The number of Americans who have a job or are looking for one, known officially as the labor force "participation rate," is at a 34-year low, but economists say even that dismal statistic does not capture the bleakness of the U.S. jobs picture.
One million fewer Americans a month are quitting their jobs to seek better opportunities than they did during the years leading up to the recession, economist and author John Lott explains. During tough times, it makes sense that Americans would hold tightly to their present positions.
Moreover, moderate increases in the quit rate can signal economic confidence as Americans leave jobs for better ones. However, were the "quit rate" not so unusually low, the labor force participation rate would be even worse.
"Hiring is supposed to increase during recoveries, not fall below the horrible level during the recession. The only reason that we are even slowly gaining any jobs is because the number of people too afraid to quit their current jobs and look for new ones is unusually large," said John Lott in an interview with Breitbart News.
He says the average quit rate over the last three months is still 7% below the rate during the recession.
Lott added: "Quits aren't supposed to fall during a recovery... people appear to be even more worried about being able to get a new job during this recovery than they were during the recession."
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 37% of the unemployed have been jobless for 27 weeks or more.
Today, nearly 90 million people are no longer in the U.S. workforce.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/02/Economist-U-S-Jobs-Picture-Worse-Than-You-Think
President ‘Present’
Obama’s pattern of indecisiveness continues — and it has Democrats worried.
Washington is abuzz with talk about how much President Obama has damaged America’s credibility with his indecisiveness on Syria. It’s become accepted fact that Obama’s decision-making style resembles that of an academic convening an unruly seminar whose participants he largely disdains. What he is not is a decisive leader with the ability to bring disparate players together behind a common purpose.This shouldn’t be a surprise. We had inklings of it a long time ago. Back when Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, Hillary Clinton accused him of “taking a pass” on tough issues when he was in the Illinois state senate, a theme later picked up by Republicans. Its basis is the 129 times he voted “present.” On 36 of those occasions, he was the only one to vote present of the 60 senators. One of those occasions was in 1999, when he twice chose not to vote on a bill protecting sexual-assault victims from having the explicit details of their cases made public without “good cause.” Bonnie Grabenhofer, the president of the Illinois National Organization of Women at the time, said she endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2007 in part because “when we needed someone to take a stand, Senator Obama took a pass.”
Today President Obama’s chaotic indecisiveness is a big part of his challenge in getting both houses of Congress to approve military action in Syria. Republicans are strongly leaning against intervention at this point, but Obama’s real problem may be with Democrats. ABC News reports that several congressional Democrats pushed back against military action against Syria in a conference call with administration officials Monday.
They may not be easy to bring into line. Recall that just two years ago, 70 House Democrats voted against a bill that would have authorized U.S. military action in Libya. Less than two months ago, a total of 111 House Democrats, a clear majority, voted to cut back on funding for National Security Agency surveillance programs.
Since then, further evidence has piled up that Obama is a dithering, indecisive leader willing to deflect making a decision because of what many see as political calculation. It’s one thing when this happens domestically, like when his administration delayed meaningful action by BP and the state of Louisiana to clear up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. It’s another when it happens in foreign policy — especially in the Middle East. Obama stood aloof during the Iranian street protests of 2009. In Libya, he delayed a decision for weeks until choosing “to lead from behind,” in the famous words of one adviser. In Egypt, the administration was caught flat-footed not once, but twice, by uprisings.
Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, outlined the pattern way back in 2011 in a Washington Post column:
An administration that lacks a consistent foreign policy philosophy has nevertheless established a predictable foreign policy pattern. A popular revolt takes place in country X. President Obama is caught by surprise and says little. A few days later an administration spokesman weakly calls for “reform.” A few more days of mounting protests and violence follow. Then, after an internal debate that spills out into the media, the president decides he must do something. But hoping to keep expectations low, his actions are limited in scope. By this point, a strategic opportunity is missed and the protesters in country X feel betrayed.Sounds just like the Syria story we’re seeing today, with the addition of Obama’s foolish “red line” threat should Syrian dictator Bashar Assad use chemical weapons. The pattern of behavior is a key reason why President Obama now has credibility problems — with both parties — on Capitol Hill.
No one should think the president can’t eventually get his way on Syria. Democrats will be reminded that if they help deliver a humiliating defeat for Obama it will not only hurt U.S. credibility abroad but will damage his domestic agenda and perhaps make his participation in the 2014 elections less valuable.
But Democrats who have watched House Republicans scramble to keep their coalition together and deliver majorities now have their own challenge. As David Drucker, congressional correspondent for the Washington Examiner, reports: “This is a rare case of the shoe being on the other foot. This time, the president and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) have to deliver the votes first — if they want the (Syrian) resolution to clear the chamber.”
And as Democratic leaders try to corral those votes, part of the pushback will not just be questions about the advisability of a strike on Syria, but increasing worries that the president they elected is not ready for prime time when it comes to foreign-policy crises. A Democratic congressman who retired years ago once told me that, while he didn’t vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980, he was “profoundly concerned” about how Jimmy Carter might have continued to mishandle U.S. foreign policy — from Afghanistan to Iran — if he’d won a second term that year.
Many Democrats may soon wake up to the fact they may indeed have reelected a Jimmy Carter — or worse. And he has a long 40 months left in his term.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357412/president-present-john-fund
Leading From Behind Congress
Obama recklessly gambles with American credibility.
President Obama's Syrian melodrama went from bad to worse on Saturday with his surprise decision to seek Congressional approval for what he promises will be merely a limited cruise-missile bombing. Mr. Obama will now have someone else to blame if Congress blocks his mission, but in the bargain he has put at risk his credibility and America's standing in the world with more than 40 months left in office.This will go down as one of the stranger gambles, if not abdications, in Commander in Chief history. For days his aides had been saying the President has the Constitutional power to act alone in response to Syria's use of chemical weapons, and that he planned to do so. On Friday, he rolled out Secretary of State John Kerry to issue a moral and strategic call to arms and declare that a response was urgent.
But on Friday night, according to leaks from this leakiest of Administrations, the President changed his mind. A military strike was not so urgent that it couldn't wait for Congress to finish its August recess and vote the week of its return on September 9. If the point of the bombing is primarily to "send a message," as the President says, well, then, apparently Congress must co-sign the letter and send it via snail mail.
It's hard not to see this as primarily a bid for political cover, a view reinforced when the President's political consigliere David Axelrod taunted on Twitter that "Congress is now the dog that caught the car." Mr. Obama can read the polls, which show that most of the public opposes intervention in Syria. Around the world he has so far mobilized mainly a coalition of the unwilling, with even the British Parliament refusing to follow his lead. By comparison, George W. Bush on Iraq looks like Metternich.
But what does anyone expect given Mr. Obama's foreign-policy leadership? Since he began running for President, Mr. Obama has told Americans that he wants to retreat from the Middle East, that the U.S. has little strategic interest there, that any differences with our enemies can be settled with his personal diplomacy, that our priority must be "nation-building at home," and that "the tide of war is receding." For two-and-a-half years, he has also said the U.S. has no stake in Syria.
The real political surprise, not to say miracle, is that after all of this so many Americans still support military action in response to Syria's use of chemical weapons—50% in the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC poll. Despite his best efforts, Mr. Obama hasn't turned Americans into isolationists.
A Congressional vote can be useful when it educates the public and rallies more political support. A national consensus is always desirable when the U.S. acts abroad. But the danger in this instance is that Mr. Obama is trying to sell a quarter-hearted intervention with half-hearted conviction.
From the start of the Syrian uprising, these columns have called for Mr. Obama to mobilize a coalition to support the moderate rebels. This would depose an enemy of the U.S. and deal a major blow to Iran's ambition to dominate the region.
The problem with the intervention that Mr. Obama is proposing is that it will do little or nothing to end the civil war or depose Assad. It is a one-off response intended to vindicate Mr. Obama's vow that there would be "consequences" if Assad used chemical weapons. It is a bombing gesture detached from a larger strategy. This is why we have urged a broader campaign to destroy Assad's air force and arm the moderate rebels to help them depose the regime and counter the jihadists who are gaining strength as the war continues.
The very limitations of Mr. Obama's intervention will make it harder for him to win Congress's support. He is already sure to lose the votes of the left and Rand Paul right. But his lack of a strategy risks losing the support of even those like GOP Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham who have long wanted America to back the Syrian rebels.
Yet now that Mr. Obama has tossed the issue to Congress, the stakes are far higher than this single use of arms in Syria or this President's credibility. Mr. Obama has put America's role as a global power on the line.
A defeat in Congress would signal to Bashar Assad and the world's other thugs that the U.S. has retired as the enforcer of any kind of world order. This would be dangerous at any time, but especially with more than three long years left in this Presidency. Unlike the British in 1956, the U.S. can't retreat from east of Suez without grave consequences. The U.S. replaced the British, but there is no one to replace America.
The world's rogues would be further emboldened and look for more weaknesses to exploit. Iran would conclude it can march to a nuclear weapon with impunity. Israel, Japan, the Gulf states and other American friends would have to recalculate their reliance on U.S. power and will.
***
These are the stakes that Mr. Obama has so recklessly put before Congress. His mishandling of Syria has been so extreme that we can't help but wonder if he really wants to lose this vote. Then he would have an excuse for further cutting defense and withdrawing America even more from world leadership. We will give him the benefit of the doubt, but only because incompetence and narrow political self-interest are more obvious explanations for his behavior.All of which means that the adults in Congress—and there are some—will have to save the day. The draft language for authorizing force that Mr. Obama has sent to Congress is too narrowly drawn as a response to WMD. Congress should broaden it to give the President more ability to respond to reprisals, support the Syrian opposition and assist our allies if they are attacked.
The reason to do this and authorize the use of force is not to save this President from embarrassment. It is to rescue American credibility and strategic interests from this most feckless of Presidents.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324009304579047431684838844.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
The Politics of the Obama Delay on Syria
Betting that the focus on a GOP rift will divert attention from how many Democrats won't support the president.
By Kimberley StrasselThe most telling line in President Obama's Saturday Syria address came near the end, when he (once again) lectured Congress about its duty to rise above "partisan differences or the politics of the moment." Having put America's global credibility at risk, Mr. Obama defaulted to the same political cynicism that has defined his presidency.
The commander in chief is in a box. His desperation to avoid military entanglement in Syria last year—in the run-up to the presidential election—inspired Mr. Obama to fumble out his "red line" warning to Bashar Assad on chemical-weapons use. The statement was a green light to the dictator to commit every atrocity up to that line and—when he received no pushback—to cross it.
Now trapped by his own declaration, Mr. Obama is reverting to the same strategy he has used in countless domestic brawls—that is, to lay responsibility for any action, or failure of action, on Congress. The decision was made easier by the fact that Congress itself was demanding a say.
That proved too tempting for a president whose crude calculus is that Congress can now rescue him however it votes. Should Congress oppose authorizing action against Syria, he can lay America's failure to honor his promises on the legislative branch. Obama aides insist that even if Congress votes no, the president may still act—though they would say that. The idea that Mr. Obama, having lacked the will to act on his own, would proceed in the face of congressional opposition is near-fantasy.
Mr. Obama must figure that if he gets authorization, he nets two political wins. He provides himself cover for taking action, while simultaneously presenting Congress's vote as affirmation of his flawed plan to lob a few missiles and call it a day. When that pinprick bombing has no discernible effect on Assad's murderous campaign, Mr. Obama will note that this was Congress's will. As he said in his Saturday speech, "all of us should be accountable" for Mr. Obama's actions.
A congressional vote is all the more tantalizing to a president who lives and breathes rough politics, and who knows that this Syria debate will be particularly punishing for Republicans. The coming weeks will highlight the growing rift in the GOP between the traditional defenders of national security and the party's libertarian-isolationist wing. While the latter does not yet occupy a large space in the GOP, its members are loud and wield much influence among the cranky conservative grass roots.
Those Republicans who might be expected to vote for a military strike will be pressured by the threat of primary challengers using that vote against them. They will likely be accused of helping Mr. Obama extract himself from his box. The president is going to enjoy this show, all the more so if it results in upheaval for Republicans in next year's midterms.
Likewise, he will enjoy putting on the spot the GOP's hawks, like Sen. John McCain, who have been merciless in their criticism of an Obama military strategy that will do nothing to end Syria's civil war or depose Assad. With the authorization Mr. Obama has sent to Congress, he is forcing Republicans to choose between an inconstant strategy and a "no" vote that harms American interests. When did a U.S. commander in chief last so cynically play politics with American credibility?
Finally, Mr. Obama is betting that the GOP rift will divert attention from the most pertinent aspect of this debate: the extent to which his own party abandons him. The president's withdrawal from the world stage—his exit from Afghanistan and Iraq, in particular—has nurtured the Democratic Party's worst instincts and left it even more resistant to a call for military action. Mr. Obama is counting on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to corral votes for him, but the liberal Democratic wing is not a sure bet.
Americans do not want to think that the president is making grave decisions about military action and U.S. standing on the basis of political calculation. Yet Mr. Obama has treated Syria as a political problem from the start, viewing it almost solely as a liability to the administration's public-opinion polling, its presidential electioneering and its rival domestic priorities. Viewing Mr. Obama's punt to Congress as anything but political is almost impossible. And yet the president again lectures Congress to rise above the "partisan" politics that he has, with great calculation, dumped on them.
The challenge for Republicans is to do just that, to remember (no matter how painful) that this is not a vote about the president or his machinations. The only question before Republicans is this: Will they send a message to the world's despots that America will not tolerate the use of weapons of mass destruction? If they will not send that message, they risk complicity in this president's failed foreign policy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324432404579049170642934080.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
A Nation of Laws, Not Men
Here’s a disturbing trend: public officials are, outside the legal system, declaring laws unconstitutional.
On September 4, a court in Pennsylvania will consider whether a county registrar of wills may issue marriage licenses to same sex couples in contravention of state law because he has decided that law is unconstitutional. This official has now issued over 100 such licenses and other public officials (mayors) have used them to perform same sex wedding ceremonies. The legal challenge by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which has overall responsibility for marriage laws and licensing, is loaded with constitutional, legal, social, and marital consequences, all of which deserve careful consideration.At the same time, the Governor and Attorney General of Pennsylvania have exchanged political blows over whether that state law banning same sex marriage should be defended in court and, if so, who has the responsibility to do that. The attorney general says Pennsylvania’s 1996 law stating that marriage is between a man and a woman is “wholly unconstitutional” and she will not defend it, even though the recent Supreme Court decision in Windsor v. United States said states were free to make their own decisions about gay marriage.
It looks like a virus is spreading among public officials creating delusions that any one of them may unilaterally decide a law is unconstitutional and decline to follow the law or defend it in court. Setting aside for a moment the same sex marriage context of these actions—we could be talking about environmental laws or gun control or taxes—is it really the case that a single federal, state, or county official is free to make a judgment about the constitutionality of a law and decline to execute, enforce, or defend it? Are we no longer what founder (and second president) John Adams called “a nation of laws and not of men”?
First and foremost, a unilateral decision by a public official not to follow or defend a law he or she considers unconstitutional is a constitutional problem. Part of the safeguards built into our constitutions, both federal and state, is a separation of powers among the three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial. Each branch has a purpose and generally no one branch alone can make law.
By the same token, no single branch, save the judicial, should be able to undo a law. This is part of the controversy surrounding President Obama’s recent decision to suspend aspects of Obamacare, which a member of the executive branch should not be able to do to a law passed by the legislature and signed by the president. It smacks of exactly the sort of monarchical power the founders sought to avoid.
The only branch of government able to declare a law unconstitutional on its own is the judiciary. Judges have legal and constitutional training and experience that is not required of those in the executive branch. Judicial procedure allows for extensive testimony, a “day in court” for both sides, and a deliberative weighing of the evidence.
Even so, the judiciary’s power to declare a law unconstitutional troubles us from time to time, such as when the legislature and president overwhelmingly support a law that a single federal judge strikes down. This is why the California Proposition 8 case was so disturbing. In the end, when the state’s governor and attorney general would not defend the law, and the U.S. Supreme Court found that no one else had standing to defend it, the decision of a single federal judge that the law was unconstitutional became the final, unappealable result. No matter which side of Proposition 8 you were on, it should be troubling when nearly 7 million Californians vote something into the state constitution that is voided by a single judge without appeal.
A more specific constitutional problem with public officials who will not enforce or defend laws they believe are unconstitutional is the conflict with their own oaths of office. Virtually all executive branch officials take an oath to support and defend the constitution and the laws of their jurisdiction. For example, the governor and attorney general of Pennsylvania both “solemnly swear that I will support, obey and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this Commonwealth and that I will discharge the duties of my office with fidelity.”
One could perhaps parse these words like a trial lawyer, but your average citizen would believe that these two officials were agreeing to support and defend the laws, in the same way that most of us were taught to follow the laws or else change them, according to the legal system.
In fact, if a public official’s responsibility vis-à-vis a particular law is only to carry it out, his duties are then considered “ministerial,” leaving no room for interpretation or disagreement. One of the issues in the case of the Pennsylvania registrar of wills is whether his duties with respect to marriage licenses are purely ministerial. Similar cases before the Supreme Courts of California (2004) and Oregon (2005) found officials who issued marriage licenses to have only ministerial responsibilities, such that their only choice was to carry out the law as written, not to object to it on constitutional or other grounds.
Again, a similar argument has been made with respect to the president and Obamacare—that once the law was passed and signed, the president’s duty was simply to execute it, leaving no room to suspend or even delay it, since specific dates of execution were clearly incorporated into the law. It would be difficult to conceive of an issuer of marriage licenses having much discretion—it is really a matter of checking boxes and issuing papers—but this is part of the argument the Pennsylvania court must resolve.
The responsibility of legal officers such as attorneys general to defend the law can be more fully appreciated in the context of legal duties and the legal system more broadly. A cardinal principle of the legal profession is that everyone deserves representation and a day in court. This is often stated as the attorney’s duty to defend even the most unpopular client. The idea is that the legal system does not depend on each attorney making his or her own individual judgment about the guilt or innocence of each party, but rather it relies on the cumulative effect of everyone in the system doing his or her job at the highest possible level.
This is why a lawyer doesn’t find it unethical to defend a guilty client. He knows that the system only works if even a guilty party gets the best possible representation, as well as the most vigorous prosecution, and that judges and juries are prepared to do justice in the end. The system only works when each participant does his or her part. In the case of gay marriage legislation, let the law be attacked by those who find it discriminatory, but then let it be defended by those elected or chosen and sworn to do so. Then the legal system as a whole, not one individual, is able to do justice. All of this is circumvented when those charged with the duty to defend refuse to play their part.
Beyond the constitutional and legal arguments, allowing public officials to make their own unilateral decisions about constitutionality creates policy chaos. In Pennsylvania, for example, no one knows for sure whether same sex marriages performed against state law, but under licenses issued by a county, are legal. And, of course, all sorts of personal and legal questions flow from that, multiplied by the number of such marriages performed.
When the California Supreme Court told the Mayor of San Francisco he could no longer issue licenses for same sex marriages in violation of state law, part of the court’s order was that illegal marriages already performed were declared null and void and that the records had to be corrected to reflect that. One can only imagine the number of public officials who might disagree strongly with a particular law and find a reason, constitutional or otherwise, for why it should not be enforced or defended. Again, regardless of which side of a law you may support, this approach to public policy invites the very chaos and lack of dependability and stability that the law is designed to prevent. It simply cannot stand.
Allowing public officials to avoid their duty to defend the laws also weakens the legal system. In Pennsylvania, for example, you have the attorney general refusing to defend a “wholly unconstitutional” law, while the governor is left to defend it on the grounds that “all laws are presumed to be constitutional and are to be defended.” This sort of dissonance among senior officials about the validity of state law hardly inspires respect and confidence in the legal system.
In California, the consequences are even worse. Now that it has been demonstrated that a ballot initiative, on which millions of dollars and hours were spent and which passed into law, can be negated by a single judge, this weakens confidence in a system that Californians have held near and dear for over a century. If state officers will not defend a law, or cannot be forced to, the law should provide a mechanism for its defense.
In the end, this really is about whether we remain a government of laws and not of men. If public officials, from the president and attorney general down through state and county executives, are allowed to give themselves a pass on executing, enforcing and defending the law, then the meaning of the law itself has been greatly diminished. Surely the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court will see the wide and deep implications of allowing a county official to disobey a law he finds unconstitutional when it begins its important hearings on September 4.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/155081
Obamacare Controversy: Company Given A 190 Million Dollar Contract Without Competition
In Illinois a computer system called the Medicaid management information system, needs to be modernized to handle the millions of individual medical cases that will result from Obamacare. The cost to do this is estimated to be around 190 million dollars. The contract was given to CNSI without a competitive bid proses, due to a loophole in Obamacare.
CNSI is already under federal investigation for questionable business practices in other states. Illinois State Senator Ron Sandack says, “ this has the hallmarks of everything that is so Chicago an so Illinois, which is totally imprudent and not best practice”.
http://freebeacon.com/obamacare-controversy-company-given-a-190-million-dollar-contract-without-competition/
Miley Cyrus and Ugly Sex
Was the MTV performance meant to be repellent rather than enticing?
By Victor Davis HansonAn older generation used to call the boredom of bad habits “reaching rock bottom”; the present variant perhaps is “jumping the shark” — that moment when the tiresome gimmicks no longer work, and the show is over.
In a moral sense, Miley Cyrus reached that tipping point for America, slapping us into admitting that most of our popular icons are crass, talentless bores, and that our own tastes, which created them, lead nowhere but to oblivion.
After all, what does an affluent and leisured culture do when it has nothing much to rebel against?
That was poor Ms. Cyrus’s recent dilemma at the MTV awards ceremony. There are no real rules about popular dance anymore: no set steps, no moves borrowed from ballet, not even a few adaptations from scripted square dancing. It is all free-form wiggling and gyrating — twerking — as if to shout out, “Who are you to say that fake screwing in a vinyl bikini is not dance?”
The same is true of music and lyrics. You can talk to a drumbeat and call it music. You can hit the same chord ad infinitum and call it music. You can scream almost anything and call it music. Doggerel becomes lyrics. Half notes, full rests, rhyme, meter — all that is irrelevant, to the degree it is even still remembered. That is why we often see our performers just stop singing for a few moments in a daze; the dead beat goes on without their constant mindless input.
In the first part of the 20th century modernist contrarians established a counter-music, an antithesis to classical genres. Populist dancers announced, “Who needs ballroom formality?” But again, how do you oppose that opposition, without a reactionary, full-circle return to formalism?
The advisers of Miley Cyrus should have a problem in that the 20-year-old ignoramus is not a Paris showgirl in the Folies Trévise of the 1870s, not an Impressionist artist in 1890, not a Ziegfeld Girl circa 1910, not a poet of the Great War, not a Depression-era novelist, and most surely not a blues singer in 1940 — all defiant in arguing that in turbulent times genres, rules, protocols in the arts, literature, and popular expression were confining, hypocritical, and fossilized (as if it is more difficult and challenging to write a poem without iambic pentameter, rhyme, or poetic diction).
Miley Cyrus, to the extent she was intent on anything other than making more money and headlines, seemed to be trying to rebel against the rebellion, most likely Madonna and her own knockoff insurgent, Lady Gaga. But given that both of them have appeared on stage nine-tenths nude, routinely simulated sex in front of millions, and adopted symbols and sets designed to gross out Middle America, how do you go beyond their uncouthness? Higher platform shoes? More videos of public nudity? Two foam fingers?
For going “beyond” — not singing more mellifluously, dancing more adroitly, or energizing the crowd more enthusiastically — is now the point. In Petronius Arbiter’s first-century novel, The Satyricon, the fatter and more repugnant is Trimalchio, and the more loudly he passes wind, burps, mangles mythology, and invokes scatology, the more he thinks that he appeals to his bored dinner guests. In terms of repugnance, Miley Cyrus was the anorexic and mobile version of Jabba the Hutt.
She has neither the training nor the discipline to go formal retro. She surely was not going to appear in her vinyl bikini, put on ballet shoes, and do a bit from Swan Lake (now that would be shocking). Nor was she going to offer “O mio babbino caro” from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi, waving her huge foam finger in Mitch Miller sing-along fashion. That too these days would be shocking.
So what is a poor multimillionaire celebrity to do in the age of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, when slumming has become passé and the audience has become post-decadent? Just say, “And you idiots are paying for this”?
There are no large cultural stimuli to force Cyrus the Younger to question society’s classical norms. No struggle to win the vote for women and then blacks. No Verdun, with a million dead in the muck. No Great Depression, with rampant starvation.
Instead we live in a psychodramatic age of virtual oppression and feigned want, in which “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is updated with Oprah’s melodramatic account of being denied a closer look at a $38,000 Swiss handbag. Our version of D-Day is the question whether or not to lob a few cruise missiles at Bashar Assad to make Obama’s redlines red. Soup kitchens and five-cent apples have transmogrified into electronic EBT cards and Obamaphones. Where is the elemental inspiration, the existential need to tap popular anguish and turn it into revolutionary artistic expression?
If multimillionaire rapper Jay-Z performs at the White House, where is to be found the font of resistance? In short — resistance to what?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357397/miley-cyrus-and-ugly-sex-victor-davis-hanson
University guts budget for College Republicans, gives extra cash to feminist group
Conservative students at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are outraged over their student
government’s decision to slash the yearly budget for the College
Republicans while awarding extra funds to campus liberal groups.UNC’s Student
Congress is tasked with allocating funding to student groups from a
pool of money consisting of mandatory student fees. While no group can
be denied funding based on its viewpoint, student government members do
have discretion to give more funding to groups and events that they
believe will enrich the campus community.The College
Republicans had asked for $8,000 to bring conservative speakers Katie
Pavlich and Ann McElhinny to campus. This was already $4,000 less than
what the group had asked for–and received–the previous year, noted club
chairman Peter McClelland.But the student government’s finance committee decided to give the students
a mere $3,000, forcing them to cut one of the two speakers.Since the College Republicans are one of the only conservative groups on campus, the decision deprives the campus of much-needed alternative viewpoints, argued McClelland.
“A cut…. just smacks in the face of anything we thought was justifiable if we value intellectual
diversity on this campus,” said McClelland in an interview with The Daily Caller.Liberal groups, on the other hand, received more funding. Siren Womyn Empowerment Magazine, a feminist organization, received $5,100. And “UNControllables”–an anarchist group that discusses ways to fight capitalism, according to UNC’s website–received $4,000.
The College Democrats did not receive a funding cut, according to The College Fix.
The College Republicans have appealed the finance
committee’s decision to the full Student Congress, which could vote to
restore funding. McClelland hopes that student congressmen will
recognize the value of bringing conservative speakers to a traditionally
liberal campus.“Students do want to hear both sides and we consider that when we pick speakers. Our two speakers are very engaging,” he said.
Robert Shibley, senior vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
,
said that it was difficult to determine whether the finance committee
had violated conservative students’ Constitutional rights.“The student government can’t give the College Republicans less money
because they don’t like Republican views,” he said in an interview with
The Daily Caller. “[But] they can make judgment calls on the quality of
the event. It’s a tough evaluation to make.”The Student Congress will revisit the the College Republicans’ funding on Tuesday.
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