Pockets of poverty, like the sores of some malignant disease, are spreading across America, as its states and cities go broke and bankrupt.
“Camden, New Jersey, stands as a warning of what huge pockets of America could turn into,” The Nation magazine reports in its Nov. 22nd issue. In fact, it has already happened, it is happening all over, and there is no signal on the horizon that poverty and blight will not continue to spread. It is not that Americans are lazy and shiftless; rather, they are reeling from betrayal—for they have been betrayed both by their employers, who have shown not an ounce of loyalty to their work forces, and they have been betrayed by their Federal government, which has lied the nation into costly criminal wars.
“Camden is the poster child of postindustrial decay,” writes Chris Hedges, the former foreign correspondent for The New York Times. “It stands as a warning of what huge pockets of the United States could turn into as we cement into place a permanent underclass of the unemployed, slash state and federal services in a desperate bid to cut massive deficits, watch cities and states go bankrupt and struggle to adjust to a stark neofeudalism in which the working and middle classes are decimated.” In an article titled “City of Ruins,” Hedges reports that 70 percent of Camden’s high school students drop out, that the city’s unemployment rate is probably 30 to 40 percent, and that its dangerous streets “are filled with the unemployed.”
What is thriving in Camden is prostitution, the drug trade and crime. “There are perhaps a hundred open-air drug markets, most run by gangs like the Bloods, the Latin Kings, Los Nietos and MS-13,” Hedges writes. “Knots of young men in black leather jackets and baggy sweatshirts sell weed and crack to clients, many of whom drive in from the suburbs. The drug trade is one of the city’s few thriving businesses…Camden is awash in guns…” (and) in 2009 had the highest crime rate in the nation with 2,333 violent crimes per 1,000 population vs. a national average of just 455, Wikipedia reported.
Camden is no isolated example. More than half of its residents, 52 percent, live in poverty. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2006 ranked it fourth highest among cities with under 250,00 residents as 35.6 percent of its population lived in poverty. It followed Brownsville, Tex., 40.6%; and College Station, Tex., 37.3%. Other poverty-struck cities were Edinburg, Tex., 35.4%; Bloomington,Ind., 34.7%; Flint, Mich., 34.1%; Kalamazoo, Mich., 33.4; Florence-Graham, Ca. (in Los Angeles County), 33.0%; Gary, Ind., 32.8%; and Muncie, Ind., 32.6%
The poverty rates of major cities show similar patterns of despair. The ten having the worst poverty rates are Detroit, 32.5%; Buffalo, 29.9%; Cincinnati, 27.8%; Cleveland, 27.0%; Miami, 26.9%; St. Louis, 26.8%; El Paso, 26.4%; Milwaukee, 26.2%; Philadelphia, 25.1%; and Newark, 24.2%.
High poverty rates, of course, stem largely from persistent, structural unemployment. As the Washington Post reported last January 15th, “Blacks, Hispanics and men have suffered the most mainly because they have been disproportionately employed in sectors hardest hit in the recession — manufacturing and construction. For instance, the unemployment rate for blacks is expected to reach 27 percent in Michigan, which has been shedding auto industry jobs. Other states with jobless rates above 20 percent for blacks are Alabama, Illinois, Ohio and South Carolina.”
Where the New Deal’s Work Projects Administration(WPA) alone in the Great Depression created 8-million new jobs, nothing of that scope exists today. The same Post article notes, “The Congressional Black Caucus wants the government to create training programs and jobs in low-income communities with the highest unemployment rates.” “It’s like triage in an emergency room — you take care of people who need the most help first and you help the others later,” said Kai Filion, research analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. Economic losses, the analyst said, could result in a 50 percent poverty rate for black children, up from 34 percent in 2008. While statistics defining the plight of African-Americans make for grim reading, it should be remembered that the majority of America’s unemployed are Caucasian and that the real unemployment figure according to some authorities is 20 percent, not the 10 percent reported by Washington.
It is hardly accidental that cities with high unemployment rates also have high crime rates. In terms of violent crime, as FBI statistics for calendar year 2009 show, Detroit, noted above to have the highest poverty rate, also has the most violent crime per 1,000 citizens, with 19.67 cases. Other major cities are (2) Memphis, 18.06; (3)Oakland, 16.79; (4) Baltimore, 15.13; (5) Buffalo, 14.59; (6) Cleveland, 13.95; (7)Kansas City, 13.00; (8) Stockton, 12.67; (9) Washington, D.C., 12.65; and (10), Philadelphia, 12.38. As Sir Thomas More wrote in his classic Utopia, published in 1516: “You allow these people to be brought up in the worst possible way, and systematically corrupted from their earliest years. Finally, when they grow up and commit the crimes that they were obviously destined to commit, ever since they were children, you start punishing them. In other words, you create thieves, and then punish them for stealing,” Could he have better explained America’s 2.3-million prison population today?
In Camden, there isn’t a single inner city supermarket that can put ghetto kids to work at an honest job after school and weekends but reporter Hedges says there are plenty of drug markets. Often, the only job a teenager can land is one on the staff of the local drug lord. The other employment choice for ghettoized youth is the military. While Pentagon recruiters strongly deny they target low-income neighborhoods, a careful reading of the home towns of those reported killed in the Middle East may well cast doubt upon this contention. Camden once was a significant manufacturing hub but those days are long gone. In many communities, major employers abandoned their workers with no compunction (and often without deserved pensions), automating employees out of their jobs. Other employers, as in Detroit, simply relocated their plants overseas entirely. The idea of a prosperous work force based on a vibrant local economy to underpin “the American Dream” got lost in the race to maximize corporate profits. In Trenton, N.J., the sign on a bridge across the Delaware River, “Trenton Makes, The World Takes,” is the boast of a bygone era. Reduced employment means reduced purchasing power and reduced tax take for local governments. This year, according to The Christian Science Monitor, California faces a $20 billion budget gap. It has already resorted to “mandatory furloughs for all state workers, teacher layoffs, (and reduced) aid to the university system 20 percent, (and made) massive cuts to education, corrections, and social services.” This grim picture is mirrored everywhere. The rising unemployment in New York City’s workforce, for example, has worsened its budget crisis, Financial Times reported Nov. 22nd.
At the same time, U.S. corporations continue their race to the bottom for cheap labor. Cable News Network’s “Exporting America” broadcast listed hundreds of “U.S. companies either sending American jobs overseas or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor instead of American workers.” A very small fraction of the companies on CNN’s list are reprinted in the following three paragraphs to convey some idea of the enormity of the indifference of employers for their workers:
Aetna, AIG, Alamo Rent a Car, Alcoa, Allstate, Anheuser-Bush, AT&T, Bank of America, Bechtel, BellSouth, Best Buy, Borden Chemical, Boeing, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Caterpillar, ChevronTexaco, Citigrouup, Continental airlines, Delta Air Lines, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Eastman Kodak, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, Fedders Corp., Fluor, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors, and Goldman Sachs.
Also, Halliburton, Hershey, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, IBM, Illinois Tool Works, ITT Industries, John Deere, Johns Manville, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg, Kerr-McGhee Chemicals, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft Foods, Lear Corp., Levi Strauss, Lockheed Martin, Mattel, Maytag, Merrill Lynch, MetLife, Microsoft, Monsanto, Motorola, Nabisco, Northrop Grumman, Northwest Airlines, Office Depot, Orbitz, Oracle, Otis Elevator, Owens Corning, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Polaroid, Pratt & Whitney, Procter & Gamble, and Prudential Insurance.
Also, Quaker Oats, Radio Shack, Rayovac, Rohm & Haas, Safeway, Sara Lee, Seco Manufacturing, Square D, State Farm Insurance, Target, Tenneco Automotive, Texas Instruments, Time Warner, Tropical Sportswear, TRW Automotive, Tupperware, Tyco Electronics, Union Pacific, UNISYS, United Plastics Group, United Technologies, Verizon, Wachovia Bank, Weyerhaeuser, Xerox, and Zenith.
Why hasn’t the Obama administration taken swift and forceful action to relieve the situation, perhaps even to launch the Domestic Marshall Plan for the cities the Urban League’s Whitney Young called for as far back as 1962? Perhaps it’s because like President Bush before him Mr. Obama is more focused on waging war. Here, again, Sir Thomas More speaks to us: “To start with, most kings are more interested in the science of war…than in useful peacetime techniques. They’re far more anxious, by hook or by crook, to acquire new kingdoms than to govern their existing ones properly.”
This, of course, applies perfectly to America’s kings, for not only have our presidents assumed the powers and prerogatives of kings but they have, in fact, acted no better than medieval kings, waging wars with armies raised from the poorest strata of society and spending lavishly to conquer while ignoring their own citizenry’s cries for bread and opportunity. Put another way, the Pentagon is spending more money for war (52 cents of every tax dollar) than all 50 states combined spend for all purposes to improve the lot of 300 million Americans. In their book, “The Three Trillion Dollar War”(W.W. Norton), Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes write, “A $3 trillion figure for the total cost strikes us as judicious, and probably errs on the low side. Needless to say, this number represents the cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq.” (Stiglitz is former chief economist at the World Bank and a Nobel Prize laureate and Bilmes is a public policy authority at Harvard.) Given the wars’ colossal and criminal waste of human life and treasure, it is little wonder states and cities the nation over are starved for income, record numbers of homes are being foreclosed, and soup kitchens are reporting a rising influx of patrons, many of them bewildered former members of the shrinking middle class.
This situation has pertained in America now for several generations. Before Iraq and Afghanistan there was the Viet Nam aggression. Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern attempted to make the connection between war abroad and hard times at home when he said, “For every bomb that falls in Viet Nam a house somewhere in America collapses from neglect.” McGovern was defeated by incumbent Richard Nixon in a landslide. It is apparent from the recent elections that Americans today, just as in the national election of 1972, do not grasp the reality of the terminal disease that is war. They do not recognize how it is driving them relentlessly into poverty while sacrificing their children like some primitive culture on the altar of the military-industrial complex to ensure a profitable harvest from their blood.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
TSA And America's Turning Point
Hobbes - The recently-escalated battle between the American people and the TSA is far more important than it first appears. The final outcome of this argument will determine whether we still live in a nation “of the people, by the people, for the people”, or whether we have become a soft tyranny where our democratic forms of elections and representatives have been reduced to a meaningless veneer as in the old Soviet Union or Red China.
The Consent of the Governed
If America has a single founding principle, it is this: no government has any authority to take any action without the consent of the governed. Our Founding Fathers did not object to the principle of paying taxes per se; they objected strongly to the idea of being forced to pay taxes to a government where they had no input. Freedom’s cry was not “No taxation” then, and it isn’t now; it was “No taxation without representation.” The same goes for any other intrusive regulation.
The concept of “the consent of the governed” means more than just voting, however. A hundred years ago, Prohibition was enacted scrupulously according to democratic forms: Congress and then the required number of states passed a constitutional amendment allowing it, and then Congress and the President passed the Volstead Act enforcing it.
However, events quickly revealed that Prohibition did not have the consent of the governed, or at least a very sizable minority of them: whole sectors of American society insisted on having their booze no matter what the law said. The end result was vast wealth poured into crime syndicates; eventually Prohibition was repealed with the nation much the worse off for the experience.
There are many laws on the books today which do not really have the consent of the governed, but the government enforces them with a light touch so as not to provoke a backlash. Consider speed limits: almost everybody speeds, and the police almost never ticket people for going just a hair over. You usually have to be speeding by a good bit, and even then, getting caught is relatively rare. If the police seriously tried to ticket every single speeder, voters would demand that the limits be changed.
Or so we’ve always assumed – after all, government ultimately answers to the people, doesn’t it?
The Servant Becomes The Master
We are about to find out. There is no question that America is in the midst of a long-overdue revolt against intrusive government on many levels, but the TSA’s indignities and incompetence reach into every middle-class life. The molestations, porno-scans, and general harassment set off so many warning signals it’s a wonder anyone’s still flying at all.
The people have made their fury loudly know. The TSA’s response? Screw you!
Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, said “if people want to travel by some other means,” they have that right – which is perfectly true but entirely beside the point. The TSA’s chief John Pistole was even more blunt, as the Wall Street Journal reports:
Faced with growing public criticism of new airport security measures, the head of the Transportation Security Administration has a simple message: They’re necessary, and they’re going to stay for now. The good news for wary travelers is that the TSA has no plans to ratchet up airport screening even further to combat potential threats.
That’s the good news – that things aren’t going to get any worse, at least for now? Is this how public servants are supposed to treat the public who are their masters?
It’s clear that the TSA no longer considers the flying public to be their own higher authority; quite the contrary, they are subjects to be ordered around at a whim and made to do whatever the Powers That Be wish on whatever pretext comes to hand.
Let’s be clear: neither the new porno-scanners nor the fondling-patdown could have caught the Underwear Bomber, much less a terrorist like the one in Saudi Arabia who shoved the explosives up his butt. After nearly a decade, the TSA has yet to catch one single terrorist using any of their airport inspections – all the terrorists who’ve been caught, have been caught by intelligence agencies using surveillance and counterintelligence techniques, not goons with gloves and wands.
So, we have the public being forced to do something they very strongly do not want to do, for no reason at all; they are protesting loudly; and the government blithely blows them off. Something is very badly wrong here.
We cannot help but think of German poet Bertold Brecht’s arch observation about a Communist government’s dissatisfaction with its revolting people:
Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Which of course is what the Left has tried to do with their repeated calls for illegal-alien amnesty and persistent voting fraud.
To sum up: we have an arm of the government openly and public committing sexual molestation on protesting innocent Americans, arrogantly proclaiming their intention to continue doing it no matter what, and merrily agreeing that the Constitution is a dead letter:
Nobody likes to have their 4th Amendment violated going through a security line, but truth of the matter is, we’re gonna have to do it.
What? Is that all it takes? A simple pronouncement of official regret for the passing of our founding documents, and then off we go into total tyranny?
This conflict with the TSA is merely a skirmish in the far larger ongoing war to determine if there are any limits whatsoever on Big Government, but it’s perhaps the most telling one yet.
If Americans will permit their wives, children, and themselves, to be sexually molested and openly humiliated in full view of the public by uniformed government operatives – in what still purports to be a representative democracy – then, indeed, they will tolerate anything, and there is little hope for the future.
This battle must be won, for to lose it means losing everything.
The Consent of the Governed
If America has a single founding principle, it is this: no government has any authority to take any action without the consent of the governed. Our Founding Fathers did not object to the principle of paying taxes per se; they objected strongly to the idea of being forced to pay taxes to a government where they had no input. Freedom’s cry was not “No taxation” then, and it isn’t now; it was “No taxation without representation.” The same goes for any other intrusive regulation.
The concept of “the consent of the governed” means more than just voting, however. A hundred years ago, Prohibition was enacted scrupulously according to democratic forms: Congress and then the required number of states passed a constitutional amendment allowing it, and then Congress and the President passed the Volstead Act enforcing it.
However, events quickly revealed that Prohibition did not have the consent of the governed, or at least a very sizable minority of them: whole sectors of American society insisted on having their booze no matter what the law said. The end result was vast wealth poured into crime syndicates; eventually Prohibition was repealed with the nation much the worse off for the experience.
There are many laws on the books today which do not really have the consent of the governed, but the government enforces them with a light touch so as not to provoke a backlash. Consider speed limits: almost everybody speeds, and the police almost never ticket people for going just a hair over. You usually have to be speeding by a good bit, and even then, getting caught is relatively rare. If the police seriously tried to ticket every single speeder, voters would demand that the limits be changed.
Or so we’ve always assumed – after all, government ultimately answers to the people, doesn’t it?
The Servant Becomes The Master
We are about to find out. There is no question that America is in the midst of a long-overdue revolt against intrusive government on many levels, but the TSA’s indignities and incompetence reach into every middle-class life. The molestations, porno-scans, and general harassment set off so many warning signals it’s a wonder anyone’s still flying at all.
The people have made their fury loudly know. The TSA’s response? Screw you!
Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, said “if people want to travel by some other means,” they have that right – which is perfectly true but entirely beside the point. The TSA’s chief John Pistole was even more blunt, as the Wall Street Journal reports:
Faced with growing public criticism of new airport security measures, the head of the Transportation Security Administration has a simple message: They’re necessary, and they’re going to stay for now. The good news for wary travelers is that the TSA has no plans to ratchet up airport screening even further to combat potential threats.
That’s the good news – that things aren’t going to get any worse, at least for now? Is this how public servants are supposed to treat the public who are their masters?
It’s clear that the TSA no longer considers the flying public to be their own higher authority; quite the contrary, they are subjects to be ordered around at a whim and made to do whatever the Powers That Be wish on whatever pretext comes to hand.
Let’s be clear: neither the new porno-scanners nor the fondling-patdown could have caught the Underwear Bomber, much less a terrorist like the one in Saudi Arabia who shoved the explosives up his butt. After nearly a decade, the TSA has yet to catch one single terrorist using any of their airport inspections – all the terrorists who’ve been caught, have been caught by intelligence agencies using surveillance and counterintelligence techniques, not goons with gloves and wands.
So, we have the public being forced to do something they very strongly do not want to do, for no reason at all; they are protesting loudly; and the government blithely blows them off. Something is very badly wrong here.
We cannot help but think of German poet Bertold Brecht’s arch observation about a Communist government’s dissatisfaction with its revolting people:
Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Which of course is what the Left has tried to do with their repeated calls for illegal-alien amnesty and persistent voting fraud.
To sum up: we have an arm of the government openly and public committing sexual molestation on protesting innocent Americans, arrogantly proclaiming their intention to continue doing it no matter what, and merrily agreeing that the Constitution is a dead letter:
Nobody likes to have their 4th Amendment violated going through a security line, but truth of the matter is, we’re gonna have to do it.
What? Is that all it takes? A simple pronouncement of official regret for the passing of our founding documents, and then off we go into total tyranny?
This conflict with the TSA is merely a skirmish in the far larger ongoing war to determine if there are any limits whatsoever on Big Government, but it’s perhaps the most telling one yet.
If Americans will permit their wives, children, and themselves, to be sexually molested and openly humiliated in full view of the public by uniformed government operatives – in what still purports to be a representative democracy – then, indeed, they will tolerate anything, and there is little hope for the future.
This battle must be won, for to lose it means losing everything.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
TSA Gestpo American Empire
Paul Craig Roberts - It doesn’t take a bureaucrat long to create an empire. John Pistole, the FBI agent who took over the Transportation Security Administration on July 1 told USA Today 16 days later that protecting trains and subways from terrorist attacks will be as high a priority for him as air travel.
It is difficult to imagine New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on crowed subway platforms or showing up an hour or two in advance for clearance for a 15 minute subway ride, but once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. Buses will be next, although it is even more difficult to imagine open air bus stops turned into security zones with screeners and gropers inspecting passengers before they board.
Will taxi passengers be next? In those Muslim lands whose citizens the US government has been slaughtering for years, favorite weapons for retaliating against the Americans are car and truck bombs. How long before Pistole announces that the TSA Gestapo is setting up roadblocks on city streets, highways and interstates to check cars for bombs?
That 15 minute trip to the grocery store then becomes an all day affair.
Indeed, it has already begun. Last September agents from Homeland Security, TSA, and the US Department of Transportation, assisted by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, conducted a counter-terrorism operation on busy Interstate 20 just west of Atlanta, Georgia. Designated VIPER (Visible Inter-mobile Prevention and Response), the operation required all trucks to stop to be screened for bombs. Federal agents used dogs, screening devices, and a large drive-through bomb detection machine. Imagine what the delays did to delivery schedules and truckers’ bottom lines.
There are also news reports of federal trucks equipped with backscatter X-ray devices that secretly scan cars and pedestrians.
With such expensive counter-terrorism activities, both in terms of the hard-pressed taxpayers’ money and civil liberties, one would think that bombs were going off all over America. But, of course, they aren’t. There has not been a successful terrorist act since 9/11, and thousands of independent experts doubt the government’s explanation of that event.
Subsequent domestic terrorist events have turned out to be FBI sting operations in which FBI agents organize not-so-bright disaffected members of society and lead them into displaying interest in participating in a terrorist act. Once the FBI agent, pretending to be a terrorist, succeeds in prompting all the right words to be said and captured on his hidden recorder, the “terrorists” are arrested and the “plot” exposed.
The very fact that the FBI has to orchestrate fake terrorism proves the absence of real terrorists.
If Americans were more thoughtful and less gullible, they might wonder why all the emphasis on transportation when there are so many soft targets. Shopping centers, for example. If there were enough terrorists in America to justify the existence of Homeland Security, bombs would be going off round the clock in shopping malls in every state. The effect would be far more terrifying than blowing up an airliner.
Indeed, if terrorists want to attack air travelers, they never need to board an airplane.
All they need to do is to join the throngs of passengers waiting to go through the TSA scanners and set off their bombs. The TSA has conveniently assembled the targets.
The final proof that there are no terrorists is that not a single neoconservative or government official responsible for the Bush regime’s invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan and the Obama regime’s slaughters of Pakistanis, Yemenis, and Somalians has been assassinated. None of these Americans who are responsible for lies, deceptions, and invasions that have destroyed the lives of countless numbers of Muslims have any security protection. If Muslims were capable of pulling off 9/11, they are certainly capable of assassinating Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Condi Rice, Kristol, Bolton, Goldberg, and scores of others during the same hour of the same day.
I am not advocating that terrorists assassinate anyone. I am just making the point that if the US was as overrun with terrorists as empire-building bureaucrats pretend, we would definitely be experiencing dramatic terrorist acts. The argument is not believable that a government that was incapable of preventing 9/11 is so all-knowing that it can prevent assassination of unprotected neocons and shopping malls from being bombed.
If Al Qaeda was anything like the organization that the US government claims, it would not be focused on trivial targets such as passenger airliners. The organization, if it exists, would be focused on its real enemies. Try to imagine the propaganda value of terrorists wiping out the neoconservatives in one fell swoop, followed by an announcement that every member of the federal government down to the lowest GS, every member of the House and Senate, and every governor was next in line to be bumped off.
This would be real terrorism instead of the make-belief stuff associated with shoe bombs that don’t work, underwear bombs that independent experts say could not work, and bottled water and shampoo bombs that experts say cannot possibly be put together in airliner lavatories.
Think about it. Would a terror organization capable of outwitting all 16 US intelligence agencies, all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel’s Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, air traffic control, the Pentagon, and airport security four times in one hour put its unrivaled prestige at risk with improbable shoe bombs, shampoo bombs, and underwear bombs?
After success in destroying the World Trade Center and blowing up part of the Pentagon, it is an extraordinary comedown to go after a mere airliner. Would a person who gains fame by knocking out the world heavyweight boxing champion make himself a laughing stock by taking lunch money from school boys?
TSA is a far greater threat to Americans than are terrorists. Pistole has given the finger to US senators and representatives, state legislators, and the traveling public who have expressed their views that virtual strip searches and sexual molestation are too high a price to pay for “security.” Indeed, the TSA with its Gestapo attitude and methods, is succeeding in making Americans more terrified of the TSA than they are of terrorists.
Make up your own mind. What terrifies you the most. Terrorists, who in all likelihood you will never encounter in your lifetime, or the TSA that you will encounter every time you fly and soon, according to Pistole, every time you take a train, a subway, or drive in a car or truck?
Before making up your mind, consider this report from Antiwar.com on November 19: “TSA officials say that anyone refusing both the full body scanners and the enhanced pat down procedures will be taken into custody. Once there the detainees will not only be barred from flying, but will be held indefinitely as suspected terrorists . . . One sheriff’s office said they were already preparing to handle a large number of detainees and plan to treat them as terror suspects.”
Who is cowing Americans into submission, terrorists or the TSA Gestapo?
It is difficult to imagine New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on crowed subway platforms or showing up an hour or two in advance for clearance for a 15 minute subway ride, but once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. Buses will be next, although it is even more difficult to imagine open air bus stops turned into security zones with screeners and gropers inspecting passengers before they board.
Will taxi passengers be next? In those Muslim lands whose citizens the US government has been slaughtering for years, favorite weapons for retaliating against the Americans are car and truck bombs. How long before Pistole announces that the TSA Gestapo is setting up roadblocks on city streets, highways and interstates to check cars for bombs?
That 15 minute trip to the grocery store then becomes an all day affair.
Indeed, it has already begun. Last September agents from Homeland Security, TSA, and the US Department of Transportation, assisted by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, conducted a counter-terrorism operation on busy Interstate 20 just west of Atlanta, Georgia. Designated VIPER (Visible Inter-mobile Prevention and Response), the operation required all trucks to stop to be screened for bombs. Federal agents used dogs, screening devices, and a large drive-through bomb detection machine. Imagine what the delays did to delivery schedules and truckers’ bottom lines.
There are also news reports of federal trucks equipped with backscatter X-ray devices that secretly scan cars and pedestrians.
With such expensive counter-terrorism activities, both in terms of the hard-pressed taxpayers’ money and civil liberties, one would think that bombs were going off all over America. But, of course, they aren’t. There has not been a successful terrorist act since 9/11, and thousands of independent experts doubt the government’s explanation of that event.
Subsequent domestic terrorist events have turned out to be FBI sting operations in which FBI agents organize not-so-bright disaffected members of society and lead them into displaying interest in participating in a terrorist act. Once the FBI agent, pretending to be a terrorist, succeeds in prompting all the right words to be said and captured on his hidden recorder, the “terrorists” are arrested and the “plot” exposed.
The very fact that the FBI has to orchestrate fake terrorism proves the absence of real terrorists.
If Americans were more thoughtful and less gullible, they might wonder why all the emphasis on transportation when there are so many soft targets. Shopping centers, for example. If there were enough terrorists in America to justify the existence of Homeland Security, bombs would be going off round the clock in shopping malls in every state. The effect would be far more terrifying than blowing up an airliner.
Indeed, if terrorists want to attack air travelers, they never need to board an airplane.
All they need to do is to join the throngs of passengers waiting to go through the TSA scanners and set off their bombs. The TSA has conveniently assembled the targets.
The final proof that there are no terrorists is that not a single neoconservative or government official responsible for the Bush regime’s invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan and the Obama regime’s slaughters of Pakistanis, Yemenis, and Somalians has been assassinated. None of these Americans who are responsible for lies, deceptions, and invasions that have destroyed the lives of countless numbers of Muslims have any security protection. If Muslims were capable of pulling off 9/11, they are certainly capable of assassinating Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Condi Rice, Kristol, Bolton, Goldberg, and scores of others during the same hour of the same day.
I am not advocating that terrorists assassinate anyone. I am just making the point that if the US was as overrun with terrorists as empire-building bureaucrats pretend, we would definitely be experiencing dramatic terrorist acts. The argument is not believable that a government that was incapable of preventing 9/11 is so all-knowing that it can prevent assassination of unprotected neocons and shopping malls from being bombed.
If Al Qaeda was anything like the organization that the US government claims, it would not be focused on trivial targets such as passenger airliners. The organization, if it exists, would be focused on its real enemies. Try to imagine the propaganda value of terrorists wiping out the neoconservatives in one fell swoop, followed by an announcement that every member of the federal government down to the lowest GS, every member of the House and Senate, and every governor was next in line to be bumped off.
This would be real terrorism instead of the make-belief stuff associated with shoe bombs that don’t work, underwear bombs that independent experts say could not work, and bottled water and shampoo bombs that experts say cannot possibly be put together in airliner lavatories.
Think about it. Would a terror organization capable of outwitting all 16 US intelligence agencies, all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel’s Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, air traffic control, the Pentagon, and airport security four times in one hour put its unrivaled prestige at risk with improbable shoe bombs, shampoo bombs, and underwear bombs?
After success in destroying the World Trade Center and blowing up part of the Pentagon, it is an extraordinary comedown to go after a mere airliner. Would a person who gains fame by knocking out the world heavyweight boxing champion make himself a laughing stock by taking lunch money from school boys?
TSA is a far greater threat to Americans than are terrorists. Pistole has given the finger to US senators and representatives, state legislators, and the traveling public who have expressed their views that virtual strip searches and sexual molestation are too high a price to pay for “security.” Indeed, the TSA with its Gestapo attitude and methods, is succeeding in making Americans more terrified of the TSA than they are of terrorists.
Make up your own mind. What terrifies you the most. Terrorists, who in all likelihood you will never encounter in your lifetime, or the TSA that you will encounter every time you fly and soon, according to Pistole, every time you take a train, a subway, or drive in a car or truck?
Before making up your mind, consider this report from Antiwar.com on November 19: “TSA officials say that anyone refusing both the full body scanners and the enhanced pat down procedures will be taken into custody. Once there the detainees will not only be barred from flying, but will be held indefinitely as suspected terrorists . . . One sheriff’s office said they were already preparing to handle a large number of detainees and plan to treat them as terror suspects.”
Who is cowing Americans into submission, terrorists or the TSA Gestapo?
Friday, November 19, 2010
Chertoff And Soros Profits From TSA Scanner Machines
Washington Examiner - Be sure and read Tim Carney’s Examiner column today on the politically-connected lobby for the controversial new TSA scanners that are upsetting airline employees and travelers everywhere. Carney notes that a company called Rapiscan got a $165 million contract for the new body image scanners four days after the underwear-bomber incident this past Christmas. Not surprisingly, Rapiscan is politically connected, observes Carney:
Rapiscan got the other naked-scanner contract from the TSA, worth $173 million. Rapiscan’s lobbyists include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. When Defense Daily reported on Price’s appropriations bill last winter, the publication noted “Price likes the budget for its emphasis on filling gaps in aviation security, in particular the whole body imaging systems.”
Then this morning Carney also noted that former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff was flacking for Rapiscan. As for the company’s other political connections, it also appears that none other than George Soros, the billionaire funder of the country’s liberal political infrastructure, owns 11,300 shares of OSI Systems Inc., the company that owns Rapiscan. Not surprisingly, OSI’s stock has appreciated considerably over the course of the year. Soros certainly is a savvy investor.
Note that OSI Systems CEO is Deepak Chopra, but it appears to be a different Deepak Chopra than the more famous liberal new age guru.
Rapiscan got the other naked-scanner contract from the TSA, worth $173 million. Rapiscan’s lobbyists include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. When Defense Daily reported on Price’s appropriations bill last winter, the publication noted “Price likes the budget for its emphasis on filling gaps in aviation security, in particular the whole body imaging systems.”
Then this morning Carney also noted that former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff was flacking for Rapiscan. As for the company’s other political connections, it also appears that none other than George Soros, the billionaire funder of the country’s liberal political infrastructure, owns 11,300 shares of OSI Systems Inc., the company that owns Rapiscan. Not surprisingly, OSI’s stock has appreciated considerably over the course of the year. Soros certainly is a savvy investor.
Note that OSI Systems CEO is Deepak Chopra, but it appears to be a different Deepak Chopra than the more famous liberal new age guru.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Dems Dismisses Grion Searches As Love Touches
Fox Nation - Transportation Safety Administration chief John Pistole and several senators from both parties defended the new, enhanced airport security screening procedures as necessary in the face of a persistent and evolving terrorist threat in a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
Pistole, calm and confident in the face of an increasing public outcry against the procedures, talked extensively about the repercussions of last year's attempted Christmas Day bombing being the impetus for the enhanced screenings before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, TSA's oversight committee.
"We know the terrorists' intent is still there," Pistole testified. "We are using technology and protocols to stay ahead of the threat and keep you safe. (Several near-misses by terrorists on airplane bombings) got through security because we were not being thorough enough in our pat-downs."
Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said prior to Pistole's testimony that she believed TSA was in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, because people would be hopping mad at TSA if Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab had succeeded. She went on to say the new advanced imaging technology--which has caused uproar because of its leave-no-secrets imaging and potential health risks--is more of a blessing than a curse.
"I'm wildly excited that I can walk through a machine instead of getting my dose of love pats," Sen. McCaskill said.
Pistole, calm and confident in the face of an increasing public outcry against the procedures, talked extensively about the repercussions of last year's attempted Christmas Day bombing being the impetus for the enhanced screenings before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, TSA's oversight committee.
"We know the terrorists' intent is still there," Pistole testified. "We are using technology and protocols to stay ahead of the threat and keep you safe. (Several near-misses by terrorists on airplane bombings) got through security because we were not being thorough enough in our pat-downs."
Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said prior to Pistole's testimony that she believed TSA was in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, because people would be hopping mad at TSA if Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab had succeeded. She went on to say the new advanced imaging technology--which has caused uproar because of its leave-no-secrets imaging and potential health risks--is more of a blessing than a curse.
"I'm wildly excited that I can walk through a machine instead of getting my dose of love pats," Sen. McCaskill said.
Former Treasury Secretary Rubin: Bond Market Could Implode
EconomicPolicyJournal.com - l Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is laying it on the line. At a conference today at the Pierre Hotel in NYC he said, according to Arron Tusk, that the soaring federal budget deficit and the Fed’s quantitative easing are putting the U.S. in “terribly dangerous territory” and warned of a bond market “implosion.”
Get this. He said Congress’ vote on raising the deficit ceiling next spring could be the “trigger” for a rout in the Treasury market.
He also said the Fed’s plan to buy $600 billion of Treasuries “has a lot of risk,” calling the international reaction “horrendous.”
Get this. He said Congress’ vote on raising the deficit ceiling next spring could be the “trigger” for a rout in the Treasury market.
He also said the Fed’s plan to buy $600 billion of Treasuries “has a lot of risk,” calling the international reaction “horrendous.”
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
New Jersey Legislators Takes On The TSA Naked Body Scanners
TRENTON— Senator Michael J. Doherty (R-Hunterdon, Warren) and Senator James Beach (D-Camden) today announced they will present resolutions to the Senate and Assembly calling on the U.S. Congress to end TSA screening procedures requiring full body scans and pat downs at U.S. airports Their action comes in response to widespread concerns over privacy and radiation, as well as reports of inappropriate conduct by TSA agents during the screening process.
“The pursuit of security should not force Americans to surrender their civil liberties or basic human dignity at a TSA checkpoint,” said Doherty. “Subjecting law-abiding American citizens to naked body scans and full body pat downs is intolerable, humiliating, vulnerable to abuse, and is fast becoming a disincentive to travel. Particularly concerning to us is the fact that physical searches result in children being touched in private areas of the body. Terrorists hate America because of the freedoms upon which this great nation was built. By implementing these screening measures, the TSA has already handed a victory to those who seek to destroy our freedoms.
“The pursuit of security should not force Americans to surrender their civil liberties or basic human dignity at a TSA checkpoint,” said Doherty. “Subjecting law-abiding American citizens to naked body scans and full body pat downs is intolerable, humiliating, vulnerable to abuse, and is fast becoming a disincentive to travel. Particularly concerning to us is the fact that physical searches result in children being touched in private areas of the body. Terrorists hate America because of the freedoms upon which this great nation was built. By implementing these screening measures, the TSA has already handed a victory to those who seek to destroy our freedoms.
Weak Dollar Seen as Unlikely to Cure Joblessness In America
CNBC - A weakening currency traditionally helps a country raise its exports and create more jobs for its workers. But the declining value of the dollar may not help the United States increase economic growth as much as it might have in the past.
Though a weakened dollar would help exports to some degree, business executives and economists said that because of the ways American multinational companies operated, it was uncertain whether it would cause much of an increase in hiring.
The issue is crucial for President Obama, who made economic growth and job creation the main themes of his recent 10-day trip to Asia. He has also held out the prospect that a surge in exports would reduce the nation’s stubborn unemployment rate, currently 9.6 percent.
Other world leaders have complained that American policies, especially the monetary easing the Federal Reserve announced this month, will depress the dollar and give American exporters an unfair advantage.
Mr. Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner have repeatedly defended the central bank’s action as a move designed to encourage American businesses to borrow, invest and hire rather than one specifically aimed at lowering the value of the dollar.
But even if the Fed’s action does end up weakening the dollar, American workers may not benefit much. For one, many big American manufacturers, from General Motors to General Electric, often make goods in the countries where they are sold rather than shipping the products abroad. This effectively takes exchange rates out of the equation, since they are using only one currency.
What is more, companies that do send goods to other countries often buy components from abroad, so the advantage of a weaker dollar in selling is offset by the higher cost of buying.
“There are very few corporations that would see this just in one way,” said Martin Regalia, chief economist at the United States Chamber of Commerce. “It cuts across a whole bunch of lines.”
Even when a company enjoys a relative surge in foreign sales, it won’t necessarily lead to a hiring spree. That is because the largest proportion of American exports are still manufactured goods, which are no longer so labor-intensive.
And many of the companies that still manufacture in this country are businesses that have not gone offshore because they are too small to justify setting up overseas operations. A weak dollar can help their businesses, but it may not prompt a wave of hiring.
“The net export effect is going to be positive, but it won’t be the driver of jobs,” said Daniel J. Meckstroth, chief economist of the Manufacturers Alliance, a trade group. “You can replace people with machines.”
According to Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight, the dollar fell by 31 percent against a basket of major currencies since 2001, as American exports increased by 45 percent. But manufacturing employment dropped by nearly a third in that time, to 11.7 million workers from 16.4 million.
The dollar has already fallen by about 10 percent against a range of currencies since the beginning of June, and government figures show that American exports rose in September by $500 million, or 0.3 percent, to their highest level in two years.
Despite the outcry from other world leaders after the Federal Reserve’s decision to inject $600 billion into the economy, the dollar strengthened slightly last week. But even if it does start drifting down again, most economists do not expect the devaluation to be steep. Some argue that most of the weakening has already happened because traders have anticipated the Fed’s action for some time.
Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said he expected the dollar to fall another 10 percent in coming months, based on a basket of currencies from countries that trade with the United States.
He estimates that such a decline would lead to about a $100 billion increase in American exports over the next two years, which he believes could translate into about 500,000 jobs. Although Mr. Hufbauer said that number was “not bad,” he noted that it would not put much of a dent in the nearly 15 million people who are still out of work.
Another reason increased sales abroad might not translate into American jobs is that American companies have moved steadily overseas in recent decades. The number of workers employed by American companies abroad more than doubled from 1989 to 2008, to 10.5 million, according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis. Companies mostly wanted to open up foreign markets, and in some cases take advantage of cheaper labor, studies show, but less vulnerability to currency movements was an important fringe benefit.
With more companies building local factories, exchange rates matter less. General Motors and Volkswagen compete fiercely for business in China, a crucial market where both automakers build almost all their cars locally rather than ship units in from their home countries.
Because the Chinese renminbi tracks the dollar — meaning that products from the United States should be cheaper than imports from Europe — G.M. would seem to be at an advantage.
Though a weakened dollar would help exports to some degree, business executives and economists said that because of the ways American multinational companies operated, it was uncertain whether it would cause much of an increase in hiring.
The issue is crucial for President Obama, who made economic growth and job creation the main themes of his recent 10-day trip to Asia. He has also held out the prospect that a surge in exports would reduce the nation’s stubborn unemployment rate, currently 9.6 percent.
Other world leaders have complained that American policies, especially the monetary easing the Federal Reserve announced this month, will depress the dollar and give American exporters an unfair advantage.
Mr. Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner have repeatedly defended the central bank’s action as a move designed to encourage American businesses to borrow, invest and hire rather than one specifically aimed at lowering the value of the dollar.
But even if the Fed’s action does end up weakening the dollar, American workers may not benefit much. For one, many big American manufacturers, from General Motors to General Electric, often make goods in the countries where they are sold rather than shipping the products abroad. This effectively takes exchange rates out of the equation, since they are using only one currency.
What is more, companies that do send goods to other countries often buy components from abroad, so the advantage of a weaker dollar in selling is offset by the higher cost of buying.
“There are very few corporations that would see this just in one way,” said Martin Regalia, chief economist at the United States Chamber of Commerce. “It cuts across a whole bunch of lines.”
Even when a company enjoys a relative surge in foreign sales, it won’t necessarily lead to a hiring spree. That is because the largest proportion of American exports are still manufactured goods, which are no longer so labor-intensive.
And many of the companies that still manufacture in this country are businesses that have not gone offshore because they are too small to justify setting up overseas operations. A weak dollar can help their businesses, but it may not prompt a wave of hiring.
“The net export effect is going to be positive, but it won’t be the driver of jobs,” said Daniel J. Meckstroth, chief economist of the Manufacturers Alliance, a trade group. “You can replace people with machines.”
According to Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight, the dollar fell by 31 percent against a basket of major currencies since 2001, as American exports increased by 45 percent. But manufacturing employment dropped by nearly a third in that time, to 11.7 million workers from 16.4 million.
The dollar has already fallen by about 10 percent against a range of currencies since the beginning of June, and government figures show that American exports rose in September by $500 million, or 0.3 percent, to their highest level in two years.
Despite the outcry from other world leaders after the Federal Reserve’s decision to inject $600 billion into the economy, the dollar strengthened slightly last week. But even if it does start drifting down again, most economists do not expect the devaluation to be steep. Some argue that most of the weakening has already happened because traders have anticipated the Fed’s action for some time.
Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said he expected the dollar to fall another 10 percent in coming months, based on a basket of currencies from countries that trade with the United States.
He estimates that such a decline would lead to about a $100 billion increase in American exports over the next two years, which he believes could translate into about 500,000 jobs. Although Mr. Hufbauer said that number was “not bad,” he noted that it would not put much of a dent in the nearly 15 million people who are still out of work.
Another reason increased sales abroad might not translate into American jobs is that American companies have moved steadily overseas in recent decades. The number of workers employed by American companies abroad more than doubled from 1989 to 2008, to 10.5 million, according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis. Companies mostly wanted to open up foreign markets, and in some cases take advantage of cheaper labor, studies show, but less vulnerability to currency movements was an important fringe benefit.
With more companies building local factories, exchange rates matter less. General Motors and Volkswagen compete fiercely for business in China, a crucial market where both automakers build almost all their cars locally rather than ship units in from their home countries.
Because the Chinese renminbi tracks the dollar — meaning that products from the United States should be cheaper than imports from Europe — G.M. would seem to be at an advantage.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Statism, The Greatest Threat To America
Campaign For Liberty - Pervasive confusion over the nature of government and freedom has opened the gates to perhaps the greatest, most widespread increase in political power in history. If we are to regain and safeguard our liberty, we must reject the tenets of modern political thinking. We must repudiate the moral presumptions and prerogatives that allow some people to vastly expand their power over other people.
The state has been by far the largest recipient of intellectual charity during the past hundred years. The issue of government coercion has been taken off the radar screen of politically correct thought. The more government power has grown, the more unfashionable it becomes to discuss or recognize government abuses — as if it were bad form to count the dead brought about by government interventions. There seems to be a gentleman’s agreement among some contemporary political philosophers to pretend that government is something loftier than it actually is — to practice noblesse oblige and to wear white gloves when discussing the nature of the state.
The great political issue of our time is not liberalism versus conservatism, or capitalism versus socialism, but statism — the belief that government is inherently superior to the citizenry, that progress consists of extending the realm of compulsion, that vesting arbitrary power in government officials will make the people happy — eventually.
What type of entity is the state? Is it a highly efficient, purring engine, like a hovercraft sailing deftly above the lives of ordinary citizens? Or is it a lumbering giant bulldozer that rips open the soil and ends up clear-cutting the lives of people it was created to protect?
The effort to find a political mechanism to force government to serve the people is the modern search for the Holy Grail. No such mechanism has been found, and government power has been relentlessly expanded. Yet, to base political philosophy on the assumption that government is inherently benevolent makes as much sense as basing geography on the assumption that the Earth is flat. Too many political thinkers treat government like some Wizard of Oz, ordaining great things, enunciating high ideals, and symbolizing all that is good in society. However, for political philosophy to have any value, it must begin by pulling back the curtain to bare the nature of the state.
Trusting contemporary governments means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other people’s lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives. Modern Leviathans give some people the power to play God with other people’s lives, property, and domestic tranquility. Modern political thinking presumes that restraints are bad for the government but good for the people. The first duty of the citizen is to assume the best of the government, while government officials assume the worst of him.
The history of the rise of the idealistic conception of the state is inevitably also the history of the decline of liberty. We cannot put the state on a pedestal without putting the people under the heel of the politician and bureaucrat. To glorify the state is to glorify coercion — the subjugation of some people to other people’s will and dictates.
Welfare-state freedom is based on the illusion that government can financially strip-mine the citizens’ lives without undermining their ability to stand on their own two feet. Citizens are assured that dependence on government is the same as self-reliance, only better. Today’s citizen is obliged to find his freedom only in the narrow ruts pre-approved by his bureaucratic overlords. In the name of freedom, the citizen is obliged to lower the drawbridges around his own life to any government employee who thinks he knows better.
The Supreme Court declared in a 1988 decision, “Servitude means ‘a condition in which a person lacks liberty especially to determine one’s course of action or way of life.’” Yet, despite the vast increase in the number of government decrees restricting people’s “course of action or way of life,” there is little recognition of the growing servitude of the American people to the federal government. Lives are made up of choices. Insofar as govern- ment nullifies or demolishes the choices that people can make, it effectively confiscates part of their lives.
Modern democracy
Nowadays, “democracy” serves mainly as a sheepskin for Leviathan, as a label to delude people into thinking that government’s big teeth will never bite them. Voting has changed from a process by which the citizen controls the government to a process that consecrates the gov-ernment’s control of the people. Elections have become largely futile exercises to reveal comparative popular contempt for competing professional politicians. The question of who nominally holds the leash has become far more important than whether government is actually leashed.
The ability to push a lever and register a protest once every few years is supposedly all the protection citizens’ liberties need — or deserve. Americans are implicitly taught in government schools that they will be able to control their government, regardless of how large it becomes. But the bigger government grows, the more irrelevant the individual voter becomes. The current theory of democracy is a relic of an era when government was a tiny fraction of its current size. The illusion of majority rule is now the great sanctifier of government abuses — and perhaps the single greatest barrier to people’s understanding the nature of government. No amount of patriotic appeals can hide the growing imbalance between the citizen’s power to bind the government and the government’s power to bind the citizen.
Modern democracy is now largely an over-glorified choice of caretakers and cage-keepers. Are citizens still free after they vote to make themselves wards of the state? Supposedly, as long as citizens are permitted to push the first domino, they are still self-governing — regardless of how many other government dominos subsequently fall on their heads. Democracy is further corrupted by a demagogy that portrays a right to vote as a license to steal.
Faith in the redemptive powers of government permeates contemporary political thinking. “Fairness” has become a bewitching word to lull people to sleep before politicians attach the lat-est “shackle of the month.” The more activities government crim-inalizes, the fairer society supposedly becomes. The tighter the regulatory thumbscrews are twisted, the higher citizens’ souls presumably rise.
Private citizens have become the moral underclass in the modern state. The values of politicians and bureaucrats are presumably so inherently superior that they have a right to coercively impose them on others, the same way that imperialists in the 1800s forcibly “saved” the backward natives in Africa and Asia. But now, instead of the “white man’s burden,” we have the “bureaucrat’s burden” — consisting of endless Federal Register notices, entrapment schemes, and abusive prosecutions. In practice, justice has become whatever serves the political or bureaucratic needs of the government. Every new definition of fairness becomes another trump card that politicians and bureaucrats play against private citizens. Public- policy disputes routinely degenerate into morality plays in which the government is almost always the “good guy.”
In the 19th century, socialists openly ridiculed the notion of a night-watchman state — a government limited to protecting the rights and safety of citizens. The night-watchman state has long since been junk-heaped, replaced by governments zealous to re-engineer society, control the econ-omy, and save persons from themselves. Unfortunately, rather than a triumph of idealism, we now have highway-robber states — gov-ernments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is safe from the fleeting whim of a bevy of politicians. Public policy today is a vast maze of payoffs and kickbacks, tangling everything that the state touches in political intrigue and bureaucratic dependence. Modern societies are increasingly dominated by political money laundering — by politicians commandeering scores of billions of dollars from one group to foist on another group, from one generation to another, or from the general populace to specific occupational groups (such as farmers). And when government defaults on its promises to the citizenry, it is not robbery, but merely sovereign immunity.
Paternalism and happiness
It was a common saying before the Civil War: “That government is best which governs least.” Nowadays, the rule appears to be “that government is best that penalizes most.” Salvation through increased state power means maximizing the number of swords of Damocles hanging over each citizen’s head — maximizing the number of individual lives that can be destroyed by political edicts and the number of people who can be locked away for possessing prohibited substances — people whose homes and cars and wallets can be seized without proof of wrongdoing, whose children can be taken away from them, who can be barred from using their own land, and whom the government devises pretexts to forcibly disarm.
The welfare state offers an “under my thumb” recipe for happiness. Paternalism presumes that the path to the citizen’s happiness consists in increasing the number of government restrictions imposed on him and the number of government employees above him. The more power government acquires, the more a symbol of the superiority of some people over others the state becomes. Every expansion of government budgets and statute books is another step towards the nationalization of the pursuit of happiness. While earlier types of government coerced people to keep them in their place, the welfare state uses coercion to make them happy — in their place. But the success of the welfare state cannot be measured by the number of citizens who rattle their tin cups when politicians pass by.
The issue is not whether government should or can be abolished; instead, the issue is whether the use of force should be minimized and limited. In the American colonies from the early 1700s onwards, fierce disputes raged between prerogative parties and anti-prerogative parties — between those that favored an expansive interpretation of the king of England’s power and those that sought to restrain or roll back the monarch’s power over colonists. In the future, the grand division in American politics will be between those who champion increased government power and those who demand that government power be slashed.
The notion that governments are inherently entitled to obedience is the most costly entitle-ment program of them all. Seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke, who inspired the Founding Fathers, declared, “Tyranny is the exercise of Power beyond Right.” Locke recognized that governments that oppress citizens destroy their own legitimacy. Yet there now seems to be an irrefutable presumption of legitimacy for any exercise of government power not involving genocide or racial discrimination.
Modern political philosophy largely consists of glorifying poorly functioning political machinery — the threats, bribes, and legislative cattle prods by which some people are made to submit to other people. It is a delusion to think of the state as something loftier than all the edicts, penalties, prison sentences, and taxes that it imposes.
Have we transferred to government the rights that we previously condemned in slaveown-ers? If not, then we must radically reduce the power that some people have captured over everyone else.
The state has been by far the largest recipient of intellectual charity during the past hundred years. The issue of government coercion has been taken off the radar screen of politically correct thought. The more government power has grown, the more unfashionable it becomes to discuss or recognize government abuses — as if it were bad form to count the dead brought about by government interventions. There seems to be a gentleman’s agreement among some contemporary political philosophers to pretend that government is something loftier than it actually is — to practice noblesse oblige and to wear white gloves when discussing the nature of the state.
The great political issue of our time is not liberalism versus conservatism, or capitalism versus socialism, but statism — the belief that government is inherently superior to the citizenry, that progress consists of extending the realm of compulsion, that vesting arbitrary power in government officials will make the people happy — eventually.
What type of entity is the state? Is it a highly efficient, purring engine, like a hovercraft sailing deftly above the lives of ordinary citizens? Or is it a lumbering giant bulldozer that rips open the soil and ends up clear-cutting the lives of people it was created to protect?
The effort to find a political mechanism to force government to serve the people is the modern search for the Holy Grail. No such mechanism has been found, and government power has been relentlessly expanded. Yet, to base political philosophy on the assumption that government is inherently benevolent makes as much sense as basing geography on the assumption that the Earth is flat. Too many political thinkers treat government like some Wizard of Oz, ordaining great things, enunciating high ideals, and symbolizing all that is good in society. However, for political philosophy to have any value, it must begin by pulling back the curtain to bare the nature of the state.
Trusting contemporary governments means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other people’s lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives. Modern Leviathans give some people the power to play God with other people’s lives, property, and domestic tranquility. Modern political thinking presumes that restraints are bad for the government but good for the people. The first duty of the citizen is to assume the best of the government, while government officials assume the worst of him.
The history of the rise of the idealistic conception of the state is inevitably also the history of the decline of liberty. We cannot put the state on a pedestal without putting the people under the heel of the politician and bureaucrat. To glorify the state is to glorify coercion — the subjugation of some people to other people’s will and dictates.
Welfare-state freedom is based on the illusion that government can financially strip-mine the citizens’ lives without undermining their ability to stand on their own two feet. Citizens are assured that dependence on government is the same as self-reliance, only better. Today’s citizen is obliged to find his freedom only in the narrow ruts pre-approved by his bureaucratic overlords. In the name of freedom, the citizen is obliged to lower the drawbridges around his own life to any government employee who thinks he knows better.
The Supreme Court declared in a 1988 decision, “Servitude means ‘a condition in which a person lacks liberty especially to determine one’s course of action or way of life.’” Yet, despite the vast increase in the number of government decrees restricting people’s “course of action or way of life,” there is little recognition of the growing servitude of the American people to the federal government. Lives are made up of choices. Insofar as govern- ment nullifies or demolishes the choices that people can make, it effectively confiscates part of their lives.
Modern democracy
Nowadays, “democracy” serves mainly as a sheepskin for Leviathan, as a label to delude people into thinking that government’s big teeth will never bite them. Voting has changed from a process by which the citizen controls the government to a process that consecrates the gov-ernment’s control of the people. Elections have become largely futile exercises to reveal comparative popular contempt for competing professional politicians. The question of who nominally holds the leash has become far more important than whether government is actually leashed.
The ability to push a lever and register a protest once every few years is supposedly all the protection citizens’ liberties need — or deserve. Americans are implicitly taught in government schools that they will be able to control their government, regardless of how large it becomes. But the bigger government grows, the more irrelevant the individual voter becomes. The current theory of democracy is a relic of an era when government was a tiny fraction of its current size. The illusion of majority rule is now the great sanctifier of government abuses — and perhaps the single greatest barrier to people’s understanding the nature of government. No amount of patriotic appeals can hide the growing imbalance between the citizen’s power to bind the government and the government’s power to bind the citizen.
Modern democracy is now largely an over-glorified choice of caretakers and cage-keepers. Are citizens still free after they vote to make themselves wards of the state? Supposedly, as long as citizens are permitted to push the first domino, they are still self-governing — regardless of how many other government dominos subsequently fall on their heads. Democracy is further corrupted by a demagogy that portrays a right to vote as a license to steal.
Faith in the redemptive powers of government permeates contemporary political thinking. “Fairness” has become a bewitching word to lull people to sleep before politicians attach the lat-est “shackle of the month.” The more activities government crim-inalizes, the fairer society supposedly becomes. The tighter the regulatory thumbscrews are twisted, the higher citizens’ souls presumably rise.
Private citizens have become the moral underclass in the modern state. The values of politicians and bureaucrats are presumably so inherently superior that they have a right to coercively impose them on others, the same way that imperialists in the 1800s forcibly “saved” the backward natives in Africa and Asia. But now, instead of the “white man’s burden,” we have the “bureaucrat’s burden” — consisting of endless Federal Register notices, entrapment schemes, and abusive prosecutions. In practice, justice has become whatever serves the political or bureaucratic needs of the government. Every new definition of fairness becomes another trump card that politicians and bureaucrats play against private citizens. Public- policy disputes routinely degenerate into morality plays in which the government is almost always the “good guy.”
In the 19th century, socialists openly ridiculed the notion of a night-watchman state — a government limited to protecting the rights and safety of citizens. The night-watchman state has long since been junk-heaped, replaced by governments zealous to re-engineer society, control the econ-omy, and save persons from themselves. Unfortunately, rather than a triumph of idealism, we now have highway-robber states — gov-ernments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is safe from the fleeting whim of a bevy of politicians. Public policy today is a vast maze of payoffs and kickbacks, tangling everything that the state touches in political intrigue and bureaucratic dependence. Modern societies are increasingly dominated by political money laundering — by politicians commandeering scores of billions of dollars from one group to foist on another group, from one generation to another, or from the general populace to specific occupational groups (such as farmers). And when government defaults on its promises to the citizenry, it is not robbery, but merely sovereign immunity.
Paternalism and happiness
It was a common saying before the Civil War: “That government is best which governs least.” Nowadays, the rule appears to be “that government is best that penalizes most.” Salvation through increased state power means maximizing the number of swords of Damocles hanging over each citizen’s head — maximizing the number of individual lives that can be destroyed by political edicts and the number of people who can be locked away for possessing prohibited substances — people whose homes and cars and wallets can be seized without proof of wrongdoing, whose children can be taken away from them, who can be barred from using their own land, and whom the government devises pretexts to forcibly disarm.
The welfare state offers an “under my thumb” recipe for happiness. Paternalism presumes that the path to the citizen’s happiness consists in increasing the number of government restrictions imposed on him and the number of government employees above him. The more power government acquires, the more a symbol of the superiority of some people over others the state becomes. Every expansion of government budgets and statute books is another step towards the nationalization of the pursuit of happiness. While earlier types of government coerced people to keep them in their place, the welfare state uses coercion to make them happy — in their place. But the success of the welfare state cannot be measured by the number of citizens who rattle their tin cups when politicians pass by.
The issue is not whether government should or can be abolished; instead, the issue is whether the use of force should be minimized and limited. In the American colonies from the early 1700s onwards, fierce disputes raged between prerogative parties and anti-prerogative parties — between those that favored an expansive interpretation of the king of England’s power and those that sought to restrain or roll back the monarch’s power over colonists. In the future, the grand division in American politics will be between those who champion increased government power and those who demand that government power be slashed.
The notion that governments are inherently entitled to obedience is the most costly entitle-ment program of them all. Seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke, who inspired the Founding Fathers, declared, “Tyranny is the exercise of Power beyond Right.” Locke recognized that governments that oppress citizens destroy their own legitimacy. Yet there now seems to be an irrefutable presumption of legitimacy for any exercise of government power not involving genocide or racial discrimination.
Modern political philosophy largely consists of glorifying poorly functioning political machinery — the threats, bribes, and legislative cattle prods by which some people are made to submit to other people. It is a delusion to think of the state as something loftier than all the edicts, penalties, prison sentences, and taxes that it imposes.
Have we transferred to government the rights that we previously condemned in slaveown-ers? If not, then we must radically reduce the power that some people have captured over everyone else.
TSA Outrage Against Porno Scanners "Gradual Degradation Of Americans"
Sibel Edmonds - Every single day millions of us are being subjected to the shameful processes of being searched, screened and viewed naked, patted, groped, fondled, poked and stroked by badge-wearing strangers- police under a different name. Every single day. Millions of us, Americans. Being violated. Being degraded. You know exactly what I am talking about. I am taking about me, you, your mother, her brother, his brother’s wife and toddler son, their grandmothers. I am talking about the systematic degradation of our people. I am talking about being raped of our dignity, privacy, and decency. I am talking about a daily systematic rape we actually pay to be subjected to. I am talking about severe violations we elect people to bring upon us. Yes, I am talking about traveling, TSA police, and being reduced to naked and helpless subjects of government police practices.
Considering its short tenure, the motherland police force, aka Department of Homeland Security, has had a one of a kind success. In less than a decade it is now the third largest cabinet police department. It has around 200,000 employees, and that’s without counting contract employees – which exceed this number. Now remember, we still have the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA…plus all the other state and local police forces from before. TSA makes up over 60,000 of DHS employees. This 60,000 federal police force oversees 450 airports, so that makes it around 133 police per airport. And that’s in addition to local airport police.
What do I mean by not so gradual and systematic degradation? I mean in less than ten years, they went from this:
Last week TSA announced that airline passengers should expect to see and feel additional pat-down procedures at U.S. airports over the coming weeks to provide another layer of security. They said passengers should continue to expect “an unpredictable mix of security layers that include explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, canine teams, among others.”
The following blurb comes from CNN, thanks to one of its employees who chose to speak up a little, only a little (all emphasis in bold are mine):
Rosemary Fitzpatrick, a CNN employee, said she was subjected to a pat-down at the Orlando, Florida, airport on Wednesday night after her underwire bra set off a magnetometer. She said she was taken to a private area and searched, with transportation screening officers telling her the pat-down was a new procedure.
According to Fitzpatrick, a female screener ran her hands around her breasts, over her stomach, buttocks and her inner thighs, and briefly touched her crotch.”I felt helpless, I felt violated, and I felt humiliated,” Fitzpatrick said, adding that she was reduced to tears at the checkpoint. She particularly objected to the fact that travelers were not warned about the new procedures.
Okay, up to this point I was pleasantly surprised to see this piece being run by a mainstream outlet, and the fact that this woman didn’t take the rape in silence and go away the way most do when it comes to these government sanctioned and implemented systematic rapes, but then I reached the following:
“I am appalled and disgusted at the new search procedures and the fact that passengers have not been made aware of the new invasive steps prior to entering the security area,” Fitzpatrick wrote. “It appears once you enter the security area, passengers forfeit their rights. There were no signs, video information, etc. at the entrance of the security area at the airport. Why?”
She added: “As an experienced traveler for work who was in tears for most of the search process, I have never experienced a more traumatic and invasive travel event!”
First, let me give her due credit for saying out loud that she objected and felt: helpless, violated, humiliated, appalled and disgusted. But after that, it is my turn to be appalled. Is the process supposed to get less humiliating, appalling, traumatic, and disgusting if the violators give prior notice about the violations, the rapes, to come??!!! Please walk with me through the following reasoning:
Two rapists are brought before a judge. One had caught his victim by surprise through a blitz attack, then violently raped her. The other had stalked his victim for a while, sent her some disturbing warning notes, and then violently raped her. Victim one turns around and tells victim two: Why do you feel violated?! Your rapist gave you the courtesy of warning notes – and that makes his rape much less of an offense than my rapist!!
My question to CNN’s Fitzpatrick is this: Next time, when these people squeeze your breast, poke your buttocks and stomach, and grab your crotch, will you feel okay? Far less violated? All because now you know what to expect?!
After reading the piece I quickly scanned other news sites, both mainstream and alternative. Almost all of them picked up the story and reported it per the original, and the strongest cursory comment at one site was that the story and Fitzpatrick’s experience was ‘unsettling.’ Wow! How hard-hitting! But that was not what I found, and find, so very ‘unsettling.’ Not at all.
What I find truly unsettling is that we only have a handful like Fitzpatrick who come forward screaming about the horrifying, humiliating, violating, traumatic …nature of these federal police practices (abuses) in all our airports. Now that is truly unsettling, shocking, and appalling as far as I am concerned. Millions are going through these routine rape processes (Yes, RAPE: raping you of your dignity, privacy, humanity, and more. Ok?!) without a peep. What is going on here? Have ‘their’ systematic humiliation and degradation practices been so successful that millions take it regularly without any protest, objection, action, counteraction?!
I am talking about the hard-core ACLU following liberals. Where the he … are you?! I can’t hear or see you. Where is the protest? Give me a holler, and let me know where and when and I’ll be there to join. Here I’m hollering on the record. And no, don’t go file a couple of lawsuits and say that you’ve done your share; that lazy move hasn’t worked for at least a decade!!
I am talking about those on the extreme right of those mentioned above. What happened to your slogan of small government and keeping a tight rein on federal government practices? Isn’t this as close and personal it gets, when your feds are squeezing your testicles while breathing inches from your face, and while you are fully paying for these squeezing and probing services?! I thought you’d attributed these practices to those commies, shouldn’t you be barking when it is in your own backyard?
I am talking about old fashion patriarchal guys. Where are you macho and good ole cowboy mentality testosterone walking bags when your wives and daughters are being fondled, squeezed, and intimately probed? Shouldn’t you be roaring like lions and throwing punches like John Wayne when it comes to those who violate your ‘women’? Don’t you feel your manliness under attack when they make you stand in front of them, with your legs apart, arms up to each side, while their hands wrap around measuring your buttocks?
I am talking about us Americans, those to the right, the ones on the left, the upper class- lower class, and those in the middle…Here we are, the entire nation, being violated and raped on a daily basis by our servants whom we pay for dearly. Last time I checked we were paying them over $7 Billion – here it is with all the zeroes: $7,000,000,000. Please, don’t even try to bring up that ‘security’ punch line so overused and abused, because last time I checked they were not providing much in terms of ‘security.’ In fact they couldn’t even secure their own personnel files and records.
Soon they will be bending us over to give us a thorough cavity search. After that it will be all cavities… And after that…There will be one or two who may stand up and scream. And for ‘them,’ one or two, even ten will be very easy to quash and ‘eliminate.’ Yet, I am still here, still hoping; hoping that somehow I’ll get to see that number in the tens of thousands and beyond, and that’s the only hope I see to stop our expedited degradation process. They say it always starts with one. Well, here I am, willing to be one. How about you?
Considering its short tenure, the motherland police force, aka Department of Homeland Security, has had a one of a kind success. In less than a decade it is now the third largest cabinet police department. It has around 200,000 employees, and that’s without counting contract employees – which exceed this number. Now remember, we still have the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA…plus all the other state and local police forces from before. TSA makes up over 60,000 of DHS employees. This 60,000 federal police force oversees 450 airports, so that makes it around 133 police per airport. And that’s in addition to local airport police.
What do I mean by not so gradual and systematic degradation? I mean in less than ten years, they went from this:
Last week TSA announced that airline passengers should expect to see and feel additional pat-down procedures at U.S. airports over the coming weeks to provide another layer of security. They said passengers should continue to expect “an unpredictable mix of security layers that include explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, canine teams, among others.”
The following blurb comes from CNN, thanks to one of its employees who chose to speak up a little, only a little (all emphasis in bold are mine):
Rosemary Fitzpatrick, a CNN employee, said she was subjected to a pat-down at the Orlando, Florida, airport on Wednesday night after her underwire bra set off a magnetometer. She said she was taken to a private area and searched, with transportation screening officers telling her the pat-down was a new procedure.
According to Fitzpatrick, a female screener ran her hands around her breasts, over her stomach, buttocks and her inner thighs, and briefly touched her crotch.”I felt helpless, I felt violated, and I felt humiliated,” Fitzpatrick said, adding that she was reduced to tears at the checkpoint. She particularly objected to the fact that travelers were not warned about the new procedures.
Okay, up to this point I was pleasantly surprised to see this piece being run by a mainstream outlet, and the fact that this woman didn’t take the rape in silence and go away the way most do when it comes to these government sanctioned and implemented systematic rapes, but then I reached the following:
“I am appalled and disgusted at the new search procedures and the fact that passengers have not been made aware of the new invasive steps prior to entering the security area,” Fitzpatrick wrote. “It appears once you enter the security area, passengers forfeit their rights. There were no signs, video information, etc. at the entrance of the security area at the airport. Why?”
She added: “As an experienced traveler for work who was in tears for most of the search process, I have never experienced a more traumatic and invasive travel event!”
First, let me give her due credit for saying out loud that she objected and felt: helpless, violated, humiliated, appalled and disgusted. But after that, it is my turn to be appalled. Is the process supposed to get less humiliating, appalling, traumatic, and disgusting if the violators give prior notice about the violations, the rapes, to come??!!! Please walk with me through the following reasoning:
Two rapists are brought before a judge. One had caught his victim by surprise through a blitz attack, then violently raped her. The other had stalked his victim for a while, sent her some disturbing warning notes, and then violently raped her. Victim one turns around and tells victim two: Why do you feel violated?! Your rapist gave you the courtesy of warning notes – and that makes his rape much less of an offense than my rapist!!
My question to CNN’s Fitzpatrick is this: Next time, when these people squeeze your breast, poke your buttocks and stomach, and grab your crotch, will you feel okay? Far less violated? All because now you know what to expect?!
After reading the piece I quickly scanned other news sites, both mainstream and alternative. Almost all of them picked up the story and reported it per the original, and the strongest cursory comment at one site was that the story and Fitzpatrick’s experience was ‘unsettling.’ Wow! How hard-hitting! But that was not what I found, and find, so very ‘unsettling.’ Not at all.
What I find truly unsettling is that we only have a handful like Fitzpatrick who come forward screaming about the horrifying, humiliating, violating, traumatic …nature of these federal police practices (abuses) in all our airports. Now that is truly unsettling, shocking, and appalling as far as I am concerned. Millions are going through these routine rape processes (Yes, RAPE: raping you of your dignity, privacy, humanity, and more. Ok?!) without a peep. What is going on here? Have ‘their’ systematic humiliation and degradation practices been so successful that millions take it regularly without any protest, objection, action, counteraction?!
I am talking about the hard-core ACLU following liberals. Where the he … are you?! I can’t hear or see you. Where is the protest? Give me a holler, and let me know where and when and I’ll be there to join. Here I’m hollering on the record. And no, don’t go file a couple of lawsuits and say that you’ve done your share; that lazy move hasn’t worked for at least a decade!!
I am talking about those on the extreme right of those mentioned above. What happened to your slogan of small government and keeping a tight rein on federal government practices? Isn’t this as close and personal it gets, when your feds are squeezing your testicles while breathing inches from your face, and while you are fully paying for these squeezing and probing services?! I thought you’d attributed these practices to those commies, shouldn’t you be barking when it is in your own backyard?
I am talking about old fashion patriarchal guys. Where are you macho and good ole cowboy mentality testosterone walking bags when your wives and daughters are being fondled, squeezed, and intimately probed? Shouldn’t you be roaring like lions and throwing punches like John Wayne when it comes to those who violate your ‘women’? Don’t you feel your manliness under attack when they make you stand in front of them, with your legs apart, arms up to each side, while their hands wrap around measuring your buttocks?
I am talking about us Americans, those to the right, the ones on the left, the upper class- lower class, and those in the middle…Here we are, the entire nation, being violated and raped on a daily basis by our servants whom we pay for dearly. Last time I checked we were paying them over $7 Billion – here it is with all the zeroes: $7,000,000,000. Please, don’t even try to bring up that ‘security’ punch line so overused and abused, because last time I checked they were not providing much in terms of ‘security.’ In fact they couldn’t even secure their own personnel files and records.
Soon they will be bending us over to give us a thorough cavity search. After that it will be all cavities… And after that…There will be one or two who may stand up and scream. And for ‘them,’ one or two, even ten will be very easy to quash and ‘eliminate.’ Yet, I am still here, still hoping; hoping that somehow I’ll get to see that number in the tens of thousands and beyond, and that’s the only hope I see to stop our expedited degradation process. They say it always starts with one. Well, here I am, willing to be one. How about you?
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Gov. Palin Leads In Early Presidential Polls
Ian Lazaran - The Daily Kos pollster finds the following from Wisconsin, Maine, West Virginia, Texas, Minnesota, and Florida:
Maine
Palin 23%
Romney 18%
Huckabee 16%
Newt 14%
Pawlenty 3%
Minnesota
Pawlenty 19%
Palin 18%
Huckabee 14%
Newt 11%
Romney 11%
Wisconsin
Palin 18%
Huckabee 15%
Newt 14%
Romney 12%
Pawlenty 8%
Texas
Palin 22%
Huckabee 20%
Newt 15%
Romney 15%
Pawlenty 3%
West Virginia
Palin 25%
Huckabee 22%
Newt 15%
Romney 15%
Pawlenty 2%
Florida
Romney 28%
Palin 22%
Huckabee 15%
Newt 15%
Pawlenty 4%
These are good results for Governor Palin. Frankly, the sample sizes in Florida and Texas are too small to draw any type of solid conclusion but the sample sizes in the other states are reasonable. She's leading in a diverse set of states. It seems that she's able to hold off Huckabee in his base areas. It also seems as if Tim Pawlenty or someone like him could end up being Governor Palin's best friend.
Maine
Palin 23%
Romney 18%
Huckabee 16%
Newt 14%
Pawlenty 3%
Minnesota
Pawlenty 19%
Palin 18%
Huckabee 14%
Newt 11%
Romney 11%
Wisconsin
Palin 18%
Huckabee 15%
Newt 14%
Romney 12%
Pawlenty 8%
Texas
Palin 22%
Huckabee 20%
Newt 15%
Romney 15%
Pawlenty 3%
West Virginia
Palin 25%
Huckabee 22%
Newt 15%
Romney 15%
Pawlenty 2%
Florida
Romney 28%
Palin 22%
Huckabee 15%
Newt 15%
Pawlenty 4%
These are good results for Governor Palin. Frankly, the sample sizes in Florida and Texas are too small to draw any type of solid conclusion but the sample sizes in the other states are reasonable. She's leading in a diverse set of states. It seems that she's able to hold off Huckabee in his base areas. It also seems as if Tim Pawlenty or someone like him could end up being Governor Palin's best friend.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
The Most Dangerous Place On Earth: The Drug War On The U.S. Border
The American Dream - Most Americans have no idea that the most dangerous place on earth is just across the United States border. The city of Juarez, Mexico is nestled right next to El Paso, Texas and it is the murder capital of the world. So far this year, more than 2,000 people have been murdered in the city. The Mexican government has been trying to get a handle on the situation, but corruption is so rampant on all levels of government in Mexico and the drug cartels are so incredibly powerful that it just seems to be a losing battle. But it is not just Juarez that is a crisis point. The truth is that vast stretches of the U.S. border with Mexico have become war zones and yet the mainstream media in the United States is strangely silent about the whole thing.
The truth is that it is far safer to go to Iraq or Afghanistan today than it is to go to cities like Juarez. Freelance journalist Jeff Antebi recently described to CNN what he experienced when he went to Juarez….
“When I arrived in Juarez,” says Antebi, “within an hour, over the police scanners, a body has been found. And maybe 30 minutes later, another body.
“And then another body. And by the end of the day, it was 10. The next day, 10. The next day, 10.”
The Mexican government says that as many as 28,000 people have been slaughtered by the drug cartels since 2007. The drug cartels are constantly at war with each other and with Mexican authorities. In the video posted below, one reporter went to Juarez to try to get a sense of what is happening to that city….
It would be really hard to understate what a disaster zone Juarez has become. In an interview with Democracy Now, author Charles Bowden described how a once very prosperous city has become a literal hellhole as a result of all this violence….
So what you have is about 10,000 federal troops and federal police agents all marauding. You have a city where no one goes out at night; where small businesses all pay extortion; where 20,000 cars were officially stolen last year; where 2,600-plus people were officially murdered last year; where nobody keeps track of the people who have been kidnapped and never come back; where nobody counts the people buried in secret burying grounds, and they, in an unseemly way, claw out of the earth from time to time. You’ve got a disaster. And you have a million people, too poor to leave, imprisoned in it.
It doesn’t matter if you are an American either. The drug cartels will gun you down and gut you like a fish in a heartbeat. For example, NPR recently described one horrific incident in the Juarez Valley that involved American citizens….
A couple of weeks ago, gunmen in the Juarez Valley killed the Mexican relative of a Fort Hancock high school student. When the student’s family in Fort Hancock heard about it, they crossed the border at 10 a.m. to see the body, and took the student with them.
“By 10:30, they had stabbed the relatives that went with him, which included his grandparents, with an ice pick,” says school superintendent Jose Franco. “My understanding is that the gentleman is like 90 years old, and they poked his eyes out with an ice pick. I believe those people are still in intensive care here in a hospital in the U.S.”
Are you starting to get an idea of just how brutal these drug cartels actually are? They are not playing games.
The horrific drug war raging on the U.S. border has created a huge demand for hitmen and acid baths. In January, authorities arrested Santiago Meza Lopez. Known as “the soupmaker”, the 45 year old man has confessed that he made about 300 bodies disappear by dissolving them in acid baths.
So why is all of this violence happening?
Well, it is all for control over the sale of drugs to Americans.
The United States is the biggest market for drugs in the world, and there is a ton of money at stake.
The drug cartels will go to great lengths to get their goods into the United States. This point was illustrated recently when U.S. officials raided a southern California warehouse and discovered a lighted, ventilated passageway 4 feet high and 1,800 feet long crossing into Mexico. The tunnel was approximately six football fields in length. During that operation, authorities seized about 25 tons of marijuana.
But this tunnel is nothing new. The truth is that approximately 75 tunnels along the border with Mexico have been discovered by authorities in the last four years alone.
Unfortunately, most Mexicans don’t even need a tunnel. Security on the U.S. border with Mexico is a complete and total joke, and illegal aliens come over almost at will.
According to some estimates, there are as many as 30 million illegal aliens in the United States today. Nobody has any idea how many of them are gang members or are working directly for the drug cartels.
But one thing is for certain – the gang problem in the United States is rapidly getting worse. Once young illegal aliens arrive in our cities, they quickly find that their employment options are extremely limited. Large numbers of them end up getting sucked into Spanish-speaking gangs.
U.S. authorities say that there are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs operating inside the United States. According to federal statistics, these 1 million gang members are responsible for up to 80% of the violent crimes committed in the U.S. each year.
Not all of this gang violence is caused by illegal aliens, but a growing percentage of it is. Spanish-speaking gangs are rapidly becoming the dominant gangs in cities all over the United States.
But it is not just gang violence that is the problem. The reality is that the Mexican drug cartels are now openly conducting organized military operations inside the United States. Federal border officials say that Mexican drug cartels have not only set up shop on U.S. soil, but they are actually maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona.
From those “forward bases”, the armed drug cartel scouts monitor every move that U.S. border agents make. In fact, it has been reported that drivers regularly bring these drug cartel scouts food, water, batteries for their radios and everything else that they need to stay in the wilderness for long periods of time.
Yes, this is really happening.
In fact, there is one stretch of Arizona that the U.S. federal government has conceded control of to the drug cartels. It is a drug smuggling corridor that extends from the Mexican border all the way up to Phoenix, Arizona.
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu made national headlines when he told the media what is really going on down there. The following are just a few quotes from what Babeu told the press….
-”Drug cartels control this area.”
-”Local law enforcement cannot handle and stop this on our own.”
-”We are outgunned, we are outmanned and we don’t have the resources here locally for us to fight this.”
The video news report posted below features Babeu and discusses how the U.S. government has actually made some parts of Arizona off limits to U.S. citizens because of the threat of violence from Mexican drug smugglers….
Yes, things have really gotten that bizarre. One border agent who wished to remain anonymous told Fox News the following earlier this year….
“To say that this area is out of control is an understatement.”
A different federal agent put it this way in an email to Fox News….
“Every night we’re getting beaten like a pinata at a birthday party by drug, alien smugglers.”
Things have gotten very, very serious along the border and both the Bush and the Obama administrations have refused to do anything to fix the problem. Today, Arizona police are being openly told that if they try to interfere with all of this drug traffic they will be “taken out” by drug cartel snipers.
Is that how we want our police officers to live?
This is a national disgrace.
The U.S. federal government refuses to secure our border, and drug violence is spilling over onto our soil and into our cities.
For over 50 years, the U.S. military has completely and totally secured the border between South Korea and North Korea. We have spent millions upon millions of dollars to do this and during that time there has not been a single unauthorized entry into South Korea across that border.
But the U.S. government says that it cannot secure our border with Mexico. In fact, there are many in the Obama administration that believe that it would be “a violation of human rights” to put up a fence or to implement extra security on the border.
Meanwhile, drug traffic and drug violence continues to come across the border into the United States. Already, many U.S. border towns are turning into nightmares. It would be very difficult to understate the threat that we are facing.
So what do you think about the Mexican drug war and the crisis on the border? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion….
The truth is that it is far safer to go to Iraq or Afghanistan today than it is to go to cities like Juarez. Freelance journalist Jeff Antebi recently described to CNN what he experienced when he went to Juarez….
“When I arrived in Juarez,” says Antebi, “within an hour, over the police scanners, a body has been found. And maybe 30 minutes later, another body.
“And then another body. And by the end of the day, it was 10. The next day, 10. The next day, 10.”
The Mexican government says that as many as 28,000 people have been slaughtered by the drug cartels since 2007. The drug cartels are constantly at war with each other and with Mexican authorities. In the video posted below, one reporter went to Juarez to try to get a sense of what is happening to that city….
It would be really hard to understate what a disaster zone Juarez has become. In an interview with Democracy Now, author Charles Bowden described how a once very prosperous city has become a literal hellhole as a result of all this violence….
So what you have is about 10,000 federal troops and federal police agents all marauding. You have a city where no one goes out at night; where small businesses all pay extortion; where 20,000 cars were officially stolen last year; where 2,600-plus people were officially murdered last year; where nobody keeps track of the people who have been kidnapped and never come back; where nobody counts the people buried in secret burying grounds, and they, in an unseemly way, claw out of the earth from time to time. You’ve got a disaster. And you have a million people, too poor to leave, imprisoned in it.
It doesn’t matter if you are an American either. The drug cartels will gun you down and gut you like a fish in a heartbeat. For example, NPR recently described one horrific incident in the Juarez Valley that involved American citizens….
A couple of weeks ago, gunmen in the Juarez Valley killed the Mexican relative of a Fort Hancock high school student. When the student’s family in Fort Hancock heard about it, they crossed the border at 10 a.m. to see the body, and took the student with them.
“By 10:30, they had stabbed the relatives that went with him, which included his grandparents, with an ice pick,” says school superintendent Jose Franco. “My understanding is that the gentleman is like 90 years old, and they poked his eyes out with an ice pick. I believe those people are still in intensive care here in a hospital in the U.S.”
Are you starting to get an idea of just how brutal these drug cartels actually are? They are not playing games.
The horrific drug war raging on the U.S. border has created a huge demand for hitmen and acid baths. In January, authorities arrested Santiago Meza Lopez. Known as “the soupmaker”, the 45 year old man has confessed that he made about 300 bodies disappear by dissolving them in acid baths.
So why is all of this violence happening?
Well, it is all for control over the sale of drugs to Americans.
The United States is the biggest market for drugs in the world, and there is a ton of money at stake.
The drug cartels will go to great lengths to get their goods into the United States. This point was illustrated recently when U.S. officials raided a southern California warehouse and discovered a lighted, ventilated passageway 4 feet high and 1,800 feet long crossing into Mexico. The tunnel was approximately six football fields in length. During that operation, authorities seized about 25 tons of marijuana.
But this tunnel is nothing new. The truth is that approximately 75 tunnels along the border with Mexico have been discovered by authorities in the last four years alone.
Unfortunately, most Mexicans don’t even need a tunnel. Security on the U.S. border with Mexico is a complete and total joke, and illegal aliens come over almost at will.
According to some estimates, there are as many as 30 million illegal aliens in the United States today. Nobody has any idea how many of them are gang members or are working directly for the drug cartels.
But one thing is for certain – the gang problem in the United States is rapidly getting worse. Once young illegal aliens arrive in our cities, they quickly find that their employment options are extremely limited. Large numbers of them end up getting sucked into Spanish-speaking gangs.
U.S. authorities say that there are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs operating inside the United States. According to federal statistics, these 1 million gang members are responsible for up to 80% of the violent crimes committed in the U.S. each year.
Not all of this gang violence is caused by illegal aliens, but a growing percentage of it is. Spanish-speaking gangs are rapidly becoming the dominant gangs in cities all over the United States.
But it is not just gang violence that is the problem. The reality is that the Mexican drug cartels are now openly conducting organized military operations inside the United States. Federal border officials say that Mexican drug cartels have not only set up shop on U.S. soil, but they are actually maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona.
From those “forward bases”, the armed drug cartel scouts monitor every move that U.S. border agents make. In fact, it has been reported that drivers regularly bring these drug cartel scouts food, water, batteries for their radios and everything else that they need to stay in the wilderness for long periods of time.
Yes, this is really happening.
In fact, there is one stretch of Arizona that the U.S. federal government has conceded control of to the drug cartels. It is a drug smuggling corridor that extends from the Mexican border all the way up to Phoenix, Arizona.
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu made national headlines when he told the media what is really going on down there. The following are just a few quotes from what Babeu told the press….
-”Drug cartels control this area.”
-”Local law enforcement cannot handle and stop this on our own.”
-”We are outgunned, we are outmanned and we don’t have the resources here locally for us to fight this.”
The video news report posted below features Babeu and discusses how the U.S. government has actually made some parts of Arizona off limits to U.S. citizens because of the threat of violence from Mexican drug smugglers….
Yes, things have really gotten that bizarre. One border agent who wished to remain anonymous told Fox News the following earlier this year….
“To say that this area is out of control is an understatement.”
A different federal agent put it this way in an email to Fox News….
“Every night we’re getting beaten like a pinata at a birthday party by drug, alien smugglers.”
Things have gotten very, very serious along the border and both the Bush and the Obama administrations have refused to do anything to fix the problem. Today, Arizona police are being openly told that if they try to interfere with all of this drug traffic they will be “taken out” by drug cartel snipers.
Is that how we want our police officers to live?
This is a national disgrace.
The U.S. federal government refuses to secure our border, and drug violence is spilling over onto our soil and into our cities.
For over 50 years, the U.S. military has completely and totally secured the border between South Korea and North Korea. We have spent millions upon millions of dollars to do this and during that time there has not been a single unauthorized entry into South Korea across that border.
But the U.S. government says that it cannot secure our border with Mexico. In fact, there are many in the Obama administration that believe that it would be “a violation of human rights” to put up a fence or to implement extra security on the border.
Meanwhile, drug traffic and drug violence continues to come across the border into the United States. Already, many U.S. border towns are turning into nightmares. It would be very difficult to understate the threat that we are facing.
So what do you think about the Mexican drug war and the crisis on the border? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion….
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Phantom Jobs Report
Paul Craig Roberts - If we cannot trust what the government tells us about weapons of mass destruction, terrorist events, and the reasons for its wars and bailouts, can we trust the government’s statement last Friday that the US economy gained 151,000 payroll jobs during October?
Apparently not. After examining the government’s report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that the jobs were “phantom jobs” created by “concurrent seasonal factor adjustments.” In other words, the 151,000 jobs cannot be found in the unadjusted underlying data. The jobs were the product of seasonal adjustments concocted by the BLS.
As usual, the financial press did no investigation and simply reported the number handed to the media by the government.
The relevant information, the information that you need to know, is that the level of payroll employment today is below the level of 10 years ago. A smaller number of Americans are employed right now than were employed a decade ago.
Think about what that means. We have had a decade of work force growth from youngsters reaching working age and from immigration, legal and illegal, but there are fewer jobs available to accommodate a decade of work force entrants than before the decade began.
During two years from December 2007 – December 2009, the US economy lost 8,363,000 jobs, according to the payroll jobs data. As of October 2010, payroll jobs purportedly have increased by 874,000, an insufficient amount to keep up with labor force growth. However, John Williams reports that 874,000 is an overestimate of jobs as a result of the faulty “birth-death model,” which overestimates new business start-ups during recessions and underestimates business failures. Williams says that the next benchmark revision due out next February will show a reduction in current employment by almost 600,000 jobs. This assumes, of course, that the BLS does not gimmick the benchmark revision. If Williams is correct, it is more evidence that the hyped recovery is non-existent.
Discounting the war production shutdown at the end of World War II, which was not a recession in the usual sense, Williams reports that “the current annual decline [in employment] remains the worst since the Great Depression, and should deepen further.”
In short, there is no employment data, and none in the works, unless gimmicked, that supports the recovery myth. The US rate of unemployment, if measured according to the methodology used in 1980, is 22.5%. Even the government’s broader measure of unemployment stands at 17%. The 9.6% reported rate is a concocted measure that does not include discouraged workers who have been unable to find a job after 6 months and workers who who want full time jobs but can only find part-time work.
Another fact that is seldom, if ever, reported, is that the payroll jobs data reports the number of jobs, not the number of people with jobs. Some people hold two jobs; thus, the payroll report does not give the number of employed people.
The BLS household survey measures the number of people with jobs. The same October that reported 151,000 new payroll jobs reported, according to the household survey, a loss of 330,000 jobs.
The American working class has been destroyed. The American middle class is in its final stages of destruction. Soon the bottom rungs of the rich themselves will be destroyed.
The entire way through this process the government will lie and the media will lie.
The United States of America has become the country of the Big Lie. Those who facilitate government and corporate lies are well rewarded, but anyone who tells any truth or expresses an impermissible opinion is excoriated and driven away.
But we “have freedom and democracy.” We are the virtuous, indispensable nation, the salt of the earth, the light unto the world.
Apparently not. After examining the government’s report, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reported that the jobs were “phantom jobs” created by “concurrent seasonal factor adjustments.” In other words, the 151,000 jobs cannot be found in the unadjusted underlying data. The jobs were the product of seasonal adjustments concocted by the BLS.
As usual, the financial press did no investigation and simply reported the number handed to the media by the government.
The relevant information, the information that you need to know, is that the level of payroll employment today is below the level of 10 years ago. A smaller number of Americans are employed right now than were employed a decade ago.
Think about what that means. We have had a decade of work force growth from youngsters reaching working age and from immigration, legal and illegal, but there are fewer jobs available to accommodate a decade of work force entrants than before the decade began.
During two years from December 2007 – December 2009, the US economy lost 8,363,000 jobs, according to the payroll jobs data. As of October 2010, payroll jobs purportedly have increased by 874,000, an insufficient amount to keep up with labor force growth. However, John Williams reports that 874,000 is an overestimate of jobs as a result of the faulty “birth-death model,” which overestimates new business start-ups during recessions and underestimates business failures. Williams says that the next benchmark revision due out next February will show a reduction in current employment by almost 600,000 jobs. This assumes, of course, that the BLS does not gimmick the benchmark revision. If Williams is correct, it is more evidence that the hyped recovery is non-existent.
Discounting the war production shutdown at the end of World War II, which was not a recession in the usual sense, Williams reports that “the current annual decline [in employment] remains the worst since the Great Depression, and should deepen further.”
In short, there is no employment data, and none in the works, unless gimmicked, that supports the recovery myth. The US rate of unemployment, if measured according to the methodology used in 1980, is 22.5%. Even the government’s broader measure of unemployment stands at 17%. The 9.6% reported rate is a concocted measure that does not include discouraged workers who have been unable to find a job after 6 months and workers who who want full time jobs but can only find part-time work.
Another fact that is seldom, if ever, reported, is that the payroll jobs data reports the number of jobs, not the number of people with jobs. Some people hold two jobs; thus, the payroll report does not give the number of employed people.
The BLS household survey measures the number of people with jobs. The same October that reported 151,000 new payroll jobs reported, according to the household survey, a loss of 330,000 jobs.
The American working class has been destroyed. The American middle class is in its final stages of destruction. Soon the bottom rungs of the rich themselves will be destroyed.
The entire way through this process the government will lie and the media will lie.
The United States of America has become the country of the Big Lie. Those who facilitate government and corporate lies are well rewarded, but anyone who tells any truth or expresses an impermissible opinion is excoriated and driven away.
But we “have freedom and democracy.” We are the virtuous, indispensable nation, the salt of the earth, the light unto the world.
Monday, November 8, 2010
14 Pieces Of Bad Economic News
Economic Collapse - Today the financial world was buzzing with excitement because there was one moderately good piece of news for the U.S. economy. U.S. employers added 151,000 jobs during the month of October and the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.6%. This is certainly welcome news, but these days it seems as though there are at least ten pieces of bad economic news for every hopeful economic signal. So don’t get fooled when the U.S. economy takes one step forward, because it is about to take another dozen or so steps backwards. We are living in the middle of a nightmarish long-term economic decline that has been building for generations. The deindustrialization of the United States, the horrific trade deficit caused by globalization and the skyrocketing national debt are problems that have taken decades to develop. The Federal Reserve has been ripping the guts out of our financial system since 1913. These are not things that are going to be fixed overnight. In fact, there are some statistics that just keep getting worse and worse and worse as time goes by. We are heading straight for a devastating economic collapse and hopefully we can all warn as many people as possible while there is still time.
The more research that you do into our economic situation the more depressing it becomes. We are in big, big, big trouble. The following are 14 pieces of bad economic news that are so horrifying you might not want to read them standing up….
#1 More than 42 million Americans were on food stamps during the month of August. That is a new all-time record, and that number is 17 percent higher than it was one year earlier. In fact, the number of Americans on food stamps is up more than 58 percent since August 2007.
#2 The number of “persons not in the labor force” in the United States has set another new all-time record. The United States has not had such an extended bout of mass unemployment since the Great Depression. The “official” unemployment rate in the United States has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 consecutive months.
#3 More than 1000 people now live in the 200 miles of flood tunnels that exist under the city of Las Vegas. Once one of the most prosperous cities in the United States, Las Vegas is now little more than a shiny, glittering corpse that it rapidly decaying.
#4 Poverty is absolutely exploding and it is hitting those who are the most vulnerable the hardest. According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010.
#5 In the past 60 days alone, the price of cotton is up 54%, the price of corn is up 29%, the price of soybeans is up 22%, the price of orange juice is up 17%, and the price of sugar is up 51%.
#6 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.
#7 The American Bankruptcy Institute says that there will be about 1.6 million consumer bankruptcies in 2010. That would represent a huge increase over 2009.
#8 According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.
#9 The individual U.S. states are mostly flat broke. For example, it is being reported that the 15 largest U.S. states spent on average over 220% of their tax receipts over the past decade. Clearly this is not even close to sustainable.
#10 The U.S. government is completely and totally broke. After analyzing Congressional Budget Office data, Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff concluded that the U.S. government is facing a “fiscal gap” of $202 trillion dollars.
#11 In an attempt to keep our financial system solvent, the U.S. Federal Reserve has announced plans to create $600 billion out of thin air and pump it into the U.S. economy. The Fed is calling this “quantitative easing“, but what they should really be calling it is “cheating, debasing and inflating”.
#12 Many of the major trading partners of the United States are expressing deep resentment regarding the new quantitative easing policy announced by the Fed. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard recently described the growing animosity this way….
Li Deshui from Beijing’s Economic Commission said a string of Asian states share China’s “deep bitterness” over dollar debasement, and are examining ways of teaming up to insulate themselves from the tsunami of US liquidity.
#13 For many analysts, the economic collapse of the United States comes down to cold, hard math. For example, the former CEO of the tenth largest bank in the United States says that it is a “mathematical certainty” that the U.S. government will eventually go bankrupt.
#14 According to a recent article on CNBC, the financial world is already buzzing about QE3….
“They’re already talking about QE3,” said Dave Rovelli, managing director of US equity trading for Canaccord Adams. “Eventually we’re going to be printing so much money the dollar is going to really go down and everybody’s going to try to deflate their currency against us. I just don’t know how this could end well.”
So is that all the Federal Reserve has left?
Are they just going to keep pouring bags of money into the economy until things get back to “normal”?
Are we going to have “Quantitative Easing 3″, “Quantitative Easing 4″, and “Quantitative Easing 5″?
It has been a long-running joke, but perhaps by the end of this thing Ben Bernanke will literally go up in a helicopter and start shoveling out huge piles of cash over the countryside.
The era of great prosperity that we have all enjoyed for so long is coming to an end. It would be advisable to use the remaining period of economic stability that we still have to prepare for what is ahead.
These economic problems could have been fixed decades ago if people would have actually listened and would have followed sound economic principles on an individual and on a corporate level, but that did not happen.
Now we are up to our eyeballs in debt and the greatest economic machine in history is rotting all around us.
We are in deep, deep, deep trouble and denying it is not going to make it go away.
The more research that you do into our economic situation the more depressing it becomes. We are in big, big, big trouble. The following are 14 pieces of bad economic news that are so horrifying you might not want to read them standing up….
#1 More than 42 million Americans were on food stamps during the month of August. That is a new all-time record, and that number is 17 percent higher than it was one year earlier. In fact, the number of Americans on food stamps is up more than 58 percent since August 2007.
#2 The number of “persons not in the labor force” in the United States has set another new all-time record. The United States has not had such an extended bout of mass unemployment since the Great Depression. The “official” unemployment rate in the United States has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 consecutive months.
#3 More than 1000 people now live in the 200 miles of flood tunnels that exist under the city of Las Vegas. Once one of the most prosperous cities in the United States, Las Vegas is now little more than a shiny, glittering corpse that it rapidly decaying.
#4 Poverty is absolutely exploding and it is hitting those who are the most vulnerable the hardest. According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010.
#5 In the past 60 days alone, the price of cotton is up 54%, the price of corn is up 29%, the price of soybeans is up 22%, the price of orange juice is up 17%, and the price of sugar is up 51%.
#6 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.
#7 The American Bankruptcy Institute says that there will be about 1.6 million consumer bankruptcies in 2010. That would represent a huge increase over 2009.
#8 According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.
#9 The individual U.S. states are mostly flat broke. For example, it is being reported that the 15 largest U.S. states spent on average over 220% of their tax receipts over the past decade. Clearly this is not even close to sustainable.
#10 The U.S. government is completely and totally broke. After analyzing Congressional Budget Office data, Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff concluded that the U.S. government is facing a “fiscal gap” of $202 trillion dollars.
#11 In an attempt to keep our financial system solvent, the U.S. Federal Reserve has announced plans to create $600 billion out of thin air and pump it into the U.S. economy. The Fed is calling this “quantitative easing“, but what they should really be calling it is “cheating, debasing and inflating”.
#12 Many of the major trading partners of the United States are expressing deep resentment regarding the new quantitative easing policy announced by the Fed. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard recently described the growing animosity this way….
Li Deshui from Beijing’s Economic Commission said a string of Asian states share China’s “deep bitterness” over dollar debasement, and are examining ways of teaming up to insulate themselves from the tsunami of US liquidity.
#13 For many analysts, the economic collapse of the United States comes down to cold, hard math. For example, the former CEO of the tenth largest bank in the United States says that it is a “mathematical certainty” that the U.S. government will eventually go bankrupt.
#14 According to a recent article on CNBC, the financial world is already buzzing about QE3….
“They’re already talking about QE3,” said Dave Rovelli, managing director of US equity trading for Canaccord Adams. “Eventually we’re going to be printing so much money the dollar is going to really go down and everybody’s going to try to deflate their currency against us. I just don’t know how this could end well.”
So is that all the Federal Reserve has left?
Are they just going to keep pouring bags of money into the economy until things get back to “normal”?
Are we going to have “Quantitative Easing 3″, “Quantitative Easing 4″, and “Quantitative Easing 5″?
It has been a long-running joke, but perhaps by the end of this thing Ben Bernanke will literally go up in a helicopter and start shoveling out huge piles of cash over the countryside.
The era of great prosperity that we have all enjoyed for so long is coming to an end. It would be advisable to use the remaining period of economic stability that we still have to prepare for what is ahead.
These economic problems could have been fixed decades ago if people would have actually listened and would have followed sound economic principles on an individual and on a corporate level, but that did not happen.
Now we are up to our eyeballs in debt and the greatest economic machine in history is rotting all around us.
We are in deep, deep, deep trouble and denying it is not going to make it go away.
Allen West Will Ask To Join CBC;Tim Scott Probably Will Not Join
Sister Toldjah - The Politico reported over the weekend on how the first two Southern GOP House members since Reconstruction are hinting around about how they’ll approach – or not approach – the Congressional Black Caucus in the weeks/months to come:
[Allen] West [FL22] told POLITICO he’d “absolutely” be interested in joining the CBC. “That has been a monolithic voice in the body politic for far too long. There is a growing conservative black voice in this country,” West said, that needs to be represented in Washington.
West, of Florida, and Tim Scott of South Carolina will be the first two black Republicans to serve in Congress since J.C. Watts, who refused to join the CBC, and the first black GOP members from the Deep South since Reconstruction, but the two have different ideas about whether they should join the CBC, which hasn’t had a Republican member since Connecticut Rep. Gary Franks, who lost his seat in 1996.
“I haven’t really decided. I’m probably leaning against it at this point,” said Scott, whose 89-year-old grandfather was with him Tuesday night when he won a seat in South Carolina’s 1st District. “My experience has been the whole notion of one nation — so I really shy away things that create some kind of boundaries. … It highlights the divisions I’ve been pushing forward to erase.”
Scott served in the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, he said, and “had some great relationships for the first year. But we were so often on a different page that — it was a good time, but besides building bridges in relationships, which was incredibly important — it didn’t serve my legislative objectives. So I didn’t join the second year.”
I can understand the rationale of both men and support them both, whatever they decide to do. I have a feeling, though, that in West’s case he’d join (if “allowed”) not to “break bread” but instead to shake things up in what has historically been nothing more than a Socialistic pro-Cuba caucus masquerading as a caucus for “black lawmakers.” He’s pretty much said as much:
Conservative West, who seldom discussed race in his campaign, is critical of the “failure of the liberal welfare policies in the black community” and says the caucus could use some ideological diversity.
West and the caucus have already crossed paths.
U.S. Rep. and Black Caucus member Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, enlisted other caucus members to oppose West, bringing U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., to West Palm Beach to stump for Klein.
At a debate last month, after Klein criticized West for being at an event with members of the notorious Outlaws motorcycle club, West noted Klein had campaigned with an “impeached federal judge,” a reference to Hastings’ removal from the federal bench by the Senate in 1989.
And since he said Klein was bringing up “guilt by association,” West brought up ethics investigations of Black Caucus members Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and the conviction of former caucus member and freezer cash-stasher William Jefferson of Louisiana.
Hastings didn’t return a call asking for his thoughts on West.
Asked how he anticipates getting along with Hastings, West said, “That’s up to him. I can get along with anyone as long as they’re doing the right things for the people of South Florida.”
Scott may very well decide to avoid being a noisemaker when it comes to this hostile-to-conservatives monolithic group and instead “make noise” for his district in other ways while serving the first of what hopefully will be many terms in the US House.
Either way, best of luck to them both.
[Allen] West [FL22] told POLITICO he’d “absolutely” be interested in joining the CBC. “That has been a monolithic voice in the body politic for far too long. There is a growing conservative black voice in this country,” West said, that needs to be represented in Washington.
West, of Florida, and Tim Scott of South Carolina will be the first two black Republicans to serve in Congress since J.C. Watts, who refused to join the CBC, and the first black GOP members from the Deep South since Reconstruction, but the two have different ideas about whether they should join the CBC, which hasn’t had a Republican member since Connecticut Rep. Gary Franks, who lost his seat in 1996.
“I haven’t really decided. I’m probably leaning against it at this point,” said Scott, whose 89-year-old grandfather was with him Tuesday night when he won a seat in South Carolina’s 1st District. “My experience has been the whole notion of one nation — so I really shy away things that create some kind of boundaries. … It highlights the divisions I’ve been pushing forward to erase.”
Scott served in the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, he said, and “had some great relationships for the first year. But we were so often on a different page that — it was a good time, but besides building bridges in relationships, which was incredibly important — it didn’t serve my legislative objectives. So I didn’t join the second year.”
I can understand the rationale of both men and support them both, whatever they decide to do. I have a feeling, though, that in West’s case he’d join (if “allowed”) not to “break bread” but instead to shake things up in what has historically been nothing more than a Socialistic pro-Cuba caucus masquerading as a caucus for “black lawmakers.” He’s pretty much said as much:
Conservative West, who seldom discussed race in his campaign, is critical of the “failure of the liberal welfare policies in the black community” and says the caucus could use some ideological diversity.
West and the caucus have already crossed paths.
U.S. Rep. and Black Caucus member Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, enlisted other caucus members to oppose West, bringing U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., to West Palm Beach to stump for Klein.
At a debate last month, after Klein criticized West for being at an event with members of the notorious Outlaws motorcycle club, West noted Klein had campaigned with an “impeached federal judge,” a reference to Hastings’ removal from the federal bench by the Senate in 1989.
And since he said Klein was bringing up “guilt by association,” West brought up ethics investigations of Black Caucus members Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and the conviction of former caucus member and freezer cash-stasher William Jefferson of Louisiana.
Hastings didn’t return a call asking for his thoughts on West.
Asked how he anticipates getting along with Hastings, West said, “That’s up to him. I can get along with anyone as long as they’re doing the right things for the people of South Florida.”
Scott may very well decide to avoid being a noisemaker when it comes to this hostile-to-conservatives monolithic group and instead “make noise” for his district in other ways while serving the first of what hopefully will be many terms in the US House.
Either way, best of luck to them both.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Bankruptcy Of U.S. "Mathematical Certainty"
(CNSNews.com) - John Allison, who for two decades served as chairman and CEO of BB&T, the nation's 10th largest bank, told CNSNews.com it is a “mathematical certainty” that the United States government will go bankrupt unless it dramatically changes its fiscal direction.
Allison likened what he sees as the predictable future bankruptcy of the United States to the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose insolvency he also said was foreseeable to those who studied their business practices and financial situation.
“I think the first thing we have to realize is where we’re going and to face it objectively,” Allison told CNSNews.com, when asked about the trillion-dollar-plus deficits the federal government has run for three straight years, the more than $13 trillion in federal debt, and the $61.9 trillion long-term shortfall the government faces (according to the analysis of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation) if the government is to pay all the benefits it has promised through entitlement programs.
“If you run the numbers, on all those numbers that you just talked about, which I think are accurate, very accurate, in 20 or 25 years, the United States goes bankrupt,” said Allison. “It’s a mathematical certainty.
“It reminds me very much of that story I told you about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae,” said Allison. “We were running the numbers, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae went bankrupt, and we got there. In 20 or 25 years, the United States goes bankrupt.
“Now, countries don’t go bankrupt the way companies do,” said Allison. “They don’t file bankruptcy. They usually hyper-inflate. They print a bunch of paper money, or they become Third World economies like Argentina--unless we change direction. So, we absolutely have to change direction. And the irony of that is it requires an interesting combination. It requires both discipline, but it also requires a focus on growing our economy. And it means a fundamental philosophical change from where we are today, from the idea of redistributing wealth to the idea of creating wealth.”
In his interview with CNSNews.com Allison said that when belonged to the Financial Services Roundtable they examined Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and determined they were going bankrupt. Congressional leaders, however, did not heed their analysis.
“I was on a committee, a Financial Services Roundtable, for nine years trying to do something about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae,” said Allison.
“You couldn’t help but see it coming,” he said. “You ran the numbers, particularly the last several years, and it was mathematically certain Freddie and Fannie were going bankrupt.”
“We met with Congress. We met with [House Financial Services Chairman] Barney Frank and [Senate Banking Chairman] Chris Dodd and they absolutely wouldn’t see it,” said Allison.
Allison became president of BB&T in 1987 and was elected chairman in 1989. He remained CEO through 2008. He is now distinguished professor of practice at the Wake Forest University Schools of Business. By 2009, according to rankings done by SNL Financial, BB&T had grown into the nation's 10th largest bank.
Allison likened what he sees as the predictable future bankruptcy of the United States to the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose insolvency he also said was foreseeable to those who studied their business practices and financial situation.
“I think the first thing we have to realize is where we’re going and to face it objectively,” Allison told CNSNews.com, when asked about the trillion-dollar-plus deficits the federal government has run for three straight years, the more than $13 trillion in federal debt, and the $61.9 trillion long-term shortfall the government faces (according to the analysis of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation) if the government is to pay all the benefits it has promised through entitlement programs.
“If you run the numbers, on all those numbers that you just talked about, which I think are accurate, very accurate, in 20 or 25 years, the United States goes bankrupt,” said Allison. “It’s a mathematical certainty.
“It reminds me very much of that story I told you about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae,” said Allison. “We were running the numbers, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae went bankrupt, and we got there. In 20 or 25 years, the United States goes bankrupt.
“Now, countries don’t go bankrupt the way companies do,” said Allison. “They don’t file bankruptcy. They usually hyper-inflate. They print a bunch of paper money, or they become Third World economies like Argentina--unless we change direction. So, we absolutely have to change direction. And the irony of that is it requires an interesting combination. It requires both discipline, but it also requires a focus on growing our economy. And it means a fundamental philosophical change from where we are today, from the idea of redistributing wealth to the idea of creating wealth.”
In his interview with CNSNews.com Allison said that when belonged to the Financial Services Roundtable they examined Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and determined they were going bankrupt. Congressional leaders, however, did not heed their analysis.
“I was on a committee, a Financial Services Roundtable, for nine years trying to do something about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae,” said Allison.
“You couldn’t help but see it coming,” he said. “You ran the numbers, particularly the last several years, and it was mathematically certain Freddie and Fannie were going bankrupt.”
“We met with Congress. We met with [House Financial Services Chairman] Barney Frank and [Senate Banking Chairman] Chris Dodd and they absolutely wouldn’t see it,” said Allison.
Allison became president of BB&T in 1987 and was elected chairman in 1989. He remained CEO through 2008. He is now distinguished professor of practice at the Wake Forest University Schools of Business. By 2009, according to rankings done by SNL Financial, BB&T had grown into the nation's 10th largest bank.
Olbermann Suspended From MSNBC But Why?
Nice Deb - CBS News, Political Hotsheet reports the glorious news:
Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay from MSNBC for making donations to three Democrats in violation of NBC’s ethics policy.
“I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night,” Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC, said in a statement. “Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”
Olbermann, who does not hide his liberal views, has acknowledged donations of $2,400 each to Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords during this election cycle.
NBC’s ethics policy generally bars political activity, including contributions, without the approval of the president of NBC News, Steve Capus, according to a 2007 story on MSNBC.com.
Ed Morrissey doubts the suspension will last past the weekend.
See also
Olbermann Watch: Olbermann Caught! Gave Thousands to Dem Candidates Then Anchored Election Coverage!
The Blog Prof: MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann suspended without pay for Democrat campaign contributions
I don’t get this one. MSNBC has suspended Keith Olbermann because he contributed to several Democrat campaigns. Apparently, MSNBC wants to maintain it’s image as a non-biased news organization. Which engenders this response from me: WHAT?!? Are they kidding? The man’s 8pm show ought to be listed as an in-kind contribution to the DNC. Good grief. Really – is this a big deal? The cat’s been out of that bag so long ago that it’s dead.
Drew says: Schadenfreude overdose.
Newsbusters: BREAKING: MSNBC Suspends Keith Olbermann Indefinitely
Tweet ‘o the day: @Doc_0: Olbermann suspended? Hey, this “Restoring Sanity” thing is really catching on!
AnnCoulter‘s having too much fun on Twitter:
Olberdork indefinitely suspended????? very sad. I will miss watching the pompous, know-nothing fruitcake.
—
I can’t believe they’d treat a graduate of Cornell’s agricultural college this way.
—
(LOL!)
Great – now, how are we supposed to know who the Worst Person in the World is? Thanks, MSNBC!
MORE:
Egad…A disturbing replacement idea has emerged….
Michelle Malkin: Support Olbermann? No freaking way; Poll added: Who should replace Olbermann?
I like RS McCain’s take: Stunning Discovery: Shadowy Corporate Donors Contribute to Political Campaigns
I was not shocked to learn that MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann had contributed to Democrats. What truly shocked me? Finding out that NBC has an “ethics policy”!
See Da Techguy for some “serious snarkitude”.
UPDATE:
Hot Air: TV Newser: “Insiders” say Olbermann won’t be back
Allah makes some great points:
What bugs me about suspending Olby for “ethics” infractions is that, if only in a nominal way, it lets MSNBC go on pretending that its commentators are journalists. It’s like when a major paper runs a “news” story that’s obviously slanted to the left and which happens to contain a spelling error. They’ll happily issue a correction for the misspelling but the bias goes unmentioned; that’s their way of signaling to readers that they’re scrupulous about accuracy even while they’re dropping hatchet jobs on conservatives while professing impartiality all the while. As Ed noted earlier, it’s a sick joke to suggest that Olby throwing a few thou to Democratic candidates is an unpardonable journalistic sin while that horror show that MSNBC happily aired on Tuesday night is just good reportorial funsies for the viewers at home. I don’t care how many posters of Murrow Olby has on his wall: He’s not a reporter, he’s not a journalist, and no one but no one but no one thinks that he is, so why are journalistic ethics being applied to him?
Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay from MSNBC for making donations to three Democrats in violation of NBC’s ethics policy.
“I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night,” Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC, said in a statement. “Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”
Olbermann, who does not hide his liberal views, has acknowledged donations of $2,400 each to Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords during this election cycle.
NBC’s ethics policy generally bars political activity, including contributions, without the approval of the president of NBC News, Steve Capus, according to a 2007 story on MSNBC.com.
Ed Morrissey doubts the suspension will last past the weekend.
See also
Olbermann Watch: Olbermann Caught! Gave Thousands to Dem Candidates Then Anchored Election Coverage!
The Blog Prof: MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann suspended without pay for Democrat campaign contributions
I don’t get this one. MSNBC has suspended Keith Olbermann because he contributed to several Democrat campaigns. Apparently, MSNBC wants to maintain it’s image as a non-biased news organization. Which engenders this response from me: WHAT?!? Are they kidding? The man’s 8pm show ought to be listed as an in-kind contribution to the DNC. Good grief. Really – is this a big deal? The cat’s been out of that bag so long ago that it’s dead.
Drew says: Schadenfreude overdose.
Newsbusters: BREAKING: MSNBC Suspends Keith Olbermann Indefinitely
Tweet ‘o the day: @Doc_0: Olbermann suspended? Hey, this “Restoring Sanity” thing is really catching on!
AnnCoulter‘s having too much fun on Twitter:
Olberdork indefinitely suspended????? very sad. I will miss watching the pompous, know-nothing fruitcake.
—
I can’t believe they’d treat a graduate of Cornell’s agricultural college this way.
—
(LOL!)
Great – now, how are we supposed to know who the Worst Person in the World is? Thanks, MSNBC!
MORE:
Egad…A disturbing replacement idea has emerged….
Michelle Malkin: Support Olbermann? No freaking way; Poll added: Who should replace Olbermann?
I like RS McCain’s take: Stunning Discovery: Shadowy Corporate Donors Contribute to Political Campaigns
I was not shocked to learn that MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann had contributed to Democrats. What truly shocked me? Finding out that NBC has an “ethics policy”!
See Da Techguy for some “serious snarkitude”.
UPDATE:
Hot Air: TV Newser: “Insiders” say Olbermann won’t be back
Allah makes some great points:
What bugs me about suspending Olby for “ethics” infractions is that, if only in a nominal way, it lets MSNBC go on pretending that its commentators are journalists. It’s like when a major paper runs a “news” story that’s obviously slanted to the left and which happens to contain a spelling error. They’ll happily issue a correction for the misspelling but the bias goes unmentioned; that’s their way of signaling to readers that they’re scrupulous about accuracy even while they’re dropping hatchet jobs on conservatives while professing impartiality all the while. As Ed noted earlier, it’s a sick joke to suggest that Olby throwing a few thou to Democratic candidates is an unpardonable journalistic sin while that horror show that MSNBC happily aired on Tuesday night is just good reportorial funsies for the viewers at home. I don’t care how many posters of Murrow Olby has on his wall: He’s not a reporter, he’s not a journalist, and no one but no one but no one thinks that he is, so why are journalistic ethics being applied to him?
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
African-American Consevatives Scott-West Headed To Capital Hill
While Democrats managed to hang on to the majority of the Senate there will be no African-American members among them. Roland Burris, the only current African-American senator, is retiring. None of the three African-American candidates — Democrats Kendrick Meek, Alvin Greene and Mike Thurmond — won on Tuesday, according to CNN.
Only six black senators have ever served in the U.S. Senate: three Republicans and three Democrats — including President Barack Obama.
On the House front however, CEDRIC RICHMOND, a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives since 2000, defeated the one-term Republican incumbent Anh “Joseph” Cao in the heavily Democratic New Orleans district, 58 percent to 39 percent.
Richmond, a 37-year-old African-American, had been expected to beat Cao, whose 2008 victory—for the seat long held by Democrat William Jefferson—was considered an anomaly, after Jefferson was accused of corruption. Cao, who immigrated from Vietnamese in 19TK, was the first Vietnamese American to serve in Congress and the first Republican elected from his district since 1891. Richmond, a New Orleans native, was the youngest person ever elected to the Louisiana legislature at age of 26 (Courtesy of New America Media).
HANSEN CLARKE, a Democratic state senator, MICHIGAN/U.S. CONGRESS (13th DISTRICT) won the seat formerly held by Rep. Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick (mother of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick), whom he defeated in a primary challenge. His opponent in the November 2 election, John Hauler, business development director for an electronics firm and a tea party activist, had pitched a plan making Detroit a tax-free zone for 10 years.
Clarke, 53, is the son of a Bangladeshi immigrant father and African-American mother who worked as a school-crossing guard to support the family after his father died. Before running for elected office, Clarke served as chief of staff to U.S. Representative John Conyers (Courtesy of New America Media).
Black Republicans also celebrated wins on Tuesday. Retired Lt. Colonel Allen West win in Florida’s 22nd District and South Carolina State Rep. Tim Scott’s victory in that state’s 1st Congressional District is also the first time two black GOP members will serve in Congress since 1996 reports CNN.
Scott defeated Democrat Ben Frasier in an open contest to replace retiring Republican Rep. Henry Brown to the first black GOP in Congress since former Oklahoma Congressman J.C.
Now let’s check out the slant on these two victories from Fox News. We love how they go out of their way to emphasize how race is not an issue and never has been in the conservative political realm. Oh hell. let’s go ahead ‘n’ call it the Tea Party. Read the following:
West defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Ron Klein shortly after Scott’s victory Tuesday. It was West’s second contest against Klein, losing to the incumbent in 2008.
Watts, elected to office in 1994′s sweeping GOP congressional gains, became the lone black Republican Member when former Congressman Gary Franks of Connecticut lost reelection in 1996, and Watts held the helm for three more terms before deciding not to seek reelection in 2002.
Watts notably did not join the Congressional Black Caucus given its overly Democratic leanings, and he balked at the suggestion among racial peers that he sold out his race. In 1997 the congressman famously denounced black leaders with archaic agendas, dismissing them as “race-hustling poverty pimps” on Fox News’s “Hannity and Colmes.”
An Atlanta native, West served in the Army for 22 years, including tours of duty in both Iraq wars and in Afghanistan. His campaign platform, “Restoring American Exceptionalism,” echoed this election cycle’s popular conservative sentiments of limited government, creating a business-friendly tax environment, and extending the Bush era tax cuts.
Scott hails from South Carolina and served the state in local office for 15 years. Scott’s agenda reflects many of the same views, including strengthening the borders against illegal immigration and focusing our military efforts to defeat violent Jihad.
Both men won tonight despite historically low black participation in the GOP and constant efforts by the left to discredit conservative movements like the Tea Party as racist. But the Republican Party had 14 viable candidates in House races this cycle, and the party intensified its outreach efforts to the black community this cycle.
WHATEVES. It should also be noted that a record number of African-American Republicans were on the ballot for congressional seats on Tuesday, more than have run since reconstruction, according to the Republican National Committee.
Only six black senators have ever served in the U.S. Senate: three Republicans and three Democrats — including President Barack Obama.
On the House front however, CEDRIC RICHMOND, a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives since 2000, defeated the one-term Republican incumbent Anh “Joseph” Cao in the heavily Democratic New Orleans district, 58 percent to 39 percent.
Richmond, a 37-year-old African-American, had been expected to beat Cao, whose 2008 victory—for the seat long held by Democrat William Jefferson—was considered an anomaly, after Jefferson was accused of corruption. Cao, who immigrated from Vietnamese in 19TK, was the first Vietnamese American to serve in Congress and the first Republican elected from his district since 1891. Richmond, a New Orleans native, was the youngest person ever elected to the Louisiana legislature at age of 26 (Courtesy of New America Media).
HANSEN CLARKE, a Democratic state senator, MICHIGAN/U.S. CONGRESS (13th DISTRICT) won the seat formerly held by Rep. Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick (mother of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick), whom he defeated in a primary challenge. His opponent in the November 2 election, John Hauler, business development director for an electronics firm and a tea party activist, had pitched a plan making Detroit a tax-free zone for 10 years.
Clarke, 53, is the son of a Bangladeshi immigrant father and African-American mother who worked as a school-crossing guard to support the family after his father died. Before running for elected office, Clarke served as chief of staff to U.S. Representative John Conyers (Courtesy of New America Media).
Black Republicans also celebrated wins on Tuesday. Retired Lt. Colonel Allen West win in Florida’s 22nd District and South Carolina State Rep. Tim Scott’s victory in that state’s 1st Congressional District is also the first time two black GOP members will serve in Congress since 1996 reports CNN.
Scott defeated Democrat Ben Frasier in an open contest to replace retiring Republican Rep. Henry Brown to the first black GOP in Congress since former Oklahoma Congressman J.C.
Now let’s check out the slant on these two victories from Fox News. We love how they go out of their way to emphasize how race is not an issue and never has been in the conservative political realm. Oh hell. let’s go ahead ‘n’ call it the Tea Party. Read the following:
West defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Ron Klein shortly after Scott’s victory Tuesday. It was West’s second contest against Klein, losing to the incumbent in 2008.
Watts, elected to office in 1994′s sweeping GOP congressional gains, became the lone black Republican Member when former Congressman Gary Franks of Connecticut lost reelection in 1996, and Watts held the helm for three more terms before deciding not to seek reelection in 2002.
Watts notably did not join the Congressional Black Caucus given its overly Democratic leanings, and he balked at the suggestion among racial peers that he sold out his race. In 1997 the congressman famously denounced black leaders with archaic agendas, dismissing them as “race-hustling poverty pimps” on Fox News’s “Hannity and Colmes.”
An Atlanta native, West served in the Army for 22 years, including tours of duty in both Iraq wars and in Afghanistan. His campaign platform, “Restoring American Exceptionalism,” echoed this election cycle’s popular conservative sentiments of limited government, creating a business-friendly tax environment, and extending the Bush era tax cuts.
Scott hails from South Carolina and served the state in local office for 15 years. Scott’s agenda reflects many of the same views, including strengthening the borders against illegal immigration and focusing our military efforts to defeat violent Jihad.
Both men won tonight despite historically low black participation in the GOP and constant efforts by the left to discredit conservative movements like the Tea Party as racist. But the Republican Party had 14 viable candidates in House races this cycle, and the party intensified its outreach efforts to the black community this cycle.
WHATEVES. It should also be noted that a record number of African-American Republicans were on the ballot for congressional seats on Tuesday, more than have run since reconstruction, according to the Republican National Committee.
Charles Krauthammer: GOP To Take "De Facto" Control Of Senate
Nice Deb - Just because Republicans failed to win enough Senate Seats to knock the deplorable and inexplicably re-elected Reid out of the majority, it doesn’t mean that they will be in the same feeble position they were in from 2009-2011. Charles Krauthammer, on Fox News this morning, said Republicans have won “de facto control” of the U.S. Senate, and now with “de jure” control of the House, they are in a perfect position, tactically.
The message voters delivered on Election Night was so strong, Krauthammer said, that Senate Democrats will continue to distance themselves from President Barack Obama’s policies for fear of political repercussions.
“I think there will be great resistance to any advance of the Obama agenda, and I think there will a lot of sympathy among these Democrats, the ones who are now up for reelection in two years for example, for an extension of the Bush tax cuts, for even a nibbling away of some of the edges of Obamacare,” he said.
Some of the Democratic senators coming into the new Congress, such as West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who defeated Republican John Raese, actually ran in open opposition to the president’s policies.
There has been a shift of power in Congress, there is no doubt about that, but Krauthammer says we didn’t really want control of both Houses:
… because then Obama could do a Truman, where he ran against the do-nothing Congress and won re-election,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist said. “If you put too much of the actual, official power to the Republicans, it makes them responsible.
Conservative voters can still watch closely, and hold Republicans accountable for any jelly-spined, RINOish behaviors we detect. We didn’t elect them to compromise with the Democrat Socialists who survived Tuesday’s onslaught.
But they shouldn’t be blamed for Obama’s economy if he rejects all of their remedies.
See Also:
Senator DeMint has some excellent advice for freshman Senators in his WSJ oped, this morning:
Congratulations to all the tea party-backed candidates who overcame a determined, partisan opposition to win their elections. The next campaign begins today. Because you must now overcome determined party insiders if this nation is going to be spared from fiscal disaster.
Many of the people who will be welcoming the new class of Senate conservatives to Washington never wanted you here in the first place. The establishment is much more likely to try to buy off your votes than to buy into your limited-government philosophy. Consider what former GOP senator-turned-lobbyist Trent Lott told the Washington Post earlier this year: “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.”
Don’t let them. Co-option is coercion. Washington operates on a favor-based economy and for every earmark, committee assignment or fancy title that’s given, payback is expected in return. The chits come due when the roll call votes begin. This is how big-spending bills that everyone always decries in public always manage to pass with just enough votes.
But someone can’t be bribed if they aren’t for sale. Here is some humble advice on how to recognize and refuse such offers.
The message voters delivered on Election Night was so strong, Krauthammer said, that Senate Democrats will continue to distance themselves from President Barack Obama’s policies for fear of political repercussions.
“I think there will be great resistance to any advance of the Obama agenda, and I think there will a lot of sympathy among these Democrats, the ones who are now up for reelection in two years for example, for an extension of the Bush tax cuts, for even a nibbling away of some of the edges of Obamacare,” he said.
Some of the Democratic senators coming into the new Congress, such as West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who defeated Republican John Raese, actually ran in open opposition to the president’s policies.
There has been a shift of power in Congress, there is no doubt about that, but Krauthammer says we didn’t really want control of both Houses:
… because then Obama could do a Truman, where he ran against the do-nothing Congress and won re-election,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist said. “If you put too much of the actual, official power to the Republicans, it makes them responsible.
Conservative voters can still watch closely, and hold Republicans accountable for any jelly-spined, RINOish behaviors we detect. We didn’t elect them to compromise with the Democrat Socialists who survived Tuesday’s onslaught.
But they shouldn’t be blamed for Obama’s economy if he rejects all of their remedies.
See Also:
Senator DeMint has some excellent advice for freshman Senators in his WSJ oped, this morning:
Congratulations to all the tea party-backed candidates who overcame a determined, partisan opposition to win their elections. The next campaign begins today. Because you must now overcome determined party insiders if this nation is going to be spared from fiscal disaster.
Many of the people who will be welcoming the new class of Senate conservatives to Washington never wanted you here in the first place. The establishment is much more likely to try to buy off your votes than to buy into your limited-government philosophy. Consider what former GOP senator-turned-lobbyist Trent Lott told the Washington Post earlier this year: “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.”
Don’t let them. Co-option is coercion. Washington operates on a favor-based economy and for every earmark, committee assignment or fancy title that’s given, payback is expected in return. The chits come due when the roll call votes begin. This is how big-spending bills that everyone always decries in public always manage to pass with just enough votes.
But someone can’t be bribed if they aren’t for sale. Here is some humble advice on how to recognize and refuse such offers.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
House-Senate Mid-Term Elections Porjections " Republican Win House 49 - Senate 7"
After months of partisan wrangling, it is finally time for the voters to deliver their decision on the 2010 mid-term elections in the Congress, as Republicans seem to have the edge today.
Republicans need to gain a net of 39 seats to charge of the House and 10 seats to take over the Senate. Political experts think the first is almost a given, while the latter is still a longshot.
It isn't difficult to get to 39 seats for a GOP takeover, as most political experts are expecting the Republicans to be back in charge of the House.
The big question is how many seats will the GOP win.
One Republican lawmaker told me yesterday that his guess is 55 seats - that's one more than what Republicans won in 1994.
Others though see the chance for a much larger haul - 60, 70, even 80 seats or more. If the "wave" is that high, then a number of unsuspecting Democrats will likely get swept out tonight, as happened in 2006 to then-Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA), even though Democrats didn't even target him.
"You're going to see somebody like that fall this time," says Henry Olsen, an elections expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
"On my list, I have what I call 'Super Upset Specials'," as Olsen and many others around here try to figure out who might be at risk on a night like this.
I should resist making any predictions like that, but I will say that I wonder if the GOP advantage in the state of Michigan could mean that a longtime Democratic lawmaker will go down to defeat.
Where are Democrats at risk of losing seats? I don't mean to be flip - but 'just about anywhere' is the answer, from New England to Blue Dogs in the South, to the Midwest and West.
As of today, Republicans have no seats in New England in the U.S. House. They have a chance to change that in Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Republicans have only two of the 29 seats in the New York delegation. They have a chance to increase that dramatically.
In key states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, the losses could approach a half dozen seats in each state if the wave is big enough for the GOP.
Virginia could see at least three Democrats go down. Meanwhile, Blue Dog Democrats are at risk in Virginia, North & South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi.
In Florida, Republicans think they can win four seats from the Democrats.
Texas could deliver as many as two to four seats for the GOP.
Indiana has three seats at risk, three or four more in Illinois, several in Michigan and Wisconsin could go to the GOP. Iowa has some GOP longshots.
Missouri has two seats that might shift, Arkansas has two or three, depending on the size of the Republican gains. Another one could go in Louisiana.
All three freshman Democrats in New Mexico are at risk, as are maybe four or five Democrats in Arizona. It probably didn't help to have arguments yesterday on the Arizona immigration law, a reminder for voters one day before the elections.
Democrats could lose the only House seat in both of the Dakotas, one in Kansas, three or four in Colorado, maybe one in Utah, another in Nevada and one in Idaho.
The Pacific Coast isn't immune either, as maybe three Democrats are at risk in California, another one or two in Oregon and a couple of seats in Washington State.
What about the GOP? Don't they have some seats at risk? Oh yeah, four or five tops - in Delaware, Louisiana, Hawaii, Illinois and south Florida. You can see how one-sided this election looks at this point.
So will the GOP win big? We'll see what the voters decide.
As for my election coverage tonight, I will be on with live reports starting through the evening, and then at 11pm EDT, I will be hosting several hours of election coverage, focusing on the race for Congress. Please check back on my blog all night, as I will be posting comments as the results unfold.
Republicans need to gain a net of 39 seats to charge of the House and 10 seats to take over the Senate. Political experts think the first is almost a given, while the latter is still a longshot.
It isn't difficult to get to 39 seats for a GOP takeover, as most political experts are expecting the Republicans to be back in charge of the House.
The big question is how many seats will the GOP win.
One Republican lawmaker told me yesterday that his guess is 55 seats - that's one more than what Republicans won in 1994.
Others though see the chance for a much larger haul - 60, 70, even 80 seats or more. If the "wave" is that high, then a number of unsuspecting Democrats will likely get swept out tonight, as happened in 2006 to then-Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA), even though Democrats didn't even target him.
"You're going to see somebody like that fall this time," says Henry Olsen, an elections expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
"On my list, I have what I call 'Super Upset Specials'," as Olsen and many others around here try to figure out who might be at risk on a night like this.
I should resist making any predictions like that, but I will say that I wonder if the GOP advantage in the state of Michigan could mean that a longtime Democratic lawmaker will go down to defeat.
Where are Democrats at risk of losing seats? I don't mean to be flip - but 'just about anywhere' is the answer, from New England to Blue Dogs in the South, to the Midwest and West.
As of today, Republicans have no seats in New England in the U.S. House. They have a chance to change that in Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Republicans have only two of the 29 seats in the New York delegation. They have a chance to increase that dramatically.
In key states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, the losses could approach a half dozen seats in each state if the wave is big enough for the GOP.
Virginia could see at least three Democrats go down. Meanwhile, Blue Dog Democrats are at risk in Virginia, North & South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi.
In Florida, Republicans think they can win four seats from the Democrats.
Texas could deliver as many as two to four seats for the GOP.
Indiana has three seats at risk, three or four more in Illinois, several in Michigan and Wisconsin could go to the GOP. Iowa has some GOP longshots.
Missouri has two seats that might shift, Arkansas has two or three, depending on the size of the Republican gains. Another one could go in Louisiana.
All three freshman Democrats in New Mexico are at risk, as are maybe four or five Democrats in Arizona. It probably didn't help to have arguments yesterday on the Arizona immigration law, a reminder for voters one day before the elections.
Democrats could lose the only House seat in both of the Dakotas, one in Kansas, three or four in Colorado, maybe one in Utah, another in Nevada and one in Idaho.
The Pacific Coast isn't immune either, as maybe three Democrats are at risk in California, another one or two in Oregon and a couple of seats in Washington State.
What about the GOP? Don't they have some seats at risk? Oh yeah, four or five tops - in Delaware, Louisiana, Hawaii, Illinois and south Florida. You can see how one-sided this election looks at this point.
So will the GOP win big? We'll see what the voters decide.
As for my election coverage tonight, I will be on with live reports starting through the evening, and then at 11pm EDT, I will be hosting several hours of election coverage, focusing on the race for Congress. Please check back on my blog all night, as I will be posting comments as the results unfold.
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