…and you can believe he didn’t write that himself.
The “American forced cultural hegemony” talking point is a textbook example from the Marxist polemic. I had at least three different classes where this subject was covered with zero attempt at balance at all, with the possible exception of me letting the teacher know my objections.
David gets upset because he knows the damage that is being done to young people in our universities.
It must be because all of Obama’s ‘oil buddies’ at BP ….
Related –
Obama says in video that $4.00 a gallon gas is fine as long as it is gradual
Press Grilled Bush When Gas Hit $3.00 – Nada for Obama… UPDATED!
API: Recent Studies Show Obama Drilling Moratorium Will Cost 50,000 Jobs; 160,000 by 2032.
My take, Democrats have been saying for 20 years that we should not go after our own oil and natural gas because it could take 5-10 years to get to use it. For not trying to implement the Cloward-Piven strategy, they sure are doing a great job of implementing it. Had enough yet?
Fact: President Barack Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu wants to “figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” At the time he made the statement, gas cost $7 – $8 a gallon in Europe.
Fact: Since taking office, President Obama’s entire energy agenda has made a gallon of gas more expensive:
- Immediately after taking office in 2009, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah.
- The EPA announced new rules mandating the use of 36 billion gallons worth of renewable fuels (like ethanol) by 2020.
- This summer President Obama needlessly instituted, not one, but two outright drilling bans in the Gulf of Mexico.
- After rescinding his outright offshore drilling ban, President Obama has refused to issue any new drilling permits in the Gulf, a policy that the Energy Information Administration estimates will cut domestic offshore oil production by 13% this year
- Interior Secretary Salazar announced that the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast, and the Pacific coast will not be developed, effectively banning drilling in those areas for the next seven years;
- The Environmental Protection Agency has announced new global warming regulations for oil refineries;
- Interior Secretary Salazar announced new rules making it more difficult to develop energy resources on federal land.
All of these policies raise gas prices at the pump by either: 1) decreasing the availability of domestic energy supplies, or 2) increasing regulatory costs on gasoline production.
President George Bush was no saint when it came to free market energy policies either. He mandated the use of ethanol, put off opening up the Outer Continental Shelf till the end of his second term, supported the expansion of renewable energy tax credits, tried to subsidize the nuclear power industry, and caved into environmental pressure by allowing the EPA to begin the global warming regulation process.
But as two time Super Bowl winning coach Bill Parcells says, “You are what your record says you are.” And the facts are these: during the first two years under President Barack Obama, gas prices have risen 55%. You can compare that to the 5% drop in gas prices during the first two years of President Bush’s term or the 2% drop under the first two years of President Clinton’s term. Neither President Bush nor President Clinton had perfect energy policies. But neither of them appointed an Energy Secretary who wanted Americans to pay $9 for a gallon of gas either.
UCLA, this is not your best moment, but I suspect it is a common one.
Be warned, this is very politically incorrect, and I will state up front that Neil is not very fair to this caller. I would not have been so short with this caller rather I would have let him speak to see if he said more things that the host could discuss. With that said Neil makes a series of points that cannot be refuted, especially about the liars. Taqiyyah is the Islamic practice of deception, which according to the Hadith has been used to advance the goals of Islam and the Umma.
Not quite my style but an interesting piece nonetheless.
This professor used liberal sources and people to decide what the liberal bias was. So this was not conservatives deciding what was liberal bias and what was not. Several studies were used and put together such as what facts were omitted, what euphemisms were used and what side did they favor, polls of the journalists themselves, prominence of ideologically charged stories etc.
One method used was to give half of a sample a free subscription to the Washington Post and the other half a subscription to the Washington Times determined by a coin flip. They went back to the families some months later and polled them on their political views to see how much they had shifted.
http://www.amazon.com/Left-Turn-Liberal-Distorts-American/dp/0312555938/
Dr. Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent years constructing precise, quantitative measures of the slant of media outlets. He does this by measuring the political content of news, as a way to measure the PQ, or “political quotient” of voters and politicians.
Among his conclusions are: all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias; and while some supposedly conservative outlets—such the Washington Times or Fox News’ Special Report—do lean right, their conservative bias is less than the liberal bias of most mainstream outlets.
Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points, on a scale of 100, the difference between the current political views of the average American, and the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California or Salt Lake County, Utah. With Left Turn readers can easily calculate their own PQ—to decide for themselves if the bias exists. This timely, much-needed study brings fact to this often overheated debate.
“I’m no conservative, but I loved Left Turn. Tim Groseclose has written the best kind of book: one that is firmly anchored in rigorous academic research, but is still so much fun to read that it is hard to put down. Liberals will not like the conclusions of this book, which in my opinion, is all the more reason why they should want to read it.”–Steven Levitt, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, and co-author of Freakonomics.
“This book—an evolution from the pioneering article in the 2005 Quarterly Journal of Economics by Groseclose and Jeffrey Milyo—uses a clever statistical technique to construct an objective measure of conservative or liberal bias in news coverage. This method and those now adopted by other serious researchers show clearly that most U.S. news outlets lean left. Most frighteningly, we learn that the media bias actually affects the ways that people think and vote.”–Robert Barro, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution.
Video of Dr. Groseclose on Lou Dobbs: http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1083158772001/do-all-mainstream-media-outlets-have-a-liberal-bias/
The conclusions draw upon recent studies by some highly respected economists and political scientists. For instance, one study, conducted by Yale researchers Alan Gerber, Dean Karlan and Daniel Bergan, is akin to a biology experiment. To one set of randomly selected voters in Northern Virginia, the researchers gave trial subscriptions to The Washington Post. To another set, they gave trial subscriptions to The Washington Times. After the subsequent election, the researchers polled their subjects and found that their Post-subscribing subjects voted for the Democrat at a 3.8 percentage higher rate than did the Times-subscribing subjects. That is, the more liberal newspaper truly seemed to cause people to vote more liberally.
After aggregating the results of this and similar studies, one finds an inescapable conclusion: Newspapers, television, radio and online media are extremely influential, especially over consumers’ political views.
For example, the results imply that if the “slant quotient” of the entire media moved 34 points leftward – approximately the difference between Fox News’ Special Report and The New York Times – then the “political quotient” of the average voter would move about 24 points leftward. The latter shift is approximately the difference between the average voter in Colorado or Iowa and the average voter in Rhode Island or Massachusetts.
If the analysis is right – that media bias really does change political views so significantly – then this no doubt has some important – and largely unrecognized – consequences.
In the video they all use slogans except three who mention policy positions. [Editor’s Note: In the video one person mentions NAFTA, which is just too long and complex of an issue to tackle in this post other than to say that here is a video of Bill Clinton’s comments at the signing]
1 – The Civil Rights Act – which Democrats filibustered and Republicans voted for by an 82% margin (eventually Dems caved). Democrats filibustered (successfully stopping the bills) all of the civil rights legislation in the 1950’s all of what was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans. One look at inner cities and inner city schools which are controlled by the Democratic Party show that the party is exploiting black Americans and has no real interest in empowering them.
2 – The Patriot Act – of which internal violations of using the act illegally have gone up exponentially under this administration. Through fast and loose “interpretation” Democrats have expanded the Act and Obama has been the worst administration when it comes to abuse of privacy rights that I am aware of.
Obama promised to put an end to warrantless wiretapping and do something about the Patriot Act. Where are the so called “far left privacy advocates” now? The Obama Administration (along with a willing Democratic Leadership in Congress) has consistently (1, 2, 3, 4, 5,) pushed for more domestic spying ability and extended the Patriot Act. More spying includes including wanting more wire taps on the internet and arguing that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in email or cell phones or… well I think you got the point. Of course who was the first TV personality to speak out on these privacy violations. Clue: He’s the new Oprah.
Now we get to ask you if Obama is spying on YOUR library book list!
Related:
Patriot Act Warrants That Let Agents Enter Homes Without Owner Knowing Triple Under Obama
Google Comes Under Fire for ‘Secret’ Relationship with NSA. Cozy with Administration.
Obama Administration implemented policy to have political appointees review all FOIA requests….
Obama Administration wants more wiretaps on internet
Obama Administration Thinks Chicago’s Cameras Everywhere are Just Dandy
Obama Administration: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in email or cell phones or…
3 – Because more women should be involved in politics – Wow that one is amazing. Shall we go through a list of Democrat misogyny hall of shame? While the first names that come up for sexual attacks, smears, lies, and name calling by Democrats are against Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Nikki Haley – Let us NOT forget how Hillary Clinton was mistreated by her fellow Democrats which resulted in the creation of dozens of PUMA groups and websites such as Hillbuzz. Remember how the Obama thugs used threats and in some cases physically kept Hillary delegates out of some caucuses? Remember how the Democrats “super delegates” stepped in when it looked like Hillary was going to win the nomination?
In fact Hillary Clinton’s own Communications Director Howard Wolfson said that Fox News was the only place where her campaign could get a fair shake because the Democrat Media Complex, also known as the elite media, was so grossly unfair even this web site spoke out against it.
This video is one the GOP can use, as it demonstrates that Democrat activists count on ignorance and mobocratic sloganeering.
By Dan Gainor:
When liberal investor George Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.
Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.
The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.
The ProPublica stories are thoroughly researched by top-notch staffers who used to work at some of the biggest news outlets in the nation. But the topics are almost laughably left-wing. The site’s proud list of “Our Investigations” includes attacks on oil companies, gas companies, the health care industry, for-profit schools and more. More than 100 stories on the latest lefty cause: opposition to drilling for natural gas by hydraulic fracking. Another 100 on the evils of the foreclosure industry.
Throw in a couple investigations making the military look bad and another about prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and you have almost the perfect journalism fantasy – a huge budget, lots of major media partners and a liberal agenda unconstrained by advertising.
One more thing: a 14-person Journalism Advisory Board, stacked with CNN’s David Gergen and representatives from top newspapers, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster. Several are working journalists, including:
• Jill Abramson, a managing editor of The New York Times;
• Kerry Smith, the senior vice president for editorial quality of ABC News;
• Cynthia A. Tucker, the editor of the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
ProPublica is far from the only Soros-funded organization that is stacked with members of the supposedly neutral press.
The Center for Public Integrity is another great example. Its board of directors is filled with working journalists like Amanpour from ABC, right along side blatant liberal media types like Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post and now AOL.
Like ProPublica, the CPI board is a veritable Who’s Who of journalism and top media organizations, including:
• Christiane Amanpour – Anchor of ABC’s Sunday morning political affairs program, “This Week with Christiane Amanpour.” A reliable lefty, she has called tax cuts “giveaways,” the Tea Party “extreme,” and Obama “very Reaganesque.”
• Paula Madison – Executive vice president and chief diversity officer for NBC Universal, who leads NBC Universal’s corporate diversity initiatives, spanning all broadcast television, cable, digital, and film properties.
• Matt Thompson – Editorial product manager at National Public Radio and an adjunct faculty member at the prominent Poynter Institute.
The group’s advisory board features:
• Ben Sherwood, ABC News president and former “Good Morning America” executive producer
Once again, like ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity’s investigations are mostly liberal – attacks on the coal industry, payday loans and conservatives like Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The Center for Public Integrity is also more open about its politics, including a detailed investigation into conservative funders David and Charles Koch and their “web of influence.”According to the center’s own 990 tax forms, the Open Society Institute gave it $651,650 in 2009 alone.
The well-known Center for Investigative Reporting follows the same template – important journalists on the board and a liberal editorial agenda. Both the board of directors and the advisory board contain journalists from major news outlets. The board features:
• Phil Bronstein (President), San Francisco Chronicle;
• David Boardman, The Seattle Times;
• Len Downie, former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, now VP;
• George Osterkamp, CBS News producer.
Readers of the site are greeted with numerous stories on climate change, illegal immigration and the evils of big companies. It counts among its media partners The Washington Post, Salon, CNN and ABC News. CIR received close to $1 million from Open Society from 2003 to 2008.
Why does it all matter? Journalists, we are constantly told, are neutral in their reporting. In almost the same breath, many bemoan the influence of money in politics. It is a maxim of both the left and many in the media that conservatives are bought and paid for by business interests. Yet where are the concerns about where their money comes from?
Fred Brown, who recently revised the book “Journalism Ethics: A Casebook of Professional Conduct for News Media,” argues journalists need to be “transparent” about their connections and “be up front about your relationship” with those who fund you.
Unfortunately, that rarely happens. While the nonprofits list who sits on their boards, the news outlets they work for make little or no effort to connect those dots. Amanpour’s biography page, for instance, talks about her lengthy career, her time at CNN and her many awards. It makes no mention of her affiliation with the Center for Public Integrity.
If journalists were more up front, they would have to admit numerous uncomfortable connections with groups that push a liberal agenda, many of them funded by the stridently liberal George Soros. So don’t expect that transparency any time soon.
A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee the election process in battleground states and keep Republican “political operatives from deciding who can vote and how those votes are counted.”
Known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), the organization was formed by liberal activists in 2006 to put Democrats in charge of state election offices, where key decisions often are made in close races on which ballots are counted and which are not.
Pay attention to this part:
Named after Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code, so-called 527 political groups — such as SOSP — have no upper limit on contributions and no restrictions on who may contribute in seeking to influence the selection, nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates to federal, state or local public office. They generally are not regulated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), creating a soft-money loophole.
While FEC regulations limit individual donations to a maximum of $2,500 per candidate and $5,000 to a PAC, a number of 527 groups have poured tens of millions of unregulated dollars into various political efforts.
SOSP has backed 11 winning candidates in 18 races, including such key states as Ohio, Nevada, Iowa, New Mexico and Minnesota.
This is where illegal and foreign money and foreign governments influence our elections. The excuse the Soros funded group uses is that it claims Republicans stole the 200 presidential election on Florida. Of course when a group of newspapers went to Florida and recounted themselves they also concluded that president Bush had won fairly.
But let me tell you what wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair when Al Gore’s lawyers used a technicality to toss out military ballots in Florida. There were valid reasons why the Supreme Court ruled for President Bush in the Bush v. Gore lawsuits: the Florida Supreme Court was allowing Democrats to change the election rules on the fly during the count; and Gore’s lawyers and a partisan Florida Court wanted to allow selective recounting of discarded votes, meaning that only in areas where Gore had a substantial lead would the votes be recounted. President Bush’s team said that if there was going to be a recount it had to be all of the state and under one set of rules – and on that part of Bush v. Gore the Supreme Court agreed 7-2.
Of course Soros’ group has already stolen elections in Minnesota. USA Today, among others, report that Al Franken won his Senate seat through fraud.
Justice Department whistle blower J. Christian Adams went public after the Justice Department dismantled the integrity division of the section in charge of making sure that “Motor Voter” was enforced properly and that dead people were removed from the voter roles. The Obama Justice Department has made it clear that they will not take action in vote intimidation cases if the victims are white and/or the perpetrators are black.
J. Christian Adams via Ed Morrissey:
How The Department of Justice Allowed Vote Fraud in Minnesota
Former Department of Justice attorney J. Christian Adams has blown the whistle on politicization within Justice in enforcing election laws, specifically the laws requiring cleaning voter rolls of the deceased and convicted felons. While the main focus of the media (such as it is) has been on the politics of the issue, Adams wants to get more of a focus on the consequences of politicization. He talks with Twin Cities talk-show host Chris Baker about the impact of this politicization in Minnesota, a subject that Minnesota Majority knows all too well. The conservative organization has spent the past 20 months attempting to get the attention of the DoJ on this very subject, to no avail:
Minnesota Majority has experienced the DOJ’s refusal to investigate these kind of cases first-hand. On November 17th of 2008 (immediately following the 2008 General Election and while the Coleman-Franken recount battle was getting underway), Minnesota Majority president Jeff Davis sent a certified letter to then Voting Section chief of the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ, Christopher Coates, requesting an investigation into apparent failures to comply with HAVA by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. No response was forthcoming.
Since the DOJ in Washington DC failed to follow up on Davis’ complaint, Minnesota Majority contacted the local FBI office and lodged the same complaint. Special Agent Brian Kinney responded and visited the Minnesota Majority office to examine Minnesota Majority’s findings. At that time, he said, “based on what I see here there is more than enough evidence to initiate an internal complaint.” He gave his assurances that he would bring the matter to the attention of his supervisors. There was no further follow-up.
By October of 2009, Minnesota Majority had compiled evidence of further violations of HAVA in Minnesota, including a finding that ineligible felons were not being detected and flagged for challenge or removal from the voter rolls. This resulted in hundreds of fraudulent votes by ineligible felons being counted in Minnesota’s 2008 election. Davis sent another certified letter to Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates. Like the first complaint from nearly a year prior, the second letter went unanswered.
Minnesota Majority’s experience supports J. Christopher Adams’ claims that the DOJ’s policy is not to pursue violations of HAVA’s anti-fraud provisions. The dismissal of the voter intimidation charges against members of the New Black Panther Party who brandished nightsticks outside a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 General Election was the last straw for Adams, who resigned in protest. He claimed that his superiors also ordered himself and other attorneys not to comply with subpoenas issued by the US Civil Rights commission, placing them in what Adams called, “legal limbo.”
Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates, who worked with Adams on the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case was demoted and transferred to a post in South Carolina earlier this year.
The Civil Rights Commission has subpoenaed Coates to testify on the matter but his DOJ employers are currently blocking his testimony.
Why would the DoJ block testimony from one of its attorneys on the internal policies of Justice?
Freddoso’s new book is a tell all of government corruption. This is a no miss interview.
Chicago has come to Washington.
Remember this?
President Obama Issues “Signing Statement” Indicating He Won’t Abide by Provision in Budget Bill
n a statement issued Friday night, President Obama took issue with some provisions in the budget bill – and in one case simply says he will not abide by it.
Last week the White House and congressional Democrats and Republicans were involved in intense negotiations over not only the size of the budget for the remainder of the FY2011 budget, and spending cuts within that budget, but also several GOP “riders,” or policy provisions attached to the bill.
One rider – Section 2262 — de-funds certain White House adviser positions – or “czars.” The president in his signing statement declares that he will not abide by it.
“The President has well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch, and to obtain advice in furtherance of this supervisory authority,” he wrote. “The President also has the prerogative to obtain advice that will assist him in carrying out his constitutional responsibilities, and do so not only from executive branch officials and employees outside the White House, but also from advisers within it. Legislative efforts that significantly impede the President’s ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities or to obtain the views of the appropriate senior advisers violate the separation of powers by undermining the President’s ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Therefore, the president wrote, “the executive branch will construe section 2262 not to abrogate these Presidential prerogatives.”
In other words: we know what you wanted that provision to do, but we don’t think it’s constitutional, so we will interpret it differently than the way you meant it.
During his presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama was quite critical of the Bush administration’s uses of signing statements telling the Boston Globe in 2007 that the “problem” with the Bush administration “is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation.”
Then-Sen. Obama said he would “not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.”
The president said that no one “doubts that it is appropriate to use signing statements to protect a president’s constitutional prerogatives; unfortunately, the Bush Administration has gone much further than that.”
This is how some corrupt corporations make millions and scam the taxpayers. The AARP is supposed to be non profit. That means that they are not supposed to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, they are not supposed to be engaged in partisan politics and they are not supposed to be engaged in a huge conflict of interest. AARP has done all of this at the expense of their members and employees.
Related:
AARP and Many Others Hiking Premiums or Dumping Coverage Because of ObamaCare
Corrupt AARP Health Care Deal Puts Seniors at Risk
CBO: Obama is wrong, cuts in Medicare will result in benefit cuts. The corrupt AARP angle. UPDATED!
Ethics You Can’t Believe In: Special Interests Dominate Fiscal Responsibility Summit
The Heartland Institute:
The Indiana legislature has passed a bill permitting virtual charter schools to serve students throughout the state, regardless where they live.
House Bill 1002, sponsored by Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma (R-Indianapolis) and Representatives Bob Behning (R-Indianapolis), Mary Ann Sullivan (D-Indianapolis), and Cindy Noe (R-Indianapolis), allows the creation of virtual charter schools in the state with no limits on enrollment. The state’s two existing virtual charter schools are limited to 500 students.
The bill passed the state Senate by a 29 to 20 vote on April 12, and the House of Representatives passed it by a 61 to 37 vote on April 27. Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) signed the bill into law on.May 5.
“Once again, Indiana is at the forefront of a growing national movement that will ensure our students receive the quality instruction they deserve,” noted Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Tony Bennett in a press statement. “By boldly asserting every child’s right to attend a great school, the Hoosier state has taken a powerful stand in favor of equal educational opportunities for all children.”
‘High-Quality Solution’
If a student of the proposed new statewide virtual charter school previously attended a traditional public school, funds will follow the student to the virtual charter school. The range would be $4,800 to $8,400, depending on the funds allocated to the local “bricks and mortar” school system.“This is an issue that I and many families have been advocating for years,” said Monique Christensen, president of Indiana Virtual School Families, a coalition of about 2,000 families. “Virtual schools are but one option that can provide a high-quality educational solution for kids. Not all children thrive in the standard brick and mortar environment.”
A virtual charter school enables students to access curriculum via computer rather than going to a school “building,” but many of the other educational elements are similar or superior to traditional education, said Christensen.
‘Pace Appropriate for Learning’
“Certified teachers with student/ teacher ratios similar to traditional schools oversee the schoolwork along with a committed learning coach whether it’s a parent, mentor, aunt, uncle, or someone else,” Christensen said. “Accelerated and gifted learners are able to move at a pace appropriate for their learning, and those needing remediation and extra help are able to spend the time needed in order to comprehend the material.”Students must pass each lesson with 80 percent mastered comprehension before they are allowed to move on to the next lesson.
Even though there isn’t a traditional classroom, “teachers are in contact with their students and families frequently,” said Christensen. “Teachers often say they develop closer relationships and are in touch more with their virtual school students than they ever were in a traditional classroom through the use of phone, email, or Web cast conferences. Students also have access to their teacher and peers, as well as educational field trips, frequent social outings, and extracurricular activities.”
Students attending charter schools in Indianapolis have fared better in math and have had mixed results in other subjects compared to their counterparts in traditional schools, according to Marisa Cannata, associate director of the National Center on School Choice (NCSC) at Vanderbilt University.
‘Seeking Better Education’
Parents who move their children to virtual and brick-and-mortar charter schools seem to be pleased with the choice, Cannata added. And other parents can’t wait to make that move.“My husband and I have begun to look into adoption and are appalled at the education choices available to our future offspring,” said Julia Porter, who lives in Warsaw, a small town in the northern part of the state.
“When looking at alternatives to schools, the closest charter school is over an hour away,” said Porter. “I feel that this virtual charter would allow for educated individuals who have children and want more for them than the community offers to seek better education. As a former New York City teacher, I see many advantages to offering this in Indiana, as Indiana offers much fewer choices to parents than larger cities.”
Phil Britt (spenterprises@wowway.com) writes from South Holland, Illinois.
The following is part one of a 1985 interview with Ex-KGB officer Yuri Bezmenov. In this interview, Bezmenov outlines the four step systematic demoralization and indoctrination techniques utilized for decades against America.
The interview is prophetic, describing effects we can see all around us today.
The goal of demoralization according to the KGB: To change the perception of reality of every American so that they are unable to come to sensible conclusions for their own good and defense in spite of abundant information. To get the targets in such a mindset so that no amount of evidence will ever convince them that leftism is wrong. Pump the targets’ heads with the ideology of their enemy which the KGB has successfully done (in their point of view) to at least three generations of students with next to nothing opposing it. The demoralized either knowingly or unknowingly work towards the goals of the KGB until the real Marxists come to power.
According to the KGB, those journalists, professors, activists, union leaders, film directors and other idealistically minded Marxists who believe in the “beauty of collectivism” think that they will be coming to power; when these “useful idiots” don’t they will be the first to become disillusioned and become the revolution’s worst enemy. According to the KGB they will have to be executed because revolutionaries know how to wage a counter-revolution. They have to go because they know too much. Other useful idiots who still believe even after the revolution become disillusioned when they or their communities have to feel the boot (hence the old saying a conservative is a liberal who got mugged).
[Editor’s Note – This is why when such revolutions are complete the new Marxists who are put in charge kill the old Marxists. In almost every case of such a revolution history shows this to be true. Even Hitler had his “Night of the Long Knives” in which he killed his “brown shirts” and other revolutionaries who used violence to help him come to power. After all if they would use violence to betray their own country they would be a deadly enemy if they later turned against Hitler. As history has demonstrated, the first rule of every successful revolution is “kill the revolutionaries” This is a lesson that the KGB taught its agents. They practiced it when Stalin purged the Trotskyites.]
During the demoralization process those in influential circles who will not accept “the beauty of collectivism” will be subject to character assassination.
The full 81 minute interview can be found below:
The Euros are diving head first into dhimmitude.
One of my history professors lectured about how and why great societies get conquered. Europe is being conquered right now as they will not defend their culture, their values, or even their women.
To our friends in Europe I say this, try and stop what is happening. If you cannot then come here and help us defend America or go to England and help UKIP, because if we lose freedom here as the Danes, Swedes, Germans and others have the world will be lost.
Freedom of speech and women’s rights just took a major hit in Denmark earlier today when the public prosecutor found Lars Hedegaard, the President of the Danish (and International) Free Press Society, guilty of “hate speech” under section 266b of the Danish penal code.
Hedegaard’s crime was to note “the great number of family rapes in areas dominated by Muslim culture in Denmark.”
The prosecutor’s crime is far greater. Now, courtesy of this prosecution, it is officially “racist” to tell the truth about sexual violence against women in Denmark, at least when that violence is perpetrated by Muslim fathers, uncles, or cousins.
When feminists first brought rape and incest out of the closet, we were accused of being “strident man haters,” and “crazy” as well. We learned to say: Not all men rape but all rapists are men. To our horror, we eventually discovered that women sometimes rape or sexually abuse children. They rarely rape other adults or force unwanted sex on other women outside of a prison setting.
Islam is not a race. Muslims come in every conceivable color. The Danes, the Scandinavians, all Europe has critiqued and exposed the real and imaginary sins and crimes of both Judaism and Christianity. Now, suddenly, Islam alone is to be spared such treatment.
Hedegaard has just published a book, Muhammed’s Girls: Violence, Murder and Rape in the House of Islam. I was told that my work appears throughout. Will my work someday also be considered “hate speech” or “racism”?
I stand in solidarity with Hedegaard at this awful moment. If the Danes and the Europeans do not take some very radical measures, it will be just as Bat Ye-or predicted. Post-Enlightenment Europe will no longer exist; Eurabia will.
I am ready to talk to the prosecutor to condemn this utter insanity. And so should everyone else. The real racists, the infidel-haters, the Jew-haters, the woman-haters are not being condemned. Only those who expose them are.
More HERE.
A pro-Israeli women’s studies professor and psychologist who actually has the guts to stand up and say “you know women are treated pretty badly in Islam”. I am amazed.
She is looking for an intern, and of course many universities are rife with antisemitism and the most dishonest pro-Islamic/antisemitic propaganda imaginable. Of course like the most effective “attitude change propaganda’ the victim is left short on facts and big on attitude and “feelings” as you are about to see.
Life is funny, life is great, but life is also strange, the way it all boils down to one’s views on only two or three subjects, namely Israel, Islam, and America.
Yesterday, I met with a potential intern sent my way by a local area college with whom I’ve happily worked before. She seemed alert, bright, interested, talented and ready to start her (unpaid) full-time summer internship almost immediately. I had already told her to visit my website and to read some of my articles and assumed that she knew my current subjects and views. She did. In fact, on the phone, she went out of her way to agree with me on my critique of the academic feminist view that the Islamic face veil and polygamy are “liberating” for women.
Just after we finished discussing hours and possible projects, she stopped, smiled smoothly, and said this:
“But I have to tell you that I take issue with your position on Israel.”
“Oh” said I. “Have you lived in Israel, do you know any Palestinians, have you read many books, written many articles, taken many courses about Israel and about the Middle East?”
“Well no,” she said, “but I feel strongly about it.”
And then I said: “So, based on your feelings and perhaps on some peer pressure, you are willing to give up an internship that you might otherwise want?”
I stressed that I had no problem with her holding a view different than my own. I asked her whether she could work with someone with whom she did not agree exactly on this one issue.
She paused. And then she said: “But I have another problem. I think it is wrong to condemn all of Islam.”
Now I looked at her for a moment without saying anything.
Then I spoke. “But I don’t. In fact, I champion the work of some religious Muslims as well as those of secular Muslims and ex-Muslims and I work with Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents and feminists. To expose honor killings, to challenge Islamic gender apartheid practices is not the same as condemning all Muslims or all Islam.”
Again, I told her that I could work with someone with whose views I did not completely agree; could she? Although by now I was fearing that if she said yes that instead of working for me she would force me to teach her in an unpaid tutorial.
She was not yet done.
“I also take issue with an article you wrote in which I believe you are stereotyping lesbians and Jewish lesbians.”
Friends: I actually managed not to laugh out loud.
I assured her that I was not at all biased against lesbians or against Jewish lesbians but indeed, that I had seen many lesbians, including Jews, who were “Queers for Palestine,” and who defended a toxically homophobic “Palestine” over the Jewish state when that Jewish state actually grants political asylum to Palestinian homosexuals who have been tortured and near-murdered by their Palestinian families, neighbors, and political leaders.
And then I said: “Look, if you decide that you can work for someone with whom you do not agree, call me.”
She left. Calm, cool, unruffled, almost satisfied.
This was the second time in which a young woman–no more than 20 or 21 years old–felt entitled to preach at me, rather righteously, when they were applying for a job with me. The first young woman was applying for a paid position but she did not let me speak until she first spent 15 minutes “filling me in” on her Third Worldist views. Yesterday’s cream-of-the-crop came all the way for an interview, ultimately in order to challenge me up close and personal.
For all I know, a tape recorder might have been running in her bag because when she left my apartment she seemed strangely happy.
Why is this all important? Because these two young women (granted, they do not represent all young Ivy League women), do not seem to respect authority or at least authority with whom they do not agree. This means that, potentially, they might be willing to destroy their own civilization since they disagree with its authorities on certain key issues. Standing on no serious knowledge base, they and others of their generation nevertheless feel absolutely entitled to stake out a position based on “feelings.”
Is this a continuation of the student uprisings in Europe and America in the 1960s? Is this the result of the politicization of knowledge, i.e. its Stalinization and Palestinianization?
Where will this end if we do not stop it? And, how can we do that?
Every once in a while, the elite media remembers that they are journalists and when they think they can get away with it they tell the truth or at least get much closer to it. Of course they had to destroy Sarah Palin first with all of their lies, editing chop jobs and other malfeasance, but at least now they can say “hey we reported what a good job she did”.
[Editor’s Note – Here is something else you might not know. In the infamous interview Palin had with Katie Couric over those couple of days, Katie would ask Sarah the same questions over and over again. This frustrated Palin and some of her answers became flippant as she was just getting sick of Couric’s badgering. The flippant answers are what NBC put on TV.
This is while Steve Schmidt, (who was hostile to Palin from the beginning because he despises religious conservatives and made that clear in his own writings) who ran the incompetent McCain communications machine, kept her off talk radio where she had a lot of experience, and wanted Sarah to behave in a way Schmidt wanted, Sarah just could not be herself.
In the infamous interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, ABC cut out many of the substantive parts of her answers to foreign policy questions. Gibson misquoted Palin when he scolded her for saying that Iraq was a “mission from God”. Palin never said it in that context as the full quote was selectively edited. Palin’s answer about the “Bush Doctrine” was also correct; as there are six “Bush Doctrines” with Sarah naming one and Gibson naming one.
When ABC’s Barbara Walters asked Sarah Palin the infamous question again “what do you read” they edited out the books she mentioned about law, philosophy and history such as Liberty & Tyranny by famed attorney and legal scholar Mark Levin.]
This Atlantic article isn’t perfect, but from a leftist outfit that often just publishes smears and hate that can be debunked in mere moments, it is quite good where it is just explaining the facts and not editorializing for the left.
Sarah Palin did not just “raise taxes” as MSNBC tried to spin this piece, Sarah Palin pushed through an entirely new royalty structure for the oil companies buying oil from the people of Alaska. The old royalty system was not just a good deal for the oil companies, it resulted in a royalty so low that the people of Alaska were being ripped off (details HERE). The Murkowski machine was corrupt and on the take, they were also corrupt in the contract bidding process which Palin also fixed.
As far as I know, this is the first elite media publication to tell the truth that Dick Morris told us way back in mid 2008 (and what we have told you in dozens of articles ever since):
So why do so many of the American people not know this Sarah Palin? Why did the elite media, who knew all of this, not bother to tell you?
As governor, Palin demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders. She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today—by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business. And she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a trajectory to financial well-being. Since 2008, Sarah Palin has influenced her party, and the tenor of its politics, perhaps more than any other Republican, but in a way that is almost the antithesis of what she did in Alaska. Had she stayed true to her record, she might have pointed her party in a very different direction.
Inside the Alaska capitol hangs a framed copy of the front page of the Anchorage Daily News for September 11, 1969, its headline—“Alaska’s Richest Day: $900 Million!”—stretching above a picture of purposeful-looking men in suits carrying large briefcases and about to duck into a car. The briefcases contain a fortune that is being rushed to the airport and on to a bank in San Francisco, so Alaskans will not forgo a single day’s interest. This is the proceeds of the state’s first oil-lease auction since the discovery, a year earlier, of the massive oil deposit at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope, to this day the largest in North America. The headline captures the euphoria over the massive payout by the world’s leading oil companies—a windfall that transformed the state’s politics, economy, and self-image almost overnight.
Throughout most of its history as a territory and, after 1959, as a state, Alaska was a tenuous proposition, a barren outpost rich in resources yet congenitally poor because the outside interests that extracted them didn’t leave much behind. The main obstacle to statehood was convincing Congress that Alaska wouldn’t immediately go bust. It still relies heavily on aid from Washington, and that, combined with the federal government’s holding title to 60 percent of its land base (the state itself holds 28 percent more), generates a robust resentment of federal power. The colonial mind-set is reinforced by the intensity of the state’s politics, a common attribute of remote settlements like Alaska, as the historian Ken Coates has noted—think Lord of the Flies.
To suddenly strike it rich opens up all sorts of possibilities, but there can be problems too. The legislature exhausted its fortune without meeting Alaskans’ outsize expectations. And although oil brought jobs and revenue, it also ensured that a state long accustomed to economic subservience would be beholden to a powerful new interest. Oil is more important to Alaska than the movie business is to Los Angeles or the auto industry is to Michigan. Stephen Haycox, a professor at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, writes in Frigid Embrace, his history of the state’s political economy, “The oil industry is, for all practical purposes, Alaska’s only private economy.”
This binds the state’s fortunes not just to the price of oil but also to the fate of the three giants that dominate Alaska: BP, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips. Oil taxes supply almost 90 percent of the general revenue, so oil is the central arena of state politics. The industry is forever trying to coax lower taxes, lighter regulation, and greater public investment by promising jobs and riches—or, on occasion, threatening to withdraw them.
In 1978, the Democratic legislature tried to secure the state’s share of oil profits by establishing a corporate income tax over the bitter opposition of the oil companies, which sued to overturn it. They lost in every venue, including, finally, the U.S. Supreme Court. But the real battle was fought in the statehouse.
The oil industry contributed mainly to Republicans through the 1960s and ’70s, but came to realize that it needed broader alliances, and in the late ’70s began courting Democrats too. The strategy paid off. In 1981, the oil companies, through their allies in the legislature, launched a coup, ousting the speaker of the house and key committee chairmen. Then they revoked the corporate income tax. For the next 25 years, oil interests ruled the state almost uninterruptedly.
Palin’s rise began in 2002, when, term-limited as mayor of Wasilla, she ran for lieutenant governor. Little known and heavily outspent, she beat expectations, losing only narrowly and showing an exceptional ability to win fervent support. Afterward, she campaigned for Frank Murkowski, the four-term Alaska senator come home to run for governor. Palin traveled the state speaking about Murkowski, and making herself better known. When he won, she was short-listed to serve the remainder of his Senate term, and even interviewed for the job. But it went to his daughter Lisa instead. (Palin acidly recounts the patronizing interview with the new governor in her memoir, Going Rogue.) Palin got the low-profile chairmanship of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a regulatory body charged with ensuring that these resources are developed in the public interest.
By the time she arrived, the notion that Alaska’s oil-and-gas policy operated in the public interest was getting hard to maintain. The industry controlled the state, and especially the Republican Party. Other than a modest adjustment to oil taxes that squeezed through in 1989 after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the hammerlock held. Alaskans were coming to regard this situation with suspicion and anxiety. The problem wasn’t just that the state was starved of revenue from its most valuable resource. It was also the failure to develop another resource to which the oil companies held title: Alaska’s bountiful supply of natural gas. It’s always been understood that North Slope oil would one day run dry. Someday, perhaps as soon as 2019, there won’t be enough oil left to push through the trans-Alaska pipeline—a catastrophe, unless the state somehow replaces the revenue. For this reason, building a gas pipeline has long been a political priority, and one the oil companies have balked at.
From her spot on the oil-and-gas commission, Palin touched off a storm over these anxieties. One glaring example of the unhealthy commingling of oil interests and Republican politics was her fellow commissioner and Murkowski appointee, Randy Ruedrich, who was also chairman of the state Republican Party. Less than a year into the job, Ruedrich got crosswise with Palin for conducting party business from his office (and, it was later revealed, giving information to a company that the commission oversaw). When he ignored her admonitions to stop, she complained to Murkowski’s staff, but still nothing happened. So Palin laid out her concerns in a letter to the governor and the story leaked to the media. In the ensuing uproar, Palin became a hero and Murkowski was left no choice but to fire Ruedrich from the commission.
Palin got strong support from an unlikely quarter: Democrats. “She had the appearance of someone who was willing to go in a different direction,” Hollis French, a Democratic state senator, told me. “We subsequently learned that she’ll throw anyone under a bus, but that wasn’t apparent at the time. It looked like real moral courage.”
Even so, Palin’s actions were presumed to have ruined her prospects. Murkowski and Ruedrich still ran the party. Breaking with them made her no longer viable as an ordinary Republican or a recipient of oil-company largesse. To continue her rise, she needed to find another path. Palin alone imagined that she could. In this and other ways, she displayed all the traits that would become famous: the intense personalization of politics, the hyper-aggressive score-settling—and the dramatic public gesture, which came next.
Palin was clearly the victor (Ruedrich paid the largest civil fine in state history), but she quit the commission anyway. In Going Rogue, she says only that as a commissioner, she was subject to a gag order that Murkowski refused to lift. But quitting didn’t void the gag order. What it did was thrust her back into the spotlight and reinforce her public image. It also gave her a rationale to challenge Murkowski.
All of this turned out to be shrewd politics, because Murkowski’s governorship proceeded to fall apart, thanks to his brazen sense of entitlement. After failing to persuade the Homeland Security Department to buy him a personal jet (to help “defend, deter or defeat opposition forces”), he ignored the legislature’s objections and bought one with state funds. But it was his handling of matters vital to the state’s future that finally threw open the door for Palin.
Murkowski made up his mind to strike a deal with the major oil producers to finally build a gas pipeline from the North Slope. He cut out the legislature and insisted on negotiating through his own team of experts, out of public sight. This rankled all sorts of people because, beyond his arrogance, Murkowski had distinct views about oil and gas that many others didn’t share.
Alaska’s parties align differently from parties elsewhere—they’re further to the right and principally concerned with resource extraction. The major philosophical divide, especially on oil and gas, is between those who view the state as beholden to the oil companies for its livelihood, and will grant them almost anything to ensure that livelihood, and those who view its position as being like the owner of a public corporation for whom the oil companies’ interests are separate from and subordinate to those of its citizen-shareholders. “Oil and gas cuts a swath right through ordinary partisan politics,” Patrick Galvin, Palin’s revenue commissioner, told me.
Murkowski’s willingness to cater to the oil producers, and his secrecy, caused tensions in his administration that burst into view when he announced his deal, in October 2005. It was a breathtaking giveaway that ceded control of the pipeline to the oil companies and retained only a small stake for Alaskans; established a 30-year regime of low taxes impossible to revoke; indemnified companies against any damages from accidents; and exempted everything from open-records laws. In exchange, the state got an increase in the oil-production tax. (Palin later released a private memo in which Murkowski’s top economic adviser complains that he has “gone completely overboard” and is treating “Alaska as a banana republic in order to secure the gas line.”) The deal conceded so much that Murkowski’s natural-resources commissioner, Tom Irwin, publicly questioned its legality—and was summarily fired. Six of Irwin’s aides quit in protest, and the “Magnificent Seven” became a cause célèbre. In the end, the legislature rejected the gas-line deal. But, in a twist, it agreed to the oil tax—which had been intended as an inducement to pass the rest of the package.
Palin came out hard on the other side of the philosophical divide from Murkowski—and made it personal. She announced she would challenge him for governor. She assailed the “secret gas line deal” and the “multinational oil companies that make mind-boggling profits off resources owned by all Alaskans.” She put an “all-Alaska” pipeline at the center of her campaign. And she declared her intention to hire Tom Irwin to negotiate the deal. “She’s what I call ‘alley-cat smart,’” Tony Knowles, the former Democratic governor, told me. “It’s not about ideology. She knows how to pick her way down the political route that she feels will be the most beneficial to what she wants to do.”
Murkowski’s tax was discredited almost immediately. Just after he signed the new Petroleum Profits Tax, the FBI raided the offices of six legislators, in what became the biggest corruption scandal in state history. During the legislative session, the FBI had hidden a video camera at the Baranof Hotel, in Juneau, in a suite that belonged to Bill Allen, a major power broker and the chief executive of Veco Corporation, an oil-services firm. The tapes showed him discussing bribes with important politicians, and revealed the existence of a group of Republican legislators who called themselves the “Corrupt Bastards Club” and took bribes from Allen and others. (Several were later sent to prison.)
In the Republican primary, Palin crushed Murkowski, delivering one of the worst defeats ever suffered by an incumbent governor anywhere. She went on to have little trouble dispatching Knowles, an oil-friendly Democrat. “A lot of people on the East Coast, when they think of Sarah Palin now,” Cliff Groh, a former state tax lobbyist, told me, “some five-letter words come to mind: Scary. Crazy. Angry. Maybe some others. But the five-letter word that people in Alaska associated with her name was clean.”
You betcha.
One of the sad and dangerous signs of our times is how many people are enthralled by words, without bothering to look at the realities behind those words.
One of those words that many people seldom look behind is “education.” But education can cover anything from courses on nuclear physics to courses on baton twirling.
Unfortunately, an increasing proportion of American education, whether in the schools or in the colleges and universities, is closer to the baton twirling end of the spectrum than toward the nuclear physics end. Even reputable colleges are increasingly teaching things that students should have learned in high school.
We don’t have a backlog of serious students trying to take serious courses. If you look at the fields in which American students specialize in colleges and universities, those fields are heavily weighted toward the soft end of the spectrum.
When it comes to postgraduate study in tough fields like math and science, you often find foreign students at American universities receiving more of such degrees than do Americans.
A recent headline in the Chronicle of Higher Education said: “Master’s in English: Will Mow Lawns.” It featured a man with that degree who has gone into the landscaping business because there is no great demand for people with Master’s degrees in English.
Too many of the people coming out of even our most prestigious academic institutions graduate with neither the skills to be economically productive nor the intellectual development to make them discerning citizens and voters.
Students can graduate from some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, without ever learning anything about science, mathematics, economics or anything else that would make them either a productive contributor to the economy or an informed voter who can see through political rhetoric.
On the contrary, people with such “education” are often more susceptible to demagoguery than the population at large. Nor is this a situation peculiar to America. In countries around the world, people with degrees in soft subjects have been sources of political unrest, instability and even mass violence.
Nor is this a new phenomenon. A scholarly history of 19th century Prague referred to “the well-educated but underemployed” Czech young men who promoted ethnic polarization there– a polarization that not only continued, but escalated, in the 20th century to produce bitter tragedies for both Czechs and Germans.
In other central European countries, between the two World Wars a rising class of newly educated young people bitterly resented having to compete with better qualified Jews in the universities and with Jews already established in business and the professions. Anti-Semitic policies and violence were the result.
It was much the same story in Asia, where successful minorities like the Chinese in Malaysia were resented by newly educated Malays without either the educational or business skills to compete with them. These Malaysians demanded– and got– heavily discriminatory laws and policies against the Chinese.
Similar situations developed at various times in Nigeria, Romania, Sri Lanka, Hungary and India, among other places.
Many Third World countries have turned out so many people with diplomas, but without meaningful skills, that “the educated unemployed” became a cliche among people who study such countries. This has not only become a personal problem for those individuals who have been educated, or half-educated, without acquiring any ability to fulfill their rising expectations, it has become a major economic and political problem for these countries.
Such people have proven to be ideal targets for demagogues promoting polarization and strife. We in the United States are still in the early stages of that process. But you need only visit campuses where whole departments feature soft courses preaching a sense of victimhood and resentment, and see the consequences in racial and ethnic polarization on campus.
There are too many other soft courses that allow students to spend years in college without becoming educated in any real sense.
We don’t need more government “investment” to produce more of such “education.” Lofty words like “investment” should not blind us to the ugly reality of political porkbarrel spending.
The government goes on as if there is no $16 trillion debt with Social Security and Medicare near broke. Do we really need this crap?
For those of you who wonder why so many women, Catholics and Hispanics voted with the TEA Party in 2010, this nonsense is one of the reasons.Democrats will not make priorities and the cuts we eed to keep the important programs going and pay the debt. The GOP will only do it if we keep their feet to the fire.
That’s the idea behind a $2 million project being unveiled Wednesday in the lunchroom of a San Antonio elementary school, where high-tech cameras installed in the cafeteria will begin photographing what foods children pile onto their trays — and later capture what they don’t finish eating.
Digital imaging analysis of the snapshots will then calculate how many calories each student scarfed down. Local health officials said the program, funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, is the first of its kind in a U.S. school, and will be so precise that the technology can identify a half-eaten pear left on a lunch tray.
“This is very sophisticated,” said Dr. Roberto Trevino, director of the San Antonio-based Social & Health Research Center, which will oversee the program.
The grant from the USDA will fund the study for four years. Trevino said the coming school year will be very experimental, with programmers fine-tuning the cameras and imaging software to accurately identify what’s a pear and what’s an apple. He expects the “prototype” to be in place by the second year.
Where is the “Islamic tolerance” crowd when it comes to the slaughter of Christians in Islamic countries; the stoning of women; the denial of rights to women; and the banning of Bibles and the banning of the building of Christian and Jewish steeples in Islamic countries? Where is their outrage then?
Swiss ban on minarets was a vote for tolerance and inclusion. The Swiss vote highlights the debate on Islam as a set of political and collectivist ideas, not a rejection of Muslims.
The recent Swiss referendum that bans construction of minarets has caused controversy across the world. There are two ways to interpret the vote. First, as a rejection of political Islam, not a rejection of Muslims. In this sense it was a vote for tolerance and inclusion, which political Islam rejects. Second, the vote was a revelation of the big gap between how the Swiss people and the Swiss elite judge political Islam.
In the battle of ideas, symbols are important.
What if the Swiss voters were asked in a referendum to ban the building of an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles as a symbol of the belief of a small minority? Or imagine a referendum on building towers topped with a hammer and sickle – another symbol dear to the hearts of a very small minority in Switzerland.
Political ideas have symbols: A swastika, a hammer and sickle, a minaret, a crescent with a star in the middle (usually on top of a minaret) all represent a collectivist political theory of supremacy by one group over all others.
On controversial issues, the Swiss listen to debate, read newspapers, and otherwise investigate when they make up their minds for a vote.
What Europeans are finding out about Islam as they investigate is that it is more than just a religion. Islam offers not only a spiritual framework for dealing with such human questions as birth, death, and what ought to come after this world; it prescribes a way of life.
Islam is an idea about how society should be organized: the individual’s relationship to the state; the relationship between men and women; rules for the interaction between believers and unbelievers; how to enforce such rules; and why a government under Islam is better than a government founded on other ideas. These political ideas of Islam have their symbols: the minaret, the crescent; the head scarf, and the sword.
The minaret is a symbol of Islamist supremacy, a token of domination that came to symbolize Islamic conquest. It was introduced decades after the founding of Islam.
In Europe, as in other places in the world where Muslims settle, the places of worship are simple at first. All that a Muslim needs to fulfill the obligation of prayer is a compass to indicate the direction of Mecca, water for ablution, a clean prayer mat, and a way of telling the time so as to pray five times a day in the allocated period.
The construction of large mosques with extremely tall towers that cost millions of dollars to erect are considered only after the demography of Muslims becomes significant.
The mosque evolves from a prayer house to a political center.
Imams can then preach a message of self-segregation and a bold rejection of the ways of the non-Muslims.
Men and women are separated; gays, apostates and Jews are openly condemned; and believers organize around political goals that call for the introduction of forms of sharia (Islamic) law, starting with family law.
This is the trend we have seen in Europe, and also in other countries where Muslims have settled. None of those Western academics, diplomats, and politicians who condemn the Swiss vote to ban the minaret address, let alone dispute, these facts.
In their response to the presence of Islam in their midst, Europeans have developed what one can discern as roughly two competing views. The first view emphasizes accuracy. Is it accurate to equate political symbols like those used by Communists and Nazis with a religious symbol like the minaret and its accessories of crescent and star; the uniforms of the Third Reich with the burqa and beards of current Islamists?
If it is accurate, then Islam, as a political movement, should be rejected on the basis of its own bigotry. In this view, Muslims should not be rejected as residents or citizens. The objection is to practices that are justified in the name of Islam, like honor killings, jihad, the we-versus-they perspective, the self-segregation. In short, Islamist supremacy.
The second view refuses to equate political symbols of various forms of white fascism with the symbols of a religion. In this school of thought, Islamic Scripture is compared to Christian and Jewish Scripture. Those who reason from this perspective preach pragmatism. According to them, the key to the assimilation of Muslims is dialogue. They are prepared to appease some of the demands that Muslim minorities make in the hope that one day their attachment to radical Scripture will wear off like that of Christian and Jewish peoples.
These two contrasting perspectives correspond to two quite distinct groups in Europe. The first are mainly the working class. The second are the classes that George Orwell described as “indeterminate.” Cosmopolitan in outlook, they include diplomats, businesspeople, mainstream politicians, and journalists. They are well versed in globalization and tend to focus on the international image of their respective countries. With every conflict between Islam and the West, they emphasize the possible backlash from Muslim countries and how that will affect the image of their country.
By contrast, those who reject the ideas and practices of political Islam are in touch with Muslims on a local level. They have been asked to accept Muslim immigrants as neighbors, classmates, colleagues – they are what Americans would refer to as Main Street. Here is the great paradox of today’s Europe: that the working class, who voted for generations for the left, now find themselves voting for right-wing parties because they feel that the social democratic parties are out of touch.
The pragmatists, most of whom are power holders, are partially right when they insist that the integration of Muslims will take a very long time. Their calls for dialogue are sensible. But as long as they do not engage Muslims to make a choice between the values of the countries that they have come to and those of the countries they left, they will find themselves faced with more surprises. And this is what the Swiss vote shows us. This is a confrontation between local, working-class voters (and some middle-class feminists) and Muslim immigrant newcomers who feel that they are entitled, not only to practice their religion, but also to replace the local political order with that of their own.
Look carefully at the reactions of the Swiss, EU and UN elites. The Swiss government is embarrassed by the outcome of the vote. The Swedes, who are currently chairing EU meetings, have condemned the Swiss vote as intolerant and xenophobic. It is remarkable that the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, said in public that the Swiss vote is a poor act of diplomacy. What he overlooks is that this is a discussion of Islam as a domestic issue. It has nothing to do with foreign policy.
The Swiss vote highlights the debate on Islam as a domestic issue in Europe. That is, Islam as a set of political and collectivist ideas. Native Europeans have been asked over and over again by their leaders to be tolerant and accepting of Muslims. They have done that. And that can be measured a) by the amount of taxpayer money that is invested in healthcare, housing, education, and welfare for Muslims and b) the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who are knocking on the doors of Europe to be admitted. If those people who cry that Europe is intolerant are right, if there was, indeed, xenophobia and a rejection of Muslims, then we would have observed the reverse. There would have been an exodus of Muslims out of Europe.
There is indeed a wider international confrontation between Islam and the West. The Iraq and Afghan wars are part of that, not to mention the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians and the nuclear ambitions of Iran. That confrontation should never be confused with the local problem of absorbing those Muslims who have been permitted to become permanent residents and citizens into European societies.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of “Infidel,” is the Somali-born women’s rights advocate and former Dutch parliamentarian. Her forthcoming book is entitled “Nomad.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali:
Multiculturalism is a form of racism. Leftist westerners believe that multiculturalism is a form of generosity. In reality it is a form of generosity to the perpetrators of tyranny.
When a culture performs female genital mutilation… the leftist thinks that there must be something good about it that “we” don’t understand. Who suffers?
When the Muslim father of a female student wants to pull her out of school and marry her off. She goes to her teacher and says “I do not want to go and be married and be a baby factory for a man I don’t even know, I want to stay in school and learn”.
So the teacher has a meeting with the father. The father says “If you go so far as to mention this to me or my daughter again I will go to the anti-discrimination authority and bring you up on charges.” The next thing you know the student is gone and no one dares have anything to say about it.
Leadership is never a political strategy, it is a moral one.
Wow, Geithner is spinning hard. 3% of businesses. Most businesses are on paper or are 1-2 man operations. Small businesses used to do almost 80% of the hiring in this country, now it is only 64%. The tax he wants will affect most businesses who actually hire. That is the point he is so desperate to avoid. Congressman Ellmers almost put him away and the following two questions in red text would be the key followups that would have finished him, “Mr. Geithner, how much of that 3% of small businesses you want to tax actually employ five or more people?”
At the same time the Obama Administration is fine with his friends at Google paying 2.4% on $3.1 billion in profits. General Electric, which was ran by Obama’s friend GE CEO Jeffery Immelt who just took a job at the White House, paid no tax on $14.2 billion in income and actually got government subsidies. GE also owned MSNBC until just recently, but I am sure that is just another one of those funny coincidences.
Geithner talks about the top 2%, but what he didn’t tell you is that the way the tax code works that top 2% excludes much of the very wealthy [see this link for details why]; who such a tax smacks are the genuine wealth creators , upper middle class risk takers and small businesses. A husband and wife with two kids may own and operate three local pizza shops and on paper that small business will bring in $250,000 a year in income (notice I did not say profits, I said income), but most of that money will go to paying employees, buying the pizza delivery man’s gasoline, food, energy for the ovens and freezers, boxes, cleaning supplies, wages, other taxes etc. Everyone must get paid before the owners do and they will be lucky to scrape $50K for themselves, which in turn they will be paying more taxes on.
Then comes the right hook, “Mr. Geithner, how can one be against small businesses that actually hire (pause for effect) and for jobs at the same time?”
I just talked to Addison Scott, who is on Congressman Ellmers’ staff, and I passed those two questions on to them. I can’t wait to see her lay these two questions on Geithner and watch him squirm.
Geithner’s explanation of the administration’s small-business tax plan came in an exchange with first-term Rep. Renee Ellmers (R.-N.C.). Ellmers, a nurse, decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 after she became active in the grass-roots opposition to President Barack Obama’s proposed health-care reform plan in 2009.
“Overwhelmingly, the businesses back home and across the country continue to tell us that regulation, lack of access to capital, taxation, fear of taxation, and just the overwhelming uncertainties that our businesses face is keeping them from hiring,” Ellmers told Geithner. “They just simply cannot.”
She then challenged Geithner on the administration’s tax plan.
“Looking into the future, you are supporting the idea of taxation, increasing taxes on those who make $250,000 or more. Those are our business owners,” said Ellmers.
Geithner initially responded by saying that the administration’s planned tax increase would hit “three percent of your small businesses.”
Ellmers then said: “Sixty-four percent of jobs that are created in this country are for small business.”
Geithner conceded the point, but then suggested the administration’s planned tax increase on small businesses would be “good for growth.”
Good for the growth of government perhaps, not the economy.
Bill Whiddle, who is as solid and bright as any communications strategist I have ever seen, in the video below gives us a great refresher in advertising techniques, branding, political messaging, and what he calls “iconography”. The best modern text on this very subject comes from author David Kupellian in his book The Marketing of Evil.
Let me give you an example of what is meant by iconography.
The Nazi Brand:
We all know what the Nazi Swastika is. Today it represents the kind of leviathan state evil that resulted in the murder of millions. It is important to keep in mind that the perception of the Swastika icon or brand was not always so negative. In the 1930’s Hitler was the darling of a large portion of American leftist academia, the media and many leftist political groups. For several years until Hitler took the rest of the Czechoslovakia after being handed the Czech Sudetenlands his brand was largely respected by large groups of people. For years Hitler and Mussolini were treated as brilliant visionaries who had discovered a “third way” as it were.
A brand can have its meaning changed, but the iconography stays virtually forever. Just like…
The GM Brand:
Here is another icon whose brand has changed and is in the process of changing at this moment.
The brand the GM symbol represents also used to be highly respected and in many ways revered. A true American icon. In short the GM brand used to mean this:
Now the GM brand is in the process of becoming a joke. Government Motors it is called. They make cars that are too expensive, do not hold up well, and that people do not want to drive. Ironically those are the qualities of the current status of government today.
Like all iconography, as we will see more of in the video below, the icon can be used against the brand.
The Obama Brand:
One will find that much of the same manipulation of iconography is used by the Obama brand and against it.
[Note: Disclaimer for leftists and idiots – We are NOT saying that Obama is the same thing as Hitler and neither is Bill Whiddle in the video below, so don’t even go there. This is about the iconography ONLY!]
And the Obama Administration is doing little more than posting these signs….
Here is a CNN from late 2007 and things have just gotten worse: Mexican Drug Cartels Threaten U.S. Reporters –
When I was growing up, gas was 70 cents a gallon and when you went to get gas, a young person who was apprenticing at the service center attached to most every gas station would come out, pump your gas, check your tires and fluids, wipers etc. That young person was apprenticing under an experienced mechanic and learning valuable skills.
Those days are gone. Now gas is $4.00 and you pump it yourself. Service? Forget it, you will be lucky if the clerk speaks English. The minimum wage, labor regulations, and government regulations have brought such apprenticeships to a screeching halt.
Central planning of an economy doesn’t work in large, diverse, environments, and works poorly in small homo-genius societies (Greece, Spain, Portugal all collapsing).
Government spending does not create wealth and in only limited circumstances does it have a long term positive impact with a high velocity of money. Politicians do not spend money on the greatest needs of individuals, businesses and communities; rather they spend those dollars with the hope that it will buy votes, increase influence, and come back in the form of campaign donations. People tend to act in their own self interest, so how can a politicians best interest be everyone else’s?
Central planners are also very fond of “tax credits” which they call “tax cuts”. You get a tax credit if you engage in a behavior that the government approves of. This causes people and businesses to act not in what is best for them, their family, their business, their economic needs or the needs of their customers, rather they are acting in the interests of a politician. How is that good for the economy when it comes down to you feeding and taking care of your family? This also results in mass corruption as the tax code becomes a behemoth filled with politicians picking winners and losers. This is called “crony capitalism” or “state run capitalism” (all of which is just a mutation of socialism/corporatism).
Tax credits are also used as the politicians rhetorical ruse. Very often government tax credits are such a regulatory burden they are an economic non starter or they are so “targeted” it means that almost no one will qualify for them [Example: Tax credit for a family of four who makes under $40,000 per year, who is buying house over 2,000 square feet, that is ran by solar power].
The more the planner’s plans fail the more the planner’s plan – Ronald Reagan.
With a flamboyant downgrade of the outlook for economic growth, jobs and profits, Wednesday’s 280-point Dow plunge to launch the so-called June stock swoon is a warning shot across the bow.
The Dow tanked alongside a batch of dismal economic data. The ISM manufacturing index, ADP employment, Case-Shiller home prices and consumer confidence are all pointing to 2 percent growth or less, rather than the kind of 5 percent growth we ought to be getting coming out of a deep recession.
The economy now looks like a Government Motors engine that’s stalling out. Or perhaps, with energy and food inflation, and housing deflation at the same time, the economy is acting like a pinball machine on permanent tilt.
There’s a key message here: Big-government stimulus never works.
First there was the massive Barack Obama stimulus spending. Then QE1. And now QE2 is winding down. And what did we get for all this? Slower growth overall, paltry job creation, more energy and commodities inflation, continued housing deflation, and virtually no new business start-up entrepreneurship.
We know the Obama spending package failed to create a 7 percent to 8 percent unemployment rate, as advertised. And now we’re learning that the Fed’s QE2 has actually done more harm than good.
All that money-printing stimulus worked to depreciate the dollar and jack-up commodity prices, especially oil and gasoline, but also food. So both companies and consumers have been punished.
Some demand-side boneheads on Wall Street want the Fed to move to QE3, allegedly to fight a stalling economy. But if the central bank prints another $600 billion or so, all that will do is sink the greenback another 10 percent and drive oil and gasoline prices higher and higher. And that, in turn, will slow business and consumers even more.
OK on one hand I am totally in favor of this because I do not have to watch them.
On the other hand they are a violation of the Obama Administration’s repeated promises of openness and transparency.
A little more than a week ago, Vice President Joe Biden traveled to fundraisers in two battleground-state cities, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.
Neither stop included the White House press corps; requests by local media to cover the events were denied by the vice president’s press office. The Democratic National Committee arranged the events for the Obama Victory Fund.
A number of seasoned political reporters and former White House press-office staffers consider that lack of coverage a dangerous precedent.
“It would behoove the Obama administration to keep its promise of transparency even with fundraisers,” agrees Jeff Brauer, a political history professor at Keystone College. “The United States is a democracy, after all.”
Having press coverage of fundraising events that feature the president or vice president matters for at least two reasons, Brauer explains.
“One, large amounts of taxpayer dollars are being used for personal security at such events. As with all tax dollars, they should be spent with accountability.
“Two, it is important for the public to know what the president and vice president are saying to donors. Is it the same message they are saying to the electorate at large?”
Such knowledge helps citizens judge officeholders’ authenticity and integrity.
More
Days before Biden was sworn in as vice president in 2009, he promised to be more open than his predecessor, Dick Cheney.
Yet his official schedule more often than not lists meetings as “closed press” or shows no public events at all.
The best way to “fundamentally transform America” is to make sure new generations forget what it is all about.
A third of graduated and rising high school seniors – who will be voting in the 2012 elections – have never studied the U.S. Constitution.
A recent study by the National Assessment for Educational Progress reported that only 67% of all high school students have spent any time studying the nation’s founding document. Every four years, the NAEP polls 10,000 students about their knowledge of – or even exposure to – the Constitution. The percentage of knowledgeable students is continually decreasing and, since 2007, the numbers have fallen another five percentage points from 72%. Maybe this is obvious, but shouldn’t a responsible and informed citizenship be one of the goals of public education?
Without basic knowledge of this foundational document, these voters will be hard pressed to answer some of the most important political questions in 2012. The next election is going to depend on every voter’s understanding of constitutional authority. For instance, does Obamacare’s individual mandate fall under the commerce clause? Other recent questions – like which branches are involved in the decision to declare war – cannot be answered without a thorough understanding of the Constitution.
But a basic understanding of the Constitution is useful well beyond just the next election. The Constitutionspells out both the powers and limitations of the federal government. It seems that it could become rather difficult to secure the blessings of liberty without teaching the next generation how our government is designed to protect these liberties.
This is a great post by former Governor Sarah Palin. She covers most of the pertinent facts we have been bringing you for a year on my old college blog in our health care round-up posts and our Health Law category, and all in one very well articulated note.
It’s now six months since President Obama took control of one-sixth of the private sector economy with his health care “reform,” and the first changes to our health care system come into effect today. Despite overwhelming public dislike of the bill, we were told that D.C. knows best, and there was nothing to worry about, and we’d be better off swallowing the pill called Obamacare; so, in defiance of the will of the people, the President and his party rammed through this mother of all unfunded mandates. Nancy Pelosi said Congress had to pass the bill so that Americans could “find out what is in it.” We found out that it’s even worse than we feared.
Remember when the president said, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”? Not true. In Texas alone a record number of doctors are leaving the Medicare system because of the cuts in reimbursements forced on them by Obamacare! The president of the Texas Medical Association, Dr. Susan Bailey, warns that “the Medicare system is beginning to implode.”
Remember the Obama administration’s promise that Obamacare would cut a typical family’s premium “by up to $2500 a year”? Not true. In fact, fueled by reports that insurers expect premiums to rise by as much as 25 percent as a result of Obamacare, Senate Democrats are contemplating the introduction of price controls.
Remember when the president said in his address to Congress that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions”? That turned out to be yet another one of those “You lie!” moments. We found out that Obamacare-mandated high risk insurance pools set up in states like Pennsylvania and New Mexico will fund abortions after all.
Remember the promise that Obamacare would “strengthen small businesses”? Not true either. The net result of Obamacare is that small businesses will face higher health care costs, new Medicare taxes, and higher regulation compliance costs, while the much-hyped health care tax credit for small businesses turns out to be almost impossible to obtain.
Remember the president’s promise that his bill would ensure “everyone [has] some basic security”? False again. Besides the great uncertainty that Obamacare hampers businesses with, companies now find it is actually cheaper to pay the $2000 per employee fine imposed by Obamacare than to keep insuring their workforce. This leaves millions of American workers at risk of losing their employer-provided health insurance.
And remember when the Obama administration said they would not be “rationing care” in the future? That ol’ “death panels” thing I wrote about last year? That was before Obamacare was passed. Once it passed, they admitted there was going to be rationing after all. There has to be. The reality of Obamacare is that it enshrines what the New York Times called “The Power of No” – the government’s power to say no to your request for treatment of the people you love. The fact that the president used a recess appointment to push through the nomination of Dr. Donald Berwick as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells you all you need to know about this administration’s intentions. After all, Berwick is the man who said, “The decision is not whether we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”
By the way, when the administration was talking about that independent board that has the statutory power to decide which categories of treatment are worthy of funding based on efficiency calculations (that, again, sounded to me like a panel of faceless bureaucrats making life and death decisions about your loved ones – which, again, is what I referred to as a “death panel”), it was another opportunity for Americans to hear the truth about Obamacare’s intentions.
So, yes, those rationing “death panels” are there, and so are the tax increases that the president also promised were “absolutely not” in his bill. (Aren’t you tiring of the untruths coming from this White House and the liberals in Congress?) When the state of Florida filed a challenge to Obamacare on the basis that the mandates in the bill are unconstitutional, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the suit by citing the Anti-Injunction Act, which blocks courts from interfering with the federal government’s ability to collect taxes. Yes, taxes! Once the bill was passed it was no longer politically inconvenient for the Obama administration to admit that it makes no difference whether the payment is a tax or a penalty because it’s “assessed and collected in the same manner.” The National Taxpayer Advocate has already warnedthat “Congress must provide sufficient funding” to allow the IRS to collect this new tax. Pretty soon we’ll be paying taxes just to make it possible for the IRS to collect all the additional taxes under Obamacare! Seems as if this is another surprise that the public found out about after the bill was rammed through.
But perhaps the most ridiculous promise of all was the president’s assurance that Obamacare will lead to “bending the curve” on health care spending. Yes, rationing is a part of the new system, and yes, Obamacare does raise taxes. But because the new government managed system is so incredibly complicated and expensive to run, health care spending will actually rise instead of fall. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at the Congressional Budget Office’s admittance that the CBO’s original estimate of the total costs of the bill were off by around $115 billion. Its new estimate is now above $1 trillion, and even that may be way too low. A more realistic figure calculated by the Pacific Research Institute puts the number at $2.5 to $3 trillion over the next 10 years! This is probably what President Obama was referring to when he admitted recently that he had known all along that “at the margins” his proposals were going to drive up costs. Give us a break! Only in this administration would they refer to a $3 trillion spending increase as “marginal.” Next time he comes to us with another one of his harebrained proposals for a budget-busting federal power grab, let’s make sure we remember the president’s admission that he was lying all along when he told us his health care plan was going to cut costs. He is increasing costs. He admits it now. Period.
Higher costs and worse care – is it any wonder why people are overwhelmingly in favor of repealing and replacing Obamacare? Politicians who have vacillated on this issue need to be fired. Candidates who don’t support “repeal and replace” don’t deserve your support. No amount of money spent on Washington’s “government-wide apolitical public information campaign” (otherwise known as “propaganda”) will convince Americans that this awful legislation is anything other than a debt-driven big government train wreck. We need to repeal and replace it, and that can only happen if we elect a new Congress that will make scrapping Obamacare one of its top priorities. We can replace it with pro-private sector, patient-oriented reform that the GOP has proposed.
On March 23, when Obamacare was signed into law, I launched my “Take back the 20” campaign, focusing on 20 congressional districts that John McCain and I carried in 2008 which are or were represented by members of Congress who voted in favor of Obamacare. They need to be held accountable for those votes. They voted for Obamacare. Now we can vote against them. We need to replace them with representatives who will respect the will of the people.
That’s why today I’m launching a new Take Back the 20 website atwww.takebackthe20.com!
TakeBackthe20.com provides information about the candidates in these 20 districts who are committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare. It has links to their personal websites and their donation pages. It allows you to read up on them, and then support them in their race to defeat those who gave us this terrible bill.
We have to send Washington a message that it’s not acceptable to disregard the will of the people. We have to tell them enough is enough. No more defying the Constitution. No more driving us off a financial cliff. We must repeal and replace Obamacare with patient-centered, results-driven, free market reform that provides solutions to people of all income levels without bankrupting our country.
It’s time to make a stand! Let’s take back the 20!
– Sarah Palin
Previously from my old college blog:
“There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases.”
That sounds like a stern headmistress dressing down some sophomores who have been misbehaving. But it’s actually from a letter sent Thursday from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans — the chief lobbyist for private health insurance companies.
Secretary Sebelius objects to claims by health insurers that they are raising premiums because of increased costs imposed by the Obamacare law passed by Congress last March.
She acknowledges that many of the law’s “key protections” take effect later this month and does not deny that these impose additional costs on insurers. But she says that “according to our analysis and those of some industry and academic experts, any potential premium impact . . . will be minimal.”
Well, that’s reassuring. Er, except that if that’s the conclusion of “some” industry and academic experts, it’s presumably not the conclusion of all industry and academic experts, or the secretary would have said so.
Sebelius also argues that “any premium increases will be moderated by out-of-pocket savings resulting from the law.” But she’s pretty vague about the numbers — “up to $1 billion in 2013.” Anyone who watches TV ads knows that “up to” can mean zero.
As Time magazine’s Karen Pickert points out, Sebelius ignores the fact that individual insurance plans cover different types of populations. So that government and “some” industry and academic experts think the new law will justify increases averaging 1 or 2 percent, they could justify much larger increases for certain plans.
Or as Ignagni, the recipient of the letter, says, “It’s a basic law of economics that additional benefits incur additional costs.”
But Sebelius has “zero tolerance” for that kind of thing. She promises to issue regulations to require “state or federal review of all potentially unreasonable rate increases” (which would presumably mean all rate increases).
And there’s a threat. “We will also keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: Those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014.”
That’s a significant date, the first year in which state insurance exchanges are slated to get a monopoly on the issuance of individual health insurance policies. Sebelius is threatening to put health insurers out of business in a substantial portion of the market if they state that Obamacare is boosting their costs.
“Congress shall make no law,” reads the First Amendment, “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Sebelius’ approach is different: “zero tolerance” for dissent.
The threat to use government regulation to destroy or harm someone’s business because they disagree with government officials is thuggery. Like the Obama administration’s transfer of money from Chrysler bondholders to its political allies in the United Auto Workers, it is a form of gangster government.
“The rule of law, or the rule of men (women)?” economist Tyler Cowen asks on his marginalrevolution.com blog. As he notes, “Nowhere is it stated that these rate hikes are against the law (even if you think they should be), nor can this ‘misinformation’ be against the law.”
According to Politico, not a single Democratic candidate for Congress has run an ad since last April that makes any positive reference to Obamacare. The First Amendment gives candidates the right to talk — or not talk — about any issue they want.
But that is not enough for Sebelius and the Obama administration. They want to stamp out negative speech about Obamacare. “Zero tolerance” means they are ready to use the powers of government to threaten economic harm on those who dissent.
The closing paragraph of Sebelius’ letter to AHIP’s Karen Ignagni gives the game away. “We worked hard to change the system to help consumers.” This is a reminder that the administration alternatively collaborated with and criticized Ignagni’s organization. We roughed you up a little but we eventually made a deal.
The secretary goes on: “It is my hope we can work together to stop misinformation and misleading marketing from the start.” In other words, shut your members up and play team ball — or my guys with the baseball bats and tommy guns are going to get busy. As Tyler Cowen puts it, “worse than I had been expecting.”
Michael Barone,The Examiner’s senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.
UPDATE – Barone continues:
A few days before my Examiner column accusing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of thuggery and gangster government for her threats against health insurers who contradict the administration line on the costs of Obamacare, my friend John Hoff, who worked on health care policy in the Bush administration, published a piece on the Heritage website describing some of the things the administration might be able to do under Obamacare. Including de facto price controls without explicit authority. Sounds like a primer on gangster government—taking away people’s property without due process of law. All the more reason to repeal this appallingly bad legislation.
Political Arena 