By Bill Varner and Flavia Krause-Jackson - Sep 29, 2011 2:05 PM GMT-0400
The Obama administration told the United Nations that too few of its 10,307 workers are being cut and average salaries, currently $119,000 a year, have risen “dramatically.”
The U.S. ambassador for UN management and reform, Joseph M. Torsella, said today that the proposed $5.2 billion UN budget for the next two years would scrap only 44 jobs, a 0.4 percent reduction. After an “onslaught” of add-ons, the 2012-13 budget would rise more than 2 percent to $5.5 billion, he said.
“That is not a break from ‘business as usual’ but a continuation of it,” Torsella said in a speech in New York to the UN’s administrative and budgetary committee. “How does management intend to bring these numbers and costs back in line?”
The Obama administration, he said, “calls for a comprehensive, department-by-department, line-by-line review of this budget” and a new process to approve UN funding.
“It is our obligation to our taxpayers to do more with less in Washington and here at the UN,” he said.
Torsella’s attack on UN salaries and workforce size follows legislation introduced by U.S. House Republicans on Aug. 30 that, if passed into law, would have the U.S. withhold a percentage of its contributions until at least 80 percent of the UN budget is voluntary.
U.S. Share
While pressing for savings in the UN budget, the Obama administration is opposed to withholding U.S. funding. That approach to forcing UN reform is “fundamentally flawed in concept and practice, sets it back, is self-defeating, and doesn’t work,” U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, said on Sept. 13.
The U.S. pays 22 percent of the UN’s regular operating budget and is assessed 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget. U.S. payments totaled $3.35 billion in 2010, of which $2.67 billion was dedicated to the 16 peacekeeping operations worldwide, from South Sudan to Haiti.
Torsella also complained about receiving the UN budget proposal in a “piecemeal fashion” with “too little financial analysis.” He cited, as an example, not knowing how much the UN spends on health-care benefits for its employees.
Calling personnel the “largest and most important driver of long-term costs,” Torsella said those expenses increased to $2.4 billion in the 2010-11 budget from $1.4 billion a decade earlier.
Republican Plan
Legislation by Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, demands that the UN let countries decide how much to pay and which programs they will support, rather than assessing payments based on a formula. It would end funding for Palestinian refugees, limit use of U.S. funds only to purposes outlined by Congress and put a hold on creating or expanding peacekeeping operations until management changes are made.
In 2006, President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said the U.S. might push to make contributions to the UN budget voluntary. Bolton also focused on peacekeeping operations, holding hearings on reports of sexual exploitation by UN peacekeepers in Africa and up to $300 million in unnecessary purchases of equipment and supplies for peacekeeping missions.
Also in 2006, House lawmakers called for withholding half of the $429 million in U.S. funding for the UN’s regular operations that year in an attempt to force changes in the world body. At the time, criticism was focused on evidence of graft in the $64 billion UN program that allowed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to use oil money from 1996 to 2003 to buy food and medical supplies for his people.
Anger over the scandal drove a 60-member group in the House to sponsor a resolution calling for the resignation of then Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
An attempt in the House in 2006 to pass legislation tying payments to UN management changes failed.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Anti-Obama sign in Uptown neighborhood draws controversy
Maya Rodriguez / Eyewitness News
NEW ORLEANS -- There are several political signs attracting all kinds of attention in one Uptown neighborhood.
On Wednesday, crowds gathered at the corner of Calhoun and Coralie streets, looking at several signs depicting President Barack Obama as either a dunce, a puppet or a crying baby in a diaper.
"It disrespects the nation -- and President Barack Obama represents our nation," said Skip Alexander, as he looked at one of the signs. "He represents everybody, not some people."
Dozens of protesters came by the house in the 1500 block of Calhoun throughout the day, demanding the sign come down.
"He wouldn't do that to [President] Bush, I'm sure. It's just insulting. It's insulting," said C.C. Campbell-Rock. "He's going to have to take them down."
"This is nothing put pure racism," said Raymond Rock. "This is a disgrace."
The home is owned by Timothy Reily, who declined to be interviewed about the signs. Former Mayor Ray Nagin showed up at the house and went inside to speak with Reily. He emerged later and would not comment on what they discussed.
Some neighbors tell Eyewitness News that Reily has been putting the signs up for months. Some of the protesters learned about the signs through a local radio station on Wednesday morning.
"He can put up a sign if he wants to. It doesn't bother me," said Harold Gagnet, a neighbor.
"I think it's fine. It's on his property," said Katherine deMontluzin. "He can say whatever he wants."
The signs have created such a firestorm of controversy, though, that police came to the scene-- called in by City Council Member Susan Guidry. She represents the district where the home is located. Guidry said she was concerned about public safety and was trying to figure out if the sign was even legal. She also said she spoke to Reily, but didn't get far.
"We have to determine that there is a zoning law that prohibits perhaps the size of the sign, perhaps the way that it's erected, that it is leaning over onto public property," Guidry said. "Whatever we can use, we will, but of course, we do have to balance that with First Amendment rights."
Yet, the signs remain in place, fanning the flames of a free speech debate on both sides of the fence.
NEW ORLEANS -- There are several political signs attracting all kinds of attention in one Uptown neighborhood.
On Wednesday, crowds gathered at the corner of Calhoun and Coralie streets, looking at several signs depicting President Barack Obama as either a dunce, a puppet or a crying baby in a diaper.
"It disrespects the nation -- and President Barack Obama represents our nation," said Skip Alexander, as he looked at one of the signs. "He represents everybody, not some people."
Dozens of protesters came by the house in the 1500 block of Calhoun throughout the day, demanding the sign come down.
"He wouldn't do that to [President] Bush, I'm sure. It's just insulting. It's insulting," said C.C. Campbell-Rock. "He's going to have to take them down."
"This is nothing put pure racism," said Raymond Rock. "This is a disgrace."
The home is owned by Timothy Reily, who declined to be interviewed about the signs. Former Mayor Ray Nagin showed up at the house and went inside to speak with Reily. He emerged later and would not comment on what they discussed.
Some neighbors tell Eyewitness News that Reily has been putting the signs up for months. Some of the protesters learned about the signs through a local radio station on Wednesday morning.
"He can put up a sign if he wants to. It doesn't bother me," said Harold Gagnet, a neighbor.
"I think it's fine. It's on his property," said Katherine deMontluzin. "He can say whatever he wants."
The signs have created such a firestorm of controversy, though, that police came to the scene-- called in by City Council Member Susan Guidry. She represents the district where the home is located. Guidry said she was concerned about public safety and was trying to figure out if the sign was even legal. She also said she spoke to Reily, but didn't get far.
"We have to determine that there is a zoning law that prohibits perhaps the size of the sign, perhaps the way that it's erected, that it is leaning over onto public property," Guidry said. "Whatever we can use, we will, but of course, we do have to balance that with First Amendment rights."
Yet, the signs remain in place, fanning the flames of a free speech debate on both sides of the fence.
US mulls building fence on border with Canada!
Sounds like they are trying to keep us in...
The Canadian Press Posted: Sep 29, 2011 9:38 AM ET Last Updated: Sep 29, 2011 8:48 PM ET
The United States is looking at building fences along the border with Canada to help keep out terrorists and other criminals, according to a draft report by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency
The report proposes the use of "fencing and other barriers" on the 49th parallel to manage "trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control."
But a spokesperson for U.S Customs and Border Protection said the government is not considering the fence option "at this time" and instead is looking at the environmental effects of putting more manpower, technology and infrastructure along the border.
The border service is also pondering options including a beefed-up technological presence through increased use of radar, sensors, cameras, drones and vehicle scanners. In addition, it might continue to improve or expand customs facilities at ports of entry.
The agency considered but ruled out the possibility of hiring "significantly more" U.S. Border Patrol agents to increase the rate of inspections, noting staffing has already risen in recent years.
Customs and Border Protection is inviting comment on the options and plans a series of public meetings in Washington and several U.S. border communities next month. It will then decide which ideas to pursue.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted last month the challenges of monitoring the vast, sparsely populated northern border region. She stressed manpower, but also a greater reliance on technology.
Ironically, the moves come as Canada and the U.S. try to finalize a perimeter security arrangement that would focus on continental defences while easing border congestion. It would be aimed at speeding passage of goods and people across the Canada-U.S. border, which has become something of a bottleneck since the 911 attacks.
Relatively speaking, Washington has focused more energy and resources on tightening security along the border with Mexico than at the sprawling one with Canada.
But that may be changing.
Only small portion secured
A U.S. Government Accountability Office report recently warned that only a small portion of the border with Canada is properly secure. It said U.S. border officers control just 50 kilometres of the 6,400-kilometre boundary.
The Customs and Border Protection report says while fences have been a big element in deterring unauthorized crossings of the U.S.-Mexican border, "it is unlikely that fencing will play as prominent a role" on the northern border, given its length and terrain that varies from prairie to forest.
However, the agency would use fencing and other barriers such as trenches to control movement and sometimes delay people trying to sneak across the border, increasing the likelihood they could be caught, says the report.
It doesn't provide details about what the fences might look like, but suggests they would be designed to blend into the environment and "complement the natural landscape."
The approach would also involve upgrading roadways and trails near the border.
"The lack of roads or presence of unmaintained roads impedes efficient surveillance operations," says the report. "Improving or expanding the roadway and trail networks could improve mobility, allowing agents to patrol more miles each day and shortening response times."
Over the last two years, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has already made what it calls "critical security improvements along the northern border," adding inspectors at the ports of entry and Border Patrol agents between ports, as well as modernizing land crossings.
Nearly 3,800 Customs and Border Protection officers scrutinize people and goods at crossings. The number of Border Patrol agents working between crossings along the northern parallel has increased 700 per cent since Sept. 11, 2001. And some three dozen land ports of entry are being modernized.
Unmanned U.S. aircraft patrol about 1,500 kilometres along the northern border from Washington to Minnesota as well as more than 300 kilometres of the Canadian border around New York state and Lake Ontario.
With files from CBC News
The Canadian Press Posted: Sep 29, 2011 9:38 AM ET Last Updated: Sep 29, 2011 8:48 PM ET
The United States is looking at building fences along the border with Canada to help keep out terrorists and other criminals, according to a draft report by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency
The report proposes the use of "fencing and other barriers" on the 49th parallel to manage "trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control."
But a spokesperson for U.S Customs and Border Protection said the government is not considering the fence option "at this time" and instead is looking at the environmental effects of putting more manpower, technology and infrastructure along the border.
The border service is also pondering options including a beefed-up technological presence through increased use of radar, sensors, cameras, drones and vehicle scanners. In addition, it might continue to improve or expand customs facilities at ports of entry.
The agency considered but ruled out the possibility of hiring "significantly more" U.S. Border Patrol agents to increase the rate of inspections, noting staffing has already risen in recent years.
Customs and Border Protection is inviting comment on the options and plans a series of public meetings in Washington and several U.S. border communities next month. It will then decide which ideas to pursue.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted last month the challenges of monitoring the vast, sparsely populated northern border region. She stressed manpower, but also a greater reliance on technology.
Ironically, the moves come as Canada and the U.S. try to finalize a perimeter security arrangement that would focus on continental defences while easing border congestion. It would be aimed at speeding passage of goods and people across the Canada-U.S. border, which has become something of a bottleneck since the 911 attacks.
Relatively speaking, Washington has focused more energy and resources on tightening security along the border with Mexico than at the sprawling one with Canada.
But that may be changing.
Only small portion secured
A U.S. Government Accountability Office report recently warned that only a small portion of the border with Canada is properly secure. It said U.S. border officers control just 50 kilometres of the 6,400-kilometre boundary.
The Customs and Border Protection report says while fences have been a big element in deterring unauthorized crossings of the U.S.-Mexican border, "it is unlikely that fencing will play as prominent a role" on the northern border, given its length and terrain that varies from prairie to forest.
However, the agency would use fencing and other barriers such as trenches to control movement and sometimes delay people trying to sneak across the border, increasing the likelihood they could be caught, says the report.
It doesn't provide details about what the fences might look like, but suggests they would be designed to blend into the environment and "complement the natural landscape."
The approach would also involve upgrading roadways and trails near the border.
"The lack of roads or presence of unmaintained roads impedes efficient surveillance operations," says the report. "Improving or expanding the roadway and trail networks could improve mobility, allowing agents to patrol more miles each day and shortening response times."
Over the last two years, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has already made what it calls "critical security improvements along the northern border," adding inspectors at the ports of entry and Border Patrol agents between ports, as well as modernizing land crossings.
Nearly 3,800 Customs and Border Protection officers scrutinize people and goods at crossings. The number of Border Patrol agents working between crossings along the northern parallel has increased 700 per cent since Sept. 11, 2001. And some three dozen land ports of entry are being modernized.
Unmanned U.S. aircraft patrol about 1,500 kilometres along the northern border from Washington to Minnesota as well as more than 300 kilometres of the Canadian border around New York state and Lake Ontario.
With files from CBC News
Liberals: Herman Cain is a Racist
Posted by Aurelius at 3:12 AM
Friday, September 30, 2011
Throughout the entire Obama Presidency, and stretching back into his candidacy, liberals have been using the race card even more than normal. Instead of arguing the issues, the Left screeches "Racist" whenever anyone disagrees with them. That is what their strategy has been with the Tea Party.
However, after Herman Cain's landslide victory at the Florida Straw Poll last week, the "racist" label that liberals had been sticking to everyone had clearly been showed as a fraud. Mr. Cain is the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza and has been a Tea Party favorite for months. He also happens to be African American, but the voters at the Poll did not care. In the end, Mr. Cain ended with 37% of the vote, more than twice as much as anyone else.
So the Left was clearly stuck in a quandary of what label to stick Mr. Cain with. The lie they came up with? Herman Cain is racist against himself. A simple Google search reveals an explosion of such sentiments.
From a forum in Topix:
Unsurprisingly, such stupidity reached its way to Daily Kos (expletives obscured): 
However, it does not stop at thousands of liberals online. The lie goes as high, if not higher, as CNN Analyst Cornell Belcher.
Earlier this week, Mr. Cain stated that African Americans are "brainwashed" towards voting for Democrats. Mr. Belcher quickly turned around and stated that those comments were "racist and bigoted:"
Likewise, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, David Bositis, echoed Mr. Belcher's feelings, stating: “[Cain] is not somebody that is knowledgeable about African-Americans as a whole. He’s an individual," and his comment was “a racist statement.”
It is now official: the only way not to be labeled a racist by the Left is by blindly toeing the line. Whatever you do, do not think on your own, regardless of your race. Liberals do not care; if you don't agree, you are a raaacist.
And at least these comments hold up the "civility" lie that the Left was pushing earlier this year. Oh, wait. It's the opposite. Conservatives are civil while liberals write comments like these (obscenities obscured):
Friday, September 30, 2011
Throughout the entire Obama Presidency, and stretching back into his candidacy, liberals have been using the race card even more than normal. Instead of arguing the issues, the Left screeches "Racist" whenever anyone disagrees with them. That is what their strategy has been with the Tea Party.
However, after Herman Cain's landslide victory at the Florida Straw Poll last week, the "racist" label that liberals had been sticking to everyone had clearly been showed as a fraud. Mr. Cain is the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza and has been a Tea Party favorite for months. He also happens to be African American, but the voters at the Poll did not care. In the end, Mr. Cain ended with 37% of the vote, more than twice as much as anyone else.
So the Left was clearly stuck in a quandary of what label to stick Mr. Cain with. The lie they came up with? Herman Cain is racist against himself. A simple Google search reveals an explosion of such sentiments.
From a forum in Topix:
However, it does not stop at thousands of liberals online. The lie goes as high, if not higher, as CNN Analyst Cornell Belcher.
Earlier this week, Mr. Cain stated that African Americans are "brainwashed" towards voting for Democrats. Mr. Belcher quickly turned around and stated that those comments were "racist and bigoted:"
Likewise, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, David Bositis, echoed Mr. Belcher's feelings, stating: “[Cain] is not somebody that is knowledgeable about African-Americans as a whole. He’s an individual," and his comment was “a racist statement.”
It is now official: the only way not to be labeled a racist by the Left is by blindly toeing the line. Whatever you do, do not think on your own, regardless of your race. Liberals do not care; if you don't agree, you are a raaacist.
And at least these comments hold up the "civility" lie that the Left was pushing earlier this year. Oh, wait. It's the opposite. Conservatives are civil while liberals write comments like these (obscenities obscured):
ATF Death Watch 89: 40 Fast and Furious Firearms “Found” in Dallas
Posted on September 29, 2011 by Robert Farago
There are so many curious aspects to the Gunwalker scandal. There are well over a thousand smoking guns still out there, somewhere. All of which prove that the ATF “lost control” of Operation Fast and Furious. But there is no single piece of evidence that answers the fundamental question about Uncle Sam’s gun running black bag job: why? What was the point of allowing bad guys to buy guns? The ATF claims they were going after the “big fish” controlling the U.S. gun stores-to-Mexican drug cartel weapons trade. That hardly seems likely—as there were no big fish to be gotten. It now looks like the ATF set about creating one. Or more. Equally damning, the ATF knew that Bureau-enabled guns were going awry a lot earlier than previously admitted . . .
A cache of assault weapons lost in the ATF’s gun-trafficking surveillance operation in Phoenix turned up in El Paso, where it was being stored for shipment to Mexico, according to new internal agency emails and federal court records.
Forty firearms along with ammunition magazines and ballistic vests were discovered in Texas in January 2010 during the early stages of the program, meaning the firearms vanished soon after the program began.
So what did the ATF do? Kept going of course. The latimes.com drills down on the logistics of the El Paso guns:
According to an ATF document, Sean Christopher Steward bought the 40 AK-47-type assault rifles on Dec. 24, 2009, from the Lone Wolf Trading Co. gun store in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix. The cache was part of 290 firearms ultimately acquired by Steward, a convicted drug felon, during the Fast and Furious operation . . .
According to ATF emails and a federal court affidavit, El Paso police officers tracking alleged drug smuggling from Mexico followed a dark blue Volkswagen Jetta as it backed into a garage at a residence on Jan. 13, 2010. The driver was identified as Alberto Sandoval. Police later searched the vehicle and found the weapons and other devices.
According to an email from ATF Special Agent Oscar B. Flores in El Paso, Sandoval told authorities that he was paid $1,000 “to store the firearms at his residence until they could be transported to the Republic of Mexico” by an unknown third party.
More emails discussing Sandoval’s arrest and the recovery of the weapons were sent to Washington headquarters and Kenneth Melson, then the ATF acting director, and William J. Hoover, the assistant director.
Sandoval was indicted and pleaded guilty to weapons charges in May 2010 in U.S. District Court in El Paso. He was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison.
The latimes.com mentions the fact that Steward was a convicted felon in passing. But that little factoid is yet more evidence that the FBI was in on Operation Fast & Furious, and not in a good way. The Agency had to game their instant background check system to let Steward’s purchases go through.
Common sense suggests that Steward knew the FBI and ATF knew that he was buying guns illegally. A convicted felon doesn’t expect to walk into a gun store and walk out with 290 firearms. If so, why the jail time? If not, why didn’t the ATF yank his chain earlier? Clearly, his tail was loose, at best.
The F&F-enabled guns went from Lone Wolf to Steward to Sandoval to a Dallas garage, in anticipation of an “unknown third party” Who somehow isn’t identified in the course of the investigation triggered when the local fuzz nab Bad Guy number two. And . . . that’s it.
As my mother likes to say, there’s no there there. No clearly delineated strategy behind Operation Fast and Furious, either in its idealized state (a “sting operation”) or in its actuation (literally incredible investigative tactics).
I still maintain that there’s an intersection between the ATF’s stingless sting and America’s federal policy towards Mexico and Mexican drug thugs. To try and view the ATF’s gun running in isolation, without examining the activities of all the other agencies implicated (DEA, IRS, CPB, ICE, FBI and the CIA), is to contemplate a diseased tree without considering the health of the forest.
Meanwhile, Mexico is on fire.
There are so many curious aspects to the Gunwalker scandal. There are well over a thousand smoking guns still out there, somewhere. All of which prove that the ATF “lost control” of Operation Fast and Furious. But there is no single piece of evidence that answers the fundamental question about Uncle Sam’s gun running black bag job: why? What was the point of allowing bad guys to buy guns? The ATF claims they were going after the “big fish” controlling the U.S. gun stores-to-Mexican drug cartel weapons trade. That hardly seems likely—as there were no big fish to be gotten. It now looks like the ATF set about creating one. Or more. Equally damning, the ATF knew that Bureau-enabled guns were going awry a lot earlier than previously admitted . . .
A cache of assault weapons lost in the ATF’s gun-trafficking surveillance operation in Phoenix turned up in El Paso, where it was being stored for shipment to Mexico, according to new internal agency emails and federal court records.
Forty firearms along with ammunition magazines and ballistic vests were discovered in Texas in January 2010 during the early stages of the program, meaning the firearms vanished soon after the program began.
So what did the ATF do? Kept going of course. The latimes.com drills down on the logistics of the El Paso guns:
According to an ATF document, Sean Christopher Steward bought the 40 AK-47-type assault rifles on Dec. 24, 2009, from the Lone Wolf Trading Co. gun store in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix. The cache was part of 290 firearms ultimately acquired by Steward, a convicted drug felon, during the Fast and Furious operation . . .
According to ATF emails and a federal court affidavit, El Paso police officers tracking alleged drug smuggling from Mexico followed a dark blue Volkswagen Jetta as it backed into a garage at a residence on Jan. 13, 2010. The driver was identified as Alberto Sandoval. Police later searched the vehicle and found the weapons and other devices.
According to an email from ATF Special Agent Oscar B. Flores in El Paso, Sandoval told authorities that he was paid $1,000 “to store the firearms at his residence until they could be transported to the Republic of Mexico” by an unknown third party.
More emails discussing Sandoval’s arrest and the recovery of the weapons were sent to Washington headquarters and Kenneth Melson, then the ATF acting director, and William J. Hoover, the assistant director.
Sandoval was indicted and pleaded guilty to weapons charges in May 2010 in U.S. District Court in El Paso. He was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison.
The latimes.com mentions the fact that Steward was a convicted felon in passing. But that little factoid is yet more evidence that the FBI was in on Operation Fast & Furious, and not in a good way. The Agency had to game their instant background check system to let Steward’s purchases go through.
Common sense suggests that Steward knew the FBI and ATF knew that he was buying guns illegally. A convicted felon doesn’t expect to walk into a gun store and walk out with 290 firearms. If so, why the jail time? If not, why didn’t the ATF yank his chain earlier? Clearly, his tail was loose, at best.
The F&F-enabled guns went from Lone Wolf to Steward to Sandoval to a Dallas garage, in anticipation of an “unknown third party” Who somehow isn’t identified in the course of the investigation triggered when the local fuzz nab Bad Guy number two. And . . . that’s it.
As my mother likes to say, there’s no there there. No clearly delineated strategy behind Operation Fast and Furious, either in its idealized state (a “sting operation”) or in its actuation (literally incredible investigative tactics).
I still maintain that there’s an intersection between the ATF’s stingless sting and America’s federal policy towards Mexico and Mexican drug thugs. To try and view the ATF’s gun running in isolation, without examining the activities of all the other agencies implicated (DEA, IRS, CPB, ICE, FBI and the CIA), is to contemplate a diseased tree without considering the health of the forest.
Meanwhile, Mexico is on fire.
Mahmoud Abbas Is No Anwar Sadat
Suzanne Fields
9/30/2011
It's the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah is followed by Yom Kippur. We listen to that strange instrument called the shofar, made of a ram's horn, with long plaintive and short bleating notes resounding in synagogues around the world. The mix of dissonance and energy calls for reflection and renewal, and we've got a lot to reflect on, particularly now that Israel and the Palestinians are once more the focus of ferocious debate. (As they always seem to be.)
Jews once raised glasses of sweet wine with a toast, "Next year in Jerusalem." It was a wistful challenge to hope in remembrance of their ancient temple, twice destroyed.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jews around the world felt it all the more crucial to regain a homeland, to have a place where they could be safe and secure. The world, or most of it, agreed. The Nazis had targeted the Jews for extermination, and it was time for the Jews to have their own sacred homeland. Now they have the homeland of that famous toast, but must fight constantly to keep it.
The United Nations General Assembly, on a remarkable day in November 1947 (before the United Nations had become an international joke), endorsed the idea of two states in Palestine -- one for Jews, to be called Israel, and the other for Arabs, to be called whatever they wanted to call it. The Arabs rejected the idea completely. They were determined to destroy the Jews and get it all. The secretary-general of the Arab League announced on Cairo radio, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre."
It didn't happen, but only because the Jews took on Arab armies from the region and whipped them all. The Jews went on to govern themselves and built a prosperous, independent state. The Palestinians have spent the years since nourishing violent grievance.
The "what if" questions abounded last week when Mahmoud Abbas asked the United Nations for instant endorsement of a Palestinian state, without resolving disputes with Israel. What if the Palestinians had accepted statehood when it was offered to them 64 years ago? Life in the Middle East could have been very different for everyone.
There was only one, brief, breathtaking moment, in 1977, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat surprised everyone with a promise that he would travel anywhere, "even Jerusalem," to discuss peace. He redeemed that promise and paid for it at the hands of Egyptian assassins.
Mahmoud Abbas, alas, is no Anwar Sadat, despite the pale imitation of a warrior he offered after his speech to the U.N. "I'm ready to meet any Israeli official at any time he wants," he told Fox News. "But to me only for a meeting I think is useless." Abbas revealed himself to be only a puffed-up poser.
President Obama, with his history of "tough love" for the Israelis and pandering to the Palestinians, wanted to dissuade Abbas from making a spectacle at the U.N. but was unable to summon the courage to do what was necessary to do it.
Afterward, the president, aware of his offense to the Jews and other friends of Israel, gave a strong speech to the General Assembly, saying the usual nice things about peace. But the United States wants most of all to be spared having to use its veto in the Security Council. The Europeans are so cowed in the face of big talk from the Arabs that such "world powers" as Nigeria, Gabon and Bosnia have the balance of power in the Security Council. In the spirit of the times, Abbas returned home to a hero's welcome, promising a "Palestinian Spring."
Benjamin Netanyahu got it right when the Israeli prime minister called the spectacle at the U.N. a performance at the "theater of the absurd." With Lebanon, controlled by Hezbollah, presiding over the U.N. Security Council, we're treated to the pretense of terrorists presiding over the world's security.
President Obama reaffirmed his administration's commitment to Israel, such as it may be, in a video message wishing the Israelis a happy new year: "As Jewish tradition teaches us, we may not complete the work, but that must never keep us from trying. "
The sentiment deserves several blasts of the ram's horn and a little reflection over what might have been if the Palestinians had taken the offered gift of statehood more than a half century ago. We can only dream of what the world might have been spared.
9/30/2011
It's the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah is followed by Yom Kippur. We listen to that strange instrument called the shofar, made of a ram's horn, with long plaintive and short bleating notes resounding in synagogues around the world. The mix of dissonance and energy calls for reflection and renewal, and we've got a lot to reflect on, particularly now that Israel and the Palestinians are once more the focus of ferocious debate. (As they always seem to be.)
Jews once raised glasses of sweet wine with a toast, "Next year in Jerusalem." It was a wistful challenge to hope in remembrance of their ancient temple, twice destroyed.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jews around the world felt it all the more crucial to regain a homeland, to have a place where they could be safe and secure. The world, or most of it, agreed. The Nazis had targeted the Jews for extermination, and it was time for the Jews to have their own sacred homeland. Now they have the homeland of that famous toast, but must fight constantly to keep it.
The United Nations General Assembly, on a remarkable day in November 1947 (before the United Nations had become an international joke), endorsed the idea of two states in Palestine -- one for Jews, to be called Israel, and the other for Arabs, to be called whatever they wanted to call it. The Arabs rejected the idea completely. They were determined to destroy the Jews and get it all. The secretary-general of the Arab League announced on Cairo radio, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre."
It didn't happen, but only because the Jews took on Arab armies from the region and whipped them all. The Jews went on to govern themselves and built a prosperous, independent state. The Palestinians have spent the years since nourishing violent grievance.
The "what if" questions abounded last week when Mahmoud Abbas asked the United Nations for instant endorsement of a Palestinian state, without resolving disputes with Israel. What if the Palestinians had accepted statehood when it was offered to them 64 years ago? Life in the Middle East could have been very different for everyone.
There was only one, brief, breathtaking moment, in 1977, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat surprised everyone with a promise that he would travel anywhere, "even Jerusalem," to discuss peace. He redeemed that promise and paid for it at the hands of Egyptian assassins.
Mahmoud Abbas, alas, is no Anwar Sadat, despite the pale imitation of a warrior he offered after his speech to the U.N. "I'm ready to meet any Israeli official at any time he wants," he told Fox News. "But to me only for a meeting I think is useless." Abbas revealed himself to be only a puffed-up poser.
President Obama, with his history of "tough love" for the Israelis and pandering to the Palestinians, wanted to dissuade Abbas from making a spectacle at the U.N. but was unable to summon the courage to do what was necessary to do it.
Afterward, the president, aware of his offense to the Jews and other friends of Israel, gave a strong speech to the General Assembly, saying the usual nice things about peace. But the United States wants most of all to be spared having to use its veto in the Security Council. The Europeans are so cowed in the face of big talk from the Arabs that such "world powers" as Nigeria, Gabon and Bosnia have the balance of power in the Security Council. In the spirit of the times, Abbas returned home to a hero's welcome, promising a "Palestinian Spring."
Benjamin Netanyahu got it right when the Israeli prime minister called the spectacle at the U.N. a performance at the "theater of the absurd." With Lebanon, controlled by Hezbollah, presiding over the U.N. Security Council, we're treated to the pretense of terrorists presiding over the world's security.
President Obama reaffirmed his administration's commitment to Israel, such as it may be, in a video message wishing the Israelis a happy new year: "As Jewish tradition teaches us, we may not complete the work, but that must never keep us from trying. "
The sentiment deserves several blasts of the ram's horn and a little reflection over what might have been if the Palestinians had taken the offered gift of statehood more than a half century ago. We can only dream of what the world might have been spared.
Watchdog: Regulators bowed to banks on bailout
Regulators bowed to big banks by easing rules for repaying bailout money, watchdog report says
Marcy Gordon, AP Business Writer, On Friday September 30, 2011, 12:40 am EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators bowed to pressure from big banks seeking a quick exit from the financial bailout program and did not uniformly apply the government's own conditions set for repaying the taxpayer funds, a new watchdog report says.
The report was issued Friday by the office of Christy Romero, the acting special inspector general for the $400 billion taxpayer bailout of the financial industry and automakers. It found that regulators, to varying degrees, "bent" to pressure from the banks in late 2009 and relaxed the requirements put in only weeks earlier.
The regulators also were motivated by a desire to cut the government's stake in the banks it had bailed out in September 2008 when the financial crisis struck, the report says.
Meanwhile, the banks wanted to get out quickly from the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, because they wanted to avoid its limits on executive compensation and the stigma associated with receiving rescue money, according to the report.
The report focused on the sales of stock to raise capital and bailout repayments by four major banks: Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., which each received $45 billion from the government; Wells Fargo & Co., which received $25 billion; and PNC Financial Services Group Inc., which got $7.6 billion.
Because the regulators failed to enforce the policy for repayments set by the Federal Reserve, the new report says, "the process to review a TARP bank's exit proposal was ... inconsistent." That policy required banks to issue at least $1 in new common stock for every $2 in bailout money they repaid.
But the banks doggedly resisted the regulators' demands to issue common stock, seeking instead to use cheaper and "less sturdy" alternatives such as selling assets or issuing preferred stock, the report found. Issuing common stock is a better way to shore up a bank's capital base, it said.
When Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo repaid the government in December 2009, only Citigroup fully met the 1-for-2 requirement, the report said.
The regulatory agencies overseeing the banks, which negotiated the repayment terms with them, were the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Treasury itself ran the bailout program, and the report said its involvement in individual banks' repayment proposals was greater than was previously known publicly.
It said Treasury encouraged the banks to speed repayment, raising the criticism that Treasury officials put that goal ahead of ensuring that the banks were strong enough to exit TARP safely.
"The result was nearly simultaneous repayments by Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup in an already fragile market," the report said. The three banks issued a combined $49.1 billion in new common stock as part of their repayments.
Tim Massad, Treasury's acting assistant secretary for financial stability, said "We're pleased that the report acknowledges that the nation's large banks are much stronger today as a result of the actions taken by Treasury."
Taxpayers will recoup the full amount invested in banks, around $245 billion, and will make an additional $20 billion or so in profit, Massad said in a telephone interview Thursday.
He said the quickened share sales were the best approach to follow. Delaying the banks' stock offerings and repayments "carried a lot of risk with it," said Massad, because it's hard to know what the market for bank shares is going to be like later on, and holding back could dampen investor confidence. "We pushed them to raise as much private capital as they could," he said.
Robert Stickler, a spokesman for Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, said the bank's wanting to issue stock "all at once rather than in stages was because of market conditions."
He rejected the idea that his bank might have pressured the regulators for a quicker exit. The bank's primary motivation was to remove the stigma of being a TARP recipient, Stickler said, and there also was concern that the restraints on executive pay were making it hard for them to keep executives.
The Federal Reserve said in written comments on the new report that, while it led the process of reviewing banks' repayment proposals, it consulted with all the agencies. "All agreed with the final decision to allow each" bank to repay, the Fed said.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency disagreed with the report's finding that the bank review process was inconsistent. The flexibility to "deviate somewhat" from the requirements was necessary and produced positive results, the agency said.
PNC, Wells Fargo and Citigroup said the TARP repayments allowed them to focus on their businesses and were in the best interests of taxpayers and shareholders.
Marcy Gordon, AP Business Writer, On Friday September 30, 2011, 12:40 am EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators bowed to pressure from big banks seeking a quick exit from the financial bailout program and did not uniformly apply the government's own conditions set for repaying the taxpayer funds, a new watchdog report says.
The report was issued Friday by the office of Christy Romero, the acting special inspector general for the $400 billion taxpayer bailout of the financial industry and automakers. It found that regulators, to varying degrees, "bent" to pressure from the banks in late 2009 and relaxed the requirements put in only weeks earlier.
The regulators also were motivated by a desire to cut the government's stake in the banks it had bailed out in September 2008 when the financial crisis struck, the report says.
Meanwhile, the banks wanted to get out quickly from the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, because they wanted to avoid its limits on executive compensation and the stigma associated with receiving rescue money, according to the report.
The report focused on the sales of stock to raise capital and bailout repayments by four major banks: Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., which each received $45 billion from the government; Wells Fargo & Co., which received $25 billion; and PNC Financial Services Group Inc., which got $7.6 billion.
Because the regulators failed to enforce the policy for repayments set by the Federal Reserve, the new report says, "the process to review a TARP bank's exit proposal was ... inconsistent." That policy required banks to issue at least $1 in new common stock for every $2 in bailout money they repaid.
But the banks doggedly resisted the regulators' demands to issue common stock, seeking instead to use cheaper and "less sturdy" alternatives such as selling assets or issuing preferred stock, the report found. Issuing common stock is a better way to shore up a bank's capital base, it said.
When Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo repaid the government in December 2009, only Citigroup fully met the 1-for-2 requirement, the report said.
The regulatory agencies overseeing the banks, which negotiated the repayment terms with them, were the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Treasury itself ran the bailout program, and the report said its involvement in individual banks' repayment proposals was greater than was previously known publicly.
It said Treasury encouraged the banks to speed repayment, raising the criticism that Treasury officials put that goal ahead of ensuring that the banks were strong enough to exit TARP safely.
"The result was nearly simultaneous repayments by Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup in an already fragile market," the report said. The three banks issued a combined $49.1 billion in new common stock as part of their repayments.
Tim Massad, Treasury's acting assistant secretary for financial stability, said "We're pleased that the report acknowledges that the nation's large banks are much stronger today as a result of the actions taken by Treasury."
Taxpayers will recoup the full amount invested in banks, around $245 billion, and will make an additional $20 billion or so in profit, Massad said in a telephone interview Thursday.
He said the quickened share sales were the best approach to follow. Delaying the banks' stock offerings and repayments "carried a lot of risk with it," said Massad, because it's hard to know what the market for bank shares is going to be like later on, and holding back could dampen investor confidence. "We pushed them to raise as much private capital as they could," he said.
Robert Stickler, a spokesman for Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, said the bank's wanting to issue stock "all at once rather than in stages was because of market conditions."
He rejected the idea that his bank might have pressured the regulators for a quicker exit. The bank's primary motivation was to remove the stigma of being a TARP recipient, Stickler said, and there also was concern that the restraints on executive pay were making it hard for them to keep executives.
The Federal Reserve said in written comments on the new report that, while it led the process of reviewing banks' repayment proposals, it consulted with all the agencies. "All agreed with the final decision to allow each" bank to repay, the Fed said.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency disagreed with the report's finding that the bank review process was inconsistent. The flexibility to "deviate somewhat" from the requirements was necessary and produced positive results, the agency said.
PNC, Wells Fargo and Citigroup said the TARP repayments allowed them to focus on their businesses and were in the best interests of taxpayers and shareholders.
Beware the consumer police
Let individuals decide for themselves what they want to eat and drink
Thursday, September 29, 2011 08:07 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, September 29, 2011 08:09 PM EDT
Part of the joy of watching the Super Bowl is getting to see all those whiz-bang, big-budget ads.
The best spot to air during last year’s Super Bowl was surely the “Green Police” advertisement for the Audi A3 — equal parts hilarious and horrific.
Set to the tune of Cheap Trick’s 1979 hit, Dream Police, the Green Police spot depicts an Orwellian near-future in which a legion of environmental cops, many of whom wear shorts and get around on geeky Segways, frequently intrude upon the personal lives of the citizenry.
They spy, sift through trash, and set up dragnets looking for environmental misbehaviour.
Thus, a supermarket customer is handcuffed for requesting a plastic bag; a homeowner is apprehended for “possession of an incandescent light bulb.”
The scenarios are funny but the Green Police spot also serves as a cautionary tale of how the ever-intrusive Nanny State can make our lives miserable — ostensibly for our own good.
I was thinking of that ad upon hearing Health Canada is actually looking at regulating the sale of energy drinks such as Red Bull and Monster.
According to recent reports, an “expert panel” has recommended the federal health minister consider reclassifying caffeine-laden, heavily-sugared energy drinks.
The panel wants them classified as “stimulant drug containing drinks” and wants them yanked from the shelves of variety stores and supermarkets. The panel suggests they should be sold under the supervision of a pharmacist.
(Evidently, there’s been 61 incidents of ill effects due to energy drinks; Health Canada classifying 32 as “serious.”)
As you might imagine, the makers of energy drinks are frothing at the mouth.
The Canadian Beverage Association asserts the expert panel’s recommendations are “completely unsubstantiated in science and their conclusions are unreasonable.” It says they are based on flawed assessments and assumptions and the recommendations run counter to how energy drinks are regulated in 160 countries.
It also notes energy drinks contain, on average, half the caffeine found in a regular cup of filtered drip coffee.
“Health authorities and numerous scientific expert panels in various jurisdictions, including the E.U., Australia, and New Zealand, have assessed energy drinks and their ingredients and have concluded that they are safe,” argues the CBA.
That said, not all beverage makers are crying foul.
Frank D’Angelo, CEO of D’Angelo Brands, says he doesn’t have a problem with the proposed regulations. D’Angelo notes his energy drink, Cheetah, wouldn’t be affected because it’s caffeine-free.
“It’s not normal to market drinks to kids that are full of caffeine,” he said, noting if the proposed regulations go through as is, “Cheetah could be the last energy drink standing” at the supermarket.
Still, the idea of the government restricting the sale of these beverages smacks of the slippery slope.
After all, why stop at energy drinks? Cheese can be artery-clogging — will cheddar soon be sold by the local pharmacist?
Governments already over-regulate the distribution and sale of alcohol. Do we really want Ottawa doing likewise when it comes to non-alcoholic beverages?
Besides, consumers already have a choice.
If someone craves caffeine, let him freely buy a Rockstar.
If he wants a caffeine-free boost, he can try Cheetah.
How’s this for an idea: Let individuals decide for themselves what they want to eat and drink.
What a concept!
Thursday, September 29, 2011 08:07 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, September 29, 2011 08:09 PM EDT
Part of the joy of watching the Super Bowl is getting to see all those whiz-bang, big-budget ads.
The best spot to air during last year’s Super Bowl was surely the “Green Police” advertisement for the Audi A3 — equal parts hilarious and horrific.
Set to the tune of Cheap Trick’s 1979 hit, Dream Police, the Green Police spot depicts an Orwellian near-future in which a legion of environmental cops, many of whom wear shorts and get around on geeky Segways, frequently intrude upon the personal lives of the citizenry.
They spy, sift through trash, and set up dragnets looking for environmental misbehaviour.
Thus, a supermarket customer is handcuffed for requesting a plastic bag; a homeowner is apprehended for “possession of an incandescent light bulb.”
The scenarios are funny but the Green Police spot also serves as a cautionary tale of how the ever-intrusive Nanny State can make our lives miserable — ostensibly for our own good.
I was thinking of that ad upon hearing Health Canada is actually looking at regulating the sale of energy drinks such as Red Bull and Monster.
According to recent reports, an “expert panel” has recommended the federal health minister consider reclassifying caffeine-laden, heavily-sugared energy drinks.
The panel wants them classified as “stimulant drug containing drinks” and wants them yanked from the shelves of variety stores and supermarkets. The panel suggests they should be sold under the supervision of a pharmacist.
(Evidently, there’s been 61 incidents of ill effects due to energy drinks; Health Canada classifying 32 as “serious.”)
As you might imagine, the makers of energy drinks are frothing at the mouth.
The Canadian Beverage Association asserts the expert panel’s recommendations are “completely unsubstantiated in science and their conclusions are unreasonable.” It says they are based on flawed assessments and assumptions and the recommendations run counter to how energy drinks are regulated in 160 countries.
It also notes energy drinks contain, on average, half the caffeine found in a regular cup of filtered drip coffee.
“Health authorities and numerous scientific expert panels in various jurisdictions, including the E.U., Australia, and New Zealand, have assessed energy drinks and their ingredients and have concluded that they are safe,” argues the CBA.
That said, not all beverage makers are crying foul.
Frank D’Angelo, CEO of D’Angelo Brands, says he doesn’t have a problem with the proposed regulations. D’Angelo notes his energy drink, Cheetah, wouldn’t be affected because it’s caffeine-free.
“It’s not normal to market drinks to kids that are full of caffeine,” he said, noting if the proposed regulations go through as is, “Cheetah could be the last energy drink standing” at the supermarket.
Still, the idea of the government restricting the sale of these beverages smacks of the slippery slope.
After all, why stop at energy drinks? Cheese can be artery-clogging — will cheddar soon be sold by the local pharmacist?
Governments already over-regulate the distribution and sale of alcohol. Do we really want Ottawa doing likewise when it comes to non-alcoholic beverages?
Besides, consumers already have a choice.
If someone craves caffeine, let him freely buy a Rockstar.
If he wants a caffeine-free boost, he can try Cheetah.
How’s this for an idea: Let individuals decide for themselves what they want to eat and drink.
What a concept!
Flat Is the New Fair
Is President Obama paving the way for GOP tax reform?
By STEPHEN MOORE
'Suddenly, liberal Democrats are making the same argument about the tax code that I've been making for 20 years," laughs former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. "Welcome to the party." Mr. Armey, who along with Steve Forbes has been the torch bearer for the flat tax since the early 1990s, believes that the latest applause line from President Obama that "billionaires should pay the same tax rate as janitors" may be the political gateway to sweeping tax reform.
Mr. Forbes sees an opening here too and says: "The flat tax is the perfect issue for these times. It fixes the economy and doesn't cost a dime." He's right. It's the teed-up GOP response to a jobless recovery and the near-universal sentiment among voters that the tax code is corrupt beyond repair.
That case is inadvertently helped as Mr. Obama and his new best friend, billionaire Warren Buffett, barnstorm the country trashing the tax system for, as the Oracle of Omaha puts it, "coddling the super rich." In truth, the system isn't nearly as skewed in favor of those at the top of the income pyramid as they allege: Today the top 1% pay 38% of the income tax. But in Washington, perception drives policy. The virtue of a flat tax with no deductions is that it provides an ironclad guarantee that the rich pay no lower a tax rate than janitors and secretaries.
This past summer the Senate Budget Committee, which is run by Democrats, reported that 26.5% of all tax deductions and credits are taken by those with incomes in the top 1% on the wealth scale. Cleaning out the attic of decades of these loopholes and using the savings to lower the tax rate ensures that Mr. Buffett, Bill Gates and Lady Gaga pay their fair share.
Mr. Obama complains in his budget that it's not fair that the rich get to deduct 35% for their mansions and charitable receipts, while the middle class deducts only 15% or 20%. But that's the collateral damage from a multitiered tax-rate system.
Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, says that loopholes are "subsidies, and subsidies are not the type of thing that you want for an efficient market system." He sounds like Milton Friedman there and he proposes to reduce "tax expenditures" by 17%.
Why stop there? Republicans should counter-offer: We see your 17% and raise it to 100%.
Done correctly, the flat tax eliminates all double taxation of saving and investment. But if liberals won't accept a lower tax rate for capital gains and dividends, perhaps the grand deal in Washington could be to tax everything at 16% or 17%.
Democrats have come to a different conclusion: They want to get rid of the deductions and raise tax rates at the same time. When has that ever worked? The near 100-year history of the tax code teaches this inviolable law of politics: The higher the tax rate, the more tax carve-outs there will be for yacht owners. That is why the rich paid a smaller share of the income tax in the early 1960s when the top tax rate was 91%, and in the 1970s with a 70% rate, than they do today with a 35% rate.
That's why the flat tax is the fairest tax of all. The combination of a single tax rate with a family-size allowance—shielding, say, the first $35,000 of income for a family of four—ensures that everyone would pay the same marginal tax rate above that level. A family of four with an income of $70,000 would pay an average tax rate of about 8.5%, whereas the members of the Buffett billionaire club would pay 17%.
Why aren't Republicans in Congress and in the presidential race making this case? Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman have tax rate reform proposals that move toward a flatter tax. But the candidate who comes closest to a true flat tax is Herman Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO. His argument for a "9-9-9" plan puts the current income and payroll taxes in the shredder and replaces them with a 9% personal income tax with no deductions, a 9% net business income tax, and a 9% national sales tax.
That would be rocket fuel for the economy, though the combination of a federal sales tax and an income tax is a big worry. But at least Mr. Cain has super-sized solutions to an economy with super-sized problems.
"I keep waiting for a Republican candidate to take the plunge," says a half-frustrated Steve Forbes. Then he adds one more flat tax selling point: "You know it ends all this crony capitalism in Washington. From now on, if Obama invites you to the White House, you'd know it's because he really loves you."
Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
By STEPHEN MOORE
'Suddenly, liberal Democrats are making the same argument about the tax code that I've been making for 20 years," laughs former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. "Welcome to the party." Mr. Armey, who along with Steve Forbes has been the torch bearer for the flat tax since the early 1990s, believes that the latest applause line from President Obama that "billionaires should pay the same tax rate as janitors" may be the political gateway to sweeping tax reform.
Mr. Forbes sees an opening here too and says: "The flat tax is the perfect issue for these times. It fixes the economy and doesn't cost a dime." He's right. It's the teed-up GOP response to a jobless recovery and the near-universal sentiment among voters that the tax code is corrupt beyond repair.
That case is inadvertently helped as Mr. Obama and his new best friend, billionaire Warren Buffett, barnstorm the country trashing the tax system for, as the Oracle of Omaha puts it, "coddling the super rich." In truth, the system isn't nearly as skewed in favor of those at the top of the income pyramid as they allege: Today the top 1% pay 38% of the income tax. But in Washington, perception drives policy. The virtue of a flat tax with no deductions is that it provides an ironclad guarantee that the rich pay no lower a tax rate than janitors and secretaries.
This past summer the Senate Budget Committee, which is run by Democrats, reported that 26.5% of all tax deductions and credits are taken by those with incomes in the top 1% on the wealth scale. Cleaning out the attic of decades of these loopholes and using the savings to lower the tax rate ensures that Mr. Buffett, Bill Gates and Lady Gaga pay their fair share.
Mr. Obama complains in his budget that it's not fair that the rich get to deduct 35% for their mansions and charitable receipts, while the middle class deducts only 15% or 20%. But that's the collateral damage from a multitiered tax-rate system.
Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, says that loopholes are "subsidies, and subsidies are not the type of thing that you want for an efficient market system." He sounds like Milton Friedman there and he proposes to reduce "tax expenditures" by 17%.
Why stop there? Republicans should counter-offer: We see your 17% and raise it to 100%.
Done correctly, the flat tax eliminates all double taxation of saving and investment. But if liberals won't accept a lower tax rate for capital gains and dividends, perhaps the grand deal in Washington could be to tax everything at 16% or 17%.
Democrats have come to a different conclusion: They want to get rid of the deductions and raise tax rates at the same time. When has that ever worked? The near 100-year history of the tax code teaches this inviolable law of politics: The higher the tax rate, the more tax carve-outs there will be for yacht owners. That is why the rich paid a smaller share of the income tax in the early 1960s when the top tax rate was 91%, and in the 1970s with a 70% rate, than they do today with a 35% rate.
That's why the flat tax is the fairest tax of all. The combination of a single tax rate with a family-size allowance—shielding, say, the first $35,000 of income for a family of four—ensures that everyone would pay the same marginal tax rate above that level. A family of four with an income of $70,000 would pay an average tax rate of about 8.5%, whereas the members of the Buffett billionaire club would pay 17%.
Why aren't Republicans in Congress and in the presidential race making this case? Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman have tax rate reform proposals that move toward a flatter tax. But the candidate who comes closest to a true flat tax is Herman Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO. His argument for a "9-9-9" plan puts the current income and payroll taxes in the shredder and replaces them with a 9% personal income tax with no deductions, a 9% net business income tax, and a 9% national sales tax.
That would be rocket fuel for the economy, though the combination of a federal sales tax and an income tax is a big worry. But at least Mr. Cain has super-sized solutions to an economy with super-sized problems.
"I keep waiting for a Republican candidate to take the plunge," says a half-frustrated Steve Forbes. Then he adds one more flat tax selling point: "You know it ends all this crony capitalism in Washington. From now on, if Obama invites you to the White House, you'd know it's because he really loves you."
Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
U.S. Taxes and the United Nations Money Pit
September 29, 2011 - 6:44 pm - by Claudia Rosett
Whether you love or hate the United Nations, one thing all Americans ought to be able to agree on is that sloshing billions of American tax dollars into the UN, with little accountability and regardless of UN performance, is a chump’s game. I’d even suggest it is no favor at all to the UN itself — corroding its incentives for decent behavior, and swaddling its staff and offices in plush sinecures that are increasingly catching the attention of financially strapped American taxpayers, who pick up the biggest share of the UN tab.
Yet the chief effort currently on the table to reform the UN — Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s “United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act of 2011″ — is playing in Washington as an utterly partisan issue. There are so far 98 co-sponsors for this bill, and not a single Democrat among them.
Why’s that? The Hill reports that according to Ros-Lehtinen, the Obama administration is telling Democrats to stay away from her bill. The bill seeks to clean up the UN by revamping some of its financial incentives — basically proposing to condition a substantial share of U.S. money on UN performance. This would include potentially withholding some of the assessed dues with which the UN General Assembly bankrolls its self-approved and ever-expanding budgets, for which the U.S. dutifully pays 22%. The administration’s argument against this approach takes the line that if America stops automatically dispensing money at the UN’s demand, it would reduce U.S. influence and ability to reform the UN.
By that argument, America’s clout at the UN consists chiefly of bribery. And there are a great many signs at the UN that such bribery has long ago been absorbed into the system not as an an exceptionally generous contribution by the host state, for which the other 192 are grateful. Rather, America’s out-sized dues are viewed by the UN’s other member states, and many on its staff, as an entitlement.
Maybe the administration should take a closer look at some of the facts now being unearthed by its own envoy for UN management and reform, Joseph Torsella. I don’t mean to suggest that Torsella is at odds with his boss — if anything, he seems to be trying to walk the impossible line of promoting reform by reconciling the administration’s give-’em-the-money theory with the UN’s gimme!-gimme! realities. But to Torsella’s credit, in his efforts to persuade the UN to behave, he has been digging up a lot of information that suggests there are excellent reasons for withholding money from the UN.
In remarks Thursday to the UN General Assembly’s budget oversight committee (known at the UN as the “Fifth Committee” or ACABQ) Torsella spelled out some of the profligacies of a UN budget which for a decade now “has grown dramatically, relentlessly, and exponentially,” more than doubling to $5.4 billion for 2010-2011, from $2.6 billion for 2001-2002. (He was talking about the “core” budget, which is actually just a fraction of an overall UN system budget that has soared to somewhere north of $25 billion, and to which the U.S. in 2010 contributed almost $7.7 billion.)
Torsella noted that the largest UN cost is for personnel, and the total dollar amount for the UN payroll (that would be the secretariat’s core payroll, not the far larger UN system) has grown over the past decade by 70%. More concretely, he said that the average UN staffer now collects compensation totaling $238,000 biannually. That works out to $119,000 on average per year, for more than 10,000 UN staffers covered by the regular budget.
To illustrate what that actually means, Torsella noted that while $100,000 is a mere rounding error to a UN proposing a $5 billion-plus regular budget, for Americans it represents the average federal taxes collected from 16 hard-working American families over the course of a full year. Credit Torsella again, that’s a vivid way of explaining just what’s going on with those soaring UN budgets. In other words, it takes the aggregate federal taxes of thousands of American families, working year-round, to sustain the tax-free six-figure incomes of all those UN bureaucrats on the sky-rocketing UN payroll — for which the U.S. pays the biggest share.
UN profligacy, coupled with such outrages as last week’s three-ring anti-Semitic circus at the General Assembly, is reaching the point at which American voters may seriously take notice. Washington pols would be wise to view this not as a partisan issue, but as an American issue. If the Obama administration doesn’t like the idea of Democrats signing on to a UN reform bill from the Republican Ros-Lehtinen, then it’s time for some competing proposals for reducing the gusher of U.S. tax dollars into the UN, and conditioning U.S. money on genuine UN reform. What we’re seeing right now from the administration — or at least from its new envoy for UN management and reform — is a long-overdue and much-needed expose of at least a few aspects of UN extravagance and abuse, but no real plan to stop it.
Whether you love or hate the United Nations, one thing all Americans ought to be able to agree on is that sloshing billions of American tax dollars into the UN, with little accountability and regardless of UN performance, is a chump’s game. I’d even suggest it is no favor at all to the UN itself — corroding its incentives for decent behavior, and swaddling its staff and offices in plush sinecures that are increasingly catching the attention of financially strapped American taxpayers, who pick up the biggest share of the UN tab.
Yet the chief effort currently on the table to reform the UN — Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s “United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act of 2011″ — is playing in Washington as an utterly partisan issue. There are so far 98 co-sponsors for this bill, and not a single Democrat among them.
Why’s that? The Hill reports that according to Ros-Lehtinen, the Obama administration is telling Democrats to stay away from her bill. The bill seeks to clean up the UN by revamping some of its financial incentives — basically proposing to condition a substantial share of U.S. money on UN performance. This would include potentially withholding some of the assessed dues with which the UN General Assembly bankrolls its self-approved and ever-expanding budgets, for which the U.S. dutifully pays 22%. The administration’s argument against this approach takes the line that if America stops automatically dispensing money at the UN’s demand, it would reduce U.S. influence and ability to reform the UN.
By that argument, America’s clout at the UN consists chiefly of bribery. And there are a great many signs at the UN that such bribery has long ago been absorbed into the system not as an an exceptionally generous contribution by the host state, for which the other 192 are grateful. Rather, America’s out-sized dues are viewed by the UN’s other member states, and many on its staff, as an entitlement.
Maybe the administration should take a closer look at some of the facts now being unearthed by its own envoy for UN management and reform, Joseph Torsella. I don’t mean to suggest that Torsella is at odds with his boss — if anything, he seems to be trying to walk the impossible line of promoting reform by reconciling the administration’s give-’em-the-money theory with the UN’s gimme!-gimme! realities. But to Torsella’s credit, in his efforts to persuade the UN to behave, he has been digging up a lot of information that suggests there are excellent reasons for withholding money from the UN.
In remarks Thursday to the UN General Assembly’s budget oversight committee (known at the UN as the “Fifth Committee” or ACABQ) Torsella spelled out some of the profligacies of a UN budget which for a decade now “has grown dramatically, relentlessly, and exponentially,” more than doubling to $5.4 billion for 2010-2011, from $2.6 billion for 2001-2002. (He was talking about the “core” budget, which is actually just a fraction of an overall UN system budget that has soared to somewhere north of $25 billion, and to which the U.S. in 2010 contributed almost $7.7 billion.)
Torsella noted that the largest UN cost is for personnel, and the total dollar amount for the UN payroll (that would be the secretariat’s core payroll, not the far larger UN system) has grown over the past decade by 70%. More concretely, he said that the average UN staffer now collects compensation totaling $238,000 biannually. That works out to $119,000 on average per year, for more than 10,000 UN staffers covered by the regular budget.
To illustrate what that actually means, Torsella noted that while $100,000 is a mere rounding error to a UN proposing a $5 billion-plus regular budget, for Americans it represents the average federal taxes collected from 16 hard-working American families over the course of a full year. Credit Torsella again, that’s a vivid way of explaining just what’s going on with those soaring UN budgets. In other words, it takes the aggregate federal taxes of thousands of American families, working year-round, to sustain the tax-free six-figure incomes of all those UN bureaucrats on the sky-rocketing UN payroll — for which the U.S. pays the biggest share.
UN profligacy, coupled with such outrages as last week’s three-ring anti-Semitic circus at the General Assembly, is reaching the point at which American voters may seriously take notice. Washington pols would be wise to view this not as a partisan issue, but as an American issue. If the Obama administration doesn’t like the idea of Democrats signing on to a UN reform bill from the Republican Ros-Lehtinen, then it’s time for some competing proposals for reducing the gusher of U.S. tax dollars into the UN, and conditioning U.S. money on genuine UN reform. What we’re seeing right now from the administration — or at least from its new envoy for UN management and reform — is a long-overdue and much-needed expose of at least a few aspects of UN extravagance and abuse, but no real plan to stop it.
How to Make Obama Like Us
What did we do to make Obama hate us and want to destroy us?
September 30, 2011 - 12:00 am - by Frank J. Fleming
The Barack Obama presidency has been disastrous. The economy is in shambles, and Obama’s only response has been to try and waste as much of our money as he can. Jobs are a scarce commodity, and yet Obama is trying to raise taxes. And his Department of Justice is apparently selling guns to Mexican drug cartels. All of this raises the obvious question: What did we do to make Obama hate us and want to destroy us?
Obama was elected on the promise of hope and change; he was going to make everything better by fixing the economy, ending all wars, and making every rainbow a double rainbow. As smart and capable as we all knew he was, he should have succeeded beyond our wildest imaginations. But instead, we’re even worse off than before — I don’t remember the last time I even saw a single rainbow. The only explanation is that somehow we’ve angered Obama and caused him to turn against us. It’s just that I’m not sure how.
Now, we could go to a town hall and ask Obama, “What have we done to make you want to destroy this country?” I think that is a horrible idea, though, as Obama will only glare at us and become even angrier. Obviously what we’ve done is extremely bad based on the way Obama is treating us, and it would only be worse if he knew we were ignorant of our exact slight against him.
We just need to accept the fact that we’re a bad country, and that’s why Obama is not following through on the hope and change he promised. So now what we need to do is try to figure out how to become a better country so Obama will like us and decide that he doesn’t need to destroy us. So I’ve done my best to study Obama and figure out some ideas to make us a country he considers worth saving.
THINGS TO TRY TO MAKE OBAMA LIKE US
Stop asking what’s in the bills he wants to pass. Stop asking what’s in the bills he wants to pass.
“Where is all this stimulus money getting spent?”
“What exactly does this health care law do?”
“Are you sure half a billion dollars for this solar panel company is a good idea?”
That’s a lot of questions, and Obama obviously doesn’t like any of them. If he’s very important and smart and quite unconcerned about the contents of his bills, then why should unimportant people like us worry our heads about it? It’s like we don’t trust his judgment. Next time he has a bill, we should just approach it with an attitude like, “Won’t this be exciting! Who knows what wonders passing this bill will unleash?!”
Stop sending Republicans to Congress.
Obama really doesn’t like Republicans and doesn’t want to work with them. He barely even liked working with his Democratic majorities and having to convince them to pass his bills, so he absolutely hates trying to work with Republicans. They do all the things that make him mad, such as not doing whatever he tells them. As long as we keep inflicting Republicans on Obama, he’s really not going to like us.
Accept global warming.
I think Obama is very disappointed in how anti-science we all are. We’re always analyzing and trying to understand things, which is the opposite of being pro-science. When scientists tell you something is true, you’re just supposed to repeat it with certainty even if you don’t understand it or it doesn’t make sense to you. Obama understands this, which is why he is very concerned about global warming and the problems it causes, such as excessive warmness. And he doesn’t question it because he knows it’s scientific fact since globes have been warmed in a lab. So we need to accept global warming, too. Again don’t worry about understanding it; just next time he proposes a bill to fight global warming, look all grateful and say, “Yay! This will help fight that… bad science stuff.” That will let Obama know we’re smart like him.
Stop worrying about math so much.
People are always wondering why the budget doesn’t add up and why we’re spending more than we take in, and Obama obviously really doesn’t like us focusing on that. Maybe we thought we were helping him by pointing out that the math doesn’t work, but I don’t think he wants the math to work. I think he just doesn’t like math at all and isn’t willing to appease it. And if Obama hates math, we should hate it, too. It’s really inflexible — not a living thing like the Constitution. Maybe if we trust in Obama, he’ll come up with something better than math.
Keep fat kids away from him.
A happy man needs a happy wife, and every day Michelle Obama looks out the White House window and gets enraged at how fat kids are. She just hates them so much and is probably always yelling at Obama to do something about them. And I’ll bet that just makes him angry at us. So we need to be extra careful to make sure he and Michelle are not exposed to fat children. Any time there is an event he is attending, have a big sign out front, saying, “Fat kids not allowed.” Especially make sure they never get near the White House. And if you hear the Obamas are coming through your neighborhood, make sure any fat kids are locked in the basement or something. Just give them a box of Twinkies; they’ll be fine.
Accept gay marriage… I think.
This is a confusing one. Obama says he is against gay marriage, yet I get this feeling that he gets mad at us when we’re against gay marriage too. So I think we’re supposed to be for it, but that seems wrong because then we’re contradicting him. Maybe he’s trying to teach us a lesson that even he can be wrong about some things… but definitely don’t go too far with that lesson, or that will make him super mad.
Reelect him.
I think the ultimate way to get Obama to like us is to reelect him. Maybe this first term is just a test, and if we pass it and reelect him, then he’ll finally be nice to us and try to help the country. That’s why it’s super important that we all vote for him, because what if he just barely gets reelected? He’ll be humiliated and will be even meaner to us in his second term — he’ll start giving Mexican drug cartels huge discounts on guns, and we’ll never see another rainbow. You don’t even want to know what he’ll do to the economy. And it will be all our fault for making Obama not like us… though I’ll mainly blame the fat kids.
September 30, 2011 - 12:00 am - by Frank J. Fleming
The Barack Obama presidency has been disastrous. The economy is in shambles, and Obama’s only response has been to try and waste as much of our money as he can. Jobs are a scarce commodity, and yet Obama is trying to raise taxes. And his Department of Justice is apparently selling guns to Mexican drug cartels. All of this raises the obvious question: What did we do to make Obama hate us and want to destroy us?
Obama was elected on the promise of hope and change; he was going to make everything better by fixing the economy, ending all wars, and making every rainbow a double rainbow. As smart and capable as we all knew he was, he should have succeeded beyond our wildest imaginations. But instead, we’re even worse off than before — I don’t remember the last time I even saw a single rainbow. The only explanation is that somehow we’ve angered Obama and caused him to turn against us. It’s just that I’m not sure how.
Now, we could go to a town hall and ask Obama, “What have we done to make you want to destroy this country?” I think that is a horrible idea, though, as Obama will only glare at us and become even angrier. Obviously what we’ve done is extremely bad based on the way Obama is treating us, and it would only be worse if he knew we were ignorant of our exact slight against him.
We just need to accept the fact that we’re a bad country, and that’s why Obama is not following through on the hope and change he promised. So now what we need to do is try to figure out how to become a better country so Obama will like us and decide that he doesn’t need to destroy us. So I’ve done my best to study Obama and figure out some ideas to make us a country he considers worth saving.
THINGS TO TRY TO MAKE OBAMA LIKE US
Stop asking what’s in the bills he wants to pass. Stop asking what’s in the bills he wants to pass.
“Where is all this stimulus money getting spent?”
“What exactly does this health care law do?”
“Are you sure half a billion dollars for this solar panel company is a good idea?”
That’s a lot of questions, and Obama obviously doesn’t like any of them. If he’s very important and smart and quite unconcerned about the contents of his bills, then why should unimportant people like us worry our heads about it? It’s like we don’t trust his judgment. Next time he has a bill, we should just approach it with an attitude like, “Won’t this be exciting! Who knows what wonders passing this bill will unleash?!”
Stop sending Republicans to Congress.
Obama really doesn’t like Republicans and doesn’t want to work with them. He barely even liked working with his Democratic majorities and having to convince them to pass his bills, so he absolutely hates trying to work with Republicans. They do all the things that make him mad, such as not doing whatever he tells them. As long as we keep inflicting Republicans on Obama, he’s really not going to like us.
Accept global warming.
I think Obama is very disappointed in how anti-science we all are. We’re always analyzing and trying to understand things, which is the opposite of being pro-science. When scientists tell you something is true, you’re just supposed to repeat it with certainty even if you don’t understand it or it doesn’t make sense to you. Obama understands this, which is why he is very concerned about global warming and the problems it causes, such as excessive warmness. And he doesn’t question it because he knows it’s scientific fact since globes have been warmed in a lab. So we need to accept global warming, too. Again don’t worry about understanding it; just next time he proposes a bill to fight global warming, look all grateful and say, “Yay! This will help fight that… bad science stuff.” That will let Obama know we’re smart like him.
Stop worrying about math so much.
People are always wondering why the budget doesn’t add up and why we’re spending more than we take in, and Obama obviously really doesn’t like us focusing on that. Maybe we thought we were helping him by pointing out that the math doesn’t work, but I don’t think he wants the math to work. I think he just doesn’t like math at all and isn’t willing to appease it. And if Obama hates math, we should hate it, too. It’s really inflexible — not a living thing like the Constitution. Maybe if we trust in Obama, he’ll come up with something better than math.
Keep fat kids away from him.
A happy man needs a happy wife, and every day Michelle Obama looks out the White House window and gets enraged at how fat kids are. She just hates them so much and is probably always yelling at Obama to do something about them. And I’ll bet that just makes him angry at us. So we need to be extra careful to make sure he and Michelle are not exposed to fat children. Any time there is an event he is attending, have a big sign out front, saying, “Fat kids not allowed.” Especially make sure they never get near the White House. And if you hear the Obamas are coming through your neighborhood, make sure any fat kids are locked in the basement or something. Just give them a box of Twinkies; they’ll be fine.
Accept gay marriage… I think.
This is a confusing one. Obama says he is against gay marriage, yet I get this feeling that he gets mad at us when we’re against gay marriage too. So I think we’re supposed to be for it, but that seems wrong because then we’re contradicting him. Maybe he’s trying to teach us a lesson that even he can be wrong about some things… but definitely don’t go too far with that lesson, or that will make him super mad.
Reelect him.
I think the ultimate way to get Obama to like us is to reelect him. Maybe this first term is just a test, and if we pass it and reelect him, then he’ll finally be nice to us and try to help the country. That’s why it’s super important that we all vote for him, because what if he just barely gets reelected? He’ll be humiliated and will be even meaner to us in his second term — he’ll start giving Mexican drug cartels huge discounts on guns, and we’ll never see another rainbow. You don’t even want to know what he’ll do to the economy. And it will be all our fault for making Obama not like us… though I’ll mainly blame the fat kids.
Study: Largest U.S. group of poor kids is now Hispanic
By Zohreen Adamjee and Michael Martinez, CNN
updated 5:33 AM EST, Fri September 30, 2011
Los Angeles (CNN) -- For the first time in U.S. history, the largest single group of poor children in any racial or ethnic category is Hispanic, according to a new survey.
Calling it "a negative milestone" in Hispanics' explosive growth in the United States, the Pew Hispanic Center study said in 2010, 37.3% of poor children in the U.S. were Hispanic, compared with 30.5% white and 26.6% black.
The Pew analysis of new census data put the number of Hispanic children in poverty at 6.1 million in 2010.
This negative trend has emerged as the 2010 census confirmed for the first time that Hispanics are the nation's No. 2 group, surpassing African-Americans.
Hispanics now make up 16.3% of the total American population -- but in the youth demographic, Hispanic kids comprise an even bigger share -- 23.1% of U.S. children are Latino, the study said.
The study found there are 6.1 million Latino children living in poverty, and more than two-thirds of them -- 4.1 million -- are children of immigrant parents. Of those 4.1 million, 86% were born in America, the study said.
The remaining 2 million poor Latino children have U.S.-born parents, the study said.
Prior to the recession, more white children lived in poverty than Latino kids, but since the recession began in 2007, those positions reversed, and the number of poor Hispanic children grew by 36.3% between 2007 and 2010, or 1.6 million, the study said.
The number of white and black children in poverty also grew, but not as big, the study found.
The recession hit Latino families hard: the unemployment rate among Hispanic workers is 11.1%, compared with a national rate of 9.1%, and the household wealth for Latinos fell more sharply than for white or black families between 2005 and 2009, the study said.
Food insecurity also grew among Latinos, with one-third of households facing the problem in 2008, up from 23.8% the prior year, the study said.
Leaders of programs serving the poor said Thursday their experiences match the study's findings, which was released Wednesday.
In his twice-a-month acts of charity, Reverend Carlos Paiva has noticed the increasing number of Latino youngsters who arrive with their families at his Angelica Lutheran Church near downtown Los Angeles.
The church gives free rice, beans, potatoes, onions and fruits to needy families, he said.
"The numbers are growing," Paiva said about Latino kids who show up at the church with their families. "The average age of the people who come here for food is 10 years old."
Michael Flood, CEO of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, said his group's recent summer lunch program for poor children saw "a lot more kids from the Latino community."
"It worries us," Flood said. "Given the fact that the economy hasn't turned around, it's a more desperate deal."
Victor Martinez, director of programming at Bienestar, a nonprofit that runs nine health community centers in southern California for Latinos, said he was "sad and disappointed to see that my community is facing these problems."
"Especially for the more recent immigrants, they have more limited resources to work. We have more requests to go to the food bank and housing," Martinez said.
updated 5:33 AM EST, Fri September 30, 2011
Los Angeles (CNN) -- For the first time in U.S. history, the largest single group of poor children in any racial or ethnic category is Hispanic, according to a new survey.
Calling it "a negative milestone" in Hispanics' explosive growth in the United States, the Pew Hispanic Center study said in 2010, 37.3% of poor children in the U.S. were Hispanic, compared with 30.5% white and 26.6% black.
The Pew analysis of new census data put the number of Hispanic children in poverty at 6.1 million in 2010.
This negative trend has emerged as the 2010 census confirmed for the first time that Hispanics are the nation's No. 2 group, surpassing African-Americans.
Hispanics now make up 16.3% of the total American population -- but in the youth demographic, Hispanic kids comprise an even bigger share -- 23.1% of U.S. children are Latino, the study said.
The study found there are 6.1 million Latino children living in poverty, and more than two-thirds of them -- 4.1 million -- are children of immigrant parents. Of those 4.1 million, 86% were born in America, the study said.
The remaining 2 million poor Latino children have U.S.-born parents, the study said.
Prior to the recession, more white children lived in poverty than Latino kids, but since the recession began in 2007, those positions reversed, and the number of poor Hispanic children grew by 36.3% between 2007 and 2010, or 1.6 million, the study said.
The number of white and black children in poverty also grew, but not as big, the study found.
The recession hit Latino families hard: the unemployment rate among Hispanic workers is 11.1%, compared with a national rate of 9.1%, and the household wealth for Latinos fell more sharply than for white or black families between 2005 and 2009, the study said.
Food insecurity also grew among Latinos, with one-third of households facing the problem in 2008, up from 23.8% the prior year, the study said.
Leaders of programs serving the poor said Thursday their experiences match the study's findings, which was released Wednesday.
In his twice-a-month acts of charity, Reverend Carlos Paiva has noticed the increasing number of Latino youngsters who arrive with their families at his Angelica Lutheran Church near downtown Los Angeles.
The church gives free rice, beans, potatoes, onions and fruits to needy families, he said.
"The numbers are growing," Paiva said about Latino kids who show up at the church with their families. "The average age of the people who come here for food is 10 years old."
Michael Flood, CEO of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, said his group's recent summer lunch program for poor children saw "a lot more kids from the Latino community."
"It worries us," Flood said. "Given the fact that the economy hasn't turned around, it's a more desperate deal."
Victor Martinez, director of programming at Bienestar, a nonprofit that runs nine health community centers in southern California for Latinos, said he was "sad and disappointed to see that my community is facing these problems."
"Especially for the more recent immigrants, they have more limited resources to work. We have more requests to go to the food bank and housing," Martinez said.
Who Owns History?
Mona Charen
9/30/2011
The Southern Poverty Law Center is appalled by the results of a new study finding that states are not teaching the history of the civil rights era. The SPLC, which commissioned the study of state curricula, concludes that students in at least 35 states are missing out on important facts about our history. And even in states that include units on civil rights, "their civil rights education boils down to two people and four words: Rosa Parks, Dr. King and 'I have a dream.'"
On one hand, you want to welcome disgruntled liberals to the club of those worried about historical amnesia among the young. We conservatives have been worrying about it for decades. On the other hand, it's tough to believe that American students are being cheated of knowledge about civil rights, compared with say, knowledge about World War II, or the progressive movement or the nullification crisis. One of my sons, who has been educated in public schools most of his life, offered that in his experience, American history is taught as "the Revolution, the internment of the Japanese during World War II and the civil rights movement."
When Common Core, an advocacy group for educational standards, surveyed American teenagers in 2008, they found that nearly a quarter were not able to correctly identify Adolf Hitler, but 97 percent knew who delivered the "I have a dream" speech. Care to speculate about how many would know who Joseph Stalin was?
Teaching history is inevitably a somewhat political act -- which is why an effort during the 1990s to establish national standards foundered in acrimony and bitterness. Some textbooks in wide use in America devote pages and pages to the so-called "McCarthy era" while neglecting much else and are written in a tone of condescension toward our forebears. Fights over textbook content in leading states like Texas have become protracted tugs of war between competing visions of our nation.
One suspects that only Howard Zinn's version of history would meet with the approval of the SPLC, and there are perhaps some on the right who might want to airbrush Joe McCarthy out altogether. But if we cannot come to some meeting of the minds on teaching the fundamentals of our history, we will have a drastically diminished future. The National Assessment of Educational Progress found in 2010 that only 12 percent of high school seniors were proficient in history.
The founders believed that special skills were necessary for free, self-governing individuals. Our second president, John Adams, said, "Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom." Thomas Jefferson proposed a system of public schools to instill the necessary knowledge and attitudes, saying memorably "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
When Ronald Reagan reflected on his eight years as president in his farewell address, he mentioned that one of the things he was proudest of was the renewed spirit of patriotism in the country. "This national feeling is good," he said, "but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge." Recalling that his generation had absorbed "almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation for its institutions," he noted that "Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children." And in what may have been the understatement of the decade, he said ". . . As for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style."
"We've got to do a better job," Reagan warned, "of getting across that America is freedom -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs protection."
When liberals tell the story of America -- and they overwhelmingly dominate the education establishment -- they tend to focus excessively on our flaws and sins. By all means, our kids need to know about the civil rights movement, just as they should know all about slavery and Jim Crow. But they should also be taught that this country overcame an ugly history of slavery and racism to a degree unequaled by any other nation on Earth. Nations that have practiced slavery (some still do) and racism are in legion. Those that have managed to transform themselves -- to listen to the "better angels of their nature" -- are incredibly rare.
In this, as in so much else, the U.S. is exemplary. If the public schools could convey just that much, it would be progress.
9/30/2011
The Southern Poverty Law Center is appalled by the results of a new study finding that states are not teaching the history of the civil rights era. The SPLC, which commissioned the study of state curricula, concludes that students in at least 35 states are missing out on important facts about our history. And even in states that include units on civil rights, "their civil rights education boils down to two people and four words: Rosa Parks, Dr. King and 'I have a dream.'"
On one hand, you want to welcome disgruntled liberals to the club of those worried about historical amnesia among the young. We conservatives have been worrying about it for decades. On the other hand, it's tough to believe that American students are being cheated of knowledge about civil rights, compared with say, knowledge about World War II, or the progressive movement or the nullification crisis. One of my sons, who has been educated in public schools most of his life, offered that in his experience, American history is taught as "the Revolution, the internment of the Japanese during World War II and the civil rights movement."
When Common Core, an advocacy group for educational standards, surveyed American teenagers in 2008, they found that nearly a quarter were not able to correctly identify Adolf Hitler, but 97 percent knew who delivered the "I have a dream" speech. Care to speculate about how many would know who Joseph Stalin was?
Teaching history is inevitably a somewhat political act -- which is why an effort during the 1990s to establish national standards foundered in acrimony and bitterness. Some textbooks in wide use in America devote pages and pages to the so-called "McCarthy era" while neglecting much else and are written in a tone of condescension toward our forebears. Fights over textbook content in leading states like Texas have become protracted tugs of war between competing visions of our nation.
One suspects that only Howard Zinn's version of history would meet with the approval of the SPLC, and there are perhaps some on the right who might want to airbrush Joe McCarthy out altogether. But if we cannot come to some meeting of the minds on teaching the fundamentals of our history, we will have a drastically diminished future. The National Assessment of Educational Progress found in 2010 that only 12 percent of high school seniors were proficient in history.
The founders believed that special skills were necessary for free, self-governing individuals. Our second president, John Adams, said, "Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom." Thomas Jefferson proposed a system of public schools to instill the necessary knowledge and attitudes, saying memorably "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
When Ronald Reagan reflected on his eight years as president in his farewell address, he mentioned that one of the things he was proudest of was the renewed spirit of patriotism in the country. "This national feeling is good," he said, "but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge." Recalling that his generation had absorbed "almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation for its institutions," he noted that "Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children." And in what may have been the understatement of the decade, he said ". . . As for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style."
"We've got to do a better job," Reagan warned, "of getting across that America is freedom -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs protection."
When liberals tell the story of America -- and they overwhelmingly dominate the education establishment -- they tend to focus excessively on our flaws and sins. By all means, our kids need to know about the civil rights movement, just as they should know all about slavery and Jim Crow. But they should also be taught that this country overcame an ugly history of slavery and racism to a degree unequaled by any other nation on Earth. Nations that have practiced slavery (some still do) and racism are in legion. Those that have managed to transform themselves -- to listen to the "better angels of their nature" -- are incredibly rare.
In this, as in so much else, the U.S. is exemplary. If the public schools could convey just that much, it would be progress.
Van Jones Warns of a Progressive "October Offensive" against Tea Party
Van Jones, president of the progressive organization Rebuild the Dream, joins The Last Word to discuss what Washington should be doing about jobs. Jones calls the US' deficit problem "phony" and made up.
"Hold on to your hats, we're going to have an October offensive to take back the American dream and rescue America's middle class," Jones told MSNBC's "The Last Word."
Jones warns of an "American Fall" like there was an Arab Spring.
RCP Video Link
Jones was President Obama's "green jobs czar" until he resigned in fall of 2009.
"Hold on to your hats, we're going to have an October offensive to take back the American dream and rescue America's middle class," Jones told MSNBC's "The Last Word."
Jones warns of an "American Fall" like there was an Arab Spring.
RCP Video Link
Jones was President Obama's "green jobs czar" until he resigned in fall of 2009.
May 2012 Be a Referendum on Obama's Perverse Vision for America
David Limbaugh
9/30/2011
Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign was grounded in meaningless platitudes, such as "hope and change." His 2012 re-election effort is grounded in meaningful platitudes centered in the destructive politics of class warfare.
Despite his best efforts to paint his abominable economic record in a favorable light, Obama simply cannot run on it, unless he succeeds in completely changing the traditional yardsticks by which we have always measured economic success: growth, unemployment, inflation and general prosperity.
No, I'm not referring to the ludicrous yardstick of "saved or created" jobs, which Obama has pushed way beyond its sell-by date. There's a limit even to the liberal media's ability to convince credulous Obama supporters that down is up and depression is prosperity.
He could conceivably boast that he has indeed created jobs, as long as we understand that he's talking about public-sector jobs, many of which have been formed at the expense of those in the private sector. But he won't dare bank on the American people's sympathy for that argument.
Instead, he'll continue to milk his militant class-warfare theme, hoping to shift our focus from the unemployment, economic stagnation and thunderous debt he's orchestrated to our baser instincts of jealousy, greed and envy.
For those stubbornly slow on the uptake, I ask you: Could it be any clearer now what Obama meant when he promised that he was going to fundamentally change America? Those moralizing idealists might have had a plausible excuse for their obtuseness before, but they can no longer be blind to Obama's grandiose scheme to restructure America.
To be sure, Obama has paid lip service to America as a land of opportunity, just as he assured us he was a fierce advocate of the free market. But he has labored to convert America from a land of equal opportunity to one where the government equalizes economic outcomes. He has set out to achieve his goal not through a process of gentle persuasion, but by polarization and intense demonization of those who have enjoyed economic success.
If you listen to him or any number of his advisers and associates, you can't help but notice a marked contempt for big corporations, bankers, the "wealthy" and every other symbol of business and capitalism that he can incite the "proletariat" against.
Obama knows he's stoking the flames of class warfare almost every time he opens his mouth today. He knows that the lion's share of his economic policies are not even geared toward promoting economic growth and prosperity. They are designed to grow government and increase its control over our lives and to "spread the wealth around." That's his vision for America, which explains why in his view, under his perverse yardsticks, he is not failing, though America, by any conventional measure, manifestly is.
Obama's senior adviser and alter ego, Valerie Jarrett, recently declared that government's role is to create jobs -- not in the sense of getting out of the way, but with artificially manufactured make-work jobs that central planners deem desirable. She believes that it's government's role to equalize results rather than to remove barriers against equal opportunity.
Jarrett said: We need to be "creating a country that's a country for everybody, not just for the very, very wealthy. ... (Obama is) not willing to balance our budget on the backs of the least of these." He's not willing to hurt Medicare or Social Security "while the very wealthy and the corporations that are the most profitable are not paying their fair share." Democratic senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren similarly informed us, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own."
Liberals such as Obama would have us believe that they enthusiastically embrace the American ideal and that they just want to expand the safety net a little bit to help the poor. They are the champions of the middle class.
Sorry, with their decades-long track record of failure, they no longer get a pass for their allegedly good intentions. Obama is a human wrecking ball single-handedly destroying our economy and bankrupting the nation. Hardest hit: the middle class. For him to masquerade as the grand protector of the middle class is like Winston Churchill passing himself off as a pacifist.
Obama's rhetoric might be appropriate in pre-revolutionary France, where the nobles were exempt from the taille, France's chief tax, and an overwhelmingly disproportionate burden was falling on the peasants, artisans and ordinary merchants. But we're in America, and last time I checked, the bottom 47 percent of income earners aren't even paying income tax.
In 2012, American voters are going to have a clear choice of whether America will restore itself as a glorious land of individual liberty and equal opportunity or continue down Obama's suicidal path of poverty and tyranny.
9/30/2011
Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign was grounded in meaningless platitudes, such as "hope and change." His 2012 re-election effort is grounded in meaningful platitudes centered in the destructive politics of class warfare.
Despite his best efforts to paint his abominable economic record in a favorable light, Obama simply cannot run on it, unless he succeeds in completely changing the traditional yardsticks by which we have always measured economic success: growth, unemployment, inflation and general prosperity.
No, I'm not referring to the ludicrous yardstick of "saved or created" jobs, which Obama has pushed way beyond its sell-by date. There's a limit even to the liberal media's ability to convince credulous Obama supporters that down is up and depression is prosperity.
He could conceivably boast that he has indeed created jobs, as long as we understand that he's talking about public-sector jobs, many of which have been formed at the expense of those in the private sector. But he won't dare bank on the American people's sympathy for that argument.
Instead, he'll continue to milk his militant class-warfare theme, hoping to shift our focus from the unemployment, economic stagnation and thunderous debt he's orchestrated to our baser instincts of jealousy, greed and envy.
For those stubbornly slow on the uptake, I ask you: Could it be any clearer now what Obama meant when he promised that he was going to fundamentally change America? Those moralizing idealists might have had a plausible excuse for their obtuseness before, but they can no longer be blind to Obama's grandiose scheme to restructure America.
To be sure, Obama has paid lip service to America as a land of opportunity, just as he assured us he was a fierce advocate of the free market. But he has labored to convert America from a land of equal opportunity to one where the government equalizes economic outcomes. He has set out to achieve his goal not through a process of gentle persuasion, but by polarization and intense demonization of those who have enjoyed economic success.
If you listen to him or any number of his advisers and associates, you can't help but notice a marked contempt for big corporations, bankers, the "wealthy" and every other symbol of business and capitalism that he can incite the "proletariat" against.
Obama knows he's stoking the flames of class warfare almost every time he opens his mouth today. He knows that the lion's share of his economic policies are not even geared toward promoting economic growth and prosperity. They are designed to grow government and increase its control over our lives and to "spread the wealth around." That's his vision for America, which explains why in his view, under his perverse yardsticks, he is not failing, though America, by any conventional measure, manifestly is.
Obama's senior adviser and alter ego, Valerie Jarrett, recently declared that government's role is to create jobs -- not in the sense of getting out of the way, but with artificially manufactured make-work jobs that central planners deem desirable. She believes that it's government's role to equalize results rather than to remove barriers against equal opportunity.
Jarrett said: We need to be "creating a country that's a country for everybody, not just for the very, very wealthy. ... (Obama is) not willing to balance our budget on the backs of the least of these." He's not willing to hurt Medicare or Social Security "while the very wealthy and the corporations that are the most profitable are not paying their fair share." Democratic senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren similarly informed us, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own."
Liberals such as Obama would have us believe that they enthusiastically embrace the American ideal and that they just want to expand the safety net a little bit to help the poor. They are the champions of the middle class.
Sorry, with their decades-long track record of failure, they no longer get a pass for their allegedly good intentions. Obama is a human wrecking ball single-handedly destroying our economy and bankrupting the nation. Hardest hit: the middle class. For him to masquerade as the grand protector of the middle class is like Winston Churchill passing himself off as a pacifist.
Obama's rhetoric might be appropriate in pre-revolutionary France, where the nobles were exempt from the taille, France's chief tax, and an overwhelmingly disproportionate burden was falling on the peasants, artisans and ordinary merchants. But we're in America, and last time I checked, the bottom 47 percent of income earners aren't even paying income tax.
In 2012, American voters are going to have a clear choice of whether America will restore itself as a glorious land of individual liberty and equal opportunity or continue down Obama's suicidal path of poverty and tyranny.
NC Dems to rename fundraiser after 50 years due to slight white supremacist problem
by Associated Press
Posted on September 20, 2011 at 1:01 PM
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Three years after a majority of North Carolina voters cast their ballots for the country's first black president, the state Democratic Party is dropping the names of a Confederate leader and a white supremacist governor from one of its signature annual events.
For decades, the party's yearly fundraiser in western North Carolina had been known as the Vance-Aycock Dinner, after two former Democratic governors. This year, the October event will be dubbed the Western Gala while a committee works on a permanent replacement title, party spokesman Walton Robinson said.
"The tradition of the Democratic Party being what it is, folks just felt it was time for a change," he said.
The decision follows several years of dispute over the name Vance-Aycock, with some party leaders and even Republicans calling on the Democrats to change it. A Republican Party spokesman declined to comment on the decision.
Zebulon Vance was a veteran of the Confederate army who also served as governor during the Civil War. But most of the criticism centered on Charles Aycock, who served as governor from 1901 to 1905.
Aycock is remembered as a strong proponent of public schools, which led to his being known as "the Education Governor." His name adorns schools and other public buildings across the state, and a statue depicting him stands on the grounds of the old state Capitol.
But he was also a leader of the so-called "White Supremacy Campaign" in 1898, which dislodged the biracial Republicans and Populist Party members who controlled state politics at the time. Aycock oversaw the codification of some of North Carolina's earliest Jim Crow laws, and the 1898 election led to a bloody uprising against Republican leadership in Wilmington in which white mobs killed scores of people.
"With that kind of record, it's very hard to make those kinds of guys your patron saints in the contemporary context," said Harry Watson, director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"The black Democrats are angry and the white Democrats are embarrassed, and probably also angry, at the idea of the party continuing to venerate Charles Aycock when he was elected to office campaigning in favor of disenfranchisement and in favor of violence to support it," he said.
The Vance-Aycock Dinner started in 1960, but it was the 100th anniversary of the Wilmington race riot, which is occasionally called the only successful coup d'etat in U.S. history, that spurred public discussion of the event's name, Watson said. After a state-appointed commission produced a report on the riot, it was included in history museums, school lesson plans and text books.
Four years ago, Richard Moore, who was then state treasurer, formally asked the party drop the around the same time that a Buncombe County Republican group announced plans to protest the dinner over Aycock's name.
"It is part of our progress and being more sensitive to the names that we hold out and honor in the Democratic Party," Moore told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "We could have done better, and I'm pleased to see that the officials in the Democratic party now agree."
Moore pushed for the change while running unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for governor. Moore said in 2007 that Aycock used "a message of white supremacy, racial segregation and oppression" that didn't reflect the party's contemporary values.
The old name may have lingered for any number of reasons, but the decision to drop it reflects the changing nature of politics in North Carolina as the state grows more diverse, said Karen Cox, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and author of "Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture."
"The Democratic Party has changed tremendously, and North Carolina has changed, too," she said. "There are a lot of people living in North Carolina now that aren't from North Carolina, and they're maybe more likely to take issue with things like this."
Posted on September 20, 2011 at 1:01 PM
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- Three years after a majority of North Carolina voters cast their ballots for the country's first black president, the state Democratic Party is dropping the names of a Confederate leader and a white supremacist governor from one of its signature annual events.
For decades, the party's yearly fundraiser in western North Carolina had been known as the Vance-Aycock Dinner, after two former Democratic governors. This year, the October event will be dubbed the Western Gala while a committee works on a permanent replacement title, party spokesman Walton Robinson said.
"The tradition of the Democratic Party being what it is, folks just felt it was time for a change," he said.
The decision follows several years of dispute over the name Vance-Aycock, with some party leaders and even Republicans calling on the Democrats to change it. A Republican Party spokesman declined to comment on the decision.
Zebulon Vance was a veteran of the Confederate army who also served as governor during the Civil War. But most of the criticism centered on Charles Aycock, who served as governor from 1901 to 1905.
Aycock is remembered as a strong proponent of public schools, which led to his being known as "the Education Governor." His name adorns schools and other public buildings across the state, and a statue depicting him stands on the grounds of the old state Capitol.
But he was also a leader of the so-called "White Supremacy Campaign" in 1898, which dislodged the biracial Republicans and Populist Party members who controlled state politics at the time. Aycock oversaw the codification of some of North Carolina's earliest Jim Crow laws, and the 1898 election led to a bloody uprising against Republican leadership in Wilmington in which white mobs killed scores of people.
"With that kind of record, it's very hard to make those kinds of guys your patron saints in the contemporary context," said Harry Watson, director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"The black Democrats are angry and the white Democrats are embarrassed, and probably also angry, at the idea of the party continuing to venerate Charles Aycock when he was elected to office campaigning in favor of disenfranchisement and in favor of violence to support it," he said.
The Vance-Aycock Dinner started in 1960, but it was the 100th anniversary of the Wilmington race riot, which is occasionally called the only successful coup d'etat in U.S. history, that spurred public discussion of the event's name, Watson said. After a state-appointed commission produced a report on the riot, it was included in history museums, school lesson plans and text books.
Four years ago, Richard Moore, who was then state treasurer, formally asked the party drop the around the same time that a Buncombe County Republican group announced plans to protest the dinner over Aycock's name.
"It is part of our progress and being more sensitive to the names that we hold out and honor in the Democratic Party," Moore told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "We could have done better, and I'm pleased to see that the officials in the Democratic party now agree."
Moore pushed for the change while running unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for governor. Moore said in 2007 that Aycock used "a message of white supremacy, racial segregation and oppression" that didn't reflect the party's contemporary values.
The old name may have lingered for any number of reasons, but the decision to drop it reflects the changing nature of politics in North Carolina as the state grows more diverse, said Karen Cox, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and author of "Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture."
"The Democratic Party has changed tremendously, and North Carolina has changed, too," she said. "There are a lot of people living in North Carolina now that aren't from North Carolina, and they're maybe more likely to take issue with things like this."
Reid Announces $13.8 MILLION For Nevada Small Businesses
That's Billion with an "M" !!!
Reid led passage of Small Business Jobs Act, which established this state grant
September 28, 2011
Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senator Harry Reid today announced that Nevada Commission on Economic Development will receive $13,803,176 to help small businesses in Nevada grow and create jobs. The grant is part of the State Small Business Credit Initiative, which was created by the Small Businesses Jobs Act. Last year, Senator Reid led passage of the Small Business Jobs Act that provided $15 billion in business tax relief and hundreds of millions in loans to business owners.
“Small businesses are critical to Nevada’s job growth and economic recovery,” said Senator Reid. “These resources will give a much needed boost to our state’s entrepreneurs and help empower them to start putting people back to work.”
The Nevada Commission on Economic Development will use these funds to support small business lending through the Nevada Microenterprise Initiative (NMI) and a new Nevada Collateral Support Program. The Commission will provide up to $500,000 to NMI and the remainder will help entrepreneurs secure the loans they need to start up or grow their businesses.
Reid led passage of Small Business Jobs Act, which established this state grant
September 28, 2011
Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senator Harry Reid today announced that Nevada Commission on Economic Development will receive $13,803,176 to help small businesses in Nevada grow and create jobs. The grant is part of the State Small Business Credit Initiative, which was created by the Small Businesses Jobs Act. Last year, Senator Reid led passage of the Small Business Jobs Act that provided $15 billion in business tax relief and hundreds of millions in loans to business owners.
“Small businesses are critical to Nevada’s job growth and economic recovery,” said Senator Reid. “These resources will give a much needed boost to our state’s entrepreneurs and help empower them to start putting people back to work.”
The Nevada Commission on Economic Development will use these funds to support small business lending through the Nevada Microenterprise Initiative (NMI) and a new Nevada Collateral Support Program. The Commission will provide up to $500,000 to NMI and the remainder will help entrepreneurs secure the loans they need to start up or grow their businesses.
The Truth About NCLR
The Truth About NCLR: NCLR Answers Critics
Open Letter to the Public:
Those familiar with the work of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) know that we are the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., and that we are an American institution committed to strengthening this great nation by promoting the advancement of Latino families. Our mission is to create opportunities and open the door to the American Dream for Latino and other families.
We proudly represent nearly 300 Affiliates—community-based organizations providing a range of essential services to millions of Latinos and others in need. Since 1997, NCLR and its Affiliates have helped more than 22,000 low-income Hispanic families purchase their first homes. In addition, NCLR’s network of 115 charter schools provides quality education to more than 25,000 Latino children every year. The health clinics we helped build and the lay health educators we trained provided care and information about prevention and detection of serious illnesses to nearly 100,000 people in 2006. Our Affiliates are working every day to help Hispanic immigrants integrate fully into American society by providing English-language classes, civics courses, and naturalization assistance.
NCLR is also among the most recognized organizations in the nonprofit sector. Our work in the health arena has been honored by the Surgeon General of the United States and numerous professional organizations. Among the many awards NCLR has received, both our former President/CEO and the immediate past Chair of our Board of Directors earned the prestigious Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and The Nonprofit Times has recognized NCLR’s leadership with its coveted “Power and Influence Top 50” award, honoring the top 50 leaders shaping the nonprofit world. In addition, NCLR is featured alongside Habitat for Humanity and the Heritage Foundation in Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, a book that analyzes the practices of 12 nonprofit organizations that have successfully created social change (released in October 2007).
We recognize that some people might be confused about our organization’s name, our mission, and our work. Much of this is understandable. Compared to some of our venerable counterparts in the civil rights and advocacy community, we are a relatively young institution representing Latinos, a historically disadvantaged and often misunderstood ethnic minority. We have a Spanish term in our name, “La Raza” (meaning “the people” or “community”), which is often mistranslated. Furthermore, we are engaged in some of the most controversial issues of our time, which we believe is essential if we are to stay true to our mission.
As an advocacy organization engaged in the public arena, we know that some will disagree with our views. As Americans committed to basic civil rights, we respect anyone’s right to do so.
But it is also clear that some critics are willfully distorting the facts and deliberately mischaracterizing our organization and our work. Recently, we have been the subject of a number of ad hominem attacks that we believe cross the line of civility in public discourse.
At times, we have ignored these attacks, preferring to invest our precious time and resources in our work, believing that the quality of our labors speaks for itself. At other times, we have responded in a civil fashion through private correspondence or by requesting a meeting with a critic so we can discuss our differences. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do this in every case, especially when our private requests for civil discussion are responded to with further unfounded attacks, often echoed in the media as if they were accurate.
So, today we are engaging in an unprecedented step to make sure that the record is as clear and accessible as we can possibly make it. We do so in the interest of full disclosure and in the spirit of complete transparency. We trust that, after reviewing all of these materials, readers will come to their own conclusions about the merits of these and similar attacks to which we have been subjected.
Janet MurguÃa
President and CEO
National Council of La Raza
NCLR Responds: A Point-by-Point Analysis
The following are common misconceptions voiced about NCLR and our work. Please click on the link below for more information on NCLR’s response to each accusation.
http://www.nclr.org/index.php/about_us/faqs/the_truth_about_nclr/
Open Letter to the Public:
Those familiar with the work of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) know that we are the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., and that we are an American institution committed to strengthening this great nation by promoting the advancement of Latino families. Our mission is to create opportunities and open the door to the American Dream for Latino and other families.
We proudly represent nearly 300 Affiliates—community-based organizations providing a range of essential services to millions of Latinos and others in need. Since 1997, NCLR and its Affiliates have helped more than 22,000 low-income Hispanic families purchase their first homes. In addition, NCLR’s network of 115 charter schools provides quality education to more than 25,000 Latino children every year. The health clinics we helped build and the lay health educators we trained provided care and information about prevention and detection of serious illnesses to nearly 100,000 people in 2006. Our Affiliates are working every day to help Hispanic immigrants integrate fully into American society by providing English-language classes, civics courses, and naturalization assistance.
NCLR is also among the most recognized organizations in the nonprofit sector. Our work in the health arena has been honored by the Surgeon General of the United States and numerous professional organizations. Among the many awards NCLR has received, both our former President/CEO and the immediate past Chair of our Board of Directors earned the prestigious Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and The Nonprofit Times has recognized NCLR’s leadership with its coveted “Power and Influence Top 50” award, honoring the top 50 leaders shaping the nonprofit world. In addition, NCLR is featured alongside Habitat for Humanity and the Heritage Foundation in Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, a book that analyzes the practices of 12 nonprofit organizations that have successfully created social change (released in October 2007).
We recognize that some people might be confused about our organization’s name, our mission, and our work. Much of this is understandable. Compared to some of our venerable counterparts in the civil rights and advocacy community, we are a relatively young institution representing Latinos, a historically disadvantaged and often misunderstood ethnic minority. We have a Spanish term in our name, “La Raza” (meaning “the people” or “community”), which is often mistranslated. Furthermore, we are engaged in some of the most controversial issues of our time, which we believe is essential if we are to stay true to our mission.
As an advocacy organization engaged in the public arena, we know that some will disagree with our views. As Americans committed to basic civil rights, we respect anyone’s right to do so.
But it is also clear that some critics are willfully distorting the facts and deliberately mischaracterizing our organization and our work. Recently, we have been the subject of a number of ad hominem attacks that we believe cross the line of civility in public discourse.
At times, we have ignored these attacks, preferring to invest our precious time and resources in our work, believing that the quality of our labors speaks for itself. At other times, we have responded in a civil fashion through private correspondence or by requesting a meeting with a critic so we can discuss our differences. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do this in every case, especially when our private requests for civil discussion are responded to with further unfounded attacks, often echoed in the media as if they were accurate.
So, today we are engaging in an unprecedented step to make sure that the record is as clear and accessible as we can possibly make it. We do so in the interest of full disclosure and in the spirit of complete transparency. We trust that, after reviewing all of these materials, readers will come to their own conclusions about the merits of these and similar attacks to which we have been subjected.
Janet MurguÃa
President and CEO
National Council of La Raza
NCLR Responds: A Point-by-Point Analysis
The following are common misconceptions voiced about NCLR and our work. Please click on the link below for more information on NCLR’s response to each accusation.
http://www.nclr.org/index.php/about_us/faqs/the_truth_about_nclr/
D.C. ANC members break the rules without redress
City has no power to police
By Luke Rosiak
The Washington Times
Thursday, September 29, 2011
By day, Regina James makes $68,000 a year detecting fraud for the D.C. government. By night, she stood by in a low-level elected position as tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds under her watch disappeared in a few months. She trampled on regulations to protect the secrecy of the fund’s expenditures while District authorities did nothing.
And on Tuesday, District officials considered paying out even more cash, as much as $16,000, to replace some of what was lost — without replacing those who oversaw the loss.
In June, the D.C. auditor determined that William Shelton withdrew $30,000 from an Advisory Neighborhood Commission 5B account, spending it on payments for a Lexus and purchases at Bloomingdale’s. Mr. Shelton was chairman of the ANC in Ward 5, one of 37 little-scrutinized boards of elected officials each with budgets in the tens of thousands.
In the few weeks since replacing Mr. Shelton as the top official at the bottom of the city’s political hierarchy, Ms. James has punished colleagues who called for accountability, refused to give elected officials access to records, flouted legal judgments by city agencies, closed meetings to public comment, moved to hire a highly paid staffer and acted so suspiciously that she was evicted from a room in a drug-treatment facility where she had set up an office.
In the process, she illuminated systemic failings in the way that nearly $1 million in public money is expended yearly across a tangle of D.C. agencies, each employing full-time staff devoted to overseeing the commissions.
In the aftermath of the Shelton revelations, internal deliberations reviewed by The Washington Times detail not outrage, but protection.
“Like it or not, Commissioner Shelton is still one of us, and Commissioner Daniels is still one of us. We have all made mistakes. He who is without sin cast the first stone,” Ms. James wrote to colleagues.
The board’s treasurer, Patricia Brown-Daniels, said she had never looked at a bank statement. One commissioner, Vaughn Bennett, called for Ms. Brown-Daniels to be stripped of financial oversight, and the 10-member board quickly fell in line — and voted to strip Mr. Bennett of his position as secretary. At a brief meeting at which no public comment was allowed, Ms. James declined to give any reason for the removal.
D.C. overseers said they exist to support the elected officials, not police them.
The office
There is no indication that ANC 5B has spent money on the community in recent years. Instead, it has purchased high-end BlackBerry service for every part-time, volunteer commissioner, recorded in auditor’s reports as a landline expense. The commission currently owes $8,000 to AT&T.
And it maintained office space inside a Salvation Army facility, where without any discussion or contract drawn up by the commission, Mr. Shelton began paying a friend, Patsy Staten, $25 an hour to answer phones about 25 hours a week. Ms. Staten signed her own timesheets. In repeated calls to the ANC office during those hours, no one ever picked up the phone.
Asked what she did at the office on a typical day, Ms. Staten said: “Twiddle my thumbs.”
Ms. Staten held at least three such jobs simultaneously and regularly mingled their accounts, billing supplies to one account and having them delivered to another, invoices obtained by The Times show.
In one, she worked for Mr. Shelton at a charity called the Young Adults Corporation of Washington, D.C., where Mr. Shelton oversaw $100,000 in D.C. funds intended for troubled children.
Thousands of dollars for materials, such as $15 cases of soda, were billed to the ANC and shipped from Maryland to various offices and apartments, some with no apparent connection to the commission.
Mr. Shelton and Ms. Staten possessed the only keys to the office and its records, even after the theft case was referred to law enforcement.
After Mr. Shelton eventually turned in his key, that left only Ms. Staten, who is not part of the elected commission. The new chairwoman, Ms. James, told colleagues that no commissioner but herself could review finances there because of privacy rules at the Salvation Army, which provides drug-treatment services.
That was never true, said the center’s executive director, Mary Lynn Logsdon.
“She was so unbelievable,” Ms. Logsdon said. “Who knows what was going on back there?”
D.C. law says ANC officials must make documents available to the public upon request. But when they were requested at the front desk of the Salvation Army, Ms. James refused to come out of the office and called the police.
“I don’t give a damn about the D.C. code,” she said.
Systemic failings
The D.C. auditor’s office, which is responsible for reviewing ANC finances,ANC Executive Director Gottlieb Simon’s office and the attorney general’s office all said Ms. James must turn over documents to the broader commission and to the public. Yet when told she had refused, the oversight agencies said they had no ability to enforce the law.
“We don’t have any enforcement mechanisms,” Deputy Auditor Lawrence Perry said. “Mr. Simon’s office is responsible for administration.”
“My office doesn’t maintain records from the commissions. The ANC itself has copies,” Mr. Simon said. “The auditor’s office is responsible for oversight.”
The 37 commissions in the city each have four to 12 elected members.
Repeatedly, when constituents brought credible complaints about regulations that were ignored or flouted, the chairman refused to provide easily obtainable documentation, and the Office of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions declined to obtain them.
Reports that lacked so much as a signature were stamped by the auditor, and many reports submitted to the auditor are missing basic pieces of information. Multiple ANCs routinely failed to deduct taxes.
Commissioner India Henderson, who took over for Ms. Brown-Daniels as treasurer for a stint in 2010, said she documented repeated concerns to Mr. Simon; Lynard Barnum, then the auditor office’s chief ANC specialist who resigned weeks ago; and D.C. Council member Yvette M. Alexander, Ward 7 Democrat, who was then head of the committee with jurisdiction over ANCs. But nothing was ever done.
J.R. Meyers, Ms. Alexander’s chief of staff, said the council can refer such concerns only to Mr. Simon’s office.
“When we had oversight, some of them would come and not want to talk about their treasurer’s report at the hearing, and we couldn’t demand otherwise,” he said. “ANCs are elected officials, so there isn’t the kind of body that governs them.”
One in three ANCs still haven’t submitted reports months after the last deadline, auditor records show.
“There needs to be better legislation governing when does an ANC have to turn over its books? Right now, it’s pretty egregious,” Meyers said.
On Tuesday, a panel of D.C. officials indicated it is amenable to providing $16,000 to the commission.
Outside contractor
The only one with knowledge about ANC finances, commissioners said, was Ms. Staten, who has declared bankruptcy twice, records show.
After the commission’s coffers were drained by theft and Ms. Staten could no longer be paid, Ms. James announced she had a new “volunteer assistant” named Tony Dugger, a political operative in Ward 5 who worked for the campaign of D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown.
Days later, as the commission prepared for a new infusion of taxpayer funds, an email was sent from Mr. Dugger’s account advising that the commission would be hiring a paid “executive director.” In meetings, the commission never discussed such a position or drafted the job requirements.
In an interview, Mr. Dugger initially denied sending the job posting, then alternated between disavowing any affiliation with the ANC and defending its actions under Ms. James in detail.
The expanded job description appeared to outsource nearly all of the work that would be done by a part-time, elected advisory neighborhood commission, from drafting policy positions to testifying before city council.
The requirements closely mirror his own resume.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC
By Luke Rosiak
The Washington Times
Thursday, September 29, 2011
By day, Regina James makes $68,000 a year detecting fraud for the D.C. government. By night, she stood by in a low-level elected position as tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds under her watch disappeared in a few months. She trampled on regulations to protect the secrecy of the fund’s expenditures while District authorities did nothing.
And on Tuesday, District officials considered paying out even more cash, as much as $16,000, to replace some of what was lost — without replacing those who oversaw the loss.
In June, the D.C. auditor determined that William Shelton withdrew $30,000 from an Advisory Neighborhood Commission 5B account, spending it on payments for a Lexus and purchases at Bloomingdale’s. Mr. Shelton was chairman of the ANC in Ward 5, one of 37 little-scrutinized boards of elected officials each with budgets in the tens of thousands.
In the few weeks since replacing Mr. Shelton as the top official at the bottom of the city’s political hierarchy, Ms. James has punished colleagues who called for accountability, refused to give elected officials access to records, flouted legal judgments by city agencies, closed meetings to public comment, moved to hire a highly paid staffer and acted so suspiciously that she was evicted from a room in a drug-treatment facility where she had set up an office.
In the process, she illuminated systemic failings in the way that nearly $1 million in public money is expended yearly across a tangle of D.C. agencies, each employing full-time staff devoted to overseeing the commissions.
In the aftermath of the Shelton revelations, internal deliberations reviewed by The Washington Times detail not outrage, but protection.
“Like it or not, Commissioner Shelton is still one of us, and Commissioner Daniels is still one of us. We have all made mistakes. He who is without sin cast the first stone,” Ms. James wrote to colleagues.
The board’s treasurer, Patricia Brown-Daniels, said she had never looked at a bank statement. One commissioner, Vaughn Bennett, called for Ms. Brown-Daniels to be stripped of financial oversight, and the 10-member board quickly fell in line — and voted to strip Mr. Bennett of his position as secretary. At a brief meeting at which no public comment was allowed, Ms. James declined to give any reason for the removal.
D.C. overseers said they exist to support the elected officials, not police them.
The office
There is no indication that ANC 5B has spent money on the community in recent years. Instead, it has purchased high-end BlackBerry service for every part-time, volunteer commissioner, recorded in auditor’s reports as a landline expense. The commission currently owes $8,000 to AT&T.
And it maintained office space inside a Salvation Army facility, where without any discussion or contract drawn up by the commission, Mr. Shelton began paying a friend, Patsy Staten, $25 an hour to answer phones about 25 hours a week. Ms. Staten signed her own timesheets. In repeated calls to the ANC office during those hours, no one ever picked up the phone.
Asked what she did at the office on a typical day, Ms. Staten said: “Twiddle my thumbs.”
Ms. Staten held at least three such jobs simultaneously and regularly mingled their accounts, billing supplies to one account and having them delivered to another, invoices obtained by The Times show.
In one, she worked for Mr. Shelton at a charity called the Young Adults Corporation of Washington, D.C., where Mr. Shelton oversaw $100,000 in D.C. funds intended for troubled children.
Thousands of dollars for materials, such as $15 cases of soda, were billed to the ANC and shipped from Maryland to various offices and apartments, some with no apparent connection to the commission.
Mr. Shelton and Ms. Staten possessed the only keys to the office and its records, even after the theft case was referred to law enforcement.
After Mr. Shelton eventually turned in his key, that left only Ms. Staten, who is not part of the elected commission. The new chairwoman, Ms. James, told colleagues that no commissioner but herself could review finances there because of privacy rules at the Salvation Army, which provides drug-treatment services.
That was never true, said the center’s executive director, Mary Lynn Logsdon.
“She was so unbelievable,” Ms. Logsdon said. “Who knows what was going on back there?”
D.C. law says ANC officials must make documents available to the public upon request. But when they were requested at the front desk of the Salvation Army, Ms. James refused to come out of the office and called the police.
“I don’t give a damn about the D.C. code,” she said.
Systemic failings
The D.C. auditor’s office, which is responsible for reviewing ANC finances,ANC Executive Director Gottlieb Simon’s office and the attorney general’s office all said Ms. James must turn over documents to the broader commission and to the public. Yet when told she had refused, the oversight agencies said they had no ability to enforce the law.
“We don’t have any enforcement mechanisms,” Deputy Auditor Lawrence Perry said. “Mr. Simon’s office is responsible for administration.”
“My office doesn’t maintain records from the commissions. The ANC itself has copies,” Mr. Simon said. “The auditor’s office is responsible for oversight.”
The 37 commissions in the city each have four to 12 elected members.
Repeatedly, when constituents brought credible complaints about regulations that were ignored or flouted, the chairman refused to provide easily obtainable documentation, and the Office of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions declined to obtain them.
Reports that lacked so much as a signature were stamped by the auditor, and many reports submitted to the auditor are missing basic pieces of information. Multiple ANCs routinely failed to deduct taxes.
Commissioner India Henderson, who took over for Ms. Brown-Daniels as treasurer for a stint in 2010, said she documented repeated concerns to Mr. Simon; Lynard Barnum, then the auditor office’s chief ANC specialist who resigned weeks ago; and D.C. Council member Yvette M. Alexander, Ward 7 Democrat, who was then head of the committee with jurisdiction over ANCs. But nothing was ever done.
J.R. Meyers, Ms. Alexander’s chief of staff, said the council can refer such concerns only to Mr. Simon’s office.
“When we had oversight, some of them would come and not want to talk about their treasurer’s report at the hearing, and we couldn’t demand otherwise,” he said. “ANCs are elected officials, so there isn’t the kind of body that governs them.”
One in three ANCs still haven’t submitted reports months after the last deadline, auditor records show.
“There needs to be better legislation governing when does an ANC have to turn over its books? Right now, it’s pretty egregious,” Meyers said.
On Tuesday, a panel of D.C. officials indicated it is amenable to providing $16,000 to the commission.
Outside contractor
The only one with knowledge about ANC finances, commissioners said, was Ms. Staten, who has declared bankruptcy twice, records show.
After the commission’s coffers were drained by theft and Ms. Staten could no longer be paid, Ms. James announced she had a new “volunteer assistant” named Tony Dugger, a political operative in Ward 5 who worked for the campaign of D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown.
Days later, as the commission prepared for a new infusion of taxpayer funds, an email was sent from Mr. Dugger’s account advising that the commission would be hiring a paid “executive director.” In meetings, the commission never discussed such a position or drafted the job requirements.
In an interview, Mr. Dugger initially denied sending the job posting, then alternated between disavowing any affiliation with the ANC and defending its actions under Ms. James in detail.
The expanded job description appeared to outsource nearly all of the work that would be done by a part-time, elected advisory neighborhood commission, from drafting policy positions to testifying before city council.
The requirements closely mirror his own resume.
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC
Forget Multiculturalism: Restore The Anglo-Saxon Philosophy Of Liberty
9/29/2011 @ 2:07PM
Bill Flax, Contributor
A history professor once postulated that the most pivotal battle shaping America’s destiny was not Yorktown or Gettysburg, but Quebec in 1759. There General Wolfe demolished French claims to Canada, which confirmed that America would develop decisively within the Anglo-protestant mold.
The latest Economic Freedom of the World rankings (for 2009) highlight the good fortune that resulted from Wolfe’s win. Many commentators will rightly deplore America’s precipitous descent over the past decade – down to tenth, yet another startling detail leaps from the page. Eight of the ten freest lands were once owned by Britain.
The nations enjoying limited government, property rights, sound currency, free trade, ease of regulation, low taxes and restrained public spending include: Hong Kong, followed by Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Chile, United Kingdom, Mauritius and the United States.
The study reveals a potent correlation linking freedom to economic progress. Nations following market principles propel past their government laden counterparts. They earn more, grow faster and “the poorest people in the most economically free countries are nearly twice as rich as the average people in the least free countries.”
The USA has likely fallen further since 2009 as abrasive government expansion continued. Obamacare and Dodd-Frank both passed in 2010. The EPA and NLRB wage regulatory crusades against businesses. Spending remains elevated. Liberty perishes underneath government’s persistent pursuit of power.
In this time of economic stagnation, perhaps prosperity can be retracted from America’s past. As the U.S. declared independence, the Industrial Revolution launched in England. History had heretofore exhibited minimal progress from antiquity. Most remained mired in subsistence level agriculture until suddenly advances in the Anglosphere catapulted living standards forward.
Capitalism offers both abstract liberties as well as freedom from want. Thanks to free markets, common laborers can access more comfort, superior sanitation and even entertainment than nobles experienced before the stirrings of modern industry. The advent of superior medicine and better nutrition even extended life. It’s estimated that prior to the aforementioned advances, three-fourths of everyone ever born died by age 35.
America’s diminished freedom is thus alarming. Historically, America’s unparalleled liberty shone hope across the seas. Our independence was essentially a counter-revolution. America, as Mark Steyn writes, “derives its political character from eighteenth-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go.”
The colonists reasserted their “ancient rights as Englishmen,” then threatened by London’s encroachments after a long span of benign neglect. Previously, enforcement of the Navigation Acts and other laws had been lackluster and easily skirted. But suddenly parliament began interceding to “extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction.”
Jefferson and company believed London violated the laws of nature and saw independence in keeping with British tradition’s historic trajectory towards liberty. Independence climaxed a long quest which commenced on the fields of Runnymede in 1215 when the Magna Carta curtailed the crown’s reach.
The Declaration meant “not to find out new principles, or new arguments” but to appeal to “ common sense.” Thomas Jefferson was particularly enamored with Anglo-Saxon culture; seeing the American Revolution as an historical step to restore liberties lost under Norman rule. He reminded King George, “America was not conquered by William the Norman, nor its lands surrendered to him.”
Like many American settlers, the Anglo-Saxons developed tribal mores around commonwealths of sovereign individuals claiming inherent, inviolable rights. Even the local king was subject to laws and custom. Property was respected and common law superseded civil statutes. Modern rights to juries and public hearings emanated from Saxon councils.
The Anglo-Saxons fashioned society on individuals, families, communities and later churches. Problems were resolved locally and only if necessary, by the broader nation. Little interference from without was tolerated. People adjoined, not as spokes on a wheel oriented toward a mystical state, but as webs of interlocking dependencies where neighbors bolstered others by shouldering their share of the load.
Modern historians dismiss this as mere lore, but many colonists, Jefferson foremost, believed Anglo-Saxon culture striking similar to theirs and reminiscent of ancient Israel. Jefferson even proposed a national seal emblazoned with Israel wandering toward the Promised Land and the flip side showing Anglo-Saxon heroes. America’s settlement harkened both. Adams credited the Anglo-Saxons “whose political principles and form of government we have assumed.”
Anglo-Saxon customs had eroded and the historicity is murky, but England suffered far less feudal paralysis than Continental Europe with a relatively fluid class system. The colonists bent British culture towards still greater liberties, forging a uniquely American perspective. Governments were established indigenously by small, often isolated groups dealing practically with local exigencies.
America shared the mother country’s language, culture and common law legal systems, without her predisposition for hereditary nobility or top down suzerainty. Republican principles prevailed. Government was instituted to protect life, liberty and property, further defined to incorporate propriety over conscience as the “pursuit of happiness.”
These free market platforms so prospered America that she soon eclipsed England’s vast prosperity. Jefferson boasted that you could travel the entire Eastern seaboard and see nary an American begging. Today, even our poor are wealthy by any material measure. So too have non-British immigrants fared well by adopting Anglo-American norms.
The USA’s two most affluent segments are Jews and Asians. Those who assimilate flourish, but every ethnicity does better economically in America than from whence their ancestors came. Likewise, the top beneficiaries of an English legacy are Asian – Hong Kong and Singapore.
It is the Left’s sacred cow that the Third World suffers from Western hegemony. Yet, the greatest happening to befall many peoples was seemingly being colonized by Britain or conquered by America. Until China’s recent epiphany, Germany and Japan were the world’s next largest economies.
China and India began their ascents by arcing toward the Anglo-American model. Beijing abandoned communism after seeing her Chinese cousins thrive in Asia’s capitalist outposts. India, as reflected by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has begun to recognize certain benefits from British rule.
When His Britannic Majesty’s forces vanquished India’s Muslim overloads (who invaded India themselves), they did more than establish British preeminence. They also bequeathed the rule of law, functioning courts, property rights and the language of international commerce: English.
While Britain’s empire wasn’t built on altruism, many former colonies profit immensely from her rule. This extends beyond economics. For all of President Obama’s anti-colonialism, remember Britain entered Kenya to abolish the Muslim slave trade, already banished to the interior by the Royal Navy.
Political correctness has so infected American thought that we recoil reflexively at the mere hint of Western brilliance. To the multiculturalists, the only culture that can’t be unequivocally praised is the very Anglo-protestant heritage which spurred America’s greatness. Ironically, it is often guilt laden WASPs, heirs of their wealth, leading the slanderous denunciations of their forbears.
“E Pluribus Unum” – from many, one – gives way to Balkanization where multiculturalists hitch grievance wagons to government’s gravy train. Attracting venturesome immigrants has long boosted America’s fortunes, but success no longer entails mimicking Anglo-American culture. Instead of assimilation, we now espouse bilingual education to abstain from “cultural imperialism.
A quasi-Marxism supplements class warfare with identity politics under the mantle of diversity. Obama’s reelection strategy advocates taxing the affluent to finance public favoritism for others he deems mistreated by what has historically been a libertarian American experiment. Identity politics transform elections into feudal patronage schemes sacrificing property and liberty on the altar of political correctness.
Vigilant Americans must restore the founders’ vision before multiculturalism forever eclipses our last vestiges of liberty.
Bill Flax, Contributor
A history professor once postulated that the most pivotal battle shaping America’s destiny was not Yorktown or Gettysburg, but Quebec in 1759. There General Wolfe demolished French claims to Canada, which confirmed that America would develop decisively within the Anglo-protestant mold.
The latest Economic Freedom of the World rankings (for 2009) highlight the good fortune that resulted from Wolfe’s win. Many commentators will rightly deplore America’s precipitous descent over the past decade – down to tenth, yet another startling detail leaps from the page. Eight of the ten freest lands were once owned by Britain.
The nations enjoying limited government, property rights, sound currency, free trade, ease of regulation, low taxes and restrained public spending include: Hong Kong, followed by Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Chile, United Kingdom, Mauritius and the United States.
The study reveals a potent correlation linking freedom to economic progress. Nations following market principles propel past their government laden counterparts. They earn more, grow faster and “the poorest people in the most economically free countries are nearly twice as rich as the average people in the least free countries.”
The USA has likely fallen further since 2009 as abrasive government expansion continued. Obamacare and Dodd-Frank both passed in 2010. The EPA and NLRB wage regulatory crusades against businesses. Spending remains elevated. Liberty perishes underneath government’s persistent pursuit of power.
In this time of economic stagnation, perhaps prosperity can be retracted from America’s past. As the U.S. declared independence, the Industrial Revolution launched in England. History had heretofore exhibited minimal progress from antiquity. Most remained mired in subsistence level agriculture until suddenly advances in the Anglosphere catapulted living standards forward.
Capitalism offers both abstract liberties as well as freedom from want. Thanks to free markets, common laborers can access more comfort, superior sanitation and even entertainment than nobles experienced before the stirrings of modern industry. The advent of superior medicine and better nutrition even extended life. It’s estimated that prior to the aforementioned advances, three-fourths of everyone ever born died by age 35.
America’s diminished freedom is thus alarming. Historically, America’s unparalleled liberty shone hope across the seas. Our independence was essentially a counter-revolution. America, as Mark Steyn writes, “derives its political character from eighteenth-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go.”
The colonists reasserted their “ancient rights as Englishmen,” then threatened by London’s encroachments after a long span of benign neglect. Previously, enforcement of the Navigation Acts and other laws had been lackluster and easily skirted. But suddenly parliament began interceding to “extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction.”
Jefferson and company believed London violated the laws of nature and saw independence in keeping with British tradition’s historic trajectory towards liberty. Independence climaxed a long quest which commenced on the fields of Runnymede in 1215 when the Magna Carta curtailed the crown’s reach.
The Declaration meant “not to find out new principles, or new arguments” but to appeal to “ common sense.” Thomas Jefferson was particularly enamored with Anglo-Saxon culture; seeing the American Revolution as an historical step to restore liberties lost under Norman rule. He reminded King George, “America was not conquered by William the Norman, nor its lands surrendered to him.”
Like many American settlers, the Anglo-Saxons developed tribal mores around commonwealths of sovereign individuals claiming inherent, inviolable rights. Even the local king was subject to laws and custom. Property was respected and common law superseded civil statutes. Modern rights to juries and public hearings emanated from Saxon councils.
The Anglo-Saxons fashioned society on individuals, families, communities and later churches. Problems were resolved locally and only if necessary, by the broader nation. Little interference from without was tolerated. People adjoined, not as spokes on a wheel oriented toward a mystical state, but as webs of interlocking dependencies where neighbors bolstered others by shouldering their share of the load.
Modern historians dismiss this as mere lore, but many colonists, Jefferson foremost, believed Anglo-Saxon culture striking similar to theirs and reminiscent of ancient Israel. Jefferson even proposed a national seal emblazoned with Israel wandering toward the Promised Land and the flip side showing Anglo-Saxon heroes. America’s settlement harkened both. Adams credited the Anglo-Saxons “whose political principles and form of government we have assumed.”
Anglo-Saxon customs had eroded and the historicity is murky, but England suffered far less feudal paralysis than Continental Europe with a relatively fluid class system. The colonists bent British culture towards still greater liberties, forging a uniquely American perspective. Governments were established indigenously by small, often isolated groups dealing practically with local exigencies.
America shared the mother country’s language, culture and common law legal systems, without her predisposition for hereditary nobility or top down suzerainty. Republican principles prevailed. Government was instituted to protect life, liberty and property, further defined to incorporate propriety over conscience as the “pursuit of happiness.”
These free market platforms so prospered America that she soon eclipsed England’s vast prosperity. Jefferson boasted that you could travel the entire Eastern seaboard and see nary an American begging. Today, even our poor are wealthy by any material measure. So too have non-British immigrants fared well by adopting Anglo-American norms.
The USA’s two most affluent segments are Jews and Asians. Those who assimilate flourish, but every ethnicity does better economically in America than from whence their ancestors came. Likewise, the top beneficiaries of an English legacy are Asian – Hong Kong and Singapore.
It is the Left’s sacred cow that the Third World suffers from Western hegemony. Yet, the greatest happening to befall many peoples was seemingly being colonized by Britain or conquered by America. Until China’s recent epiphany, Germany and Japan were the world’s next largest economies.
China and India began their ascents by arcing toward the Anglo-American model. Beijing abandoned communism after seeing her Chinese cousins thrive in Asia’s capitalist outposts. India, as reflected by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has begun to recognize certain benefits from British rule.
When His Britannic Majesty’s forces vanquished India’s Muslim overloads (who invaded India themselves), they did more than establish British preeminence. They also bequeathed the rule of law, functioning courts, property rights and the language of international commerce: English.
While Britain’s empire wasn’t built on altruism, many former colonies profit immensely from her rule. This extends beyond economics. For all of President Obama’s anti-colonialism, remember Britain entered Kenya to abolish the Muslim slave trade, already banished to the interior by the Royal Navy.
Political correctness has so infected American thought that we recoil reflexively at the mere hint of Western brilliance. To the multiculturalists, the only culture that can’t be unequivocally praised is the very Anglo-protestant heritage which spurred America’s greatness. Ironically, it is often guilt laden WASPs, heirs of their wealth, leading the slanderous denunciations of their forbears.
“E Pluribus Unum” – from many, one – gives way to Balkanization where multiculturalists hitch grievance wagons to government’s gravy train. Attracting venturesome immigrants has long boosted America’s fortunes, but success no longer entails mimicking Anglo-American culture. Instead of assimilation, we now espouse bilingual education to abstain from “cultural imperialism.
A quasi-Marxism supplements class warfare with identity politics under the mantle of diversity. Obama’s reelection strategy advocates taxing the affluent to finance public favoritism for others he deems mistreated by what has historically been a libertarian American experiment. Identity politics transform elections into feudal patronage schemes sacrificing property and liberty on the altar of political correctness.
Vigilant Americans must restore the founders’ vision before multiculturalism forever eclipses our last vestiges of liberty.
Dick Durbin: We, er, don’t have the votes in the Senate to pass Obama’s jobs bill
posted at 9:52 pm on September 29, 2011 by Allahpundit
Note well: It’s not because of a GOP filibuster either.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that, at the moment, Democrats don’t have the votes to pass President Obama’s jobs bill, but Durbin added that that would change.
“Not at the moment, I don’t think we do but, uh, we can work on it,” Durbin said according to Chicago radio station WLS…
“The oil-producing state senators don’t like eliminating or reducing the subsidy for oil companies, “Durbin said. “There are some senators who are up for election who say I’m never gonna vote for a tax increase while I’m up for election, even on the wealthiest people. So, we’re not gonna have 100% Democratic senators. That’s why it needs to be bi-partisan and I hope we can find some Republicans who will join us to make it happen.”
Is this news? We knew on Sept. 14 that Democrats were leery of the bill when Reid insisted that they had other business to handle before taking it up. Two days later, we found out that Senate Democrats spent an hour and a half griping about the bill to White House aides in a meeting. Five Democrats — Begich, Webb, Landrieu, Mikulski, and Casey — were specifically named as opponents. Three days after that, Durbin told CNN not to expect any action on it until October at the earliest, a prediction that’ll end up being proved right. To the extent that his latest comments are “news,” it’s for two reasons. One: Despite having had two weeks to convince his own party’s congressional caucus to rally behind him on this extremely prominent measure, Obama’s still up shinola creek. That’s what happens when your job approval trend lines look like this. Two: We all realize, I hope, that the bill is chiefly a political ploy designed to show The One being proactive on the seminal electoral issue of the day. He expects Republicans to block it, at which point he’ll turn around and blame our endless economic malaise on the GOP. That’s perfectly straightforward — except that he forgot to craft the bill to make sure that it would attract the support of Democrats at least, which is essential if he wants to frame opposition to it as blind wingnut partisanship. I’m as confused as Dave in Texas is about that. If you want to isolate Republican obstructionism as America’s big problem, you should probably first double-check with your own guys to make sure they’re not being obstructionist too, huh?
Brand new from Fox News tonight: A clear majority of voters (52/38) say that if Obama were CEO of a company, he’d have been fired by now. I can’t imagine why.
Note well: It’s not because of a GOP filibuster either.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that, at the moment, Democrats don’t have the votes to pass President Obama’s jobs bill, but Durbin added that that would change.
“Not at the moment, I don’t think we do but, uh, we can work on it,” Durbin said according to Chicago radio station WLS…
“The oil-producing state senators don’t like eliminating or reducing the subsidy for oil companies, “Durbin said. “There are some senators who are up for election who say I’m never gonna vote for a tax increase while I’m up for election, even on the wealthiest people. So, we’re not gonna have 100% Democratic senators. That’s why it needs to be bi-partisan and I hope we can find some Republicans who will join us to make it happen.”
Is this news? We knew on Sept. 14 that Democrats were leery of the bill when Reid insisted that they had other business to handle before taking it up. Two days later, we found out that Senate Democrats spent an hour and a half griping about the bill to White House aides in a meeting. Five Democrats — Begich, Webb, Landrieu, Mikulski, and Casey — were specifically named as opponents. Three days after that, Durbin told CNN not to expect any action on it until October at the earliest, a prediction that’ll end up being proved right. To the extent that his latest comments are “news,” it’s for two reasons. One: Despite having had two weeks to convince his own party’s congressional caucus to rally behind him on this extremely prominent measure, Obama’s still up shinola creek. That’s what happens when your job approval trend lines look like this. Two: We all realize, I hope, that the bill is chiefly a political ploy designed to show The One being proactive on the seminal electoral issue of the day. He expects Republicans to block it, at which point he’ll turn around and blame our endless economic malaise on the GOP. That’s perfectly straightforward — except that he forgot to craft the bill to make sure that it would attract the support of Democrats at least, which is essential if he wants to frame opposition to it as blind wingnut partisanship. I’m as confused as Dave in Texas is about that. If you want to isolate Republican obstructionism as America’s big problem, you should probably first double-check with your own guys to make sure they’re not being obstructionist too, huh?
Brand new from Fox News tonight: A clear majority of voters (52/38) say that if Obama were CEO of a company, he’d have been fired by now. I can’t imagine why.
Obama’s Environmentalist Army Declares War on West Virginia Jobs
Posted on September 29th, 2011
President’s agenda will kill 7,000 mining jobs nationwide
Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign today is calling upon President Obama to freeze proposed mining regulations that will kill good jobs in West Virginia, increase dependence on foreign energy sources and raise electricity prices for consumers nationwide. Today Gov. Perry is visiting West Virginia, where he will continue to share his record and vision of fiscal conservatism and job creation.
“President Obama claims to be a ‘warrior for the middle class,’ but his job-killing regulatory policies are hammering middle class families already struggling to make ends meet,” said Perry spokesman Mark Miner. “The president should freeze the proposed federal regulations endangering thousands of West Virginia jobs and the very existence of the industry that provides 44 percent of America’s electricity.”
The Perry campaign cited the U.S. Office of Surface Mining’s rewrite of the Stream Buffer Zone Rule, which could kill as many as 7,000 coal mining jobs nationwide, or 10 percent of industry total, according to the agency’s own estimates.
“Our families cannot afford four more years of a president sacrificing thousands of jobs and crippling American energy production so he can energize his liberal political base,” said Miner.
President Obama’s policies indicate that he is intent on shutting down the U.S. coal industry, as he admitted in a 2008 interview: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”[1]
The president’s ideologically driven objectives on greenhouse gases are so extreme, in fact, that the EPA recently admitted it would require 230,000 new federal bureaucrats to fully implement the terms of the Clean Air Act. The agency’s admission confirms that the Clean Air Act was never intended to apply to greenhouse gases. Rather than simply concede that fact, the Obama administration has attempted to rewrite the Clean Air Act to satisfy its radical agenda of regulating the entire economy based on emissions.
“Gov. Perry knows we do not have to sacrifice our economy to protect our environment, and we do not have to pit our health against our jobs,” said Miner. “Even President Obama realizes that his environmental extremism is hurting the economy, and that’s why he reluctantly backed off enforcement of smog rules. But if the president is serious about creating jobs, he will freeze all proposed federal regulations for six months, starting today.”
President’s agenda will kill 7,000 mining jobs nationwide
Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign today is calling upon President Obama to freeze proposed mining regulations that will kill good jobs in West Virginia, increase dependence on foreign energy sources and raise electricity prices for consumers nationwide. Today Gov. Perry is visiting West Virginia, where he will continue to share his record and vision of fiscal conservatism and job creation.
“President Obama claims to be a ‘warrior for the middle class,’ but his job-killing regulatory policies are hammering middle class families already struggling to make ends meet,” said Perry spokesman Mark Miner. “The president should freeze the proposed federal regulations endangering thousands of West Virginia jobs and the very existence of the industry that provides 44 percent of America’s electricity.”
The Perry campaign cited the U.S. Office of Surface Mining’s rewrite of the Stream Buffer Zone Rule, which could kill as many as 7,000 coal mining jobs nationwide, or 10 percent of industry total, according to the agency’s own estimates.
“Our families cannot afford four more years of a president sacrificing thousands of jobs and crippling American energy production so he can energize his liberal political base,” said Miner.
President Obama’s policies indicate that he is intent on shutting down the U.S. coal industry, as he admitted in a 2008 interview: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”[1]
The president’s ideologically driven objectives on greenhouse gases are so extreme, in fact, that the EPA recently admitted it would require 230,000 new federal bureaucrats to fully implement the terms of the Clean Air Act. The agency’s admission confirms that the Clean Air Act was never intended to apply to greenhouse gases. Rather than simply concede that fact, the Obama administration has attempted to rewrite the Clean Air Act to satisfy its radical agenda of regulating the entire economy based on emissions.
“Gov. Perry knows we do not have to sacrifice our economy to protect our environment, and we do not have to pit our health against our jobs,” said Miner. “Even President Obama realizes that his environmental extremism is hurting the economy, and that’s why he reluctantly backed off enforcement of smog rules. But if the president is serious about creating jobs, he will freeze all proposed federal regulations for six months, starting today.”
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