Ten questions about the Obamacare employer mandate delay
The White House would rather we not talk or think about this subject
since it announced this on a holiday week, but we shall defy them!
1. Do we think President Obama knew about the delay in the employer
mandate or did he have to wait to find out about it when Air Force One
landed back in America and he could get a newspaper in front of him?
2. Isn’t Obama just leaving the little guy out to dry by waiving a mandate for employers, who have an organized lobby, but leaving it in place for individuals?
3. Since we’re “already seeing benefits of Obamacare,” and the rest is so dangerous to the economy we’re delaying it, why do we need the rest?
4. Isn’t it the White House that’s interfering with implementation, now?
5. By Obama’s definition, did the White House just do an end-around
Congress to limit women’s access to birth control? Without employer
mandate penalties being enforced, will the administration also be
declining to enforce penalties on employers who don’t provide free birth
control? Or, is that lobby not powerful enough to get a waiver?
6. Doesn’t this just give us another year or two of uncertainty and slow hiring?
7. Is there any plausible way this is not a pretty devastating admission of Obamcare’s failures?
8. Would anyone sue to stop the administration from delaying this
part of the law? HCAN? Some other liberal activist group? Maybe OFA
could finally make itself useful in making the president’s priorities a
reality.
9. What are the implications of the delay on the private health insurance market? Avik Roy offers some answers on this.
10. Are we all repealers now?
Exit question: Does this mean #WeCanWait after all?
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/02/ten-questions-about-the-obamacare-employer-mandate-delay/
Obama's Fundamental Transformation of a Nation He Despises
Is it just incompetence, or is there something else going on here?
Obama's
only real competence, it seems, lies in spying on Americans and
imposing new restrictions on their liberty. This fact may be the key to
understanding this president. He has shown himself sympathetic toward
every anti-American dictator on the planet, warmly embracing Hugo
Chávez, lifting travel restrictions to Castro's Cuba, and (when he
thought no one could hear him) promising a cozy second term with
President Putin.
Obama's
love affair with Marxist tyrants has not earned him any favors -- not
even the return of one globe-trotting traitor. The best he can do is
issue a weak protest and direct his new secretary of state to remark
that Hong Kong's and Russia's actions in regard to Snowden are really "disappointing." That kind of swagger should make the Chinese and Russian leadership wet their britches.
For
his part, Obama has done nothing, perhaps because he is still in thrall
of anyone who calls himself a Marxist. The only people he really
distrusts are Americans, especially those patriotic Tea Party members
who care about their country's future.
Does President Obama really hate the American people that much?
I think he does. He hates America as it is and as it has been, and, as he openly admits, he wants nothing less than to "fundamentally transform America."
One does not completely transform a nation into the opposite of what it
is unless one hates that nation as it is. That fact explains why Obama
has done so little to protect America while doing so much to spy on,
disparage, and attack ordinary Americans.
Obama seized on the financial crisis of 2008 as the pretext for passing a sweeping stimulus bill, the Dodd-Frank financial services regulation, and the seriously mislabeled "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Now, with the help of "extreme weather" coverage on every mainstream news
service, he has been ginning up another crisis as the pretext for
sweeping regulation of the entire economy. And just last week, in a
speech at Georgetown University, he has announced what that regulation
will cover.
It
will cover just about everything. Every activity that uses energy, or
that used energy in its manufacture or requires energy for its
maintenance, will be regulated -- not by Congress but by the president
directly.
That is the strategy behind Obama's new pronouncements on the "social cost" of carbon emissions. As Obama put it in his Georgetown speech, "the costs of these [climate] events can be measured." Nothing could justify the actual
cost of Obama's new emissions push, which will raise the cost of
electricity along with everything else from cars to refrigerators to new
homes. But if the "social cost" of carbon emissions is factored in,
suddenly the new guidelines are made to seem affordable.
But
what is the "social cost" of carbon? It is the cost of future climate
events that "might result" from increased carbon emissions. In fact, no
one knows whether there actually will be more extreme weather events --
or even what constitutes such an event. Is a cold winter such an
event? An abnormally wet spring? An average year, with its share of
tornados and wildfires? The truth is that the president is engaging in
pure speculation as the basis for policies that will cost hundreds of
billions in spending and millions of new jobs.
As
Obama himself pointed out at Georgetown, America's carbon emissions are
"at the lowest levels in nearly 20 years." Yet, according to the
president, it is in precisely in this period ("the last 15 years") that
scientists have recorded rising temperatures. The president's science
seems a bit confused.
It
is all too much like Stalin's fascination with the pseudo-science of
Trofim Lysenko. Stalin's faith in Lysenkoism set Soviet agriculture
back decades. Yet Lysenko's theories of the heritability of acquired
traits became the basis of Soviet agricultural policy -- just as the
unproven science of global warming has become the basis of American
energy policy under Obama.
Lysenkoism
ended in disaster for the Soviet Union, and the science of global
warming is leading the U.S. and western Europe toward a similar economic
disaster. This year, California's Central Valley, which supplies much
of America's fresh fruits and vegetables, will receive only 20% of its
normal water allocation for fear of harming the Delta smelt.
A president with real leadership qualities would suspend the efforts
to save the smelt and save the humans instead. But this president is
terrified of offending the environmental lobby. In fact, he wants to go
farther. Why should farmers have any water at all if the smelt's
future is at stake?
It's
not difficult to see where the pseudo-science of global warming is
taking us. Obama has already declared that, in effect, there shall be
no new coal-fired power plants and that at least one third of existing
coal-fired plants are to be shuttered in the near future, and all of
them eventually in the carbon-free future he dreams of. He is preparing
regulations that will make it impossible to produce efficient and
economical full-size trucks in the numbers now needed to run our
economy. His next step will likely be an assault on our nation's
ability to produce shale gas through the safe technology of hydraulic
fracturing.
And
that's just the beginning of the total makeover that Obama has in mind
for America. Did I mention persecution of journalists? Forced
unionization of workplaces? Abortion on demand, funded by every
employer? Racial discrimination in perpetuity against non-minorities?
And environmental regulations as far as the eye can see, affecting
every aspect of life?
From
the flow per second of your morning shower to the temperature at which
you set your thermometer at night, from the car you drive to what you
eat, from where and how your children are educated to how you fund
your retirement, Obama wants government to control every moment of your
existence. Long ago, in a glorious revolution, Americans rejected this
sort of tyranny when it was imposed on them by the British Crown. Our
only chance now is at the ballot box in 2014 and 2016.
State Department bureau spent $630,000 on Facebook 'likes'
State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook
"likes," prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that
the bureau was "buying fans" in social media, the agency's inspector
general says.
The department's Bureau of International Information Programs spent the money to increase its "likes" count between 2011 and March 2013.
"Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as 'buying
fans' who may have once clicked on an ad or 'liked' a photo but have no
real interest in the topic and have never engaged further," the
inspector general reported.
The spending increased the bureau's English-language Facebook page
likes from 100,000 to more than 2 million and to 450,000 on Facebook's
foreign-language pages.
Despite the surge in likes, the IG said the effort failed to reach
the bureau's target audience, which is largely older and more
influential than the people liking its pages. Only about 2 percent of
fans actually engage with the pages by liking, sharing or commenting.
In September 2012 Facebook also changed its approach to users'
news feeds, and the expensive "fan" campaigns became much less valuable.
The bureau now must constantly pay for sponsored ads to keep its
content visible even to people who have already liked its pages.
Another problem with the bureau's social media outreach is a lack of strategy for reaching the right audience, the report said.
"The absence of a Department wide PD [public diplomacy] strategy
tying resources to priorities directly affects IIP's work. Fundamental
questions remain unresolved. What is the proper balance between engaging
young people and marginalized groups versus elites and opinion
leaders?" the IG said.
Not only does the bureau lack its own social media strategy, but
various State Department bureaus have more than 150 social media
accounts that are uncoordinated and often overlap, according to the IG.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2532629
State Department's Sex Trafficking Scandals
Pssst,
did you hear? President Obama is replacing Ambassador Howard Gutman in
Belgium. You remember Ambassador Gutman, don't you? He's the big
Democrat donor President Obama nominated to represent his policies in
Belgium and who, it is alleged, trolled for prostitutes -- some of them children! -- in a park near his official residence.
Late in the day on Friday, June 21, the White House released a list
of new nominees for various posts, and Denise Bauer was listed for the
United States Ambassador to Belgium post. For the cynics, this is
similar to a Friday night document
dump -- a strategy the Obama Administration employs to release
controversial information or items unflattering to them after the
nightly news cycle is over and most people tune out for the weekend.
Denise Bauer was the Finance Chair of Women for Obama during the last election and served on the Obama for America National Finance Committee for the 2008 and 2012 elections. She was also a donor and a bundler. According to the New York Times, Bauer has raised $4,367,187 for Obama since 2007.
In a speech on May 5, 2013, Ambassador Gutman announced that he was leaving the post. CBS News
reported about a month later that a memo obtained from the Department
of State (DOS) Inspector General's (IG) office noted that the DOS has
known about the prostitution rumors since 2011, but higher-ups in the
DOS stopped the investigation of Ambassador Gutman. He was allowed to
remain America's representative to Belgium for two more years, and, if
the speech is any indication, he is leaving with his head held high,
even amidst rumors that his pants had been around his ankles during much
of his tenure.
The biographical information
about Gutman on the website says he was a "Special Assistant to F.B.I.
Director William H. Webster, focusing on counter-terrorism and
counter-intelligence." What do you think counter-intelligence officers
from other countries would do with information that a U.S. Ambassador
bought prostitutes of all ages in a park in Belgium? Can you say
"blackmail"? His background seems to imply he should have known how
risky and stupid actions like that could be, and yet, if the rumors
prove true, he jettisoned his judgment in favor of his sexual
proclivities.
Guess
what else was released last week? The 2013 Trafficking in Persons (TIP)
Report was made public on June 19. The TIP Report is the product of the
U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons (TIP Office), as mandated by the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act of 2000. The 2013 Report ranks the United States in the highest
tier, Tier 1, and states, "The U.S. government fully complies with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking."
What
does that mean? In part, it means the United States ranking takes into
consideration U.S. policy enacted to eradicate modern-day slavery. There
are two indicia listed
which are used to judge a country's "serious and sustained efforts to
eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons" that are interesting
in light of recent scandals:
-
Whether the government of the country vigorously investigates,
prosecutes, convicts, and sentences public officials who participate in
or facilitate severe forms of trafficking in persons, including
nationals of the country who are deployed abroad as part of a
peacekeeping or other similar mission who engage in or facilitate severe
forms of trafficking in persons or exploit victims of such trafficking,
and takes all appropriate measures against officials who condone such
trafficking.
- Whether the government of the country has made serious and sustained efforts to reduce the demand for
(A) commercial sex acts; and
(B) participation in international sex tourism by nationals of the country.
Can
you name two U.S. public officials recently alleged to have purchased
sex from children found in prostitution in other countries? (That is
called "sex trafficking" and "sex tourism," by the way.) Yes, Ambassador
Gutman is one, and Sen. Robert Menendez
(D-New Jersey) is the other. Sen. Menendez is alleged to have flown to
the Dominican Republic and had sex with teenagers engaged in
prostitution.
So,
following the first bullet point, has the Obama Administration
vigorously investigated either case? It is alleged in the DOS IG's memo
that during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's tenure, the
situation with Ambassador Gutman was ordered dropped.
Would that indicate "officials who condone such trafficking"? Has
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) urged the Obama
Administration to look into allegations that the Chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee may have engaged in sex trafficking and
international sex tourism in the Dominican Republic?
How about the prostitution scandals involving Secret Service agents
engaging prostitutes in Colombia when they were there to do advance
work for President Obama's visit, and the security detail assigned to
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hiring prostitutes during trips
with her to Russia and Colombia? In both cases, the problem of agents
engaging prostitutes was portrayed as a common occurrence in federal
agencies. Those agents were involved in commercial sex, which
exacerbates sex trafficking and international sex tourism. Without the
demand for commercial sex, there would be no sex trafficking.
In 2009, then-Secretary Clinton wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post
to announce the release of the 2009 TIP Report. She wrote, "To some,
human trafficking may seem like a problem limited to other parts of the
world. In fact, it occurs in every country, including the United States,
and we have a responsibility to fight it just as others do."
Yes,
she had a responsibility to fight it when her security detail and an
ambassador under her authority engaged in commercial sex and allegedly
the sex trafficking of a minor.
She
also wrote, "Human trafficking flourishes in the shadows and demands
attention, commitment and passion from all of us." By covering up these
scandals and allowing the perpetrators to remain in their jobs, she cast
a huge shadow over the plight of sex slaves found in the commercial sex
industry.
In 2012, President Obama gave a speech
at the Clinton Global Initiative on the topic of human trafficking. He
said, "First, we're going to do more to spot it and stop it. We'll
prepare a new assessment of human trafficking in the United States so we
better understand the scope and scale of the problem."
Given the examples above, it seems when they spot it they cover it up.
President Obama also said, "In short, we're making clear that American
tax dollars must never, ever be used to support the trafficking of
human beings. We will have zero tolerance. We mean what we say. We
will enforce it."
Except when you don't.
Homeland Security watchdog faces fresh allegations
The embattled deputy inspector general at the Department of Homeland
Security destroyed incriminating documents to prevent their public
release, used federal funds to pay for two Puerto Rican vacations, and
bugged his employees’ phones and email, a new letter from Cause of Action, a government-accountability group, charges.
The recent allegations against Charles Edwards add to those leveled
last week by the Senate Homeland Security Committee. The Daily Caller
News Foundation reported
on Friday that the committee accused Edwards of whitewashing a
politically sensitive report, abusing agency resources, and committing a
slew of other offenses.
“Inspectors general are put in place to hold agencies accountable and
conduct thorough and accurate investigations of misconduct within
agencies,” Cause of Action Communications Director Mary Beth Hutchins
told TheDC News Foundation.
“When the deputy inspector general is the one who is causing the
corruption and who is actually in hot water himself, it’s a disservice
not only to his office but to the agency and the American people as
well,” Hutchins continued.
According to the group, anonymous insiders within DHS’ Freedom of
Information Act unit say that Edwards routinely ordered the destruction
or removal of records from his office’s database in order to avoid
questions about his wrongdoing.
In one instance, whistle-blowers allege that documents sought by a
reporter regarding the teleworking history of Edwards’ wife inexplicably
disappeared from their internal database and email systems. Edwards is
accused of breaking anti-nepotism laws by employing his wife, and
putting pressure on subordinates to approve her seven-month teleworking
stint in India.
The letter also states that Edwards took two separate four-day trips
to Puerto Rico on the government’s dime, ostensibly for a “site check”
of a sparsely staffed inspector general’s office in San Juan. Insiders
report that Edwards spent little time at that office, presumably
enjoying the sights and sounds of the Caribbean commonwealth instead.
In one visit, he allegedly took six other high-level employees with him, including his personal secretary.
Finally, the letter maintains that Edwards spied on and abused his
employees, cultivating a toxic work environment that made it difficult
for the office to investigate waste, fraud and abuse at the Department
of Homeland Security.
Worried that someone was leaking information about his transgressions
to a journalist, sometime in early 2012 Edwards instructed his IT
department to monitor the phone and email communications of his
employees.
“He would know things that he only would’ve discovered through their
emails and then would go and yell at them,” an insider said.
Another source said that Edwards was verbally abusive and had no patience for dissenting employees.
“If you tell him ‘No,’ he takes that as insubordination,” the
whistle-blower alleged. “So if anyone opposes him, he finds reasons to
put them on administrative leave.”
The letter was sent to the White House on Monday and calls on
President Barack Obama to immediately fire Edwards and nominate a
permanent inspector general. The Department of Homeland Security has
languished without a Senate-confirmed watchdog since February 2011.
Cause of Action recently sued the inspector general’s office for the
release of records under the Freedom of Information Act, and says it
will continue to pursue any facts or documents detailing Edwards’
misconduct.
“Inspectors general are supposed to be this watchdog within
the government,” Hutchins said, “but unfortunately in this case, the
watchdog is not guarding anything but his own reputation.”
The 'Privacy vs. Security' Canard
One
of the standard claims of those who would defend "well-intentioned"
police-state practices such as the NSA's universal secret monitoring of
telephone and e-mail data is that the enhancement of "security" provided
by these programs warrants the sacrifice of "some privacy." That
argument is being worked to a frazzle of late, as the Obama
administration and others seek to justify the ever-growing litany of
revelations about the levels of surveillance to which the U.S. federal
government is subjecting everyone. This framing of the issue as
"privacy vs. security" is a canard which loads the dice in tyranny's
favor.
It's
important to recognize that you can't have 100 percent security and
also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We're going
to have to make some choices as a society.
So says Barack Obama to the American people, defending the NSA's gathering of communications metadata. But following this line of non-reasoning, how are Americans
to make the relevant "choices"? -- pretending for a moment that they
were given any "choice" in the matter of a top-secret bureaucratic
invasion of their lives that they would never have learned about without
an Edward Snowden. Obama, using the typical vernacular of this issue,
presents 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy as desirable but
contradictory goals. Does this mean that choosing 50 percent security
entails giving up 50 percent privacy? If you desired 100 percent
security, would you have to relinquish 100 percent of your privacy?
(This appears to be the Obama administration's preferred option.) And
how does "inconvenience" figure into this scale of measurement?
More generally, however, why are we reduced to discussing political philosophy like children arguing about school night curfews with their parents?
The
word "privacy" has been at the center of the debate over the
administration's disregard for the individual rights and dignity of its
citizens -- not to mention the citizens of every other nation -- from
day one. And privacy is the best way to frame this debate -- from the
point of view of defending authoritarianism. Privacy is a vague,
nebulous concept, difficult to define in a political context, and
therefore seemingly negotiable. By focusing on privacy, rather than
liberty, the defenders of unlimited state power seek to turn this
relatively cut-and-dried issue into a nuanced balancing act between
legitimate but conflicting aspirations. (Notice how frequently and
religiously the NSA's apologists of the left and right turn to the
Supreme Court's rulings regarding what constitutes "a reasonable
expectation of privacy" -- as if, as I have previously noted, these people suddenly regard SCOTUS as beyond reproach.)
Perhaps,
by way of clarifying the problem, we ought to try to follow the logic
of the defenders of the NSA's universal communications surveillance
(oops, I mean "data-collection") programs, and see where it leads.
On Father's Day -- how appropriate -- the friends of paternalistic government were out in force, appearing throughout the American
media to deliver a simple and monolithic message: Edward Snowden
traitor, NSA patriot. Let us examine the version of this message
delivered by the coolest head among the defenders, and the one
specifically sent out to allay the fears of conservatives, Vice
President Dick Cheney.
On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace showed Cheney a clip of Senator Rand Paul saying this:
This
is what we objected to, and what our founding fathers partly fought the
Revolution over, is that they did not want generalized warrants where
you could go from house to house with soldiers looking for things -- or
now, from computer to computer to phone to phone -- without specifying
who you're targeting.
In response to this, Cheney said:
Two-thirds
of the Congress today, Chris, wasn't here on 9/11, or for that period
immediately after, when we got into this program. And the reason we got
into it was because we'd been attacked... nineteen guys armed with box
cutters and airline tickets. The worry is... that sooner or later
there's going to be another attack, and they'll have deadlier weapons
than ever before.... When you consider the possibility of somebody
smuggling something like a nuclear device into the United States, it
becomes very important to gather intelligence on your enemies, and stop
that attack before it ever gets launched.
Cheney
begins with a non sequitur that somehow becomes his main argument --
namely, that two-thirds of today's Congress wasn't in Washington on
9/11. So what? Weren't those newer members, such as Cheney's implied
target, Rand Paul, nevertheless alive, adult, and every bit as concerned
about the events of 9/11 as the men and women who were in
Washington at that time? Cheney is attempting to dismiss Paul's
concerns on the grounds that Paul does not really understand the issues
at stake, but his argument relies on the laziest of logical fallacies,
the appeal to authority -- specifically, in this case, his own
authority. (Note that he does not answer Paul's specific concern about
"generalized warrants"; in fact, his answer implies that such concerns
are simply no longer valid.) Cheney's remark reveals the precise
attitude of the Washington establishment that drives constitutional
conservatives crazy -- its unblinking paternalistic condescension. If
you weren't a member of the Washington establishment on 9/11, Cheney
suggests, then you just don't understand the real issues, so your
argument does not warrant serious rebuttal. "You'll understand all of
this when you grow up," Cheney in effect tells the fifty-year-old U.S.
senator and twenty-year practicing physician.
Aside from this dismissive attitude (which, by the way, might go some way to explaining why
two-thirds of the Congress has changed over the past several years),
Cheney's case for the U.S. government's moral authority to marshal the
data from every technological communication on the planet -- to
nationalize the private data of communications companies, as Mark Levin
puts it -- is just a more concrete version of Obama's weird math about
privacy, security, and inconvenience. Phrases such as "another attack,"
"nuclear device," and so on are not rational arguments for specific
government action, but rather frightening images intended to obviate any
need for rational argument.
The
biggest logical problem enters here. The defenders of this unbridled
surveillance bank everything on their claim that bad things might happen
if the government is not granted this unprecedented and unlimited
authority. What they are hoping you won't notice -- or perhaps fail to
notice themselves -- is that bad things will necessarily happen if the government is granted such authority.
Cheney,
for example, says that the possibility of another deadly terrorist
attack makes it "important to gather intelligence on your enemies."
That is obviously true, but again beside the point, as we are not
talking about gathering intelligence on one's enemies, but rather the
monitoring of every innocent man, woman, or child who uses a telephone
or a computer to contact someone. Consider, by analogy, a man who
believes that his wife may be having an affair, and who therefore hires a
private investigator -- not to follow his wife around and see what she
is doing, but to catalogue the comings and goings of every man in town,
in case one of them should happen to be secretly meeting his wife.
Let's
get right to the nub of it. If you want to increase security by
reducing the risk of Islamic terrorism in the most effective way
possible, here's what you can do: mobilize the militaries of America and
her Western allies, and turn every Islamic country into a radioactive
parking lot tomorrow. It will also be necessary to deny Muslims entry
to all Western nations effective immediately, and to round up and expel
those currently residing in the West.
"That's
insane," you exclaim, "for it would hurt millions of innocent people
who have neither harmed anyone nor ever planned to harm anyone!"
You
are exactly right. And that is precisely the point I am making with
regard to the commandeering of all electronic communications, and the
denial of "privacy" through establishing blanket authority to examine
everyone's contacts, determine anyone's whereabouts, and analyze
everyone's activities, without specific grounds for suspicion of
criminal behavior. The modern concept of "privacy," used as a
bargaining chip in the security marketplace, is a trivialization of a
more serious notion of the private which was so central to the
development of modern liberty. The real issue here is not whether we
can afford to sacrifice "a little privacy," but whether we can afford to
sacrifice our nature as private beings -- i.e., as men and women who
fundamentally exist independent of any government.
That
is, the core of paternalistic government is the assumption that men are
primarily the custody of the state, as children are of their parents.
But the philosophy of modern liberty begins from the opposite assumption
-- namely, that we are primarily separate entities -- private men --
whose attachment to the state is a secondary reality and essentially
voluntary in nature. The supposition that anything done in the name of
"security" is justified may be appropriate to the context of our
emotional support for a man who kills a home invader "to protect his
children," since the children's security really is entirely his
responsibility. This supposition is not appropriate to the voluntary
relationship of rational adults that constitutes civil society and leads
to the institution of limited government.
Oh,
but these times are different, some may object. After all, Islamic
terrorists are attempting to destroy Western civilization, and if they
are not stopped by any possible means, they might succeed.
First
of all, if the West is prepared to resort to "any possible means," then
the jihadists out to destroy us have already succeeded. How many times
have we heard Western leaders insist that if we give up our core
principles of freedom and individual rights, the terrorists win? And
yet one of the most prominent purveyors of that argument is now
answering concerns that the U.S. federal government has exceeded its
legitimate powers by saying, in effect, "You weren't in Washington on
9/11, so you just wouldn't understand why these hitherto unacceptable
powers are necessary." Okay, so the terrorists have indeed won; let's
at least be honest about it.
Furthermore,
let us reconsider the claim at the center of all the arguments for the
government's (self-granted) authority secretly to collect data on
everyone's daily activities and associations: "You can't have 100
percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero
inconvenience." That is, the government must be allowed to grow in
scope and authority over the individual in order to ensure collective
safety.
This
argument for ever-expanding power in the name of national security is
similar to the argument for ever-expanding power in the name of social
security. Society is perceived to have a problem; the only plausible
solution, it is maintained, is more government power and less individual
liberty. The social security version of this argument has worked out
rather poorly; increased government authority to provide "security" has
resulted in the bankrupting of most of a civilization, the inculcation
of a shameless culture of mass dependency, and the infinite expansion of
a bureaucratic regulatory state that neatly combines the philosophy of
Lenin with the psychology of Kafka.
However,
one might object, national security is a more legitimate function of
government. So it is, but does the legitimacy of the function give
blanket legitimacy to any and all methods pursued in the name of that
function? That is, does the end justify the means? Does the importance
of security justify the gradual establishment of a "soft police state,"
if you will?
The
error of assuming such expanded, open-ended powers in the name of
security is that this entails attempting to mitigate a risk to some by
means that guarantee a more fundamental danger to all -- that is, it
means buying protection against potential physical harm to some men at
the price of actual spiritual harm to mankind. Such a price seems
reasonable only in a degenerate age in which pleasure has supplanted
virtue as a defining good, and hence the safety of the body is valued
above the freedom of the soul.
And
the threat of expanded state power carries a danger that is not static,
but devolutionary. For doesn't establishing a principle of sacrificing
individual liberty to collective physical security promote, or even
require, a societal deterioration of respect for the individual, and a
general culture of technology-grounded paternalism (i.e.,
totalitarianism) in the "governing class"? Does the recorded history of
the trajectory of such governance suggest that its practitioners are
likely to violate liberty only as far as is "necessary," to revoke
assumed powers once those powers appear to have served their benign
purpose, or to abstain from taking illegitimate advantage of these
powers, and the public submissiveness they engender, to advance agendas
and interests beyond the goals initially enumerated as justifications
for those powers?
How
can the defenders of such an anti-individual, dignity-defying
aggrandizement of the state as is currently being foisted upon the world
in the name of "security" possibly answer the old battle cries of
freedom that issued from a world before collectivist authoritarianism
reasserted its hold on civilization? What happened to "Give me liberty
or give me death"? It has now been replaced, in a Faustian bargain,
with "I'll give you my liberty if you promise not to let me die."
Just a few private thoughts that I don't mind sharing with the NSA.
Protectors of the Poor?
The Left’s counterproductive anti-poverty policies.
The political left has long claimed the
role of protector of “the poor.” It is one of their central moral claims
to political power. But how valid is this claim?
Leaders of the
Left in many countries have promoted policies that enable the poor to be
more comfortable in their poverty. But that raises a fundamental
question: Just who are “the poor”?
If you use a bureaucratic
definition of poverty as including all individuals or families below
some arbitrary income level set by the government, then it is easy to
get the kinds of statistics about “the poor” that are thrown around in
the media and in politics. But do those statistics have much of a
relationship to reality?
“Poverty” once had some concrete meaning —
not enough food to eat or not enough clothing or shelter to protect you
from the elements, for example. Today it means whatever the government
bureaucrats, who set up the statistical criteria, choose to make it
mean. And they have every incentive to define poverty in a way that
includes enough people to justify welfare-state spending.
Most Americans with incomes below the official poverty level have
air conditioning and television and own a motor vehicle; and, far from
being hungry, are more likely than other Americans to be overweight. But
an arbitrary definition of words and numbers gives them access to the
taxpayers’ money.
This kind of “poverty” can easily become a way of life, not only for today’s “poor,” but for their children and grandchildren.
Even
when they have the potential to become productive members of society,
the loss of welfare-state benefits if they try to do so is an implicit
“tax” on what they would earn that often exceeds the explicit tax on a
millionaire.
If increasing your income by $10,000 would cause you to lose $15,000 in government benefits, would you do it?
In
short, the political left’s welfare state makes poverty more
comfortable, while penalizing attempts to rise out of poverty. Unless we
believe that some people are predestined to be poor, the Left’s agenda
is a disservice to them, as well as to society. The vast amounts of
money wasted are by no means the worst of it.
If our goal is for
people to get out of poverty, there are plenty of heartening examples of
individuals and groups who have done that, in countries around the
world.
Millions of “overseas Chinese” emigrated from China
destitute and often illiterate in centuries past. Whether they settled
in Southeast Asian countries or in the United States, they began at the
bottom, taking hard, dirty, and sometimes dangerous jobs.
Even
though the overseas Chinese were usually paid little, they saved out of
that little, and many eventually opened tiny businesses. By working long
hours and living frugally, they were able to turn tiny businesses into
larger and more prosperous businesses. Then they saw to it that their
children got the education that they themselves often lacked.
By 1994, the 57 million overseas Chinese had created as much wealth as the one billion people living in China.
Variations
on this social pattern can be found in the histories of Jewish,
Armenian, Lebanese, and other emigrants who settled in many countries
around the world — initially poor, but rising over the generations to
prosperity. Seldom did they rely on government, and they usually avoided
politics on their way up.
Such groups concentrated on developing
what economists call “human capital” — their skills, talents, knowledge,
and self-discipline. Their success has usually been based on that one
four-letter word that the Left seldom uses in polite society: “work.”
There
are individuals in virtually every group who follow similar patterns to
rise from poverty to prosperity. But how many such individuals there
are in different groups makes a big difference for the prosperity or
poverty of the groups as a whole.
The agenda of the Left —
promoting envy and a sense of grievance, while making loud demands for
“rights” to what other people have produced — is a pattern that has been
widespread in countries around the world.
This agenda has seldom
lifted the poor out of poverty. But it has lifted the Left to positions
of power and self-aggrandizement, while they promote policies with
socially counterproductive results.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352599/protectors-poor-thomas-sowell
I Shrugged
...Thinking about the NSA revelation, I also thought about other things my government does that I really hate.
Within a few hours, I had a list of 100 -- it was surprisingly easy. I
encourage you to start a list of your own. Here are just a few example
of horrible, destructive government:
-- Government (federal and local) now employs 22 million Americans. That's outrageous.
-- Government runs up a $17 trillion deficit and yet continues to
throw our money at things like $100 million presidential trips,
million-dollar bus stops and pork projects, as well as thousands of
programs that don't work.
-- It funds a drug war that causes crime and imprisons millions, disproportionately minorities. That's horrible.
-- It spends your money on corporate welfare. And farm subsidies. And
flood insurance that helps higher-income people like me build homes in
risky spots.
-- Government keeps American Indians poor by smothering them with
socialist central planning. It does this despite the fall of the Soviet
Union and the obvious failure of socialism everywhere. That's evil.
-- So are "too big to fail" bank bailouts. And other bailouts.
-- I'm furious that there are now 175,000 pages of federal law. No
one understands all the laws, but they keep passing more. How dare they!
NSA spying seems less horrible than these other abuses, especially if data mining might prevent terrorism....
What we already know about government is even scarier than what they know about us.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2013/07/03/i-shrugged-n1632389/page/full
DOJ: Governments can punish homeschoolers
Mom, dad objected to teachings that violated faith
The U.S. Department of Justice has revealed in a court filing it
agrees with the philosophy of the German government that bureaucrats can
punish homeschooling parents. And the agency explained parental rights to keep their children free
from instruction that violates their faith essentially are negligible
when the government’s goal is an “open society.”
The arguments were made in a pleading before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that encourages the judges to send a German homeschooling family, the Romeikes, back to Germany where members likely would face persecution.
“The goal in Germany is for an ‘open, pluralistic society,’” wrote
the government’s pleading, signed by Senior Litigation Counsel Robert N.
Markle in Washington. So, he said, there is a law requiring attendance
by all at government schools and punishment is levied against anyone
failing to comply, whether they are truant or have religious objections
to the indoctrination at the public schools.
His argument to the appellate court cited from a German court
decision, which stated: “The general public has a justified interest in
counteracting the development of religiously or philosophically
motivated ‘parallel societies’ and in integrating minorities in this
area. Integration does not only require that the majority of the
population does not exclude religious or ideological minorities, but, in
fact, that these minorities do not segregate themselves and that they
do not close themselves off to a dialogue with dissenters and people of
other beliefs. (PK'SNOTE: So they must conform in order to be an open pluralistic society. Right.) Dialogue with such minorities is an enrichment for an
open pluralistic society. The learning and practicing of this in the
sense of experienced tolerance is an important lesson right from the
elementary school stage. The presence of a broad spectrum of convictions
in a classroom can sustainably develop the ability of all pupils in
being tolerant and exercising the dialogue that is a basic requirement
of democratic decision-making process.”
Markle suggested said since all parents whose children don’t attend
mandatory public school classes – homeschoolers and truants alike, the
punishment for all is fair.
The German family had withdrawn their children from German schools
over teachings on sex, violence and other issues that conflicted with
their Christian faith.
The DOJ also brought in international court rulings, noting that,
“The European Court of Human Rights has held that parents could not
refuse the right to education of a child on the basis of the parents’
convictions, because the child has an independent right to education.”
Such rulings in Europe have been used to confirm that it is the state
that makes decisions about education for children, not parents.
“According to the court, this latter right, by its nature, calls for
regulation by the state, which enjoys a degree of flexibility in setting
up and interpreting rules governing its education system,” the DOJ
wrote.
The DOJ continued, “The court upheld the German law, noting –
importantly for purposes of this petition – that compulsory attendance
does not deprive parents of their right to exercise, with respect to
their children, ‘natural parental functions as educators or to guide
their children on a path in line with the parents’ own religious or
philosophical convictions.’
“The parents are free to attend to their children’s religious
training and to offer the children opposing viewpoints from those taught
in school, should they feel it necessary to do so,” the DOJ wrote.
The Home School Legal Defense Association,
which is fighting on behalf of the family, said, Germany’s actions
amount to persecution – a platform on which the Romeikes should be
granted asylum.
“Silencing the ‘intolerant’ to promote tolerance is not only
illogical; it is antithetical to any theory of freedom of conscience,”
the organization argued earlier.
A panel of the court had rejected the family’s asylum request, the
HSLDA asked for rehearing, and the court ordered the DOJ to respond.
“Attorney General [Eric] Holder is trying to seek dismissal of this
case because he believes that targeting specific groups in the name of
tolerance is within the normal legitimate functions of government,” said
Michael Farris, HSLDA founder. “This cannot be the ultimate position of
the United States without denying the essence of our commitment to
liberty.
“We’re trying to provide a home for this family who would otherwise
go back to facing fines, jail time, and forcible removal of their
children because of their religious convictions about how their children
should be educated. Why Attorney General Holder thinks that it is
appropriate for any country to do this to a family simply for
homeschooling is beyond me.”
Farris had warned that the court’s position has far-reaching consequences.
“When the United States government says that homeschooling is a
mutable choice, it is saying that a government can legitimately coerce
you to change this choice,” Farris said. “In other words, you have no
protected right to choose what type of education your children will
receive. We should understand that in these arguments, something very
concerning is being said about the liberties of all Americans.
“I’m glad Obama wasn’t in charge in 1620,” Farris said in an
appearance on “Fox and Friends.” “The government’s arguments in this
case confuse equal persecution with equal protection and demonstrate a
serious disregard for individual religious liberty. I really wonder what
would’ve happened to the Pilgrims under this administration.”
HSLDA said the Romeikes fled from Germany to the United States to
legally homeschool. An immigration judge who heard their case ruled they
had a well-founded fear of persecution if returned to German, so
granted them asylum.
Their children had been undergoing indoctrination in Germany on
issues of sexual permissiveness and leftist political ideology when the
family decided to act.
But the Obama administration, unhappy with the outcome, appealed.
Michael Donnelly, HSLDA’s director of international affairs who works
with persecuted homeschoolers worldwide, said, “Germany persecutes
homeschoolers. Exorbitant fines, custody threats, and imprisonment over
homeschooling should be seen for what it is – persecution. It is
unconscionable for the 6th Circuit to ignore black and white edicts from
the German Supreme Court explicitly condoning this behavior. Germany’s
countrywide federal and state policies that essentially ban home
education should not be accepted as complying with basic human rights
standards.”
WND has reported on the case since its inception. Just weeks ago, HSLDA officials launched a petition on
a White House website to seek help. The White House policy is to
provide a response to petitions that collect more than 100,000
signatures, but nothing has been heard since the threshold was passed
more than a month ago.
The German Supreme Court said because of the issue of socialization, the state, not parents, decides how children are educated.
“This is dangerous precedent. One that Americans ignore at their peril,” Donnelly said.
“This is the nightmare of German parents – even non-homeschooling
parents have suffered by being fined and sent to jail seeking to
exercise reasonable discretion over their children’s education such as
opting them out of certain objectionable presentations of material that
violates their convictions. German states don’t tolerate differences in
education – they just want uniformity. But fundamental human rights and
even international law requires Germany to respect the superior right of
parents over education of children.”
As WND reported, police
officers appeared on their Romeike’s doorstep in Germany in 2006 to
forcibly take their children to a local public school.
Germany is notorious for its attacks on homeschooling families. In
one case several years ago, a young teen was taken from her family and
put into a psychiatric ward because she was homeschooled. Fines and even
jail terms are common.
WND previously reported on a law journal article that undermines the Obama administration’s arguments.
The article, “Germany Homeschoolers as ‘Particular Society Group’: Evaluation Under Current U.S. Asylum Jurisprudence,” was written by Miki Kawashima Matrician and published in the 2011 Boston College International and Comparative Law Review.
The journal article said, “The BIA should find that all German
homeschoolers comprise a ‘particular social group,’ regardless of
whether the Romeike family successfully established a claim of
‘well-founded fear of persecution.’”
The problem is that a Nazi-era law in Germany in 1938, under the
leadership of Adolf Hitler, eliminated exemptions that would provide an
open door for homeschoolers under the nation’s compulsory education
laws.
Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany,
previously wrote on the issue in a blog, explaining the German
government “has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel
societies that are based on religion.”
As WND reported, the German government believes schooling is critical
to socialization, as is evident in its response to parents who objected
to police officers picking up their child at home and delivering him to
a public school.
“The minister of education does not share your attitudes toward
so-called homeschooling,” said a government letter. “… You complain
about the forced school escort of primary school children by the
responsible local police officers. … In order to avoid this in future,
the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in
order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement.”
http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/doj-governments-can-punish-homeschoolers/?cat_orig=world
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment