palosverdesblog

Chadwick Boy Comes Home

2011-10-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

He walked into the room to the chorus of 300 kazoos playing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Michael Reagan is truly loved in these parts. The Republican Women luncheon was sold out, and we were not disappointed. Michael shared some of his childhood experiences here on the Hill. -- He attended Chadwick School because Ron and Jane did not want their adopted son to be exposed to the temptations of Beverly Hills High (and they wanted him out of the house).

He told heartwarming stories about his dad, who was a bit of a cheap skate.

Michael walked into his father’s hospital room --

Michael: How are you doing dad?

Ronald: Well, you know son, I was shot yesterday. (in that soft, slow Reagan tone)

Michael: I know that dad; I just wanted to know how you are feeling.

Ronald: Well, Michael, I’m feeling OK. But I have some advice for you.

Michael: What’s that dad?

Ronald: If you’re going to get shot, don’t wear your new suit.

Michael: I see it dad, the blue suit all cut up lying in the corner.

Ronald: Yes, they had to cut it off me. I was hoping they would try to save the suit. After all, I am the President.

Michael: I know dad.

Ronald: Michael, the boy who shot me; his name is Hinkley. Do you think his parents have money?

Michael: They are oil people, dad.

Ronald: Well, do you think they’d buy me a new suit?

And so it went, one endearing story after another, for over an hour, without a single note.

But there were serious moments as well. Like when he spoke about how we just have to beat Obama before he destroys our country. Michael would vote for any of the Republican candidates (even Ron Paul) and he wishes they would stop taking pot shots at each other and concentrate on Obama. Republicans are sometimes their own worst enemies.

Democrats, being ideologically pure, have no problem with any Democrat candidate (even Barbara Boxer), while Republicans are a more diverse bunch. I thought about what I believe, as a conservative Republican, and contrasted it to mainline Democrat ideology.

Republican vs. Democrat

Rights bestowed by God vs. Rights granted by the State
Individual liberty vs. Government control of our lives
The Constitution vs. A living constitution
Individual responsibility vs. Cradle-to-grave welfare
Life vs. “Choice” (ie a woman’s right to kill)
American is exceptional vs. Just like Greece is exceptional, or China, or..
Right to bear arms vs. Gun control
Legal immigration vs. Open borders
Right to work vs. Unions

Democrats are congenitally wedded to their beliefs, in some cases with a religious fervor (eg. the sacred right of a woman to reproductive freedom). By contrast, Republicans are renegades: Goldwater was pro choice, Reagan granted amnesty to illegal aliens, Bush gave us prescription drugs at government expense, and, did you know, William F. Buckley supported legalizing pot.

Michael told the story about his dad appointing Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in order to keep a promise to his daughter, Maureen, who in return gave up campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment.

Several times Michael reminded us to be more like Democrats – to get into the game. Write letters to the editor, knock on doors, don’t just send money like we always do.

Now we need to nominate a ticket and get behind it. For my money the best would be Mitt Romney as the presidential nominee with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for VP. It’s a WASP-free ticket -- a Mormon and a Roman Catholic -- How diverse is that!!

Car Wars

2011-10-11T15:13:00.000-07:00

Imagine your teenage son and his cheerleader girlfriend hopping into his brand new jazzy sports scar for its maiden spin. OK, I know this merely reinforces the Palos Verdes stereotype of indulgent parents and spoiled kids. But, hey, the kid is an honor student who will be attending Stanford U. in the fall. Anyway, the car enters the 405 freeway and carefully moves across toward the HOV speed lane. Suddenly the unimaginable happens: the throttle opens wide, the engine revs into the red zone, the brakes cease to function and the steering wheel locks tight. A disaster is imminent.

This is merely the opening scene of Chris Malburg’s new techno-thriller, “Car Wars: A Novel of Industrial Terrorism.” (Get it at http://www.carwarsebook.com/ or at Amazon.com). My friend and PVE neighbor, Chris is a noted business writer who is trying his hand at fiction. And his new book is a fun read, especially on a Kindle at RAT Beach. Without giving away the plot, let me just say that there are plenty of villains in the book, among them Yonggan Zhanshi, ruthless industrialist in control of a devastating weapon of mass destruction, the head of the Chinese National Bank and the honorable President of the PRC.

In a memorable scene the Chinese President reads the riot act to the American president. Here is an excerpt:

...The Chinese President frowned at his American counterpart. “America is bankrupt,” he began. “Morally as well as economically. I can do nothing about the former, but I can do something about your economics. I am your banker. I am now calling in the money I have lent to you. From this moment on, you work for me.” The Chinese President paused for a few seconds to let the shock of what he had just said fully sink in.

“America’s Social Security, its Medicare and Medicaid and its unfunded pension liabilities created by the powerful labor unions now comes to 93 percent of your gross domestic product. There is no more money left to pay for anything else. And so you rely on China, Japan and the UK to buy your Treasury debt to fund your cash needs. No more!
“Your baby-boom generation is now retired. This large portion of your former workforce no longer pays taxes, but they do suck down your government’s benefits like hogs on a teet. Had you raised taxes to pay for all this years ago and reduced spending, things might have been different--”

“I have been in consultation with my fellow holders of US debt. The IMF is calling the temporary line of credit it granted the United States. You have 30 days to repay the $100 billion you borrowed. Additionally, China demands that the US immediately repay $500 billion in Treasury securities coming due in the next 60 days. Not only will China not lend you the $300 billion you have come here to borrow, but my country will no longer be in attendance at your Treasury auctions.”

The Chinese President stopped his pacing in front of his counterpart, turned and looked him in the eye. “This financial hiatus China is taking from America does not have to be permanent. If the US puts its financial house in order and affords China one other courtesy, I may elect to resume doing business on a limited scale.”

The American President sat very still in his chair. He rejoiced that there might yet be a way out of this financial morass. “Yes, Mr. President? What kinds of house cleaning tasks do you have in mind?”

The Chinese President’s knife-edged hand slashed the air, making his first point. “America will limit the coverage of Medicare and Medicaid--no more expensive treatments. Either your people will pay for them on their own or they will do without.” The hand slashed the air a second time, “Next, no health insurance subsidies. You will explain to your greedy, unemployed nation of welfare recipients that healthcare is not a right of citizenship but instead, a personal responsibility.”

“Next,” continued the Chinese President, “You will eliminate all nonessential governmental expenses. You will begin with farming subsidies, ethanol production, public broadcasting, energy conservation and trade promotion.” The knife-edged hand slashed the air yet a third time, “You will go to a flat tax system where everyone--every single American citizen--pays taxes equivalent to 18 percent on the income they earn. You will eliminate all deductions and tax credits. You will also increase the gasoline tax to $2 a gallon. You will balance your federal budget.”

The US President raised his hand for permission to speak. “That’s a lot to take in. Are you finished, Mr. President?”

“I will tell you when I am finished...

Good stuff that. I had no idea that the PRC President was a Republican. In fact some of his action items could be taken straight from Newt Gingrich’s new 21st Century Contract with America.

Faster than Light

2011-10-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

"We don't serve faster than light neutrinos in here" said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.

The cognoscenti were abuzz -- Einstein was wrong! Relativity was debunked! European scientists at CERN in Switzerland and Gran Sasso in Italy had shown that the speed of light is not really the limit. Physicists, on the other hand, were mildly amused, one, even, who promised to eat his shorts if the experimental result was correct. The great majority of physicists, a clear consensus, were skeptical of the results, thinking that there must be an experimental error.

Interestingly, no one in the physics establishment mentioned the consensus. No one accused the experimenters of being Relativity-deniers. No one tried to stop publication of the seminal paper in a prestigious journal. And no one claimed that the CERN-Sasso scientists were bigots – after all, Einstein was a Jew. In short, the physics community reacted not at all like the global warming community when confronted with contrary evidence.

So what was all the excitement about? The experiment, code named OPERA, was built to detect neutrinos, ghostly subatomic particles, which are produced at CERN and aimed towards Gran Sasso, 700kms away. There are several types of neutrinos and two of the species are called mu neutrinos (mu-nu) and tau neutrinos (tau-nu). The primary purpose of the experiment was to determine if any of the mu-nus from CERN had converted into tau-nus along the way. If so, this would help establish the idea that neutrinos have a finite (really tiny) mass that might account for the much-sought-after “Dark Matter” hidden in the universe. A sidelight was to measure the time of flight of the neutrinos and compare it to the time light would take to travel the same distance. Surprise! The neutrinos took less time, 60 nanoseconds less.

OPERA chief scientist Antonio Ereditato explained that “we are not claiming things, we want just to be helped by the community in understanding our crazy result - because it is crazy. And of course the consequences can be very serious.” Indeed, much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his Special Theory of Relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed the speed of light (in vacuum).

Faster-than-light particles, so-called tachyons, have long been contemplated by theoretical physicists. If they did exist they could be used to send signals into one's own past, a clear paradox of causality -- and an explanation of the backwards joke at the beginning of this note. In fact, the most famous quip about “faster than light” has by now attained a venerable age (Reginald Buller in Punch, 12/19/23):

There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She started one day
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night.

The upheaval of known physics resulting from the discovery of tachyons would be momentous. A few astounding effects are discussed briefly in the Appendix.

In a related development, the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics has been granted for an experimental error! It was 1997 and Adam Riess was sure he'd spotted a blatant error in his results -- measurements of exploding stars implied that the universe was expanding at a faster and faster rate, instead of slowing down, as everyone expected. Indeed, astrophysicists believed that the rate of expansion of the universe -- set in motion by the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago -- would be slowing down due to the influence of gravity. The goal was to figure out how rapid the deceleration was. What the scientists found, instead, was that the expansion of the universe was accelerating -- an observation that could be explained by the existence of a mysterious “Dark Energy” that acts like anti-gravity. Further experiments supported this finding and, even though no one knows what the Dark Energy is, the experimenters were awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize.

In breaking news (10/5/11): The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Dan Shechtman, an Israeli scientist, for his discovery of quasi-crystals, a form of matter that was not thought to exist. Shechtman faced skepticism, even expulsion from his research team, before his discovery won widespread acceptance as a fundamental breakthrough. “The main lesson that I have learned over time is that a good scientist is a humble and listening scientist and not one that is sure 100 percent in what he read in the textbooks,” Shechtman, 70, told a news conference in Haifa, Israel.

These cases illustrate the way real science should work. It is not politically motivated, and is not right just because it is believed, no matter the consensus.

Appendix

In classical physics, mass is independent of speed. In Relativity, however, Einstein showed that the mass of a particle is related to its velocity, v:

M = M0/sqrt(1- v2/c2)

where M0 is the particle’s rest mass (mass at zero speed), c is the light speed and sqrt(…..) signifies the square root of the quantity in brackets. As one tries to accelerate a particle, and its velocity increases, so does its mass because of the v in the denominator of the equation. That makes it harder to speed up the particle. The result is that for all normal particles (we might call the tardyons) the speed has an upper limit of c, the speed of light.

Note that for tachyons, if they exist, the term v/c exceeds one, and the term in the brackets is negative. Since the square root of a negative number is imaginary, the mass of a tachyon is a strange thing indeed.

Another curious effect is that, unlike ordinary particles, the speed of a tachyon increases as its energy decreases. In particular, energy approaches zero when v approaches infinity. Therefore, just as tardyons are forbidden to break the light-speed barrier, so too are tachyons forbidden from slowing down to below c, because infinite energy is required to reach the barrier from either above or below.

Some Scary Numbers

2011-09-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

You may recall the catchphrase “Billions and Billions” (of stars) that was associated with astronomer Carl Sagan’s popular TV show Cosmos.(1) It seemed like an enormous number, commensurate with the vastness of the universe. Now, however, Billion is passe’, Trillion has become the new Billion –- such as in the US Federal budget deficit for 2011 is more than a Trillion dollars – and we need to recalibrate our mental calculators. So much has changed.

I remember making $1.80 an hour hauling beef for Wilson & Co, the meat packers. That was 1961 and I was not making much more than the black maids in that new movie “The Help.” And I was paying income tax and FICA.

Today the Government Motors unionized workers make $28 an hour (plus another equal amount in benefits) and yet complain. They just got a signing bonus of $5,000 plus inflation protection to ink their latest contract. Now that $28/hr is a scary number because it is unsustainable. We cannot compete in the global marketplace when nut-turners make $28 an hour. And thus far we have been somewhat lucky since the countries that make good cars –- Germany, Japan, South Korea –- are all expensive places to manufacture them. When the $5 per hour Chinese learns how to make a good car – say in 5 years – it will be all over except the shouting.

But I digress. What I really want to talk about are the scary large numbers. Take $1 Trillion (that is a million x $million) for example. $1 Trillion is the amount the US Federal Government collects in income taxes from those of us lucky enough to pay income taxes. It is also equal to the amount we claim on our deductions; thus the tax code saves us an equal amount, ie $1 Trillion. For the average Joe the deductions come from mortgage interest, charitable contributions, supporting your mother-in-law, and the like. Note that only about 10% of the $1 Trillion tax savings goes to those evil corporations (which happen to employ our neighbors). So when Obama talks about generating a few hundred billion dollars by closing tax loopholes, it is largely our loopholes he wants to close. And remember, also, that nearly half of US households pay no Federal income tax at all. When the President talks about paying our fair share, I wonder if it is those folks he wants to do more.

An even scarier number is $14 Trillion. That is roughly the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total value of all goods and services produced in a year. But $14Trillion is also roughly the value of the Federal government debt, and also the total US household debt. Let’s do some arithmetic. If we divide the GDP by the US population, some 310 million, then the GDP per person is about $45,000, so is the Federal debt per person, and so is the personal debt of each person. For a family of four, that sums up to $180,000 in all three categories. Thus the average family owes $180,000 in government debt (not including State debt) and another $180,000 in family debt. Those are some scary numbers. Could it get much worse?

Oh, yes it can. Have you heard about the UNFUNDED LIABILITIES? Projecting into the future, the revenues from all Federal taxes will not be able to fund the required expenditures. The numbers are actually quite staggering: Social Security - $17T, Medicare - $88T, adding up to more than $100 Trillion dollars. Since the private net worth of all Americans together is estimated at just over $50 Trillion dollars by the Federal Reserve, you can see the problem.

James Madison foresaw the problem with government excess in Federalist 51:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

It is pretty clear that the government, at least since FDR, and at all levels, has failed to live up to its obligation of restraint. Then Obama goosed it, but good!

(1) The title of Sagan’s last book was “Billions and Billions.” As a humorous tribute to him, a sagan was defined as a unit of measurement equal to at least four billion, since the lower bound of a number conforming to the constraint of billions and billions must be two billion plus two billion. What is the US deficit measured in sagans? Or should we call it an obama?

Imagine God and Country

2011-09-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try…

It was the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and we were at church. The service was moving and memorable. Then the minister announced that the next song would be John Lennon’s Imagine, and added that he was very glad it was chosen. I wondered why?

In the book Lennon in America, by Geoffrey Giuliano, Lennon himself explained that Imagine was “anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic, but because it's sugar-coated, it's accepted.” Imagine is commonly referred to as the “atheist’s anthem.” So why sing such a song in church? Why, especially, on a day of national sorrow? Have we somehow misplaced our moral compasses?

The next day I read about a research study by eminent Notre Dame sociology professor Christian Smith. The study asked about the moral lives of young people 18 - 23 years of age, and the results are depressing. (“If it Feels Right,” David Brooks, New York Times, 9/12/11)

When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. The default position is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. The study revealed an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism -- of moral relativism and nonjudgmentalism.

Imagine all the people
Living for today

When there is no God or Heaven, living for today seems like a reasonable ethics.

For decades, thinkers in many disciplines have warned about the erosion of a shared moral framework. Alaisdair MacIntyre argues that the disintegration began during the Enlightenment with the rejection of Aristotle’s teleological idea -- that human life had a proper end, and that human beings could not reach this natural end without preparation. Throughout history, society has served to provide this preparation through the family, the church, school and the state. The group was seen to be the essential moral unit. Religion defined rules and practices, families imposed moral discipline and schools supported the families. Now, however, we are told that it does not matter what we believe as long as we follow our hearts -- the individual as the essential moral unit.

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too

The founders of our great country firmly believed that God was the foundation of virtue and that “respect for His authority, mediated by the authority of parents, was the foundation of godly character.” The public schools were established with the goal of reinforcing this parental obligation to mold moral citizens.

Somehow, through machinations known only to the intellectual soul, the “Men in Black” decided that religion needed to be banished from the public square. Thus teachers were left toothless in their battle with the child’s instinctive willfulness. Now there are movements afoot to banish the Pledge of Allegiance from the schools as well. Heaven help us if the courts get to decide.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

Imagine, indeed! Every time the sharing all the world crowd has taken control of a society or nation the result has been violence and widespread destitution. The forces that are trying to transform this country into a Lennonesque utopia must be resisted, or we will inherit the culture we deserve, and it won’t be pretty.

References

Barzun, Jacques, The Culture We Deserve
Bloom, Allan, The Closing of the American Mind
Bork, Robert, Slouching Toward Gomorrah
Himmelfarb, Gertrude, The De-Moralization of Society
Hunter, James, The Death of Character
Levin, Mark, Men in Black
MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue

PolyMath or Pretender

2011-09-16T15:37:00.001-07:00

I like to read the New York Times articles by Paul Krugman: though pretentious, they are usually good for a few laughs. You see, Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner in Economics who yet adheres to Keynesianism, an outmoded and generally discredited economic theory. Although it has been clearly shown that Keynesian government “investment” actually prolonged the Great Depression, and that his theory utterly failed to explain Jimmy Carter’s stagflation, Krugman still clings to his childish belief that yet another “stimulus” is just what we need to cure the Obama recession.

Occasionally Krugman goes off the reservation and tries to display his scientific acumen. He is, after all, the guy who wrote an essay on the computation of interest rates on goods in transit near the speed of light. I kid you not. (See “Sixty-seven, and Smarter than Paul Krugman,” palosverdesblog, 5/5/09.) In his recent Times piece, “Republicans Against Science” (8/28/11), Krugman criticized Rick Perry for this “vile” statement: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.” Yep, Krugman called that “vile.” Let us see if Mr. Krugman knows what he is talking about, or is he just a pretender.

What makes a scientific theory? Let me use an example to illustrate the concept. If I say that things fall down, that is true, but is not a scientific theory. If I add that things fall down because the Earth attracts them that is a hypothesis, still not a theory. If say that all the planets move in orbits because the Sun attracts them, that generalization is still less than a theory. When, however, I say that the force of attraction between the planets and the sun is proportional to the product of the masses and inversely as the square of the distance between them, then I am able to calculate the motion of the planets for comparison (and prediction). Now I have a scientific theory.

Thus a scientific theory is more than an idea. It must be descriptive, quantitative, predictive and testable. Thus, it must also be falsifiable. Newton’s gravity meets all these criteria. As an exercise for the reader, ask yourself if evolution does the same. Treat microevolution (Lamarck, c1800, which predates Darwin) and macroevolution (Darwin’s big idea) separately. Here I’ll put global warming “science” to the test.

The central premise of global warming theory is that man-made carbon dioxide emissions have been trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere and warming the earth. Since the beginning of the industrial age, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been increasing inexorably, from about 280 ppm in 1800 to 390 ppm today, an increase of 39%. Yet during that time the average global temperature has gone up and down. And during the Medieval Warming (900 -1300AD), before the advent of the industrial age, the global temperature was comparable to today.
Even overlooking the obvious fact that to base your science on one variable – actually a small proportion of one variable – is not science, the evidence does not even support the idea. Indeed, the global warming “science” - based on computer models - fails the criteria of a scientific theory. In the memorable words of physicist Wolfgang Pauli, it is “not even wrong.”

As for pseudo-polymath Paul Krugman, his theme song should be
“Yes, I’m the great pretender…”

The Logical Dead End of the Nanny State

2011-08-24T17:09:00.000-07:00

The Western world, as I recently noted (“The Abolition of America,” 7/4/11) is in the process of rejecting the natural tradition of objective right and wrong. One of the sad consequences has been a cultural and moral decay that has infected the greater part of old Europe. Now, only a month or so later, we have witnessed riots in the streets of London and throughout England. Many observers of the British scene have commented on the root causes of the senseless destruction. Three of my favorites - Mark Steyn, Theodore Dalrymple, Ann Coulter - plus Prime Minister David Cameron -- contributed their wisdom to the following analysis.
Lord, please forgive my plagiarizing.

There are many lessons for us from London in flames, as gangs of feral youths trashed and looted their own neighborhoods. There is a saying in Britain for people who undermine their own living quarters – they call it “shitting on your own doorstep.” And this rioting suggests that the welfare state has given rise to a generation perfectly happy to do that.

The London rioters are the children of dependency, the progeny of Big Government: they have been marinated in stimulus their entire lives. One-fifth of children are raised in homes in which no adult works – in which the weekday ritual of rising, dressing and leaving for gainful employment is entirely unknown. One-tenth of the adult population has done not a day's work since Tony Blair took office on May 1, 1997.

The riots are the apotheosis of the welfare state and popular culture in their British form. A population thinks that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and if it does not receive that high standard, that is a sign of injustice. It believes itself deprived, even though each one has received an education costing $80,000, toward which neither he nor, quite likely, any member of his family made much of a contribution. Indeed, he may well have lived his entire life at others’ expense, such that every mouthful of food he has ever eaten, every shirt he has ever worn, every television he has ever watched, has been provided by others. Even if he were to recognize this, he would not be grateful, for dependency does not promote gratitude.

And consigning the violence to rage over reduced job opportunities and welfare doesn’t quite wash. A large number of the vandals and looters are teenagers on their school vacations rather than desperate twenty- or thirty-year olds recently out of a job and with a family to support. As written in the Daily Telegraph, the rioters hardly represented a beleaguered minority neglected by the state:
So far, those arrested and charged include an 11-year-old girl, a 31-year-old primary school teacher and the 19-year-old daughter of a company director who is currently at Exeter University. The participation of those from relatively affluent backgrounds, either in full-time education or full-time employment, makes nonsense of the knee-jerk response of blaming cuts to the Education Maintenance Allowance, among other things.

A more plausible “root cause” is the parlous state of British inner-city state education, which has turned out a generation of unemployable youth, who are understandably angry at their dim prospects and their miserable state-provided living environments. This introduces a different, and altogether more damning, diagnosis: the failure of the policies of post-war social democratic orthodoxy, and the cumulative growth of the welfare state, to address the problems of urban poverty and the integration of marginalized classes into wider society – indeed, the state’s role in destroying the integrity of families, in discouraging bourgeois aspiration, and in uprooting traditional community values which historically served to harmonize and reconcile society to itself.

Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to address the “moral collapse” that led to the widespread looting and violence. He has pledged to “review every aspect of our work to mend our broken society: schools, welfare, families, parenting, addiction,… to the twisting and misrepresenting of human rights that has undermined personal responsibility.

“These riots were not about race,” Cameron said. “These riots were not about government cuts ... And these riots were not about poverty.”

“No, this was about behavior ... people showing indifference to right and wrong; people with a twisted moral code; people with a complete absence of self-restraint.”

He listed irresponsibility, selfishness, fatherless children, reward without effort, crime without punishment and behaving as if one’s choices have no consequences as some of the problems contributing to a “slow-motion moral collapse.”

“What last week has shown is that this moral neutrality, this relativism – it’s not going to cut it anymore,” he stressed.

And the “social fightback” starts with families. “If we want to have any hope of mending our broken society, family and parenting is where we’ve got to start.”

When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the British welfare regime in 1942, his goal was the "abolition of want" to be accomplished by "co-operation between the State and the individual." In attempting to insulate the citizenry from life's vicissitudes, Sir William succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Today want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons want to work, want to marry, want to raise children, want to lead a life of any purpose or dignity.

For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ's Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population. Here is America, the Democrats' real achievement has been in destroying the family, thereby creating an endless supply of potential rioters. When blacks were only four generations out of slavery, their illegitimacy rate was about 23 percent (lower than the white illegitimacy rate is now). Then Democrats decided to help them!

It is barely two generations since LBJ's Great Society programs began and the rate of black illegitimacy has tripled to 72 percent. Meanwhile, the white illegitimacy rate has exploded from 4 percent to 29 percent. Instead of a “War on Poverty,” it should have been called a “War on the Family.”

The vast and permanent underclass created by the welfare state is a great success story for the Democratic Party, which now has a loyal constituency of deadbeats who automatically vote for the Democrats to keep their “benefits” flowing.

It's the Democrat Party “heroin dealer” model of government.

The Abolition of America July 4. 2011

2011-08-24T17:05:00.000-07:00

As Americans celebrate our Independence, it behooves us to heed the warning of a man who did not live in freedom. “To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots,” said Alexander Solzhenitzyn. You sever a people’s roots by destroying the memory of their historical past. Today, too many Americans, particularly young people, are ignorant of our past, or believe a distorted version of it.

Jesus said “I am the Truth,” and without truth there can be no freedom. In the past century, British author C.S. Lewis wrote eloquently on the subjects of truth and identity. Clive Staples Lewis (“Jack” to his friends) wrote everything from children’s fiction to philosophy and theology, from The Chronicles of Narnia to Mere Christianity. The Abolition of Man was his classic defense of truth (the natural law) and his goal was nothing short of an attempt to salvage Western civilization. Lewis believed that the Western world was in the process of rejecting the tradition of objective right and wrong, and he saw this rejection of truth being taught in the school systems of his day. Fifty years later, with the advent of post-modernity, the question of “Truth” is, indeed, the question of our time.

Lewis would be appalled to find that the “debunking” program he described in The Abolition of Man has done so much damage to the Britain he knew. As Lewis feared, the cultural demolition was deliberate. The self-anointed reformers admitted as much: “We recognize that the British people love the old ways, and that there is no popular clamour for change. Nevertheless, change we must.” Sadly, this change has led to a cultural and moral decline that has infected the greater part of old Europe. The last two Roman Catholic popes have written with passion on the dangers of a “dictatorship of relativism” in Europe. But how did this cultural sea change come about? Was the root cause intellectual or material? And to what degree has America been infected?

The radical idea that truth is a state constructed by the mind is at the root of a cultural infection. With reason as the sole guide, each reasoning person could (should) construct his own private version of truth (subjectivism). What inevitably follows is relativism -- that each individual’s conception of truth is as valid as any other individual’s. When applied to society, there are no objective truths, only prevailing versions disseminated by ruling social groups. When applied to virtue, moral relativism is the result. Each society creates its own ethics. The ideology of relativism holds that all cultures, ethnic groups, sexual preference or special interest group are equally valid, deserve communal support and mandated representation. This is “multiculturalism” today.

Radical thought in America has a long history but it entered the mainstream in the 1930’s and marinated through the 60’s. Intellectuals in fields such as education and psychology had been infected by Radical Enlightenment philosophy and Marxism. Scholars taught the tactics of “Critical Theory:” destructive criticism of all the main elements of Western culture, including Christianity, morality, the family, sexual restraint, capitalism, patriotism and conservatism. Their strategy was psychological conditioning: “America’s children could be conditioned at school to reject their parent’s social and moral beliefs as racist, sexist and homophobic, and conditioned to embrace a new morality.”

Now the radicals of the 1960’s have become professors of philosophy, sociology, literature, black studies, feminine studies, GLBT studies,… and, most ominously, professors at the education schools of nearly all colleges and universities in America. In the Ed. schools they are able to indoctrinate the future teachers of America in all manner of radical thought including relativism, multiculturalism, gender equality and hateful criticism of Western culture, America in particular.
Their first step is the deconstruction and reinvention of history. Lying about our history has now become commonplace. Take, for example, the National History Standards published by UCLA in 1994. This curriculum promoted multiculturalism by minimizing the achievements of Europeans and their descendents in America in order to focus attention on blacks and American Indians. Students were told they need to “Analyze the Declaration of Independence (mentioned only once) from the perspective of men and women, and people of Native American, European, and African descent.” The US Senate denounced the UCLA farce by a vote of 99-1.
But that did not stop the revisionists.

In 2005 the California State Board of Education approved the eighth-grade history text, Creating America. Produced by Houghton Mifflin, Creating America identifies ten representative American heroes: Abigail Adams, Crispus Attucks, Andrew Jackson, Queen Liluokalanai, Abraham Lincoln, Juan Sequin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, George Washington, Ida B. Wells and Zitkala-Sa. In fact, this highly unrepresentative American history rather vaguely resembles a “Soviet-style history” cobbled together from representative national heroes that conforms to multicultural ideology.

One of the most popular American history texts at the high school level is Howard Zinn’s People’s History. Reflecting postmodern revisionist ideology, Zinn declares that “there is no such thing as pure fact.” The theory of history offered by Marx --“The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle”-- is relied upon by Zinn to explain all of American history, which is portrayed as a continuous chain of immoral colonialism, imperialism and exploitation of minorities and the laboring underclass. Predictably, Zinn draws a moral equivalence between America and the 9/11 terrorists. Yet nowhere in his book will the student learn about Washington's Farewell Address, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address or Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate.

More recently, the state of CA passed a bill that would require teaching the contributions of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. The textbooks will need to be modified accordingly. Is it actually a fact that GLBT contributions have been systematically excluded from the texts? Of course, facts mean nothing when you are pursuing an agenda, in this case the abolition of the centuries old tradition of heterosexual marriage.

So what is left of our culture? Was the redefinition of the words “is” and “sex” by President Clinton an aberration? In one of the founding texts of sociology, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Emile Durkheim wrote that by defining what is “deviant,” we are enabled to know what is not, and hence to live by shared standards. In 1993, New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan authored a now-famous essay, “Defining Deviancy Down.” In it, he argued that social scientists, the courts, politicians, and some in the general public had been busy redefining deviancy down, so much so “as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, (while) also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard.”

How far have we regressed since then? “This is the Brave New World that mindless tolerance, diversity and lawsuits on their behalf have wrought. The decline of American civilization since the 1960s has been so fast and so dramatic that it takes one's breath away,” said my friend Dennis Prager. As Dostoyevsky prophesized many years ago, “If there is no God, everything is permitted.”

I’m confident that Jack would agree.

Ask a Jew

2011-03-08T14:43:00.001-08:00

One Sunday past I traveled out to Pasadena with good buddy Jersey George to attend a show billed as “Religion on the Line” but promoted by the performers as “Ask a Jew.” Longtime friends and KRLA Radio hosts Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt put on quite a show for the 700+ religious conservatives gathered in the Hilton Hotel ballroom.

Throughout the performance Hugh played the straight man to Dennis’ wise man. At the start Hugh asked the audience how many were Jewish (about one quarter), Roman Catholic (same), Evangelical (half), Muslim (none) and atheist (1). It is interesting that three fourths were Christian and that Mainline Protestant was not polled, perhaps signifying the conservatism of the audience.

Hugh asked questions of Dennis for two hours, dealing mostly with what it means to be Jewish in America. Prager was ever-ready with insightful and, frequently hysterical, responses, having spoken on the topic hundreds of times and written several best-selling books, including “Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism” with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin.

Just a sample question dealt with the afterlife. Dennis explained that most Jews do not believe in heaven or hell, in spite of what the Torah says. Judaism preaches an afterlife, including the resurrection of the body, but Jews say -- whatever?

In describing the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform branches of Judaism, Dennis mentioned that the Orthodox Jews do not generally accept converts. You may be an Orthodox Jew only if your mother was born a Jew. I thought what a wonderful place America is, where there can be three radically different forms of a single religion, and no one bats an eye. It reminded me of an incident that occurred in England last year that was not so wonderful.

Europe’s largest Orthodox Jewish school is in London and it has long accepted only Jewish students. Last year, when it denied entry to the son of a Jewish father and convert Jewish mother, the parents sued. In a scary decision, the British court found for the parents and against the school on the grounds that the basis for Orthodox Judaism is “racist.” In his bizarre opinion, the chief justice equated the Jewish doctrine of matrilineal descent with South African apartheid. Britain’s chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, was apoplectic: “An English court has declared the religious definition of Jewish status to be racist,… in effect declaring Judaism racist.” (David Goldman, First Things magazine, Jan. 2010)

Just last week the British courts again interjected themselves in religious matters. A black Christian couple was denied the right to continue raising foster children because their views on homosexuality were in conflict with gay rights, which take precedence over their religious beliefs. The grandparents, Owen and Eunice Johns, have already fostered 15 children and were praised by social workers as “kind and hospitable people” who “respond sensitively” to youngsters.

But social workers raised concerns that their attitudes to homosexuality would conflict with the new Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations. During the case, the Equality and Human Rights Commission argued that the children risk being “infected by Christian moral views.”

Outside court, Mr. and Mrs. Johns, aged 65 and 62, said they were “extremely distressed and had only wanted to offer a loving home to a child in need.” They believe homosexuality is “against God’s law and morals” – but said they are not homophobic and would “accept and love” any child. (Tamara Cohen, UK Mail Online, 1st March 2011)

Meanwhile, Islamic religious (sharia) courts have been established in Britain to operate in parallel to British courts. A report entitled “Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights” begins with Suhaib Hasan, Secretary General of the Islamic Sharia Council, saying, “If Sharia law is implemented, then you can turn this country into a haven of peace because once a thief's hand is cut off nobody is going to steal.” There are presently over 85 Islamic sharia courts operating in Britain, sanctioned by the British government that has declared their rulings “enforceable with the full power of the judicial system.”

Thus far the Islamic courts deal with civil matters only. Still the “sharia courts threaten the integrity of law in the British democracy, by promoting the unequal treatment of women in the British Islamic community.” For example, “in disputes over child custody, sharia recognizes the absoluteness of a father's ownership if the child is over seven years old.” (Ellen Toplansky, Sharia Law in Canada and Britain.)

This unholy trifecta reveals the sad state of religious freedom in Great Britain. Of course, these things could never happen in America. Or could they? (Obama appointee Dalia Mogahed is a sharia law advocate.)

Toward the end of the show Dennis stated that the essence of Judaism is fighting evil. Hugh responded that the essence of Christianity is forgiveness. On the way home after the show, George and I had plenty to gab about over Sicilian pizza and Italian beer at a great place just off Colorado.

Unholy Debt

2011-02-24T14:12:00.000-08:00

With the Federal government debt exceeding the total output of the entire US economy (the GDP), serious minded people are seriously concerned about the economic health of the country. Depending on inflation and interest rates, the interest payments on the debt could, by the end of the decade, exceed the total Federal budget of only a few years ago. The effect of such excessive government spending is to remove money from the private economy, keeping unemployment at unhealthy levels, nearly 10% now, and double that if you include the underemployed.

The same problem exists in the States where typical yearly deficits are in the billions of dollars, in excess of $20B in California. States are trying all kinds of tricks to balance their budgets, usually including borrowing tons of money if they can get it. Unfunded future liabilities for government retiree’s pensions and health care costs are impossible hurdles in many States. (In California it exceeds $500 Billion.)

Now church leaders are beginning to speak out about the immorality of massive debt. "America's growing debt is a not just a financial issue, it's a spiritual one," said Jerry Newcombe, of the Coral Ridge Ministries. "The Bible is very clear about the moral dangers of debt." The evangelical ministry has been sounding the alarm about the "monstrous debt burden" to its estimated 500,000 devotees through radio programs, print publications and its website.

Likewise, the Family Research Council has delivered "action alerts" about the debt to its network of 40,000 pastors. The Christian Coalition, Concerned Women for America, and the Faith and Freedom Coalition are also warning members that the deficit is reaching immoral proportions. ("National debt is new hot issue for evangelicals," by Daniel Burke, Religion News Service)

Generally, people are concerned about the effect on unemployment and the threat to long-term prosperity of historically high levels of spending and debt. Another, perhaps even greater, issue is the harmful effects on the targets of government largess. The sad state of New York welfare is a prime example.

New York’s Medicaid program covers nearly 5 million people, a quarter of the total population at a cost of $53 billion (combined federal and state money), more than any other state, even California, with twice as many enrollees. Think about that. One quarter of New York residents receive Medicaid, at a cost of over $10,000 per person.

Now Medicaid is supposed to be a last-resort safety net for those who do not receive medical care through their own or employee insurance or Medicare. Yet New York Medicaid covers parents who earn up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level and childless adults up to the poverty level. New York also provides optional benefits including prescription drugs, dental and vision care and even long-term care. (New York Times editorial, 2/19/11.) Quite the nice safety net! In addition to the Medicaid giveaway, this quarter of New York residents likely receive food, rent and energy subsidies, and pay no Federal or State income taxes. These 5 million people are effectively wards of the State.

So what about these millions of (mostly) able-bodied folks who receive welfare, food stamps, rent and energy subsidies, Medicaid, etc, and pay nothing at all for it? Do they feel good about it? Are they motivated to improve their lot? Daniel Patrick Moynihan, working for Lyndon Johnson in 1965, warned America about the self-destructive consequences of the Welfare State. Star Parker’s Uncle Sam’s Plantation exposed the personal tragedy of a young woman “chewed up and spit out by our country’s ruthless welfare system.” If you look at the many longitudinal studies of welfare recipients from the 1960s until today you find a dismal record of social improvement.

As Aristotle said 2500 years ago, “If you want to encourage something, reward it.” President Johnson’s war on Poverty has had the unintended consequences of “family breakdown and illegitimacy; cycles of dependency that transfer from one generation to the next; anger, despair and hopelessness. Judged by its results, the war on Poverty was more a War on the Poor.” (Jay Richards, Money, Greed and God)

This is the unholy Welfare State. It must be stopped.

Oh the Inanity!

2011-02-15T16:07:00.000-08:00

I sometimes wonder if I can continue reading the New York Times. OK, I only read it at Equinox where it is free, and I use it to get my heart pumping. But the editorial and op-ed writers (excepting David Brooks) are so ideologically tilted as to overshadow the Leaning Tower of Pisa. One could make a career out of debunking the economic “wisdom” of Paul Krugman (whose answer to every question is more government spending) and the socio-political confusion of Bob Herbert.

On Feb 11, while the throngs celebrated in Cairo, Herbert wrote a piece called “When Democracy Weakens.” In it he mused: “I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.”

I wondered what was going on in Bob’s head? Why is he so worried about America?

Herbert again: “So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands.”

There it is. Bob frets that the top tax rate is still “only” 36% and politicians, faced with a $14 trillion federal debt and a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, are looking to cut the budget. “We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.”

Well, what about that? The dictionary definition of democracy is a “form of government in which all the people hold the ruling power either directly or through elected representatives.” It is generally agreed that democracies must guarantee “equality of rights, opportunity and treatment” through the rule of law and that includes the right to hold public office. By that definition there were exactly zero democracies in the world in 1900. Women did not get the vote until somewhat later. Today, however, there are 89 democracies in the world comprising 46% of the world population. That is remarkable progress!

Like all leftists, Herbert thinks of democracy primarily in economic terms. So what about the poor that he thinks are, somehow, disenfranchised? Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a DVD player, and a stereo. In fact, 46% of all poor households actually own their own homes. As a group, America's poor are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle class children and, in most cases, is well above recommended norms.

Not one poor American is denied the right to vote or hold public office or equality under the law. And not one pays a single dollar in Federal income tax. Bob needs to stop the inanity and worry about what is really wrong with American culture.
There are two main reasons why American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and fathers are absent from the home.

The typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year. (16 hours of work per week) If total work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year, the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week, nearly 75% of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.

Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two thirds of poor children reside in single parent homes; each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three quarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

Look to your community, Bob.

The Job Myth

2011-01-30T15:50:00.001-08:00

The fabric of a culture contains both truths and myths -– falsehoods believed by a large number of people. Many times, truths and myths straddle the same objective reality. For example, a truth about America is that it was created as “one nation, under God.” The myth is that it was designed to be a secular nation with a “wall of separation” between church and state. If you saw the SOTU on Tuesday night, one thing you did not see was the words “In God We Trust” chiseled into the granite behind and above the President. As Denis Prager has noted, that was a deliberate choice of the TV stations in service of their secular-America myth. The God-in-America myth has been profoundly damaging to our culture. It will be a primary subject of these blogs.

Today, however, I’d like to talk about another type of myth, also harmful, dealing with the economy. This very popular myth involves jobs, or more specifically, job creation. (Isn’t it interesting that job and Job – “an upright man whose faith in God survived the test of repeated calamities” -- are the same word.)

Now, Government is able to create jobs, but it involves the force-able transfer of income from one group of people to another. The stimulus package did a lot of that income transfer, but the President has now come to realize that it did not keep the jobless rate below 8%, as he promised, and, with unemployment in the mid 9% range, the people have given up on a government fix. Indeed, “Obama put the business community on notice that they have to deliver on new jobs.” (Timothy Egan, New York Times, 1/26/11)

It is unfortunate that this viewpoint reflects an ignorance of basic economics that seems to be mythological. Even the intellectual elites fall for it. The raison d’etre of private companies is to produce goods and services. Jobs are a means to that end. If sufficient demand for goods and services is lacking, jobs will be lost. The law of supply and demand, the most basic in economics, seems to have evaded the Times writers.

While many believe that the creation of jobs is a universal good, and is the moral responsibility of us all, the Bible puts all such duties below the rights of property. Michael Medved (http://www.michaelmedved.com/) described it thus:

While leaders of the religious left portray the Bible as a neo-socialist document that emphasizes sharing resources with the poor, the stone tablets at the core of our tradition tell a different story. In late January, Jewish congregations around the world read the Exodus passage introducing the Ten Commandments, and two of those ten explicitly stress the sanctity of private property. God commands humanity not to steal—seizing wealth belonging to someone else – and not to covet your neighbor’s house, his animals, or “anything that belongs to your neighbor.” The commandment says material goods belong to the individual, not the state, or even to God. We are obliged to help the poor through acts of personal charity, but nothing suggests that government should seize private property against the will of its owners to achieve some higher good.

The history of the past two decades shows that lower government spending as a share of GDP is associated with lower unemployment rates. A much better way to reduce unemployment is to encourage private investment with lower tax rates and reduced regulations. The following graph shows how lower tax rates caused falling unemployment fell when private investment increased as a share of GDP. (John B. Taylor, The Wall Street Journal, 1/29/11)

Economics is a serious business, not the stuff of myths.

Two Culture Wars

2011-01-22T16:55:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the Tucson tragedy there were accusations that political rhetoric encouraged Jared Loughner on his murderous rampage. Of course, that was mere nonsense. “None of Aristotle's four causes -- not first, not final, not formal, not efficient -- link Loughner's rampage to political chatter.” One of the great things about Americans is that we can and do engage in rhetorical battles about politics, religion, popular mores, MTV (“Skins” – yuck!), without descending into physical violence.

Two of the most consequential culture wars in America today deal with religion and the source of authority. The “Faith Matters” survey conducted by Robert Putnam and David Campbell (see the book “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us”) found that “Americans are increasingly concentrated at opposite ends of the spectrum – the seriously religious at one pole and the avowedly secular at the other.” The authority war faces off those who wish to conserve the culture handed down from the past and those who would radically change it.

The conservative modus operandi for cultural change is a slow series of tiny tweaks meant to improve an already magnificent tapestry. For the change agent, on the other hand, the campaign must begin with the destruction of the culture as it exists. Usually the change campaign begins with contemptuous dismissal of the past as when Marx declared that “culture is mere training to act as a machine,” or when the deconstructionists denied the validity of all culture as being the corrupt products of “dead white men.”

Tectonic cultural shifts generally originate from within a culture, motivated by the cultural elite, intellectuals and political class. The books I reviewed in my last post (by Dalrymple and Hitchens) showed the devastating effects of the cultural revolution in England since the 1960s. “To regret religion is to regret Western civilization,” said Dalrymple, summing up the British loss. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) has written passionately about how Europe’s denial of its religious and moral foundations led to the loss of faith, optimism and courage. Reflecting on the ever declining birth rate, Ratzinger noted that “Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future.” (See for example, “Without Roots” by Ratzinger and Marcello Pera)

The culture wars over religion and authority are inter-related in the Putnam and Campbell data. The “Faith Matters” survey shows that religiosity is not correlated to positions on foreign or immigration policies, and the correlation is modest when the issue is the size of government (The religious like smaller). However, the statistical correlations are strong when it comes to abortion and same sex marriage. By large margins, religious people are opposed to both. Abortion and gay marriage are simply steps too far for most religious people.

Protecting the lives of the weakest humans against a culturally approved slaughter is about the clearest possible moral stand the church could hope for. Standing against gay marriage continues the church’s protection of the innocent after birth.

However, some churches (eg. the Episcopal and the United Church of Christ) have abandoned these traditional stands to their own peril; membership in such progressive churches has plummeted in the last decades. This sad story will be the subject of a future post.

Is Britain Civilized?

2011-01-06T14:57:00.000-08:00

When the great British bulldog was laid to rest on 31 January 1965, the crowds (more than 300,000) who queued up to see him lying in state were typically British: loyal, proud, sentimental, yet self controlled. During the darkest days of the war, when England was on the precipice of surrender, Winston Churchill had been the indispensable man. The British people were a proud family honoring their father figure, sure that British institutions were the best in the world. Thus it came as something of a surprise when the newly elected Labour government set about to “reform” British culture.

In 1965 the youthful Roy Jenkins was appointed to head the Home Office. Jenkins had made a name for him-self with the publication of a manifesto called “Is Britain Civilized?” in which he attacked Britain's "archaic" laws on abortion, censorship, homosexuality, and divorce, as well as arguing for the abolition of capital punishment. His reform of the criminal justice system was designed to make it as “civilized” to the criminal as possible. Jenkins and his Labour co-conspirators believed that a more permissive society would be a more civilized society.

One of the greatest blows was to the stability of family life. In his 1967 Reith lectures, Edmund Leach actually blamed the traditional family for most of society’s problems. In 1965 British society was one of the most stable, decent and law-abiding in the world. By the turn of the century, English society had been radicalized.

In his book “Our Culture, What’s left of It” the British ex-pat Theodore Dalrymple documents the destruction of English character: rampant alcoholism and drug use; increasing illegitimacy; children raised without any form of parental supervision or guidance; the destruction of traditional mores and respect for law.

And what happened to the family? Labour MP Jon Cruddas, a staunch liberal, said recently that the “biggest calamity facing society is the relentless disintegration of the family and the profoundly dangerous consequential element of a lack of male role models.”

Neil Clark summarized the damage in the 2003 Opinion-Telegraph: “The damaging impact of Jenkins's reforms on the society we live in is all too clear to see. One marriage in three now ends in divorce. Almost 40 per cent of children are now born out of wedlock, the highest figure in Europe. Since the 1967 Abortion Act, more than six million unborn children have been aborted. The legalization of homosexuality has not been the end of the chapter, but merely the beginning, with an aggressive ‘gay rights’ lobby demanding more and more concessions. The policy of early release of prisoners has had a catastrophic effect on the safety of the general public: 14 per cent of violent criminals freed early are convicted of fresh violence within two years of their release.”

Liberalizing political reforms made a mess of British society turning England into perhaps the “most libertine -- and frankly immoral -- country in Europe.” You may think these judgments are rather harsh, perhaps exaggerated. Well by the late 1970s the damage was already so severe that English novelist Kingsley Amis wrote a withering satire on the decay of the national culture. In “Russian Hide and Seek” Amis suggests that the trashing of English culture could only have been achieved by a ruthless foreign invader.

At the same time the churches in England were undergoing their own reforms and contributing to the destruction of English character. In his scathing critique of British social life --“The Abolition of Britain”-- Peter Hitchens notes that “Hell was abolished around the same time that abortion was legalized and the death penalty was done away with.” Anglican bishops, headed by John Robinson, began to admit that they were “not sure about the existence of God or the truths of their religion’s central beliefs.” The Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins (another Jenkins!) spoke of the resurrection as “conjuring tricks with bones.”

Lacking the “faith once given,” English churches decided to become relevant and post-modern. Traditional forms and the most cherished beliefs were jettisoned. Scripture was increasingly replaced by social theology, suited to the new social democracy, in which “Christian charity was expressed through political action rather than in your own conduct.” The churches became booster clubs for the political reforms imposed on the working class people by Roy Jenkins and his crew. And the churches became increasingly empty.

Some Anglican pastors described in “The Rise and fall of the Nine o’Clock Service” tried to entice the lost parishioners with pseudo-Christian services: “Druidic white-robed figures around an alter resembling a crescent moon… hundreds of black-clad figures peer out of the darkness, swaying to swirling, strangely ethereal breaths of ambient techno.” Very clearly, it could no longer be said that the Anglican Church was the “Tory party at prayer.” It did not work.

Amis describes a church service after the Russians have purified England. A young woman reciting the Creed wonders what it is all about: “The whole catalogue was very odd – remote and fanciful. It made sense to believe in keeping oneself to oneself, in a hot-water bottle on a cold night. But what difference could it make to think the Holy Ghost advisable, to be in favor of the life everlasting.”

So what do you think? Is Britain still civilized? Do you see any parallels in America?

Onward Christian Soldiers

2010-12-30T14:00:00.000-08:00

Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng
blend with ours your voices in the triumph song.

In this time between Christmas and the New Year it is appropriate to reflect on our blessings. We who live in “this greatest nation on God’s green earth” have a lot to be thankful for. Although there are many who have had to struggle during the economic downturn, we all of us enjoy the most freedom and economic opportunity ever experienced in the history of mankind. Yet we read that many well off people are unsatisfied and unfulfilled. Depression is a growing malady. Perhaps the remedy is to “choose life.”

At our church (Neighborhood Church in PVE) my friend, the Rev. George Baum, conducts a monthly Happiness Hour (or two or three). At these gatherings we try to follow the admonition of Dennis Prager that “Happiness is a Serious Problem.” We owe it to others – our family and friends foremost -- to be happy, or at least to pretend to be happy. Of course this instruction did not originate with Dennis. Indeed the Church fathers preached the same message. “The Apostle Paul — who spent an inordinate amount of time in cold, dark Roman prisons — instructed his followers to give thanks in all things. Paul's advice is consistent with research showing that the single biggest ‘happiness variable’ we can control is our attitude.” (Oliver Thomas, “In New Year's trying times, choose life,” USA Today, 12/26/10). My aunt Judy was wrong: We were not “put on the earth to suffer.”

That said gratitude and happiness are not cause for Pollyanna. Indeed, there are troubling signs of moral decay in culture and society. Much of the trouble can be traced to a loss of faith associated with growing secularization. In the twentieth century secularism was enforced by totalitarian regimes. Totalitarianism cannot tolerate God since the state must be the source of all human rights. The extreme consequence was the mass murder of over one hundred million in Europe, China and the Soviet Union.

But secularism does not need to be enforced. In advanced democratic countries God can be chased from the public square in the service of toleration and “the separation of church and state.” Europe provides a sad example of the loss of faith. In his books, “The Abolition of Britain” and “The Rage Against God,” Peter Hitchens, brother of the flagrant atheist Christopher Hitchens (“God is Not Great”) chronicles the parallel decline of religion and culture in the formerly great -- Great Britain.

We Christian Soldiers must be diligent. Faith is like a muscle that needs to be exercised to remain strong. In America the protestant mainline churches became flabby and lost millions of members. But the void of belief had to be filled. Some turned to environmentalism, others to post-modern religious movements such as Emerging Christianity that welcome flabby Christians. But that story is for another time.

When I was a blogger a few friends found my musings to be of interest. Now I would like to resume the practice with a weekly post on the subject of culture and its most significant artifact -- religion. You may well wonder why I care enough to expend the effort of writing a regular blog on religion. It's simple: If we do not speak up the other side will win. I refer again to St. Paul: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:16).

Sweetheart Government Jobs

2010-04-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

Isn’t it astounding how little most people learn from history? Or, perhaps, it is not so surprising considering the political correctness and downright slander found in many historical treatments used in our underperforming schools. Someone said that those who ignore history are bound to repeat it, much to their chagrin. For example, what can we learn from the Chinese?

In medieval times the Chinese empire dominated the Eastern world and led the whole world in culture and innovation. By 1300 the Chinese had invented gunpowder, canal locks, movable type, the compass and rockets, among many other notable achievements. Then it stopped. While the Ming dynasty astonished outsiders with their wealth, knowledge and power through the fourteenth century, eventually Chinese technology and innovation withered and the empire waned. What happened to this great culture? What does history tell us? I’ll return to those questions later, after talking a bit about a modern parallel.

According to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the typical federal worker is paid 20% more than a private-sector worker in the same occupation.
For example, broadcast technicians earn on average $90,000 working for the Federal government vs. only $49,000 in private industry. Some other comparisons (federal/private): graphic designer ($70,800/$46,600), landscape architect ($80,800/$58,400), public relations manager ($132,000/$88,000) and clergy ($70,500/$39,200). Overall federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector while the average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046.

Furthermore these salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Adding it up you get a grand total of $111,476 per year for government work vs. $69,928 for the same work in the private sector. The difference is $41,548 or 59% in favor of government work!

Mama, you must send your clile to work for the gubment. Those who labor in the private sector have become an underclass.

So what does this analysis have to do with the downfall of the Chinese empire? There are several reasons why technology, innovation and progress waned in China. One was Confusion ideology wherein the universe simply is and always was and there is no reason to suppose that it functions according to rational laws. Thus the scientific revolution that awoke the West did not seem possible to Chinese minds. Another reason is the massiveness of the Chinese bureaucracy and its sweetheart government jobs. Eventually the “best and the brightest” in Chinese society entered government service where the pay and benefits far surpassed the “private” sector. History provides a valuable lesson.

And while we labor to reverse the profligacy and malfeasance in Washington, we must not overlook the problems here in California. As the State government goes bankrupt, and brings down the local entities by their egregious spending, it is past time to demand changes. Surely the size of government needs to be reduced by insisting that government does what it must do and no more. At the same time efficiency can be dramatically improved by balancing incomes.

In the 3/29 Daily Breeze, the editorial summarized the “political pay gap,” meaning the discrepancy between state government workers and those who labor in the private economy. The magnitude of the problem created by this overspending is understood through a simple fact. States and local governments would save $339 billion a year if they paid their workers the same as private workers. That is enough to more than cover the estimated 2010-2011 deficits of every state in the nation.

In California, about half of government expenditures go to support government employees and the State alone has a $20+ billion yearly deficit. The government employee unions control the Democrat party and are rewarded with sweetheart deals in contract negotiations. Somehow we need to find a way to break the cycle of public union - elected official back scratching.

A good first step will be to elect Meg Whitman as governor (and John Eastman as attorney general). Then we need to replace as many of the Sacramento Democrats as possible and put the fear of the people into the rest of them.

At the local level it is time to demand that city officials, school boards, library trustees and other government entities look at their employees’ total compensation and make appropriate adjustments. It is no longer valid to benchmark government employees’ compensation against other government employees, ie city vs. city, school district vs. school district, library vs. library. The only legitimate comparison is with the private sector, and the ensuing action should lead to fiscal solvency. To do otherwise is an abrogation of our citizen-patriot duties.

The New Socialism

2009-12-12T12:51:00.001-08:00

Remember the old saw: How do you know when a politician is lying?.… His lips are moving! There seems to be more and more truth in that. But I have a sure fire test for lying. If a story appears as “news” in the New York Times, also as the lead editorial and then as an opinion piece written by one of their hacks, well that’s proof positive that the whole thing is a lie. You’ve all seen it on topics as diverse as the health care debate, the war on terror and Sarah Palin. (God bless her!)

Monday 12/6 the Times did it again, this time on the subject of manmade global warming. The “news” story, “In Face of Skeptics, Experts Affirm Climate Peril” assured us that the circulation of several thousand e-mail messages between climate scientists urging their brethren to delete embarrassing e-mails, to keep papers by competing scientists from publication and to make “adjustments” in research data to hide the recent global cooling trend is a mere tempest in a teapot. The editorial “Beyond Copenhagen” sounds an encouraging note because the United States and China, the world’s two biggest emitters, have promised to reduce or slow their emissions. The op-ed “An Affordable Truth” by Paul Krugman warns about a likely reaction to Copenhagen. “We’ll hear cries that the whole notion of global warming is a hoax perpetrated by a vast scientific conspiracy, as demonstrated by stolen e-mail messages that show — well, actually all they show is that scientists are human.” Uh huh. He closes with hope for Copenhagen: “A deal there would save the planet at a price we can easily afford. And it would actually help us in our current economic predicament.” Krugman also has a bridge he would like to unload. Those lying Times!

The truth of the matter is that manmade global warming is perhaps the greatest hoax ever perpetrated by the science-government establishment. And our president is in a leadership role. This week his EPA declared that carbon dioxide is a threat to humans and will be regulated under the Clean Air Act. According to Obama’s hand-picked EPA head Lisa Jackson, “there are no more excuses for delaying.” Yet it is obvious to school children that carbon dioxide is actually a life-giving gas. We humans exhale it, plants gobble it up and give us food and shelter and oxygen to breath. Everything should be so harmful.

What’s more, trying to significantly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions will have many deleterious side effects, including skyrocketing energy prices, loss of jobs, unsafe cars, and, most of all, loss of freedom. That is because energy use is a driving force of prosperity. Consider just a few numbers.

From 2002 to 2006 the US Gross Domestic Product grew from $10 trillion to $13 trillion, a 30% increase. Over the same time frame the US emissions of carbon dioxide stayed nearly flat at 5.8 billion metric tons. Thus the US energy efficiency rose by 30% in five years. That’s what can happen in an advanced economy like ours (where the per capita GDP exceeds $47,000) when it transitions from heavy industry and manufacturing to a service and information economy and makes more efficient use of energy.

Over that same time period, the Chinese GDP grew dramatically, from $1.5 trillion to $2.25 trillion (50%), while the Chinese yearly emissions of carbon dioxide grew from 3.8 billion tons to 6.1 billion tons (60%). Relatively poor countries like China ($2000 per capita GDP) require excess energy to grow their economies. This is likely to remain the case for the foreseeable future as the Chinese try to raise another several hundred million people from poverty up to medium development levels. It is no surprise that the Chinese are building one coal-fired power plant per week and will continue doing so for the next ten years.

Worldwide there are 1.6 billion people who do not have access to electricity and 2.4 billion people -- more than a third of the world's total -- still cook and heat with traditional fuels such as firewood or dung. To raise the 2.4 billion people up to the Chinese economic level will require energy use double that of China. The UN estimates that energy use will jump by 50 percent over the next 25 years, with two-thirds of that hike expected in the developing world.

Now one might think that raising people up from abject poverty is a good thing. Except, that is, if you place the environment above people. And that is just what motivates the global warming fascists. Instead of allowing the people in poor countries to benefit from globalization, their goal is to pay those countries to curb their energy use and their economic development. Some numbers will elucidate the folly of this approach. To pay just $1 per day to the 2.4 billion poorest people in the world would cost $876 billion annually. Guess where that cash will be coming from. And that exercise assumes that the bucks get to the actual people. Fat chance! Only pennies on the dollar of foreign aid distributed through kleptocratic governments in the third world reaches the poor. Of course, the real objective of the fascists is to use the one buck a day to buy sleeping bags and K-rations so the poor won’t need to burn those pesky fossil fuels to cook or to heat their homes.

Liberals like to ask, “What would Jesus do?” It seems to me that Jesus would put the plight of the poor today above the potential temperature of the planet in 2100.

Those who predict catastrophe if the emissions of carbon-dioxide are not curbed right now have been found out. “Climategate” has emerged. The thousands of emails urging trickery, deletion of data, hiding the decline and punishing or silencing dissidents have shed the light of reason on the chicanery that has been employed by the UC climate science community in order to convince the world that “the science has been settled.” When the first UN (IPCC) report appeared in 1990 it contained a reconstruction of 1000 years of global temperature data that clearly showed the Medieval Warm Period (circa 1000 – 1300) and the Little Ice Age (circa 1350 – 1850) preceding the Modern Warming (1850 – 1990). But those very natural temperature variations that occurred before the Industrial Revolution did not fit the alarmist model of manmade global warming. Thus the MWP and the LIA had to go and, sure enough, the second UN report in 1995 used 1400 AD as its base -- effectively wiping the MWP off the radar screen. Then in the third report (2001) the MWP and LIA both simply vanished, replaced by a downward trend throughout the millennium until a sharp jump upward last century.

This 2001 reconstruction was the infamous “Hockey Stick” fabricated by Michael Mann and his cronies at Penn State. “Mike’s Nature trick,” as it has become known, involved two pieces of scientific fraud. First, a flawed filtering technique was used on the temperature data (reconstructed from proxies) effectively wiping out the MWP and the LIA and resulting in a gradual downward-trending global temperature from 1000AD until 1850. Second, the data reconstruction was abruptly terminated in 1980 when it was starting to trend downward (cooler) and replaced with actual measured temperatures which were rising. Climate scientists concluded that “the rate and duration of warming of the 20th century has been much greater than in any of the previous nine centuries.” This conclusion has been the poster child for the fraudulent Anthropogenic Global Warming movement.

The most accurate temperature reconstruction derived from tree-rings and lake and ocean sediments by Moberg et al (2005) actually emphasizes rather than hides the MWP.

Note that the MWP was warmer than the late 20th century peak. Since 1998 the global temperature has been declining. Yet the alarmists warn that catastrophe looms.

You have to wonder why the AGW movement has captured the hearts and minds of world leaders. The third worlders are sensibly looking for a handout, in the form of reparations for the “climate debt” incurred by the developed nations. But the first worlders have to be driven by something other than self interest. Charles Krauthammer nailed it: “The new socialism: A shift from red to green.” Environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, “the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.” God, help us.

Be Very Scared

2009-08-19T10:53:00.001-07:00

Beliefs matter. History shows that crackpot ideas in the minds of powerful people can lead to devastating consequences. Just look at how the ideas of Thomas Malthus and Charles Darwin, in the mind of a man like Hitler, led to death and destruction.

In the present time, as we debate the health care issues, consider the following crackpot idea:

"The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being."

In other words, children during the early years after birth, cannot yet be defined as human beings.

What would you think of the guy who said that? Could he be an American? An influential American?

In the book, Ecoscience, co-authored with Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) the same guy wrote: "The neo-Malthusiasn view proposes...population limitation and redistribution of wealth..... We find ourselves firmly in the neo-Malthusian camp"

So how about the idea of a government-imposed limit on family size? Again, from our mystery man:

"It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society."

Moreover, if the United States government refuses to take proper measures, these nuts would authorize the United Nations to use compelling force to control population.

The author of these cocamame ideas is none other than John Holdren, President Obama's Science Adviser. Here is a guy who influences the president's ideas on our health care.

Another Obama advisor on health care policy is Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm, who has some scary ideas about how to keep health care costs down.

"When implemented, the 'Complete Lives' system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated."

The kids and oldies get "attenuated" chances in Obamacare. Imagine what that means.

Then there is Obama czar Cass Sustein, who wrote in the Columbia Law Review:

"I urge that the government should indeed focus on 'life-years' rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people."

With these guys advising the radical Obama on how to restructure American health care, we should all be scared, very scared.

Sprinting Towards Gomorrah

2009-05-19T15:30:00.000-07:00

On July 1, 1987 President Reagan nominated Robert Bork for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Within minutes Edward Kennedy stood on the Senate floor to condemn the nomination and a new verb was born. According to Kennedy:

“Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is -- and is often the only -- protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”

Bork’s sin was his “originalist” view of the Constitution, including his belief that it does not contain a general “right to privacy,” the shaky pillar upon which Roe v. Wade rests. The left wing vitriol against Judge Bork was so egregious that it gave rise to a new verb - to “bork” - which has been reserved for conservative nominees.
In 1991, at a conference of the National Organization for Women, feminist Florynce Kennedy addressed the importance of defeating the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. She said, “We're going to bork him. We're going to kill him politically. This little creep, where did he come from?” Fortunately for America, Thomas was confirmed and has been an outstanding Supreme Court jurist and stalwart defender of the Constitution.

What is it that infuriates liberals about Judge Bork, Judge Thomas or other judicial conservatives such as Samuel Alito or Janice Rogers Brown? Simply, that judges such as these have opposed the decline of American morals - what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “defining deviancy down” - that has been aided and abetted by the “Constitution as a living document” jurists on the Federal benches.

In 1988 Bork wrote Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, in which he argued that the rise of the Left in America has undermined the moral standards necessary for civil society. He condemned the defining characteristics of modern liberalism: radical egalitarianism (equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity) and radical individualism (nearly unlimited right to personal gratification). These bankrupt ideologies have led to bigger government, radical political correctness, quotas, unlimited abortion coupled with an abrupt rise in out-of-wedlock births, declining academic accomplishment, and attempts to redefine civic institutions such as marriage.

American culture has suffered as a result. In his eye-opening book Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, Samuel P. Huntington points to a pervasive effort by elites in the judiciary, academia and the media to promote measures consciously designed to weaken America’s cultural and creedal identities. “These efforts by a nation’s leaders to deconstruct the nation they governed were, quite possibly, without precedent in human history,” wrote Huntington.

One of the recent attacks on civil society is encompassed in a bill working its way through the California legislature. S.B. 572, which was approved 7-to-2 out of Senate committee, would institute “Harvey Milk Day” in honor of the openly homosexual San Francisco Board of Supervisors member who was murdered in 1978. The observances would recognize Milk's “accomplishments as well as the contributions he made to this state.” Furthermore the bill reads that “all public schools and educational institutions are encouraged to observe and conduct suitable commemorative exercises.”

Randy Thomasson of SaveCalifornia.com says this legislation designates another day to indoctrinate children in the tenets of homosexuality. He contends that the measure would “encourage public schools to positively portray to children any and all facets of homosexuality, bisexuality, and trans-sexuality -- and anything else that's in the closet.”

But - what of the vast accomplishments of Harvey Milk? If you saw the movie, even Sean Penn could not obscure the facts that Milk used his short time in office to hold homosexual pride parades, work on behalf of the homosexual agenda - including gay marriage and sexual experimentation - and oppose organized religion. Just the kind of guy you want school kids to emulate.

On the abortion front, a recent Gallup poll found that, for the first time since the question began to be asked, the majority of Americans consider themselves to be “pro-life.” Fifty-one percent of those polled said that they were pro-life, and forty-two percent considered themselves pro-choice. The results are encouraging.

Yet in the fine state of California, your minor daughter has the right to an abortion without your consent or notification. LA School District Examiner, Ericha Parks has identified the relevant CA codes:

Health and Safety Code Section 123450 states that “An emancipated minor may obtain an abortion without the consent of a parent or guardian.”

Education Code Section 46010.1 states that, “The governing board of each school district shall, each academic year, notify pupils in grades 7 to 12, and the parents or guardians of all pupils enrolled in the district, that school authorities may excuse any pupil from school for the purpose of obtaining confidential medical services without the consent of the pupil's parent or guardian.”

I think Justice Bork would agree that the “slouch” has become a “sprint” and Gomorrah is in sight.

Sixty-seven, and Smarter than Paul Krugman

2009-05-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

Whenever a public intellectual makes pronouncements on two subjects as diverse as science and economics in a single sentence it is probably prudent to check out his bona-fides. So who is this Paul Krugman, and is he really as smart as he thinks he is?

According to Wikipedia, Krugman (56) is an economist, columnist, intellectual, author, professor, Nobel Prize winner in Economics and op-ed columnist for The New York Times. Krugman says he was drawn to economics after reading Asimov's Foundation novels, in which the social scientists of the future use "psychohistory" in an attempt to save civilization.

According to the Nobel committee, Krugman “integrated economies of scale into explicit general equilibrium models.” The fact that consumers prefer a diverse choice of brands but that production favors economies of scale explains why Germany is successful at selling BMWs in Sweden while Sweden is successful in selling Volvos in Germany. This modeling of economic trade has come to be called “New Trade Theory.” Very impressive!

On the scientific side Krugman once wrote an essay called 'The Theory of Interstellar Trade' on computing interest rates on goods in transit near the speed of light. In it he considers the shipment of goods from Earth to the planet Trantor in a distant star system and the problem of evaluating capital costs on the goods when the time to ship them depends on the observer’s reference frame. [Gratuitous math example: If n is the number of years to ship the goods in the Earth-Trantor inertial reference frame, then the years aboard the space ship will be n times the square root of {1 – (v/c)2 } where v is the speed of the star ship and c is the speed of light.]

Thus, when Krugman proclaims on science and economics in The New York Times, most of us listen up: “So it is important to understand that just as denials that climate change is happening are junk science, predictions of economic disaster if we try to do anything about climate change are junk economics.” (5/1/09)

There are just a few things wrong with this pregnant sentence. In the first place, no one is denying that climate change is happening; it happens all the time. Most scientists even agree that global warming is happening, although is seems to have stopped for the last decade. The scientific debate is over the causes of the warming, and how much of it is anthropomorphic, that is, caused by Al Gore. The economic debate is over what to do about it, if anything. And those who warn of the economic dangers of doing too much are anything but junk economists.

Pete DuPont (Wall Street Journal, “Sapping America’s Energy”) warns that global-warming legislation sponsored by Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts would drive up the cost of everything. Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute notes that “Waxman-Markey would put big government in charge of how much energy people can use. It would be the biggest government intervention in people's lives since the second world war, which was the last time people had to have rationing coupons in order to buy a gallon of gas.”Through the mechanisms of cap-and-trade-and-tax, the legislation intends to make energy much more expensive and less available to consumers. Obama, himself, admitted that “cap and trade will cause electricity rates to skyrocket.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xOxwW4Toio )

On the regulatory front, the Obama administration declared last Friday that carbon dioxide threatens the planet. The Environmental Protection Agency found that the emissions endanger “the health and welfare of current and future generations.” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson wrote in a memo to her staff that it is "the first formal recognition by the U.S. government of the threats posed by climate change.” No longer are we regulating lead and nitrous oxide and sulfur hexafluoride as deleterious to the environment – now the EPA is allowed to regulate the very gas we exhale with every breath. (See PalosVerdesBlog, April 29, 2009).

But Krugman sees a green lining in all of this government intervention. If only we threaten to begin the emissions-tightening mandates two or three years from now, then businesses will be incentivized now to make massive investments in the green alternatives to fossil fuels. Unfortunately, our economist fails to connect the dots: who, pray tell, will pay for the massive investments? Who, who, who? Well you and I, of course, the consumers.

Yesterday, on my sixty-seventh birthday, Krugman struck again. “Wages are falling all across America” and those who are voluntarily accepting wage cuts in order to keep their jobs are just making things worse. Krugman explains that “the answer lies in one of the paradoxes that plague our economy.” When workers across the economy accept lower wages, “the result is higher unemployment.” Hmm??? He explains that if workers at every company earn less, then no company gains a competitive advantage, and there is no benefit to the economy.

But since when are lower wages the sole source of competitive advantage? What about BMW and Volvo and the advantages of their superior products, and the advantages produced by innovation and superior service and efficiency? It is as if Krugman is unaware of the competitive advantage that lowering corporate taxes on American firms would give them in the global marketplace.

We’ve seen in the past few months what FDR learned the hard way during the Great Depression - that stimulating a moribund economy by government spending is difficult and risky. Yet there is a sure fire way to increase wages, employment, innovation, business expansion and greatly improve the retirement funds of grandma as well as the grandkids. Simply reduce the corporate tax rate (“zero” being the ideal rate) thereby giving American businesses the competitive advantage that is the key to the benefits program. Instead, yesterday the President announced that he was closing tax loopholes for corporations and the New York Times applauded (while expressing concern that it “could put American companies at a competitive disadvantage… and “could even impede job creation in the United States.” Ya think?)

But, then, that must be ECO 101 material, not the stuff of Nobel Prizes or voyages to Trantor, or even psychohistory.

Slumdog Outsourcing, Cap and Trade

2009-04-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

Linda finally convinced me to rent the movie Slumdog Millionaire; I had been resisting because of the scenes showing little slumdog kids being blinded by a gangster to make them into better beggars. I have to admit that it was a good flick. I particularly liked the scene where the SM’s older brother kills the gangster and the boys escape. Very satisfying! The movie shows the flip-sides of Indian culture, contrasting the opulent lives of the gangsters who live off the destitute slumdog kids.

One scene of a Mumbai call center reminded me of the outsourcing issue that worries Americans so. I recently received a video on “personal outsourcing.”

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/more_american_workers_outsourcing

In it an American accountant, Donald, hates his job (that has not yet been outsourced by his company). Donald has a bright idea. Why not outsource it himself, so he contacts an Indian friend Janahara who is currently unemployed. Donald offers a deal: He will send Janahara his software, data files and daily tasks; Janahara will complete the tasks and return the completed files to Donald for $10 per day. This is a good deal for both men: Janahara is now employed and Donald has time to day-trade in mortgage backed derivatives, play fantasy football and watch MTV.

But that is not the end of the story. Janahara, being an industrious entrepreneur, sees a way to multiply his income by continuing the outsourcing cycle. He sends Donald’s tasks to an Indian worker in a remote village (or in a Mumbai slum) who will do the work for $3 per day. Janahara then signs on to do the work of one of Donald’s co-workers and outsources that to another slumdog, and so on and so forth. What a deal, this globalism. Tom Friedman would be proud.

This scenario reminds me of one of the big boondoggles before the American congress, Cap and Trade. According to Democrats, the Cap and Trade system will create new green jobs, pay for the nationalization of our health care system and save the Earth from global warming. To see how it works consider the following simple example.

One of the byproducts of living is carbon dioxide, CO2, which we exhale with every breath. Since the Kyoto protocol calls for the reduction of CO2 emissions to 1990 levels, while the US population has grown by about 25%, we still living Americans are being asked to breathe less, 25% less. Now I take a breath about every 6 seconds, say 10 times a minute or 600 times an hour. A 25% reduction to 450 breaths an hour would be tough. But that is the “cap” and my government supplied breath-o-meter will inform the Feds if I exceed the mandated limit, for which I will be severely fined. However, the ingenious Democrats, following their European brethren, have devised the Cap and Trade system to lessen the pain.

All I need is a slumdog who is willing to cut his breathing down by 50% for a modest fee. Our combined breaths per hour will then be 600 (me) + 300 (him) = 900, meeting the UN IPCC mandate. The Cap and Trade system will be overseen by a US federal agency, USC&T, an Indian agency, IC&T, and a UN agency, UNC&T, each of which will take a cut from my payment to the slumdog. I figure that everyone will be happy if I pay $10 per day, the C&T agencies each take a 20% fee, and the slumdog pockets the remaining $4 per day. The poor fellow’s health may suffer, but hey, that’s globalization!

The Population Fizzle

2009-04-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

America has a demographics problem. Oh, it’s not as bad as Europe’s or Japan’s or Russia’s, but it is a serious problem that promises to get much worse. We hear about it occasionally when, say, entitlements are discussed. As in, “Who’s going to pay for all that?” Early in G. W. Bush’s first term we were told that Social Security would be bankrupt in a few decades, and Medicare was an even worse problem. Bush tried to introduce reforms but was shot down by a bipartisan congress.

The issue stems from demographics. When SS was introduced the US population resembled a stable pyramid with relatively few retirees at the top and the mass of workers underneath. If the Feds had left the SS money in a bank account the compound interest would be sufficient to pay future retirees for a long time. But, like all governments, they spent the money; thus payments to retirees depend on the FICA deposits of current workers. The problem is we haven’t enough workers to fund the entitlements of the rapidly aging population. The formerly stable pyramid is being morphed into a highly unstable inverted pyramid. And the consequences are dire.

Note that the problem is a relative scarcity of young people compared to a glut of older people. And the solution is contrary to that proposed by environmentalists and other fanatics. Reducing the population will not help unless you kill off the old folks. In America we have tried to stave off the problem by allowing massive (illegal) immigration. Those workers from destitute Latin American countries will “do the work that Americans will not do” and contribute to the SS system, but disproportionately use the resources of all the social services. Also, their children, after spending time in our public education system, tend to lack the work ethics of their parents and tend to be less educated and less able to contribute to the general welfare compared to US natives. Immigration is not the long term answer.

The politicians have been able to ignore the problem since it is in the long term compared to their political careers. But there are grave near term consequences that were not generally expected.

In a recent article “Demographics and Depression” by David P. Goldman (First Things, May, 2009), the root cause of our current economic crisis is traced to the same demographics trend that threatens our entitlement systems. Everyone knows that the housing bubble bursting was the trigger that caused the economy to go south. But why did it burst in the first place. The answer lies simply in the immutable laws of supply and demand.

The prime owners of family homes are families, those with two parents and children. Well the number of such families has stayed constant at about 25 million since the late nineteen sixties while the US population has grown by 50%, from 200 million to 300 million. During those decades the number of single parent families has tripled and the number of elderly has doubled (to 30% today). But the former cannot usually afford a family home and the latter want or need to downsize.

At the same time the number of family homes (with 3 or more bedrooms) in the US has doubled from about 36 million to 72 million. The 25 million nuclear families just do not need 72 million family homes. Thus: the bursting bubble. All the gimmicks (subprime loans, unverified incomes, mortgage-backed securities, etc, etc) that were used to get unqualified people into homes they did not need prolonged the bubble but could not overturn the laws of economics.

So, what is the solution? Goldman points out that “credit markets tend to derive from the cycle of human life. Young people need to borrow capital to start families and businesses; old people need to earn income on the capital they have saved.” But there are not enough young people. Americans need to get married and have babies! It is your patriotic duty. (Hint to John and Mark, our two single thirty-something sons.)

And the government can actually help. (Hint to President Obama). Goldman proposes several measures: (1) Cut taxes on families; (2) Shift the burden of social insurance more to the childless; (3) change the immigration laws (to allow many more productive people in their prime earning years to enter.) I will add, fix the educational system and focus on achievement, character and job skills.

Ps: Happy Earth Day – It keeps getting better and better, despite global warming.

The End of Ends

2009-04-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

On this fine Easter Sunday, as we celebrate the end of eternal death, it is perhaps appropriate to think about some ends of another sort. Lately, it has become fashionable to pontificate about the end of this and the end of that.
Just last week David Brooks wrote in the New York Times about “The End of Philosophy.” According to Brooks, the Socratic Method that relies on reasoning to arrive at moral truths has been shown to be faulty.

In a new book called simply Human, Michael Gazzaniga writes that “it has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior, such as helping other people. In fact, in most studies, none has been found.” The conclusion right out of Evo-Psycho is that morality is an evolved trait.

Notice that intellectuals so easily overlook the most obvious solution: Morality is the most fundamental law of human nature. C. S. Lewis wrote books about it: “Human beings,” he said, “all over the Earth (and for all times), have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it.” In Mere Christianity, Lewis explains that God’s hand in the universe is evident in the “moral law that is urging me to do right, and making me feel uncomfortable when I do wrong.”

There is no “end of philosophy,” only a mistaken way of looking at the world.

In his 1989 essay “The End of History?” Francis Fukuyama argued that the triumph of Western liberal democracy signaled the end of worldwide human conflict. "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

Events, including especially 9-11 and the rise of Islamo-Fascism, unfortunately, interfered with Fukuyama’s utopian vision. History is very much alive. We are besieged by pirates, for heaven’s sake.

In 1968 (and several times since) Paul R. Ehrlich predicted the end of civilization. His book The Population Bomb predicted disaster for humanity due to the "population explosion". Ehrlich forecast that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death” unless radical action was taken to limit population so as to avoid mass famine greater than any in history. History proved Ehrlich wrong. World food production grows at a rate much higher than population growth due to advances in farming technology, chemistry and biology.

Before the turn of the 20th century the scientific world was convinced that the end of physics was nigh. At his Munich high school, Max Planck’s physics professor advised his student against a career in physics. “In this field,” he said, “almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes.” After all, Newton and Maxwell had done all the really interesting work. Then came Einstein, and the world of physics was stood on its head. The first half of the 20th century were the most explosive decades in the history of physics.

Yet scientists and other pundits persisted in their predictions of the end of this and that.

The great Paul Dirac, who combined relativity and quantum mechanics, and predicted the existence of anti-particles, was convinced that the end of chemistry was imminent. Recognizing that quantum physics was the basis of chemistry, but that quantum mechanical calculations were formidably difficult for molecules of even moderate size, he wrote: “The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved.”

That was in 1933. In the intervening seven decades enormous progress has been made in finding solutions of Schrodinger’s equation for complex multi-atom systems with accuracy sufficient for explanation and prediction of chemical properties. The end of chemistry was grossly overstated.

Aside from a lack of imagination, it seems to me that the pundits who foresaw the end of this and that missed two important factors. One is the boundless ingenuity of human beings. Given a scientific genius and the technological advances, eg lasers, computers and such at his disposal, it is foolhardy to set limits on scientific achievement.

The other mistake is to underestimate the creativity of the Divinity, Who has made a world of infinite variety for our enjoyment. As long as humans do not give up the quest to know God’s mind, the future is boundless.

The Audacity of Hype!

2009-03-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

Watch out! The squaws are off the reservation. Just listen:

"In one of his disturbing spells of passivity, President Obama decided not to fight Congress and live up to his own no-earmark pledge from the campaign. Team Obama sounds hollow, chanting that 'the status quo is not acceptable,' even while conceding that the president is accepting the status quo by signing a budget festooned with pork."

Who’s that? You ask. Could it be John McCain? No, it’s none other than Team Obama cheerleader Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. Mo, even had the audacity to give Johnny Mac a left-handed kudo for his diatribe in the Senate over the pork laden Federal Budget.

“There was a bit of King Lear in the scene on the Senate floor, a stormy, solitary John McCain on 'this great stage of fools,' as the Bard wrote, railing against both parties and the president in fiery speeches and rapid-fire tweets.

'He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath,' the Fool told Lear. And he’s truly mad that trusts in the promise of a presidential candidate to quell earmarks."

Methinks squaw speaks truth.

I have to admit to underestimating President Obama. Not that I believed his promise to strike earmarks out of Federal budgets or to reduce the deficit. And I expected an abrupt move to the left in his domestic policy. What floored me was the astounding audacity of his socialist move.

First, he handed over the "stimulus" bill to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed who filled it with rewards for every Democrat interest group in the country and a massive expansion of government largess. Really, how does $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa stimulate the economy?

Next he raised the specter of government controlled health care. Then the cap-and-trade “solution” to climate change. And the changes to the tax code reducing mortgage interest and charitable deductions.

And the effect on the economy has been nothing short of disastrous.

Since Obama’s election the Dow Jones index has dropped over $2200 or 25%. Every politician has voiced the concern that we are suffering from a crisis of confidence, in the economy, our jobs, the value of our homes, our retirement accounts, in the rising cost of health care and the threat of tax increases. The stock market reflects the national malaise. Obama promised to restore national confidence by addressing these issues. So why is the stock market so sour?

Could it be that massive government spending will only make the problems worse? Take health care, which is outrageously expensive already. The market knows that government mandates will only increase the costs. It is simply the law of supply and demand.

When the government pumps money into the consumer side of the health care industry, or any industry, demand goes up and prices rise. It is inevitable. The only solution to increasing costs is rationing, which occurs in all the enlightened European nations, and Canada, that live with universal health care.

According to Investor’s business Daily: "The economic stimulus bill will create an entity called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, which will decide which treatments you should get, whether you should get them, and whether they should even be available. It is modeled after a British board which helps to run the notoriously inefficient and bureaucratic National Health Service."

The cause and effect of demand-side economics is exactly what has happened to the cost of education, as costs increased when institutions were able to raise fees knowing that government would supply the excess. The Department of Education “stimulus” will only make a bad situation worse.

Could it be that the market knows hype when it sees it?

Be not afraid, though, “Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal. Amazing! As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.”

It all makes perfect sense. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

Yes, there is a crisis of confidence in America. But there is also another crisis, a crisis of irresponsibility. When more than 31 million people depend on the Federal government for food stamps to feed their families, while three quarters of Americans (and over three quarters of the poor) are fat, well something is seriously wrong.

Yesterday the President bristled over an assertion that, perhaps, he is a socialist—and, thereby, deserves the adoration of the lefty intelligentia.

To quote Roger Cohen in his Times op-ed: "I love France, but I don’t want there to be two of them, least of all if one is the United States. … There is a touch of France in (Obama’s) étatisme — the state as all-embracing solution rather than problem — and there’s more than a touch of France in the bash-the-rich righteousness.

"For everyone from the oil and gas industry to drug companies, the message was clear: Off with their heads! I’d thought of Obama as less Robespierre than Talleyrand."

Audacious!

Americanism

2008-10-29T17:53:00.000-07:00

The story of a great religion began in England around the time of Elizabeth I. Publication of the English Bible and especially the King James Version in 1611 created an explosion of literacy and religiosity in England. People learned to read from the Bible because they yearned to read the Bible.

The Bible was a subversive book; ordinary Englishmen saw it as a direct connection between themselves and the Lord. The British Enlightenment and national pride in budding democratic forms were tied to the Old Testament. Worshipers began to see England as “ancient Israel reborn – with an exalted destiny and special relationship to the Almighty.” After all, it was agreed that ancient Israel built a nearly perfect republic dating from the Exodus. Israel was seen as a divinely designed state dedicated to liberty and social justice. The British, with great pride, saw themselves too as a “chosen people.”

And they took this belief to the New World. Before the Puritans embarked for America, John Cotton preached a sermon to the pioneers: “Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own.” God would plant these Puritans in a new “promised land.”

On the voyage to the new land, John Winthrop wrote in 1630: “Wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all peoples are upon us,” invoking the famous verse in Matthew: “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” The Puritan travelers believed themselves to be a chosen people and they were almost ridiculously optimistic. “Choose life and live! – you and your children” quoted Winthrop on shipboard.

Other immigrants proclaimed a biblical mandate for democracy (Thomas Hooker) and introduced freedom of religion (Roger Williams). John Adams said in 1765: “I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence.” The founding fathers thought of their new nation as blessed and possessing a mission from God. “We are entered into Covenant with the Lord for this work,” John Winthrop wrote; “we shall find that the God of Israel is among us.”

What work did the Lord expect of us? The founders elucidated a uniquely American Creed: liberty, equality and democracy. [The American Creed was described and celebrated by Gunnar Myrdal in his 1944 book American Dilemma.] The settlers believed that God expected democratic chivalry, a willingness to intervene on the side of right, to spread the American Creed to oppressed peoples around the world. American leaders returned to this commitment again and again over the decades and centuries.

Thomas Jefferson described the Creed in the Declaration of Independence as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And he referred to his countrymen in his first inaugural address as “possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth generation.”

In 1783, soon after the Revolutionary War was won, Ezra Stiles delivered a sermon “upon the political welfare of God’s American Israel.” In 1788 Samuel Langdon, president of Harvard, delivered a sermon entitled “The Republic of the Israelites as Example to the American States.” President Washington was quoted as saying “there never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a Devine interposition in their affairs than those of the United States.”

When the Continental Congress invited Jefferson, Franklin and Adams to design a national seal their proposal showed Israel crossing the Red Sea, lit by the divine pillar of fire, with the motto: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” In his second inaugural address Jefferson made explicit the analogy between America and ancient Israel. “I shall need,” Jefferson said, “the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life.”

It is clear that the founders saw America as a chosen country inhabited by a chosen people. In a remarkable new book, Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion, David Gelernter propounds the theory that Americanism emerged from Puritanism as a religion in its own right.

Americanism is a religion insofar as it tells an absolute truth about the meaning of human life, a truth we must take on faith. “We hold these truths to be self-evident” says the Declaration of Independence, without a shred of proof. Americanism is a “sublimely humane” religious concept, says Gelernter, “built on strong confidence in humanity’s ability to make life better.” And with that faith comes an obligation to spread the American Creed. Life, liberty and democracy are meant to be spread to the whole world. It is our “Covenant with the Lord.”

Of course, like all religions, and all believers, Americanism was flawed at the outset. It took the greatness and courage of Abraham Lincoln to make the American Creed whole. When he spoke in the Gettysburg Address of a nation “conceived in liberty” and of “the proposition that all men are created equal” and of “a government of the people, by the people and for the people,” he was fulfilling the American Covenant with the Lord. Slavery had to be abolished. In his second inaugural address he resolved to walk with the Lord, “with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.”

Lincoln understood democracy as the Lord’s voice speaking through the people. “I must trust in the Supreme Being” he said, “who has never forsaken this favored land.” Lincoln hoped to be “a humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty and of this, his almost chosen people.” For Lincoln, the American creed: Life, Liberty and Democracy – comes from the Bible and the Almighty. “We shall nobly save,” he said, “or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth.”

America: the last, best hope of earth.

Down through American history, the Creed has been held sacred and the Covenant with the Almighty has been invoked as justification for deeds of supreme chivalry.

Woodrow Wilson, a couple of years before we entered the First World War, spoke of Americanism: “I believe that the glory of America is that she is a great spiritual conception.”… “America came into existence in order to show the way to mankind in every part of the world to justice, and freedom, and liberty.” In his 1917 speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war Wilson said “the world must be made safe for democracy.” Wilson saw his mission as divinely inspired.

Harry Truman believed in Americanism. He accepted the Soviet challenge in Greece and Turkey, taking the United States into the Cold war. He fought the Korean War to keep the South Koreans free from communist tyranny. Ronald Reagan believed in Americanism. He said why not win the Cold War, against all accepted wisdom – and he did. George Bush believed in Americanism. He insisted in spreading the American Creed for the good of mankind and America. Had he more eloquence, Bush might have echoed John Kennedy’s classic statement of democratic chivalry: “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

For their good deeds all these great men were reviled by European and American converts to the religion of peace and appeasement. No good deed goes unpunished.
With the possible exception of Jimmy Carter, all American presidents believed in Americanism and American Exceptionalism. Barack Obama does not. JFK must be turning in his grave.

Just Say NObama

2008-10-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

PalosVerdesBlog has been essentially dormant for a little over a year since Linda Henson came into my life. It’s been a wonderful and fulfilling time. Now, however, with perhaps the most consequential presidential election of our lifetime looming, I felt it was time to put my thoughts into bytes and send them to my friends and old readers.

Mark Steyn was commenting on the prissy treatment of Barack Obama by the presidential debate moderators and the rest of the main stream media (MSM). It's like the Victorian matron who covers her piano's legs -- there are some questions the MSM just won't ask the candidate Obama. So who is this guy who would be our president?

Fortunately for us, Investor’s Business Daily has looked in depth at one troubling aspect of Obama's character in an 18-part series. In the following I will borrow extensively from the IBD series and try to frame what, I think, is a critical issue as we formulate our election decisions.

“Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.”

Sounds a bit like Karl Marx. But it's the former Kenya bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, challenging the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In a scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses “owned by Asians and Europeans.”

Obama's dad was a devoted communist.

Obama Sr. advised the Kenyan government to “redistribute” income through higher taxes. He also demonized corporations and called for massive government “investment” in social programs. “What is more important is to find means by which we can redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all,” said the senior Obama. “This is the government's obligation.” Here is what “the Old Man,” as Obama Jr. and his siblings called him, wrote in proposing government-run farms: “We have to look at priorities in terms of what is good for society, and on this basis we may find it necessary to force people to do things they would not do otherwise.”

Echoing his father, Obama Jr. argues that the government should impose “tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth.” The acorn does not fall far from the tree.

As a youngster, Obama's mentor “Frank” was none other than the late communist Frank Davis, who fled after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his “subversive, un-American activities.” In fact, Davis was a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA and “a bitter opponent of capitalism.” Davis wrote militant poems as a black writer in Chicago, including one in which he hails the Soviet revolution: “Smash on, victory-eating Red Army.” He also attacked traditional Christianity, titling one inflammatory screed, “Christ is a Dixie N*****.”
After college Obama Jr. followed in Davis’ footsteps, becoming a “community organizer” in Chicago. His boss there was Gerald Kellman a disciple of the late Saul “The Red” Alinsky, a radical Chicago socialist who wrote the “Rules for Radicals” and agitated for social revolution in America.

Stanley Kurtz answered the question on everyone's mind: “WHAT exactly does a community organizer do?” Here's a big part of the answer: Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers with poor credit. In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and thereby force financial institutions to direct billions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers. In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama Jr. spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.

In the 1980s, Obama served as director of the Developing Communities Project, which operated using Alinsky strategies and was involved with another Alinsky-oriented entity, ACORN . Capitalism always was considered the enemy. “America's corporations are a spiritual slum,” Alinsky wrote, “and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society.” Obama Jr. calls his years as an Alinskyesque community organizer in Chicago “the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith.”

In fact, intimidation tactics, public charges of racism and threats to block business expansion enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America's financial institutions. Banks already overexposed by these shaky loans were pushed further in the wrong direction when government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up their bad loans and offering them for sale on world markets. Fannie and Freddie acted in response to Clinton administration pressure to boost homeownership rates among minorities and the poor. The result of this systematic disregard for normal credit standards has been a financial disaster.

After graduating from Harvard Law, Obama returned to Chicago and joined the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright who preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called “black liberation theology” and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere. Obama pledged allegiance to a system of “black values” that demonizes white “middle classness” and other mainstream pursuits. Obama was now ready for a political life.

In 1995, Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district's influential liberals at the home of two well-known figures on the Chicago left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, former members of the terrorist Weather Underground.

Ten years earlier Alice Palmer was an executive board member of the U.S. Peace Council, a Soviet front group. In 1986, Palmer wrote an article for the Communist Party USA's newspaper detailing how impressed she was by the Soviet system. Palmer gushed at the “Soviet plan to provide people with higher wages and better education” and spoke of the efficiency of the Soviets’ five-year economic plan, attributing its success to “central planning.” She praised their “comprehensive affirmative action program, which they have stuck to religiously — if I can use the word — since 1917.”

Palmer also marveled that all Russian citizens were guaranteed a job matching their training and skills, free education, affordable housing and free medical care. Because Soviet school curricula were established at the national level, she said, “There is no second-class track system in the minority-nationality schools as there is in the inferior inner city schools in my hometown, Chicago, and elsewhere in the United States.”

Alice Palmer was yet another of Obama’s socialist mentors. Throughout his career, Barack Obama Jr. has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for “economic justice” by punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat.

Among Obama's biggest current admirers, for example, is Pepe Lozano a leader in the Chicago Young Communist League and an editorial board member of the People's Weekly World, newspaper of the Communist Party USA. Lozano believes that Obama is the communist party's best hope: “This is a history-making process,” Lozano told a Chicago gathering in June 2008, “and we will be missing it if we don't do all we can to elect Barack Obama president.”
The next month, the People's Weekly World editorialized in favor of Obama, calling his a “transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term.” The communist support is nothing new, however. Joel Wendland, managing editor of Political Affairs: Marxist Thought Online, another CPUSA magazine, suggested in February that Obama could be “the people's president.”

Now I am not suggesting that Barack Obama Jr. is a communist. It is sadly true, however, that he is the favored candidate of communists in America and of terrorists around the world. That is hugely troubling, to say the least.

So what are some of the socialist deeds that will come with an Obama presidency?

“We are citizens of the world,” Obama told thousands of Germans during his recent tour of the Middle East and Europe. And if the Global Poverty Act he has sponsored becomes law, we're also going to be taxpayers of the world. “With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces.” Obama calls for the “eradication of poverty” in part through the “redistribution (of) wealth of land” and “a fair distribution of the earth's resources.” In other words: American resources. Obama's bill would force U.S. taxpayers to fork over 0.7% of our gross domestic product (about $100B this year) every year to fund a global war on poverty.

In talking about his national service, Obama made this startling statement: “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” Northwestern University law professor James Lindgren has estimated that this civilian national security force alone would cost somewhere between $100 billion and $500 billion, and that doesn't include the cost of the brown shirts. In a speech in California, Michelle Obama, who has made a small fortune in the “helping industry,” said: “Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism; that you come out of your isolation; that you move out of your comfort zone. . . . Barack Obama will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual — uninvolved, uninformed.” Welcome to American Fascism.

Obama also fails to understand how taxes change behavior. He thinks raising taxes on the most productive members of society won't “curb incentives to work or invest.” Even TV news anchor Charlie Gibson knows better. During a primary debate, the Gibson took Obama to task for his proposal to double the capital gains tax. History shows, he pointed out, that raising the cap gains rate actually ends up costing the government revenues. Obama just didn't get it. “Well, Charlie,” he argued, “what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

Obama Jr. is pushing massive taxes and “investments” in social programs — at the expense of free enterprise. He wants to raise the top marginal income-tax rate to at least 39%, while increasing Social Security taxes on those with higher incomes by completely removing the payroll cap. That means many entrepreneurs would be paying 12.4% on Social Security payroll taxes alone, plus the 2.9% on Medicare taxes, for a total federal tax rate of 54%. Since 1960 when the top marginal tax rate was 90% it has been decreased by Republican presidents to the current 35% while federal revenues grew by 400% due to the expanding economy. Might this signify a cause-effect relationship, Mr. Obama?

Obama Jr. just does not get it. His “tax plan” calls for 95% of American families to receive a federal “tax cut.” He fails to disclose that 40% of American families do not pay any federal income taxes. His handout is just another welfare program. It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't. The remaining 55% who do pay taxes but would receive an Obama handout should beware: Obama will first increase their federal taxes by eliminating the Bush tax cuts and keeping the Alternate Minimum Tax, and then give them a minor refund. Not such a great deal.

And his idea of increasing corporate taxes is just brain dead. Corporations only pass on the taxes to consumers in the form of higher prices and thus become less competitive on the world stage. The “enlightened” European countries are cutting corporate taxes at the same time that Obama wants to raise them. Guess where the jobs are going to go. Obama, “with a flick of his fingers, will show American corporations how to create more jobs with less money. It's simple, really. He has a wand.”

Kimberley Strassel notes that The Great Obama will perform a feat never yet managed in all history. He will create an enormous new government health program, spend billions to transform our energy economy, provide financial assistance to the world, invest in infrastructure, increase education spending, provide job training assistance, and give 95% of Americans a tax (ahem) cut -- all without raising the deficit a single penny! And he'll do it in the middle of a financial crisis. And with falling tax revenues! Voila!

If we want to restore the American economy, avoid a crippling depression and make the 21st another American Century, we need to say – NO to Obama!

“AA” Goes to the White House

2008-03-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

We live in interesting times. For decades Democrats have been the champions of affirmative action (positive discrimination) in everything from college admissions to jobs and political appointments. We’ve been told that gender and race-based preferences are justified by years of suppression of women and blacks by the white male power structure. We watched as legions of the preferred were given positions they neither earned nor were qualified to hold and we winced as the Peter Principle inflicted its harsh justice.

Imagine our delight in seeing the Democratic Party caught up in an internecine food fight over which preferred class is most compelling, gender or race.

There’s Hillary touting her vast experience as compared to Barack’s merely splendid speech at the Democrat convention. Barack’s surrogates point out that Hillary’s experience amounts to being cheated on and humiliated by a man who happened to be president. Then she was canonized for “standing by her man” (not something she learned at feminist headquarters). But never mind, she’s a woman and as such deserves to be president, if only that uppity half-black male would get out of her way.

Gender preferences have become a tired old saw horse in this country of vast opportunity. Unfortunately feminists never tire of the fight and politically correct (ie. gutless) elites continue bending over for them. One of the latest outrages is chronicled by Christina Hoff Sommers (“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”) in the latest issue of The American.
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/why-can2019t-a-woman-be-more-like-a-man

Women now earn 57 percent of bachelors degrees, 59 percent of masters degrees and the majority of PhDs. Sounds great, unless you happen to be male. But men are still doing well in the “hard” sciences and engineering: Women comprise just 19 percent of tenure-track professors in math, 11 percent in physics, 10 percent in computer science, and 10 percent in electrical engineering. That’s a “problem” that needs to be addressed.

Debra Rolison, a physical chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory describes herself as an “uppity woman” with a solution. She wants to apply Title IX to science education, and she is supported by the National Science Foundation and a host of female university presidents. (Women now serve as presidents of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Miami,…) Just imagine if there are 100 physics majors in the freshman class at MIT then there must be 100 women physics majors. If MIT can only find 25 qualified women physicists, then 75 males will need to find another major. Or they can admit unqualified women, assuming they can find 75 with the interest. The feminists also advocate reducing the rigors of the course work and downplaying competition so the women will be more likely to stick it out. Believe it – you can’t make up this stuff!

Virginia Valian, a psychologist at Hunter College, is an authority in the crusade to achieve “equity” for women in the sciences. She aims to do something about the central problem: Not only do fewer women than men choose to enter the physical sciences, but those who do often give child care and family a higher priority than their male colleagues. Valian believes that our male-dominated society constructs and enforces “gender schemas” that encourage men to act and women to emote. To achieve a “gender-fair” society, Valian advocates altering the way we raise our children. For example, “Egalitarian parents can bring up their children so that both boys and girls play with dolls and trucks.... From the standpoint of equality, nothing is more important.” Believing garbage like this, Congress is considering the “Gender Bias Elimination Act.”

Watch out guys! I wonder how Mr. Obama will vote on the Gender Bias act.

Barrack has more than his share of problems. First his wife Michelle announced that she was for the first time proud to be an American. Next came the flap over the racist church the Obamas attend. Over twenty years ago he joined a church run by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who Obama described as his spiritual mentor. The Obamas were married there and their daughters were baptized in the church. Obama credited Wright with delivering a sermon that he adopted as the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

But in a sermon on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Wright said:

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

In a 2003 sermon, he said blacks should condemn the United States.

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

He also gave a sermon in December comparing Obama to Jesus.

When questioned by Anderson Cooper, Obama claimed that he knew nothing about Rev. Wright’s outrageous sermons, and that the parishioners did not believe such rhetoric. But videos show Obama’s fellow worshipers clapping and singing out in response to Wright. Methinks Mr. Obama’s got some splain’in to do. Hillary’s minions will be sure to ask him, and ask him some more.

Revenge of the Spotted Owl

2008-01-09T21:36:00.000-08:00

Rose Machinery, Inc. Horrizontal Band Re-Rip Saw

Carolynne and Ray Rose operate a millwright company in Bend, Oregon. Carolynne is my daughter. Rose Machinery, Inc was founded by Ray’s father in 1978 in the midst of a booming lumber industry. In those days Rose Machinery tools were mostly sold to local companies. Today Ray sells his products world-wide, some as far away as China. What happened to the Oregon lumber industry is the sad story of environmental fanaticism and the Spotted Owl.

In the 1980s forest scientists became concerned about the declining population of a small, reclusive owl that lived in the old-growth forests of Oregon. They believed that if the old forests went away due to logging, so would the Spotted Owl. Environmental groups spotted a legal wedge in their aggressive crusade to halt old-growth logging and sued to list the spotted owl among the nation's endangered species. “What followed was one of the most gut-grabbing economic and social upheavals in modern Oregon history.”

“Sawmills were shut down and thousands of loggers lost jobs. Restaurants put spotted owls on their menus, and T-shirts and bumper stickers urged: Save a logger, eat an owl.”

In the years 1990-95, timber employment dropped by 11,000 (20%) sending families to unemployment offices and food banks. In 1993, President Clinton signed the Northwest Forest Plan which put millions of acres of federal timber off-limits to logging. The wood-based industries in Oregon were forced to import lumber from Canada, China and the tropical rainforests. “Blood lumber, as it were. You get a little gorilla meat with every log from equatorial Africa, because that is what native loggers eat for lunch.”

The greatest loss in the Spotted Owl debacle was the stable funding base for schools, roads and local government due to the loss of timber revenues. “Rural school kids get what is becoming a third world educational prospect.”

More than a decade after lumbering was halted in order to save the Spotted Owl, it is the height of environmental irony that nature is proving far more adept at getting rid of the owl than the Endangered Species Act was in saving it. The versatile and voracious Barred Owl is driving the smaller Spotted Owl out of the protected forests. Forest Rangers are now considering a Barred Owl hunting season.

The moral of the story is that environmental whackos armed with the Endangered Species Act can play havoc with the social and economic fabric of a community.

The latest and a far more serious threat is the global warming frenzy. The Fish and Wildlife Service has been asked to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act as the result of habitat loss caused by global warming and the melting of Arctic sea ice. The New York Times thinks this would be great since it would “trigger a series of protections, including identifying habitat critical to the bears’ survival and also impose obligations on all federal agencies to avoid actions that could hurt the bears’ prospects.” The result will be lawsuits against any activity (driving, barbequing, breathing…) that generates greenhouse gasses.

In California, the global warmistas have already had a negative impact. The California Global Warming Solutions Act that was passed in 2006 went into effect on Jan. 1, 2008. Because “global warming poses a serious threat to the public health, natural resources and environment of California,” all development projects are going to be subject to environmental reviews that include a climate change study.

At the Palos Verdes Library District we are embarking on a capital campaign to raise several million dollars for a major expansion of the Miraleste Branch Library. Our legal counsel warns that for any large development, “opponents will attack the method of analysis employed” thereby adding costs and delays to the construction project.

You can take it to the bank that schools, hospitals, housing and development of all kinds will be substantially burdened, stalled or even stopped by environmentalist lawsuits. The lawyers will be happy.

Global Nonsense

2007-12-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

As we huddled in the Kansas City airport, the sleeting rain turned to blowing snow and flights were being cancelled left and right. Many travelers had waited all day in the airport only to learn at 6PM that they needed to find a place to stay the night. Linda and I were lucky that our Midwest Air jet was on a round trip to Los Angeles and we were able to leave for home before KCI was socked in. We would have welcomed some global warming as we waited on the runway for our plane to be de-iced.

Do you know that 2007 has been a year of global cooling. The Southern Hemisphere experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Brazil and Peru hundreds of people died from exposure to the record cold. Extreme cold weather is occurring worldwide. Yet global warming hysteria prevails. From a Washington Times article by David Deming (Dec. 19): “If you think any of the preceding facts can falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. Nothing creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a true believer. In 2005, a Canadian Greenpeace representative explained ‘global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.’ In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can't make this stuff up.”

In a Real Clear Politics article (12/18/07) former Democratic NYC mayor Ed Koch asks “Does Gore Know What He's Talking About?” Among the relevant points in Koch’s piece is the fact that "China will surpass the United States in 2009, nearly a decade ahead of previous predictions, as the biggest emitter of the main gas linked to global warming." Said Lu Xuedu, the deputy director general of the Chinese Office of Global Environmental Affairs, "You cannot tell people who are struggling to earn enough to eat that they need to reduce their emissions." Then from the Wall Street Journal: "Under the vaunted Kyoto, from 2000 to 2004, Europe managed to increase its emissions by 2.3% over 1995 to 2000. Meanwhile in the U.S., under the president's oh-so-unserious plan, U.S. emissions from 2000 to 2004 were 8% lower than in the prior period."

While the “advanced” nations (primarily Euroland) fret about the threat of environmental disaster and the undeveloped nations dream of wealth transfers from the wealthy ones (especially the U.S.) Andrew Lilico (Conservative Home, 12/18/07) notes that even if humans are causing the planet to heat up, it is a classic error in policy formulation to assume we should stop doing so. “When formulating policy, we should always bear in mind a number of principles:”

1. It does not follow, from the mere fact that we can tell a story that something is wrong that anything needs to be done about it. It is only once we have a compelling account of why the market cannot solve these problems that our analysis even gets going.

2. It does not follow from the mere fact that there is a problem that the Market cannot address, that intervention by the government can address the problem any better.

3. It does not follow from the fact that the government could, in principle, intervene to make things better, that any particular intervention is actually one that makes this problem better.

4. And finally, even if a specific intervention would, indeed, make things better, it does not follow either that it is the best intervention available or that it will not have other impacts (costs and risks) that are worse than the problem it is trying to solve.

Lilico notes that climate models and associated economic analyses suggest that without mitigation the costs of climate change might be perhaps 5% of GDP in 2100. To place this in context, people in 2100 are expected to be five times as wealthy as today. So the effect of unmitigated global warming is that they will only be 4.75 times as rich as us. Horrors!

He concludes: “Mainstream climate models do not predict that the world will end. Consequently we are not faced with a desperate race against time in which we aim just to do as much as we possibly can, hoping that tomorrow we will be able to do more. Rather, we are in the situation of normal policymaking, in which it may well be that there is a policy intervention that makes the world a better place by reducing the impact of climate change at fairly low cost, but each intervention needs to be judged on its own merits.”

But the politicians and the global warming industrialists do not see it that way. They prefer to impose government sanctions and to hell with the economic consequences.

A favorite of the European community and now the U.S. Congress is the “Cap and Trade” scheme. Yet Neil O’Brien of Open Europe calls the scheme a failure (OnPoint with Monica Trauzzi, 12/5/07).

Monica Trauzzi: So what's the core issue with the E.U. emission trading scheme?

Neil O'Brien: Well, I suppose the core issue really is that it hasn't reduced emissions. So, in the first year of it working, for example in the UK, emissions have actually gone up by 3.6 percent.

Monica Trauzzi: Hasn't this trading system provided clarity for businesses though?

Neil O'Brien: No. I mean that's one of the criticisms of it. It's exactly that you don't get certainty. If you have an emissions trading system there, the fundamental thing about it is you're accepting that the price of carbon is going to move around. It's going to be volatile. In Europe the price of carbon has crashed hugely from being about €33 a ton down to just a couple of euro cents a ton. So there's no real incentive to reduce pollution at all. And a lot of people got really badly burned.

Monica Trauzzi: Qualify the success of the trading system then. Is it a total failure or are there some redeeming qualities?

Neil O'Brien: This sounds like a hard thing to say, but really it is at the moment a total failure. It's not reducing emissions. It's very costly. I mean just the administrative burden of running it is about a billion euros a year, so in the U.S. it would be something roughly comparable.

Monica Trauzzi: So, domestically, do you see red flags here with the U.S. Lieberman-Warner bill? Based on what you've seen in Europe are you concerned?

Neil O'Brien: I would be concerned for your sake because what you're trying to do is even more complicated than what we've done and we've not managed to make our system work. It's just fundamentally a tricky thing to do. Lieberman-Warner is more complicated in two different ways. Firstly, you have this very overt move to import 15 percent of credits from abroad. So until the 2020s you're talking about not making any emission reductions through the scheme yourself. You're going to be paying people in China to make emissions reductions. And secondly, getting the right allocation is fundamentally tricky because it involves policymakers trying to guess the future of energy prices, the future of the growth of the economy, the future of technology change for the several years ahead. And in the proposal of Lieberman-Warner they're trying to guess all those kinds of variables over a period going to 2050. I would anticipate an even more volatile or uncertain price within the American system than the E.U. one, which is going to make it very, very hard for businesses to invest. And so you won't get the kind of technological innovation that is the whole point of this exercise.

It’s all Nonsense!

Bali, the War on Poverty

2007-12-05T19:10:00.000-08:00

Joining the Democratic Party with the JFK election, I was proud to be a Kennedy Liberal. The president stood for strength in foreign affairs and for patriotism. “Ask not what your country can do for you …” resounded in my soul, and “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty” made me proud to be an American. When John Kennedy was assassinated my friends and I were crushed. We were also worried about the unattractive Lyndon Johnson; would he take the country on the course mapped out by our hero?

We were surprised by Johnson’s leadership in the civil rights movement. But being of draft age we were horrified by the interminable Vietnam War. Why wouldn’t Johnson just bomb the hell out of Hanoi? A little nuke should have done the trick, as we know from General Jiap’s memoirs.

While losing the Vietnam War, Johnson’s bright guys began another war, the War on Poverty. Having set the colossal forces of government in action, the intellectual elites found it impossible to admit that they were losing and that their methods were actually making matters worse.

The Democratic Party continued changing over the years, and not for the better. The op-ed article “The Gentry Liberals” by Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel in the Los Angeles Times (12/2/07) explains that the Democrat leadership today is “more concerned with global warming and gay rights than with lunch-pail Joes.” Kotkin and Siegel trace the change to the ascendance in the Democratic Party hierarchy of an “intelligent aristocracy” whose governance would be guided by “enlightened policy.”

David Halberstam wrote about “the best and the brightest” brought into the JFK/LBJ administrations who arrogantly insisted on pursuing "brilliant policies that defied common sense." Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called these academic liberals “the vital center” but they never occupied the center and their progeny today push the envelope of the left wing. They obsess over abortion rights, gay marriage, global warming and the habeas corpus rights of war criminals while the middle class and the political center worry about terrorism, job security, affordable housing and the rising cost of education and energy.

According to Kotkin and Siegel, it is the “green tint” that distances liberals furthest from the values and interests of the middle and working (aka lower) classes. Furthermore, the crusade to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by forcing the US to adhere to the Kyoto/Bali protocols is bound to end up hurting the middle and working classes economically. Rich liberals like Al Gore can afford to buy expensive hybrid cars (Al drives a Lexus LS 600h that gets 1 mpg less than its non-hybrid brother, but has a heck of a lot more horses.) and pay $5 for a gallon of gas.

With Kyoto petering out to no good effect, the global warming industries are gathering the UN-190 in Bali to divvy up the loot sure to be generated from trading carbon credits and the like. A recent New York Times editorial claims that the US cannot expect other countries to cut greenhouse emissions “unless it acts decisively at home.” Of course this is wrong on two counts. The EU countries will continue their cap-and-trade ways whatever the US does because (1) they love socialism and (2) it is the only way they can feel superior to the US. The developing nations, conversely, will happily accept subsidies from the rest of us while accelerating their production and use of fossil fuels. The Chinese are on track to build one coal-fired power plant per week for the next 10 years no matter what the US does.

As Phil Valentine notes “global warming is being used as a template to rob from the rich nations and give to the poor ones.” The UN issued a report last week that baldly admitted the truth: developed nations will need to cough up about $86 Billion per year to “strengthen the capacity of vulnerable people.” Of course most of that dough will be “skimmed off by tinhorn dictators, the same rabble that runs the U.N.” Brazil’s lefty president wants the US to pay to stop Brazil from cutting down their rain forests: “In Bali, we are going to very seriously discuss the price rich countries have to pay so that poorer countries can preserve their forests.”

Ironically, this Kyoto/Bali juncture comes at a time when the US carbon dioxide emissions are actually down 1.5 percent. I wonder if the “Gentry Liberals” know that.

Living with Linda

2007-10-18T11:01:00.001-07:00

On July 18 she stepped off the plane in Dallas-Fort Worth airport. It was the first time I had seen Linda Henson in the flesh. Until then I had to make do with the picture on Live Messenger that we used to communicate while playing bridge online.

We first met in March ‘07 on the MSN Zone Bridge site and became regular partners about a month later. Her nickname is ShortyKS1, Shorty reflecting her stature, KS her Kansas home and 1 because she is the tops in my book. The Zone tournaments are long and there is plenty of time to chat and get to know your partners. Linda and I eventually shared that we were both in long-term, unhappy marriages,.. and before long we were in love. The July Zone convention in Tyler Texas was our first chance to meet. Within a week after returning to our homes we each filed for divorce. On August 1, we moved into our rental home in the lovely Malaga Cove area of Palos Verdes Estates. The ten weeks we have lived together have been among the happiest in my life.

Linda came to me as a package deal with her Westie (West Highland Terrier) Sammy: “Love me, love my dog.” He is a dynamo who follows me all over the house. What a great friend! Linda says that someday Sammy and I will bond… I think it has already happened. When Linda goes to Kansas City in December to party with her Birthday Group, Sammy will keep the bed warm and me from being too lonely. My Starbucks friends wonder why I am so frequently absent from our morning meetings. It’s simple: I have discovered the joy of quantum entanglement (aka snuggling) in the morning.

Shorty is a phenomenon, a force of nature. She is a constant wonderment to my simple mind – an enigma, wrapped in a riddle – and funny to boot! Linda is full of life and instantly befriends strangers. The first time we toured the new house she met our neighbor, now dear friend, Betty Hutchinson, who called her “little girl”; Betty is 87. They have become fast friends and an enduring picture is of Linda and Betty walking hand-in-hand down Via Pinale.

Linda left a flock of great friends back in Salina, Kansas. On my trip there I got to know her Birthday Group, some of her P.E.O. sisters, and other golfing buddies; wonderful women, all. Many worried about Linda – would she miss her friends too much and have a hard time making new ones in LA? Dear Sharon Hauser even visited our home to check us out. Well, they were right about Linda missing them, but wrong about her ability to make new friends. Everyone she meets loves her: she has already been invited to join the Palos Verdes Woman’s Club; two local P.E.O. chapters have invited her to meetings; she and Sammy were asked to visit children at the Torrance Memorial Hospital; she is joining the Peninsula Friends of the Library; we play bridge in two groups and work out together at Equinox; etc, etc.

Last weekend we hosted a dinner party for a few friends. The guest of honor was Lt. Col. Dave McCarthy and his wife Carrie. Dave is recently returned from Iraq and newly honored with the Bronze Star for heroism in battle. Typical of a Marine, Dave would not talk about the battle. Linda cooked a fabulous meal that we enjoyed with the McCarthy’s, Dr. Dave Young and Lizzie and my son John. We plan to invite all my old friends over to visit our little Spanish-style house, built around a courtyard. This weekend we will attend the Starbucks Group bash organized by Glen Terry. I hope the entire posse shows up.

Democrats Tee Off OBL

2007-09-09T17:21:00.000-07:00

Satchel Pooch: EEW… What is that??

Bucky Katt: I don’t know the exact species, but it’s got no spine, so it would be in phylum Democrata.

Darby Conley (“Get Fuzzy”) figured the Dem peaceniks were no match for warlike Islamists.

It’s now clear from the latest OBL transcript (viewed by clicking

here) to all but the most disturbed cool-aid drinkers that Osama bin Laden thought the Democrats were his partners in creating the world he wants to live in.

“People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of the tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there, which has led to the vast majority of you being afflicted with disappointment.”

Indeed, Harry Reed is also disappointed, Michael Moore is disappointed, Cindy Sheehan, who plans to oppose Nancy Pelosi in a Dem primary fight, is too. OBL asks the pregnant question: “Why have the Democrats failed to stop this war, despite them being the majority?”

According to bin Laden there are two ways to end the war:

“The first is from our side, and it is to continue to escalate the killing and fighting against you." The second is to do away with the American democratic system of government. "It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of the democratic system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations.”

Speaking from Moveon.org talking points, OBL refers to “the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes...” He goes on to call Noam Chomsky “among one of the most capable of those from your own side, for his opposition to the war” (and practically every other US foreign policy in the last 50 years.)

“To conclude,” bin Laden says, “I invite you to embrace Islam.”

Unfortunately for Osama, not quite enough Democrats have bought into his vision.

What a Month!!

2007-09-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

My last PalosVerdesBlog post was nearly two months ago, on July 24. It dealt with “Just War” theory in the age of worldwide Islamic terrorism. There were some interesting comments.

First from Burt: “My reading is that the rest of the world is as smart as the 75% of Americans who realize that we've irrevocably blown it --and the world and our country would be far better off if we didn't continue to blow our treasury and if we didn't continue to add to the number of US military who are destined to be mentally diminished the rest of their lives. I've been asking you for the year that we've known each other what you see as the end point of our staying there; so far I haven't heard any logical answer.” Of course I’ve answered this question every time Burt asked it, but he does not want to accept the possibility of my end point being achieved. Neither does a Democrat Party that is invested in defeat.

George Weigel (“First Things”) described what our leaving now would mean: “What would ‘out’ mean? At the moment, it would certainly mean a genocidal war of Balkan ferocity or worse within Iraq. That war would almost certainly draw in both Iran and the Sunni powers of the region. And then, it seems almost certain, the entire region would explode, with incalculable political, economic, and human costs. In the midst of that chaos, al-Qaeda and similar networks would find themselves new Iraqi havens, as they did in the chaos of the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan—which would, in turn, likely mean that the United States would have to go back into Iraq in the future, under far, far worse circumstances than we face today.”

Greg asked the salient question: “As for the ensuing chaos, let us suppose that subsequent to a pull-out, ethnic cleansing took the form of concentration camps complete with gas chambers and soap factories. Would the Dems be remorseful? Would they want to go back in?”

Mike added a warning: “George Marshall used to say that democracies will not sustain a war beyond seven years. Were he alive today he might adjust that figure downward.” I only hope that the American people wake up to the fact that this war with Islamic radicals is going to be a generational struggle and that we had damn well better win it.

On a lighter note: My grandson, Sgt. Johnny Walton, US Army 82 Airborne, was discharged last week after 5 years in the service and 2 tours of duty (nearly 2 years) in Iraq. Carolynne, his mom, said Johnny is tempted to burn his uniforms, but he had better not, as he is eligible for recall for 2 more years. In January, Johnny will be entering George Mason University. Continued good luck, grandson.

Our good friend Col. Dave McCarthy, USMC Special Operations, is leaving Iraq soon. Here is a longish bit from his last “Bagdad” report:

“Greetings. I trust this message finds you and yours all well and in good spirits. It's hard to believe that thirteen messages have been written in my time here, and I don't know how many photos have been sent. As I've told you many times before, writing a few sentences each day or night has been a form of therapy for me. I wonder if I'll need to continue the therapy when I get back to the states . . . probably: I am going to L.A. after all, LaLa Land. I will begin redeployment in two days. After I leave Bagdad I have to go to Kuwait where I will spend about a week, then it's off to the USA. I feel a little sad because I'll be leaving the friends I've made here - both American and Iraqi, and I feel a little guilty because our National interests and the lives of innocent Iraqis tell me I should stay. I'll miss the camaraderie and the adrenaline rushes; I'll miss putting on my Battle Rattle, saddling up and heading out into Indian territory (outside the wire).

What I won't miss are tents, porta-johns, bad chow (or no chow), too little sleep (or no sleep) and having people trying to blow me up with IEDs, gettingrocketed with RPGs and getting shot at by small arms fire (although I am going back to L.A., so there's that chance). I won't miss listening to arabic prayers broadcast five times a day over loudspeakers in the minarets. I won't miss Big-Voice announcing "INCOMING! INCOMING! INCOMING!" I won't miss killing and witnessing death. Another thing I surely won't miss about Bagdad is the weather. In the NY Times Op-Ed piece "A War We Just Might Win " authors Michael E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack write, "After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad . . ." Yep, "furnace-like heat" sums itup nicely; I won't miss it at all, nor the rivers of sweat that go with it. Oh, by the way, after the heat the first thing they noticed was the high morale of the troops.

One bit of shameless self-promotion, if I may: I just found out that have been awarded the Bronze Star medal. Napoleon said something about how men will perform magnificently for a little bit of colored ribbon; I guess he's right.

A quick aside: The documentary movie "Obsession" is excellent, albeit chilling, and I highly recommend it. It'll give you a good insight into what America - and western civilization - faces. I see it first-hand here daily. The overriding message in the movie is the quote of Irish statesman Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." That thought is one of the main reasons I have sworn the oath every morning for the past 26 years and why I keep deploying.

Since the last message I had a few more missions, including one big one on the Iranian border - a nice neighborhood (did the sarcasm come through o.k.?). We took a Black Hawk helicopter to a Forward Operating Base (FOB) about an hour and a half flight southeast of Bagdad and then headed out from there. The FOB there has a small contingent of US Forces and a large contingent of Georgian forces - that's Georgian as in from the Republic of Georgia. The ride down was not uneventful: about half way there we took small arms ground fire. We had two Black Hawks, as always, and each Black Hawk has two 7.62-cal. door guns; when the door gunners from each airship open fire it puts out a large volume of fire. Unfortunately I was seated in the forward-facing seat directly behind one of the door gunners, and getting hit in the face with a few hundred rounds of hot brass as it's being ejected from the gun is just no fun . . . then again it's more fun than getting hit in the face with hot lead from ground fire.

Above is a picture of our Terp (interpreter) Ammar, Air Force Major General Edgington and me. Ammar is not only a valued asset he is a great man and has become a dear friend. He is an Iraqi Catholic, so when the terrorists started bombing Catholic churches and kidnapping and killing priests, nuns and parishioners he moved his family to Jordan for their safety. I knew he wants more than anything to come to America with his parents, his brother and his sister, become a citizen and start a business, so I got him all of the documents and forms he needs, arranged for an interview with Major General Edgington and for a friend who works in the U.S. Embassy in Bagdad to take Ammar from office to office to get all the signatures and stamps he needs. When the final O.K. comes - God willing - he'll be leaving for America in a couple of months. I very much look forward to having his family as guests.

In closing I have a favor to ask: please say a prayer for the good people of Iraq - the innocent people; there are a lot of them, many of whom I have befriended - especially the Kurds up North and the Baghdad Christians - and they deserve better than they've gotten the last few years. If we can get rid of Al Qaida and get rid of the Syrians, Iranians, Saudis and other foreign Muslim extremists, then the good people might have a chance. O.K., now that's everything. Take care and be well. Please know that you are always in my thoughts and in my prayers.

Semper Fidelis,DMM

I’m sure we’re all looking forward to tipping a few brewskis with Brother Dave and listening to him tell us some details about his war experiences. God bless him and all our fighting troops.

Finally, why was I absent from blog duty for the last two months? There have been some BIG changes in my life. Lee and I are divorcing. On Aug 1, I moved into a lovely home in the Malaga Cove area of Palos Verdes Estates with Linda Henson, the new love of my life, and her Westie (West Highland Terrier) Sammy. My new email address is

wlama@verizon.net

and the home phone is 310-375-9315. I hope to continue my contributions to the blogosphere and that my friends like the new stuff from a newly happy guy.

Military Strategy for Dummies

2007-07-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed that our nation is chock full of armchair military strategists? Everyone seems to have an opinion about the war: At the highest level of generalization are statements such as -- “Our current policies have been a disaster” -- to which I reply with equal perspicacity and nuance: Says who?

It’s hard to find a coherent strategy from any national Democrat (excepting Joe Lieberman) but they have in common a commitment to discrediting the war and accepting defeat. The House passed legislation last week, with 95 percent of Democrats voting in favor, requiring that the United States withdraw most combat troops from Iraq by April 1, 2008. The jist of their argument is that we need to step out of the way of the sectarian strife and let the Sunnis and Shiites battle it out. Little thought is given to the slaughter that would ensue; even less to the effect this action might have on U.S. security and prosperity, never mind the rest of the world.

Armchair strategists have even suggested that allowing Iran to support the Shias would be a way to insure victory over the Sunni militias and their al Qaeda friends. Now there are reports (with videos) of a field in Iraq containing 50 Iranian-made rocket launchers, all aimed at a US army base. But hey, we ought to trust the Iranians, just like Jimmy Carter did.

To attempt a rational conversation about the war it is important to have a realistic perspective of our goals and objectives. After 9/11 it was obvious that our decades-long strategy of siding with brutal dictators in the Middle East, while ignoring an occasional attack on American interests, was both absurd and immoral. President Bush took aim at two of the bad actors in the Islamic world when we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The goals were to overthrow the dangerous Taliban and Saddam Hussein regimes and to establish governments that would cease to be breeders and sponsors of terrorism.

It was clear that dictators and elements of Islamic religious law that stand in the way of personal freedom and religious tolerance breed discontent. Thus the governments we are attempting to establish are based on core democratic principles including free elections and basic individual rights.

Remember, terrorism is the third attack on Western civilization by radical Islam. To deal with terrorism, units of our armed forces are in 30+ countries around the world hunting down terrorist groups and dealing with them. This gets very little publicity. People can argue about whether the war in Iraq is right or wrong, but they should be clear about our strategy -- to remove the radicals from power and give the moderates a chance. We are demonstrating to the Islamic world that (1) America will not tolerate attacks on our people or interests and (2) freedom is the way to personal prosperity and happiness and acceptance into the league of respected nations. Our hope is that, over time, the moderates will find a way to bring Islam forward into the 21st century. It will take time and we must continue our effort. We cannot just pull out and let chaos take our place.

Aside from the political and humanitarian consequences, we must stay the course because we are an honorable nation that went to war for honorable reasons. The just-war philosophy rests on three principles: ius ad bellum, ius in bello and ius ad pacem: “war-decision law” and “war-conduct law” and “war into peace law.” In the words of James Turner Johnson, the foremost historian of the just-war tradition: “Just war in the age of global jihadist terrorism is not simply about the right, even the obligation, to use armed force to protect ourselves, our societies, and the values we cherish; it is not only about how we should fight in this cause; it is ultimately about the peace we seek to establish in contrast to the war the terrorists have set in motion. We are, as Augustine put it, to ‘be peaceful . . . in warring,’ that is, to keep the aim of peace first and foremost, and not only to ‘vanquish those whom you war against’ but also to ‘bring them to the prosperity of peace.’ . . . The ideal expressed in the just war tradition . . . is an ideal in which the use of force serves . . . to create peace. This is a purpose that must not be forgotten.”

This perspective is elaborated by George Weigel in the April, 2007 issue of First Things magazine. (http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=5465)

And please don’t fall into the trap of believing that if only we weren’t in the Middle East peace would prevail. In the age of globalization the Western way of life is all too apparent to the peoples of the Islamic world. The masses love our freedom and prosperity but it is messing with their social constructs by empowering women, tolerating gays, respecting other religions. The radicals among in Islam, many educated men, find this social change intolerable and are willing to fight to destroy modernization, and us with it.

Happy Birthday America

2007-07-04T21:50:00.001-07:00

I am the flag of the United States of America. My name is Old Glory.
I stand for peace, honor, truth and justice. I stand for freedom.

I am confident. I am proud.

Listen to Elvis sing “America the Beautiful” while you read this post.
http://home.comcast.net/~nw-fla/tribute_flag_B_thompson.htm

On the way to the Palos Verdes Estates “Old fashioned Fourth of July” party, I stopped at Starbucks for my daily latte (grande, no foam, single-shot). Good friend Rori Roje said “Oh, you’re going to see Mayberry RFD meets The Rich and the Famous.” Rori was half right.

The PVE event was celebrating its forty-sixth year and it looked and felt like small town, mid-America transplanted to the gorgeous Pacific coast. Guests were treated to music by the Unabridged Big Band, to a stunning rendition of the Star Spangled Banner by Shauna Steiner Torok, recognition of all the military services, an apple pie contest (the top two finishers were men!), a patriotic bike parade, a puppet show and face painting and awards for children essayists, Americanism (De De Hicks), volunteerism (Josh Liu) and the Norris Heritage of Freedom Award to noted historian and keynote speaker Kevin Starr.

De De Hicks spoke with heartfelt passion about what it means to be an American. She told us about the neighbor’s house she saw burn to the ground when she was only eight and how, by the end of the next day, the family was re-supplied with everything they needed to live from the generosity of the community. Experiences like that helped to mold De De’s volunteer spirit, a spirit she sees in abundance in America, “the greatest country in the whole wide universe!!”

Kevin Starr (CA Librarian Emeritus) is the author of a multi-volume series on the history of California, collectively called “America and the California Dream.” The most recent edition is The Coast of Dreams (2004), a concise cultural history of California since 1990. In 2006 Starr was awarded a National Humanities Medal. Starr opened with a reminiscence of his time at the White House when he received the Humanities Medal from President Bush. He contrasted the classical Greek architecture of the White House with the Mediteranian architecture of Malaga Cove in PVE. Yet, for all the thousands of miles between us, we are all one country, “from sea to shining sea.” He talked at length and with wonderful detail about the Westward movement and the incorporation of California into the Union. He asked the founding fathers and mothers to join us in this day of celebration.

It reminded me of what is sadly slipping away in much of America: a deep and abiding sense of the cultural history of our great nation. Dennis Prager calls for a July Fourth seder. “Perhaps the major reason Jews have been able to keep their national identity alive for 3,000 years, the last 2,000 of which were nearly all spent dispersed among other nations, is ritual. National memory dies without national ritual. And without a national memory, a nation dies. That is the secret at the heart of the Jewish people's survival that the American people must learn if they are to survive.

“When Jews gather at the Passover Seder they recount the exodus from Egypt, an event that occurred 3,200 years ago, as if it happened to them. That has to be the motto of the July Fourth Seder. We all have to retell the story in as much detail as possible and to regard ourselves as if we were present at the nation's founding in 1776.”

As parents and grandparents we need to see to it that the history and values of our great country are taught and are cherished by our kids and grandkids. I saw an example of that in Malaga Cove today. As the great social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville commented long ago in Democracy in America, “the village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that, wherever a number of men are collected, it seems to constitute itself.” That perfectly natural township is alive and well on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

The Intellectual PM versus the Islamic Fanatics

2007-07-03T14:57:00.001-07:00

When news broke of the attempted car bombings in London and the SUV explosion in Glasgow airport, the British media immediately posited the question of the new Prime Minister’s resoluteness. The somber Gordon Brown appeared briefly on national television from 10 Downing Street late Saturday. “I want all British people to be vigilant and I want them to support the police and all the authorities in the difficult decisions that they have to make,” he said. “I know that the British people will stand together, united, resolute and strong.” Clearly the terrorists were testing the new Prime Minister and trying to influence his policies. Will they be successful?

By now we know that the Islamic terrorists were all connected to the medical profession, as many as six of them being doctors. They were not impoverished youths lashing out at an unfair socio-economic structure. Friend Phil Clark wrote that “the arrests of physicians/medical students in the UK underscores the degree to which we Westerner's are wrong in estimating that the threat would not come from educated professionals, and further shows how ineffective assumed assimilation is as a protection.”

Western Alliance friend Pappy opined that Dr. Mohammed Asha was “doing his best to help spread the flames of socialized medicine. The bombs failed to go off because, just like socialized medicine, there was a waiting period.”

Christopher Hitchens (“Don’t Mince Words”) observes that “we were warned for years of the danger, by Britons of Asian descent such as Hanif Kureishi, Monica Ali and Salman Rushdie. They knew what the village mullahs looked like and sounded like, and they said as much.” More recently British Channel Four's Undercover Mosque and Christiane Amanpour’s CNN Special Investigations Unit showcased British Muslim fanatics who came right out with their program. “Straight into the camera, leading figures like Anjem Choudary spoke of their love for Osama Bin Laden and their explicit rejection of any definition of Islam as a religion of peace. On tape or in person, mullahs in prominent British mosques called for the killing of Indians and Jews.”

What is even more sinister, Hitchens notes that the car bomb was parked outside a club in Piccadilly on ladies night and that “this explosion might have been designed to lure people into the street, the better to be burned and shredded by the succeeding explosion from the second car-borne cargo of gasoline and nails. The murderers did not just want body parts in general but female body parts in particular.”

An ABC news report on June 18 described large teams of newly trained suicide bombers who are being sent to the United States and Europe, according to evidence contained on a new videotape. Teams assigned to carry out attacks in Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Germany were introduced at an al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9.

We will have to wait to see how militantly the British authorities take the rising threat level. And what about Gordon Brown? A recent piece (“An Intellectual in Power”) by John Lloyd in Prospect magazine gives cause for optimism. Although known as an intellectual, “Brown has a kind of contempt for pure intellectuals,” says an aide. “He has little use for those for whom ideas are everything. He reads and talks and thinks with practice in mind.”

Brown’s intellectual appetites are more catholic than his political image implies. “He has really moved away from a social democratic position on the economy. He is pretty much a market liberal,” says another adviser. He is a fan of globalization, his favorite book being Why Globalization Works by Martin Wolf. He reads big books like Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy, Timothy Garton Ash's Free World and Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilisations. Brown has an appreciation for the threats facing Western Civilization.

Brown has recently been giving speeches and writing articles on Britishness. He adheres to the view of Linda Colley (Britons) that Britain is “an invented nation, united by a broadly Protestant culture.” It sounds a lot like Seymour Martin Lipsett’s American Exceptionalism. (“He's fascinated by the US's ability to ground itself in writing and image, in a way we can't.”) Brown’s British Council lecture Britishness (July, 2004) roused a patriotism which in the British was real, deep and popular.

In his recently published book, Courage: Eight Portraits, the new prime minister celebrates individuals who were called upon to show courage in face of great danger or injustice, and who rose, in differing ways, magnificently. “There are good reasons” he writes, “why I believe we continue to immortalise them… because we believe that the concept of courage says something about us and the best in us.”

Brown senses a threat of a moral breakdown at both the individual and the social level in Britain. (Our Culture, What’s Left of It by Theodore Dalrymple) “The modern left, especially since the 1960s, has been often scornful of a morality it regarded as bourgeois, and even while calling for extreme forms of collectivism has in practice endorsed much of the libertarian individualism of contemporary consumerism.”

Brown has invited conservative political scientist James Q Wilson and philosopher Gertrude Himmelfarb -- both American -- to give seminars at No 10 Downing Street. In The Moral Sense (1993), Wilson argues that “the indulgence, cruelty and violence that are now a familiar part of life have been the fault of those who too weakly, or apologetically, maintain moral-social limits.” Himmelfarb, a historian of ideas, sees in the work of “David Hume, Adam Smith and others the same kind of search as that in which Brown is said to be engaged: a quest for a robust social morality.”

Thus far, I see Gordon Brown as a worthy successor of Tony Blair, perhaps even more American than the long time Labour leader. Thus far, I like the cut of his jib.

Zero Tolerance in Palos Verdes

2007-06-29T22:37:00.001-07:00

The story rocked the local news like an IED. Little toy soldiers with little plastic guns worn by little boys were declared verboten at a grammar school graduation. The boys at the Cornerstone school were ordered by Principal Denise Leonard to remove the toy soldiers, or cut off the plastic micro-guns, or be held in contempt of the district Zero Tolerance Weapon's policy. Leonard “directed students to not place images of weapons on student-created mortarboards to be used in the promotion ceremony,” according to a PVUSD statement.

Letters to the editor and to the school superintendent accused the principal of violating the student’s free speech, of misguided pedagogy and of an anti-military bias -- not to mention petty behavior.

In my opinion, the free speech argument holds no water. The US Supreme Court ruled this week that students have limited first amendment rights. In a 5-4 decision, the Supremes held that speech promoting illegal drug use (“Bong Hits 4 Jesus,” in this case) may be regarded as “disruptive” to school life, as defined by the Supreme Court in Tinker (1969). However, in my opinion and that of Justice Thomas, the Tinker decision granting free speech rights to minor students was ill advised, has led to a multitude of court case and to “cultural disarray flowing from the schools into society.”

Justice Clarence Thomas attached to the Roberts’ majority decision an essay on the decline and fall of American public education. (see www.supremecourtus.gov )

Thomas showed that from the beginning of the Republic “the schools’ role was most certainly in loco parentis, in that they and parents broadly agreed on what made an adolescent grow into a good person.” Today parents are spending thousands on private schools “to have what American schools had from 1859 to 1959--some basic measure of the Three Ds: decorum, decency and diligence; self-control as a higher common value than out-of-control.”

In a surprising statement about the “Bong” decision, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer wrote: “Students will test the limits of acceptable behavior in myriad ways better known to schoolteachers than to judges; school officials need a degree of flexible authority to respond to disciplinary challenges; and the law has always considered the relationship between teachers and students special. Under these circumstances, the more detailed the Court's supervision becomes, the more likely its law will engender further disputes among teachers and students. Consequently, larger numbers of those disputes will likely make their way from the schoolhouse to the courthouse. Yet no one wishes to substitute courts for school boards, or to turn the judge's chambers into the principal's office.”

Thus, I stand behind the Cornerstone principal’s authority to make decisions about the behavior of students under her jurisdiction, including their speech and other forms of expression. That still leaves, however, the questions of pedagogy, bias and good sense.

My friend Dr. Dave Young wrote to the Superintendent to explain that the decision to treat the weapon on a toy soldier the same as an actual weapon not allowed under the zero tolerance for weapons on campus is bad pedagogy.

“We want, I believe, to teach children the ability to discriminate between examples of desired and undesired behaviors. We want them to learn the difference between the legal and criminal use of weapons. This decision does exactly the opposite. It not only fails to teach the difference between people engaged in the pro-social use of them (police and soldiers) from anti-social use (criminals and terrorists), but it actually implies that they are the same. This is appallingly poor teaching.”

Dr. Young continues: “Not to distinguish between representations of weapons and actual weapons also undermines the development of critical thinking skills. A toy soldier is simply not a weapon, and to argue that it is makes one look foolish.”

Finally Dr. Young asks about the motivation behind the ruling: “Did this decision inadvertently disrespect those who have died for our freedoms? Did the decision reflect either a conscious or unconscious anti-military bias?”

These are legitimate questions that the School Board and administration should address.

The argument that the zero-tolerance policy made her do it is specious at best. PVUSD Board Policy BP 5131.7 Students Weapons and Dangerous Instruments: The Board of Education desires students and staff to be free from the fear and danger presented by firearms and other weapons. The Board therefore prohibits any person other than authorized law enforcement or security personnel from possessing weapons, imitation firearms, or dangerous instruments of any kind in school buildings, on school grounds or buses, or at a school-related or school-sponsored activity away from school.

I’ve heard it said that while the toy soldiers are not covered by the policy, that they can create a hostile environment. Give me a break!

Finally, the Zero Tolerance approach in schools is harmful. A report from Harvard University (Opportunities Suspended: The Devastating Consequences of Zero Tolerance and School Discipline) illustrates that “Zero Tolerance is unfair, is contrary to the developmental needs of children, denies children educational opportunities, and often results in the criminalization of children. Even the common schoolyard scuffle has become a target, regardless of severity and circumstances.” Another report Zero Tolerance, Zero Evidence of the Indiana Education Policy Center states: “There is as yet little evidence that the strategies typically associated with zero tolerance contribute to improved student behavior or overall school safety.”

It is understandable that school boards and principals strive to be cautious about anything that could be thought to contribute to a hostile environment. In our litigious society is would be fiscally irresponsible to do otherwise. But it is even more important to teach the truth and to instill in students a sense of thankfulness and respect for the military and police who protect our lives, sometimes through the rightful use of fire-arms.

Rebirth of Western Religion

2007-06-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

With the spate of religion-bashing books coming out in the last year (by well known authors including Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Michel Onfray, Victor Stenger) one might be tempted, and some are encouraged, to believe that the prophesy “Gott ist tot” of Nietzsche’s famous madman has finally come to pass in the Western world. Yet all these books have about them “an odd defensiveness -- as though they were not a sign of victory but of desperation.” In Western Europe it appears that the madman was right, but everywhere else on Earth religion is surging.

The secularist story line goes like this. “As people become more educated and more prosperous they find themselves both more skeptical of religion's premises and less needful of its consolations. Hence, in the long run, religion, or more specifically the Christianity so long dominant on the West, will die out.” Indeed, what one sees in Europe today are elderly altar servers in childless churches attended by mere handfuls of pensioners. “If God were to be dead in the Nietzschean sense, one suspects that the wake would look a lot like this.”

Yet two leading secularism theorists (Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, 2006) have noted that in fact “secularization theory is currently experiencing the most sustained challenge in its long history.” Not only that, but as Robert Royal observes, “three centuries of debunking, skepticism, criticism, revolution, and scorn by secularists not only have failed to defeat religious belief, but have actually enhanced its self-defense.” (The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, 2006. See also Peter Berger, The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, 1999)

Now, in a scholarly piece by Mary Eberstadt of the Hoover Institution (“How the West Really Lost God”) secularist theory is put to the test of reason and empiricism. “What secularization theory assumes is that religious belief comes ontologically first for people and that it goes on to determine or shape other things they do -- including such elemental personal decisions as whether they marry and have children or not.” Hence the plummeting birth rates in Western Europe outside the Muslim communities.

Norris and Inglehart, for example, clearly state the cause and effect.

“Secularization and human development have a powerful negative impact on human fertility rates. Practically all of the countries in which secularization is most advanced show fertility rates far below the replacement level -- while societies with traditional religious orientations have fertility rates that are two or three times the replacement level.” When stated that way the outcome seems inevitable: the death of the West through the inexorable tide of demographics.

However, Mary Eberstadt asks why must the cause-effect vector be as is commonly assumed? Might not the decline of childbearing come first, then driving the decline of religiosity?

The Western European data seem to support that time-reversed point of view. What demographers call the “unprecedented and overall sustained fall in birthrate that characterizes Western Europe today” began in France in the late eighteenth century, but in Britain, which was then richer than France, the decline started a century later. In each case the decline in churchgoing kicked in 1-2 generations later. In Ireland the birthrate decline followed by the religious decline occurred within one generation (from 1970 to 2005). European fertility in general dropped well before the dramatic demise of religious practice seen today.

Eberstadt argues convincingly how the act of creation and child rearing encourage parents into communion with something larger than themselves, in communities of like-minded believers (ie in church). There are even fewer atheists in the nursery than in the foxhole. For the details check out her paper at
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/how_the_west_really_lost_god.html

This new perspective goes a long way toward explaining one of the most puzzling aspects of American exceptionalism. Richard Dawkins posed the problem this way: “The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religious country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. I am continually asked why this is, and I do not know.”

The 2007 Princeton Survey found that 91 percent of Americans believe in God, as opposed to 6 percent agnostic and 3 percent atheist. Might it be because we are still having babies? And it is not only Hispanic immigrants who are having babies in America. Birthrates are well above replacement level among well-educated and well-off Orthodox Jews, Mormons, Evangelical Christians and Catholics.

Seen in this light the death of the West is not inevitable. Fertility rates have waxed and waned throughout history. (The low birth rate among Roman patricians was of sufficient concern under the emperor Augustus as to result in the imposition of the family-friendly Julian laws.) Today there are many socio-economic forces (see Social Security) that could well drive a baby boom in the highly secular countries of Western Europe, Canada and Japan. If that happens the appeal of religion will rise and the death of the West, and of God, will be averted.

We should all hope so because the alternative is grim indeed.

Warriors

2007-06-23T21:08:00.001-07:00

Lt. Colonel Dave McCarthy, USMC, sent me a photo essay he called “Bagdad Living,” thinking that it might take off in the magazine publishing world as a spin-off of “Country Living.” Please email me if you’d like to see the rest of the photos. Here is part of Dave’s narrative.

Our interpreter is called Ammar. He's Catholic, which means he is a target for al Qaida and other Islamic fundamentalist groups. To give you an idea of what Christians face here in Bagdad, Chaldean patriarchs Bishop Donamarding and Bishop Armanweli appealed to Prime Minister Maliki to intervene to protect Iraqi Christians from Muslim extremists. Pan-Arab and Iraqi media reported that many Baghdad Christians have been told to convert to Islam or be killed. Ammar is a trusted and highly valued asset of ours; I pray every day for his safety and that of his family.

During a tense moment in a bad neighborhood in Bagdad, out of the corner of my eye I noticed an Iraqi women huddled in a shallow ditch trying to shield her two small children. I turned and saw a combat cameraman take their photo, so when we returned to base I asked him to e-mail me a copy, which he did. I decided not to send it because it is too graphic and depressing. I keep the photo on my computer and look at it every so often because it illustrates to me what we're here for -- to protect innocent Iraqis. If you saw the fear on this poor woman's face then you could understand what the average Bagdad resident faces daily; it is absolutely heart-breaking.

I realize that America doesn't have infinite resources, but I wish we could fight every place innocent women and children are attacked. I wish the U.S. government would take volunteers and form up an Expeditionary Force to go to Darfur to protect the innocent people there from the Janjaweed (militia); I'd volunteer to go in a heartbeat.

I'll be in the International Zone (IZ) this week, hopefully for not more than 4 or 5 days, and then I head out West to Fallujah and Ramadi. One of the reasons I love to get out West is because the Marine Corps controls the West. I don't mean to knock the army, and I obviously have a bias towards Marines. It's not just the Warrior Brotherhood among Marines; a Knights of the Round Table sort of thing; it's also the more aggressive war fighting style that I like. I hear from a great many soldiers, sailors and airmen that they feel better, safer, when Marines are around. In 2001 I was in a remote area of Afghanistan when a very young airman, he couldn't have been more than 18 years old, looked at the U.S. MARINES tape on my uniform top and said “Man, I just breath so much easier when Marines are around.”

Greetings from Bagdad, yet again. Well, we were supposed to be wheels-up at 0930. At 0920 we received a radio call with the latest intel and we decided to postpone the mission for a week. So, I'm back at the Forward Operating Base for now. The photo of me above is by the cancelled-south-trip helo.

Today is shaping up to be a REALLY bad day: it's only noon and already we lost seven men. God, that hurts.

My time in the IZ wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. The Iraqis living there are not all good guys; there are good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods in the IZ. The part of the IZ where the US Embassy is located is like a strange dream: you can have Marines in full Battle Rattle side by side with civilians in suits or in Dockers and polo shirts, and in the evening there will be the occasional lady in a ball gown. One thing about the IZ - they get hit with a lot of indirect fire almost every day (mortars and rockets). Several nights I stayed in the IZ and one evening a 107 mm rocket destroyed a Shower trailer not 50 meters from the trailer where I was staying; yet another close call for yours truly.

Actually, that attack led to something interesting (for lack of a better word). Because that rocket landed so close I thought it wise for me to get into a bunker in case other rockets landed in the vicinity. As I was getting in the bunker another rocket landed close by. To this day I don't know if it was the concussion that threw me into the bunker or if it was that the sound of the explosion was enough for me to jump into the bunker, but in any event I slammed my foot into the concrete. It hurt like heck, but the attack ended and I did as I usually do when I'm injured: I sucked it up and marched on. Unfortunately my foot got worse, turning red and becoming increasingly painful. I could handle the pain, but after 10 days one of the toes and a toe nail had turned black.

Now I'm no medical expert, but I was fairly certain that flesh turning black is not a good thing, so I figured it was time to seek medical attention. The Doc at the Troop Medical Clinic aboard this Forward Operating Base had the medic just take a scalpel and cut off the entire nail. The next day it hurt really bad, and when I took my boot off out poured about 2 cups of blood. Yep, time to seek medical attention yet again. This time a different Doc took one look at it and said that I'd need to see a foot specialist. The podiatrist took one look at my foot and told the Medics to bring me into the Operating Room, where she proceeded to do her medical thing, including amputating half of one of my toes.

So, now I'm grounded for a while, in a soft cast and hobbling around on crutches. The worst part is that I will miss a mission tomorrow, and likely the next few missions. This is like déjà vu from my second tour in Iraq, when I slammed my leg during a direct fire attack and developed a DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis) and had to be casevaced out. The funny thing is that with this injury, the guys are telling me that I rate a Purple Heart Medal since the injury was sustained as a result of enemy fire. Gimmee a break! There is NO WAY I would pull a John Kerry and put a Purple Heart medal on my chest for a little owwee and half a toe; not when soldiers and Marines are having limbs blown off in IED explosions.

Well, the stitches in my foot came out this morning, so I've been assigned a mission leaving tomorrow morning and wanted to just shoot off a quick message to say hello - or goodbye as the case may be - before I go. This should be a short one - maybe a few days, but as they say, “the best laid plans . . .” It's been a while since I've recited the chaplain's words to us, so I'll do so now: “You cannot do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good you can do.” All the good we can do is chock full of good intentions, and it doesn't sound like a path to hell, does it?

Well, I'd best get going so I can be sure my gear is all in order. Take care and be well.

Semper Fidelis,

DMM

My grandson, Sgt. John Walton, Army 82nd Airborne Division is scheduled to finish his second tour in Iraq next month. He volunteered to stay on until September so that a buddy whose wife had a baby could return home in Johnny’s place. Having spent his time in Iraq repairing helicopters and dodging rockets, I think Johnny wanted to get a taste of battle before his time was up. His offer was refused since it would take too much time to train him for combat. I’m glad and so is his mom.

Sicko

2007-06-19T14:07:00.001-07:00

Would you take health care advice from this man?

Pumping away on the elliptical machine at Equinox, I had the choice of fourteen televisions, every third one tuned into The View. While watching ESPN, I noticed a portly sloppy guy walk on The View set and engulf Liz Hasselbeck. Michael Moore was there to plug his new movie, Sicko.

Moore's major point is that the health care system in America is “broken.”

From a film review by James Christopher at the Cannes Film Festival:

“Moore plays the small humble man in this villainous conspiracy against the public. He feels the aches and pains of the wronged, and lambasts company directors and government officials. He travels to London to show off the beauty and brilliance of the British National Health Service. He films empty waiting rooms and happy, care-free health workers.

What he hasn’t done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have. I’ve spent more hours than I care to remember in NHS hospitals vainly waiting for stitches or praying for the arrival of a midwife. There are no such traumas in Moore’s rose-tinted vision of our glorious NHS.”

Coincidentally, the LA Times ran a long article last Sunday titled “Care in need of a cure” that managed to bash the US medical profession while simultaneously promoting Moore’s movie. The story behind the article was a report by the Commonwealth Fund ranking the United States sixth out of six industrialized nations on “measures of safe and coordinated health care” while spending the most per person on that care. The US trailed, in order, Great Britain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada while spending $6102 per person compared to an average of $2735 for the others.

Examples of our poor showing include the fact that the US life expectancy is 77.2 years compared to the average of 77.8 years (and Japan’s 81.8 years). The US also has higher average potential years of life lost due to diabetes (0.10 year compared to 0.04 year). These dramatic results are blamed squarely on the sad state of US healthcare, while the real causes (largely obesity - see Michael Moore) are discounted.

Fortunately, the article is balanced by other facts about the US healthcare system: We have the best breast cancer treatment and survival rates; the best preventive measures like Pap tests, mammograms and colonoscopies; the best treatment of heart attacks and drug-resistant tuberculosis; the premier medical research institutions; and America leads the world in the development of new drugs. The article admits that wealthy people from around the world come to the US for treatment of major diseases.

All that sounds pretty darn good. With all those firsts how did we wind up last? The key to that conundrum comes in the article’s twenty-fourth paragraph: “Probably the area in which the US uniquely falters by comparison with developed nations is in assuring that anyone who is sick can receive care.”

The thirty-first paragraph reveals the causal and the cure. Somewhere between 46 and 50 million Americans do not have health insurance. That means, of course, that between 250 and 254 million Americans do have private health insurance and are receiving top notch care. The question is what to do about the rest and the conclusion is obvious: give them health insurance at public expense.

Let’s use the lower number of uninsured for a calculation of how much that would cost at the average expenditure of $6102 per American. The result is $281 Billion – each and every year. That is the Democratic solution. It is not surprising when one remembers that the Dem’s presidential candidate John Edwards proposed that the US educate 100 million children in the third world. All Democratic social programs cost in the $100’s of billions.

Now what about all those who are uninsured? Who are they? One very large group must be the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens. They broke into our country and now use our services, including hospital emergency rooms. If the Democrats have their way, these will be joined by another 50-100 million family members if the absurd immigration bill passes. Another substantial group, probably several million, are homeless bums. Most will not even accept public housing if it comes with any conditions and wouldn’t go to a doctor if you paid them to do so. Perhaps the largest group is unmarried women with several children. Again it is act of faith that the large percent who are addicts are going to take themselves or their children to the doctor.

So what would I do about this issue? My compassionate conservative plan would rely on individual responsibility, low cost insurance and clinics. First, illegal immigrants who are allowed to stay would be required to purchase minimal health insurance policies that would cover catastrophic care and doctor’s visits in clinics. They would not be allowed to use the emergency rooms for non-emergencies.

The immigration bill must not be passed if it allows family members of illegals to come here ahead of immigrants who are standing in line. The bill should favor those immigrants who are able to pay for their health insurance. It should especially recruit doctors who would be encouraged via accelerated citizenship to practice in clinics for the poor. (The US has 20% fewer doctors per capita than the other industrialized nations.)

The homeless should be incarcerated (some) or institutionalized (most). Unmarried mothers on welfare should be allowed (encouraged) to take themselves and their children to the clinics at no cost.

This is a plan that deals with the problem while maintaining the excellent heath care system for the large majority of American who pay their own way. And don’t buy the blather that our health care is too expensive (although the excessive amount going to personal injury lawyers should be reduced by tort reform). When you need a heart bypass operation and your insurance pays for it, you will agree it’s a bargain at twice the price.

Moral Philosophy and the Death Penalty

2007-06-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

Philosophy is tough sledding, as I’m finding in the Moral Decisions class at St. John Fisher Church. The word philosophy is Greek and we immediately think of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in the 4th century BC. Socrates asked questions like What is justice? What is poetry? He began the Socratic Method, a questioning dialog without answers. Plato is widely believed to have been a student of Socrates and to have been deeply influenced by his teacher's unjust death. Plato's brilliance can be witnessed by reading his Socratic dialogues.

Aristotle believed that humans know some things inherently (the basic truths about themselves and the world) and that philosophy builds on that knowledge.

In the twelfth century Aristotle’s writings were translated into Latin and St. Thomas Aquinas made a lifelong study of his works. G.K. Chesterton noted that the central theme of St. Thomas’s work was the compatibility and complementarities of faith and reason. When this does not occur, it is because reason has become scrambled.

Modern philosophy began in the sixteenth century with Rene’ Descartes who doubted everything. “I think; therefore I am” was the end result of his search for something that could not be doubted. In contrast to Aristotle, Aquinas and the Catholic Church, Descartes believed that unless some method is first learned, one cannot know anything. To Descartes, the study of philosophy confers on one his first certified grasp of truth. (It is interesting that Descartes has become the patron saint of many non-believers, but he was a zealous Catholic, believing that science is possible only because God exists and God cannot lie.)

Philosophy means the quest for wisdom, and involves the disciplines of logic, mathematics, natural science, ethics and theology. Ethics, or moral philosophy, seeks knowledge in order to help us become good. But what is good? Humans are not essentially individuals, at the most basic level. We are born into a family -- not by choice, but by nature. Thus, human good is communal, the common good.

Thus, it seems to me that when considering any complex moral issue (say immigration, abortion or the death penalty) we should carefully consider the common good.

The death penalty for capital murder has long been debated in the industrialized world. It is outlawed in Europe and is all but non-existent in America. In 2005, there were over 16,000 cases of murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the US. There were 60 executions.

The common good argument is that executing murderers would deter murder and save lives. But the death penalty opponents challenged the veracity of that assertion. Finally, the results of several recent university studies are available.

A series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years analyze the hotly debated argument — whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes, counting between 3 and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.

One of the studies by Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. “The results are robust, they don't really go away,” he said. “I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) — what am I going to do, hide them? The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect.”

Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 showing that capital punishment has deterrent effects. To explore the question, they look at executions and homicides, by year and by state or county, looking at the impact of the death penalty on homicides while accounting for other factors such as unemployment data, per capita income, the probabilities of arrest and conviction, and more.

Among the conclusions:

1. Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University.

2. The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

3. Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

The reports have horrified death penalty opponents.

Steven Shavell, a professor at Harvard Law School and editor of the American Law and Economics Review, said that his journal intends to publish several articles on the statistical studies on deterrence in an upcoming issue.

The University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein, a well-known liberal law professor and critic of the death penalty, has begun to question his own strongly held views. “If it's the case that executing murderers prevents the execution of innocents by murderers, then the moral evaluation is not simple,” he told The Associated Press. “Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty.”

Moral philosophy says to look to the common good, in this case saving the lives of innocents. To ignore this would be immoral, and the sign of a scrambled mind.

Volunteerism in Palos Verdes

2007-06-09T15:55:00.000-07:00

Last month I had the honor of speaking at a luncheon to say “Thank you” to the volunteers of the Palos Verdes Library. On a sunny day at the Los Verdes Country Club, the room was filled with most of the two-hundred-plus volunteers who give over two thousand hours a month to the Library and raise in excess of $250,000 yearly from the book sales and gift shop.

I mentioned that I’ve been reading a wonderful book by Seymour Martin Lipset called American Exceptionalism. When I looked over the sea of volunteers, I knew what Mr. Lipset was talking about.

Volunteerism is one of the traits that set Americans apart.

More than 80% of Americans belong to a volunteer organization and provide financial support. But even more amazing is the fact that 60% of Americans give their time to a volunteer organization. No other nation comes close.

Today I had the chance to thank the teen volunteers. They are a bright group of over 80 teens who work as computer docents, re-shelf books, do craft exercises with the little kids, raise money from the sale of home-made cookies, and do a host of other things that benefit the Library.

I asked one young lady what else she does besides homework and helping the Library and she said her senior project at PV High was helping Downs Syndrome kids with a form of music/dance therapy -- and her mom mentioned that she also volunteered over 1400 hours to the Assist-Teens organization during high school. These kids are not watching much television.

Speaking of that scourge on American society, the Culture and Media Institute just released the results of a new survey of television usage. The Media Assault on American Values report finds that 1) the public believes American values are in decline, 2) the public believes the media are contributing to this decline and 3) people who watch more television have more permissive attitudes about moral issues.

Strong majorities (74%) believe American values are weaker than they were 20 years ago and that the entertainment media have a negative influence on American values (73%).

The survey looked at attitudes and behaviors of heavy television viewers (four hours or more per evening) compared to light television viewers (one hour or less of TV per evening). Here are some interesting results:

1. Light TV users volunteer much more (73%) than heavy TV users (44%).

2. A majority (51%) of light TV viewers describe themselves as pro-life, compared to only 37% of heavy TV viewers.

3. Light TV viewers are more likely (47%) to attend church weekly, compared to just 28% of heavy viewers.

4. Heavy TV viewers are much more likely (64%) to believe the government should be responsible for providing retirement benefits to Americans, compared to only 43% of light TV viewers.

5. Heavy TV viewers prefer government health care to private health care (63%) compared to only 43% of light TV viewers.

From the Executive Summary of the report, written by Brian Fitzpatrick, Senior Editor, Culture and Media Institute:

“The most telling finding is that increased exposure to television correlates with a decline in acceptance of personal responsibility. According to the survey, the more hours people spend in front of the television, the less likely they are to accept personal responsibility for their own lives and for their obligations to the people around them. They are less likely to conduct themselves honestly, and they are more likely to hold permissive attitudes about moral issues like divorce, extramarital sex, homosexuality and abortion. They are less likely to honor Godly values and religion in public life.”

We need to remember that correlations do not necessarily imply cause and effect. It is possible that TV is contributing to the moral decline or it may be that immoral people tend to watch more TV. It’s probably some of both.

Parents would do well to turn off the TV and send their kids to the Library to study and volunteer. It’s a win-win-win situation.

Incompetence Incorporated

2007-06-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

I’m always amazed when the mainstream media do something good for the country. Thus I have to give credit to CNN for hosting the Democrats debate on Sunday (moderated by Wolf Blitzer) and to the New York Times for publishing the entire transcript yesterday. It was a public service to expose the flock of incompetents running for president to the nation. Here are a few choice excerpts.

Senator Obama, you get the first question of the night. It has been nearly six years since 9/11. Since that time, we have not suffered any terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Just yesterday, the FBI arrested three men for a terror plot at JFK Airport. Could it be that the Bush administration's effort to thwart terror at home has been a success?

SEN. OBAMA: No. Look, all of us are glad that we haven't had a terrorist attack since 9/11, and I think there are some things that the Bush administration has done well. But the fact of the matter is that we live in a more dangerous world, not a less dangerous world, partly as a consequence of this president's actions.

Senator Edwards, you said the war on terror is a bumper sticker, not a plan. With the news yesterday, this alleged plot at JFK which could have done supposedly horrendous damage and caused incredible number of casualties, do you believe the U.S. is not at war with terrorists?

SEN. EDWARDS: I reject this bumper sticker, Wolf. And that's exactly what it is, it's a bumper sticker.

Senator Clinton, do you agree with Senator Edwards that this war on terror is nothing more than a bumper sticker, at least the way it's been described?

SEN. CLINTON: No, I do not. And I believe we are safer than we were.

When Hillary is the most sensible person on the stage, well… but this was the only smart thing she said.

Sen. Biden, you are on the only person standing on this stage tonight to recently vote to continue funding the troops in Iraq. My question is this: why were Senators Obama, Clinton, Dodd and Congressman Kucinich wrong to vote against the funding?

SEN. BIDEN: I don't want to judge them. I mean, these are my friends.

Senator Clinton, do you regret voting to authorize the president to use force against Saddam Hussein in Iraq without actually reading the National Intelligence Estimate, the classified document laying out the best U.S. intelligence at that time?

SEN. CLINTON: Wolf, I was thoroughly briefed.

Governor Richardson, a question on immigration. Despite your doubts about the immigration bill that's now pending in the U.S. Senate, you support granting legal status to about 12 million people who have entered this country illegally. Why is this not an amnesty program?

GOV. RICHARDSON: I would not support legislation that divided families. I would not support legislation that builds a wall, a Berlin-type wall between two countries.

Senator Biden, you voted last year to support this immigration legislation, including the construction of a 700-mile fence along the border. Governor Richardson doesn't think there needs to be such a fence. Why is he wrong?

SEN. BIDEN: Well, he's not wrong. There doesn't need to be a 700-mile fence, but there does need -- look, we got to start as if we -- we all love this phrase, "Start talking truth to power." I voted for the fence related to drugs.

Candidates, I want you to raise your hand if you believe English should be the official language of the United States. The only hand I see is Senator Gravel.

SEN. OBAMA: This is the kind of question that is designed precisely to divide us.

SEN. CLINTON: The problem is that if it becomes official, instead of recognized as national, which indeed it is, if it becomes official, that means in a place like New York City you can't print ballots in any other language.

Senator Biden, there are still a lot of military commanders out there, including the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, who say keep the current policy. "Don't ask, don't tell" -- it would be demoralizing, it would be bad for military readiness to change that policy and let gays and lesbians serve openly in the U.S. military.

SEN. BIDEN: Peter Pace is flat wrong. I've been to Afghanistan, I've been to Iraq seven times, I've been in the Balkans, I've been in these foxholes with these kids, literally in bunkers with them. Let me tell you something, nobody asked anybody else whether they're gay in those holes -- those foxholes, number one. Number two, our allies -- the British, the French, all our major allies -- gays openly serve.

Our allies –- the French?

Senator Clinton, if you were president of the United States, the question is, what would you do with former President Bill Clinton?

SEN. CLINTON: This is a fascinating question. And when I become president, Bill Clinton, my dear husband (liar, liar, pants on fire) will be one of the people who will be sent around the world as a roving ambassador to make it very clear to the rest of the world that we're back to a policy of reaching out and working and trying to make friends and allies and stopping the alienation of the rest of the world.

Senator Dodd, gas prices are at record-high levels. Americans are frustrated. What would you do to reduce gas prices?

SEN. DODD: Well, this is a major crisis issue, obviously. Energy-related problems, obviously, are problems with global warming; the dependency on the Middle East for so much of our energy supplies. It's a national security issue. It's a health care issue. The problems are profound here and require some very strong answers. Today we have the solar -- polar caps, rather -- melting.

Rep. Kucinich, what would you do to rebuild the military, which seems to be pretty stretched right now?

REP. KUCINICH: Well, the first thing we need to do is cut -- first of all, there's a couple different dimensions to this. One is, we need to cut military spending overall by about 25 percent.

Senator Biden, you're the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. If you got word from the U.S. intelligence community that Ahmadinejad and his government were on the verge of having a nuclear bomb capable of hitting targets in the region on missiles, what would you do?

SEN. BIDEN: Blah, blah, blah.... blah, blah, blah... but at the end of the day, if they posed the missile, stuck it on a pad, I'd take it out.

Congressman Kucinich, if you were president of the United States and the intelligence community said to you, "We know where Osama bin Laden is, he's in Pakistan. We've got a specific target, but he's only going to be there for 20 minutes. You got to give the order, yes or no, to take him out with a HELLFIRE missile, but it's going to kill some innocent civilians at the same time," what would be your decision?

REP. KUCINICH: I don't think that a president of the United States, who believes in peace and who wants to create peace in the world, is going to be using assassination as a tool.

Candidates, please address the crisis in Darfur. At this time as many as 400,000 people have been killed, millions are without food and shelter. If you were elected president, what role do you think the United States should play in addressing this terrible tragedy?

SEN. BIDEN: You know, we have to stop talking about it. In fact, you have in the capital of Sudan the government saying we're not going to allow that to happen. They have forfeited their sovereignty by engaging in genocide. We should impose a no-fly zone. If the U.N. will not move now, we should impose a no-fly zone, and we should commit 25,000 NATO troops. You could take out the Janjawid tomorrow.

All right candidates, raise your hand if you agree with Senator Biden that the United States should use military force to stop the genocide in Darfur.

SEN. CLINTON: Are we talking about a no-fly zone?

SEN. OBAMA: (Inaudible) -- aren't going to work.

GOV. RICHARDSON: At the U.N.

MR. EDWARDS: If you're talking about American troops, I don't agree with that.

SEN. OBAMA: I don't want to raise hands anymore.

GOV. RICHARDSON: No. I got a very fragile cease-fire put together there three months ago, and we made things a little better. I went with the Save Darfur Coalition. This is what I would do. Number one, more U.N. peacekeepers. The government is refusing to make this happen.

SEN. BIDEN: In the meantime, 50,000 are dead.

SEN. DODD: But the idea that you'd go in and stop the Olympics from happening I don't think gets you there.

SEN. EDWARDS: America no longer has the moral authority to lead in the world. Watching a genocide continue has contributed to that, but it is not the only thing. The spread of HIV/AIDS. I think America ought to actually lead an effort to make primary school education available to 100 million children in the world who desperately need it, and including in Africa.

SEN. DODD: I'd like to know what my colleagues would feel about it.

SEN. OBAMA: You want us to raise our hands?

Could you actually vote for one of these bozos for president in the United States?

Immigration Bill Rates an “F”

2007-05-31T15:07:00.000-07:00

In my analysis of the Illegal Alien Amnesty Travesty (a.k.a. the U.S. Senate Immigration Bill) it appears that my bottom line position was not entirely clear. Good friend Ken Sax: “I liked your blog, but I am a bit confused as to your position. Maybe I misinterpreted your statement during the last Moral Decisions Group meeting, in that you thought that the present bill approved by Kennedy, McCain, and Bush was a good one, and that you had read most of the main provisions.”

Ken’s right, my initial reaction to the Senate Bill was hopeful. At least there was a bipartisan group of Senators who were serious about improving the status-quo. The draft Bill contained elements of good policy: a border fence, increased border patrols, a tamper-proof ID, workplace enforcement, immigrant selection based on U.S. need, and an attempt to regularize the 12-20 million illegal aliens already here. As I said, the devil is in the details.

In my opinion the Bill lacks sufficient emphasis on security, but it could be fixed by appropriate sequencing. My first three priorities deal with security.

1. Construct a (double) border fence of no less than 700 miles in addition to the 300 miles of vehicle barriers.

2. Hire and train an additional 20,000 border control agents.

3. Create a tamper-proof ID card and implement the required infrastructure.

No other provision of the Bill should be effected until these security items are completed, whether it takes one year or three. The next steps deal with the 12-20 million illegal aliens here now.

4. Hire and train a sufficient number of deputies to conduct background checks on the 12-20 million illegals in a timely manner, say one year.

5. Take applications for Z visas that would allow illegals to remain in the country, but not receive government benefits.

6. Conduct background checks sufficient to weed out criminals and potential terrorists. Jail or deport them.

7. After the background checks are complete, issue tamper proof Z-cards that are required to hold a job.

8. Fine and/or jail employers who hire illegals not holding Z visas. Deport the illegals.

The fundamental question is whether a permanent Z-visa condition would be good or bad for the country. Victor Davis Hanson wrote today about “The Global Immigration Problem.”

“Given the social costs of illegal immigration, this is not a win-win situation of hooking up our available jobs with their available workers. Instead, it too often turns into a sort of cultural apartheid, where both unassimilated foreign workers and Western citizens are resentful of each other.

Employers may console themselves that they pay better than what the immigrants earned back at home. This might be true, but the wages are never enough to allow such newcomers to achieve parity with their hosts.

Naturally, immigrants soon get angry. And rather than showing thanks for a ticket out of the slums of Mexico City or Tunis, blatant hypocrisy can follow: The once thankful, but now exhausted, alien may wave the flag of the country he would never return to while shunning the culture of the host county he would never leave.

In the second generation, as we see from riots in France or gangs in Los Angeles, things can get even worse.

There is a final irony. The more Western elites ignore their own laws, allow unassimilated ethnic ghettos and profit from an exploitive labor market, the more their own nations will begin to resemble the very places immigrants fled from.”

It’s clear that immigrants who do not assimilate are not good for society and are frequently dangerous. Thus there must be a path to citizenship that has meaningful measures of assimilation for the holders of temporary Z visas. The Republican proposal for 200,000 more temporary workers per year (holders of the new Y visas) is brain dead and should be stricken from the Bill.

Bottom line, the present immigration bill is critically flawed and should not be passed without the increased security measures and with the Y visas.

Slavery Returns to America

2007-05-27T19:15:00.000-07:00

“We fought a civil war to force Democrats to give up on slavery 150 years ago. They've become so desperate for servants that now they're importing an underclass to wash their clothes and pick their vegetables. This vast class of unskilled immigrants is the left's new form of slavery,” wrote Ann Coulter in her latest piece at Human Events Online . (Thanks to friend Barry C. for this lead.)

According to Alien Nation author Peter Brimelow, “There is recent evidence that, even after four generations, fewer than 10% of Mexicans have post-high school degrees, as opposed to nearly half of non-Mexican-Americans.” So you'll always have the maid. As New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said, our golf fairways would suffer without illegal immigrants.

Oops, Bloomberg is a Republican (sort of). Yes, Republican farmers in the Central Valley of California and in Senator Saxby Chambliss’ Georgia fields are all in favor of “importing a slave class.” If you want to know why President Bush’s approval numbers have plummeted into the low 30’s, it’s because mainstream Republicans (i.e. those who don’t work in Washington) are mightily pissed off about this illegal alien super-amnesty.

And they have the gall to deny that it is amnesty. If a burglar broke into your home and you captured him without blowing him away, then if you say “It’s OK, you can leave before I call the cops,” that’s amnesty. If, on the other hand, you say, “Hey, never mind the cops, what room would you like to sleep in, and please send for your wife and children, and I’ll build an extra bathroom for you guys, and you can go to my doctors, and when you get older you can have some of my Social Security, and you wont have to pay any taxes because your income will be below the federal minimum, but we’ll give you an earned income tax benefit of $3500, and… ,” well that’s something more than amnesty. That’s what my buddy Dave Young calls “super-amnesty.”

But I’ve strayed from the Democrats, those “great lovers of the downtrodden -- the downtrodden trimming their hedges – who pretend to believe that their gardeners' children will be graduating from Harvard and curing cancer someday.” The Democrat business leaders at Apple Computer and Microsoft (and throughout the high tech industry) have something in this bill for them too.

“America takes in roughly 1 million legal immigrants each year. Only about 30,000 of them have Ph.D.s. Why on earth would any rational immigration policy discriminate against immigrants with Ph.D.s in favor of unskilled, non-English-speaking immigrants?” Exactly, says Steve Jobs, send us your downtrodden computer engineers and mathematicians, because some of the work just can’t be outsourced to India, as much as we’d like to do just that.

Hysteria aside, it is sadly true that our colleges do not graduate enough highly qualified scientists, engineers and mathematicians to fill the jobs that need to remain here. When I was managing in industry, we were frustrated in our attempts to find qualified Americans and wound up going to China and India to bring in engineers, who we always described as “unique multi-facetted geniuses” in order to satisfy the immigration authorities.

Even the K-12 teachers have figured out that unbridled illegal immigration is destroying the public school system. On the website Teachers.Net, a public school teacher writes about the chaos at her school due to “cheap tomatoes.” Here are a few excerpts.

I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at a largesouthern California high school which is designated a Title 1 schoolmeaning that its students are in the lower socioeconomic and income levels. Title 1 schools are on the free breakfast and free lunch program. When Isay free breakfast, I'm not talking a glass of milk and roll -- but afull breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would make aMarriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with trays andtrays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)

I estimate that well over 50% of these students are obese or at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more DO have cell phones.

The school also provides day care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls (some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)

I have had to intervene several times for young and substitute teacherswhose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students here in thecountry less then 3 months who raised so much hell with the femaleteachers, calling them putas (whores) and throwing things that theteachers were in tears. Free medical, free education, free food, daycare etc., etc., etc. Is it any wonder they feel entitled to not only bein this country but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements?

A third-world culture that does not value education, that accepts children getting pregnant and dropping out of school by 15 and that refuses toassimilate, and an American culture that has become so weak and worriedabout politically correct that we don't have the will to do anythingabout it.

There’s more, but you get the idea.

Closing out with the Democrats, law abiding citizens and centrists are beginning to see Hillary for the giant two-faced albatross that she is. Even Hollywood is abandoning her. But for those who are still addicted to Hillary care - a.k.a. “The Hillary Ambivalence Syndrome” - The “Half Hour News Hour” offers this remedy: OxyClinton. Enjoy!

Rating the Immigration Bill

2007-05-25T18:39:00.000-07:00

In a remarkable display of bipartisanship, the Senate on Monday voted for cloture on an illegal alien (immigration) bill that few Americans like in its entirety (the New York Times poll notwithstanding). The “Grand Bargain” addresses an issue that all Americans agree needs to be fixed. As usual, the devil is in the details.

And, oh, what details. The 300+ page bill is readable by lawyers with a masochistic bent (Our friend Hugh Hewitt spent the weekend reading the “McCain jam down.”) and pundits like Steven Colbert who hired a Mexican immigrant (who did not need to press 2) to read it for him. Colbert reports that the fiery border moat with the fireproof dragons was nowhere to be found. So much for border security.

Now down to business. Key components of the “compromise” include:

1. Immediate amnesty for 12-20 million illegal aliens who will get legal status for residence and jobs.
2. New flows of 200 thousand temporary foreign workers each year.
3. Mandatory workplace verification.
4. Enhanced border enforcement.

The driving force for the bill is an odd coalition of big-government Democrats and big-business Republicans. Democrats argue that the welfare state requires liberal immigration policies. Today there are only 3.3 workers for every retiree. With the 77 million baby boomers beginning to retire, we need to bring in 900,000 immigrants a year so that when the last of the boomers retires in 2030 there will be 2.2 workers for every retiree – barely sufficient to keep the system from collapse. And, of course, Democrats count on most of the immigrants joining their Party.

Big business Republicans want the cheap workers to keep profits high. But at what cost? Tom Sowell dispels the myth of the illegal “doing work that no American would do” and making a positive economic contribution.

Every aspect of the current immigration bill, and of the arguments made for it, has Fraud written all over it. The first, and perhaps biggest, fraud is the argument that illegal aliens are “doing jobs Americans won't do.” There are no such jobs. Even in the sector of the economy in which illegal immigrants have the highest representation -- agriculture -- they are just 24 percent of the workers. Where did the other 76 percent come from, if these are jobs that Americans won't do?

Furthermore, the argument that illegal agricultural workers are “making a contribution to the economy” is likewise misleading. For well over half a century, this country has had chronic agricultural surpluses which have cost the taxpayers billions of dollars a year to buy, store, and try to get rid of on the world market at money-losing prices. If there were fewer agricultural workers and smaller agricultural surpluses, the taxpayers would save money.

The economic implications were examined exhaustively by Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation. Continuing to import a low-skilled population under family-based immigration will cost the welfare state far more than the immigrants' contributions to the economy and government. Rector argued that low-skilled immigrants are costly to the welfare state at every point in their life cycle, and are very costly when elderly. Just the millions of illegals already here will, if given amnesty, cost an average of $10,000 per year in various entitlements (Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, housing, etc.) Cumulatively, the cost of the current illegals amounts to more than $2.5 trillion (for 12 million) or as much as $4 trillion (for 20 million) over 30 years.

We can forget about the solubility of Social Security and Medicare.

Another cost is purely societal. Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute offers this wake-up call to sentimentalists who cling to “the myth of the redeeming power of Hispanic family values, the Hispanic work ethic, and Hispanic virtue.”
From 1990 to 2004, Hispanics accounted for 92 percent of the increase in poor people. Only 53 percent of Hispanics earn high school diplomas, the lowest among American ethnic groups. Half of all children born to Hispanic-Americans in 2005 were born out of wedlock -- a reliable predictor of social pathologies.

And while we have millions of immigrants waiting to come to the USA legally, the Senate bill sends the message that these immigrants would be better served by violating our laws, rather than by following them.

Internal enforcement is another huge problem.

Illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. before Jan. 1, 2007, would be able to register for “Z visas” and continue to live and work here. Section 601(h) of the new bill explains how to handle applicants for the Z credentials. An alien who files application for Z-nonimmigrant status shall, upon submission of any evidence required under paragraphs (f) and (g) and after the Secretary has conducted appropriate background checks, to include name and fingerprint checks, that have not by the end of the next business day produced information rendering the applicant ineligible.

The government gets one-two days to check them out… and then they may work legally, may leave the country and return and may not be detained for immigration purposes… all before even one more mile of fence is built or a workplace verification system is constructed.Everyone knows the federal government simply lacks the ability to conduct millions of background checks on the illegal aliens who will be regularized by the law.

Border security is problematic.

The proposed bill authorizes the hiring of Border Patrol agents until 20,000 are on staff, the construction of at least 300 miles of vehicular barriers and 360 miles of double fencing and the end of “catch and return.” The draft bill calls for an increase in border patrol agents of not less than 2,000 in fiscal year '07, 2,400 in '08, and 2,400 more in each fiscal year through 2012, for a total of 14,000 over six years. But of course appropriations are not bound by this direction: authorized doesn't mean funded.

The proposed border fence is 390 miles less than the 750 miles that was authorized over a year ago. Hugh Hewitt asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff how much of the 750 has been constructed. After a lot of hemming and hawing the Secretary finally admitted than the strict answer is zero, but that 75 miles are under construction and should be finished by September. At that rate the proposed 360 miles will take another 3-4 years –- if the funds are appropriated. There is a serious credibility problem when it comes to security.

I’ve heard two broad approaches to the illegal immigrant issue and the Senate bill, one from George Will and one from Hugh Hewitt.

George Will says we should concentrate on border control and workplace enforcement facilitated by a biometric identification card issued to immigrants who arrive here legally. Treat the problem of the 12 million with benign neglect. Their children born here are American citizens; the parents of these children will pass away.

Hugh Hewitt takes a more centrist approach recommending that the bill be modified to mandate that the entire fence will be built before any Z visa issues, that the Border Patrol be dramatically expanded before any Z visa issues, detailing the expansion in the staffs of the DHS and FBI charged with processing and investigating the Z visa applicants and declining to extend to any illegal alien from “countries of special interest” any status whatsoever.

I’m inclined to lean Hugh’s way if only because politics is the art of compromise and the amended bill would be vastly better than the status quo.

Americans Move Out

2007-05-17T15:52:00.000-07:00

We hear and read a lot about the polarization of America: Democrats versus Republicans, the culture wars between liberals and conservatives, the religious right versus the secular left. Now we find that people are voting with their feet.

Dave Young sent me an article by Michael Barone from the WSJ that deals with “The Realignment of America.” In large numbers, Americans are now moving out of, not into, the “Coastal Megalopolises” while immigrants are moving in. Since 2000, the old coastal cities (Boston, NYC, Washington, Miami, San Diego, LA, San Francisco..) have experienced an outflow of native born Americans averaging 650,000 per year balanced by an inflow of immigrants, many of them illegal.

Where are the Americans going? It’s not to the suburbs. The outflow is moving to heartland cities across the nation: Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Orlando, Charlotte, Phoenix, Tampa, California's Inland Empire, Sacramento, Austin, Raleigh, Nashville, Richmond, and the big winner, Las Vegas, with a whopping 19% domestic inflow. These are economic dynamos that are driving much of America's growth, with much less economic polarization and a higher percentage of traditional families than in the “Coastal Megalopolises.”

Barone predicts some profound political ramifications. Democrats, who decry the widening economic gap in the nation, are in charge of the cities where the gap is widening most visibly. They live in “exquisitely decorated Park Avenue apartments and Beverly Hills mansions with immigrant servants passing the hors d'oeuvres.” Meanwhile the Interior Boomtowns voted 56% for George W. Bush in 2004 and states dominated by the Boomtowns (Texas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Nevada) are projected to pick up 10 House seats in the 2010 Census. Good for the GOP, but not good for the nation.

Phil Clark sent me a follow-up article “The Coming Great Divide in American Political Culture” by J.R. Dunn. (in The American Thinker). The demographic trends indicate that “we're headed for an even more serious social schism between the heartland and the coastal metropolises. The heartland (along with smaller cities and towns on the coasts) will be comprised of melting-pot Americans, the coastal cities a bewildering melange of immigrants from all points of the compass, topped with an exceedingly thin layer of ultra-wealthy natives.” Think Beverly Hills and Los Angeles.

Unlike all previous immigrant influxes, today’s political correctness and multiculturalism remove all reasons for immigrants to adapt to their new country. With no particular pressure to fit in, the new immigrants will cling to their traditions, worldviews, and customs, many conflicting with ours and with those of other immigrant groups. The result will be Babel.

The Senate compromise crafted today by Ted Kennedy and John McCain is yet another nail in the coffin for e pluribus unum.

The Belle of Badgag

2007-05-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

Here is an update from our friend Lt. Col. Dave (Big Mac) McCarthy, on the left, beginning with a letter of recommendation written by an Army Special Forces Colonel (John) who is a legend in the Special Forces community for his work in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq and who served with Dave in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Lt Col David "Big Mac" McCarthy is dark, wild and very, verrry different. He is an incredibly intelligent and articulate person of excellent breeding and education. His father was a USMC veteran as well and, other than having a son that became a lawyer, he was proud of his offspring. Dave not only is an excellent USMC Officer of some repute within the SF community, he looks like a Marine (the guy exudes professional Marine Corps bearing). He is the kind of man who (again, other than the lawyer thing) you would be proud to call friend. I am honored to include him among my personal Brothers-In-Arms. He is a good shot (as any good Marine), he is as loyal as an old hound dog (which his facial features strongly resemble), and he is unflinchingly brave. All those (true) glowing accolades having been recited, he is a dark creature whose wildness is barely held in check by his strong self disciplined will. “Big Mac” is a warrior.

AIRBORNE,

John

Those who know and love Dave agree that he is different. A tiny example:

“Yes, I know the city I'm in is spelled ‘Baghdad’ but I refuse to write it that way, opting to write it as ‘Bagdad.’ I suppose it's kind of similar to the way I refuse to say ‘Venti’ or ‘Grande’ or whatever the heck else Starbucks thinks is chic - I will always say ‘Large, medium or small.’ With Starbucks and with Bagdad I'm probably just spiteful.”

Gotta love the guy! In Dave’s honor, I’m spelling it Badgag! Back to Dave:

Because I mentioned that I had attended a morning brief with General Petraeus, some people have asked if I know him or what he's like. I hope I didn't give the impression that he and I are drinking buddies or that we have meetings; the truth is that he has meetings and in some of those meetings I am one of about 50 or more people attending. Usually the Army SF Colonel I work for attends, but occasionally I have to. I say "I have to" because I'm not a big fan of meetings, or of sitting in front of a computer, or of having to go to the Palace where the Battle Update Assessments (BUAs) take place; I would much prefer to be out in Bagdad with the men. When I'm out in one of the Bagdad neighborhoods or somewhere else in Iraq I feel very alive; my senses are heightened. Part of that feeling alive is because Enthusiasm is a leadership trait, and part is because I like adrenaline. By the way, that's why I never submitted a promotion package for full Colonel: I would much rather be a Lieutenant Colonel in the field with the men than a Colonel behind a desk having to go to meetings (not to imply that the Marine Corps would have promoted me even if I had submitted a package, which is o.k. - it's in line with "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member).

Getting back to General Petraeus, bottom line: No, I don't know him. However I can tell you from having been in meetings he has held, that he is not only incredibly intelligent, he is also very personable and has a great sense of humor. BUAs take place in what's called the JOC - that's the Joint Operations Center, pronounced "Jock". The JOC is an amphitheater in one of the big rooms of one of the palaces and on each level of the amphitheater going all the way around are work stations, each with three computer screens and three telephones; each one for a different function. At each work station there is a representative of one of the different sections of the war fighting machine: Ground Operations, Air Operations, Medical, Legal, Logistics, Weather, Intelligence, etc, etc, etc; even the chaplain's office has a liaison officer/chaplain in the JOC. It's sad though because he is the one who has to put a damper on things when he addresses the JOC and talks about a soldier or Marine who was killed in action; I usually get misty-eyed when he talks about the family of the fallen hero, especially when that family includes young children. If I weren't in the JOC I'd be crying like a baby when I hear those talks (Remember, I'm a big rough, tough Marine on the outside, and a big marshmallow on the inside).

As I'm sitting here listening to machinegun fire and explosions in the distance I'm reminded of the fact that I had mentioned that there are generally 140 attacks daily in Iraq, and 60 in Bagdad. For clarification, those numbers are only major attacks or complex attacks. If the figures were to include every rocket or mortar attack, every I.E.D that detonates and every incident of sniper fire or small arms fire you can bet that the figures would be in the thousands, probably the tens of thousands. Although not every attack is written into the statistics, almost every attack has some horrible consequence. Earlier today there was a sniper attack - just one round fired - where an Army full Colonel was hit; the bullet entered the Colonel's lower back, exited his groin, took off one of his testicles and entered the other side of the groin before stopping in his thigh. Although that attack was not major or complex, I'm guessing that to the Colonel it was significant.

I finally caved and am wearing blackened rank insignia. You may recall that I said I'd never wear it, that I'd always wear silver oak leaves. Well, I'm wearing the blackened stuff. I wasn't ordered to wear it, which is what I had always thought it would take me to switch from silver to black; it was that the men finally got through to me that they were genuinely concerned about me being a bigger target than I already am. Sometimes when we’re under fire and I was being particularly targeted I half-expected them to shout out "YOU SEE SIR . . . IT'S THAT DAMNED SILVER OAK LEAF!!" They asked to speak to me about it, and they were very sincere in our discussions about their concern for my well-being. I decided that my aversion to blackened insignia wasn't worth them fretting about my wearing a big target on my chest (the silver Oak Leaf), so I switched. The smiles on their faces made the wearing of the blackened insignia, despite my distaste for it, worth it.

I'll see if I can't get someone to take another photo and you can compare the two photos - with silver and with black; see if you think I'm a lesser target now. When you see the photo note that I added a Marine Corps Eagle, Globe and Anchor to the ensemble; surely I'm now the Belle of the (Badgag) Ball.

Speaking of silver, I always carried a silver rosary ring in my pocket, perhaps thinking that it counter-acted the silver oak leaves and other things that put me in more danger than I otherwise would be in (things like the fact that my head sticks up higher than the rest of the men). I'll continue to carry it even though I switched to blackened insignia since we're never really “safe” here - last night I was almost knocked out of my cot by a mortar landing really close by. It's funny (not Ha-Ha funny, but interesting funny) that although I carry the rosary ring I don't use it: as with the camera shutter release, since my fingers are more useful on a trigger than on the rosary ring I don't get to say too many Hail Marys and Our Fathers, at least not on the ring - you can be sure they're going through my head. You know the old saying: there are no atheists in a foxhole.

I don't know if the newspapers back in the states are running this human interest story; it's bittersweet: A soldier rescued a dog here and had written to his family - parents and fiancée - about the dog, which he and his unit adopted as a mascot (yes, it's against regulations to keep mascots, but sometimes you just gotta look the other way). Tragically, the soldier was subsequently killed in action. His family wanted the dog as a remembrance of the soldier, since because he had no children the dog was their link to the soldier. The family contacted their congressman, who contacted the Department of Defense, who contacted the Department of the Army, who contacted Multi-National Force Iraq, and right now, as I am writing this, an order is being staffed to have the dog retrieved from up north and brought to the nearest Forward Operating Base where it will be transported to a place where it can be examined, vaccinated and ultimately flown back to the States to give to the family. You just know that that dog will be the most pampered and loved dog in America.

Well, that's about it for this “Greetings from Bagdad” message. Please take care and be well. You are in my thoughts and in my prayers.
Dave (McCarthy, LtCol, USMC, 1 ea.)

I’ll close this post with a video about remembering our troops, sent to me by my good friend Linda Henson (Shortyks1 on Zone Bridge). Lizzie Palmer who put this YouTube program together is 15 years old.

http://www.youtube.com/v/ervaMPt4Ha0&autoplay=1

Local Inanity, Global Insanity

2007-05-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

At their last two regular meetings, the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council took dauntless stands against violence and air pollution. At least that’s what they told themselves.

Just one day after the Virginia Tech shootings, the RPV Council endorsed the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” campaign, in order to create an America free of gun violence. Of course, illegal guns are, well… illegal, and this vacuous motion does not make them any more illegal. One councilman was not happy about joining in support of a nationwide legislation without seeing the complete legislation, understanding it, making sure that it is not brought to us under false cover. Still, the motion was passed unanimously.

This is just one part of the larger Brady anti-gun campaign that aims to eliminate or severely curtail gun ownership in America. Interestingly, the brave anti-gun movement is out of step with mainstream Americans who appreciate the benefit of guns for sport and home defense. The fastest growing gun-owner demographic is single women.

Liberal legal academics have finally come to see gun ownership as a right guaranteed by the Constitution, the right position long understood by conservatives. The New York Times reports that in March, for the first time in the nation’s history, a federal appeals court struck down a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds. Liberal law professor Laurence Tribe (Harvard) said he had come to believe that the Second Amendment protected an individual right. “My conclusion came as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome surprise,” Professor Tribe said. “I have always supported as a matter of policy very comprehensive gun control.”

Does anyone know the last time a shooting homicide was committed in Rancho Palos Verdes? The City Council would have more effect on the homicide rate by fencing off the Oceanside cliffs.

The other local inanity was the vote by the RPV Council to endorse the “US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement” also known as the “Cool Cities” pledge. By signing the pledge, RPV effectively ratified the Kyoto Protocol, thereby agreeing to reduce citywide carbon dioxide “pollution” to 7 percent below levels set in 1990 by the year 2012, or something like that. One councilman expressed concern as to the degree of commitment that the city might find itself in. “It's one thing to make a statement that you're in support of something; it's then another thing to go out and wage a complete commitment to incur costs and do studies. We did not do that part, but we wanted to show our support for the concept of what Cool Cities represents.”

Is this inanity, or what? The motion passed 3-0.

RPV now joins Seattle and the State of California in setting a goal to reduce pollution that is not pollution (Tell it to the trees.) and our action will have not the slightest effect on local or global temperatures. But it sure feels good. According to the UN climate commission, avoiding the horrors of global warming (assuming the climate models are right) will cost on the average of 3% of world GDP per year. In 2006 dollars that’s 3% of 45 Trillion dollars or $1.3 Trillion. (or $400 Billion from the USA).

I have an idea. There is at least one councilman who is an avid biker. He is known to consume more than his share of oxygen and produce more than his share of carbon dioxide pollution while pumping his two-wheeler. Give it up, Tom, save the Earth.

Fortunately, the local inanities are merely annoying examples of useless government interference. On the global level, however, the bad ideas verge on insanity. Here is a fun example.

Children are bad for the planet! John Guillebaud of the Optimum Population Trust says that “the greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.” The effect on the planet of having one child less is equivalent to reducing a family's carbon dioxide output by 620 round trip flights a year between London and New York. The EU average is currently 1.5 children per family, but the Professor says “rich countries should be the most concerned about family size as their children have higher per capita carbon dioxide emissions.” He has not yet suggested mass suicide.

On that note, Paul Watson, president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society warns that mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth. Watson has called humans a disease (the “AIDS of the Earth”) and wants the population to be reduced to less than 1 billion people. To the Sea Shepherds, saving the whales is more important than saving 5.5 billion people.

And the Winner Is?

2007-05-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

Al Qaeda. The House Democrats Intelligence Authorization bill includes a provision directing an assessment of the effects that climate change has on national security. Intelligence panel Chairman Silvestre Reyes, Texas Democrat, said the climate-change study is one of several shifts his party has made to intelligence policy. He described the idea as “cutting edge.”

Muslims are now required to pray at least once daily facing Washington, DC.

In the GOP debate on Thursday, the winner was … any Republican… well, maybe excepting Ron Paul. But any of the other nine in the debate would make a much better president than anyone on the Democratic side. The amazing thing was that the Republican candidates would agree to debate on MsNBC with that Democratic attack hound Chris Matthews as moderator. In true journalistic spirit, Matthews asked a series of “Have you stopped beating your wife?” questions, such as:

>> Governor Huckabee, in light of the scandals plaguing the current administration and its allies, which mistakes have you learned not to repeat?

>> Senator Brownback, what’s with your party and all this corruption?

>> Do you think Scooter Libby should be pardoned?

>> Governor Gilmore, is Karl Rove your friend? Do you want to keep him in the White House if you get elected President.

>> Governor Thompson, how many American soldiers have lost their lives in the Iraq war and how many have been injured to date.

>> Mayor Giuliani, has the increased influence of Christian conservatives in your party been good for it? If a private employer finds homosexuality immoral, should he be allowed to fire a gay worker?

>> Senator Brownback, will your personal religious beliefs influence your foreign policy thinking.

>> Congressman Tancredo, do you have a plan to solve the shortage of organs donated for transplant?

The remarkable thing is how well the GOP candidates handled these biased questions. Here are a few of my favorites.

>> A recent NBC poll shows that just 22 percent believe this country is on the right track and 55 percent of Americans say victory is just not possible in Iraq. Why shouldn’t they have a president who will listen?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, if you wanted to have a president who just followed the polls, all we’d need to do is plug in our TV and have it run the country, but that’s not what America wants. It’s not what America needs.

>> Fred Thompson said that Iran has already committed acts of war. Do you agree? And secondly, as part of that, what’s your trip wire for a U.S. strike in Iran?

SEN. MCCAIN: My greatest fear is the Iranians acquire a nuclear weapon and give it to a terrorist organization. The tripwire is that if they acquire these weapons -- our intelligence tells us that this is a real threat to the state of Israel to other states in the region.

>> Is it worth moving heaven and earth, spending billions of dollars, just trying to catch Osama bin Laden?

MR. ROMNEY: Of course we get Osama bin Laden and make sure he pays for the outrage he exacted on America. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person. Because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.

>> Governor Romney, what do you dislike most about America?

MR. ROMNEY: Gosh. I love America. America for me is not just our rolling mountains and hills and streams and great cities, it’s the American people. And the American people are the greatest people in the world. What makes America the greatest nation in the world is the heart of the American people -- hard-working, innovative, risk-taking, God-loving, family-oriented, the American people.

>> Would the day that Roe v. Wade is repealed be a good day for Americans? We’re looking for nuance here.

MR. HUCKABEE: We are a culture of life. We celebrate, we elevate life. When hikers on Mount Hood get lost, we move heaven and Earth to go find them. When coalminers in West Virginia are trapped in a mine, we go after them because we celebrate life. This life issue is not insignificant, it’s not small. It separates us from the Islamic fascists who would strap a bomb to the belly of their child and blow them up.

>> Mrs. Reagan wants to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Will that progress under your administration?

MR. ROMNEY: It certainly will. Altered Nuclear Transfer, I think, is perhaps the best course.

>> Embryonic. Embryonic.

MR. Romney: Altered Nuclear Transfer; we do not have to kill.

>> Senator McCain, do you believe in evolution?

SEN. MCCAIN: I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset that the hand of God is there also.

>> Seriously, would it be good for America to have Bill Clinton back living in the White House?

MR. ROMNEY: You have got to be kidding!

REP. HUNTER: You know Bill Clinton cut the U.S. Army by almost 50 percent. In this war against terror, he’s the wrong guy to have in there.

MR. GIULIANI: It would mean that we were back on defense against terrorism, given Senator Clinton’s recent positions.

And here is my absolute favorite.

> Governor Romney, what do you say to Roman Catholic bishops who would deny communion to elected officials who support abortion rights?

MR. ROMNEY: I don’t say anything to Roman Catholic bishops. They can do whatever the heck they want. Roman Catholic bishops are in a private institution, a religion, and they can do whatever they want in a religion.

> Do you see that as interference in public life?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, I can’t imagine a government telling a church who can have communion in their church. I can’t -- we have a separation of church and state; it’s served us well in this country.

Matthews simply does not understand the First Ammendment.

Contrast these reasoned answers with the responses of the Democratic contenders at their debate.

>> What would you do if two American cities were devastated by terrorist attacks?

SEN. OBAMA: I’d worry about the first responders.

>> From whom do you get your moral guidance?

MR. EDWARDS: Hmmmm……

Home Front

2007-05-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

Dave McCarthy, our favorite Marine Colonel, sent this picture to complement his “Baghdad Update” (4/29/07). With Dave are his wonderful wife Carrie and the “loveable monkeys” Connor and Trevor.

Several readers have asked for Dave’s contact information. Here is his email david.mccarthy@iraq.centcom.mil

and here is his snail mail address

MCCARTHY, DM

MNC-I C-3 AT/FP

APO AE 09342

Dave asked me to please let people know that he can't always reply in a timely manner. He loves cookies and prayers: “As for cookies or anything else, we are always VERY appreciative of anything and everything that people want to send, and everyone here always shares everything, which is good because some guys never get mail. Please let people know that I - we – truly appreciate the prayers; I personally am a very big believer in the power of prayer. Just be sure and pray not that I'll come home safe or even that I'll come home at all, just that God's Will be done.”

The Post Office provides boxes (roughly 12x14x3.5 inches) that they will mail to our troops for $8.10 no matter the weight. They arrive in about two weeks.

As a follow-up to yesterdays post (“Sensible Education Reform”), I have a suggestion for Recommendation 1: Reduce the barriers to entry into teaching for those without traditional teacher certification. Hire former soldiers.

The Troops to Teachers program is a source of quality teachers for America's schools. John Gantz, Department of Defense, Defense Activity for Non-Traditional Education Support (DANTES) asks:

“Can a tough crusty old no-nonsense Marine Corps Sergeant Major be an effective teacher in our public schools? How about a retired infantry Army Lieutenant Colonel, or an Air Force Special Operations Senior Master Sergeant, or a former Navy submarine commander? Some within the public education community raised concerns about the suitability of career military personnel as teachers. These military veterans, the critics said, would be too rigid, too demanding, inflexible, harsh, and their approach to teaching would be totally incompatible with the needs of today’s students.”

But there are almost 9,000 military veterans who have successfully made the transition from uniform to the classroom and proven the critics wrong. A recent study titled “Profile of Troops to Teachers” conducted by Emily Feistritzer, President of the National Center for Education Information, concludes that Troops to Teachers brings to public education “exactly what the nation has identified it needs”:

• More men

• More minorities

• Teachers in high demand areas – inner cities

• Teachers in high demand subject areas – special education, math, science

• Well educated teachers

• Competent teachers

• Teachers who believe all children can learn

• Teachers who value high standards for themselves as well as for students

• Committed teachers

• Teachers who plan to stay a while

Another study conducted by William Owings of Old Dominion University sought to determine the effectiveness of Troops to Teachers. Among the findings:

• Principals overwhelmingly (over 90%) reported that “Troops” teachers are more effective in classroom instruction and classroom management/student discipline than are traditionally prepared teachers with similar years of teaching experience.
• Principals stated (89.5%) that “Troops” teachers have a positive impact on student achievement to a greater degree than do traditionally prepared teachers with similar years of teaching experience.
• “Troops” teachers teach in high poverty schools, teach high-demand subjects (special education, math, and science), plan to remain in teaching as a career, and increase the teaching pool’s diversity.

John Gantz concludes: The success of the program is due solely to the fact that “Troops” teachers are highly effective in the classroom. Through Troops to Teachers, military personnel are able to continue their service to the Nation on the front lines in public school classrooms throughout America.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is looking for retiring or separating members of the Armed Forces, Coast Guard, Reserves, and National Guard to teach Math, Science, English or Special Education. Officers and enlisted troops holding a bachelors degree with expertise in these subject areas may qualify for the Troops for Teachers program. Servicemembers and veterans who are interested in learning more about opportunities with LAUSD should

click here to fill out an application.

The Department of Defense provides a $5K stipend to qualified participants to help pay for teacher certification programs (a waste). An additional $5K is available as an incentive to attract more individuals to schools serving a high percentage of disadvantaged students.

Schools should be eager to access this supply of men (Over 80% of “Troops” are men), minorities (40%), teachers of critical need subjects of math, science or special education (50%) and teachers willing to accept positions in schools serving disadvantaged students (67% of the “Troops.”)

Tell your School Boards about this great program.

Sensible Education Reform

2007-05-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

It is a pleasant surprise whenever I find a liberal public institution making a sensible policy proposal. Thus the report of the Hamilton Project, associated with the liberal Brookings Institution, caught my eye. (It was even written up today by Nicolas Kristof in the New York Times -- another surprise.)

“Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job,” written by Robert Gordon, Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O. Staiger, makes several specific recommendations for K-12 education reform:

Recommendation 1: Reduce the barriers to entry into teaching for those without traditional teacher certification. There is no reason to limit initial entrance into teaching to those who have completed traditional certification programs or who must take such courses in their first years on the job (like my friend Bob G.).

Recommendation 2: Make it harder to promote the least effective teachers to tenured positions. School districts have very good information about a teacher’s effectiveness after two or three years on the job and should base retention decisions on that trial period.

Recommendation 3: Provide bonuses to highly effective teachers willing to teach in schools with a high proportion of low income students. Today, the lowest achieving teachers are clustered in the poorest schools where students are most in need of effective teaching.

While there is a severe shortage of science and math teachers, the potential supply of technical workers (engineers, lab technicians, etc) who might enter teaching is thwarted by the credentialing requirements. Recent evidence demonstrates that teacher certification is a poor predictor of teacher effectiveness. Data from 150,000 students in 9,400 classrooms in the Los Angeles Unified School District (yearly from 2000 through 2003) show that there is no statistical difference in achievement for students assigned to certified and uncertified teachers.

If one examines the course curriculum of teacher’s colleges, this result is not surprising. Heather MacDonald in The Burden of Bad Ideas explains why Johnny’s teacher can’t teach. It’s because Teacher Ed schools worry more about stamping out racism in aspiring teachers than about test results. In fact they worry about “Anything But Knowledge”: self-actualization, social adjustment, following one’s joy, multicultural sensitivity,… “ABK” was born in the anti-intellectual fervor following WWI when progressive educators such as John Dewey decided that schools needed to prepare students for life by providing life knowledge as opposed to traditional knowledge.

They decided that kids needed to learn “critical thinking skills” rather than spelling, the multiplication tables or any facts at all. When teachers dismiss actual knowledge, you have to replace it with something, and the Ed schools favored “constructed knowledge.” I have mine, you have yours, Johnny has his, and it’s all just fine.

They promoted “child-centered schools” where the kid became the decision maker relegating the teacher to the role of advisor (a much easier gig). Teachers were taught disdain for report cards and objective tests in favor of “meta-cognitive thinking.” At all costs teachers must avoid “teaching to the test.” It sounds like discredited folderol, but professors of education, “like aging vestal virgins, still guard the progressive flame.”

Returning to the Hamilton Project report, effectiveness varies substantially among certified teachers and also among uncertified teachers. And those large differences are evident even after adjusting for the obvious socioeconomic and educational factors such as baseline test performance, race/ ethnicity, family income, gender and so on.

While certification status was not helpful in predicting teacher impacts on student performance, teacher ranking during their first two years of teaching does provide a lot of information about their likely impact during their third year and beyond. The average student assigned to a teacher who was in the bottom quartile during his or her first two years lost on average 5 percentile points relative to students with similar baseline scores and demographics. In contrast, the average student assigned to a top-quartile teacher gained 5 percentile points relative to students with similar baseline scores and demographics. Therefore, the average difference between being assigned a top-quartile or a bottom-quartile teacher is 10 percentile points. Furthermore this 10 point delta is cumulative growing to 20 points in two years, etc.

Many measures might be used to assess teacher performance including principal evaluations, parent evaluations, classroom observations, and the number of times a teacher is absent. However, measures of outputs and performance rather than credentials would need to be used.

We hear a lot about the critical need to reduce class sizes. An experiment in Tennessee of classroom size reduction found that schools could improve achievement by half as much—5 percentile points—by shrinking class size in early grades. But class size reduction of the magnitude considered in that experiment is expensive: shrinking average class size from twenty-two to sixteen students per class would require a 38 percent increase in the number of teachers and the amount of classroom space in those early grades.

Progressive doctrine has severely damaged our educational system. It is time to bring teaching into the twenty-first century where competition drives improvement and over-regulation is the enemy of progress.

Baghdad Update

2007-04-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

This is the second in a series of reports on war in Iraq from our good friend Lt. Col. Dave McCarthy, USMC. (See “Greetings from Baghdad” 4/17/07). Some of my readers don’t know Dave and have asked for a bit of background. Here, in his words, is the McCarthy family.

Greetings, All. Very early tomorrow I take a C-130 to points far northof Baghdad. My previous messages have told you about my life here in Iraq and now, before I leave, I wanted to tell you about the home front.

Joseph (17-years old) has gotten a job at Islands restaurant and enjoys it very much, however that means that he doesn't visit Carey,Connor and Trevor as much as we'd like. We understand that between work and school it's difficult. Joseph is an absolutely super kid who everyone likes; His brothers Connor and Trevor idolize him. When I speak with his guidance counselors and teachers they all rave about him. He's been accepted to several colleges. He would like to be a U.S. Marine, and is weighing the pros and cons of enlisting in the Reserves while he's in college and then getting commissioned or doing the Platoon Leaders Course. Either way he'll make a fine Marine. For years he has studied the Guidebook for Marines and the Marine Officer's Guide, and he knows the 11 Leadership Principles and the 14 Leadership Traits.

Twins Connor and Trevor are a barrel of monkeys - a loveable barrel of monkeys but a barrel of monkeys nonetheless. They play on Basketball, Little League and Soccer teams and do quite well. Like Joseph, they're very well-mannered and polite (they're my boys - they damned well better be). Cullen is our Irish Terrier, and he is one crazy dog. When he has extra energy he tears around the house at breakneck speed - I find it hard to comprehend how anything can go so fast in such a confined space - and Connor and Trevor just jump up on the couch to get out of his way and they shout in unison, "GO CULLEN GO! GO CULLEN GO!" Most of the time, the three of them tear around the house like a hurricane.

As for Carey, where do I start? She works almost full time in a demanding job, takes the boys to all of their sports practices and games, their after-school tutoring and all of their appointments. She reads to them and with them every night and does endless math problems and other studies. Carey is an amazing, wonderful wife and an amazing, wonderful mother. I honestly don't know how or why God saw fit to bless my existence on this earth with her, but I thank God every day that he did.

This current vacation in Iraq is my fifth deployment since 9/11; the first four were back-to-back, so after 9/11, I was gone from home for over two years. It is a testament to Carey's strengths - physical, mental and spiritual - that she managed with twin boys who were 18 months old when I left and almost 4 years old when I returned. This time is not any easier for her and in many ways it is more difficult. What she did then and what she does now is immeasurably harder than what I do. Heck, it’s easy getting shot at and having bad guys trying to blow you up.

Take care and be well.
Semper Fidelis,
Dave

Colonel McCarthy’s previous message of April 24 tells about the daily life of a “garden-variety Marine Ground-Pounder/Bullet-Stopper.” Dave explains that because he is a lawyer in civilian life “some people back home think what I do for the Marine Corps is lawyering, with the Judge Advocate General Corps. However, I don't practice law in the military and I have no desire to (I'm allergic to desks and offices). I went to law school after I left active duty a hundred or so years ago, so I never practiced military law.”

One of Dave’s more humorous experiences was an encounter with a wolf aboard a Forward Operating Base. He sent a truly frightening picture of the wolf (or his brother) and notes “the resemblance between a U.S. Marine and a wolf.”

On the subject of life in the war zone: “I will tell you that we can handle hunger, filth and the deprivation of all manner of comforts. What is a killer, or at least has the potential to be, is the sleep deprivation that we sometimes are subjected to by mission necessity. It's akin to the stress that I previously wrote about in that we try not to think about the stress or the lack of sleep, but we're likely internalizing it. I suppose if we thought consciously about stress and lack of sleep we'd go nuts. Then again, this whole place is nuts. One of our expressions here is NORMAL is a cycle on a washing machine. One thing that would likely seem abnormal to a normal person is how we are accustomed to explosions and gun fire. There are generally 140 attacks per day in Iraq, and 60 per day in Baghdad. Every night and much of the day the sound of small arms fire and machine gun fire is all around us, and yet if it isn't in our immediate area we don't even pay attention.”

With regard to the photo of me last message, military friends have felt compelled to tell me that in a tactical situation I shouldn't be wearing the Silver Oak Leaf rank insignia of a Lieutenant Colonel - it makes me a juicy target for a sniper - that instead I should be wearing the blackened Oak Leaf that is intended for tactical situations. For the record, I am well aware of tactics and tactical garb, however I don't care for blackened rank insignia, and while I have no aversion to others wearing it, I don't wear it; I never have and, unless I'm ordered to, I never will. Fortunately for me one of the senior ranking Marines here is Major General Moore, who also dislikes blackened rank insignia and who also never wears it. I half-jokingly tell my men that they should be grateful: I'll draw the sniper fire so they won't.

The children of Baghdad are much like children anywhere in theworld in that they run and play and are generally amusing to watch. I wish I could climb out of the Humvee and kick a soccer ball with them or have a catch, but if I did likely I'd be killed and they might also. Of course the kids here in Baghdad more often than not are dressed in clothes that have seen better days. We often take up collections and give the money to the Chaplain to buy clothes or shoes or soccer balls for the kids. Of course with the millions of residents of Baghdad we can't even make a dent, but something is better than nothing. You may recall what the Chaplain told us: We cannot do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good we can do.

Dave’s message goes on for several pages, all of it riveting. If anyone wants his complete email just let me know.

God protect Colonel Dave McCarthy and all our troops in the war zones.

Ps It looks like our grandson Johnny Walton is not going to have his second tour of duty in Iraq extended due to the latest surge.

Happiness Tips

2007-04-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

We all know that happiness is a Constitutional right and that government is responsible for making sure we have enough of it. Like many conservatives, however, I believe in volunteerism and think it is my duty to spread some happiness to combat the liberal gloom. Thus, as a public service, your happy PalosVerdesBlog will regularly provide suggestions to improve your happiness. Here is the first installment.

I. HOW TO START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

1. Open a new file on your computer.
2. Name it “Hillary Rodham Clinton”
3. Send it to the trash.
4. Empty the trash.
5. Your PC will ask you, “Do you really want to get rid of Hillary Rodham Clinton?”
6. Firmly Click “Yes.”
7. Feel better??

Next week we'll do Nancy Pelosi, then Harry Reid, and so on... Thanks to Pam, David and Sharon for sending me this tip. As a minor improvement, before step three throw all the liberal crap from your inbox into the “Hillary Rodham Clinton” folder, than send it to the trash. I regularly dump my New York Times (the free electronic highlights) that way.

II. MORE FUN WITH HILLARY

Simply click here for No Ways Tired:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4HZWOMGiIs

and here for Kentucky Fried Hillary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu9TQq0C3Ac

Turn up the volume and enjoy.

III. LAUGH AT THE CROW

By now everyone has heard about the latest environmental initiative. Noted humanitarian Cheryl Crow has called for limits on loo paper. Singer Crow has suggested “using only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required.”

Apparently Crow has other ideas as well. Crow thinks paper napkins “represent the height of wastefulness” so she has designed a clothing line with what she calls a “dining sleeve” that can be removed and washed before reuse. “Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development,” she explained, “they are, in my mind, worth investigating.” In her mind!

One of her groupies who is not so sure about the single square of loo paper is Rosie O who took a moment on “The View” to express her incredulity at the supposedly enviro-friendly suggestion. “HAVE YOU SEEN MY ASS?!” bellowed Rosie. NOT a pretty sight! Barbara Walters was good enough to warn viewers not to use their sleeves, another of Crow's helpful suggestions.

For even more fun with toilet paper, click here:
http://www.funofun.com/toiletpaper.htm

I think that’s enough happiness for one installment.

Sense and Sensibility

2007-04-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

I want to thank all the readers who answered my opinion poll dealing with the Virginia Tech massacre and the Supreme Court abortion ruling. I’m happy to report that PalosVerdesBlog readers are smarter than your average bears.

On the question about the likely source of the killer’s rage, Cho’s personal evil was the 100% response. The purpose of his acts was to get on television (93%) and he should rot in hell (85%). There was one respondent who could not make up his mind on any question, who saw “complexity and a variety of possible answers.” Of course this is precisely the moral relativism which is plaguing our society. When dealing with questions of right and wrong, good and evil, moral relativists are incapable of making value judgments.

We’ve learned a lot since the tragedy about the killer, Cho Seung-Hui, and about those who tried to deal with him. Cho’s English class examined contemporary horror films and literature, and the students were required to keep what were known as fear journals. “We had a whole discussion on serial killers,” said one student. (This is the crap they are teaching in the humanities at major universities.) Professors saw the images of persecution, revenge and anger in his writings and found themselves struggling to define the line between a legitimate work of self-expression and one of violent or sick imagery that needed to be restrained. Political correctness is going to get us killed.

Eight of his professors, while trying to “balance the freedom needed to be creative against the warning signs of psychosis,” formed a task force to discuss how to handle him. They reached out to university officials but no action was taken by school administrators in response to their concerns.

To me the overlooked story is the heroic act of Professor Liviu Librescu, a 77 year old holocaust survivor who sacrificed his life to save his students in the shooting rampage. When the gunfire got closer to his classroom, Librescu fearlessly braced himself against the door, holding it shut against the gunman in the hall, while students darted to the windows of the second-floor classroom to escape the slaughter. All the students survived. Librescu stayed behind to hold off the crazed gunman. He died to save his students.

“He realized he had to save the students,” said his daughter-in-law Ayala Schmulevich. “That was the kind of man he was.”

I have to wonder what was wrong with the male students in Librescu’s mechanical engineering classroom. In comparison to the twin disasters of feminism, rampant abortion and the decline of the nuclear family, one tends to overlook another tragic outcome, the feminization of America. Manliness, as Prof Harvey Mansfield explained in his book of that title, is on the decline in America. It is telling that the hero of the Virginia Tech tragedy was a member of the Greatest Generation.

The other significant story last week was the Supreme Court upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban passed by congress and signed into law by the president. I think my question about what the Court ruling exhibited confused some folks, since only 50% answered that it showed judicial restraint. The point is that the Court saw no reason to interfere with a duly passed law. The implications for Roe v. Wade are being debated. The ruling expresses respect for the dignity of human life (93%) outlawing a procedure (“intact dilation and extraction”) that is nothing less than a gruesome murder (100%) of a child.

For the feminist’s side of the issue, I turn to Anne Hendershott, professor of sociology at the University of San Diego. “The court did not talk about big concepts and issues like privacy, but about the small, gripping details of how abortion works,” said the professor. “Focusing on such details,” she said, “is how so-called incrementalists are trying to chip away at the availability of abortion.”

I guess the devil is, literally, in the details.

PalosVerdesBlog Opinion Poll

2007-04-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

The drive-by media have been bubbling over with balderdash the last couple of days dealing with the Virginia Tech massacre, the Supreme Court abortion ruling and other items. I’d like to know what my blog readers think about these matters. Take the poll; “answers” to follow.

Cho Seung-Hui Killings

1. What was the source of the killer’s rage?
a) Inability to process serotonin
b) Childhood brain injury
c) American injustice
d) His personal evil

2. The purpose of his hateful acts was to:
a) Rail against the use of alcohol
b) Live up to his father’s Saudi Arabian leanings
c) Die like Jesus
d) Get on television

3. What is the appropriate reaction to the murders?
a) Compassion for Cho
b) Banning hand guns
c) Anger at the Virginia Tech police
d) Hoping that Cho goes straight to hell

Supreme Court Upholds the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban

4. The Court ruling exhibited:
a) Judicial restraint
b) Judicial activism
c) Stare Decisis
d) Have no idea

5. The ruling expresses:
a) Respect for the dignity of human life
b) Disrespect for lower court rulings
c) Belief that women are flighty creatures who must be protected by men
d) Disdain of the Bush administration for women’s reproductive rights

6. The banned procedure described as “intact dilation and extraction” is:
a) A gruesome murder
b) Necessary to protect the life of the woman
c) Ok, if birth could lead to post-partum depression
d) Unlikely to cause mental anguish in the mother

Media Mania

7. The most politically biased newspaper in the US is the:
a) Wall Street Journal
b) New York Times
c) Washington Post
d) Los Angeles Times

Greetings from Baghdad

2007-04-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

Every day I think about my grandson in Iraq and pray that he will be safe. But there are only around 10 million Americans who are closely related to the US troops deployed in the war zones. The remaining 290 million Americans need to be thankful for what our brave soldiers are doing. One way for me to remind people is to post blogs about some of the heroes. This one is a message from our good friend Dave McCarthy, a Marine Special Operations Lt. Col who is back in Iraq. When Dave is not fighting for us he is a City Attorney, husband and father of three boys. Dave says that for the first time in 20 years he got a Marine Corps “High and Tight” haircut. Here are excerpts from his “Greetings from Baghdad.”

Greetings All. I trust this message finds everyone well and in good spirits. How are things there? Karen and Wick - tonight is brownie night and I can't wait! Bill - thanks for the postings on your blog; I loved the one about Thomas Friedman. Brian - some of this message is for civilian eyes, so you'll just have to skip over the parts that are old-hat to you or just bear with me.

Before I left the US I had to spend a few days in Tampa at MacDill AFB with Marine Forces Central doing some required pre-deployment stuff like taking a refresher on my SERE training (Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape) and filling out new Personnel Recovery Data so that if you're captured or become separated from your unit the National Joint Recovery Agency can verify you're who you say you are before they send in a rescue team - to insure they don't send a team into an ambush. Once in Kuwait I got myself from Kuwait City to Ali As Saleem Air Base where I was issued weapons and other toys. From there I hopped on an Air Force C-130 flying to Baghdad Airport where I jumped on an Army convoy that was headed to the Forward Operating Base.

My very first day here I received a nice welcome from the insurgents: three rockets landed inside our compound. Two of the rockets didn't do any real damage, but one landed on a vehicle, destroying it; fortunately no one was hurt. This should be an interesting tour of duty. The temperature is OK now but is starting to heat up and this summer is projected to be wickedly hot. I'm wondering if I'll break my personal record of being in 127 degree heat which I experienced last time I was here. The heat itself might be bearable, except that when we leave the wire we're wearing full battle-rattle (Helmet, flak vest, gas mask, etc, etc, etc), and that all weighs about 55 pounds.

I will tell you this: Baghdad is vastly different and 1000% worse than my last two tours here. The last time I was here my team and I managed to borrow a regular civilian van so we could travel and operate without drawing attention to ourselves. We drove that van all over Iraq and the van obviously had no armor and it was just us - we had no escort. These days you don't leave the wire unless you're in an armored Humvee and with a full armored convoy. I'm reminiscing about that van now: the one thing I loved about it is that it had sliding passenger doors on both sides and the rear passenger seats swiveled all around; whenever we found ourselves in the middle of a crowded place and the natives were restless we just opened the doors, swiveled the seats and pointed our weapons out - it was like a helicopter gunship at street level and let me tell you, the crowds parted like Moses parting the sea.

One good thing is that the personal protective gear has vastly improved over even just a few years ago. In both Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 and 2004 I had a regular old flak vest, which wouldn't stop a bullet and I’m not even sure it would stop shrapnel. I now have “sappi plates” in the front, rear and sides of my brand new flak vest and they supposedly will stop a 7.62 round (an AK-47 bullet), so that gives me some degree of comfort.

Every time we leave the compound to head out either to downtown Baghdad or to elsewhere in Iraq it is tension-filled. I wouldn't be at all surprised if I leave Iraq with an ulcer and tension headaches, not to mention circulation problems from cramming myself into Humvees - those things were not designed for a guy my size, let alone a guy my size in full battle-rattle.

When I left here after my first tour I left with a hearing loss - not too serious - from exposure to gunfire and explosions. Also, I came home with bad habits, like sleeping with a .45 under my pillow and clearing the house every time I came home (that is, they were bad habits for home; they were darned good habits for here).

While traveling in the Humvees we can expect to draw sniper fire; explosions from IEDs occur, but thankfully aren't as common. We're getting better at either pre-detonating the IEDs with electronic countermeasures or locating them and defusing them. Electronic countermeasure devices are attached toalmost all Humvees. IEDs are still the biggest worry because AIF is gettingbetter at implanting them and they are making them bigger and deadlierthan ever before. “AIF” is “Anti-Iraqi Forces” - the label we affix toal Qaeda, insurgents, Muslim extremists and foreign fighters. The onlybad guys that aren't AIF are the common criminals - tens ofthousands that Saddam Hussein released from prison just beforethe fall of his government (a tactic he no doubt learned from the Cubantyrant, specifically in the Mariel boatlift when Castro let thousands of criminals out of Cuban prisons and gulags to go to the U.S. to wreak havoc on our communities).

Today on our way back to the Forward Operating Base one of the smaller IEDs – perhaps intended for us - detonated ahead of us, destroyed an Iraqi automobile and badly injured a woman inside. Fortunately an Iraqi Army detachment was close by and took the woman to a hospital. War is a horrible thing. What keeps me going and motivates me is the firm belief that there are in fact things worse than war, which is why I'm here to beginwith. I know you're familiar with, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things . . .” and other writings of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine. They might have written during the Revolutionary War, but their writings are timeless.

One thing I feel compelled to comment on is the news reporting in the US. You should take much of what you read, hear or watch with a grain of salt. Most reporters seldom leave the international zone in Baghdad, so they either report third-hand news or they simply make up “news.” If seems that they have a hidden, or not so hidden, agenda and they don't see ordon't want to see the progress we're making here, and if they do see itthey won't report it. Progress here is being made, albeit slowly . . I think. Hey, what do I know, I'm just a Marine Ground-Pounder/Bullet-Stopper. They also editorialize the news in a big way. I'm told that the New York Times reported that there was an anti-American protest in Iraq where “tens of thousands” of Iraqis turned out. I was near that protest when it took place, and in actuality the protestors were so few in number that they barely filled one traffic intersection; it was a non-event.

Are the media back in the states reporting that the insurgents have been including Chlorine in their IED's? That way if the explosion or the shrapnel don't get you the poison gas will. They are complete immoral barbarians; they target crowds of innocent civilians, including women and children. You'd think that both people and politicians would be so outraged they would demand that the US military stay here until the last of the murderers are wiped out. There I go again getting heavy; sorry about that. Getting back to the progress we're making, I'm reminded of something a chaplain told us before we headed out of the compound to go into downtown Baghdad; he said, “You cannot do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good you can do.” We like to think we're doing some good over here; doing good for both the Iraqi people and doing good for the future of America; certainly some of us will die trying and we're willing to do so for a cause we believe in.

Last Sunday I was fortunate enough to be on a Forward Operating Base when Mass was being conducted in the base chapel so I attended. Wouldn't you know a mortar round impacted not far from the chapel right during Mass. My first thought was “what a good time and place to die - at mass and in a chapel.” My second thought was “freaking Muslim extremists - we're expected to bend over backwards to show respect for Islam and for the Koran and here they go shelling us while we're at church.”

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for listening. I'll write again when I can. Please take care and be well.

Semper Fidelis,

Dave (McCarthy, LtCol, USMC, 1 ea.)

Post Script - Just after I wrote the last of this message three 107 mm rockets impacted the Base in the area where all our tents and livingfacilities are located. They were close, but thank God, no cigar. Oneof them impacted not 100 meters from my tent, and a piece of shrapnelcame through my wall - I'll bring it home and encase it in Lucite for anice souvenir.

My grandson Johnny Walton just emailed to say that his Army 82nd Airborne unit has not yet been extended beyond its 12 month tour of duty (John’s second in Iraq) due to the latest troop surge. We’re praying that he will be home safe in the fall.

Lies, Damned Lies and Global Warming

2007-04-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

THE WEATHER CHANNEL (today): Recent cold weather in parts of the country has caused some people to wonder about global warming. But are all cold days the same? For more on that, we turn to the Weather Channel's resident climatologist Tom Durrow. Tom?

“That's a good question, Cynthia. Folks in Cleveland are probably thinking that if their team can't play on opening day because of snow, maybe global warming has gone away. Not so. In fact, Cynthia, Ohioans may have forgotten that Cleveland posted a record high 77 degrees on January 14. So did a number of other cities during the first month of 2007. Climatologists say there is more significance to warm weather in January than cold weather in April. So much so, in fact, that beginning this year, the Department of Meteorology at Harvard University will weight certain days of 2007 differently from others.

“So, on the one hand this year so far ranks as only the 26th warmest winter since 1950 calculated on an absolute basis of temperature averaging. However, according to climatologists at Harvard and other respected universities, this year is actually the second warmest winter ever if you assign the necessary historic weights to the warm days and cold days of 2007. This weighting, “or atmospheric reconfiguration modeling,” gets pretty complicated.

Forgetting the complex mathematics, let's take two days for illustration. On January 14, with its temperature in Cleveland of 77 degrees, scientists have assigned a weighted temperature of 77 plus 14 which equals 91 degrees. Meanwhile, April 3, which had a low temperature of 19, receives a weighted temperature of 19x3, bringing the day's low to an almost balmy 57. So while you may think it was cold this past month, the weather scientists say even the coldest days were actually pretty warm. Cynthia?”

OK, Bill, it is apocryphal... but did I have you going for just a minute?
Greg

Thanks to my good friend Greg who is smarter than your average bear. But is it more outrageous than the lies and hyperbole contained in Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, that “foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide.” Britain's Lord Moncton has challenged Gore to a televised debate? Moncton suggested for a venue the Oxford Museum of Natural History, site of the famous debate between T.H. Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, because “I hope that in this lofty atmosphere the caution and scepticism of true science will once again prevail, this time over the shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism.” Gore declined.

I could spend a day listing the lies in Gore’s movie and his public statements, as well as the alarmist subterfuge in the latest UN report. (See my post “Anthropogenic or Au-Natural?” 11/24/06)

For example, look at the hysteria over carbon dioxide, that satanic gas. Last week the US Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision demonstrated that they possess superior intellect in ALL matters (including atmospheric chemistry and physics), deciding that carbon dioxide is indeed a pollutant which is helping to cause global alarming, ...er, warming. Therefore, the EPA is now vested with the mandate to control the amount of that substance that is released into the atmosphere by human activity.

Most of us are aware that we, and our animal friends, “exhaust” carbon dioxide as the culmination of the O2/CO2 exchange in the lungs. The EPA, reacting swiftly, has already announced that, effective July 1st, new regulations will require that all American citizens take one less breath per minute in order to curb the generation of this pollutant. The President has requested that all Americans “make this sacrifice for the safety of the earth,” and has implored the international community to follow our lead.

Sorry,.. I couldn’t resist another spoof.

In actual fact, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is quite low relative to levels in geologic times. One hundred million years ago the level was six times higher than now and the previous low, equal to the current level, was three hundred million years ago. Before that was a peak 18 times the current level about 500 millions years ago. Those much higher levels of carbon dioxide had nothing to do with automobile exhaust. And of our current carbon loading, humans cause less than 4 percent of it. Volcanoes and wild fires cause much, much more and guess how accurately those events can be modeled.

The sad thing about all the lies, damn lies is how many good-intentioned people are sucked in by them. Yesterday at Starbucks a nice lady approached our posse with a pile of New York Times newspapers. She asked if we wanted some, but said that she had removed the Home sections since her article was in there.

Under the headline “To Fight Global Warming, Some Hang Clothes,” there was a picture of Kathy’s house in Rolling Hills with several clothes lines hanging in the back yard. Kathy said she was appalled by her $1100 monthly electric bill last summer so she decided to begin hanging out her wash. She became a clothesline activist and credits the drop of her electric bill to $575 in March as due largely to her (mostly) abandoning the electric dryer.

Poor Kathy is so deluded. The cost of drying a typical load of laundry in an electric dryer is 35 cents compared to 18 cents in a gas dryer. The typical gas dryer costs about $85 to operate annually. Unless, as Dr. Dave says, she is paying illegals to blow dry her wash, there is no way that Kathy could be spending more than about $15 monthly, assuming she has an electric dryer. Unfortunately, Kathy has not been able to get rid of her dryer. Her husband refuses to use the line-dried bath towels since they feel like sandpaper. Oh, and Kathy refuses to apply for the required clothesline permit from the Rolling Hills Community Association. Liberals don’t have to obey the law, because, in the words of her 13 year old daughter, “It looks beautiful; It looks like we care for the Earth.”

Is Thomas Friedman a Flathead?

2007-04-06T15:28:00.000-07:00

Since the publication of his mega-bestseller The World is Flat in 2005, Tom Friedman has become the darling of the neoliberal intellectual world. Like many intellectuals who have achieved prominence, Friedman has seized the imprimatur to offer weighty pronouncements on all manner of public issues ranging from environmentalism to tax policy to war strategy. The public response has been nearly uniform appreciation for a guy who seems to know his stuff.

So who is Thomas Friedman, and why are so many people listening to him? His bona fides are impressive. Friedman received a BA in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University and an MA in Middle Eastern studies from Oxford. He was a war correspondent in Lebanon and Palestine and a political reporter during the George H. W. Bush and Clinton years. Currently he is the international affairs columnist for The New York Times, a famous author and a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Thomas Friedman is a passionate missionary for the neoliberal world view (shared with Alan Greenspan and the late Milton Friedman) that sees the free market as the fountainhead of human freedom. He believes that globalization—the ongoing process of worldwide industrialization— is only compatible with capitalism and that this economic system enables humanity to leave war, tyranny, and poverty behind. As such Friedman is a classical utopian intellectual. Replace capitalism with socialism and his views are consistent with the positions expressed by Karl Marx in the The Communist Manifesto.

Unfortunately, Tom Friedman shares Marx's blind spots. “For Marxists and neoliberals alike, it is technological advance that fuels economic development, and economic forces that shape society. Politics and culture are secondary phenomena.” (John Gray, “The World is Round,” International Journal on World Peace) In Friedman’s own words, “I am a technological determinist! Guilty as charged.”

While embracing the weakest features of Marx's thought—its consistent underestimation of nationalist and religious movements— Friedman failed to absorb Marx's insights into the self-destructive qualities of capitalism. Marx viewed the free market as a revolutionary force, and understood that its expansion throughout the world was bound to be disruptive and violent. Just look at Russia today to see an example of Friedman’s myopia.

Globalization clearly makes the world smaller. It may also make it richer. It does not necessarily make it more peaceful or more liberal. Adam Smith, the 18th century moral philosopher and pioneering political economist, was much closer to the truth when he wrote “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” Note that it’s not all about economics; peace and justice are required as well for prosperity to reign.

Taken together, Friedman’s two part paean to neoliberal socio-economic theory [The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999) and The World Is Flat (2005)] tells a compelling story of globalization fueled by advances in communications technology and the Internet. But they naively suppose that globalization leads ineluctably to capitalism and capitalism to harmony, and fail utterly to comprehend the primacy of nationalistic and religious forces. But, what the heck, prominent intellectuals can be as narrow-minded as Joe 6-pack.

That does not deter intellectuals from venturing well outside their areas of expertise. Consider Friedman’s television documentary “Addicted to Oil” shown on the Discovery Channel. He warned that “This is not your parents’ energy crisis” and presented three good reasons: America is engaged in a war on terror with an enemy that it is funding through its reliance on oil; with the rise of India, China, Brazil and Russia there are three billion new global consumers; and as the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom in oil-rich authoritarian countries slows down.

Then he adds the neoliberal carrot: green technology may as a result become the largest growth industry of the new century. “Being green is going to be a source of so much industry in the 21st century, whether it’s green appliances, green design, green manufacturing, and green consulting.” And China is going to have to go green, because they can’t breathe.

This is intellectual utopianism run amok. Never mind the Chinese construction of a new coal fired power plant every week for the next ten years in the current phase of building. Never mind that energy use in the developing countries is going to triple by 2050. Pay no attention to the fact that the energy used is going to be the cheapest available, i.e. coal and oil. Friedman has faith: China will “leap ahead and provide the breakthrough for really cheap solar power.” Sure it will.

Tom shares the primary characteristic of the public intellectual, the belief that social engineering through government intervention will lead to utopia. Thus he is happy to support European-level taxes on gasoline to drive down consumption and Hillary Clinton-style confiscatory takings (“I want to take those profits.”) of oil company profits to fund government development of alternative fuels. Milton Friedman would be appalled.

Since both of these actions would harm the economy, and poor people preferentially, they will not happen. They are empty sound bites (or bytes for Tom) signifying nothing. The fact is that an increase in bio-fuel usage might have a beneficial effect. The “Saudis might increase production enough to drive down oil prices, in order to make investments -- investors beware -- in alternative fuels even more uneconomic than they already are.” (George Will, “Let's get real about soaring gasoline prices”)

Even more effective would be to greatly expand US oil production. We currently have a proven reserve of 30 billion barrels (BB) plus 15 BB in the new field 175 miles off the Louisiana coast, plus 10 BB in the Artic National Wildlife Preserve. Yet the US produces only one quarter of the 7.5 BB that we use yearly. If we produced more the world price would drop and the Muslim despots would profit less.

And if you are worrying about running out of oil, don’t. Here is the record. In 1971 the worldwide proven reserves of oil were 612 BB. By 2002 the world had used 767 BB – and the proven reserves were 1,028 BB. The more we look, the more we find.

Netting out Tom Friedman: a classical utopian intellectual, a technological determinist, an ordained expert in fields he knows just enough about to be dangerous, yet a naïve believer in the efficacy of government intervention in financial markets when it suits his agenda -- i.e., a hypocrite, or not as smart as he would have us believe.

Heroes versus Stooges

2007-04-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while the Los Angeles Times prints something intelligent and I feel compelled to offer a nod of appreciation. Yesterday the lead editorial headline was “Small classes aren't a cure-all.” In the seventh paragraph the stark truth emerged: “There is still no evidence that the multibillion-dollar investment in small primary classes has made more than an incremental difference in achievement.”

The State has been investing $1.7 Billion yearly in class size reduction and it has had, maybe, an incremental (read miniscule) effect on student performance. Meanwhile this “well-intentioned” expenditure of our money swelled the ranks of the teaching profession and has led to fraud at some school districts. In one case, the Santa Ana district fudged the books to make it look as though there were no more than 20 students per teacher in the primary grades so the schools could receive $16 Million from the state for reducing class size. The Times recommends a “public spanking” for the Santa Ana school board and superintendent. How about some jail time?

I have two friends who retired from engineering and went into teaching hoping to make a difference. Roger went to a high school in a tough LA neighborhood. He lasted four years and finally gave it up, quite discouraged. Bob is sticking it out in a school near Watts, but it’s tough. The quality of teachers at their schools was not the problem. The size of their classes was not the problem. The composition of their classes was. If classes could be restricted to those kids who wanted to be there, who did not want to cause trouble, who could spend their time thinking about biology rather than their babies, class size would not be an issue. One partial solution to this problem is school choice.

Friday the Times printed a column about the Los Angeles Unified School District’s decisions on two charter school issues. In the first, the LAUSD board rejected the application by Green Dot Public Schools to build eight new charters in a Watts neighborhood, one of the city's worst. The board members who voted against the charters are allies of the teacher’s union. Despite the promising results Green Dot has produced at its other charters, they remain skeptical of the group's reform model, whatever that is.

In denying the charters the LAUSD board violated state law.

My friend and school board member Mike Lansing, who represents Watts, accused his colleagues of bending to the wishes of the influential United Teachers Los Angeles, which opposes the charter movement, and which donated over $1 Million dollars to the election campaigns of their three board stooges. “It's really disappointing that we keep talking about wanting to do what's best for children first, when without a doubt that vote was about a teacher’s union and three board members not having the backbone to stand up and do the right thing for kids over their ties to the union,” Lansing said after the vote.

For those of you who don’t know Mike, he is the full time director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Los Angeles Harbor. Like Roger and Bob, Mike is a hero.

In the other LAUSD board decision, it voted to renew the charter of Academia Semillas del Pueblo despite the fact that the unconventional school has had terrible test results for five years. The school’s absurd multilingual curriculum includes Spanish, English, Mandarin and Nahuatl-Mexicano. But the board bowed to pressure from political stooges Richard Alatorre and Jackie Goldberg and Spanish groups to keep it open, the kids be damned. Until the unions lose their hold on politicians and school board members, the kids have little to no chance.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

2007-03-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” These words from the Declaration of Independence are among the most famous and inspirational in the history of ideas.

Note that these rights do not include the Right to Happiness. The Founding Fathers were intelligent enough to know that it was beyond their power, and also believed that it is not the business of government to guarantee outcomes. Government was committed to do nothing to stand in the way of the pursuit of happiness (income taxes notwithstanding) but was not about to make happiness a right.

Oh, how things have changed! Today, there are folks who think that the government needs to guarantee the right to health care, the right to housing and the right to income equality. I know that I’m a little bummed that I make less than Kobe Bryant and Barbara Boxer, but then I can’t out-jump Kobe, or out-think Barb… Scratch that! I have no idea why she’s not impoverished.

Our friend Dennis Prager has been talking about “Compassion and the Decline of America.” He tells about the 13-year-old son of his friend and the baseball game where the score was changed. His son's team was winning 24-7 as the game entered the last inning, but the scoreboard read 0-0. In order to ensure that the boys losing by a lopsided score would not feel too bad, the score was changed.

Throughout liberal America, compassion is trumping all other values: truth, fairness, wisdom and building character. One pities the boys on the losing team, but not for the typical PC reasons. “They learned that they do not have to deal with disappointment in life. Instead, someone in authority will take care of them. They learned that their feelings, not objective standards, are what society deems most important.”

This reliance on the state for personal problems -- health care, housing and income equality, winning and losing -- the worldview of the Left -- is formed early in life.
Prager notes that compassion is a morally and socially destructive guideline when making public policy.

Mike Medved, another good friend, notes that the “Essence of Liberalism” is embracing life's losers. The left sees society divided between the privileged and the powerless, the favored and the unfortunate, victors and victims.

“While the right wants to reward beneficial choices and discourage destructive directions, the left seeks to eliminate or reduce the impact of the disadvantages that result from bad decisions. In place of the conservative emphasis on accountability, the left proffers a gospel of indiscriminate compassion.”

Actually, indiscriminate is not quite right. “Enlightened lefties long to embrace and exalt the homeless, single mothers, people of color, homosexuals, feminists, convicted criminals, atheists, immigrants and many more – even Islamo-Nazi terrorists. America is simply too prosperous and too powerful to win liberal sympathy.”

In his book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness," Lyle H. Rossiter, M.D., describes the liberal psyche.

“In his determination to control the world, the liberal constantly defends himself against the most basic of human fears: being alone and helpless in a dangerous, indifferent world, the nightmare of the abandoned, terrified child. Persons plagued with such fears easily conclude that it is in their greatest interest to dominate others, and to set about achieving that goal through the manipulation of government power.”

This leads to the “liberal principle of coercive collectivism in which the citizen's choices will be influenced by ideals of entitlement, welfare dependency, state regulation and moral relativism.” The liberal, Rossiter adds, is “not called to maturity but is instead invited to begin a second childhood. Like the child at play, he is given, or at least promised, ultimate economic, social and political security without having to assume responsibility for himself.”

In an insightful column called “The Pathology of Liberalism,” Joan Swirsky explains that “at the core of liberal thinking is the same kind of pathology that characterizes other mental disorders, i.e., a glitch in the brain that produces feelings and behavior over which liberals have no control.”

“Liberals, like children, live in a world of utopian dreaminess, believing that if everyone would just be nice to each other - let's talk, let's chat - all the noisy death threats and pesky suicide bombings would go away, and all those grumpy grownups in the current administration would see the light.”

“And when thwarted they do what children do when they're mad. They call names. Who but a snobby and vacuous little brat would badmouth the president on foreign soil while our troops were in harm's way as liberal Senator John Kerry did, as did liberal former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.”

Much worse, they've aligned themselves with America's mortal enemies. According to Vasko Kohlmayer in World Defense Review, “the affection in which liberals are held by our foes is neither unjustified nor surprising. They have more than earned it by systematically subverting this country's war effort while simultaneously proffering assistance to those who have pledged to destroy us.”

It is a long suffered illness. “Almost all of the current Dem leadership was actively involved in the Vietnam protest effort. Bill and Hilary Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and Nancy Pelosi were all personally engaged in the anti-war movement. And when at last it bore its disastrous fruit, they gloated and danced in the streets. Exhilarated and jubilant, they deemed America's disgrace their finest hour. In their skewed world, America's defeat came to represent their personal triumph.”

Joan Swirsky advises, the next time you're listening to a liberal, observe the symptoms: the anger, pessimism, negativity, name-calling, gratuitous insults, the desire to present an image of goodness, the transparent attempt to be liked, and the eagerness to placate our enemies, the better to avoid a fight so that those enemies will like us.

“Ask yourself: Do I want a child to be the President of the United States and the Commander in Chief in a time of war?”

I ask myself, Do I want liberals making any decisions that determine the direction of our country? NOPE!

Banish the Bling

2007-03-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

“A culture of failure taints black America” wrote Juan Williams of National Public Radio. (Washington Post, 8/21/06) Williams noted there is a “sinister obstacle facing African American young people today: a culture steeped in bitterness and nihilism, a culture that is a virtual blueprint for failure.”

In response to my post “Parsing the Achievement Gap” (3/23/07) blogging buddy Mahndisa commented about the “mass popularization of NEGATIVE rap and NEGATIVE rock and roll, plebian, gut bucket, baby mamma having, concubining, drug selling and doing foolishness that is glorified, rather than condemned as in previous generations.”

Mahndisa is a black educator who fights against the culture of failure every day. She concludes: “I am sick and tired of seeing people who choose a life of ignorance because they are trying to be black.”

Williams talks of generational poverty caused by the fact that nearly 70% of black children (and 50% of Hispanic children) are born to single women today. “Their search for identity and a sense of direction is undermined by the twisted popular culture that focuses on the “bling-bling” of fast money associated with rap artists, drug dealers and the idea that women are at their best when flaunting their sexuality and having babies.”

Bob Herbert in the New York Times (“The Danger Zone”) talks about the extreme joblessness of young black men — “joblessness that is coursing through communities and being passed from one generation to another, like a deadly virus” — that is a direct consequence of dropping out of school. For high school dropouts, the jobless rate is 29% for whites, 19% for Hispanics and 67% for black men.

Herbert’s solution is “Education, Education, Education.” For black males, employment rates rise from 33% among high school dropouts to 57% among high school graduates to 86% among four-year college graduates (just 2% below the white rate).

Herbert believes that not working “breeds all manner of antisocial behavior, including violent crime” and that there are so few black marriages because “there are so many black men who are financially incapable of supporting a family.” This is disturbing. Here is an educated, black columnist for the New York Times who thinks that lack of a job causes crime. It is, again, a question of cause and effect, chicken and egg.

Kay Hymowitz (“Marriage and Caste,” City Journal) notes that America’s chief source of inequality is the Marriage Gap. As of 1960, the percentage of high school dropout women who were single mothers barely hit 1%. That all changed in the decades following the 1960s when women with lower educational levels “decided that marriage and children were two entirely unconnected life experiences.” Such behavior is irrational as marriage improves the economic situation of low-income women, even if their husbands are only deliverymen or janitors.

Barry, another friend and blog reader, has pegged the root cause of the increasing illegitimacy among poor people. The Great Society welfare programs made it economically advantageous to be a poor mother with out-of-wedlock children and no job. It allowed males to skip out of all family obligations. Now we have a third generation on the way whose culture is tied to a welfare state mentality and the accompanying victimization complex of their hypocritical leaders.

Jesse the Jackson wrote today that young African-American boys are in crisis… but “we can't simply load the blame on the schools.” Is this a new JJ? But then he reverted to huckster form. In the crucial early years, “they are shackled…. with no systematic program to ensure prenatal care, health care, day care, parental education.” JJ’s solution is mo gub’ment to take care of the kids while the moms … do what the moms do.

“We've got too many babies raising babies,” said Jackson, “who don't have the resources or the knowledge of how to take care of their children.” Right on!

Mahndisa punctuated the issue: “All of my Black ancestors would roll over in their graves if they knew folk were acting like this!”

The bloody crime is that the poor in America were better off fifty years ago because they had better values that included being married to your children’s mother and supporting your family, no matter what it took.