truly beautiful if she only took the trouble. But I can recall a woman like that who was educated at Berkeley, and who apparently thought attention to her appearance was not hip.
Unfortunately, her husband met another woman, who had not gone to Berkeley, and who did not have this inhibition -- or many other inhibitions.
With his decision declaring ObamaCare constitutional, Chief Justice John Roberts turned what F.A. Hayek called "The Road to Serfdom" into a super highway. The government all but owns us now, and can order us to do pretty much whatever it wants us to do.
Anyone who wants to read one book that will help explain the international crises of our time should read "The Gathering Storm" by Winston Churchill. It is not about the Middle East or even about today. It is about the fatuous and irresponsible foreign policies of the 1930s that led to the most catastrophic war in human history. But you can recognize the same fecklessness today.
In a time of widespread disillusionment with both political parties, someone has noted that the only thing these parties say that is believed by the public are their accusations against each other.
Once, when I was teaching at an institution that bent over backward for foreign students, I was asked in class one day: "What is your policy toward foreign students?" My reply was: "To me, all students are the same. I treat them all the same and hold them all to the same standards." The next semester there was an organized boycott of my classes by foreign students. When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
Saving Califoria - VDH
Let’s Save California Now!
Just a handful of legislative acts might still save California. Here are 12 brief examples:
1. The Hetch Hetchy Smelt and Salmon Act
This so-called “Skip a Shower, Save a Smelt Act” would transfer control of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir [1] releases from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The legislation would dismantle sections of the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct west beyond the San Joaquin River, stop the present unnatural diversion of fresh water to San Francisco, and allow instead Hetch Hetchy fresh water to resume natural flows to the San Joaquin River — thus allowing the San Joaquin River and Tuolumne River to recover their salmon populations.
In addition, the transfers of fresh Hetch Hetchy water into the delta and beyond to the Pacific Ocean would preserve delta smelt [2] populations. To make up the losses, the law would set up Bay Area water commissions to monitor mandatory rationing, recycling, and the recovery of sewage and grey water. It would also assess new taxes for wind and solar salinization plants to replace the 265,000 acre feet currently diverted to Bay Area residential use from its proper role in ensuring healthy fish populations. Aim: To synchronize water resources with water-use advocacy.
2. The Undocumented Immigrant Equity Act
The “I am Juan too Act” would assess all California communities by U.S. Census data to ascertain average per-household income levels as well as diversity percentages. Those counties assessed on average in the top 10% bracket of the state’s per-household income level, and which do not reflect the general ethnic make-up of the state, would be required to provide low-income housing for undocumented immigrants, who by 2020 would by law make up not less than 20% of such targeted communities’ general populations.
There are dozens of empty miles, for example, along the 280 freeway corridor from Palo Alto to Burlingame — an ideal place for high-density, low-income housing, served by high-speed rail. Aim: One, to achieve economic parity for undocumented immigrants by allowing them affordable housing in affluent areas where jobs are plentiful, wages are high, and opportunities exist for mentorships; and, two, to ensure cultural diversity among the non-diverse host community [3], bringing it into compliance with the state’s ethnic profile.
3. The Cultivating Diversity Education Equilibrium Act
The “Beverly Hills to the Barrio Act” would ensure that all California school populations reflect the state’s rich ethnic diversity percentages. Schools would lose state aid if their student populations were not commensurate with state ethnic-group target levels. To take one example of the choices available for school districts to partner and find common solutions: School districts in Redwood City or East Palo Alto [4], for example, would bus more students on those campuses found in numbers out of compliance with statewide percentages to Menlo-Atherton. The latter in turn would bus more of its own students found in excess of state averages to Redwood City and East Palo school districts, until all three campuses reached “diversity equilibrium” and matched the correct racial percentages in the state. Aim: To end disparities in California school testing and performance levels accruing largely due to intrinsic racial and ethnic discrimination.
4. The Silicon Valley Transparency and Fair Jobs Act
This “Google Good Citizen Act” would set up a regional board to monitor commerce in the San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara tri-county area. The state regulatory commission would monitor offshore investment, outsourcing, and unionization. All commercial entities, with over 100 employees, would be in violation and face state fines if: 1) the number of a firm’s employees overseas accounted for 10% or more of the workforce currently employed within the tri-county Silicon Valley area; 2) more than 1% of the current capitalization of a Silicon Valley company were deposited in banks outside the United States; and 3) more than 50% of a tri-county company’s workforce were non-union. Aim: To ensure progressive Silicon Valley commercial businesses are caring progressive state citizens [5].
5. The California Firearms Safety Act
The “No Guns for Grandees Act” would forbid private security details to be armed with handguns or semi-automatic long guns. It would allow private security personnel to be armed only with paintball, BB or pellet guns. Aim: To prevent unnecessary armed deterrence by private security units in the hire of the affluent [6].
6. The Fair Housing Adjustment Act
The “Everywhere an Atherton [7] Act” would tax all private residential square footage in excess of 1800 square feet at four times the current per square foot assessment. Aim: It would ensure state resources are equally distributed and not inordinately siphoned off to a small minority of the state population. Would encourage existing large homes to downsize through reverse remodeling [8].
7. The High-speed Rail Equality Act
The “Start It in Menlo Park Act” would require all high-speed rail to begin construction in sequential fashion, beginning at the designated start of the proposed route. It forbids building out of sequence before beginning segments are completed. Aim: To ensure commuters in Los Angeles and San Francisco will have priority in construction, avoiding privileging Fresno-to-Corcoran commuters, where construction of the first link of the high-speed rail line is slated to begin.
8. The Climate Change Adjustment and Fair Temperature Act
This “Tulare Becomes Carmel Act” would order PG&E and Southern California Edison to assess a 30% surcharge on kilowatt rates of those residents in areas where the yearly mean high temperatures did not exceed 85 degrees and low temperatures did not go below 40 degrees. Accruing revenue would subsidize those living in hot summer and cold winter climates of the state, to ensure that they had access to affordable heating and cooling. Aim: To ensure every Californian the right to live in a house with temperatures at 75 degrees.
9. The One-percenter Politician Act
The so-called “Pelosi and Feinstein Act” orders the California Franchise Tax Board to ascertain the incomes of all spouses of California federal, state, and local politicians; and taxes all spousal self-employed income of elected officials in excess of $100,000 at a 90% rate. Aim: To ensure that California’s representatives reflect the rich economic diversity and income averages of the state. It also prohibits inside influence peddling on the part of politicians.
10. The Protect the Peregrine Act
The “Friends of Feathers Act” establishes a $1,000,000 fine for the killing of any eagle, hawk, falcon, owl, or protected bird of prey by wind-generation machines [9] or desert solar power plants [10]. Aim: To stop the wind and solar industry from harming natural ecosystem of California.
11. The Petroleum Fair Use Act
The “Pump What You Use Act” establishes a state board to ensure California gasoline consumption matches state oil production. It collates daily refining outputs of California-produced petroleum with daily state sales of gasoline. It cuts off all daily state sales of gasoline that exceed daily state refinery production of state-produced petroleum. Aim: To ensure that Californians only consume the gasoline they produce and thereby do not promote a larger carbon footprint by subsidizing out-of-state oil production not overseen by
California resource legislation [11].
12. The California Fair Automobile Act
The so-called “Malibu Beamer Act” establishes that all imported California vehicles deemed “luxury” (e.g., in 2014 with new sticker prices in excess of $60,000) shall be taxed at a 30% rate for each dollar of sales value over $60,000. Aim: To ensure so-called imported high-performance and luxury cars do not use an inordinate amount of state energy resources, or leave large carbon footprints on the California ecological landscape, or divert collective resources to the individual [12] from the greater needs of the state.
If we were to pass these laws, California would change overnight.
Why Immigration Reform Matters For Republicans - Geo. Will
Why Immigration Reform Matters For Republicans
By GEORGE F. WILL
Posted 02/14/2014 02:48 PM ET
Distilled to their discouraging essence, Republicans' reasons for retreating from immigration reform reflect waning confidence in American culture and in the political mission only Republicans can perform — restoring America's economic vigor.
Without this, the nation will have a dismal future only Democrats can relish: government growing in order to allocate scarce opportunity.
Many Republicans say addressing immigration will distract from a winning focus on ObamaCare. But a mature party avoids monomania, and ObamaCare's manifold defects are obvious enough that voters will not require nine more months of reminders.
Many Republicans say immigration policy divides their party. If, however, the party becomes a gaggle of veto groups enforcing unanimities, it will become what completely harmonious parties are: small.
Many Republicans see in immigrants only future Democratic votes. This descent into Democratic-style identity politics is unworthy of Republicans, and unrealistic. U.S. history tells a consistent story — the party identified with prosperity, and hence opportunity, prospers.
Many Republicans have understandable cultural concerns, worrying that immigrants from this hemisphere do not experience the "psychological guillotine" that severed trans-Atlantic immigrants from prior allegiances. But is there data proving that American culture has lost its assimilative power?
Thirty-five percent of illegal adult immigrants have been here at least 15 years, 28% for 10 to 14 years and only 15% for less than five years. Thirty-five percent own their homes. Are we sure they are resisting assimilation?
Many Republicans rightly say control of borders is an essential ingredient of national sovereignty. But net immigration from Mexico has recently been approximately zero. Border Patrol spending, which quadrupled in the 1990s, tripled in the 2000s.
With illegal entries near a 40-year low, and a 2012 Government Accountability Office assessment that border security was then 84% effective, will a "border surge" of $30 billion more for the further militarization (actually, the East Germanization) of the 1,969 miles assuage remaining worries?
Many Republicans say Barack Obama cannot be trusted to enforce reforms. This is, however, no reason for not improving immigration laws that subsequent presidents will respect.
Besides, the Obama administration's deportations are, if anything, excessive, made possible by post-9/11 technological and manpower resources.
As the Economist tartly notes, "a mass murder committed by mostly Saudi terrorists resulted in an almost limitless amount of money being made available for the deportation of Mexican house-painters."
Many Republicans say immigration runs counter to U.S. social policies aiming to reduce the number of people with low levels of skill and education, and must further depress the wages of Americans who, at the bottom of the economic ladder, are already paying the price for today's economic anemia.
This is true. But so is this: The Congressional Budget Office says an initial slight reduction of low wages (0.1% in a decade) will be followed by increased economic growth partly attributable to immigrants.
Immigration is the entrepreneurial act of taking the risk of uprooting oneself and plunging into uncertainty. Small wonder, then, that immigrants are about 20% of owners of small businesses, and that more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children.
George W. Bush was the first president since Woodrow Wilson to serve two terms and leave office with the average household income lower than when he entered it. Obama may be the second when he leaves during the eighth year of a wretched recovery.
Forty-seven percent of the House Republican conference has been in Washington 37 months or less; 21% of them have never held any other elective office. Many plunged into politics because they were dismayed about the nation's trajectory under the current president and his predecessor.
Many are understandably disposed against immigration because they have only dim memories of a more dynamic America, and have little aptitude for politics suited to, and aimed at restoring, vibrancy.
Some Depression-era progressives, expecting capitalism's crisis to produce a prolonged and perhaps permanent scarcity of jobs, hoped Social Security would open jobs for the young by encouraging older workers to retire.
Progressives often are ambivalent about scarcities because they see themselves as administrators of rationing.
But President Bill Clinton, refuting opposition — much of it from Democrats — to the North American Free Trade Agreement, splendidly said: "Protectionism is just a fancy word for giving up."
Opposition to immigration because the economy supposedly cannot generate sufficient jobs is similar defeatism. Zero-sum reasoning about a fixed quantity of American opportunity is for an America in a defensive crouch, which is not for conservatives.
America Becomes Orwellian - VDH
As Lies Turn Into 'Truth,' America Becomes Orwellian
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Posted 02/14/2014 02:48 PM ET
The nightmare societies portrayed in the George Orwell novels "1984" and "Animal Farm" gave us the word "Orwellian."
That adjective reflects a vast government's efforts not just to deceive and control the people, but also to do so by reinventing the meaning of ordinary words while rewriting the past itself.
America, of all places, is becoming Orwellian.
The president repeatedly reminds the American people that under his leadership the U.S. has produced a record level of new oil and natural gas. But didn't Obama radically curtail leases for just such new energy production on federal lands?
Have the edicts on the barn wall of "Animal Farm" been changed again, with the production of new oil and gas going from bad to suddenly good?
Does anyone remember that the Affordable Care Act was sold on the premise it would guarantee retention of existing health plans and doctors, create 4 million new jobs and save families $2,500 a year in premiums, all the while extending expanded coverage to more people at a lower cost?
Only in Orwell's world of doublespeak could raising taxes, while the cost of health plans soars, be called "affordable." Is losing your existing plan and doctor a way of retaining them?
The CBO recently warned that ObamaCare would "keep hours worked and potential output during the next 10 years lower than they would be otherwise." That nonpartisan verdict should be bad news for workers.
Not in our brave new world. The Obama administration says it is pleased that workers will now be freed from "job lock." What is job lock — a made-up Newspeak word right out of "1984"? Work fewer hours, make less money and create fewer outputs — and be happy.
About every January since 2009, the president has promised to close Guantanamo Bay. Is the detention facility now sort of virtually closed — in the manner that Syrian President Bashar Assad and his chemical weapons are now virtually gone, as Obama decreed years ago, and in the manner that we are still hunting down the murderers in Benghazi who were supposedly outraged over a video?
In 2004, many in the media reported that George W. Bush, the Emmanuel Goldstein of our era, had overseen a "jobless recovery."
Unemployment at election time in 2004 was 5.4%. Yet since January 2009, only two months have seen joblessness below 7%.
A record 90 million able-bodied Americans are not participating in the workforce. Yet the president, in Orwellian doublespeak fashion, recently claimed that the job picture is good. If 5.4% unemployment was once called a jobless recovery, are we now in a jobless recovery from a jobless recovery?
In 2013, the IRS confessed it had targeted particular political groups based on their names or political themes — a Big Brother intrusion into private lives that was revealed at about the same time the Associated Press and National Security Agency eavesdropping scandals came to light. In the initial media frenzy, President Obama blasted the politicization of the IRS as "outrageous."
After the IRS was confirmed to be delaying the tax-exempt requests of conservative groups at a far greater rate than their liberal counterparts, the agency's director stepped down at the end of his term. His replacement subsequently resigned from the agency.
And the IRS official in charge of tax-exempt decisions, Lois Lerner, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before Congress. She and Joseph H. Grant, commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division, both abruptly retired from the IRS.
Congressional committees and the Treasury inspector general for tax administration found that groups loosely associated with the Tea Party were more likely to have their tax-exempt requests put on hold. Yet Obama concluded this entire mess did not entail "even a smidgen of corruption."
It takes Orwell's doublethink to explain how a scandal might have rated an "outrageous" before the people in charge quit, retired or invoked the Fifth, and then, after their embarrassing departures, was reinvented as an episode without corruption.
In politics, both conservatives and liberals make up stuff. But Orwell, who also blasted the rise of European fascism, focused more on the mind games of the statist Left.
Why? He feared the Left suffered a wage of hypocrisy in more openly proclaiming the noble interests of "the people." Because of the exalted ends of equality and fairness, statists were likely to get a pass for the scary means they employed to achieve them.
Right now in America, words and deeds of both past and present become reality only when the leaders put them in the correct service of the people.
Obama's clever campaign to constrict the flow of criticism
Obama's clever campaign to constrict the flow of criticism
By Andrew Malcolm
Posted 02/13/2014 09:16 AM ET
Among the many costs of the Barack Obama presidency is an intentional corrosion for its own political gain of public faith in so many American institutions, among them Congress, the Supreme Court and the media.
If numerous sectors of society are feuding or distrustful of each other, then a well-controlled central authority like a chief executive can more easily rule the pieces. It's classic Chicago politics, the way the mayor there controls the city's feuding neighborhood fiefdoms of
Democrat pols and workers.
We're going to examine the American media today and urge some temperance and caution in the now endemic condemnation of the much-reviled MSM for the country's own self-interest.
To be honest, it has done much to earn widespread public distrust. This stems from the inherent institutional and individual arrogance of its long-time monopoly over the information flow through broadcast networks and large daily newspapers.
And from its laser focus on conflict as "news" and its do-good social agendas that instinctively turn to government intervention instead of far more effective individual responsibility and action. The traditional media's disconnection from its audience became even more starkly visible with the Internet's welcome explosion of information sources, many of them responsible.
Reporters Without Borders released its annual World Press Freedom Index the other day. Much of it was predictable. Few would be surprised that China, Syria and North Korea inhabit the bottom rungs of press freedom.
What was shocking to those of us who favor a strong, independent -- and, yes, imperfect -- media as a constitutional check on government's power was the ranking of the United States, the world's largest economy and most enduring democracy.
The U.S. during the fifth year of Obama's reign plummeted 13 spots to 46th in the world, right between -- are you ready? -- Rumania and Haiti. The group based that embarrassing ranking largely on the Obama administration's unusually determined efforts to curb dissent and plug and track down leaks. (For the five countries deemed most free, scroll to the bottom.**)
Not all leaks are bad. With a twinkle in his eye, a knowing politician once authorized me to leak government information with the order: "See that you suppress this widely."
Trying to gain dominance over each 24-hour news cycle, the Obama administration leaks like a sieve with the advantageous info it wants out -- a new cabinet member, EPA policy shift, some nickel-and-dime small ball gimmick Obama intends to announce to placate a segment of his base. None of this is unique to him.
And no president or wannabe likes un-orchestrated leaks.
But no other administration in recent memory has gone to the lengths of this one to plug leaks, catch leakers and intimidate would-be news sources.
Atty. Gen. Eric Holder even signed a court document certifying that a Fox News reporter was a criminal co-conspirator, when he wasn't, in order to obtain authority to wiretap him, his emails and his parents' phone to track the reporter's source.
Then, under oath, Holder told Congress he could not contemplate ever doing such a thing.
Obama is notorious for dodging responsibility, professing ignorance of a problem or blaming others.
In his Super Bowl interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, a jolly Obama virtually dismissed the IRS scandal of intimidating conservative groups as a bevy of "bone-head decisions" by confused local agents free of even a "smidgen" of corruption. And the president as victim implied that Fox News harps on the case to drive its own anti-administration agenda.
This from the same cynical mouth that less than nine months ago denounced the same affair as an outrageous abuse of power, promising a thorough investigation to ensure it never ever reoccurred.
Now that the Obama crowd has separated media from many who once trusted it, comes an even more dire threat.
The Federal Communications Commission this spring will launch a nationwide "study" of newsroom values, priorities and processes to see if they meet a list of government "critical information needs." This will also involve print media over which the FCC has heretofore had no authority under the Constitution.
This process, similar to ones employed by Communist regimes behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, is not designed to gather any information at all. It's designed to sow doubt, fear and intimidate traditionally independent news media into self-censorship, which can be a very powerful tool limiting critical news coverage.
And -- oh, look! -- there's an important midterm election coming in nine months.
Americans need not trust, respect or even like the nation's disparate news media to see this campaign for what it is: A bold political move by an omnivorous government that threatens, like a clogged human artery, to limit the flow of independent information envisioned by the Founding Fathers as so essential to the daily health of this democracy.
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