Charles Koch Speaks Out Against Crony Capitalism/Socialism, Bloated Government, Corrupt Regulation

Since the left likes to demonize and invent all sorts of conspiracy theories against this man and his brother it seemed a good time to go back and actually examine his point of view.

Wall Street Journal:

Years of tremendous overspending by federal, state and local governments have brought us face-to-face with an economic crisis. Federal spending will total at least $3.8 trillion this year—double what it was 10 years ago. And unlike in 2001, when there was a small federal surplus, this year’s projected budget deficit is more than $1.6 trillion.

Several trillions more in debt have been accumulated by state and local governments. States are looking at a combined total of more than $130 billion in budget shortfalls this year. Next year, they will be in even worse shape as most so-called stimulus payments end.

For many years, I, my family and our company have contributed to a variety of intellectual and political causes working to solve these problems. Because of our activism, we’ve been vilified by various groups. Despite this criticism, we’re determined to keep contributing and standing up for those politicians, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who are taking these challenges seriously.

Both Democrats and Republicans have done a poor job of managing our finances. They’ve raised debt ceilings, floated bond issues, and delayed tough decisions.

In spite of looming bankruptcy, President Obama and many in Congress have tiptoed around the issue of overspending by suggesting relatively minor cuts in mostly discretionary items. There have been few serious proposals for necessary cuts in military and entitlement programs, even though these account for about three-fourths of all federal spending.

Yes, some House leaders have suggested cutting spending to 2008 levels. But getting back to a balanced budget would mean a return to at least 2003 spending levels—and would still leave us with the problem of paying off our enormous debts.

Federal data indicate how urgently we need reform: The unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid already exceed $106 trillion. That’s well over $300,000 for every man, woman and child in America (and exceeds the combined value of every U.S. bank account, stock certificate, building and piece of personal or public property).

The Congressional Budget Office has warned that the interest on our federal debt is “poised to skyrocket.” Even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is sounding alarms. Yet the White House insists that substantial spending cuts would hurt the economy and increase unemployment.

Plenty of compelling examples indicate just the opposite. When Canada recently reduced its federal spending to 11.3% of GDP from 17.5% eight years earlier, the economy rebounded and unemployment dropped. By comparison, our federal spending is 25% of GDP.

Government spending on business only aggravates the problem. Too many businesses have successfully lobbied for special favors and treatment by seeking mandates for their products, subsidies (in the form of cash payments from the government), and regulations or tariffs to keep more efficient competitors at bay.

Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.

The purpose of business is to efficiently convert resources into products and services that make people’s lives better. Businesses that fail to do so should be allowed to go bankrupt rather than be bailed out.

But what about jobs that are lost when businesses go under? It’s important to remember that not all jobs are the same. In business, real jobs profitably produce goods and services that people value more highly than their alternatives. Subsidizing inefficient jobs is costly, wastes resources, and weakens our economy.

Because every other company in a given industry is accepting market-distorting programs, Koch companies have had little option but to do so as well, simply to remain competitive and help sustain our 50,000 U.S.-based jobs. However, even when such policies benefit us, we only support the policies that enhance true economic freedom.

For example, because of government mandates, our refining business is essentially obligated to be in the ethanol business. We believe that ethanol—and every other product in the marketplace—should be required to compete on its own merits, without mandates, subsidies or protective tariffs. Such policies only increase the prices of those products, taxes and the cost of many other goods and services.

Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers—not governments—to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens.

Recent studies show that the poorest 10% of the population living in countries with the greatest economic freedom have 10 times the per capita income of the poorest citizens in countries with the least economic freedom. In other words, society as a whole benefits from greater economic freedom.

Even though it affects our business, as a matter of principle our company has been outspoken in defense of economic freedom. This country would be much better off if every company would do the same. Instead, we see far too many businesses that paint their tails white and run with the antelope.

I am confident that businesses like ours will hire more people and invest in more equipment when our country’s financial future looks more promising. Laying the groundwork for smaller, smarter government, especially at the federal level, is going to be tough. But it is essential for getting us back on the path to long-term prosperity.

Mr. Koch is chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, Inc. He’s the author of “The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company” (Wiley, 2007).

Muslim turned Christian speaks out: God of Koran is ‘biggest terrorist’

Associated Press Video:

Muslim turned Christian speaks out. Mosab Hassan Yousef, who helped Israel’s security forces kill and arrest members of Hamas, is probably marked for death. He should be keeping silent. But he’s got a story to tell, one he delivers in his new book, ‘Son of Hamas.’

GAO Report: Government bloated. Massive Overlap. 82 “teacher improvement programs”.

Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. government has 15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs to help the homeless and 80 programs for economic development.

These are a few of the findings in a massive study of overlapping and duplicative programs that cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, according to the Government Accountability Office.

A report from the nonpartisan GAO, to be released Tuesday, compiles a list of redundant and potentially ineffective federal programs, and it could serve as a template for lawmakers in both parties as they move to cut federal spending and consolidate programs to reduce the deficit. Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), who pushed for the report, estimated it identifies between $100 billion and $200 billion in duplicative spending. The GAO didn’t put a specific figure on the spending overlap.

The GAO examined numerous federal agencies, including the departments of defense, agriculture and housing and urban development, and pointed to instances where different arms of the government should be coordinating or consolidating efforts to save taxpayers’ money.

The agency found 82 federal programs to improve teacher quality; 80 to help disadvantaged people with transportation; 47 for job training and employment; and 56 to help people understand finances, according to a draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Instances of ineffective and unfocused federal programs can lead to a mishmash of occasionally arbitrary policies and rules, the report said. It recommends merging or consolidating a number of programs to both save money and make the government more efficient.

“Reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap, or fragmentation could potentially save billions of tax dollars annually and help agencies provide more efficient and effective services,” the report said.

There have been multiple efforts to cull the number of federal programs in recent years, but they often run into opposition from lawmakers in both parties who rush to defend individual spending provisions. In fact, GAO’s recommendations are often ignored or postponed by federal agencies and lawmakers, particularly when they could require difficult political votes.

You just can’t make this stuff up:

The report says policy makers should consider creating a single food-safety agency because of a number of redundancies. The Food and Drug Administration makes sure that chicken eggs are “safe, wholesome, and properly labeled” while a division of the Department of Agriculture “is responsible for the safety of eggs processed into egg products.”

The report says there are 18 federal programs that spent a combined $62.5 billion in 2008 on food and nutrition assistance, but little is known about the effectiveness of 11 of these programs because they haven’t been well studied.

The report said five divisions within the Department of Transportation account for 100 different programs that fund things like highways, rail projects and safety programs.

On teacher quality, the report identified 82 programs that often have similar descriptions and goals and are spread across 10 federal agencies, including the Department of Education, the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Nine of these programs are linked to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Fifty-three of the programs are relatively small, receiving $50 million or less, “and many have their own separate administrative processes.”

The GAO highlighted 80 different economic development programs at the Department of Commerce, HUD, Department of Agriculture and Small Business Administration, that spent a combined $6.5 billion last year and often overlapped. For example, the four agencies combined to have 52 different programs that fund “entrepreneurial efforts,” 35 programs for infrastructure, and 26 programs for telecommunications. It said 60% of the programs fund only one or two activities, making them “the most likely to overlap because many of them can only fund the same limited types of activities.”

3M CEO: Obama is anti-business

3M CEO George Buckley

Notice Buckley said Canada as well as Mexico. Canada is in the process if lowering its corporate income tax to 16.5% (the USA is 35%). Canada is in the midst of a free-market awakening and wealth is flocking to Canada. They are slowly privatizing their health care system and streamlining their regulatory structure. Canada has realized that as the United States socializes that the wealth will flee, so they are making sure that the wealth does not have far to go.

(Reuters) – The chief executive of diversified manufacturer 3M Co called President Barack Obama anti-business in an interview with the Financial Times, arguing that manufacturers could move to Canada or Mexico as a result.

“We know what his instincts are — they are Robin Hood-esque,” 3M CEO George Buckley told the paper. “He is anti-business.”

Obama is working to shed the reputation that he is against the business community. Earlier this month, he assembled a group of top U.S. executives, chaired by General Electric Co Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt, to advise him on economic matters.

He also brought on JPMorgan Chase executive William Daley as his chief of staff and made a high profile speech to the Chamber of Commerce, a business lobby, earlier this year.

But Buckley said he was not yet convinced by Obama’s actions.

“Politicians forget that business has choice. We’re not indentured servants and we will do business where it’s good and friendly. If it’s hostile, incrementally, things will slip away. We’ve got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada and Mexico — which tend to be pro-business — or America,” he told the Financial Times.

Inded GE’s Immelt has been sending jobs to China while encouraging Obama to do more of the same.

42% think Karl Marx is in the founding documents

Via New American:

A recent survey conducted earlier this month by the Harris Interactive polling firm on behalf of the Bill of Rights Institute reveals some startling results. According to the survey, 42 percent of the over 2,000 respondents believe that Karl Marx’s maxim, “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need [or needs]” is part of one of our nation’s founding documents. Further, nearly 20 percent assigned it to the Bill of Rights. When the survey results are fragmented according to age, we find that 30 percent of young adults misidentified Marx’s statement as something written in either the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution.

The particulars of the answers to the poll’s questions are equally disturbing. Over half of respondents named “education” as a right protected from government encroachment by the First Amendment. Furthermore, not even 20 percent could name the five rights actually guaranteed by that amendment (those rights, should any of our readers need a refresher are: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right peaceably to assemble, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances).

Lesson for Journalism Students: Donald Rumsfeld and Andrea Mitchell Spar Over Iraq

Please examine this video of Andrea Mitchell more or less trying to interrogate Donald Rumsfeld.

This is a fantastic example of many of the worst aspects of journalism. In this interview Andrea Mitchell displays the most common forms of bias that undermine journalistic ethics and standards. It is rare to find a single clip with so many clear examples of exactly how the ethical and professional journalist should not conduct themselves.

The biggest form of media bias is not a partisan slant to the left, it is the slant everything towards conflict, the more personal and/or salacious the better. As you examine the video you will notice that Mitchell takes every observation and even the slightest critique as an indication of dramatic personal conflict the likes of which one would only see in an  epidode of “The West Wing”. In order to create this dramatic and combative narrative in her own mind Mitchell relies on statements and sources from people who were not “in the room” and were three or four levels down.

A journalist must always keep in mind that too many bureaucrats/consultants/staffers wish to see his or her name in the paper or in a book. Others wish to be a ‘secret source”. As is so often the case when stories or rumors come from officials three or four times removed from the President the story gets embellished, sometimes for dramatic effect and sometimes just to fill in the blanks. Through each stage the truth becomes less and less directionally accurate and this is much more so for the “source” that wants to see his name in a book or be “Deep Throat” as they have to keep feeding the journalist in order to keep them coming back for more.

Combine the biases of conflict creation, dramatic theatre, fill in the blanks, and attention whoring with Mitchells clear partisan slant and you can see that she ends up with a narrative in her own mind that she is certain is true, but does not resemble objective reality. Mitchell becomes incredulous while Rumsfeld simply explains to her that she just doesn’t know what she is talking about.

The concentration on conflict and the dramatic at the expense of the historical record is the biggest factor that marginalizes elite media journalism in the eyes of the public. Partisan bias is a significant second.

Journalism students, if you want to be truly respected and trusted  the example Andrea Mitchell gave in her “performance” is perhaps the quintessential example of how journalism should not be done.

Study: 82% of medical students agreed to perform intrusive exams on unconscious patients without consent

This shows about how well medical students, (at least in Australia and Britain where the study was done) are being taught ethics.  If medical students cannot uphold even the most common sense ethical standards, imagine how bad journalism students are.

News.com Australia:

AUSTRALIAN medical students are carrying out intrusive procedures on unconscious and anesthetized patients without gaining the patient’s consent.

The unauthorised examinations include genital, rectal and breast exams, and raise serious questions about the ethics of up-and-coming doctors, Madison reports.

The research, soon to be published in international medical journal, Medical Education, describes – among others – a student with “no qualms” about performing an anal examination on a female patient because she didn’t think the woman’s consent was relevant.

Another case outlined in the research describes a man who was subjected to rectal examinations from a “queue” of medical students after he was anaesthetised for surgery. 
“I was in theatre, the patient was under a spinal (anaesthetic) as well and there was a screen up and they just had a queue of medical students doing a rectal examination,” a student confessed. 

“[H]e wasn’t consented but because … you’re in that situation, you don’t have the confidence to say ‘no’ you just do it.”

The author of the study, Professor Charlotte Rees, voiced concerns about senior medical staff ordering students to perform unauthorised procedures, leaving the students torn between the strong ethics of consent in society and the weak ethics of medical staff. 

Of students who were put in this position during the research, 82 per cent obeyed orders.

“We think that it is weakness in the ethical climate of the clinical workplace that ultimately serves to legitimise and reinforce unethical practices in the context of students learning intimate examinations,” writes Prof Rees.

The study consists of 200 students across three unnamed medical schools in Britain and Australia. 

Deficit spending under Obama has been mind boggling

This post may help the laymen wrap their head around just how much deficit spending we are talking about.

The Weekly Standard:

* In actual dollars, President Obama’s $4.4 trillion in deficit spending in just three years is 37 percent higher than the previous record of $3.2 trillion (held by President George W. Bush) in deficit spending for an entire presidency. It’s no small feat to demolish an 8-year record in just 3 years.

* In inflation-adjusted dollars, President Obama’s $3.8 trillion (in constant fiscal-year 2005 dollars) in deficit spending in just three years is nearly double our $2 trillion (in constant fiscal-year 2005 dollars) in deficit spending in the five fiscal years during which we were fighting World War II (FY 1942-46). It’s no small feat to nearly double the United States’ inflation-adjusted deficits during the largest conflict in human history, and to do so in less time than it took American GIs to fight that two-front war.

* As a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP), President Obama’s average annual deficit spending is 9.7 percent of GDP. That’s higher than during any single year of the Great Depression, the Cold War, the Korean War, or Vietnam. In fact, the only deficits in more than 200 years of American history that have exceeded even 6 percent of GDP have all involved either the Civil War, World War I, World War II, or President Obama.

* In average annual deficit spending as a percentage of GDP, the nearby chart shows how President Obama stacks up against other presidents who have served during the past four decades.

* The Obama deficit legacy, moreover, will be felt well beyond his tenure in office, especially if that tenure extends beyond a single term. First, Obama’s spending through 2012 essentially doesn’t include Obama-care. The CBO projects that Obama-care will increase spending by more than $2 trillion in the overhaul’s real first decade (2014 to 2023). That’s more than $2 trillion that could -otherwise be used to pay down the debt, rather than allowing the debt to rise continually and then piling a massive new entitlement program on top of it.

And these numbers are just to February of this year.

Heritage: Ten most popular economic charts of 2010

Heritage:

Top Ten Charts of 2010

The Top Ten Heritage Charts are below, sorted by pageviews with the 10th most popular chart on top, and the most popular chart at the bottom. Turns out the most popular chart of 2010 is the same as the 2009 (with updated info).  

10. Recent Spending Hikes Are Not Limited to Temporary Emergencies

9. Federal Revenues by Source

8. Federal Government Revenues Have More Than Tripled Since 1965

7. Entitlements Will Consume All Tax Revenues by 2052

6. Taxes per Household Have Risen Dramatically

5. Obama’s Budget Would Create Unprecedented Deficits

4. National Debt Set to Skyrocket

3. Federal Spending Is Growing Faster Than Federal Revenue

2. Federal Spending per Household Is Skyrocketing

1. The Top 10 Percent of Income Earners Paid 71 Percent of Federal Income Tax

Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages

Remember that Clinton/Gingrich “Welfare Reform” law that was so effective at stopping people from gaming the system and helping people get back to work? Did you know it was reversed with the stimulus bill?

CNBC:

Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement.

Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

“The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. “Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.”

Flashback 2010: Washington State overwhelmingly votes down new tax on wealthy

[Those who are running on class warfare, eat the rich nonsense could be in for a rude awakening come 2012. It was just a few short months ago that the liberal Washington State had a referrendum and look at what they did. – Editor]

 

Even Microsoft opposed it. Gotta love the irony.

The mega rich guys who supported this are big time hypocrite. As 5% means nothing to them and since much of their income is not in the form of taxable wages they would have been exempted from most of it anyways. The producer class though would have gotten soaked.

The truth is we need wealth. Wealth goes where it is treated well and in case you haven’t noticed it is being treated well in China. We have lost 14,000 factories in the last 10 years. We want wealth to come to our communities, not drive them away.

Al Reuters:

The plan devised by the father of the Microsoft Corp co-founder to slap a 5 percent tax on earnings over $200,000 — Initiative Measure 1098 — was rejected by 65 percent of voters, with almost two-thirds of precincts reported.

The result is a boon for the anti-tax Tea Party movement and suggests Americans may be in the mood to extend tax cuts introduced by former President George W. Bush even for the wealthiest citizens. It also signals that Americans are unwilling to accept higher taxes as a way of balancing state budgets ravaged by the recession.

It is a stinging defeat for Bill Gates senior, who put $600,000 of his own money behind the campaign and also for his son, the world’s second richest person, who let it be known he would vote for the measure.

The vote is the fourth failure to introduce a state tax in Washington in the last 70 years and leaves the state as one of only seven without one.

Although the new tax would have affected fewer than 70,000 people out of the state’s 6.7 million residents, an opposition campaign run by an organization called Defeat 1098 persuaded voters that the tax on the wealthy would be extended to lower earners.

Major backers of Defeat 1098 include Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who contributed $425,000 to the campaign, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

Microsoft, Boeing and Alaska Airlines, all major employers in the state, also contributed to the opposition campaign, fearing that a tax on high-earners would hurt their ability to lure talented workers to the state.

Texas Governor Rick Perry recently seized on the issue to invite top businesses in Washington state to relocate to Texas, which does not have an income tax.

Corruption: Most Stimulus Funds Spent in Democrat Districts…

[Originally posted on my old college blog in April 2010 – Editor]

Via George Mason University, National Review, and HotAir.

The stimulus bill, as ill conceived as it is, gives is a fantastic opportunity to test Keynesian economic policy and models in comparison to actual results.

According to the law, districts with the highest unemployment were supposed to get the bulk of the stimulus money. Did that actually happen?

First: The idea behind the $787 billion stimulus bill is that, if the government spends money where it is the most needed, it will create jobs and trigger economic growth. Hence, we should expect the government to invest more money in districts with higher unemployment rates.

Controlling for the percentage of the district employed in the construction industry, a proxy for the vulnerability to recession of a district, I find no statistical correlation for all relevant unemployment indicators and the allocation of funds. This suggests that unemployment is not the factor leading the awards. Also, I found no correlation between other economic indicators, such as income, and stimulus funding.

Second: On average, Democratic districts received one-and-a-half times as many awards as Republican ones. Democratic districts also received two-and-a-half times more stimulus dollars than Republican districts ($122,127,186,509 vs. $46,139,592,268). Republican districts also received smaller awards on average. (The average dollars awarded per Republican district is $260,675,663, while the average dollars awarded per Democratic district is $471,533,539.)

The exact same thing happend under the “new deal” where much of the spending went to swing districts to buy votes. Massive amounts of money spent and non-farm unemployment never dropped below 20% during the New Deal.

The fact remains and it might as well be considered a Law of Economics: Politicians spend money with a political result in mind, not an economic one. Pictorial logarithm proof:

As you can see the log shows no correlation, but look at this….

Well would you look at that. Oh the news gets better…

In the report from Dr. Veronique de Rugy from George Mason University:

I found that an average cost of $286,000 was awarded per job created, a 16.3 percent increase over the previous period.

See the full report HERE.

Now in case you are thinking to yourself, /whiney voice on “Well wait, that economist you quoted doesn’t count cause she is French and she wrote a note about her findings to Natioal Review which means she is a nazi and only twice removed from Hitler’s third cousin!”

Well USA Today hired some econo-geeks and they came up with the same result:

Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows. That money includes aid to repair military bases, improve public housing and help students pay for college…

More crony capitalism and corruption.

48 Out of 50 States Have Lost Jobs since Democrats’ Stimulus Law. Washington DC Gained Jobs.

And these numbers were taken from last December so it is even worse now. We have been losing about 400,000 jobs a week since that time based on new unemployment claims (in fairness this number does not include jobs created which helps to mitigate this number, but with wages going down and inflation goes up, lots of thes enew jobs are part time and/or are people just taking anything out of desperation).

House Ways & Means Committee:

While Democrats promised stimulus would create 3.7 million jobs, the reality is far different. To date, 48 out of 50 states have lost jobs, while the unemployment rate has remained at or above 9.5% for 15 consecutive months. As the nation nears the end of 2010 — when final statistics will be available to compare actual outcomes with the Administration’s pre-stimulus projections — Washington, D.C. remains the only place in America where those job-creation projections actually have been met.  Meanwhile, the rest of the nation is left asking “Where are the jobs?”

State Administration Projection of Change in Jobs Through December 2010 Actual Change in Jobs Through October 2010
Alabama +52,000 -43,500
Alaska +8,000 -1,200
Arizona +70,000 -73,800
Arkansas +31,000 -5,100
California +396,000 -543,400
Colorado +59,000 -83,200
Connecticut +41,000 -39,200
Delaware +11,000 -10,300
District of Columbia +12,000 +21,100
Florida +206,000 -169,200
Georgia +106,000 -126,200
Hawaii +15,000 -8,900
Idaho +17,000 -16,100
Illinois +148,000 -160,900
Indiana +75,000 -40,200
Iowa +37,000 -20,200
Kansas +33,000 -32,800
Kentucky +48,000 -7,700
Louisiana +50,000 -15,600
Maine +15,000 -9,900
Maryland +66,000 -13,900
Massachusetts +79,000 -33,500
Michigan +109,000 -105,900
Minnesota +66,000 -24,700
Mississippi +30,000 -23,900
Missouri +69,000 -66,500
Montana +11,000 -8,600
Nebraska +23,000 -11,400
Nevada +34,000 -79,000
New Hampshire +16,000 +5,200
New Jersey +100,000 -104,600
New Mexico +22,000 -13,300
New York +215,000 -127,700
North Carolina +105,000 -81,900
North Dakota +8,000 +6,600
Ohio +133,000 -157,500
Oklahoma +40,000 -24,400
Oregon +44,000 -41,300
Pennsylvania +143,000 -71,900
Rhode Island +12,000 -15,600
South Carolina +50,000 -22,900
South Dakota +10,000 -2,500
Tennessee +70,000 -53,700
Texas +269,000 -54,100
Utah +32,000 -15,000
Vermont +8,000 -5,200
Virginia +93,000 -44,500
Washington +75,000 -70,900
West Virginia +20,000 -10,600
Wisconsin +70,000 -69,100
Wyoming +8,000 -7,800

Source: Administration February 13, 2009 projection and actual U.S. Department of Labor data.

Islam’s Ignorant Defenders

Simply one of the wisest columns on this subject ever written. It is worth reading twice.

By David French:

Our cultural elite knows nothing about Islam, yet they defend with it with sneering, condescending ferocity.

One of the more interesting phenomena of recent times has been the cultural elite’s aggressive defense of Islam. Whether they’re decrying the alleged “Islamophobia” of their fellow Americans, storming off TV sets, offering impassioned defenses of religious liberty, or offering uninformed theological statements about the religion’s alleged true nature, many of our most educated and politically aware citizens are united in outrage. A great religion is under attack, they say, and it’s under attack by a bigoted citizenry who let the actions of a tiny few define the nature of the many.

But what do they actually know about Islam?

Isn’t the “true” nature of a religion defined through its theologians and adherents? “True” Islam has been debated — and fought over — for more than 1,000 years. The existence of Sunni and Shi’ite divisions demonstrates that there is no monolithic definition of Islam even within the Islamic world. And yet men like our most recent presidents purport to define it as a “religion of peace” (President Bush’s favorite phrase) or a “religion that reaffirms peace, fairness, and tolerance” (President Obama’s recent description).

Again and again when I face outraged and indignant liberals — people who defame Ground Zero mosque opponents as bigots or pass around the latest Jon Stewart video as if it were more documentary than comedy sketch — I find their knowledge is skin deep, at best. “Jihad is really the inner struggle,” they say. “Islam had a glorious civilization in the Middle Ages,” they argue. Some cite the Muslims they know — kind-hearted, hospitable people — who serve as stand-ins for Muslims everywhere.

As for me, I spent a year in Iraq, talked to countless Muslims, have read the Koran and much of the Hadith, and I still don’t know what “true Islam” is. How could I? I struggle enough to define (and live) “true Christianity.” Can I really purport to understand Islam in all its complexity?

But I’m not entirely ignorant. Some things I do know, and I know them all too well.

We face an enemy that is recruiting its followers using explicit, religious themes. To them, jihad is not an “inner struggle” but a call to war. The call to jihad has grown so strong that thousands of young Muslims have served as suicide bombers, hundreds of thousands have served as jihadist fighters, and untold millions more support armed jihad through donations, public demonstrations, and in public opinion polls.

Even allegedly moderate Muslims, like a key investor in the Ground Zero mosque property, have been caught giving money to terrorist organizations, and the imam at the center of controversy has a history of radicalism that would shock the conscience of most Americans (declaring America an “accessory to the crime” of September 11 is moderate?).

And it’s sometimes tough to tell the difference between moderates and extremists. Anwar al-Awlaki, one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, served as a Chaplain at George Washington University, and the Fort Hood shooter was not only an Army officer, he gave briefings on the “Koranic World View” to physicians at Walter Reed Hospital.

Moreover, anti-Semitism is rampant in the Muslim world, with children’s shows in Gaza featuring such characters as Assud, the Jew-eating rabbit, ancient anti-Semitic hoaxes like the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” aired as a “documentary” in Egypt, and Saudi-written and distributed textbooks preaching hate to Muslim children around the world.

Let’s flip the script for a moment. Let’s imagine that in the United States our Christian population was producing thousands of suicide bombers, recruiting tens of thousands of Jihadists, financing hundreds of millions of dollars of arms and ammunition, and distributing literature proclaiming Jews and others as worthy of death. Would Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walk of the set at criticism of Christians? Would Time magazine decry “Christophobia”? Of course not. They would argue that Christianity was in crisis, and they would be right.

During my time in Iraq I met Muslims who laid down their lives every day to protect their community from the jihadists. After all, many thousands more Iraqi soldiers and police officers have died protecting their own country than have American soldiers. Moreover, many Muslim Americans have rendered courageous, indispensable service in the War on Terror. Their faith is real, and their service is greater than that of the vast majority of their fellow citizens. So, what is true Islam?

That definition I leave to Muslims. And as they struggle to work through the complexities of their own faith, I doubt they’ll consult President Bush, President Obama, or Joy Behar.

At the same time, however, all Americans have to deal with and guard against the actions and attitudes of many millions of Muslims, people who believe their faith calls them to support, to finance, and to fight an unending jihad against unbelievers. There is something rotten at work within Islam, and whether it takes five years, five hundred, or five thousand, that rottenness (regardless of its relationship to “true Islam”) must be resisted and defeated.

David French is a lawyer, writer, soldier, and veteran of the Iraq war. He is the director of the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom.

Reminder of What to Expect from the Elite Media this Election Season: O’Reilly Blasts Washington Post’s Dana Milbank for Openly Lying About Coverage 7 Million People Watched

This is the kind of press coverage we can expect from the Washington Post and the rest of the crew of profoundly snarky pundits sometimes called the elite media or as some others have called it the “Democrat Media Complex”.

[Flashback November 2010]

You would think that if you are going to lie about someone or an event, perhaps it should be an event that wasn’t witnessed by 7 million people. This is exactly the same nonsense that Media Matters does on a regular basis.

Our pal JohnnyDollar, who has been on a roll lately with his vigilance, captured the video:

Gov. Bobby Jindal: Brown University Administrators & Faculty Undermine Christian Faith & Western Civilization.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal also spoke the oil crisis and how the federal government had gotten in the way with some of the most foolish regulations one can imagine. Wasn’t the Department of Homeland Security reorganization supposed to fix this problem? Looks like it didn’t work.

At 7:00 the governor talks about how subversive public education has become.

Why conservatives are happier and more generous than liberals

This is a great article by Dennis Prager who actually wrote a book on the subject of happiness. This article is also gives great insight as to the psychological differences between conservatives a liberals.

Prager:

According to polls — Pew Research Center, the National Science Foundation — and studies such as Arthur Brooks’s Gross National Happiness, conservative Americans are happier than liberal Americans.

Liberals respond this way: “If we’re unhappier, it’s because we are more upset than conservatives over the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves.”

But common sense and data suggest other explanations.

For one thing, conservatives on the same socioeconomic level as liberals give more charity and volunteer more time than do liberals. And as regards the suffering of non-Americans, for at least half a century conservatives have been far more willing to sacrifice American treasure and American blood (often their own) for other nations’ liberty.

Both of these facts refute the liberals-are-more-concerned-about-others explanation for liberal unhappiness.

So, let’s look at other explanations.

Perhaps we are posing the question backwards when we ask why liberals are less happy than conservatives. The question implies that liberalism causes unhappiness. And while this is true, it may be equally correct to say that unhappy people are more likely to adopt leftist positions.

Take black Americans, for example. It makes perfect sense that a black American who is essentially happy is going to be less attracted to the Left. Anyone who has interacted with black conservatives rarely encounters an angry, unhappy person.

Why?

Because the liberal view on race is that America is a racist society. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, a black American must abandon liberalism in order to be a happy individual. It is very hard, if not impossible, to be a happy person while believing that society is out to hurt you. So, the unhappy black person will gravitate to liberalism and liberalism will in turn make him more unhappy by reinforcing his view that he is a victim.

The unhappy gravitate toward the Left for a second reason. Life is hard for liberals and life is hard for conservatives. But conservatives assume that life will always be hard. Liberals, on the other hand, have utopian dreams. At his brother Robert’s funeral, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy recalled his brother saying: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’”

Utopians will always be less happy than those who know that suffering is inherent to human existence. The utopian compares America to utopia and finds it terribly wanting. The conservative compares America to every other civilization that has ever existed and walks around wondering how he got so lucky as to be born or naturalized an American.

Third, imagine two Americans living in essentially identical socioeconomic conditions. They earn $45,000 a year, they have the same amount of debt on their homes, and both have the same number of dependents. One seeks governmental assistance wherever possible; the other eschews any governmental help. Which one is likely to be the liberal and which one is likely to be the happier individual?

This is not a question only an oracle can answer. The one who yearns for governmental help is the one who is likely to be both liberal and less happy. Conservatism, which demands self-reliance, makes one happier. The more a man or woman feels like captain of his or her ship (as poor as that ship may be), the happier he or she will be.

A fourth explanation for greater unhappiness among liberals is that the more people allow feelings to govern them, the less happy they will be. And the further left one goes, the more importance one attaches to feelings.

It is liberal educators and liberal parents who have clamored for protecting young people from the pain of losing games. The liberal world came up with the idea of giving trophies to kids who lose; they don’t want their children feeling bad. Conservatives, on the other hand, teach their kids how to lose well. They are less worried about their children feeling bad.

A couple of years ago, I gave a speech on happiness to the students and faculty of a prestigious high school in the Los Angeles area. The subject was the need to act happy even when one isn’t feeling happy — because it is unfair to others to inflict our bad moods on them and because we will never be happy if we allow our feelings to dictate our happiness.

From what I experienced that day and learned later, liberal students and faculty generally loathed my speech; conservative students generally loved it (there were no conservative faculty to speak of). Why? Because conservatives are far more likely to be comfortable with the idea that feelings are not as important as behavior.

Those who know that feelings must not govern us, but that we must govern our feelings, are far more likely to be happy people.

The upshot of all this? There is an amazingly simple way to defeat the Left: Raise children who are grateful to be American, who don’t complain, who can handle losing, and who are guided by values, not feelings. In other words, teach them how to be happy adults.

Libya’s transitional leader says Islamic Sharia law will be the “basic source” of all law


The readers of this web site are not surprised by this at all. This is trajic, especially for the women of Libya and Tunisia and as well know the women of Egypt are already suffering forced virginity checks etc.

On the domestic front, this will not inspire women to vote for Obama.

AP/Yahoo News:

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — Libya’s transitional leader says Islamic Sharia law will be the “basic source” of all law.

Al-Reuters:

The leader of an Islamist party predicted to win the biggest share of the vote was heckled outside a polling station by people shouting “terrorist” — highlighting tensions between Islamists and secularists that are also being felt in other countries touched by the Arab Spring.

Telegraph:

Libya’s liberation: interim ruler unveils more radical than expected plans for Islamic law …

Washington Post & Accuracy in Media Slam Sean Penn Movie as “Full of Lies”

Since this film has recently been released on DVD it seemed like a good time to revisit this issue from last December

I wrote about the Plame non-scandal scandal at length in The Preface (an IU student paper) and in a term paper on “attitude change propaganda”. I am gratified that the Washington Post editors did the right thing in their recent editorial, but the Washington Post was as guilty as anyone else in reporting the lies about this issue and The Post repeated them regularly.

At first, The Post (along with the rest of the elite media) would just report the usual lies; that Plame was outed by the White House, that she was undercover and that she lost her career as a secret agent as a result of her exposure. All of this and more was debunked by the official investigations.

But as it became more clear that it was Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame who were liars, the Washington Post did something very interesting which made them the focus of my paper on propaganda. On page one and two the Post would report the usual lies about this story as if they were true, and often on the very same day they would write an editorial that was buried in the paper telling the truth about the matter. This happened repeatedly. Do the editors at the Washington Post actually edit and check the accuracy of their reporters and/or the wire stores they feature prominently, or do they just write a daily column and call it an editorial?

The largest misconception is that Valerie Plame was a secret agent at or near the time the events unfolded. The truth is that Plame was outed many years before by secret documents that were leaked which rendered her a desk jockey at the CIA’s  WMD  Division at Langley. If anyone doubts that may I remind you that when this unfolded Plame had young twins at home, so unless the CIA is in the habit of sending pregnant moms to be with twins overseas undercover you are just going to have to accept that she was put on desk duty.

Plame was listed in Joe Wilson’s Who’s Who entry. Plame made contributions to Democrats listing a known CIA front business as her place of employment. Her neighbors knew she worked for the CIA (as one intrepid reporter went knocking on doors). She was not anything close to 007 by any objective measure.

The Washington Post continued their peculiar behavior recently as Accuracy in Media points out:

While the paper said [in its editorial] it hoped that George W. Bush’s version of events would be vindicated by historians, the Post’s “Reliable Sources” gossip column had run a big article about  the public relations blitz for the movie and its various premiers in Washington, D.C. Plame “is more than happy with ‘Fair Game,’ the movie based on her memoir,” the article said. No kidding.

So the “troubling trend” was in evidence at the Post itself, albeit in a different section of the paper.

Indeed Washington Post, where was the reporters fact check in the story linked? The fact that the film was made from Plame’s memoir and that she is happy with it shows that Plame is not just a proven liar, which the evidence has demonstrated and even the Washington Post admits, but rather she is a continuous and flaming one [not the language we like to use here but unfortunately reality demands it – Editor].

To read both of the excellent pieces from Accuracy in Media you can access them HERE and HERE.

Washington Post:

Hollywood myth-making on Valerie Plame controversy

WE’RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film “Fair Game” – which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq – deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it. The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame’s exposure as a CIA agent. “It’s accurate,” Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson: “For people who have short memories or don’t read, this is the only way they will remember that period.”

We certainly hope that is not the case. In fact, “Fair Game,” based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions – not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post’s Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification. [Translation – she made it up – Editor]

The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee [The bi-partisan committee was unanimous in its findings – Editor] found that Mr. Wilson’s reporting did not affect the intelligence community’s view on the matter [In fact Wilson’s report to the CIA bolstered the case that Saddam was trying to obtain more uranium according to that very same Senate Intelligence Committee Report – Editor] , and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush’s statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.

“Fair Game” also resells the couple’s story that Ms. Plame’s exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy – but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative. [Think about it, you lie to the newspapers while telling them that the President is a liar; and you expect that the Washington press core won’t track down the fact that it was your wife, Valerie Plame, who sent a memo to her boss recommending that Wilson be sent to Niger? The Senate Intelligence Committee investigators confirmed that as well. Our question still remains, why was Wilson not required to sign a non-disclosure contract? Could it be that the infamous Wilson letter was the goal of the entire affair? – Editor]

Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; “Fair Game” is just one more example. But the film’s reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth – not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife – the myth endures. We’ll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.

Michelle Rhee: Some schools got their funding doubled and scores still went down

For those of you who do not know Michelle Rhee, she is one of the stars from the hit film “Waiting for Superman”. The film is a brilliant documentary about people who made a difference or who tried to make a difference in public schools.

Rhee was the Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor. While she was able to make positive changes, the key aspects of her reform plan were stopped by the teachers union who is desperate to maintain the failing status quo (if you think that what I just said is even a MILD exaggeration consider this your personal invitation to demonstrate otherwise).

CPI: Big Polluters Freed from Environmental Oversight by Stimulus Bill (government picking winners and losers)

Before we begin it should be clear that the “Center for Public Integrity” CPI is a far left outfit complete with all the spin and trimmings. And while the story they tell is spun I find it to be directionally accurate. While it is rather obvious that environmental regulations go way beyond science and are in fact used to pick winners and losers for purposes of corruption, influence and donations, this article demonstrates that fact with detail. Unknowingly and in it’s own way, the CPI has made the case against leviathan government and the kind of “Chicago Style” regulations that always result from it as well as this web log ever could.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2565/ :

In the name of job creation and clean energy, the Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation’s biggest polluters and granted them sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.

The administration has awarded more than 179,000 “categorical exclusions” to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Coal-burning utilities like Westar Energy and Duke Energy, chemical manufacturer DuPont, and ethanol maker Didion Milling are among the firms with histories of serious environmental violations that have won blanket NEPA exemptions.

Even a project at BP’s maligned refinery in Texas City, Tex. — owner of the oil industry’s worst safety record and site of a deadly 2005 explosion, as well as a benzene leak earlier this year — secured a waiver for the preliminary phase of a carbon capture and sequestration experiment involving two companies with past compliance problems. The primary firm has since dropped out of the project before it could advance to the second phase.

Agency officials who granted the exemptions told the Center that they do not have time in most cases to review the environmental compliance records of stimulus recipients, and do not believe past violations should affect polluters’ chances of winning stimulus money or the NEPA exclusions.

The so-called “stimulus” funding came from the $787-billion legislation officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in February 2009.

Documents obtained by the Center show the administration has devised a speedy review process that relies on voluntary disclosures by companies to determine whether stimulus projects pose environmental harm. Corporate polluters often omitted mention of health, safety, and environmental violations from their applications. In fact, administration officials told the Center they chose to ignore companies’ environmental compliance records in making grant decisions and issuing NEPA exemptions, saying they considered such information irrelevant.

Some polluters reported their stimulus projects might cause “unknown environmental risks” or could “adversely affect” sensitive resources, the documents show. Others acknowledged they would produce hazardous air pollutants or toxic metals. Still others won stimulus money just weeks after settling major pollution cases. Yet nearly all got exemptions from full environmental analyses, the documents show.

FIRE to Administrators of Public Colleges Nationwide: Beware of Personal Liability for Free Speech Violations

The free speech, freedom of association, and other rights violations seem to be ongoing and never ending on campus nation wide. It is not as if court actions against public universities in these matters have not been well reported. It is unbelievable that college administrators could not be aware of what has been going on in the courts in regards to campus free speech. So the next shoe is about to drop;  going after administrators personal fortunes and assets for using their positions to violate the rights of students and faculty.

FIRE:

Today, FIRE warned the presidents and top lawyers at nearly 300 public colleges and universities across the nation that they and their staffs should be ready to pay out of their own pockets if they continue to violate their students’ free speech rights.

Let’s hope that this catches their attention once and for all. For too long, public college administrators have been intentionally violating the free speech rights of their students, secure in the knowledge that they won’t personally lose a dime should a court rule against them. This means that if they feel like they can score political brownie points with those on campus who wish to see dissent silenced, they can do so without any personal cost. Heck, even if they lose to FIRE or in court, they can still say to their cronies, “Hey, I tried my best. We spent thousands in legal fees trying to shut those students up. We just couldn’t manage it!”

FIRE is putting these individuals on notice by sending a certified mailing this week to the presidents and general counsel of 296 of the biggest and most prestigious public colleges across the nation, highlighting significant legal developments from the past year. FIRE’s mailing warns these top administrators that with the state of the law on campus speech codes clearer now than ever before, they and their employees violate the speech rights of students at their own financial peril, as they can no longer count on “qualified immunity” to shield them from liability.

The legal doctrine of qualified immunity protects government officials from personal liability for monetary damages for violating another person’s constitutional rights if their actions do not violate “clearly established law” of which a reasonable person in their position would have been aware. For years, public universities have argued that their speech codes did not violate clearly established law regarding students’ First Amendment rights, despite one legal decision after another striking down these codes under a constitutional challenge. One would think that university lawyers or law schools might have educated administrators on basic First Amendment principles, but one would evidently be mistaken.

Thanks to a continuing stream of federal court decisions, however, particularly in the Third Circuit, the argument that college administrators do not know that speech codes violate student free speech rights is increasingly untenable. Earlier this year, in McCauley v. University of the Virgin Islands, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals struck down university policies that absurdly prohibited “offensive” or “unauthorized” signs and conduct causing “emotional distress,” noting that a “desire to protect the listener cannot be convincingly trumpeted as a basis for censoring speech for university students.”

In our mailing, we are also warning administrators about a recent federal case in Georgia that FIRE coordinated, in which a federal district court determined that former Valdosta State University president Ronald Zaccari was not shielded from personal liability for violating the clearly established rights of student Hayden Barnes. (Zaccari is currently appealing that decision.) This is a major finding against a former university president, and if upheld, administrators will no longer be able to fool themselves that the possibility of qualified immunity being pierced is not a real one. As Dr. Johnson famously said, “the prospect of a hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully.”

FIRE comes wielding the carrot along with the stick, though. For colleges that wish to make an honest effort to rectify their speech codesthey do existFIRE offers resources such as its guide to Correcting Common Mistakes in Campus Speech Policies, a bound version of which is included in every certified letter. FIRE is also willing to consult with any university that shows an interest in changing its policies to better protect free speech on campus.

No institution should be proud of stripping its students of their fundamental rights. As our 2011 report on speech codes pointed out, the proportion of colleges that do so is slowly but consistently falling. “Only” 67 percent of public institutions colleges now prohibit speech that would be allowed in the larger society. (Three years ago, it was 79 percent, so it could be, and has been, worse.) But 67% is nowhere near good enough. Until that number reaches zero, FIRE will be there to bring the accountability to universities that is so sorely lacking.