The Anti-Declinist
Mrs. Thatcher’s
predecessor as prime minister, the amiable but forgotten Sunny Jim
Callaghan, once confided to a friend of mine that he thought Britain’s
decline was irreversible and that the government’s job was to manage it
as gracefully as possible. By 1979, even this modest aim seemed beyond
the capabilities of the British establishment, and the nation turned to a
woman who was one of the few even in a supposedly “conservative” party
not to subscribe to the Callaghan thesis. She reversed the decline, at
home and overseas. The Falklands War, inconsequential in and of itself,
had a huge global significance: After Vietnam, the fall of the Shah,
Cuban troops in Africa, and Soviet annexation of real estate from
Cambodia to Grenada, the British routing of the Argentine junta stunned
everyone from the politburo in Moscow to their nickel ’n’ dime clients
in the presidential palaces, all of whom had figured the “free world” no
longer had any fight in it.
Just after the Fall of Thatcher, I was in the pub enjoying a drink with her daughter Carol after a little light radio work. A fellow patron, a “radical” “poet”, decided to have a go at her in loco parentis, which is Latin for “in the absence of her loco parent”. After reciting a long catalogue of Mrs Thatcher’s various crimes, he leant into Carol, nose to nose, and summed it all up: “Basically, your mum just totally smashed the working classes.”
Carol was a jolly good sport about it, as always. And it has to be said that this terrible indictment loses a lot of its force when you replace “Vatcher” – a word the snarling tribunes of the masses could effortlessly spit down the length of the bar – with “your mum”.
On the other hand, he had a point: basically, her mum did just totally smash the working classes.That’s to say, she understood that the biggest threat to any viable future for Britain was a unionized public sector that had awarded itself a lifestyle it wasn’t willing to earn. So she picked a fight with it, and made sure she won. In the pre-Thatcher era, union leaders were household names, mainly because they were responsible for everything your household lacked. Britain’s system of government was summed up in the unlovely phrase “beer and sandwiches at Number Ten” — which meant union grandees showing up at Downing Street to discuss what it would take to persuade them not to go on strike, and being plied with the aforementioned refreshments by a prime minister reduced to the proprietor of a seedy pub, with the Cabinet as his barmaids.
In 1990, when Mrs. Thatcher was evicted from office by her ingrate party’s act of matricide, the difference she’d made was such that in all the political panel discussions on TV that evening no producer thought to invite any union leaders. No one knew their names anymore.
That’s the difference between a real Terminator, and a poseur like Schwarzenegger.
As to the force of her personality, at the Commonwealth Conference in (I think) Vancouver a couple of decades ago, they had a “dress-down Friday” thing for the final day: the chaps from Oz, Canada, Belize, Papua New Guinea, and whatnot showed up in slacks and open-necked shirts, and then Mrs Thatcher came downstairs dressed in the usual big blue power suit with the Eighties shoulder pads. I think it was Bob Hawke, the Aussie PM, who observed, “Forty-nine blokes in the right dress code, and one woman who isn’t. And she made us feel like the ones who’d got it wrong.”
The term “rest in peace” doesn’t seem quite right for Margaret Thatcher. I hope upstairs they’re getting out an extra large tumbler, and readying for some vigorous debate into the small hours.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/344938/anti-declinist-mark-steyn
PK'S NOTE: And from the Left/Progressives:
MSNBC host: Thatcher embodied selfishness and greed
Allahpundit warned in the breaking-news post that the passing of Margaret Thatcher would probably not generate much graciousness on the Left. MSNBC proved him prophetic almost immediately, as NRO’s Eliana Johnson captured in this clip. Martin Bashir immediately launched into an attack on Thatcher as the embodiment of “selfishness and greed,” and managed to offer a quote that Thatcher probably would have enjoyed, considering the sources:“The result was a kind of flagrant, excessive, and ostentatious pursuit of cash” in Britain, Bashir said.
He added, “The best description I ever heard of her was from French president Francois Mitterand who said she had the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe.”How did that flagrant pursuit of cash work out for Britons, anyway? Jim Pethokoukis reminded us this morning:
She privatized. She cut taxes. She busted unions. As economist Scott Sumner has noted, “Britain had lagged other European economies for decades, growing far more slowly than most economies on the continent. Thatcher’s reforms were among the most comprehensive in the world.”
Just compare the performance of the UK economy versus the French economy. One nation in 1979 started to again embrace markets, the other did not. Brits went from being 10% poorer than Frenchmen to being 10% richer. The lady was not for turning, but thanks in great part to her policies and determination, the economic fate of the UK and the West was.Be sure to look at the eye-popping chart. It’s amazing how pursuit of economic growth looks when economic growth is the actual goal — as opposed to the economic and regulatory policies over the last four years of “recovery” here.
So, I guess the “let the body get cold” period for respect and graciousness only applies to liberals and the Left, huh? That seems to be the AP stylebook, too, and not just MSNBC. J. P. Freire contrasts the obits from the Associated Press for Thatcher and another world leader who recently passed away. One freed people from economic stagnation while another confiscated great swaths of the economy and created stagnation. Guess who gets better treatment?
When it comes to praising free market champions like Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Associated Press still has trouble giving them their due. In their obituary this morning, the APleads with, and continues to harp upon, the controversy stoked during her tenure as England’s Prime Minister, instead of her actual achievements. Take the first sentence from this morning’s obit:
Love her or loathe her, one thing’s beyond dispute: Margaret Thatcher transformed Britain. The Iron Lady who ruled for 11 remarkable years imposed her will on a fractious, rundown nation — breaking the unions, triumphing in a far-off war, and selling off state industries at a record pace.
“Ruled.” “Imposed her will.” The AP’s word choice apes the old Liberal attacks on Thatcher as tyrant, taking pains to equivocate between the varying opinions people had of her.
For admirers, Thatcher was a savior who rescued Britain from ruin and laid the groundwork for an extraordinary economic renaissance. For critics, she was a heartless tyrant who ushered in an era of greed that kicked the weak out onto the streets and let the rich become filthy rich.
To the AP’s reporter, the history is apparently far from settled that her transformational role was a positive one. Contrast this to the AP’s coverage (by a different reporter, of course) of the death of socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez:
President Hugo Chavez, the fiery populist who declared a socialist revolution in Venezuela, crusaded against U.S. influence and championed a leftist revival across Latin America, died Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer.
This breathless introduction is followed by more plaudits:
During more than 14 years in office, Chavez routinely challenged the status quo at home and internationally. He polarized Venezuelans with his confrontational and domineering style, yet was also a masterful communicator and strategist who tapped into Venezuelan nationalism to win broad support, particularly among the poor.
Yes, he was polarizing, but he challenged the status quo! He was a masterful communicator!
Why, he’s almost like Venezuela’s Thatcher! Except he received broad support, unlike Thatcher who merely “imposed her will” on a “fractious nation.”They just can’t help themselves, can they?
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/04/08/msnbc-host-thatcher-embodied-selfishness-and-greed/
PK'S NOTE: How amazing was she? Read this:
Speech to Conservative Party Conference
From her speech to Britain’s Conservative Party Conference in 1975, Thatcher’s blunt and timeless diagnosis of the economic and moral ills of destructive left-wing policies:The economic challenge has been debated at length in this hall.
Last week it gave rise to the usual scenes of cordial brotherly strife.
Day after day the comrades called one another far from comradely names, and occasionally, when they remembered, they called us names too.
Some of them, for example, suggested that I criticised Britain when I was overseas. They are wrong.
It wasn’t Britain I was criticising. It was-Socialism. (Applause).
And I will go on criticising Socialism, and opposing Socialism because it is bad for Britain—and Britain and Socialism are not the same thing.
As long as I have health and strength, they never will be. (Applause).
But whatever could I say about Britain that is half as damaging as what this Labour Government have done to our country?
Let’s look at the record.
It is the Labour Government that have caused prices to rise at a record rate of 26 per cent a year.
They told us that the Social Contract would solve everything. But now everyone can see that the so-called contract was a fraud—a fraud for which the people of this country have had to pay a very high price.
It is the Labour Government whose policies are forcing unemployment higher than it need have been—thousands more men and women lose their jobs every day.
There are going to be men and women many of them youngsters straight out of school—who will be without a job this winter because Socialist Ministers spent last year attacking us, instead of attacking inflation.
And it’s the Labour Government that have brought the level of production below that of the 3-day week in 1974. We’ve really got a 3-day week now,—only it takes five days to do it. (Applause).
It’s the Labour Government that have brought us record peace-time taxation. They’ve got the usual Socialist disease—they’ve run out of other people’s money. (Laughter).
And it’s the Labour Government that have pushed public spending to record levels.
And how’ve they done it? By borrowing, and borrowing and borrowing.
Never in the field of human credit has so much been owed. (Laughter). End of section checked against ITN News at Ten, 10 October 1975.
But serious as the economic challenge is, the political and moral challenge is just as grave, perhaps more so.
Economic problems never start with economics. They have deeper roots—in human nature and in politics.
They don’t finish at economics either.
Labour’s failure to cope, to look at the nation’s problems from the point of view of the whole nation, not just one section of it, has led to loss of confidence and a sense of helplessness.
With it goes a feeling that Parliament, which ought to be in charge, is not in charge—that the actions and the decisions are taken elsewhere.
And it goes deeper than that. There are voices that seem anxious not to overcome our economic difficulties, but to exploit them, to destroy the free enterprise society and put a Marxist system in its place.
…
I sometimes think the Labour Party is like a pub where the mild is running out. If someone doesn’t do something soon, all that’s left will be bitter. (Laughter). And all that’s bitter will be Left. (Laughter).
Whenever I visit Communist countries, their politicians never hesitate to boast about their achievements.
They know them all by heart and reel off the facts and figures, claiming that this is the rich harvest of the Communist system.
Yet they are not prosperous as we in the West are prosperous, and they are not free as we in the West are free.
Our capitalist system produces a far higher standard of prosperity and happiness because it believes in incentive and opportunity, and because it is founded on human dignity and freedom. (Applause).
Even the Russians have to go to a capitalist country, America to buy enough wheat to feed their people. And that aftermore than 50 years of a State controlled economy.
Yet they boast incessantly while we, who have so much more to boast about, forever criticise and decry.
Isn’t it time we spoke up for our way of life? (Applause) After all, no Western nation has to build a wall round itself to keep its people in. (Applause).
So let us have no truck with those who say the free enterprise system has failed. What we face today is not a crisis of capitalism, but of Socialism. No country can flourish if its economic and social life is dominated by nationalisation and state control.
The cause of our shortcomings does not therefore lie in private enterprise. Our problem is not that we have too little socialism. It is that we have too much.
…
THE FREE SOCIETY AND THE ECONOMY
A man’s right to work as he will to spend what he earns to own property to have the State as servant and not as master these are the British inheritance.
They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend. (Applause). End of section checked against ITN Early Evening News, 10 October 1975.
But we want a free economy, not only because it guarantees our liberties, but also because it is the best way of creating wealth and prosperity for the whole country.
It is this prosperity alone which can give us the resources for better services for the community, better services for those in need. (Applause).
By their attack on private enterprise, this Labour Government have made certain that there will be next to nothing available for improvements in our social services over the next few years.
We must get private enterprise back on the road to recovery, not merely to give people more of their own money to spend as they choose, but to have more money to help the old and the sick and the handicapped.
The way to recovery is through profits. Good profits today, leading to high investment, well-paid jobs and a better standard of living tomorrow. (Applause).
No profits mean no investment, and a dying industry geared to yesterday’s world.
Other nations have recognised that for years now. They are going ahead faster than we are; and the gap between us will continue to increase unless we change our ways.
The trouble here is that for years the Labour Party have made people feel that profits are guilty-unless proved innocent.
But when I visit factories and businesses I do not find that those who actually work in them are against profits. On the contrary, they want to work for a prosperous concern. With a future—their future. (Applause).
Governments must learn to leave these companies with enough of their own profits to produce the goods and jobs for tomorrow.
If the Socialists won’t or can’t there will be no profit making industry left to support the losses caused by fresh bouts of nationalisation.
And if anyone says I am preaching laissez-faire, let me say this.
I am not arguing, and never have argued, that all we have to do is to let the economy run by itself.
I believe that, just as each of us has an obligation to make the best of his talents so governments have an obligation to create the framework within which we can do so. Not only individual people, but individual firms and particularly small firms. (Applause).
Some of these will stay small but others will expand and become the great companies of the future.
The Labour Government have pursued a disastrous vendetta against small businesses and the self-employed. We will reverse their damaging policies. (Applause).
…
EQUALITY
Now let me turn to something I spoke about in America.
Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a State computer. We believe they should be individuals.
We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise.
We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.
Engineers, miners, manual workers, shop assistants, farm workers, postmen, housewives—these are the essential foundations of our society. Without them there would be no nation. (Applause).
But their are others with special gifts who should also have their chance, because if the adventurers who strike out in new directions in science, technology, medicine, commerce and industry the arts are hobbled, there can be no advance.
The spirit of envy can destroy. It can never build…
Margaret Thatcher Was Also Right About Islamism
There is much to review and laud about the Iron Lady’s life and work. Of course, her views on economics were the things for which will be most remembered. But today I am thinking of something else she said—when she had actually been out of office for more than a decade.By then she was called Lady Thatcher, and she wrote an op-ed article that was published in the New York Times on February 11, 2002, a few months after the Sept. 11th attacks. The title of the piece was, Advice to a Superpower. She was characteristically direct describing the ideology behind the attacks and the on-going threat. Her words from that article will probably not be highlighted in the media today—likely not even mentioned. But her focus on the Islamist threat drew a clear, unmistakable warning from the past.
Thatcher wrote:
Perhaps the best parallel is with early communism. Islamic extremism today, like bolshevism in the past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical, well-armed devotees. And, like communism, it requires an all-embracing long-term strategy to defeat it.The Iron Lady nailed it. Though Islamism and communism as ideologies bear little resemblance to each other, beyond a mutual affinity for subduing and controlling others, they do have much in common when it comes to methodology.
Our greatest enemy is, and will be for a long time, Islamism and its very clear agenda to subdue all who persist in the audacity of being non-Muslim infidels.
http://townhall.com/columnists/davidstokes/2013/04/08/margaret-thatcher-was-also-right-about-islamism-n1561190/page/full/
Obama Admin Fires Another Blank on Condom Study
A University of Puerto Rico researcher received a $667,999 grant as part of President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus for a study on an HIV intervention programs designed for “young, heterosexual Latino couples.”
The Department of Health and Human Services wrote in a press release announcing the grant that the stimulus funds would be used “to promote economic recovery.”
However, the University of Puerto Rico study did nothing for the economy.
The project, now listed as “completed” on the Recovery Act website, created 0.00 jobs.
The study consisted of implementing different intervention programs on 75 young Latino couples.
The study is designed to test the impact of the modified intervention in: (1) increasing male condom use, (2) decreasing unsafe sex behaviors, (3) reducing the number of sexual partners; and (4) increasing mutual monogamy. The couples will be randomized to one of the following two conditions: (1) an HIV/STI risk reduction intervention; or (2) a life skills intervention, as control condition.The Weekly Standard reported Thursday about another stimulus program to study condom use, which also created zero jobs.
http://freebeacon.com/obama-admin-fires-another-blank-on-condom-study/
Obama Admin Spends $21,000 on Basketball Equipment
Ever since the election of the Best Left-Handed Shameless Gunner-in-Chief, America’s relationship with basketball has strengthened. The sport has a mystique. America has been hypnotized into thinking Obama Election Day pick-up games are somehow more competitive than MJ’s Bulls vs. Isiah’s Pistons.
At least the Oval Office just plays pick-up. The Departments of Interior and Transportation have caught the basketball fever so bad, they’ve dropped more than $20K on rebounding machines. Several rebounding machines. Meanwhile, the most the Department of Education spends on hoops is time wasted on Arne Duncan rebounding POTUS air balls.
Now, DOI and DOT haven’t spent their money on some run-of-the-mill rebounding machine. The Shoot-A-Way is a popular apparatus used by teams at all levels of basketball. In fact, two out of the final four use the Shoot-A-Way. Louisville,the favorite for this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Champion, owns eight. Only the best for our most superflous government agencies.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs inside the Department of the Interior spent close to $15,000 for Shoot-A-Ways, in 2009 and in 2012. Salazar’s 2012 order of a Shoot-A-Way was issued to Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Ok. That’s $5,232 in U.S. tax dollars spent on teams in 2012-2013 that went 8-12 and 4-9.
And even in the face of the March 1 sequester that’s resulted in up to 47,000 hard-working FAA employees being furloughed, outgoing Transportation secretary Ray LaHood rang up $6,386 on February 15, 2013, for a Shoot-A-Way that went to the Maritime Administration. The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, which the Maritime Administration oversees, has a better record than Riverside. The men’s and women’s teams hovered around .500 this year, thus proving, as in the case of California’s High-Speed Rail system, that the Department of Transportation enjoys spending thousands of tax dollars on middling projects.
Five days after his Shoot-A-Way purchase, Secretary LaHood released this statement:
Sequestration will have a serious impact on the transportation services that are critical to the traveling public and the nation’s economy. At DOT we will need to cut nearly a billion dollars, which will affect dozens of our programs.
Over $600 million of those cuts will need to come from the Federal Aviation Administration – the agency that controls and manages our nation’s skies. As a result of these cuts, the vast majority of the FAA’s nearly 47,000 employees will be furloughed for approximately one day per pay period until the end of the fiscal year. In some cases it could be as many as two furlough days per pay period.One service the sequester won’t scratch: awful basketball at the White House.
http://freebeacon.com/blog/obama-admin-spends-21000-on-basketball-equipment
Off Course
As ex-Speaker Pelosi inelegantly forecast, now that Obamacare is law, we are learning what is in it, including substantial opportunities for identity theft.Our eyes and sensibilities are being burned regularly as the many layers of that odious and acrid onion are peeled back and we are confronted with more of the horrors that lie within it.
Just this last week it was revealed that:
Tens of thousands of health care
professionals, union workers and community activists (will be) hired as
"navigators" to help Americans choose Obamacare options....(and)
provide free translators for those not fluent in English -- no matter
what their native language is.
But that might not be the worst of it.
Former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey is the author of the book, Beating Obamacare, and she may know more about that monstrosity than nearly anyone. She has been explaining that this "navigator" program is more than an enormous and expensive affirmative-action employment scheme.
In interviews with Stuart Varney (caution -- may autoplay) on Fox Business' "Varney & Co." and with Eric Bolling,who was subbing on Fox News' "Cavuto & Co.," Ms. McCaughey showed that it is also a gargantuan and unchecked identity-information scoop into which individuals will be pouring, unknowingly, massive doses of personal data:
There's nothing in here about background checks. You're going to hand them your Social Security number, your address, your financial information[.]
Keep that Kleenex box handy, folks, because you may not have seen anything yet.
Lawmakers: Who Approved Jay-Z and Beyonce’s Trip to Cuba?
Florida Republican Reps. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart are asking questions about the nature of Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s trip last week to Cuba.
In a letter to the Treasury Department office that controls travel licenses, Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart “express concern” about what appeared to be a tourist trip taken by the famous and politically connected couple, despite prohibitions against American tourism:
We write to express concern and to request information regarding the highly publicized trip by U.S. musicians Beyoncé Knowles-Carter (Beyoncé) and Shawn Carter (Jay-Z) to Cuba. We would like to respectfully request, within all applicable rules and guidelines, information regarding the type of license that Beyoncé and Jay-Z received, for what purpose, and who approved such travel. [...]
Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple’s trip as tourism, and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda. We represent a community of many who have been deeply and personally harmed by the Castro regime’s atrocities, including former political prisoners and the families of murdered innocents. The restrictions on tourism travel are common-sense measures meant to prevent U.S. dollars from supporting a murderous regime that opposes U.S. security interests at every turn and which ruthlessly suppresses the most basic liberties of speech, assembly, and belief. We support the Cuban people by refusing to sustain their jailers.http://freebeacon.com/lawmakers-who-approved-jay-z-and-beyonces-trip-to-cuba/
Obama budget to take aim at wealthy IRAs
President Obama’s budget, to be released next week, will limit how much wealthy individuals – like Mitt Romney – can keep in IRAs and other retirement accounts.The proposal would save around $9 billion over a decade, a senior administration official said, while also bringing more fairness to the tax code.
The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”
Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or right around $3 million this year.
http://www.infowars.com/obama-budget-to-take-aim-at-wealthy-iras/
More Than 101 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have A Job
The jobs recovery is a complete and total myth. The percentage of the working age population in the United States that had a job in March 2013 was exactly the same as it was all the way back in March 2010. In addition, as you will see below, there are now more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job. But even though the employment level in the United States has consistently remained very low over the past three years, the Obama administration keeps telling us that unemployment is actually going down. In fact, they tell us that the unemployment rate has declined from a peak of 10.0% all the way down to 7.6%. And they tell us that in March the unemployment rate fell by 0.1% even though only 88,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy. But it takes at least 125,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So how in the world are they coming up with these numbers? Well, the reality is that the entire decline in the unemployment rate over the past three years can be accounted for by the reduction in size of the labor force. In other words, the Obama administration is getting unemployment to go down by pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans simply do not want jobs anymore. We saw this once again in March. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,more than 600,000 Americans dropped out of the labor market during that month alone. That pushed the labor force participation rate down to 63.3%, which is the lowest it has been in more than 30 years. So please don’t believe the hype. The sad truth is that there has been no jobs recovery whatsoever.
If things were getting better, there would not be more than 101 million working age Americans without a job.
So exactly where does that statistic come from? Well, the following explains where I got that number…
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 11,742,000working age Americans that are officially unemployed.
In addition, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that there are89,967,000 working age Americans that are “not in the labor force”. That is a new all-time record, and that number increased by a whopping663,000 during the month of March alone.
When you add 11,742,000 working age Americans that are officially unemployed to the 89,967,000 working age Americans that are “not in the labor force”, you come up with a grand total of 101,709,000 working age Americans that do not have a job.
When you stop and think about it, that is an absolutely staggering statistic.
And anyone that tells you that “a higher percentage of Americans are working today” is telling you a complete and total lie. During the last recession the percentage of working age Americans with a job fell dramatically, and since then we have not seen that number bounce back at all. In fact, this is the very first time in the post-World War II era that we have not seen the employment-population ratio bounce back after a recession. At this point, the employment-population ratio has been under 60 percent for 49 months in a row…
March 2008: 62.7 percent
March 2009: 59.9 percent
March 2010: 58.5 percent
March 2011: 58.4 percent
March 2012: 58.5 percent
March 2013: 58.5 percent
We should be thankful that the percentage of working age Americans with a job did not continue to decline, but we should also be quite alarmed that it has not bounced back at all.
If there was going to be a recovery, there would have been one by now. The next major economic downturn is rapidly approaching, and that is going to push the employment-population ratio down even farther.
So why is the U.S. economy not producing as many jobs as it used to? Well, certainly the overall decline of the economy has a lot to do with it. We are a nation that is drowning in debt and that is getting poorer by the day.
But since the end of the last recession, corporate profits have bounced back in a big way and are now at an all-time high. So you would figure that the big corporations should be able to hire a lot more workers by now.
Unfortunately, that is not the way things work anymore. Big corporations are trying to minimize the number of expensive American workers that they have on their payrolls as much as possible these days.
One way that they are doing this is through the use of technology. Thanks to robots, computers and other forms of technology, big corporations simply do not need as many human workers as they used to. In future years, this trend is only going to accelerate. I wrote about how this is changing the world of employment in one of my previous articles entitled “Rise Of The Droids: Will Robots Eventually Steal All Of Our Jobs?”
Another way that big corporations are replacing expensive American workers is by shipping their jobs off to the other side of the globe. Big corporations know that they can make bigger profits by making stuff in foreign countries where they can pay workers less than a dollar an hour with no benefits. How in the world are American workers supposed to compete with that? For much more on how U.S. jobs are being killed by offshoring, please see this article: “55 Reasons Why You Should Buy Products That Are Made In America“.
And of course immigration is having a dramatic impact on the labor market in some areas of the country as well. Cheap labor has dramatically driven down wages in a lot of professions. For example, once upon a time you could live a very nice middle class lifestyle as a roofer. But now many roofers really struggle to make a living.
When you add everything up, it paints a very bleak picture for the future of the American worker.
The cost of living keeps rising much faster than wages do, and the competition for good jobs has become incredibly fierce.
Meanwhile, the government continues to make things even easier for those that are not working. This has caused some Americans to give up completely and to be content with letting the government take care of them. The following is from a recent article by Monty Pelerin…
As we make it easier to get unemployment benefits for longer time periods, more people take advantage of the system. So too with food stamps and disability. All programs are at or near record levels in what is supposed to be four years into an economic recovery. For many, the benefits of becoming a government dependent exceed what they can earn. One study reported that a family of four, collecting all the benefits for which they were entitled, would have to earn $65,000 per annum to have the same after-tax purchasing power.
If you are a product of the government schools and are legal to work (i.e., have skills enough that you are affordable at the minimum wage or higher), at what point do you realize that there is no need to go through the hassle of actual work. You can live pretty well by staying home and taking advantage of the entitlements available to you. That is exactly what a larger and larger percentage of the population are realizing. In many cases, it is economically irrational to work.
This behavior creates a social pathology that only worsens over time. Kids learn from their parents that work is not necessary and the many ways to game the system. In this regard, look for this problem to become worse over time unless these programs are cut back.In some areas of the country, it actually pays not to work very hard. According to Gary Alexander, the Secretary of Public Welfare for the state of Pennsylvania, a “single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045.”
But the truth is that most Americans still want to work hard and would gladly take a good job if they could just find one. The following is one example that was featured in a recent Fox News article…
After a full year of fruitless job hunting, Natasha Baebler just gave up.
She’d already abandoned hope of getting work in her field, working with the disabled. But she couldn’t land anything else, either — not even a job interview at a telephone call center.
Until she feels confident enough to send out resumes again, she’ll get by on food stamps and disability checks from Social Security and live with her parents in St. Louis.
“I’m not proud of it,” says Baebler, who is in her mid-30s and is blind. “The only way I’m able to sustain any semblance of self-preservation is to rely on government programs that I have no desire to be on.”And that is how most Americans feel.
Most Americans do not want to be dependent on the government.
Most Americans want to work hard and take care of themselves.
Unfortunately, our economy is not producing nearly enough jobs for everyone and it never will again.
So there will continue to be millions upon millions of Americans that find that they cannot take care of themselves and their families without government assistance no matter how hard they try.
And this is just the beginning – things are going to get much worseduring the next major wave of the economic collapse.
Yes, at the moment there are more than 101 million working age Americans that do not have a job, but that number is actually going to go much higher in the years ahead. The anger and frustration caused by a lack of employment opportunities is going to shake this nation.
That is why it is important to try to become less dependent on your own job. In this economic environment, a job can disappear at literally any moment. Anything that you can do to become less dependent on the system would be a good thing.
http://www.infowars.com/more-than-101-million-working-age-americans-do-not-have-a-job/
Glenn Beck Eviscerates MSNBC Promo Claiming Your Kids Belong to the ‘Whole Community’ — and Makes Some Scary Connections
Glenn
Beck opened his radio show Monday in a state of near disbelief over an
MSNBC promo where anchor Melissa Harris-Perry calmly explains how your
children don’t really belong to you — they belong to the collective.
“It’s
almost a parody of reality,” Beck said of the clip. “It is so far
beyond what we have ever thought as a nation, it’s remarkable…”
For those who haven’t seen the advertisement, Harris-Perry says:
We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. [Emphasis added]
Beck spent roughly an hour of his program breaking down the promo, and how it connects to the larger issues today.
First,
he explained why the ad shouldn’t be dismissed, and how it will be “so
appealing” to a startling percentage of the population:
“…The idea behind this is going to be so appealing to so many people. So many people are going to say, ‘I love that.’ Because I’m freaked out.
I don’t know what to do with my kids… They’re unruly. They’re
whatever. I don’t know what to do. And so the State will relieve you of
that.
And I think that there’s a good 20 to 30% of America,
maybe even higher now, I’m not sure, [that] will gladly have the State
take that over so they don’t have to worry about it. Yet another one of
your responsibilities taken from you ‑‑ I’m sorry. Another one of your responsibilities that you will gladly hand over because you don’t know what to do.
And so they will do it for you: Don’t worry! We’ll raise your kids.
We’ll train your kids. We’ll educate your kids because it’s working out
so well… [Emphasis added]
“This
is exactly what we warned about,” Beck said. “This is the fulfillment
of so many things that we have said on this program.”
Beck
referenced Agenda 21, which emphasizes “the collective” over the
individual, noting that it’s been branded a conspiracy theory among
adults while children are learning about it in school.
But
while the notion has been reserved largely for theoretical papers thus
far, Beck claimed it is growing legs in America’s academic curriculum
and connected it to the concerns recently raised about two programs
called Common Core and CSCOPE:
“It’s already being implemented with Common Core. It’s already been implemented here in Texas with CSCOPE. You don’t have a right to see as a parent what your children are learning. You go to a Texas school and say, “Let me see the curriculum.” You can’t. “Let me see that test that you are teaching through CSCOPE.” You can’t. You’re a parent. You don’t have a right to know.
And
this is not some kooky panelist misspeaking, Beck noted. This is a
pre-planned promotion that had to go through layers of approval and
planning.
“Here’s our point of view — that your children
don’t belong to you,” Beck said in amazement. But more than that,
“this is an organization that had its hosts meeting with the president regularly,” co-host Stu Burguiere noted.
From there, Beck read excerpts from a stunning 2012 article in Pravda, which used to be the official paper of the USSR.
“Bye,
bye Miss American Pie. The Communists have won in America with Obama…
Obama has been re-elected for a 2nd term by an illiterate society and he
is ready to continue his lies of less taxes while he raises them,” it
says.
The
article continues: “They read history in America don’t they? Alas, the
schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and
history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents.”
“Wow,” was all the co-hosts could say.
But
in some ways, they concluded, the controversial ad is actually a good
thing. While many would have preferred to see a more moderate tone from
the popular news network, at least they’re being honest.
“I told you there would come a time when they would show you their true colors,” Beck said.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/08/glenn-beck-eviscerates-msnbc-promo-claiming-your-kids-belong-to-the-whole-community-and-makes-some-scary-connections/
US won’t be returning to moon, NASA chief says
America won't be repeating that historic one small step anytime soon -- not according to NASA chief Charlie Bolden, anyway.
"NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime," Bolden told a joint meeting of the Space Studies
Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington last week, according to Jeff Foust of SpacePolitics.com
. "And the reason is, we can only do so many things."Instead, he said the focus
would remain on human missions to asteroids and to Mars. "We intend
to do that, and we think it can be done." Meanwhile, interest in the
moon has been growing in both the private sector and in foreign
countries.Last week, Russia rekindled its plans for a robotic moon exploration program, unveiling its first new moon mission since the Soviet Union launched Luna 24 in 1976. Russian space scientists are scripting a new plan to reconnect with the moon, one scientist explained.
"Exploration of the moon is an important part of the program," said Igor Mitrofanov of the Institute for Space Research during Microsymposium 54 on "Lunar Farside and Poles — New Destinations for Exploration," held in The Woodlands, Texas, on March 16 and 17.
'I just want to emphasize that Russia is a spacefaring country not only with the robotic but also manned flight," he added.
And private interest in the moon as a resource is heating up. Several companies have announced plans to mine the moon
,
thought to contain a ransom in precious minerals including titanium,
platinum, and helium 3, a rare isotope of helium that many feel could
be the future of energy on Earth and in space.Moon Express, one of the companies targeting the moon and competing in Google's Lunar X Prize to reach our satellite, recently said it plans a mission to begin exploring the moon in 2015.
In his remarks last Thursday, NASA's Bolden acknowledged the widespread interest in the moon from other nations, and said his agency would be willing to help.
"They all have dreams of putting humans on the Moon," he said. "I have told every head of agency of every partner agency that if you assume the lead in a human lunar mission, NASA will be a part of that. NASA wants to be a participant."
IRS collecting tax payer information from Facebook and Twitter
You have until April 15th to file a return - and the IRS will be collecting a lot more than just taxes this year.
According to several reports, the agency will also be collecting personal information from sites like Facebook and Twitter.
from sites like Facebook and Twitter.
It says the effort is to catch people trying to beat the system, but some say it goes too far.
Attorney Kristen Mathews warns to be careful with what you say on social media platforms.
She has concerns the government is pushing the limits of what has historically been considered private.
"There
are laws that regulate the government's ability to get a hold of things
like credit card transaction history. But those laws have become more
permissive in the last several years, particularly after 9-11, and so
some might say those laws are no longer in line with the average
expectation of privacy," says Mathews.
The government has said it would only check a Facebook page or twitter account if there is already red flag in a tax form.
if there is already red flag in a tax form.You're Not Really Following @BarackObama on Twitter
The 29,503,030 people who follow Barack Obama's Twitter account might see his picture, see his name, see that little blue verified account badge and think they're following the President — but it's not him. All of the president's named social media accounts, in fact, have been handed over to a non-partisan, not-for-profit group that isn't overly concerned if you didn't notice the transition. As the first sitting President with a Twitter account, the murky handover raises questions that didn't exist ten years ago — can a politician legally hand over his valuable online identity to an outside group? is it ethical? — and makes clear federal regulators are unprepared to answer them.Obama was one of the first politicians to recognize the potential of social media in communicating with voters. His Twitter account was created by a staffer on March 5, 2007, two months before he formally announced his presidential candidacy. Throughout that contest, his first term, and second campaign for the presidency, Obama's campaign staff used it to share news about the president's policy priorities and to try and engage Americans in his efforts. Then, in January, it handed the reins to Organizing for Action, a new entity that took over much of Obama's campaign apparatus: website, social media accounts, email list — even the abbreviated shorthand of "OFA." The organization updated the bios associated with the social media accounts ("This account is run by Organizing for Action staff") and then kept tweeting and Facebooking, with a new emphasis on joining — and, ideally, contributing to — the new OFA. Without skipping a beat, a brand-new organization gained millions of followers on social media. It's like the president, mid-conversation, handed his phone to a telemarketer who does a great Obama impression. Or, to be more accurate, one telemarketer — the campaign — handed the phone to another one.
But to the government, OFA and the Obama campaign are very different legal creatures. Organizing For Action was created earlier this year as a 501(c)(4) non-profit under IRS code — the same as other political non-profits, like the conservative groups FreedomWorks and Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS. There are particular things a 501(c)(4) can and cannot do. It can raise scads of money, which is appealing to political organizations. But it cannot expressly advocate for a political candidate, which some organizations tend to consider a bit of an impediment. What a 501(c)(4) can do politically is what's known as issues advocacy, pressuring elected officials and candidates on issues for the "promotion of social welfare." This vague-sounding phrase is legally vague as well, and has generally been interpreted to allow for pretty much any sort of political statement short of "Vote For Candidate X." So if Organizing For Action wants to, say, convince Congress to support background checks, it can send material to voters in a senator's district, requesting that they call their senator and demand he vote the right way.
Or, easier, they can tweet a similar request.
If you're someone who started following the president during last year's election, this could easily appear to be a request from the President of the United States — or, perhaps obviously, one of his staffers — asking that you contact your Congressmember. It isn't. He may not even agree with what it says.
This is an unprecedented development. In part because of the novelty of social media, no major candidate for office has transitioned his political campaign's online communication into an external advocacy organization. The federal regulators who watch campaign and non-profit activity haven't addressed the practice. Nor has the organization said much about the relationship.
Here's
how it works. There are three entities involved: the president, his
campaign, and the non-profit OFA. The campaign has always owned and
operated the social media accounts, since their instantiation. During
the last year's election, staffers for the campaign, Obama For America,
managed the social media presence, under the ultimate direction of the
president.According to an OFA official who asked not to be identified, that changed in early February. On the sixth of that month, OFA "made arrangements" with the campaign for use of the website and operation of the social media accounts — an agreement that may include "leases or sales" of those assets to OFA, which income would show up in the campaign's FEC filings.
In summary, then, the president — independent of both of the other two organizations — receives the benefit of political action from OFA as he did from the campaign. The campaign entity allows OFA to use the accounts, which will likely result in a financial relationship between the two. Both OFA and the campaign receive contributions from donors.
It's an arrangement complex and specific enough that there's little question it falls within the letter of the law — perhaps in part because the law lags badly behind technology and political campaigns in considering the role of social media in politics.
(A note: This article focuses primarily on OFA's Twitter account. The organization also controls the barackobama.com domain and its presences on Facebook and Tumblr, but Twitter is the most interesting example, and a broadly representative one.)
@BarackObama and the law
The body responsible for determining when organizations and elected officials break campaign finance law is the Federal Elections Commission. The FEC is a non-partisan body comprised of six commissioners — three Democrats, three Republicans — that evaluates gray areas of campaign activity and renders judgment.There are two reasons that the FEC opinion usually trails political activity, as it very much is in the case of social media. The first is that it is necessarily responsive. Some organizations seek prior approval for situations that lie on the borders of existing law, but many apply a "ask forgiveness, not permission" mantra.
The other reason the FEC trails is that it's a body comprised of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. In Washington, D.C., that's a sure-fire formula for ties — and at the FEC, a tie goes to the status quo.
The agency's primary concern is ensuring voters know who pays for what, who, for example, "approves of this message." But their antennae are mostly focused on money, not perception. Since there is value in @barackobama's 29 million followers — if you were to buy that number of followers from an online site like FollowerSale.com, it would cost you in excess of $153,000 — how it might change hands is important, regardless of the name it carries. (The organization does have its own Twitter account, @OFA, which is much less popular.)
Jason Kaune, a partner at the California law firm Nielsen Merksamer, specializes in political law and ethics. Political campaigns, he told me, "have gotten much more aggressive, and both the IRS and the FEC have given them room to do it." Obama, while not eligible for reelection, is still subject to the candidate rules that those two agencies develop. And "when something's given to a candidate they have to pay for it."
But, he notes, "this is the reverse, a sitting candidate gave something to a (c)(4)" — namely, the social media accounts. Obama is getting political benefit, but not any economic benefit — so the FEC wouldn't care. This also explains why OFA will likely pay for use of the accounts. In that case, there's no gift at all.
More importantly, OFA has no FEC obligation to be explicit in each tweet that @barackobama isn't actually Barack Obama. First of all, FEC rules only apply to electoral activity. But regardless, no FEC decision or issued rule clarifies how campaigns may or may not use social media. In 2010, Roll Call reported that the agency wasn't "in any particular hurry to map out" that uncharted territory. "The closest the FEC has come to entering the brave new world of social networking," it reported, "was a 2002 advisory opinion on text messaging, well before the method was notably used in the 2008 election by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign." In that case, an opinion from the vice chairman suggested that text messages are exempt from standard disclaimers required on ads "since text messages are so small." That's about it. (The idea of Twitter fine print has plagued the Federal Trade Commission, too.)
If OFA treads into political territory, things change. Let's say that Barack Obama endorsed Elizabeth Colbert Busch for Congress in South Carolina against Mark Sanford. If the group were to tweet from @barackobama, "Voters in South Carolina, don't forget to go vote for Elizabeth Colbert Busch tomorrow!" — that would be a violation, even though it's theoretically "Barack Obama" tweeting it. As a (c)(4), OFA can't officially endorse or expressly advocate for a candidate. (This, too, is a blurry line that's not worth getting into for the purposes of this article.) It's perfectly fine for a group to tweet an endorsement or call to electoral action without a disclaimer; the FEC doesn't care about that. But OFA can't because of its IRS status. If OFA were not a non-profit, it could tweet endorsements for candidates in the president's name to its heart's content. Whether or not the president supported the candidate, but that's a question for later on.
Kaune notes that Obama's clearly getting a benefit from OFA's advocacy, but it's not one that the FEC captures. As he says, "I think it's more in the 'there oughtta be a law' category than 'a law is being broken.'"
The ethics of @BarackObama
The letter of the law notwithstanding, there's clearly a question of whether or not the seamless transition from an organization directly linked to the president to one that is wholly independent and reliant on donations is ethical. And the response to that is subjective.Technically, OFA does reveal that the @BarackObama account isn't controlled by the president. But you only see that if you visit the account page, which most Twitter users wouldn't. At the time that @BarackObama changed hands, this was the only tweet that referred to OFA.
Far from being an explanation in the change of ownership, it's the telemarketer taking over with a sales pitch.
It's also worth noting that the bio still says, "Tweets from the President are signed -bo." That inclusion helps blur the distinction between the president and the account. If he still tweets from @BarackObama, it must still be associated with him, right? The last time the account included a "-bo" tweet was the day of his second Inaguration — before the handover.
If you open any tweet from @BarackObama, it's clear that the distinction between the account and the president is lost on a lot of people. There are regular requests for the president to follow users back, for example, and praise for policy measures. There doesn't appear to have been a time at which OFA responded in an effort to clarify ownership of the account.
"The @BarackObama Twitter account clearly states in its description that it is controlled by Organizing for Action," the OFA official told us, "and this is a Twitter handle that has been controlled and used for years by a nongovernmental organization — Obama for America — without any problems with confusion."
Kaune points out that OFA's management of @BarackObama is "no different than Senator So-and-so who doesn't know how to use an account and has a staffer do that." But in that case, the social media-savvy staffer works directing for the senator. OFA and Obama have no official relationship.
The role of Obama in OFA
The arms-length relationship between Obama and Organizing For Action is based on its legal status as a non-partisan organization. As Politico reported in February, the organization updated its guidelines to make that point clearly.The organization on Wednesday quietly posted new guidelines on its website formally declaring its intention to stay out of campaign politics.How OFA ensures it's in sync with that legislative agenda has been covered before. OFA is run by Jim Messina, the man who also managed the president's reelection campaign. Leaders in the organization — measured in part by how much they contribute — meet regularly with the president and his advisors to learn about their priorities. But, according to the official we spoke with at OFA, actual coordination is minimal.
“Neither OFA nor its chapters will be involved in any way in elections or partisan political activity,” OFA wrote. “Its exclusive purpose is public policy advocacy and development, and in particular, both enactment of President Obama’s legislative agenda and the identification and advancement of other goals for progressive change at the state and local level.
"Generally speaking, Organizing for Action, as a private and independent organization, does not coordinate its digital communications, including those on Twitter, with the White House," said the OFA official. "When the President or the First Lady communicates directly with Organizing for Action's supporters, the White House is necessarily involved in reviewing those communications."
This is not dissimilar from other organizations that work to promote components of the president's agenda – though OFA may have less trouble getting someone on the phone.
Twitter verification fails again
It's not only OFA's fault that people think they're talking to Barack Obama on Twitter — Twitter's telling them that, too. Despite having no legal or personal relationship with the president, the account is verified by Twitter. Despite repeated emails and phone calls, no one from the company responded to our attempts to talk. It's not the first time that a verified account hasn't actually been the purported user. In January of 2012, the company verified Rupert Murdoch's wife — although she wasn't the one tweeting from the account.
Twitter should not still be struggling at negotiating political issues. In 2009, for example, the company came under fire for including Gavin Newsom, then mayor of San Francisco, in its suggested users list. Newsom saw a huge surge in followers — at the same time during which he was planning to run for governor. That's a clear benefit to a candidate and, while Twitter wasn't sanctioned in any way, it shortly revamped its system.
It might be argued that the off-chance of Obama again tweeting from the account using "-bo" is enough to warrant verification. He could tweet similarly from any account, of course — one tweet does not an account make.
There are simple steps that OFA could take to clarify its role on social media. An obvious one would be to change the name of the account, something akin to what the Vatican did in-between Popes. It could respond to confused users. It could change the image associated with the account. But there's not much incentive for OFA to do so.
The president's press office loudly proclaims its commitment to "creating an unprecedented level of openness" in government. "We will work together," it writes, "to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration." As an entity independent of the president, Organizing For Action appears not to be beholden to that mantra.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/04/youre-not-following-barackobama-twitter/63930/
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