PK'S NOTE: Some really great articles in this post. Read 'em all.
Holder runs into roadblocks on off-the-record meetings with news organizations
Attorney General Eric Holder is running into early resistance from news organizations as he tries to hold meetings with their Washington bureau chiefs over his department's surveillance of reporters -- with the organizations balking at Holder's attempt to keep the sessions off the record.Holder, who agreed to conduct a review of DOJ guidelines over investigations that involve journalists, has set up meetings with members of the media for Thursday and Friday. Fox News was invited to the Friday session at Justice Department headquarters in Washington, though hasn't yet decided whether to attend.
The department, though, wants the meetings to be off the record, meaning the discussions would not be reportable.
The Associated Press issued a statement saying it wants any meeting to be on the record, meaning it could be the subject of news stories. And The New York Times said it won't attend because of the department's off-the-record ground rules.
Both the Associated Press and Fox News had their phone records pulled by the Justice Department, in the course of two separate leak investigations. The department went a step further in the Fox News case, seizing the personal emails of correspondent James Rosen, while accusing him of being a criminal "co-conspirator" in the application for the search warrant.
The AP raised early questions about the terms for this week's meetings.
AP media relations manager Erin Madigan White said that if the session is not on the record, the news cooperative will offer its views in an open letter on how Justice Department regulations should be updated.
If the AP's meeting with the attorney general is on the record, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll will attend, White said. She said AP expects its attorneys to be included in any planned meetings between the attorney general's office and media lawyers on the legal specifics.
New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson said in a statement: "It isn't appropriate for us to attend an off the record meeting with the attorney general. Our Washington bureau is aggressively covering the department's handling of leak investigations at this time."
The Huffington Post also announced it would not attend the meeting at DOJ headquarters. CNN similarly said it would not attend an off-record meeting, but would agree to go if the attorney general made the session on the record.
Politico's editor-in-chief, John Harris, though, said on Thursday that he would attend.
The planned meetings are to take place over the coming weeks. The department said Holder plans to engage with news media organizations, including print media, wire services, radio, television, online media and news and trade associations. Discussions are to include news media executives and general counsels as well as government experts in intelligence and investigative agencies.
The meetings come as Holder faces intense scrutiny from lawmakers over his May 15 testimony in which he claimed to be unaware of any "potential prosecution" of the press, despite knowing about the investigation that targeted Fox News' James Rosen.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., R-Wis., voiced "great concern" in a letter to Holder on Wednesday, asking a number of questions about the department's dealings with the press, and alleging that the Fox News case "contradicts" his testimony at the hearing two weeks ago.
The committee confirmed earlier this week it was looking into Holder's testimony. Appearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Holder insisted that "the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material" is not something he was involved in or knew about.
It emerged days later that the Justice Department obtained access to Rosen's emails -- after filing an affidavit that accused him of being a likely criminal "co-conspirator" in the leak of sensitive material regarding North Korea. Rosen was never charged, and never prosecuted. But he was effectively accused of violating the federal Espionage Act.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Wednesday that it appears Holder testified truthfully. He said President Obama "absolutely" has confidence in him.
Obama has asked Holder to report to him on any recommended policy changes on Justice Department investigations involving reporters by July 12.
Teacher Punished for Telling Students About Constitutional Rights
An Illinois high school teacher was punished by a local school district after he warned students about the Constitutional rights before answering a school-mandated survey about emotional and at-risk behavior.John Dryden, a social studies teacher at Batavia High School, was issued a formal reprimand and docked a day’s pay. The punishment was doled out during a closed-door school board meeting.
The controversy started when the school district directed students to complete a survey about at-risk behavior – including past drug, tobacco and alcohol usage.
“I advised my students that they had a Fifth Amendment right not incriminate themselves,” Dryden told a local newspaper. “It was not my intention for them not to take the survey.”
Batavia School Superintendent Jack Barshinger told Fox News what the teacher did was against the rules.
“The issue before the board was whether one employee had the right to mischaracterize the efforts of teachers, counselors, social workers and others and tell students in effect that the adults are not here to help but they are trying to get you to incriminate yourself,” he said.
But Dryden said several questions on the 34-page survey asked students to self-report what could potentially be criminal behavior. “I’m not here to stir the pot,” Dryden said. “I’m just trying to protect my kids.”
Barshinger told Fox News that school rules protect students from self-incrimination. “It is not possible for a student to incriminate himself in a school setting that would make him eligible for any police action,” he said.
And while the superintendent said students “absolutely” have constitutional rights – he said there is a caveat. “Unfortunately, it is how they are applied in a school setting,” he said. “The Fifth Amendment – you don’t typically hear about in a school setting. That’s because the law has already been set that don’t allow students to self incriminate.”
He also said parents and students were given the opportunity to opt-out of the survey.
Nearly 100 students, former students and colleagues turned out at the school board meeting to show their support for the embattled teacher. A Facebook petition generated nearly 6,000 signatures for the 20-year veteran teacher.
“He is able to break through student apathy like no other teacher I know,” fellow teacher Scott Bayer told a local newspaper.
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/teacher-punished-for-telling-students-about-constitutional-rights.html
Staples Says Gun Store Can’t Enter Contest
A small Nebraska gun shop has decided to buy its ink pens and post-it notes somewhere else after they said Staples rejected their entry into a marketing contest because they are in the firearms business.Travis Vonseggern and Bill Jackson own Maple Creek Gunsmithing in Fremont, Neb. The store offers gunsmithing, guns, ammo, and firearms training.
They recently entered the Staples PUSH It Forward Contest – hoping to win a $50,000 marketing campaign for their small business. But a few days later, the men received a rejection email:
“We’re sorry, but your small business entry into the Staples PUSH It Forward Contest has been rejected for the following reason(s): Entry contains content that promotes alcohol, illegal drugs, tobacco, firearms/weapons (or the use of any of the foregoing); promotes any activities that may appear unsafe or dangerous; promotes any particular political agenda or message; is obscene or offensive; or endorses any form of hate or hate group.”
The email also stated that Staples “reserves the right to reject any entry that they deem is not in accordance with the official rules.”
Jackson said he was shocked that Staples considered their business to be on par with drug dealers and criminals. “I was blown away,” he told Fox News. “I couldn’t believe what I was reading.”
A Staples spokesperson confirmed to Fox News that they do not allow businesses that deal in firearms from entering the contest.
Jackson said he went from disgusted to angry. “They lumped us in with criminals,” he said.
Jackson and Vonseggern are Army veterans and Vonseggern was awarded a Purple Heart.
“Everything in our store is patriotic,” Vonseggern said. “For us to be classified as a drug dealer or obscene and offensive is hurtful to our feelings.”
So the store owners decided to post the email they received on Facebook “to let our customers know where (Staples) stands.”
“The company policy clearly states they are not all the way pro-gun,” Vonseggern said. “They’ve got a little lefty in them.”
And the next time they need paper products, the men said they will be shopping at a locally owned store.
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/staples-says-gun-store-cant-enter-contest.html
First lady urges Dem donors to ‘max out’
First lady Michelle Obama urged donors to “max out” their contributions at a pair of posh Manhattan fundraisers for the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday night.“We need you to keep on writin' those checks!” she said, according to a pool report of one of the events. “And if you haven't maxed out, you know what's my motto: Max out! Let's say it again, max out! And if you've maxed out, get your friends to give and max out!”
The
first fundraiser was at the Park Avenue private residence of clothing
designer Tory Burch on the East side of Manhattan. About 100 people paid
between $5,000 and $25,000 for the event. The second event was an LGBT
Gala, where approximately 350 people paid up to $32,400 to see the first
lady speak.
Actress Julianne Moore, designer Vera Wang, and Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour were among those in attendance.
Obama encouraged donors to shell out for upcoming elections, saying it was important to stay engaged in the political process even when “the excitement that comes with the presidential campaign has faded.”
“It's easy to get frustrated and to become cynical,” she said. “And now that the excitement that comes with presidential campaign has faded, it is so tempting to turn off that TV and wait another four years to re-engage. But make no mistake about it, while we are tuning out, let me tell you, other folks are tuning in.”
At the LGBT Gala, the first lady was introduced by Washington Wizards center Jason Collins, who earlier this year became the first man active in a major sport to announce he is gay.
“I hope my actions give courage to those still unsure about coming out, and I hope it shows them the overwhelming amount of support that is waiting for them,” Collins said at the gala. “If there's one thing to take away from my experience, it's that we're not alone.”
The first lady and President Obama were vocal supporters of Collins's decision to come out, and he called Michelle Obama “a steadfast champion for LGBT families.”
President Obama attended a pair of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraisers in Chicago on Wednesday night.
Now that he’s been shot and killed, his family attorney, Benjamin Crump, says shooter trial is “the civil rights case of the century” – while playing the “race-card” 24/7……
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/05/29/crump-on-state-v-zimmerman-civil-rights-case-of-century-omara-race-has-nothing-to-do-with-case/
A Washington Free Beacon investigation has identified at least
five pro-Israel organizations that have been audited by the IRS in the
wake of a coordinated` campaign by White House-allied activist groups in
2009 and 2010.
Actress Julianne Moore, designer Vera Wang, and Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour were among those in attendance.
Obama encouraged donors to shell out for upcoming elections, saying it was important to stay engaged in the political process even when “the excitement that comes with the presidential campaign has faded.”
“It's easy to get frustrated and to become cynical,” she said. “And now that the excitement that comes with presidential campaign has faded, it is so tempting to turn off that TV and wait another four years to re-engage. But make no mistake about it, while we are tuning out, let me tell you, other folks are tuning in.”
At the LGBT Gala, the first lady was introduced by Washington Wizards center Jason Collins, who earlier this year became the first man active in a major sport to announce he is gay.
“I hope my actions give courage to those still unsure about coming out, and I hope it shows them the overwhelming amount of support that is waiting for them,” Collins said at the gala. “If there's one thing to take away from my experience, it's that we're not alone.”
The first lady and President Obama were vocal supporters of Collins's decision to come out, and he called Michelle Obama “a steadfast champion for LGBT families.”
President Obama attended a pair of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraisers in Chicago on Wednesday night.
Crump on State V Zimmerman: “Civil Rights Case of Century” – O’Mara “Race Has Nothing To Do With Case”….
Trayvon was 17, smoked dope, sold drugs, drank “lean” drug cocktail with frequency, burglarized homes, video’s himself and peeps beating homeless guy, bought sold guns, participated in organized MMA street fights, kicked out of school three times, kicked out of his Mom’s house, no parental supervision, and put on bus - sent to Sanford FL with a rolled up baggie of marijuana stuffed between his butt cheeks.
Now that he’s been shot and killed, his family attorney, Benjamin Crump, says shooter trial is “the civil rights case of the century” – while playing the “race-card” 24/7……
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/05/29/crump-on-state-v-zimmerman-civil-rights-case-of-century-omara-race-has-nothing-to-do-with-case/
IRS Crosses Green Line
Pro-Israel groups felt wrath of Obama IRS, WFB investigation reveals
These organizations, some of which are too afraid of government reprisals to speak publicly, say in interviews with the Free Beacon that they now believe the IRS actions may have been coordinated by the Obama administration.
Many of the charities openly clashed with the Obama administration’s policy of opposing Israeli settlement construction over the so-called “Green Line,” which marks the pre-1967 boundary between Israel and the West Bank and West and East Jerusalem.
After the Obama administration took up the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as one of its most prominent foreign policy priorities in early 2009, and made a cessation of Israeli settlement construction the cornerstone of its approach, the nonprofits were subjected to a string of unflattering media reports.
White House-allied lobbying groups joined the media criticism by challenged the nonprofits’ tax-exempt status, arguing that they undercut President Barack Obama’s Middle East policies.
“Our concern at that time was that these articles weren’t just appearing by happenstance, but may have reflected an evolving policy shift in the Obama administration to scrutinize charitable giving by organizations on behalf of Jewish communities and institutions over the Green Line,” said Jerusalem-based attorney Marc Zell, who convened a private meeting of pro-Israel groups in August 2009 to discuss these concerns.
Tax-exempt charities that support Israeli settlements have been the subject of controversy for years. But the issue came to a head after Obama made opposition to settlement construction a focus of his Middle East policy in 2009 and demanded Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu halt all construction beyond the Green Line, including in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem.
While it is not illegal for these charities to contribute to groups and individuals across the Green Line, critics say that they should not receive tax-exempt status because they support communities the administration views as antagonistic to administration policy.
The media scrutiny began as early as March 26, 2009, when the Washington Post’s David Ignatius published a column questioning the groups’ tax-exempt status.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) announced the next day that it would begin a campaign of filing legal complaints with the IRS and the Treasury Department to investigate groups “allegedly raising funds for the development of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.”
ADC is closely tied to the Obama White House. The president recorded a video greeting to the group’s annual conference and sent two senior administration officials to attend.
The ADC announced in October 2009 that it had expanded its legal campaign against pro-Israel charities and was “working with a number of coalition partners, both nationally and internationally, in conducting this ongoing campaign.”
The chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority raised the issue two days later during a meeting with U.S. Consul General Daniel Rubenstein, according to a State Department cable revealed by Wikileaks.
“[Palestinian negotiator Ahmad Quraya] gave the Consul General a copy of an article by Uri Blau and Nir Hasson, published in Israeli daily Haaretz newspaper on August 17, entitled ‘American Non-profit Organization Raises Funds for Settlement,’ and asked the USG to review the situation with an eye toward eliminating organizations’ tax exempt status if they are funding settlement activity,” said the cable.
On July 5, 2010, the New York Times published its 5,000-word cover story on the groups, following up with a Room for Debate series two days later. The article quoted an unnamed senior State Department administration official calling such groups “a problem” and “unhelpful to the efforts that we’re trying to make.” The story also quoted a senior Obama Middle East adviser, Daniel Kurtzer, saying the groups “drove us crazy.”
J Street, a pro-Palestinian lobbying group that was closely aligned with the White House in 2009 and 2010, called the following week for an investigation into U.S. charities that contribute to settlements.
One pro-Israel targets was HaYovel, which was featured prominently in the New York Times article. Six months after the article was published, the IRS audited the Nashville-based charity, which sends volunteers to work in vineyards across the Green Line.
“We bookend that [New York Times] story. We were the first [group mentioned]. They really kind of focused on us,” said HaYovel’s founder Tommy Waller. “Then six months later we had an audit.”
Shari Waller, who cofounded HaYovel with her husband, said the couple received a phone call from the IRS in December 2010. She said she was not aware of anything in their tax documents that may have prompted the audit, and added that the additional scrutiny came during the group’s first five years of existence when audits tend to be rare.
“They contacted us the week of Christmas and told us they wanted to audit us, right now,” she said. “The most unusual thing to me was they contacted us at a time [that] for most people is a very hectic time, and we had just returned from Israel. To think about taking calls for an audit on the telephone—official business is usually conducted through the mail.”
Tommy Waller said he found the timing of the audit “suspicious” and believes it may have been politically motivated.
“We 100-percent support Judea and Samaria, and Jewish sovereignty in that area, and the current administration is 100 percent opposed to Jewish sovereignty in that area of Israel,” he said. “That’s why we suspected that we would have to deal with [an audit].”
Two other organizations—the American arm of an educational institution that operates across the Green Line and the American arm of a well-known Israeli charity that was mentioned in the New York Times article—say they were also audited.
Another organization that was criticized in multiple articles during 2009 and 2010 was audited last year. The organization, like many of the groups with whom the Free Beacon spoke, asked to remain anonymous out of fear of political retaliation and concern that exposure would harm fundraising efforts.
“The IRS carried out an examination of our organization, reviewing all of our accounting records, tax returns, bylaws, bank records, grant awards, etc, for the relevant period,” said a senior official of this organization.
“There was no vindictiveness in the audit itself and it was completed within a matter of months. Our feeling at the time was that this order must have come from above. The IRS seemed to be responding to a request or a complaint from higher up.”
Concerns that the IRS was targeting pro-Israel groups were first raised publicly by Z Street, a pro-Israel organization run by Lori Lowenthal Marcus.
Z Street filed a lawsuit against the IRS in 2010, alleging its application for tax-exempt status was delayed because it disagreed with the Obama administration’s Israel policy.
According to the suit, Marcus’s attorney was informed by IRS official Diane Gentry that Z Street’s “application for tax-exempt status has been at least delayed, and may be denied because of a special IRS policy in place regarding organizations in any way connected with Israel, and further that the applications of many such Israel-related organizations have been assigned to “a special unit in the D.C. office.”
Neither the IRS nor Gentry responded to a request for comment.
Marcus said Z Street has not funded anyone or any groups in the settlements. But, she added, the problems her organization faced could be related to the administration’s concerns over settlement-supporting groups.
Z Street’s application for tax-exempt status first ran into trouble with the IRS on July 19, 2010, two weeks after the lengthy New York Times article was published.
“Even if that is the case, that’s an explanation, but it’s not an answer. It’s not an adequate reason,” said Marcus. “It’s totally inappropriate.”
Zell told the Free Beacon he has not personally witnessed a shift in IRS policy since the 2009 meeting suggesting settlement-supporting nonprofits have been targeted.
However, he said it is a “yellow flag” that at least five of these organizations have been audited since 2009, considering the recent finding by the IRS inspector general that the agency targeted conservative groups.
“Now with the revelations of the IRS abuses vis-a-vis U.S. right-wing organizations, that have been published of late, there is renewed concerned that these kinds of policies, same kinds of policies and procedures, may have been targeted at these organizations [that support settlements],” he said.
http://freebeacon.com/irs-crosses-green-line/
Lois Lerner Told Republican in 1996: “Promise me You Will Never Run Again, and We’ll Drop This (FEC) Case”
Lois Lerner, the controversial director of the tax-exempt organizations division at the Internal Revenue Service, has a long sordid history of targeting conservatives.Under the direction of Lois Lerner, the Federal Election Commission sued the Christian Coalition in the 1990s. She harassed the Christian Coalition for three election cycles. Eventually, she lost her case. At one point Lerner even asked a conservative if Pat Robertson prayed over him. (Sound familiar?)
Al Salvi – Lois Lerner
Then there’s this…
Lois Lerner made this offer to Republican Senate candidate Al Salvi in 1996,
“Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.”
USofArn reported:
In 1996 Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the harassment of Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status, was head of the enforcement division of the Federal Elections Commission(FEC). That year Al Salvi was the Republican nominee for the US Senate from Illinois, his Democrat opponent was then congressman Dick Durbin.The Illinois Review has more on Lerner:
During the final weeks of the campaign Salvi loaned himself over a million dollars to buy ads in the Chicago media market. This in turn prompted the Democrat party’s campaign arms to file complaints with the FEC and in kind the FEC, specifically Lois Lerner, filed charges against Al Salvi.
That is when Mr. Salvi contends Lois Lerner made him the following offer, “Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.”
Al Salvi refused that offer and would fight the FEC complaint against him for several more years before a Judge tossed out the complaint.
Soon after the IRS story broke, Al Salvi told Illinois Review that it was IRS official Lois Lerner who represented the FEC in a Democrat complaint against him. According to Salvi, Lerner was, without question, politically motivated, and went so far as to make him an offer: “Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.”These actions landed Lois Lerner at the IRS where she used the same tactics against conservatives and Christians – only on a much larger scale. 500 conservative and Christian groups were illegally targeted by the Obama IRS during her tenure. For twenty-seven months the Obama IRS refused to approve any Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status. At the same time the Obama IRS approved dozens of progressive applications.
Salvi declined her offer, and ran for Illinois Secretary of State in 1998.
But when he saw Lerner plead the Fifth Amendment before Congress last week, he recognized her. “That’s the woman,” Salvi said. “And I didn’t plead the Fifth like she did.”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/05/breaking-lois-lerner-told-republican-in-1996-promise-me-you-will-never-run-again-and-well-drop-this-fec-case/
The Old Order is Dying
Ideas of the 1960s have now grown reactionary in our world that is vastly different from a half-century ago.Take well-meaning subsidies for those over age 62. Why are there still senior discounts, vast expansions in Social Security and Medicare, and generous public pensions?
Five decades ago all that made sense. There was no such thing as double-dipping. Seniors often were physically worn out from blue-collar jobs. They were usually poorer and frequently sicker than society in general. The aged usually died not long after they retired.
Not now. Seniors often live a quarter-century or longer after a mostly white-collar retirement, drawing subsidies from those least able to pay for them.
Seniors are not like today's strapped youth, scrimping for a down payment on a house. Most are not struggling to find even part-time work. None are paying off crushing student loans. In a calcified economy, why would an affluent couple in their early 60s earn a "senior discount" at a movie, while the struggling young couple with three children in the same line does not?
Affirmative action and enforced "diversity" were originally designed to give a boost to those who were victims of historical bias from the supposedly oppressive white-majority society. Is that still true, a half-century after these assumptions became institutionalized?
Through greater intermarriage and immigration, America has become a multiracial nation. Skin color, general appearance, accent or the sound of one's name cannot so easily identify either "oppressors" or "victims."
So who exactly should receive privileges in job-hiring or college admissions -- the newly arrived Pakistani immigrant, or the third-generation, upper-middle-class Mexican-American who does not speak Spanish? Both, or neither? What about someone of half-Jamaican ancestry? What about the children of Attorney General Eric Holder or self-proclaimed Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren? What about the poor white grandson of the Oklahoma diaspora who is now a minority in California?
Even if the 21st-century state could define who is a minority, on what moral grounds does the targeted beneficiary deserve special consideration? Is his disadvantage defined by being poorer, by lingering trauma from his grandparents' long-ago ordeals, or by yesterday's experience with routine racial prejudice?
If Latinos are underrepresented at the University of California, Berkeley, is it because of the stubborn institutional prejudices that also somehow have been trumped by Asian-Americans enrolling at three times their numbers in the state's general population? Are women so oppressed by men that they graduate from college in higher numbers than their chauvinist male counterparts?
Consider also the calcified assumptions about college education. The expanding 1960s campus was touted as the future gateway to a smarter, fairer, richer and more ethical America. Is that dream still valid?
Today, the college-educated owe a collective $1 trillion in unpaid student loans. Millions of recent graduates cannot find jobs that offer much chance of paying off their crushing student debts.
College itself has become a sort of five- to six-year lifestyle choice. Debt, joblessness or occasional part-time employment and coursework eat up a youth's 20s -- in a way that military service or vocational training does not.
In reaction, private diploma mills are springing up everywhere. But there are no "diversity czars" at DeVry University. There is no time or money for the luxury of classes such as "Gender Oppression" at Phoenix University. Students do not have rock-climbing walls or have Michael Moore address them at Heald College.
The private-sector campus makes other assumptions. One is that the hallowed liberal arts general-education requirement has been corrupted and no longer ensures an employer that his college-graduate hire is any more broadly educated or liberally minded than those who paid far less tuition for job-training courses at for-profit alternative campuses.
Scan the government grandees caught up in the current administration's ballooning IRS, Associated Press and Benghazi scandals. In each case, a blue-chip Ivy League degree was no guarantee that our best and brightest technocrats would prove transparent or act honorably. What difference did it make that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, President Barack Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had degrees from prestigious universities when they misled the American people or Congress?
The now-aging idealists of the 1960s long ago promised us that a uniformly degreed citizenry -- shepherded by Ivy League-branded technocrats -- would make America better by sorting us out by differences in age, gender, education and race.
It is now past time to end that ossified dream before it becomes our collective nightmare.
http://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2013/05/30/the-old-order-is-dying-n1608537/page/full
Winning the Long War
Imagine
trying to fight a war against an enemy led by ruthless tyrants, while
granting that enemy authority to train your own military. After all, you
reason, sending your soldiers to the enemy's training centers frees up
your time and resources for other priorities. Moreover, the tyrants have
graciously promised to train your men in good faith, so denying them
this privilege might seem ungrateful.
What are your chances of winning that war? You might win a skirmish here and there, if a few of your soldiers remain independent enough to question the lessons in surrender they were taught by the enemy. But your long-term prospects are, of course, dismal, since after their rare provisional successes, your soldiers will only use their newly-gained territory to set up a tent for conciliatory peace talks with the other side, in accordance with the rules of engagement they have learned in training.
Civilization -- all of it -- is currently under the domination of progressive collectivism in ethics, authoritarianism in politics, irrationalism in epistemology, and nihilism in metaphysics. The architects of this calamity have paved the road to the devil's dominion over several generations. Their recent boldness, moving in for the kill on the last, crumbling bastion of principled resistance, America, shows that they believe ultimate victory is at hand, which, in human terms, means we face a thousand years of darkness.
We who reject the progressives' knee-jerk historicism, however, need not accept the inevitability of this result. Doom does not follow necessarily from any mechanism beyond human control. It does, however, follow necessarily from inaction and resignation. That is to say, civilization is doomed unless she begins to mount a deliberate and determined defense.
The first step to mounting an effective defense is to understand how progressivism has won so much territory, geographical and spiritual, over this multi-generational war. I mean, specifically, how they have done it in practice, for concrete results derive from concrete actions. The nations of the semi-free world have, over the course of generations, voted themselves into servitude, voted away their property rights, acquiesced in the breakdown of the family, and willingly given over their souls en masse to the rule of all the wanton and stupid desires and fears that men for millennia knew they had to control in order to remain men; they have forsaken the human heritage for the false promises of tyrants. Why? How did the pied pipers lead civilization astray? And why does this process always tend in one direction, such that intermittent stasis has become our only relief from freefall?
The answer has been staring us in the face all along. For "civilization" -- literally "the process of civilizing men," or the society resulting from this process -- is, as Allan Bloom observed a generation ago, just another word for education. Thus the reversal of true education is the undoing of any social arrangement consistent with human nature. The progressives' deranged hope has been to prime mankind so thoroughly for surrender that when the time comes for each new stage of enslavement, they may simply swing open the next gate in their clever labyrinth of pens within pens, and men will walk into the new, smaller enclosure of their own accord. And they have every reason for faith in their scheme, as they have been successfully training generations of men for such gradual submission for more than a century, at public expense no less.
In brief, as long as authoritarians have your children in their schools, they own your future. True, you may win an election here and there, or stop a particular piece of progressive legislation once in a while; but even those little victories will be won on compromising terms, and the turf gained in one battle will never be used as the staging ground for a broader assault.
For generations, progressives have had the insuperable strategic and psychological advantage of knowing that anything they fail to accomplish today will be accomplished tomorrow, because the collectivist goals of tomorrow are being planted in the souls of children today, in schools designed for this purpose. ("We'll get you through your children!" Allen Ginsberg shouted at Norman Podhoretz. This was not a wild threat. It was an unveiled description of public education.)
This is not merely a matter of curriculum. No mere textbook changes or administrative overhauls can undo the defining danger. Public schools undermine -- and are intended to undermine -- the attachment to private family, by draining most of a child's energy and attention into a world unrelated to home; by forcibly creating an alternative social universe that engenders attachments rivalling those to parents and siblings; and by teaching children implicit and explicit moral lessons over the heads of their parents, lessons that may stand in direct defiance of the parents' beliefs. The public school, which is to say the state, becomes the highest moral authority in the child's life, the ultimate arbiter of truth, the child's primary social realm, and hence the main source of the foundational states of character that will guide his future choices and inclinations.
The inherent impulse of public education towards increased school hours, increased high school completion rates, and "universal preschool" is not an impulse towards more learning, but rather towards less. More time in the abstract world of aimless, collective childhood means less time developing practical skills, private interests, and personal motivations that might have made a young person's future more fulfilling, more exceptional, certainly freer -- and more independent, confident, and self-reliant.
And this is exactly why progressives hate private, non-progressive education (for "the masses"), why they demand that government education be compulsory, and why they fight for increasing standardization of outcomes and methods, as well as for almost exclusive control of children's time and energy from the earliest possible to the latest feasible age. Men capable of living independent, confident and self-reliant lives grounded in their own skills, their own interests, and their own minds, are a threat to the authoritarians, mainly because what such men naturally crave -- more freedom -- is precisely the opposite of the desire progressivism seeks to foster in every child, namely the desire of a helpless dependent for perpetual security, to be provided by the all-knowing, all-caring über-parent, Government.
This brings us back to our military analogy. The progressive enemy showed patience; knowing they could not reverse the mentality of a civilization in a day, and having learned the risks of applying too much force at once, they instead carefully arranged the conditions of slow decay. Compulsory schooling, masked as humanitarianism, was the single most essential coercive act required to achieve their long-term goals. Public education created a social and moral environment which necessarily undermined freedom, individualism, private family life, and the innate human desire for self-development, regardless of what was explicitly taught, or by whom. This point is vital, because it means the more explicit moral lessons of leftist compliance, and the more aggressive lowering of intellectual standards, could be introduced gradually, as the basic social conditions of the schools themselves actually prepared people for the next stage of degradation. Parents imbued with the first, relatively mild stage of moral and mental corruption were more likely to consent to having their children imbued with the next stage, and so on. (This is the answer to people who say, "But the public schools were better in my day." Yes they were -- as Stage I cancer is "better" than Stage IV cancer.)
Within a generation or two -- despite thousands of years of counterexamples, and the fact that the very idea of government education contradicts the basis of modern liberal democracy or republicanism as blatantly as any idea can -- compulsory schooling became an implicit faith, an unquestioned good. Before long, the best result anyone even hoped for was a reversal of some particular degradation in the curriculum, or of some particular bureaucratic expansion. But this guaranteed that the underlying condition of progressive civilizational decay -- the retarding, collectivizing, demoralizing nature of compulsory schooling itself -- would remain forever intact. Thus, future generations, on whom we must pin our hopes for a broad cultural renewal, will always have been trained by the enemy, even if that enemy occasionally makes a superficial concession to keep up the absurd illusion of good faith.
How to solve this?
First, accept the obvious: there is no general will in a society grounded in government schools for undoing compulsory indoctrination immediately. We must therefore learn the most valuable lesson of progressivism, namely the indispensability of patience and gradualism. The next generation cannot be freed en masse from progressive mental control, and yet this freeing of minds is the only way to restore rationality and liberty in the long run.
The necessary conclusion, then: we must begin raising private militias for future battles -- people who will not have submission to the progressives as their implicit goal, because, not having learned their rules of engagement in collectivist training camps, they will have become exactly the men most naturally resistant to progressivism: independent, confident, rational, and self-reliant.
In short, remove individual children from public schools, and raise them as individuals. This is not a legislative solution depending on corrupt politicians; it depends on no politician or party. This is private action taken with a view to granting someone a gift he will instinctively want to share and fight for, namely a feeling of uncompromised self-ownership and self-determination.
The final battles in civilization's ongoing war will be fought many years hence, perhaps when most of us are dead and gone. This war's short-term victories will be small, but cumulative. Parents must gradually take back the responsibility for raising their own children, the future men and women who will determine whether progressive authoritarianism is permitted to close the final, innermost gate of its labyrinth, locking our descendants inside to be devoured by the Minotaur of oppression, or whether the monster will be killed at last by a modern Theseus, in the form of millions of free souls prepared to defend themselves as too few today are, and to rebuild their communities -- to recivilize -- on principles of reason and human nature.
You do not have the option of waiting for someone else to act. The trend throughout the world is toward increasing restriction of parental authority. Many Western countries have already outlawed homeschooling. (Homeschooling is imperfect, if it must be done in accordance with government standards, but it is infinitely superior to the Dewey/Marx pre-education camps.) Once it becomes strictly illegal to resist public schooling, the only way to rescue children from government education without being imprisoned would be mass civil disobedience, which is highly unlikely. Thus the time to act, for those still legally permitted to do so, is now.
The progressives control the mechanisms of power, and will unavoidably continue to do so for as long as they control every nation's educational establishment -- which means for as long as there are compulsory public schools. What is required, therefore, is educational guerrilla warfare: preparing a rebel army of civilized, moral, non-government-educated individuals who will gradually grow to sufficient numbers to challenge the foundations of the progressive establishment in government, in the universities, in the arts, and in the rearing of new generations of young people freed from the inhuman labyrinth of government education.
I have discussed the practical possibilities elsewhere, but allow me to explain educational guerrilla warfare by way of a personal example. I recently took a stroll with a friend here in Korea -- a graduate student, and the young wife of a Christian minister. When she mentioned her plans to have children in the near future, I asked her about the possibility of homeschooling, which is uncommon here. Her initial answer was the typical, "It would be so difficult." She has a conscience, however, so she immediately chuckled embarrassedly at her own words. Over the course of the ensuing conversation, and a subsequent one, I asked her the basic questions I believe all prospective parents must confront:
My friend is earnest and good-hearted. I believe she will not evade her own conscience on these matters, and others.
Her children will be what they are capable of being, and what they want
to be, rather than submissive, diminished, useful tools of authority.
If the friendly but pointed conversation I have just described under the name "guerrilla warfare" does not look like your idea of war, be assured -- and warned -- that it will look like war to the progressives. For however civilized (and civilizing) our methods might seem, the ultimate outcome of this war will be of as great a world-historical significance as that of any previous war -- and the authoritarians certainly know it. This is a war to preserve and rejoin the three-thousand-year continuum that progressivism seeks to erase from human memory forever.
The battleground is the soul of today's children, the soul of civilization's future. The authoritarians have all the heavy weapons -- their own educational establishment enforceable by law, and supported by both a mass media and a mass of humanity that has been trained to accept the terms of its own enslavement in exchange for the false comfort of disengagement from human nature. We, their hated enemy, have only our powers of personal persuasion, our own and our friends' private consciences, and the strength of knowing that truth and nature are on our side.
That's enough. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." -- Lao Tzu
What are your chances of winning that war? You might win a skirmish here and there, if a few of your soldiers remain independent enough to question the lessons in surrender they were taught by the enemy. But your long-term prospects are, of course, dismal, since after their rare provisional successes, your soldiers will only use their newly-gained territory to set up a tent for conciliatory peace talks with the other side, in accordance with the rules of engagement they have learned in training.
Civilization -- all of it -- is currently under the domination of progressive collectivism in ethics, authoritarianism in politics, irrationalism in epistemology, and nihilism in metaphysics. The architects of this calamity have paved the road to the devil's dominion over several generations. Their recent boldness, moving in for the kill on the last, crumbling bastion of principled resistance, America, shows that they believe ultimate victory is at hand, which, in human terms, means we face a thousand years of darkness.
We who reject the progressives' knee-jerk historicism, however, need not accept the inevitability of this result. Doom does not follow necessarily from any mechanism beyond human control. It does, however, follow necessarily from inaction and resignation. That is to say, civilization is doomed unless she begins to mount a deliberate and determined defense.
The first step to mounting an effective defense is to understand how progressivism has won so much territory, geographical and spiritual, over this multi-generational war. I mean, specifically, how they have done it in practice, for concrete results derive from concrete actions. The nations of the semi-free world have, over the course of generations, voted themselves into servitude, voted away their property rights, acquiesced in the breakdown of the family, and willingly given over their souls en masse to the rule of all the wanton and stupid desires and fears that men for millennia knew they had to control in order to remain men; they have forsaken the human heritage for the false promises of tyrants. Why? How did the pied pipers lead civilization astray? And why does this process always tend in one direction, such that intermittent stasis has become our only relief from freefall?
The answer has been staring us in the face all along. For "civilization" -- literally "the process of civilizing men," or the society resulting from this process -- is, as Allan Bloom observed a generation ago, just another word for education. Thus the reversal of true education is the undoing of any social arrangement consistent with human nature. The progressives' deranged hope has been to prime mankind so thoroughly for surrender that when the time comes for each new stage of enslavement, they may simply swing open the next gate in their clever labyrinth of pens within pens, and men will walk into the new, smaller enclosure of their own accord. And they have every reason for faith in their scheme, as they have been successfully training generations of men for such gradual submission for more than a century, at public expense no less.
In brief, as long as authoritarians have your children in their schools, they own your future. True, you may win an election here and there, or stop a particular piece of progressive legislation once in a while; but even those little victories will be won on compromising terms, and the turf gained in one battle will never be used as the staging ground for a broader assault.
For generations, progressives have had the insuperable strategic and psychological advantage of knowing that anything they fail to accomplish today will be accomplished tomorrow, because the collectivist goals of tomorrow are being planted in the souls of children today, in schools designed for this purpose. ("We'll get you through your children!" Allen Ginsberg shouted at Norman Podhoretz. This was not a wild threat. It was an unveiled description of public education.)
This is not merely a matter of curriculum. No mere textbook changes or administrative overhauls can undo the defining danger. Public schools undermine -- and are intended to undermine -- the attachment to private family, by draining most of a child's energy and attention into a world unrelated to home; by forcibly creating an alternative social universe that engenders attachments rivalling those to parents and siblings; and by teaching children implicit and explicit moral lessons over the heads of their parents, lessons that may stand in direct defiance of the parents' beliefs. The public school, which is to say the state, becomes the highest moral authority in the child's life, the ultimate arbiter of truth, the child's primary social realm, and hence the main source of the foundational states of character that will guide his future choices and inclinations.
The inherent impulse of public education towards increased school hours, increased high school completion rates, and "universal preschool" is not an impulse towards more learning, but rather towards less. More time in the abstract world of aimless, collective childhood means less time developing practical skills, private interests, and personal motivations that might have made a young person's future more fulfilling, more exceptional, certainly freer -- and more independent, confident, and self-reliant.
And this is exactly why progressives hate private, non-progressive education (for "the masses"), why they demand that government education be compulsory, and why they fight for increasing standardization of outcomes and methods, as well as for almost exclusive control of children's time and energy from the earliest possible to the latest feasible age. Men capable of living independent, confident and self-reliant lives grounded in their own skills, their own interests, and their own minds, are a threat to the authoritarians, mainly because what such men naturally crave -- more freedom -- is precisely the opposite of the desire progressivism seeks to foster in every child, namely the desire of a helpless dependent for perpetual security, to be provided by the all-knowing, all-caring über-parent, Government.
This brings us back to our military analogy. The progressive enemy showed patience; knowing they could not reverse the mentality of a civilization in a day, and having learned the risks of applying too much force at once, they instead carefully arranged the conditions of slow decay. Compulsory schooling, masked as humanitarianism, was the single most essential coercive act required to achieve their long-term goals. Public education created a social and moral environment which necessarily undermined freedom, individualism, private family life, and the innate human desire for self-development, regardless of what was explicitly taught, or by whom. This point is vital, because it means the more explicit moral lessons of leftist compliance, and the more aggressive lowering of intellectual standards, could be introduced gradually, as the basic social conditions of the schools themselves actually prepared people for the next stage of degradation. Parents imbued with the first, relatively mild stage of moral and mental corruption were more likely to consent to having their children imbued with the next stage, and so on. (This is the answer to people who say, "But the public schools were better in my day." Yes they were -- as Stage I cancer is "better" than Stage IV cancer.)
Within a generation or two -- despite thousands of years of counterexamples, and the fact that the very idea of government education contradicts the basis of modern liberal democracy or republicanism as blatantly as any idea can -- compulsory schooling became an implicit faith, an unquestioned good. Before long, the best result anyone even hoped for was a reversal of some particular degradation in the curriculum, or of some particular bureaucratic expansion. But this guaranteed that the underlying condition of progressive civilizational decay -- the retarding, collectivizing, demoralizing nature of compulsory schooling itself -- would remain forever intact. Thus, future generations, on whom we must pin our hopes for a broad cultural renewal, will always have been trained by the enemy, even if that enemy occasionally makes a superficial concession to keep up the absurd illusion of good faith.
How to solve this?
First, accept the obvious: there is no general will in a society grounded in government schools for undoing compulsory indoctrination immediately. We must therefore learn the most valuable lesson of progressivism, namely the indispensability of patience and gradualism. The next generation cannot be freed en masse from progressive mental control, and yet this freeing of minds is the only way to restore rationality and liberty in the long run.
The necessary conclusion, then: we must begin raising private militias for future battles -- people who will not have submission to the progressives as their implicit goal, because, not having learned their rules of engagement in collectivist training camps, they will have become exactly the men most naturally resistant to progressivism: independent, confident, rational, and self-reliant.
In short, remove individual children from public schools, and raise them as individuals. This is not a legislative solution depending on corrupt politicians; it depends on no politician or party. This is private action taken with a view to granting someone a gift he will instinctively want to share and fight for, namely a feeling of uncompromised self-ownership and self-determination.
The final battles in civilization's ongoing war will be fought many years hence, perhaps when most of us are dead and gone. This war's short-term victories will be small, but cumulative. Parents must gradually take back the responsibility for raising their own children, the future men and women who will determine whether progressive authoritarianism is permitted to close the final, innermost gate of its labyrinth, locking our descendants inside to be devoured by the Minotaur of oppression, or whether the monster will be killed at last by a modern Theseus, in the form of millions of free souls prepared to defend themselves as too few today are, and to rebuild their communities -- to recivilize -- on principles of reason and human nature.
You do not have the option of waiting for someone else to act. The trend throughout the world is toward increasing restriction of parental authority. Many Western countries have already outlawed homeschooling. (Homeschooling is imperfect, if it must be done in accordance with government standards, but it is infinitely superior to the Dewey/Marx pre-education camps.) Once it becomes strictly illegal to resist public schooling, the only way to rescue children from government education without being imprisoned would be mass civil disobedience, which is highly unlikely. Thus the time to act, for those still legally permitted to do so, is now.
The progressives control the mechanisms of power, and will unavoidably continue to do so for as long as they control every nation's educational establishment -- which means for as long as there are compulsory public schools. What is required, therefore, is educational guerrilla warfare: preparing a rebel army of civilized, moral, non-government-educated individuals who will gradually grow to sufficient numbers to challenge the foundations of the progressive establishment in government, in the universities, in the arts, and in the rearing of new generations of young people freed from the inhuman labyrinth of government education.
I have discussed the practical possibilities elsewhere, but allow me to explain educational guerrilla warfare by way of a personal example. I recently took a stroll with a friend here in Korea -- a graduate student, and the young wife of a Christian minister. When she mentioned her plans to have children in the near future, I asked her about the possibility of homeschooling, which is uncommon here. Her initial answer was the typical, "It would be so difficult." She has a conscience, however, so she immediately chuckled embarrassedly at her own words. Over the course of the ensuing conversation, and a subsequent one, I asked her the basic questions I believe all prospective parents must confront:
(1)
Can you accept public education's lowest common denominator standards
and emphasis on basic social utility as satisfactory goals for your own
child's upbringing?
(2)
Do you agree to give up primary control of your child's moral
development to the contingencies of childish mob pressures and the
schools' systemic demands for conformity?
(3)
Do you prefer to have your child raised in an environment in which his
own genuine interests and curiosities are punished or drugged out of him
in the name of "paying attention" and "socialization," thus diluting or
smothering the natural enthusiasms that might have driven him to
extraordinary achievements?
(4) Are you convinced that John Dewey's programmatic wish to have every child raised in a collectivized setting in order to undermine independent thought and short-circuit the private family is
better for your child than the private models of education that
produced classical Greece and Rome, the Italian Renaissance, the
Enlightenment, and the American Revolution?
If the friendly but pointed conversation I have just described under the name "guerrilla warfare" does not look like your idea of war, be assured -- and warned -- that it will look like war to the progressives. For however civilized (and civilizing) our methods might seem, the ultimate outcome of this war will be of as great a world-historical significance as that of any previous war -- and the authoritarians certainly know it. This is a war to preserve and rejoin the three-thousand-year continuum that progressivism seeks to erase from human memory forever.
The battleground is the soul of today's children, the soul of civilization's future. The authoritarians have all the heavy weapons -- their own educational establishment enforceable by law, and supported by both a mass media and a mass of humanity that has been trained to accept the terms of its own enslavement in exchange for the false comfort of disengagement from human nature. We, their hated enemy, have only our powers of personal persuasion, our own and our friends' private consciences, and the strength of knowing that truth and nature are on our side.
That's enough. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." -- Lao Tzu
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/winning_the_long_war.html#ixzz2Un5lkSc1
PK'S NOTE: I'm not sure on this. I see the author's point but I don't think I believe that the government should own private companies. And I'm sure I'm very naive on the issue.
Tesla Is Worse Than Solyndra
How the U.S. government’s bungled investment in the car company cost taxpayers at least $1 billion.
In 2009, as the financial crisis raged and General Motors and Chrysler plunged toward bankruptcy, Tesla Motors faced a seemingly impossible task: raising half a billion dollars to build an electric-car factory. Tesla had just staggered through a year of layoffs, canceled orders, and record losses. Then suddenly, salvation. The U.S. Department of Energy offered to lend the company $465 million at rock-bottom interest rates.
Four years later, Tesla Motors offers a remarkable example of how a
well-timed government investment in the right company can pay off. Every
week, 400 all-electric Model S sedans roll out of Tesla’s factory in
Fremont, Calif., which the government’s loan financed. Motor Trend named the Model S its 2013 Car of the Year.
Tesla’s stock is the toast of Wall Street, giving the company a market
value topping $12 billion. And in sharp contrast to Solyndra, the solar
panel maker that defaulted on its $528 million loan from the Energy
Departtment, Tesla last week paid the government back early, with
interest.
Yet despite all the public celebration, both Solyndra and Tesla stand
as warnings of the dangers in deputizing bureaucrats to play bankers
and venture capitalists. In both loans, the government walked away
laughably undercompensated for the risk it accepted in the startup
companies. In fact, the Tesla deal was arguably far more costly for
America than the Solyndra fiasco.
Solyndra exposed the first way the taxpayer could lose out. The
traditional advantage of making a loan (as opposed to buying stock in a
company) is that lenders often get paid something even when the
borrowing company fails, because they hold collateral. Solyndra’s
bankruptcy revealed the ephemeral value of the government’s collateral.
Taxpayers have yet to recover a penny from the company.
Tesla’s runaway success, by contrast, is demonstrating how making venture capital–style investments in risky companies—without demanding venture capital–style compensation in return—can
end up costing taxpayers even more. In Silicon Valley, one Google pays
for a dozen Pets.com. The government made the key mistake of loaning
money to Tesla without insisting on receiving stock options, options
that could have allowed the Department of Energy to pay for the Solyndra
losses several times over.
When the government’s negotiators started hammering out the details
of the Tesla investment in mid-2009, it was obvious to both sides that
the feds were in a position to name their terms. Tesla’s management knew
that if they couldn’t get the government’s money at 3 or 4 percent
interest, their next cheapest source of capital would cost 10 times
more, a whopping 30 to 40 percent annually. (That’s according to
estimates Tesla made in a regulatory filing, which based its numbers on “venture capital rates of return for companies at a similar stage of development as us.”)
Today, the Energy Department defends the massive discount it offered
as perfectly appropriate. “The loan program wasn’t intended to generate
profit; the goal of the program is to provide affordable financing so
that America’s entrepreneurs and innovators can build a strong, thriving
and growing clean energy industry in the United States,” says a
department spokeswoman.
Yet isn't affordability the exact reason stock options are standard
in normal venture capital deals? When a company is struggling, the
options can’t be exercised and thus are perfectly affordable, not
draining a dollar of cash from a startup company. Unlike a loan, stock
options only cost the company money if it goes on to success—at which
point it can afford to share that success with its early investors.
Personal loans made in 2008 by Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder and CEO,
provide a telling contrast. Musk received a much higher interest rate
(10 percent) from Tesla and, more importantly, the option to convert his
$38 million of debt into shares of Tesla stock. That’s exactly what he
ended up doing, and the resulting shares are now worth a whopping $1.4
billion—a 3,500 percent return on his investment. By contrast, the
Department of Energy earned only $12 million in interest on its $465
million loan—a 2.6 percent return.
The government had huge leeway to demand similar terms as part of its
loan, given the yawning gap between its interest rate and the cost of
Tesla’s next-best source of capital. The government was ponying up more
capital than all of Tesla’s previous investors combined. At a bare
minimum, the Department of Energy could have demanded a share of the
company equal to the 11 percent Musk received for his $38 million loan
the year before. Such an 11 percent share would be worth $1.4 billion to
taxpayers today.
And if the government had wanted to bargain like a real venture
capitalist, Tesla’s desperate need for cash gave the feds the power to
demand options on half the company’s stock, or more. Over at the
Treasury Department, negotiators were demanding big ownership stakes in
exchange for life-saving bailouts. The Treasury wound up owning 85
percent of AIG’s stock and 32 percent of GM’s.
There was nothing to prevent DOE from demanding stock options from Tesla. Tesla’s loan came courtesy of a 2007 law
signed by George W. Bush, which provided $25 billion for loans backing
“Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing.” While Congress required
the Energy Department to lend at low rates, equal to what the government
pays, the law was silent on the issue of stock options.
And, in fact, the Energy Department actually did negotiate for
options on 3 million shares of Tesla stock as part of the original loan,
options that would be worth $300 million based on Tesla’s current share
price.
Unfortunately for taxpayers, those options no longer exist. Tesla had the right to force the extinguishment of those options by repaying the loan early, as it just did. (The Energy Department says that was expected, since unlike typical options these were never meant to turn a profit but rather to encourage Tesla to repay the loan early if it could.)
Unfortunately for taxpayers, those options no longer exist. Tesla had the right to force the extinguishment of those options by repaying the loan early, as it just did. (The Energy Department says that was expected, since unlike typical options these were never meant to turn a profit but rather to encourage Tesla to repay the loan early if it could.)
Elon Musk didn’t mention that $300 million reason when he explained
last week why Tesla was repaying the loan early. Musk cast the repayment
not as a responsibility to his shareholders but rather as a moral duty
to the taxpayers who made his company’s success possible. “Having
accepted taxpayer money, I thought we had an obligation to repay it as
soon as we reasonably could," Musk told the Wall Street Journal last week.
Asked to explain what, in fact, was Musk’s primary motive for the
loan repayment, a Tesla spokesperson declined to comment. (Musk also
told the Journal that “If economics were the only consideration
we would not have done this," despite the company’s significant
economic incentive to kill the government’s options.)
Supporters of the government stimulus program point to Tesla as a
shining example of how such investments can be long-term successes.
“Ultimately, making the U.S. the leader in advanced vehicles and clean
energy will pay for itself many times over as our economy grows and new
industries are created,” says an Energy Department press officer.
Here’s hoping that proves true. In the meantime, the question of how
to compensate taxpayers for Tesla-esque successes remains a distinct
issue, one that the government would do well to pay more attention to
the next time it plays venture capitalist. If the government had
demanded an ownership stake in reasonable proportion to the amount of
money it put at risk, Tesla would be just as successful as it is today.
The only difference would be that the taxpayers who saved the company
would share in that success.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesla_is_worse_than_solyndra_how_the_u_s_government_bungled_its_investment.single.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesla_is_worse_than_solyndra_how_the_u_s_government_bungled_its_investment.single.html
Historian: Obama helping resurrect Ottoman Empire?
Pattern seen in 'Arab Spring' interventions began in Balkans in 1990s
Is Obama helping advance a grand plan by Turkey, with the support of Germany, to restore the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic caliphate that controlled much of southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa for more than six centuries?That is a question posed by historian Robert E. Kaplan in an article titled “The U.S. Helps Reconstruct the Ottoman Empire,” published this week by the international policy council and think tank Gatestone Institute.
Kaplan, a historian with a doctorate from Cornell University, specializing in modern Europe, says history suggests a possible partnership between Turkey and Germany, which has seen influence over Turkey as a means of influencing Muslims worldwide for its own interests.
He asks why the U.S. government “would actively promote German aims,” including the destruction of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the re-creation of the Ottoman Empire through the “Arab Spring.”
Kaplan points to Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ultimate victor in the “Arab Spring”; the U.S. backing of radical Islamic “rebel” groups in Libya with ties to al-Qaida; and current support for similarly constituted radical Islamic “rebel” groups in Syria aligned with al-Qaida.
Each of these U.S. military interventions occurred in areas that were under the Ottoman Empire.
Bring back the Ottoman Empire?
Kaplan sees a similarity between the Clinton-era attacks against the Serbs and the Obama administration hostility to well-established regimes in Libya and Syria.
He writes:
Since the mid-1990s the United States has intervened militarily in several internal armed conflicts in Europe and the Middle East: bombing Serbs and Serbia in support of Izetbegovic’s Moslem Regime in Bosnia in 1995, bombing Serbs and Serbia in support of KLA Moslems of Kosovo in 1999, bombing Libya’s Gaddafi regime in support of rebels in 2010. Each intervention was justified to Americans as motivated by humanitarian concerns: to protect Bosnian Moslems from genocidal Serbs, to protect Kosovo Moslems from genocidal Serbs, and to protect Libyans from their murderous dictator Muammar Gaddafi.Kaplan observes that neither President Clinton nor President Obama ever mentioned the reconstitution of the Ottoman Empire as a justification for U.S. military intervention.
The U.S. offered other reasons for intervening in Serbia, including a desire to gain a strategic foothold in the Balkans, to defeat communism in Yugoslavia, to demonstrate to the world’s Muslims that the U.S. is not anti-Muslim, and to redefine the role of NATO in the post-Cold War era.
Recurring pattern
At its height in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ottoman Empire stretched from its capital in Turkey, through the Muslim-populated areas of North Africa, Iraq, the costal regions of the Arabian Peninsula and parts of the Balkans.
Kaplan points out that since the 1990s, “each European and Middle Eastern country that experienced American military intervention in an internal military conflict or an ‘Arab Spring’ has ended up with a government dominated by Islamists of the Moslem Brotherhood or al-Qaida variety fits nicely with the idea that these events represent a return to Ottoman rule.”
In these conflicts, Kaplan sees recurring patterns employed by Clinton and Obama to justify U.S. military intervention:
Each U. S. military action in Europe and the Middle East since 1990, however, with the exception of Iraq, has followed an overt pattern: First there is an armed conflict within the country where the intervention will take place. American news media heavily report this conflict. The “good guys” in the story are the rebels. The “bad guys,” to be attacked by American military force, are brutally anti-democratic, and committers of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Prestigious public figures, NGOs, judicial and quasi-judicial bodies and international organizations call for supporting the rebels and attacking the regime. Next, the American president orders American logistical support and arms supplies for the rebels. Finally the American president orders military attack under the auspices of NATO in support of the rebels. The attack usually consists of aerial bombing, today’s equivalent of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ gunboat which could attack coastal cities of militarily weak countries without fear of retaliation. The ultimate outcome of each American intervention is the replacement of a secular government with an Islamist regime in an area that had been part of the Ottoman Empire.Kaplan cites a recent report published by John Rosenthal in the online Asian Times that discloses reports prepared by the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, attributing the massacre in the Syrian town of Houla on May 25, 2012, to the Syrian government.
Rosenthal linked the conclusions of the BND regarding the Houla massacre to the policy of the German government to support the Syrian rebellion and its political arm, the Syrian National Council.
Recalling that Germany invaded Serbia in both World Wars I and II and actively sought the destruction of Yugoslavia in the Cold War era, Kaplan wonders if the administration’s joining with Germany in the bombing of Libya, and possibly Syria as well, is an effort to help Germany fill its foreign policy objective of restoring the Ottoman Empire.
Kaplan notes that the Obama administration’s foreign policy requires it to downplay the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida terrorist threat to U.S. national security.
Al-Qaida defeated, or embraced?
In the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama spoke at a campaign event in Las Vegas one day after the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack, proclaiming, “A day after 9/11, we are reminded that a new tower rises above the New York skyline, but al-Qaeida is on the path to defeat and bin Laden is dead.”
On Nov. 1, 2012, CNSNews.com reported that Obama had described al-Qaida as having been “decimated,” “on the path to defeat,” or some other variation at least 32 times since the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. It was a theme Obama repeated last week in his counter-terrorism policy speech at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.
Obama also has advanced a narrative expressing U.S. acceptance of Islam.
In his foreign policy speech delivered at Cairo University June 4, 2009, Obama explained he had known Islam “on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed.”
In a joint press availability with Turkey’s President Gul at Cankaya Palace in Ankara, Turkey, on April 6, 2009, Obama repudiated U.S. history since George Washington, declaring the U.S. is not a Christian country: “And I’ve said before that one of the great strengths of the United States is – although as I mentioned, we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”
Yet, despite Obama’s attempt to establish a narrative in which Islamic terrorism is not a threat to U.S. national security, evidence abounds that the radical Islamic rebels responsible for opposing Gadhafi in Libya and Assad in Syria have extensive ties to al-Qaida.
In September 2012, WND also broke the story that the slain U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stevens, played a central role in recruiting jihadists to fight the Syria regime, according to Egyptian security forces.
In December 2012, WND reported top level al-Qaida operatives are functioning with impunity in Libya under a NATO-established provisional government.
In February 2013, WND reported that the U.S. special mission in Benghazi was used to coordinate Arab arms shipments and other aid to rebels in Libya who are known to be saturated by al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorist groups.
On May 14, 2013, WND reported the attack that killed Stevens and three other Americans was an al-Qaida revenge killing that took place one day after al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri called for retaliation for a U.S. drone strike that killed a top Libyan al-Qaida leader.
Formed by Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida is a Sunni Islamic organization, whereas the Assad regime in Syria has been arguably a client state of Iran, the only nation in the Middle East in which a majority of the Muslims are Shiites.
The conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims dates back to the founding of Islam when a split took place over who should succeed Muhammad, when he died in AD 632. Sunnis comprise about 75 to 90 percent of the world’s Muslims.
The Muslim Brotherhood that has come to power in the African Islamic states following the “Arab Spring” is a Sunni Islam-dominated organization that opposes the Shiites in Iran on religious grounds.
On Jan. 3, 2013, WND reported that the Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated the Obama White House, with several American Muslim leaders who work with the Obama administration identified as Muslim Brotherhood operatives who have significant influence on U.S. policy.
On Feb. 10, 2013, WND reported President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, John Brennan, converted to Islam years ago in Saudi Arabia.
Arguably, the Obama administration’s policy of siding with the rebels in Libya and Syria may reflect the aim of isolating Shiite-dominated Iran from the rest of the Islamic world.
The logical expectation would be that a recreated Ottoman Empire headquartered in Turkey would be a Sunni organization, reflecting the Sunni-dominance in Turkey.
The Gatestone Institute website describes the organization as a non-partisan, not-for-profit international policy council and think tank dedicated “to educating the public about what the mainstream media fails to report.”
As the organization’s website explains, “Gatestone Institute conducts national and international conferences, briefings and events for its members and others, with world leaders, journalists and experts – analyzing, strategizing, and keeping them informed on current issues, and where possible recommending solutions.”
http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/historian-obama-helping-resurrect-ottoman-empire/
Obama’s ‘Chicago Way’
The administration’s political tactics are straight out of the Daley playbook.
The scandals swirling around the Obama administration have many journalists scratching their heads as to how “hope and change” seem to have been supplanted by “arrogance and fear.” Perhaps it’s time they revisit one of their original premises about Barack Obama: that he wasn’t influenced by the Chicago Daley machine. You know: the machine that boosted his career and whose protégés — including Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and his wife, Michelle — he brought to Washington with him.The liberal take on the president was best summed up by Slate magazine’s Jacob Weisberg, who wrote last year that Obama “somehow passed through Chicago politics without ever developing any real connection to it.” It’s true that Obama initially kept some distance from the machine. But by the time he ran for the Senate in 2004, his main political Sherpas were Axelrod, who was then the chief consultant to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and Jarrett, the mayor’s former deputy chief of staff. As Scott Simon of NPR noted: “While calling for historic change globally, [Obama] has never professed to be a reformer locally.” The Daley machine, which evolved over 60 years from a patronage-rich army of worker bees into a corporate state in which political pull and public-employee unions dominate, has left its imprint on Obama. The machine’s core principle, laid out in an illuminating Chicago Independent Examiner primer on “the Chicago Way,” is that at all times elections are too important to be left to chance. John Kass, the muckraking columnist for the Chicago Tribune who for years has warned that Obama was bringing “the Chicago way” to Washington, sums up his city like this: “Once there were old bosses. Now there are new bosses. And shopkeepers still keep their mouths shut. Tavern owners still keep their mouths shut. Even billionaires keep their mouths shut.”
“We have a sick political culture, and that’s the environment Barack Obama came from,” Jay Stewart, the executive director of the Chicago Better Government Association, warned ABC News when Obama ran in 2008. He noted that Obama had “been noticeably silent on the issue of corruption here in his home state.”
Joel Kotkin, an urban expert who still considers himself a “Kennedy Democrat –– John F. Kennedy,” wrote at Forbes: “Most of us would put up with a bit of corruption and special dealing if the results were strong economic and employment growth. But the bare demographic and economic facts for both Chicago and Illinois reveal a stunning legacy of failure.” Since 2007, the Chicago region has lost more jobs than Detroit has, and more than twice as many as New York. The city’s murder rate is a national disgrace, and its teachers’ union is so powerful that a strike it called last year forced new mayor Rahm Emanuel to back down from his attempt to curb union power.
The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch tags Chicago as the fifth most heavily taxed city in the country: Its sky-high effective sales tax of 9.75 percent makes the tax burden on a family earning $25,000 a year the fourth highest in the country. From 1991, two years after Richard M. Daley first took office as mayor, to 2011, the year Emanuel took the reins, the average debt per Chicagoan grew from $600 to $2,600, an increase of 433 percent. As Dick Simpson, a former reform Chicago alderman who now teaches at the University of Illinois, put it: “There’s a significant downside to authoritarian rule. The city could do much better.”
Conservatives in Chicago, an embattled breed, say the Obama scandals now coming to light — the IRS, the intimidation of journalists, the green-energy boondoggles such as Solyndra — could have been anticipated. “The 2008 Obama campaign perpetrated a fraud that he was a reformer,” says Chris Robling, a former journalist who has served as a Republican election commissioner. “All of the complaints — from the lack of transparency to HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s shaking down corporations to promote Obamacare — stem from the culture of the Daley Machine.” For decades, Robling says, Mayor Daley “encouraged” contributions to his favorite charities, with the implicit understanding that the “encourager” controlled the city’s inspectors and regulators. “That sounds an awful lot like what Sebelius was doing to prop up Obamacare,” Robling notes. “Obama’s ideology may come from Saul Alinsky’s acolytes, but his political tactics come straight from the Daley playbook.” Indeed, friends of Bill Daley, Mayor Daley’s brother, say that one reason Bill left his post as Obama’s White House chief of staff after only one year was that even he thought Team Obama was too much “all politics, all of the time” and not enough about governance.
Journalists used to know that presidents are in part a product of their past: where their careers were nurtured and where their politics were shaped. They understood this as a given when it came to Ronald Reagan and California; they basically grasped it about Bill Clinton’s Arkansas, and certainly nailed it on George W. Bush and Texas. But when it came to Barack Obama, all that went out the window. Speaking at the University of Southern California, at a post-2008 conference on the election, Mark Halperin, then of ABC News, said that the media’s treatment of Obama had been “the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war.” It was “extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage,” he concluded.
That media failure continued throughout Obama’s first term. Perhaps now, as Obama’s “Chicago Way” is coming into focus, the media will want to redeem itself. With Obama, it’s become all too clear: You can take the politician away from the machine, but you can’t take the machine out of the politician.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/349610/obamas-chicago-way-john-fund
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