Mark Levin's new book The Liberty Amendments proposes that state legislatures use their Article V power to call a convention to propose new constitutional amendments for state ratification. The unorthodox process seems impractical at first -- it's never been used, it's off the mainstream political radar, few people even know it exists, etc. -- but a closer look reveals transformative advantages over the prevailing political strategies of the day.
1. Conservatives' Washington-centric focus has born little fruit.
America's news coverage and political mindset revolve around Washington D.C. and, by its nature, Washington D.C. revolves around big government. It is a culture that is embarrassed by constitutionalism, gravitates toward racial, gender, and ethnic politics, and works to convince conservatives to abandon their best ideas and arguments out of political fear.
The Potomac is poor ground for a constitutional battle.
2. Money and the establishment make it unlikely to get solid conservatives in federal office.
Winning U.S. Senate candidates spend an average of $10.4 million per race. The average successful House race costs $1.6 million. Citizens who can marshal such vast resources are rare. Rarer still is a candidate with such wealth who has developed political convictions strong enough withstand Washington's corrupting onslaught.
Non-megabucks candidates generally climb the political ladder slowly, building a fund-raising base as they go. Unfortunately, that method leads legislators to scratch innumerable backs on the way to the House and Senate. Each deal made, each unsavory compromise reached, each postponement of what they originally ran for in order to ensure a safe reelection dulls the conservatives' senses and leads to legislators whose only elite skill is winning another term.
Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than the current Republican caucus of the US Senate. There are perhaps eight to 13 reliably conservative members in the entire group. Turning those 13 into 60 is a worthy goal, but given the shallow pool from which we have to draw, "elect more Republicans" appears to be a weak strategy.
3. Ideas like a balanced budget amendment are destined to fail in Washington, but remain popular around the country, even in blue states.
Because Democrats rely so heavily on government largesse both to appear compassionate and dole out dollars to their constituencies, a balanced budget amendment will likely never garner sufficient House and Senate support to pass. However, the amendment is very popular among the voters who would send those same big-spending Democrats to Washington.
4. Many State legislators still remember why they first ran for office
In what feels like a lifetime ago, a newly elected John Boehner charged into Congress as an anti-establishment reformer, quick to call out his more senior Republican colleagues for timidity. Over two decades later, Boehner now emulates the same establishment he railed against in his first few terms.
Just as in Boehner's case, time, adversity, and proximity to power change virtually all politicians. The idealism that accompanies so many young representatives is scarcely detectable by the time they arrive at the nation's capital.
State legislators are often different. They are typically earlier in their political career, many have full-time non-political jobs, and most are not as beaten down by the media and liberal political culture as their federal counterparts.
Even many Democrats are more grounded on the state level. It's true that states like California and Massachusetts are very liberal, but how far-fetched is it to believe the legislatures of West Virginia, New Mexico (Dem controlled) and Kentucky (Dem house, GOP senate) could be persuaded to vote for a convention to propose something like federal term limits?
5. Republicans already control all or part of many of state legislatures
A convention to propose amendments requires 34 state legislatures to sign on. Currently, 27 legislatures are majority Republican in both houses. The GOP control one chamber in five more states. The nation's only non-partisan legislature is in Nebraska, a solid red state.
In other words, right now, without any electoral push, getting at least one legislative body in 33 of the 34 states required is simply a matter of convincing Republicans. This bears repeating. Presently, 97% of the state legislatures needed for a convention are completely or partially controlled by the GOP. Compare that to a 45%-Republican U.S. Senate and a 53%-Republican House.
Given the current make-up of the federal and state legislatures, which goal seems more achievable, the simultaneous elections of a strong conservative speaker (it's been nearly two decades since the short-lived Gingrich takeover), a constitutionalist president (Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge are the only two in the last 100 years), and 60 reliable conservatives in the Senate (which last happened in the 1920s), or to convince a few purple states to call for a convention?
Any pro-constitutionalist strategy must recognize the sense of hopelessness that persists among many conservatives in the wake of the 2012 elections. Besides the disappointment in the results themselves, the post-election performance of GOP has been a disaster. Whatever post-2012 motivation remained to fight for the national Republicans has all but vanished.
To add to conservatives' frustration, repairing the damage through the electoral process seems overwhelming. Tireless grass-roots efforts in 2010 and 2012 have yielded few substantive victories. Swing voters who seem endlessly deceived by phony media narratives and pop-culture irrelevancies combine with a feckless GOP leadership to feed the growing sense of powerlessness.
Given the condition of the country and tenor of the national debate, a new strategy is needed. A state-ordered convention simultaneously transcends federal-level impediments and harnesses the conservatives' current and potential strength in state legislatures around the country.
The amendment convention strategy is undoubtedly unorthodox, but it also appears to be the most practical method whereby America can restore constitutional governance.
Will Obama go to Congress before attacking Syria?
The answer to that question is … probably not. Despite all of the handwringing by Democrats in the last administration about “imperial presidencies,” Barack Obama has exercised military powers unilaterally, especially in Libya, which was a war against Moammar Qaddafi in all but name. Based on the responses from the White House late yesterday, we can expect more of the same regarding Syria:Carney also downplayed a role for Congress in reviewing or approving any strike plan. “I’m not going to speculate about a [presidential] decision that has not been made,” he said.Even less surprisingly, Obama will bypass the UN. Neil Munro notes that Obama criticized George W. Bush for not waiting for UN approval to invade Iraq, but the actions under consideration for Syria likely fall far short of a ground assault:
“I’m not going to itemize calls… [but] we are consulting with members of Congress,” he said.
The use of chemical weapons is “a clear violation of an international norm,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday.
But the international norm was adopted by “a vast majority of nations … since World War I,” Carney said.
He did not say the norm was endorsed or enforced the U.N.
When asked by a reporter about the U.N.’s role, Carney punted.
“You’re getting in to a hypothetical about a decision that has not been made. … The president is consulting with the international community,” said Carney, pointedly omitting the U.N.The UN issue just reflects a certain amount of hypocrisy, and is the lesser concern. The US has not ceded sovereignty to the UN; it is just a platform for multilateral diplomacy, albeit the most prominent. Bypassing Congress on the use of military force is another matter. The executive has the power to use military power for a limited time through the War Powers Act, which was meant for an emergency where national security is a concern, although the WPA has been used to justify all sorts of interventions over the last 30-plus years.
Libya certainly didn’t qualify as an emergency in regard to our own national security, and neither does Syria. The Libya intervention should have been instructive to Obama, too. Originally hailed as a success when the Qaddafi regime collapsed, it has turned into an utter disaster. We unleashed our enemies in the war on terror and provided them a failed state with which to launch offensives throughout Northern Africa. Spreading the political responsibility for that kind of risk would have been helpful, just as Congressional authorization for invading Iraq was for Bush when the war turned sour in 2006-7. And Congress would almost certainly have provided bipartisan cover for Obama on Libya in the spring of 2011 had he asked for it.
The same is true here on Syria, although perhaps somewhat less so after getting the high hand from Obama on Libya. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) thinks Congressional approval would get his colleagues to take foreign policy a little more seriously, too:
Monday, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the ranking member of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, said he hoped Obama would seek congressional permission before he acted in the region. Corker also confirmed that he was in communication with security advisers at the White House who were weighing their options for military intervention in Syria.
“They do not need an authorization, but I do hope they will come for one,” Corker said Monday during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “If you look at foreign policy over the last long period of time, Congress has gotten a pass on all of these issues and the debate in Washington to me can be almost sophomoric and silly because we are not taking ownership over these decisions.”
The War Powers Resolution allows Obama to intervene in a conflict without a formal vote by Congress, but the law does require the president to get approval to stay engaged after a maximum of 90 days. Despite that, presidents have not always gone to Congress for approval after that time frame.The WPA says 60 day, not 90; the additional 30 are for withdrawal if the President declines to consult Congress. The only two Presidents to my memory who didn’t go to Congress by that time are Obama and Bill Clinton, in Kosovo.
The White House is mulling over a plan that would involve at least a couple of days of combat against a nation which has not attacked the US, nor represents a direct threat to us at the moment. Unlike the initial rationalization about the use of force against Libya, there isn’t a ticking clock on such action to save a population from massacre. The White House has no excuse to eschew Congressional approval that would almost certainly be immediately granted to punish Syria for the use of chemical weapons, assuming that the strike was punitive, limited, and not designed to hand Syria over to al-Qaeda. Not only is there no excuse for not seeking Congressional approval, it’s political malpractice not to seek it, especially with intervention polling so poorly among Americans at the moment. Frankly, the go-it-alone strategy is inexplicable.
Update: The always-insightful Michael Ramirez offers his thoughts on this for the Investors Business Daily editorial cartoon today:
Also, be sure to check out Ramirez’ terrific collection of his works: Everyone Has the Right to My Opinion, which covers the entire breadth of Ramirez’ career, and it gives fascinating look at political history. Read my review here, and watch my interviews with Ramirez here and here. And don’t forget to check out the entire Investors.com site, which has now incorporated all of the former IBD Editorials, while individual investors still exist.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/27/will-obama-go-to-congress-before-attacking-syria/
Target Assad
A strike directed straight at the Syrian dictator and his family is the only military option that could hasten the end of the civil war.
Should President Obama decide to order a military strike against Syria, his main order of business must be to kill Bashar Assad. Also, Bashar's brother and principal henchman, Maher. Also, everyone else in the Assad family with a claim on political power. Also, all of the political symbols of the Assad family's power, including all of their official or unofficial residences. The use of chemical weapons against one's own citizens plumbs depths of barbarity matched in recent history only by Saddam Hussein. A civilized world cannot tolerate it. It must demonstrate that the penalty for it will be acutely personal and inescapably fatal.Maybe this strikes some readers as bloody-minded. But I don't see how a president who ran for his second term boasting about how he "got" Osama bin Laden—one bullet to the head and another to the heart—has any grounds to quarrel with the concept.
As it is, a strike directed straight at the Syrian dictator and his family is the only military option that will not run afoul of the only red line Mr. Obama is adamant about: not getting drawn into a protracted Syrian conflict. And it is the one option that has a chance to pay strategic dividends from what will inevitably be a symbolic action.
Let's examine some of the alternatives.
One option is to target the Syrian army's stores of chemical weapons, estimated at over 1,000 tons. Last week the Times of Israel reported that "the embattled [Assad] regime has concentrated its vast stocks of chemical weapons in just two or three locations . . . under the control of Syrian Air Force Intelligence." If that's right, there's a chance some large portion of Assad's stockpile could be wiped out of existence using "agent-defeat" bombs that first shred chemical storage containers in a rain of metal darts, and then incinerate the chemicals with white phosphorus, preventing them from going airborne.
Still, it's unlikely that airstrikes could destroy all of the regime's chemical stores, which are probably now being moved in anticipation of a strike, and which could always be replenished by Bashar's friends in North Korea and Iran. More to the point, a strike on chemical weapons stocks, while salutary in its own right, does little to hurt the men who ordered their use. Nor does it seriously damage the regime's ability to continue waging war against its own people, if only by conventional means.
Another option would be a strike on the headquarters, air bases and arms depots of the regime's elite Republican Guard, and particularly Maher Assad's Fourth Armored Division, which reportedly carried out last week's attack. But here the problem of asset dispersion becomes that much greater, as fewer tanks, helicopters or jets can be destroyed by a single cruise missile (unit cost: $1.5 million).
Nor is it clear, morally speaking, why the grunts doing the Assad family's bidding should be first in the line of American fire. In the spring of 2005 I was briefly detained by a Republican Guard unit when I stumbled into their encampment on the Lebanese border. The soldiers looked poor, dirty and thin. I felt sorry for them then. I still do.
Then there is the "Desert Fox" option—Bill Clinton's scattershot, three-day bombing campaign of Iraq in December 1998, on the eve of his impeachment. The operation hit 97 targets in an effort to "degrade" Iraq's WMD stockpiles and make a political statement. But it did nothing to damage Saddam's regime and even increased international sympathy for him. Reprising that feckless exercise in "doing something" is the worst thing the U.S. could do in Syria. Sadly, it's probably what we'll wind up doing.
And so to the Kill Assad option. On Monday John Kerry spoke with remarkable passion about the "moral obscenity" of using chemical weapons, and about the need to enforce "accountability for those who would use the world's most heinous weapons against the world's most vulnerable people." Amen, Mr. Secretary, especially considering that you used to be Bashar's best friend in Washington.
But now those words must be made to mean something, lest they become a piece of that other moral obscenity: the West's hitherto bland indifference to Syria's suffering. Condemnation can no longer suffice. It recalls the international reaction to Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, captured by the magazine Punch:
"We don't want you to fight/but by jingo if you do/We will probably issue a joint memorandum/Suggesting a mild disapproval of you." Mussolini went on to conquer the country—using chemical weapons.
The world can ill-afford a reprise of the 1930s, when the barbarians were given free rein by a West that had lost its will to enforce global order. Yes, a Tomahawk aimed at Assad could miss, just as the missiles aimed at Saddam did. But there's also a chance it could hit and hasten the end of the civil war. And there's both a moral and deterrent value in putting Bashar and Maher on the same list that once contained the names of bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki.
There will be other occasions to consider the narrow question of Syria's future. What's at stake now is the future of civilization, and whether the word still has any meaning.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323407104579036740023927518.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party Prepares for War
Here we go again. In the wake of Sept. 11 — an atrocity wholly attributable to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which provided most of the hijackers and whose evil Wahabbist ideology offered the emotional and “religious” justification for mass murder — the Bush administration did almost everything wrong: attacking Iraq, trying to “nation-build” in Afghanistan, creating the ludicrous Department of Homeland Security and its idiot stepchild, the Transportation Security Administration, appointing a useless director of national intelligence, and establishing the Big Brother security state that Barack Hussein Obama is now exploiting to spy on the very people he is supposed to lead.
Deceptively running on an “I’m not Bush” platform, Obama has merrily presided over the third and now the fourth terms of the Bush administration — a cause in which he is happily joined by the likes of Arizona Senator John McCain and his mini-me from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, two of the charter members of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Government that has been in power in the U.S. since 1988 and shows no signs of lessening its choke hold on the nation.
And now this. In a development rich with irony, the Winter Soldier himself, John “Mr. Eighteen Weeks” Kerry — who returned from Vietnam with almost as many medals as Audie Murphy, and in record time — has now declared that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against its Islamist rebels and thrown the latest hot potato over to his boss — who’s characteristically dithering. Still, with Obama’s proclaimed “red line” against the use of chemical weapons by the Bashar Assad government, and the cheerleading from the McCain side of the aisle, there seems little doubt that the U.S. is about to enter yet another war in the Middle East. What could go wrong?
How about this item in Forbes:
Moscow urged Washington on Sunday not to repeat “past mistakes” in the Middle East when dealing with the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar Assad.Washington said Assad used it before. Russia said they did not.
Doctors Without Borders and Syrian opposition say that more than 300 people died after the alleged toxic gas attack in an eastern Damascus suburb on Wednesday, but Syrian authorities denied the claim.
Of course. Why make this black and white?
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday that President Barack Obama has told him to “prepare options for all contingencies” while the White House is deciding whether to use military force against Syria, according to various U.S. news agencies.
Shortly after that news broke, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the alleged chemical attack could have been a staged “provocation” by the Syrian opposition and that the U.S. might use it as a pretext to go after Syria.
“All of this makes one recall the events that happened 10 years ago, when, using false information about Iraqis having weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. bypassed the United Nations and started a scheme whose consequences are well known to everyone,” the ministry said in a web-posted statement.
There were never any weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. And numerous reports by the U.K. and U.S. government at the U.N. were actually old information, some of it even plagiarized.
From Russia’s view, President Barack Obama is just another Middle East war-loving George W. Bush.
A senior Russian lawmaker said Sunday that Obama was a George W. “clone”.“Obama is restlessly heading towards war in Syria like Bush was heading towards war in Iraq. Like in Iraq, this war would be illegitimate and Obama will become Bush’s clone,” said Alexei Pushkov of the international committee of the Russian lower house, according to Forbes.
Whether the Assad regime is killing its own people (and keep in mind that modern”Syria,” like the other “nations’ of the Middle East, is an imaginary state, dating from 1963, 1966, or 1970, depending on how you count, but a fully paid-up member of the ummah) with chemical weapons should not matter in the slightest to the West, strategically speaking, and one would think those on the Left who screamed about Chimpy McHitler would agree. Or even some on the Right. Alas, no.
But that was so then and this is so now. What’s completely clear — as it was to some of us from the beginning — is that the high “moral” dudgeon of the leftist protests against Bush were simply the means to the electoral end of installing their man in the White House. Obama never had the slightest intention of rolling back Bush’s mistakes; for him, they were not a bug of the presidency, but a compelling feature. Not for any foreign-policy reasons — with apparatchiks like Kerry at State, Samantha Power at the U.N. (when she deigns to show up) and the enlisted man, Chuck Hagel, at the Pentagon, this is the most incompetent administration since Jimmy Carter’s — but because the war-machine apparatus could just as easily be employed against the domestic population as well.
Hello, NSA. Hello, IRS. We have always been at war with Eastasia, and for reasons of national security, you must surrender every last vestige of your privacy and your dignity. After all, we are keeping you “safe.”
And this is where the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Government comes in. Without useful idiots like the collaborator, John McCain, there would be no war in Syria. Without the Right’s fetishization of the military and the police — who must do what civilian authorities tell them to do, and if those duly elected authorities are leftists, tough luck — there would not only be no war in Syria, or Libya, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, there would be no war on the streets of our American cities. Indeed, it’s time to retire this whole idiotic “war on” trope — the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Women, the War on Terror — and restore both the military and the civilian police to their rightful places in society: outwardly directed, against enemies both foreign and domestic, and not against Ham Sandwich Nation, where every day, we all either become criminals, or get treated like one.
But no. The Founding Fathers warned against “factions” — meaning political parties — but they never saw this coming: a grand union of factions, ostensibly in opposition but in reality in near-complete agreement about the nature and use of government power. Washington, D.C., was only established as the capital nine years after the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; prior to that, both Philadelphia and New York City had done time as the seat of the federal government. But thanks to unrelenting campaign of self-aggrandizement, and the natural tendency of any organism, including cancer cells, to self-protection and procreation, it is today united against its common enemy: We, the People.
Well, which is it?
And that really is all.
http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2013/08/26/the-permanent-bipartisan-fusion-party-prepares-for-war/?singlepage=true
Gird your loins for October debt limit war
The Treasury Department has informed Congress that the country will bump up against the debt ceiling by mid-October. The current ceiling stands at $16.7 trillion.The Hill:
"Congress should act as soon as possible to meet its responsibility to the nation and to remove the threat of default," he wrote. "Under any circumstance - in light of the schedule, the inherent viability of cash flows, and the dire consequences of miscalculation - Congress must act before the middle of October."This time, it looks like we're going over the cliff. With Obama dead set against negotiating a rise in the debt limit and Republicans dead set on using the debt limit to wring concessions on spending from Obama, someone, somewhere is going to have to give in to the other side or we really are going to find out what happens when the government hits the debt ceiling. Some say it won't be too bad, others think it will be catastrophic. Regardless, whoever gives in will be damned by their base for it.
Lew's deadline would set up a crucial few weeks for the White House and Congress when lawmakers return to Washington next month. The government will shut down on Oct. 1 unless Congress approves a measure to keep it funded. Only nine legislative days are scheduled in September.
Shortly after Lew's letter became public, the White House reiterated its stance on raising the debt limit - it is not up for debate.
"Let me reiterate what our position is, and it is unequivocal - we will not negotiate with Republicans in Congress over bills Congress has racked up," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. "We have never defaulted and we must never default."
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) fired back, saying the debt limit is "a reminder that, under President Obama, Washington has failed to deal seriously with America's debt and deficit."
Republicans have signaled an interest in joining the debate over government funding with the debate over raising the debt ceiling, which could give the party more leverage in talks with the White House.
Boehner told his conference Thursday that he wanted to advance a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government funded for one or two months. The measure would be set at the level of the sequester, which imposed automatic spending cuts on the government.
Conservative members want to use the government funding measure to defund ObamaCare, a move Boehner has not embraced.
Democrats want to replace sequester spending cuts with a mix of revenue increases.
It's impossible to predict, but there have already been behind the scenes talks between the House and Obama and it could be a deal will be reached sooner than most of us think. It almost certainly would satisfy no one and would be a temporary fix, thus setting the stage for another brawl a few months down the road.
Will Obama Make the Fed Even Worse?
President Barack Obama is making the most important economic-policy decision of his second term: picking a new chairman for the Federal Reserve. We shouldn’t be optimistic, because nothing the president has said or done suggests that he is at all displeased with a Fed performance that has been just short of disastrous.Tight money by the Fed was a major cause, and maybe the major cause, of the financial crash. Its officials spent the summer of 2008 worrying about the nonexistent threat of inflation, and their first monetary-policy decision after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed was to discourage bank lending, a contractionary step. They let the economy’s total spending level fall at the fastest rate since the Great Depression.
Since the economy hit bottom, spending has risen slowly and recovered no lost ground. The demand for money balances remains higher than normal, a symptom of continued tightness.
For five years, inflation and inflation expectations have consistently been below the Fed’s target, and unemployment has been above it. Fed policy -- set by a board of governors that now includes six Obama appointees among its seven members -- has therefore been too tight, and its attempts at loosening have been insufficient.
Added Tools
When he took office, Obama was convinced, according to his former adviser Christina Romer, that monetary policy had done all it could: that with interest rates near zero, the Fed couldn’t loosen any further. This wasn’t true. Raising the inflation target, depreciating the dollar, doing more quantitative easing -- there were many ways a determined Fed could have reflated the economy. And the central bank would, in fact, go on to do more quantitative easing later in Obama’s first term.Obama didn’t make it a priority, obviously, to put people at the Fed who would make money looser. He let vacancies continue without nominating replacements even when he had 60 Democrats in the Senate to get them confirmed. When the Fed’s inadequate loosening policies were criticized as too aggressive, he said nothing to defend them.
Now he’s reportedly eager to name his former economic adviser Lawrence Summers to the Fed. Last year, Summers expressed the same complacent view -- that because interest rates are low, the Fed can do no more to aid the recovery --that Obama did in 2009.
For Summers, the only effect of looser money would be to encourage a few marginal investments by lowering interest rates. It is, again, too narrow a view of what the Fed can do. The direct effects of a change in interest rates are less important than what the Fed signals about the future path of spending levels. If markets have confidence that the Fed is learning from its failures, both consumption and investment should start rising.
In a recent interview, Obama said one of the qualities he’s seeking in a chairman is a willingness to stop “new bubbles” when “the markets start frothing up.” It’s true that the Fed can inflate bubbles by making money too easy and has done so in the past. But we’re nowhere near that point now: Total household debt is still falling, which isn’t a sign of bubbliness. If Obama wants a Fed that thinks otherwise, then his excessive worrying about bubbles is itself worrisome. It would be even more problematic if he wanted the Fed to play an active role in policing bubbles rather than just not causing them. That idea would take the Fed far beyond its legal mandate and its competence, and would instill a bias toward tightness.
Presidential Apathy
My guess is that Obama doesn’t know, think or care much about monetary policy. That’s usually a good disposition for someone in the Oval Office to have. A president who was too interested in monetary policy would be tempted to interfere with the Fed. Indifference beats the attitude of many Republicans, who are still convinced, contrary to all the evidence, that rampant inflation is just around the corner.While presidential apathy about central banking is usually a virtue, once every 70 years or so the economy suffers through a calamity of tight money. We found ourselves in that circumstance when Obama took office. The country could have been well served by a president who favored monetary looseness, a policy the Democratic Party has supported for about a century. Because of Obama’s indifference, we had no such luck.
A lot of conservatives have adopted screwy ideas about monetary policy during the Obama years. They have been urging the Fed to tighten a policy that is already too tight. But the monetary mistakes of liberals have been the most consequential ones during these years. The likely nomination of Summers doesn’t suggest that we’ll see an improvement anytime soon.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/will-obama-make-the-fed-even-worse-.html
Comprehensive Gang of 8 Legislation Full of Pork
Great news everyone. The Gang of 8 "comprehensive" immigration reform package is turning out just like every other gigantic bill the Senate passes: chock full of pork.After a comprehensive immigration bill passed the Senate in June, President Obama says he's "absolutely confident" it can pass the House if put to a vote.As Congress gets back from their long August recess next week, the details of the Senate's Gang of 8 legislation will be front and center in the House and members prepare their own version of an immigration overhaul. Surprisingly, illegal immigration wasn't a hot topic as expected at August town hall meetings.
But critics question how many lawmakers have actually read the 1,200-page bill, which they say is packed with hidden pork-barrel spending projects ranging from $1.5 billion for a "Youth Jobs Program" to millions for immigrant support groups that some say have a political agenda.
"Earmarks, special pork deals, and cash for groups allied with the Obama administration should be eliminated from any final bill," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said in a statement to FoxNews.com.
The largest program FoxNews.com found with tenuous ties to immigration is on page 1,181 of the Senate bill, which allocates $1.5 billion for a "Youth Jobs Fund" to give states money to "provide ... employment opportunities" for teens and young adults.
Republican Rep. Frank LoBiondo represents a South Jersey congressional district with a sizable Hispanic population, farmlands that employ migrant workers, an influential labor union presence and a constituency that voted twice for President Obama.Speaker John Boehner has vowed border security will come before any type of amnesty plan for illegal immigrants.
He's precisely the kind of GOP lawmaker immigration advocates said they would target over the August recess, when members of Congress return home for the longest stretch of the year.
But at a local Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting and a Rotary Club luncheon on Thursday, immigration was never mentioned.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/08/27/comprehensive-gang-of-8-legislation-full-of-pork-n1675000
Holder vs. Martin Luther King Jr.
Justice sues Louisiana to block vouchers for minority children.
Give Eric Holder credit for cognitive racial dissonance. On nearly the same day the Attorney General spoke in Washington to honor the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, his Justice Department sued to block the educational dreams of minority children in Louisiana.Late last week, Justice asked a federal court to stop 34 school districts in the Pelican State from handing out private-school vouchers so kids can escape failing public schools. Mr. Holder's lawyers claim the voucher program appears "to impede the desegregation progress" required under federal law. Justice provides little evidence to support this claim, but there couldn't be a clearer expression of how the civil-rights establishment is locked in a 1950s time warp.
Passed in 2012, Louisiana's state-wide program guarantees a voucher to students from families with incomes below 250% of poverty and who attend schools graded C or below. The point is to let kids escape the segregation of failed schools, and about 90% of the beneficiaries are black.
But Justice is more worried about the complexion of the schools' student body than their manifest failure to educate. During the 2012-13 school year, about 10% of voucher recipients came from 22 districts that remain under desegregation orders from 50 or so years ago.
For example, says the complaint, in several of those 22 districts "the voucher recipients were in the racial minority at the public school they attended before receiving the voucher." In other words, Justice is claiming that the voucher program may be illegal because minority kids made their failing public schools more white by leaving those schools to go to better private schools.
In one of only two specific examples in its footnotes, Justice says that Celilia Primary School (30.1% black) in St. Martin Parish District (46.5% black) lost all of six black voucher recipients. Justice claims the reduction in black students at Celilia increases "the difference between the school's black student percentage from the district's and reinforcing the school's racial identity as a white school in a predominantly black school district." Since when is 46.5% predominantly black?
All of this is even more dubious because the evidence from around the country is that vouchers enhance racial integration. Public school attendance is mainly determined by geography, so segregated neighborhoods produce segregated schools. Vouchers help poor minorities escape those boundaries to attend schools they otherwise couldn't. Seven of eight studies that have examined vouchers in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., found that private schools that recipients attend are more diverse than public schools.
In any case, segregation is hardly the main obstacle to learning that it was for minority children in the days of "separate but equal." Today's civil-rights outrage is the millions of poor kids who can't escape failing schools whatever their racial make up.
Our guess—confirmed by sources in Louisiana—is that this lawsuit isn't really about integration. It's about helping the teachers union repeal the voucher law by any legal means, and the segregation gambit is the last one available. Justice gives this strategy away when it claims "jurisdiction over Louisiana" even for vouchers for students in districts without desegregation orders.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana has emerged as a leader in school reform, with city-wide charter schools in New Orleans and now statewide vouchers for the poor. A black Attorney General ought to be applauding this attempt to fulfill MLK's dream of equal educational opportunity. His lawsuit turns racial justice on its head.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323407104579037020495325310.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Democracy’s Dog Days
We all want democracy to thrive and flourish, but can it?
The Obama administration was quite pleased that the anti-democratic Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood had come to power through a single plebiscite. That confidence required a great deal of moral blindness, both of the present and past.
Like other once-elected authoritarians who believe that democracy is similar to a bus route — in the words of Mr. Erdogan of Turkey, once you get to your stop, you get off — Morsi had no intention of fostering the sort of consensual institutions so necessary for republican government. Almost immediately he gave a de facto green light to cleanse the government of his opponents, to Islamicize a once largely secular society, and to persecute religious minorities.
Like a Hitler, Mussolini, Mugabe, or Hugo Chavez, Morsi was counting on the legitimacy from a once-in-a-lifetime largely free election, and then the use of state power, if not terror, to institutionalize his authoritarian rule. Morsi’s legacy is that he was both a beneficiary of the Arab Spring in Egypt and almost singlehandedly ended it.
Unfortunately, there seem to be no signs of democracy’s revival elsewhere in the Arab world or, for that matter, all that many recent vibrant examples in the world at large these days.
In contrast, after the end of the Cold War there was a giddy “end of history” moment. By the new millennium, “democratic” government and free market capitalism were accepted as the natural — indeed, the foreordained — final stage in civilization’s evolution. And why not? The Soviet Union was in shambles. Eastern Europe was democratizing. Latin American democracies were starting to crowd out both communist and right-wing dictatorships. The European Union was ushering in the euro to self-congratulatory proclamations of a new social democratic heaven on Earth. The betting was when, not if, a newly capitalist China democratized. Bill Clinton, under duress, had moved America to the democratic center, and was helping to balance budgets.
Only the Islamic Middle East resisted the supposedly inevitable democratic urge. As the world’s regional holdout, the region was seen as well overdue for its turn at majority rule. Democratization, we Americans argued, might force the Muslim world to emulate those consensual systems with far better records of stable governance and widespread prosperity. With freedom and affluence, the age-old Middle East pathologies — misogyny, religious intolerance, tribalism, fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and statism — would fade along with terrorist-driven violence. Or so it was thought.
Now, in the second decade of the new millennium, democracy is not just having a rough time, but failing in a way that its harsh critics so often predicted, from Plato to Nietzsche and Spengler.
Often the recent world confused plebiscites with democracy, as if the two were synonymous.
But does anyone think the once-elected Mr. Morsi in Egypt was a true democrat? Are the Iranian elections reflections of a free society? Were the austerity packages imposed on southern Europe part of a constitutional process? Is a Germany or Netherlands encouraged to hold elections about the fate of their participation in the EU? Does a Mr. Erdogan or Mr. Ortega — or did the late Hugo Chavez — operate within transparent and lawful protocols?
Instead, southern Europe is reeling, the result of the proverbial people voting themselves entitlements and perks that the state could not pay for. In the fashion of the fourth century Athenian dêmos, pensioners, the subsidized, and public employees blame almost everyone and everything else for their own self-inflicted miseries.
The European Union avoids national referenda in fear that democratic and open elections would lead the EU to unravel. Instead, the EU in large part is reduced to appealing to German war guilt, to German mercantile self-interest, and to German philanthropy to subsidize much of a failed Mediterranean Europe.
Westernized democratic societies — Europe in particular — are shrinking. The bounty of free market capitalism, the emancipation of women, technological advances, and the non-judgmentalism of egalitarian democracy have all emphasized enjoying the good life rather than the sacrifices of child-raising. The result is a demographic time bomb of a dwindling and aging population.
Here in the United States, we are engaged in a great struggle to save constitutional democracy as we once knew it. President Obama seems intent — by ignoring enforcement of existing statutes, by piling up record debt, by vastly enlarging the size of the federal government, by expanding the money supply, by enabling unprecedented numbers of Americans to enroll in food stamp, disability, unemployment, and various entitlement programs, and by politicizing federal institutions from the Justice Department to the IRS — on creating an “equality of result” society. The aim of making everyone about the same is seen as justifying the illiberal means necessary to achieve them.
“Liberty” is now a word that earns an IRS audit. “Fairness” is proof of one’s patriotism. It is as if the failed and violent French Revolution, not the successful American alternative, is now the inspirational model.
In short, democracy’s culture worldwide is in crisis. It cannot pay its bills. It chafes at constitutional protections of individual rights and expression. It seems to encourage rather than to mitigate racial and class tensions. It offers more entitlements to a growing aging cohort and less opportunity for a shrinking younger population to pay for them. It appears unable to offer non-democratic societies moral and ethical models.
Most cannot decide whether the democracies are plagued with a particularly poor generation of demagogic leaders, or whether we are suffering the inevitable wages of rule by plebiscite that eats away at constitutional law and prefers executive fiat. What Jefferson and Tocqueville thought might save us from the mob-rule of ancient Athens — the independent agrarian and small autonomous businessperson anchoring checks and balances to 51% majority rule and demagogues — is no longer our ideal.
I offer a modest suggestion amidst our current angst. Let us put a moratorium on the use of the word “democracy” altogether in our lectures about the Arab Spring and promoting Western values. Cease using it, given that the word has lost all currency and has regressed to its root Hellenic demagogic meaning of “people power.”
Most people simply do not appreciate the complex constitutional system that democracy’s modern incarnation is supposed to represent, and prefer to equate democracy with what on any given day the majority is said to want — which is almost always a state-mandated equality and a redistribution of wealth — or a way to implement authoritarianism. In the Middle East, an election without a ratified constitution and the rule of law is a prescription for tyranny.
Instead, let us speak of “consensual government” or “constitutional government,” and emphasize “republicanism.” Our goal, to the degree we wish to offer advice abroad to reformers abroad, would be to encourage illiberal states to form “representative” or “constitutional republics,” where the will of the people is expressed through representatives who themselves are subject to constitutional law.
Limited or consensual government should be our sloganeering overseas and at home. The great lesson of the Obama administration is that the abuses of democratic plebiscites abroad are not contrasted, but amplified by the increasingly lawless American model, when it uses the IRS and the Justice Department to go after political opponents, allows senior officials to lie under oath to the Congress, and fails to execute faithfully those laws passed by the legislative branch. If we are to offer America as a model, then there must be some honesty and transparency about the Benghazi, Associated Press, IRS, and NSA scandals.
In the latter 20th century, we got our wish and saw much of the world adopt Western democratic trajectories. It is now our challenge in the early 21st century to ensure that they were not given a bill of goods.
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/democracys-dog-days/?singlepage=true
The Lawless Regime
Last week on these pages we documented the "Lawless in the White House" ways of Barack Obama (full article here). Included was an IBD list of thirteen separate grievances that only tell part of the story of abuse of the Constitutional limits of Presidential authority, and invention of new laws while ignoring existing law. In recent days, a bevy of columnists have also opined on the issue.Charles Krauthammer said the lawless ways of Barack Obama are fitting of a "caudillo" rather than an American President. "That's banana republic stuff," he says and goes on:
"Such gross executive usurpation disdains the Constitution. It mocks the separation of powers. And most consequentially, it introduces a fatal instability into law itself. If the law is not what is plainly written, but is whatever the president and his agents decide, what's left of the law?"(link here)
George Will joined in in his most recent column in the Washington Post blasted the Obama Administration:
"Nowadays the federal government leavens its usual quotient of incompetence with large dollops of illegality."
Will further opines that the Obama Administration is full of:
"…small, devious people putting their lawlessness in the service of their parochialism and recklessly sacrificing public safety and constitutional propriety."
Will cites a harsh rebuke of the White House by the District of Columbia U.S. Court of Appeals involving Obama's Nuclear Regulatory Commission willfully "flouting the law" that binds the agency regarding a Yucca Mountain decision that is now more than two years delinquent. “It is no overstatement to say that our constitutional system of separation of powers would be significantly altered if we were to allow executive and independent agencies to disregard federal law in the manner asserted in this case,” Will quotes from the scathing decision of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh. (link here)
Nationally syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock delivered a frontal assault on the lawless ways of the "Obama Regime." Murdock concludes that in Obama's world:
"…the Constitution is for chumps, and the law is for losers."
Murdock was just warming up. Here's more:
"Slowly at first, then all of a sudden, the Obama Administration has devolved into the Obama Regime. Obama does whatever he wants. Those pesky impediments on his predecessors — namely, federal law, the separation of powers, and the Constitution — have proved as tough as tissue paper in containing Obama’s ambition to impose statism on America. From Obamacare to unions to telephones, it’s basically another day, another decree." (link here)
That Obama disregards – even disdains – the Constitution and the Law should come as no real surprise. While still a state senator in Illinois in 2001, he publicly criticized the Founding Fathers for creating a Constitution that he described as a "charter of negative liberties" that limited what "the federal government can't do to you."
While Americans have long understood that the Founders saw government at the biggest threat to individual Freedom, and cherish a Constitution that checked the power of government, not so with Barack Obama. He longed for the opportunity to "break free from the essential constraints" placed therein by the Founders that limit government's ability to accomplish what he sees as the most important objective – "the redistribution of wealth."
Whether you agree or disagree with the Obama agenda, every citizen who loves America should be deeply concerned with the abuse of power by this President and his Administration and the precedent that he will establish if allow to continue his wanton disregard of the Constitution.
Few on Capitol Hill have the stomach to even whisper the "i" word, though violating the Constitution certainly would seem the rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors." However, we are encouraged to know that at least some Members of Congress are seeking remedies short of impeachment to appeal to the Supreme Court to rein in the rogue President and preserve the Constitution.
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/bobbeauprez/2013/08/27/the-lawless-regime-n1674105/page/full
Threats
Armed insurrection, as Egypt is experiencing, is unlikely in America, but there are threats to democracy, many of which are more subtle. As much as anything, the founding fathers feared that too much power might accrue to any one individual or segment of society.They had, as an example, Britain. While the idea of Parliament imposing taxes without representation became a catalyst for revolution, the founders were well aware that, at the same time, England was the most liberal nation in the world. It was a country which upheld property rights and where the rule of law prevailed. Yet, even after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which strengthened Parliament’s role, they had seen King George III attempt to seize power back from Parliament.
To counter the threat of power becoming embedded within one person or one group, the founding fathers composed a government intricate in its complexities, while simple in its fundamental precepts, and deliberately contentious in its function, yet designed for collegiality.
Power is divided between states and federal governments. Each is further divided between three branches – executive, judicial, and legislative. And the legislature consists of lower and upper houses – the first, direct representatives of the people; the second (at the federal level) to be [originally] elected by states’ legislatures. Other safeguards included electoral terms that were staggered to life-time appointments for members of the Supreme Court.
The purposes were to provide a democratic republic, while ensuring continuity of society, and, significantly, to make it difficult for one person or one group to amass too much power. It was based on the concept of property rights and that government would always be one of laws, not men.
Certainly external threats, such as Islamic extremists in the form of al Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood, are real concerns. After all, protecting its people is the greatest responsibility of any government. With the exception of Israel and possibly Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai, the entire Middle East has descended into a new dark age. Such is the consequence of radical Islamism, with the Muslim Brotherhood as its bullhorn.
Further, as our defense spending is being reduced at the fastest rate since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there is a risk that disputes between China and Japan could escalate, threatening our position in the Pacific. As we dismember our missile defense operations, the ownership of nuclear weapons by rogue nations like Iran and North Korea have become more threatening. In a world of rising Morlocks, we risk becoming a nation of Eloi.
But it is the internal, more subliminal threats that need concern us as well. Dependency, debt, and cronyism imperil our nation just as much as terrorists operating in Drone-free zones. That troika of hazards risks rendering the fabric of our democratic republic. It leads, ultimately, to a decline in economic strength and, ultimately, to a rise in totalitarianism.
With government consuming an ever-larger percent of GDP, economic growth becomes more difficult. Every day we witness signs of executive usurpation in Washington. While care for the poor, the disadvantaged and the elderly is noble (and necessary in many cases), we must be wary that government does not become overly paternalistic; for dependency weakens the moral fiber of society.
Debt is insidious; it creeps up on little cat feet, especially in an environment of artificially low interest rates. And cronyism is the consequence of bigness – in government, banks, corporations, media/entertainment and unions. Theirs’ is a symbiotic world, each feeding off the other.
Dependency is dangerous no matter the form it takes; it is antithetical to nature. The protective instinct of new parents gives way to the equally natural instinctive knowledge that long-term survivability depends, in some measure, on self-sufficiency. In the wild, animals understand that survivorship of their species means their off-spring must become self-reliant. Birds nudge fledglings from nests high above the ground. While man is societal, he recognizes his responsibility to himself and those who depend on him.
The simplicity of this axiom is manifested in the ancient Chinese adage that says give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, but teach him to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Yet Western governments are outliers in this regard. They move against nature in encouraging dependency, knowing full well the harm they cause, yet convinced that contented recipients will reciprocate on Election Day. It is a short-sighted view that will end badly.
Debt is addictive, or, rather, it is not debt – which is the consequence – that is addictive, but the spending, which is its cause. We all must live in the present, without being consumed with Epicurean delights. Individually, we must prepare for tomorrow. That goes for the state as well. When government funds today’s consumption with money earmarked for tomorrow, we rob our children and grandchildren. When we underfund entitlement programs, that is what we are doing.
Seventy percent of the federal budget goes to mandatory spending (64%) and interest (6%). Eighty-seven percent of mandatory spending is consumed with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits. (The balance consists of Veteran’s benefits, Transportation, and Food and Agriculture transfers.) Interest costs will almost certainly rise in the years ahead, as interest rates revert to more normal levels – roughly double current rates. Because tax revenues do not cover expenditures, our debt grows each year, today amounting to about $16.7 trillion.
Should we experience another attack like 9/11, our response would be conditioned on our ability to borrow even more money. Should banks “too big to fail” in fact fail, as they threatened in 2008, there is a real question as to whether we could muster the resources today to save the financial system, as we did then. We live in an age in which consumerism rules. It is a condition warned about by Edmund Burke – a danger of collective egoism in which whole generations no longer feel bound by the basic trust which unites past, present, and future generations.
Government, abetted by low interest rates, has forgiven millions of Americans of some or all of their mortgage debt and, if proposals are to be believed, of substantial levels of student loan debt as well. This apparent willingness of government to protect borrowers has made consumers less wary of the debilitating effect of debt. The housing crisis that nearly brought the nation to its knees in 2008 was not solely the fault of banks; though they played an important role. Its genesis began in Washington when the Clinton Administration began easing rules for home-ownership, allowing and encouraging those who could not afford the cost to buy. It was further aggravated by Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Barney Frank and their mutually beneficial relationships with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Yet, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which has done nothing to reform Wall Street and little to protect consumers, was named after these two members of what Mark Twain so aptly called the only “distinctly American criminal class” – Congress. In the past two years, student loan debt has grown 20%, now topping a trillion dollars. It has distorted the price of college and damaged the preception of living within one’s means. The ease with which it can be dismissed harms the character of the borrower, as well as the pocketbook of the lender – and the taxpayer has become the lender of last resort.
Cronyism is all about us. We see it in the open doors between Washington administrations’ and Congress, and K Street and Wall Street. It incorporates big labor and big business. As an example, Richard Gephardt, after serving 28 years in Congress, formed a lobbying company, Gephardt Government Affairs, reportedly earning him $7 million last year.
Harry Truman believed he should never lend himself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the President. When we see President Clinton making between $250,000 to $750,000 per speech, we know the world has changed – and not for the better. It is not just the revolving doors between the hallways of government and K Street, as detailed in Mark Leibovich’s book, Our Town; it is the too-cozy collegiality that exists between powerful members of government and those whose well-being is dependent on Congressional legislation and administrative regulations.
A perfidious example of how far down cronyism reaches is reflected in the decision by U.S. authorities to not charge either Jamie Dimon or Bruno Iksil in the J.P Morgan “Whale” episode. Instead, they charged two junior traders. Are we supposed to believe that senior management was unaware of a trade that cost the bank $6 billion? If they did know, they should be charged with complicity and fired. If they did not, they should be charged with negligence and fired.
Taxpayers, as bank’s management surely knows, remain the backstop to their indiscretions. Union members’ dues are used for political gain, with little or no say-so by individual union members. Hollywood has long been a mill for propaganda. During the war years they were overtly patriotic. But more recently, their messages have been more subtle. A pretence of disinterestedness masks underlying political favoritism. I have no problem with a decision to support particular candidates or issues, but I do object to the claim of impartiality. In a world that has become uneducated as to issues, the medium, as Marshall McLuhan warned, has become the message.
The perpetuation of these threats leads to a decline of a moral sense and the possible transformation of a country that has served us and the world well. As Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane note in their new book, Balance: The Economics of Great Powers, nations and empires rise and fall. It is a risk to which attention must be paid. In promoting dependency, we give up personal responsibility.
As a society we encourage consumerism and discourage saving and investment. As Madonna sang, we have come to believe that “the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mister Right.” A cult of hedonism leads to an attitude of carpe diem. In living for today, we assume tomorrow will take care of itself. And cronyism turns the electorate cynical, providing a sense that the system is rigged, making prophetic the headline in Jacob Weisberg’s column two weeks ago in the Financial Times: “They came for the politics, but stay for the money.”
None of the domestic threats enumerated above are wrong when experienced in moderation, not even cronyism; nor, in citing them, do I mean to diminish the threat of Islamic terrorism – America’s and the West’s greatest international challenge. A moral society watches out for those in need, without creating dependency. Debt allows us to enjoy comforts today that we might not otherwise be able to afford. In terms of cronyism, one must expect old friendships to be maintained as people advance through their careers and that new ones will be made.
Last Thursday, writing in the New York Times, David Barboza noted that the SEC is investigating the Wall Street practice of hiring children of officials of state-controlled companies [specifically in China]. They are concerned that such hirings “cross a line.” Why not, in addition, investigate the practice of former Congressmen and women who routinely trade on their relationships when starting consultancies, or ex-Presidents who use the fame of their office to make millions in speaking engagements?
Like Cincinnatus, retiring politicians should leave politics behind. Good politicians serving the public interest must guard against “influence,” putting the needs of the people above self-interest. Can we revert to such a place? I am sure we can, but will we? The threats are clear and present.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/26/Threats
An American Satyricon
Our elites would be right at home in Petronius’s world of debauchery and bored melodrama.
By Victor Davis HansonSometime in the mid-first century a.d., an otherwise little known consular official, Gaius Petronius, wrote a brilliant satirical novel about the gross and pretentious new Roman-imperial elite. The Satyricon is an often-cruel parody about how the Roman agrarian republic of old had degenerated into a wealth-obsessed, empty society of wannabe new elites, flush with money, and both obsessed with and bored with sex. Most of the Satyricon is lost. But in its longest surviving chapter — “Dinner with Trimalchio” — Petronius might as well have been describing our own 21st-century nomenklatura.
For the buffoonish libertine guests of the host Trimalchio, food and sex are in such surfeit that they have to be repackaged in bizarre and repulsive ways. Think of someone like the feminist mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner, who once railed about the need to enforce sexual-harassment laws, now only to discover ever creepier ways to grope, pat, grab, squeeze, pinch, and slobber on 18 co-workers and veritable strangers, whether in their 20s or over 60. Unfortunately, the sexual luridness does not necessarily end with Filner’s resignation; one of his would-be replacements is already under attack by his opponents on allegations that as a city councilman he was caught masturbating in the city-hall restroom between public meetings.
In good Petronian fashion, the narcissist Anthony Weiner sent pictures of his own genitalia to near-strangers, under the Latinate pseudonym “Carlos Danger.” Was Eliot Spitzer any better? As the governor of New York, he preferred anonymous numbers — “Client #9” — to false names, real to virtual sex, very young to mature women, and buying rather than romancing his partners. Is there some Petronian prerequisite in our age that our ascendant politicians must be perverts?
Transvestitism and sexual ambiguity are likewise Petronian themes; in our day, the controversy rages over whether convicted felon Bradley Manning is now a woman because he says he is. The politically correct term “transgendered” trumps biology; and if you doubt that, you are a homophobe or worse. As in the Roman Satyricon, our popular culture also displays a sick fascination with images of teen sex. So how does one trump the now-boring sexual shamelessness of Lady Gaga — still squirming about in a skimpy thong — at an MTV awards ceremony? Bring out former Disney teenage star Miley Cyrus in a vinyl bikini, wearing some sort of huge foam finger on her hand to simulate lewd sex acts.
The orgies at Trimalchio’s cool Pompeii estate (think Malibu) suggest that in imperial-Roman society Kardashian-style displays of wealth and Clintonian influence-peddling were matter-of-fact rather than shocking. Note that in our real version of the novel’s theme, Mayor Filner was not bothered by his exposure, and finally had to be nearly dragged out of office. Carlos Danger would have been mayor of New York, but the liberal press finally became worried over its embarrassment: Apparently two or three sexting episodes were tolerable, but another four or five, replete with more lies, risked parody.
Spitzer is again running for office — comptroller of New York City — and may well win. After all, Bill Clinton, feminist champion, protector of female subordinate employees from workplace harassers, survived Monicagate. John Edwards might have saved his political career had the tabloid National Enquirer not caught him red-handed with his mistress during the 2008 campaign, while his wife was dying of cancer. To an unimpressed masseuse, Al Gore appeared as a “crazed sex poodle.” That sobriquet did no more damage to Gore’s green empire than Trimalchio’s randy escapades imperiled his latifundia.
Another farce in the Satyricon involves the nonchalant ignorance of Trimalchio and his guests. The wannabes equate influence and money with status and learning and so pontificate about current events, with made-up mythologies and half-educated references to history. When Trimalchio and his banqueters begin to sermonize on literature, almost everything that follows turns out to be wrong — as Petronius reminds us how high learning has become as inane a commodity as food or sex, and only sort of half consumed, rather like the 2008 campaign of faux Greek columns and Vero possumus, which were supposed to convey gravitas.
Likewise, in our version, what does a $200,000 Ivy League education or a graduate degree really get you any more? In the sophisticated world of our political and highly credentialed elites, there are 57 states. Atlantic Coast cities are said to lie along the Gulf of Mexico; after all, they are down there somewhere in the South. The Malvinas become the Maldives — Ma- with an s at the end seems close enough. Corps-men serve in the military (as zombies?). Medgar Evans was a civil-rights icon, but you know whom we mean. President Roosevelt addressed the nation on television after the stock-market crash in 1929 — well, he would have, had he been president then and if only Americans had had televisions in their homes. And how are we to know that what we read from celebrity authors is not just made up or plagiarized, whether a Maureen Dowd column or a Doris Kearns Goodwin book?
The famously nouveau-riche Trimalchio’s guests drop the names of the rich and powerful, mostly to remind one another that they are now among the plutocracy that is replacing the old bankrupt aristocracy. We too are seeing something like that metamorphosis. It is hard to guess on any given summer weekend which populist progressive family — the Obamas, the Clintons, the Kerrys, the Gores — will be ensconced on what particular Hamptons, Nantucket, or Martha’s Vineyard beach, rubbing shoulders with just the sort of Silicon Valley or Wall Street new zillionaires who during work hours are supposed to be the evil “1 percent” and “fat cats” who need to be forced to pay their “fair share.”
Al Gore, like Trimalchio, does not mutter a word without revealing his ignorance — or hypocrisy. Over the last 15 years, the planet has not heated up, and the science of global warming is not established, which is why the nomenclature had to change from global warming to climate change to climate chaos in order to account for too much bothersome wet, snowy, and cold weather. The reconciler, who became a near-billionaire both hyping global warming and selling medieval-style indulgences as antidotes, now claims those who disagree with him are comparable to fascists and racists. All this comes from a wheeler-dealer who made big money damning fossil fuels only to sell a failing cable station to an anti-Semitic, anti-American fascistic enterprise, fueled by the millions garnered from the vast export of oil and gas from the Arabian peninsula. And to complete Gore’s Trimalchian man-of-the-people profile, he rushed the sale in hopes of beating the new, higher capital-gains taxes that he had been urging for lesser folk — sort of like progressive John Kerry buying and berthing his grand new yacht in Rhode Island to avoid the high excise and sales taxes in his home state of Massachusetts.
Farce and psychodrama pass for entertainment in the Satyricon. A country that once lost 600 legionnaires a minute at Cannae is reduced to gossiping about precious jewelry, exotic food, and sick gladiatorial games in the arena. Our elites go through some of the same bored melodrama. Withdrawal dates, red lines, deadlines, and leading from behind form our new rhetorical military. While Trimalchio parties in Pompeii on stuffed boar and sparrows (sort of like wagyu beef on a bed of arugula), somewhere to the unmentioned north legionnaires keep back the “barbarians” on the Rhine and the Danube. But they are as out of sight and mind as those who are camped out tonight in the Afghan highlands, or the “at this point, what difference does it make?” Americans killed in Benghazi, or the SEAL teams who dropped in on bin Laden while the president was playing card games with staffers.
Civil rights once meant an existential struggle between the oppressed and villains like Bull Connor with his dogs and fire hoses. Now Oprah is miffed over being treating rudely while eyeing a $38,000 purse in Switzerland; the NAACP wants sensitivity training for a rodeo clown with an Obama mask; American Idol’s failed contestants sue for “cruel and inhuman treatment”; near-billionaire rapper Jay-Z warns that the have-nots may riot; and a depressed former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was reduced to spending $750,000 of other people’s money on essentials like stuffed elk heads and Michael Jackson’s old fedora.
Just as Petronius’s world went on for another 400 years, ours may too.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356805/american-satyricon-victor-davis-hanso
Democrats attempting to revive push to tax the heck out of guns and ammunition
I’ve never been a fan of any form of sin taxes, so called because our august lawmakers deem a particular behavior a vice and then try to ramp up the taxes on its perpetrators to supposedly pay for the cost of the behavior on society at large, but the idea that law-abiding, gun-owning citizens need to pay for the sins of what are overwhelmingly not law-abiding and probably not tax-paying criminals… really just takes the cake of stupid.But no way is that stopping a couple of Congressional Democrats from fixing to propose even steeper taxes on the lawful purchasers of handguns and ammunition and supposedly funnel the revenue to ‘gun violence prevention.’ Via Fox News:
Called the “Gun Violence Prevention and Safe Communities Act,” the bill sponsored by William Pascrell, D-N.J., and Danny Davis, D-Ill., would nearly double the current 11 percent tax on handguns, while raising the levy on bullets and cartridges from 11 percent to 50 percent. …Yes, by all means, let’s add yet another regressive barrier to home- and self-defense, so that even more people will be completely dependent on the police for protection, in order to help offset the costs of law enforcement! …Anyone? Anyone?
The lawmakers say the bill would generate $600 million per year, which would be used to fund law-enforcement and gun violence prevention. …
The bill would also increase the transfer tax on all weapons (except antique guns) covered under the National Firearms Act (which excludes most common guns) from $200 to $500 and index to inflation and increase the transfer tax for any other weapon from $5 to $100. …
“This legislation is a pro-active approach to reducing gun violence by using proven preventive programs which have been starved for funds until now,” Davis said. “As part of a comprehensive, multidimensional strategy to reduce gun violence, this legislation closes major loopholes in tax law and lays out an equitable, long term, sustainable strategy to provide the requisite resources.”
It’s no surprise that Davis represents a portion of Chicago, whose own “long term, sustainable strategy to provide the requisite resources” for violence prevention has been a direct cause of skyrocketing murder rates but still seems to insist for more gun control as the answer.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/27/democrats-attempting-to-revive-push-to-tax-the-heck-out-of-guns-and-ammunition/
Sales Of Public Data To Marketers Can Mean Big $$ For Governments
Roughly 60 percent of the mail we get can be classified as junk mail, but sometimes that flood of mail seems nonstop, and the pitches are often unsettlingly specific. This tends to happen particularly after major life events.A CBS4 Investigation has uncovered that government agencies at all levels are selling personal information to marketing companies.
Eric Meer is a small business owner who works out of his home in Denver’s Stapleton neighborhood. Meer says he was deluged by direct mail after registering his small business with the Colorado Secretary of State. He says many of the ads he received were deceptive asking him to pay fees that he wasn’t required to pay.
Meer had a hunch the Secretary of State was selling his business information to marketing companies. CBS4 confirmed his hunch was right. Last year, the Secretary of State brought in $59,000 for business registration data.“It feels like a betrayal,” Meer said. “Because our government is supposed to protect us, not to sell our information and profit from us.”
Spokesperson Andrew Cole confirms the Secretary of State sells business information for monetary amounts ranging from $200 to $12,000, depending on frequency and amount of information requested. But, Cole says the fees only cover the costs of running the databases.
“We are not looking to make money,” said Cole. “We charge to cover our costs.”
According to Cole, there is no way to opt out of these lists and anyone can buy them, even scammers. There is no screening process. “It’s a public database,” Cole said. He said it’s “meant to be public” and part of running a transparent government.
The Secretary of State also sold voter registration information — including names, addresses and political party affiliation of voters — for $58,000, last year.
Do you ever notice a surge of confusing mail after refinancing, a foreclosure, or buying a house? The Denver Clerk and Recorder made $32,000 last year selling home sale data.
It happens in college, too. The University of Colorado Boulder buys names from the SAT for 33 cents each and names from the ACT for 34 cents each for recruiting purposes. CU sells student information to private meal plans and storage companies for $15,000 a year.
Even death is for sale. The Social Security Administration sells a “Master Death Index” for 7,500 each. The result, an onslaught of letters to surviving family members asking to purchase a home.
Local marketer Becky Seely has purchased lists in the past and says it’s clear these agencies are catering to marketers.
“What average consumer needs to know the deaths that happened in the last three months or the new businesses that registered?” asks Seely. But she says most of the time we put ourselves on marketing lists without realizing it. The most common ways our information is collected and then circulated is when we enter a contest, use a valued customer shopping card, register a product, subscribe to a magazine or even give money to a charity.
“It’s kind of an endless black hole of lists, unfortunately,” Seely said.
The Direct Marketing Association has blocked every state effort to create a mandatory “do not mail” registry similar to a do not call list. However, the same group offers its own registry that promises to cut down on the junk mail you receive.
The Direct Marketing Association says you cannot stop bills, statements, notices and political mailings. The group also offers a deceased Do Not Contact list.
Additional Resources
- Visit the Direct Marketing Association website at www.dmachoice.org to help cut down on junk mail.
- See a list of companies who purchased the Colorado Secretary of State business data in the past year. (xls file)
- See who bought student information from the University of Colorado in 2013 in this document. (pdf file)
- See who bought the voter rolls from the Colorado Secretary of State in 2013. (pdf file)
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/08/26/sales-of-public-data-to-marketers-can-mean-big-for-governments/
Why Democrats Love Failing Schools: Because Unions Pay Them To
It is now official. For all their talk about education’s failings, and all their feigned interest in bettering the educational system, liberals once again have proven that they hate giving the disadvantaged the same opportunities as the privileged. According to Fox News, the Justice Department is trying to stop a school vouchers program in Louisiana that attempts to place children in independent schools instead of under-performing public schools. So, apparently it’s all about “the kids”. . . Unless Teacher’s Unions are set to lose a dollar.Louisiana is one of a few states that have implemented a very limited voucher program. Vouchers, on their own merit, should be a championed idea for underprivileged minorities and low income families. With educational dollars meant to better the learning process for students throughout the state, vouchers were given to 570 public school students so that children in impoverished and underperforming schools might reap the same benefited education as some of the most privileged in the state. However, in papers filed in US District Court, the Justice Department said that the vouchers “impeded the desegregation process."
Right. Imagine the horror on Martin Luther King Jr.’s face when he learned that low-income students were given the opportunity to attend some of the most exclusive and impressive academies in the state. The federal government is arguing that allowing students to attend independent schools under the voucher system “could create a racial imbalance in public school systems protected by desegregation orders.”
Anyone else find it ironic that the first black President’s administration is blocking a reform effort that is poised to dis-proportionately benefit minority communities?
According to Fox News: The Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal -- who last year expanded the program that started in 2008 -- said this weekend that the department's action is "shameful" and said President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder "are trying to keep kids trapped in failing public schools against the wishes of their parents."
Tough words. . . And accurate.
The Louisiana Supreme Court already found, earlier this year, that the state could not use the allotted voucher money. As a result the Republican governor had to find the $40 million in other public funds to move the project forward and help the 8,000 students already enrolled in the program.
The objection by the DOJ is just one more case where Democrats and Liberal groups have tried to limit the ability of minorities to move out of failing schools. A hypocritical maneuver for a group that claims the mantel of moral superiority on the issue.
The reason is far more simple, and insidious, than most would think. The Liberal/ Democratic agenda is closely aligned with Teacher’s unions. And like all unions, they are working to protect due paying positions above all else. And yes: That means the Unions would rather preserve their jobs than work for the betterment of your child’s educational experience. After all, over 95 percent of political donations from Teacher’s Unions went to Democrats; and based off of Democrat run cities like Chicago, New York, LA, and Detroit, that’s a horrible investment. On a purely economic analysis, it would seem the Democrat Party is far more dedicated to keeping the Union happy, than honestly improving student education. As a consequence, the lobbying arm of the union is not focused on the interests of students. . . But don’t take my word for it:
So. . . Apparently losing a teacher’s tenure is “too high a price to pay” for a more effective educational system for our youth. And to think they act like it’s “all for the children.”
The most terrifying part of the story: The case is scheduled to be heard by a judge who has already ruled that parts of Jindal's 2012 expansion were unconstitutional. So, we have a Judge who is opposed to using public education monies for the purpose of educating the public (as opposed to feeding Teacher’s Unions), about to rule on a law that runs contrary to the fundamental concerns of the Obama Administration. If the Judge, or the DOJ, were actually interested in improving education, they would applaud any attempt to move students from failing schools. They, instead, seem far more interested in preserving the failing status quo.
After all, our ruling elite don’t send their kids to underperforming schools. So, really, why should they promote opportunities for the rest of America’s youth without first bowing to politically connected Unions?
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/michaelschaus/2013/08/27/democrats-love-failing-schools-n1674151/page/full
Jersey City high school candidate for student gov't sent racist texts to himself, school official says
The black St. Peter’s Prep student who purportedly received racist text messages warning him to drop out of the Jersey City high school's student government election sent the texts to himself, a school official confirmed last week.“The entire Saint Peter's Prep community is relieved that this extremely distressing incident has found closure, and we commend the various law enforcement officials for their diligent work on this case over the past months,” said school spokesman James Horan, who confirmed the result of the probe after its disclosure by a police source.
The 16-year-old was running for president for the Student Council in May when he supposedly received four hateful text messages. He brought them to the attention of school officials who called in his father and police.
"We have NEVER and will NEVER have an (n-word) to lead our school," was one of the messages supposedly sent to the 16-year-old student, who at the time, was a resident in Jersey City.
The message went on to call President Obama by his middle name Hussein and used a racial slur in referring to Obama, a police report said. "We will never make that mistake again. Drop out right now . . ." it continued, a police report said.
A second message read "Whites! Your a waste on this earth, a waste at this school, and most importantly a Waste for this campaign." That message called the student government candidate a "slave" and used a racial slur, a report said.
The third message texted to -- and as it turns out from -- the student, contained a warning to drop out of the race and the fourth read, in part, "COMEONE your black!!! lol your a joke for even trying to run," according to a police report.
The 16-year-old eventually lost the race for student council president but was elected vice president. A source said he no longer attends the school.
Police were not immediately able to determine who sent the text messages because they were sent using a phone app called TEXTME.
In an interview with The Jersey Journal at the time the texts were sent, the boy’s father said his son was “extremely nervous and feels threatened” and did not want to be interviewed.
"He is the type of boy who does not want any kind of trouble," the father said. "It's so sad. He doesn't want the image of the school to be tainted."
"It is a predominantly white school and there may be a few sections of the school who are fearful of a new face trying to get in office,” the father said at the time.
Neither the father nor son could be reached for comment. No one answered at the family's Armstrong Avenue house on Friday.
Jersey City police spokesman Bob McHugh refused to comment on the investigation on the grounds the student is a juvenile.
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2013/08/the_black_st_peters_prep_student_who_received_racist_text_during_his_run_for_student_council_sent_th.html#incart_m-rpt-1
Twerking towards Gomorrah
Viewers of the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night were treated to a bizarre dance routine from former Disney child actress Miley Cyrus, which CBS News describes as “one performance that won’t be forgotten very quickly:”
Cyrus gave Robin Thicke a lap dance, paraded around with dancing bears, twerked her butt off and grabbed her crotch a few times. Not to mention the tongue. We saw a lot of that.If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “twerking” is a dance move that dispenses with all the other subtleties of dance to deliver pelvic thrusts and butt wiggles. If a cell phone set to “vibrate” magically became human and started dancing, it would twerk. CBS left out the part where young Miley grabbed a foam finger from a member of the audience and began rubbing it against her crotch. She wound up simulating a bit of anal penetration with Ms. Loring’s son, who was singing with her on stage. And the “bears” in the act were dancers dressed like children’s teddy bears, adding a lovely touch of pedophilia chic to the proceedings.
[Robin] Thicke’s mother, Gloria Loring, told OMG! Insider, “I don’t understand what Miley Cyrus is trying to do. I think she’s misbegotten in this attempt of hers. And I think it was not beneficial.” She added, “I didn’t get what her point was. It was so over the top as to almost be a parody of itself.
My first exposure to Ms. Cyrus music came when I was putting together a photo slideshow for my 6-year-old niece’s birthday party, back in the “Hannah Montana” days. That wasn’t so long ago. I remember how much my little niece adored “Hannah Montana.” She’s just now entering her preteen years – that tender moment in a young girl’s life when liberals think she should be able to get morning-after birth control pills over the counter, without her parents’ consent. ”Hannah Montana” was a cute Disney fantasy about an ordinary girl who is secretly a millionaire pop star. Is this how all the little girls who daydreamed about being Hannah Montana thought the dream would end?
I can tell Robin Thicke’s mom what Miley Cyrus was “trying to do.” Most obviously, it was a bid for attention, another jolt of cheap electrical stimulus to the temples of a jaded, faded culture that expects nothing from young people, and is therefore shocked by nothing they do. It’s not easy to generate controversy in a society whose only standard is that there should be no standards. The only way for a barely-legal singer to get tongues wagging is to wag her tongue. What else was she supposed to do, sing and dance modestly after endorsing abstinence, traditional marriage, and self-discipline? That would have been plenty controversial, all right, but the people marketing her music wouldn’t like it, it’s hard to squeeze cash from rebellious teenagers with a message like that, and all the wrong people would have applauded.
Also, Ms. Loring, I would advise you not to underestimate the importance of the pedophile edge to Miley’s routine. Sexualizing young people is an important mission of the Left. They want little girls to jump right from teddy bears to Planned Parenthood. That helps dissolve the bonds of family, which is a fading bastion of independence and self-reliance against collective power. It’s important for the “Ozzie and Harriet” crowd to feel utterly marginalized, as unwelcome in 2013 as the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock. We are supposed to accept that the world has forever moved on from those days. Parents can’t control their kids – indeed, their influence is expressly unwelcome when it comes to sexual training, where the concept of “parental consent” has become as antique as the pocketwatch or bustle. Liberal culture defines wanton sexuality and the rejection of family authority as “empowerment.” It softens people up for hardcore government dependency when they’re forced to stop twerking and face the consequences.
Also, sexy children make a nice distraction for the older members of the Low Information Voter community, who crave transgression and worship youth, working as hard as possible not to grow up.
Miley Cyrus was on the bill with Lady Gaga, who is supposed to be the second coming of the aging Madonna, who has been busy transforming herself into a James Bond villain in her dotage. Lady Gaga is said to have been “upstaged” by Miley’s re-enactment of a Japanese schoolgirl porn video, because all poor Gaga could think to do was dress up as a nun. What kind of rebellion against authority is that? Nuns are so pre-ObamaCare. Religious conscience has given way before the power of the almighty State. Nuns are just marking time until they’re legally compelled to perform abortions.
It might seem pathetic to watch these “edgy” artists flaunt their defiance against thoroughly vanquished traditions, but maybe it’s an encouraging sign. Their marketing gurus apparently think there’s still a bit of milk in the old sacred cows. The kids of 2013 can still savor a look of scandalized horror on Mom and Dad’s faces. Someone apparently thinks “family values” haven’t quite been beaten to death.
Which is good, because “family values” remain our only hope for pulling out of the social and economic nose dive we find ourselves in. The upper class retains the “secrets” of decorum, respect, and fidelity that everyone else has been tricked into forgetting. Back when the Left set about turning the phrase “family values” into a post-modern joke, laughs were had at the expense of uptight squares who didn’t understand the difference between safeguarding important principles and having a bit of fun. Well, the joke is on everyone else.
We never should have forgotten the potent connection between thought and expression, the importance of habit and ritual. It is difficult to treasure what a saturation media culture treats like trash. And it doesn’t help that the law of diminishing returns obliges the people who dug our cultural pit to dig more frantically as the hole grows deeper, madly searching for whatever flickers of shock value might still be left to uncover.
Societies die from thousands of cultural cuts. Children are powerfully influenced by popular culture. They yearn for guidance and inspiration from the adult world. They receive the lesson transmitted by crap like the MTV Video Music Awards. Kids a bit younger than Miley Cyrus remember what she used to be, and they see what she is now. They see the road stretching between those points, and they follow it. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that if you want to live a hedonistic anything-goes lifestyle, starting before you’re legally allowed to purchase alcohol, and avoid being destroyed by the consequences, it really helps to be a millionaire.
http://www.redstate.com/2013/08/26/twerking-towards-gomorrah/
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