Civility? What Channel?

Amplify’d from www.familysecuritymatters.org

Civility? What Channel?

Frank Salvato

What’s all this talk about civility taking hold in the American political arena? Evidently, Progressive talker Stephanie Miller, who, I guess, has a syndicated radio show – amazing what passes for talent these days on talk radio – didn’t get that memo...strange, too, as her leader, Pres. Obama took to the airwaves after the Tucson tragedy to admonish everyone who was throwing rhetorical bombs under the guise of “political debate.” Yet, for Ms. Miller, it’s full speed ahead with the name-calling and the deprecating jokes.

Mediateite.com reports that while discussing House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH):

“...Miller and her show’s producer, Chris Lavoie, mentioned her earlier joke about Barack Obama making ‘the Boehner cry’...”

Miller pronounced the Speaker’s name “Boner.”

“And then came an observation about Boehner’s warm glow – an observation that, of course, acts as rather juicy bait for conservatives who will (we’re guessing) most certainly ask why it’s excusable to make comments about the Speaker’s skin color:

“’And then the other big thing I noticed – I’m sorry cause you know you can’t help the visual, okay – Boehner is a darker color than the President.’

“Lavoie then chimed in with quite a specific observation:

“’I tweeted last night that if he wore and avocado green tie, he would totally be a 1970’s kitchen.’”

That’s nice. Isn’t it?

Truth be told, when one honestly compares the rhetoric of the Progressive Left, the Democrats and the Right – the main word here is honestly and yes I did separate the Progressives from the Democrats – we arrive at only one outcome consistently, and that is that the overwhelming majority of caustic rhetoric comes from the Progressive faction of our political spectrum.

Politico.com reported in February of last year, well before the Tucson tragedy, that Progressive talker and admitted Socialist, Ed Shultz, said this of former Vice President Dick Cheney:

“You’re damn right, Dick Cheney's heart's a political football. We ought to rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him...Do you realize that if you had five heart attacks, hell, you wouldn't get past two heart attacks and they’d dump you...But because you're a war criminal and because you are on the take from Halliburton...you can get the best healthcare on the face of the earth.”

One has to wonder where all that Leftist tolerance has disappeared to.

On a more measured note, but nevertheless just as dishonest and disingenuous, former (it feels good to say that) MSNBC pundit Keith Olbermann denigrated the Tea Party Movement, challenging:

“Let me ask all of you who attend these things, how many black faces do you see at these events?”

He continued,

“Why are you surrounded by the largest crowd you will ever again see in your life that consists of nothing but people who look exactly like you?”

Ironically, and simply to make a point, ACORN whistleblower Anita Moncrief recently announced the creation and launch of the nation’s first Black Tea Party group. One has to wonder whether Mr. Olbermann can wipe the self-pity from his eyes long enough to see the different “colors” involved in the Tea Party Movement, or whether his arrogance just sees Conservatives and those who want to protect the Constitution as gray.

But why should we be surprised at the vitriol coming out of the Progressive Left?

Progressives are the ones who gin-up discontent around the world. From Greece to San Francisco, France to the G20 summits and World Trade Organization events wherever they take place, if there is a loud, obnoxious, bull-headed protest event, complete with posters depicting someone as Hitler and denouncing Capitalism in favor of wealth redistribution and Che Guevara, there you will find Progressives, in all their disgruntled, arrogant, elitist glory.

Now, you may be asking why I separate the Democrats from the Progressives. After all, they both come from the Left side of the aisle, right?

Wrong. Progressives exist on both sides of the aisle; they simply have found it easier to take-over the Democrat Party.

Nancy Pelosi, the majority of the Congressional Black Caucus (can you imagine if there was a Congressional White Caucus? Whoa!) and all of the mini-me special interest caucus leaders routinely are found to be members of the House Progressive Caucus – 70 House members, along with two Senators comprise the whole of the Progressive contingent. Compare that to the rest of the Democrat side of the aisle which numbers 123, including 26 Blue Dog Democrats.

My point? If you want to truly arrive at civility in the American political arena, all we really have to do is separate the infiltrating Progressives from the true Democrats and spotlight the Progressives for who and what they are: caustic malcontents hell-bent on diminishing our Constitutional Republic to a Socialist Democracy. All we have to do is encourage true Democrats to...take back their party.

That achieved – and only then – can we return to the days of civil, spirited and honest debate in the American political arena.

And so it goes... Read more at www.familysecuritymatters.org

 

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Amplify’d from www.lewrockwell.com

Replace Austerity With Freedom, Independence, and Prosperity

by Scott Lazarowitz

The Economic Collapse Blog has this list of examples of how European-style "austerity" is already hitting the U.S., including cities closing schools and fire stations, and states eliminating whole state agencies and raising taxes. That includes the state of Illinois whose legislature has passed a "temporary" 66% personal income tax hike that the Democrat governor will sign. Rest assured, this income tax hike will be as "temporary" as the one in Massachusetts, still in place since 1989.1 Such austerity measures may lead to the same kind of social unrest Europeans have been experiencing.

The Economic Collapse Blog concludes,

We are entering a time of extreme financial stress in America.  The federal government is broke.  Most of our state and local governments are broke.  Record numbers of Americans are going bankrupt.  Record numbers of Americans are being kicked out of their homes.  Record numbers of Americans are now living in poverty.

The debt-fueled prosperity of the last several decades came at a cost.  We literally mortgaged the future.  Now nothing will ever be the same again.

To say that "nothing will ever be the same again" is just pessimistic and unnecessary. We actually can return to the prosperity of the past, by replacing debt and austerity with freedom and independence.

There is no need for Americans to suffer through what European countries are suffering, because nearly all the problems we face are caused by governmental intrusions into many aspects of our personal and economic lives – intrusions by federal, state and local governments. Regardless of the good intentions that the welfare and military socialism statists have in justifying their use of compulsory government powers, what America needs is to cut the shackles of State-imposed dependence, restrictions, regulations, taxation, all those policies of moral relativism that involve violations of the Rule of Law: theft, trespass, denial of Due Process, and other acts of State-initiated criminal aggression.

Freeing Americans includes repealing all forms of intrusive presumption-of-guilt regulations and restrictions that are in place having nothing to do with whether any individual is suspected of any crimes against others. Regulations are before-the-fact demands by the government that presume the individual and one’s business guilty, in which one must submit one’s private personal or financial information to the government to prove one’s innocence. Government regulations and arbitrary restrictions are literally searches and seizures by the government of information that is none of anyone else’s business, and effect in the stifling of everyday citizens’ growth and prosperity.

Ending all personal income taxes, corporate taxes, estate taxes, and capital gains taxes frees people who own or share in the ownership of businesses – i.e. employers and prospective employers – to invest in their own research and development and in the expansion of their businesses, which is the genuine force behind jobs creation, in both blue collar and white collar sectors. Ending all personal income taxes frees people to explore their own ideas and inventions, and to start their own businesses that will employ more people and advance society further. Also, ending all personal and corporate income taxes allows individuals and businesses to donate more of their own money to worthy charitable organizations, like it used to be before the intrusiveness of the government entered the scene and discouraged such charity giving.

Some may respond to such suggestions, "Well, if we do all that, then how will government functions be funded?" My response is: do you mean, how do we fund public employees’ 6-figure pensions, how do we fund all the extravagant public employee salaries that are now on average higher than private sector salaries? Or, for example, do you mean to ask how we fund the federal Department of Education that has done nothing but create bureaucracies and turn American education into a Soviet-style indoctrination camp for State-worship? As far as the federal government is concerned, just about every agency and department in Washington can be eliminated, because they are unnecessary and have been nothing but parasitic and slowing America’s growth and progress almost to a halt.

We also need to be honest about the "War on Terror" and the War on Drugs, which are not wars on terror or drugs, but wars on freedom. The war on drugs has been extremely hypocritical, by going after only "street drugs," but not alcohol and not prescription drugs, all of which have been just as dangerous and lethal. The war on drugs criminalizes victimless behavior, discourages personal responsibility, and has been a boondoggle for law enforcement agencies through confiscation of private property and through bribery, and has caused a black market in drugs which incentivizes the formation of drug gangs and cartels that leads to increased violence, as well as the corruption of otherwise "good" cops and other government officials. What would happen if we immediately ended the War on Drugs and required individuals to be responsible for their actions and decisions? Do we really need to have costly government "anti-drug" enforcement agencies?

And regarding this "War on Terror," many of the terrorists themselves have expressed explicitly that their primary motivations for their terrorist acts have been political, and not religious, responding to the U.S. government’s many decades of intrusions on those foreign lands as well as the U.S. government’s intrusive interventionist foreign policy. Even a top U.S. general has recently stated that for every one innocent civilian the U.S. military and CIA murders, ten new terrorists are created.

So, what would happen if we simply just closed all the U.S. military bases on foreign lands and brought all U.S. troops, contractors, and bureaucrats back to the U.S.? Does anyone in his right mind actually believe that there would be more terrorism against the U.S.?

If we closed all those foreign bases and brought everyone home and ended the violence that the U.S. military has been committing against foreigners, why, that would mean that the military socialism and welfare redistribution of wealth from middle-class workers over to defense contractors would have to stop. And, I’d like to ask, just how selfish are those defense contractors, knowing how counter-productive U.S. government aggression in the Middle East has been, knowing that they are playing a major role in making America less safe and much less productive, less prosperous and less free?

And how selfish are these big corporate-statist financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, etc., in insisting that their billions of dollars in bonuses that result from bailouts and quantitative easing continue, at the expense of poor, middle-class workers and producers? How selfish will the parasites continue to be, as America continues to decline economically and morally? How much longer do we need to suffer at the hands of the most destructive of political institutions, that Federal Reserve? Because Americans’ inherent, inalienable rights to trade, commerce and contracts with free, competing currencies have been unconstitutionally squashed by this voracious federal Leviathan, we are all becoming poorer, and America is literally turning into a Third World economy. Which isn’t even an "economy" anymore because of the intrusive crimes of the State – America is a State-owned political prison.

In other words, just how helpful has the federal government been to America’s progress? What would happen if we just eliminated the federal government, and restored to the states their constitutionally-recognized inalienable rights to independence and sovereignty that political criminals have stolen from them in these 235 years of America? Is it possible to have an organized country consisting of independent states, but without a central-planning compulsory federal government? Of course it’s possible – and, for us to survive, it is necessary to make such a change, in addition to the elimination of the theft of taxation, the search and seizure of regulations, and the counter-productive wars on drugs and terrorism, and the sooner the better.

In honestly considering such solutions, one would have to conclude that, without a central federal government and all of government’s intrusions, no one would be able to monopolize territorial jurisdictions, monetary functions or the defense of others. There would be freedom, prosperity, and yes, much more security, and with a further assurance of stability for future generations.

Linked document prepared by the Massachusetts Citizens for Limited Taxation.

Scott Lazarowitz [send him mail] is a commentator and cartoonist at Reasonandjest.com. Read more at www.lewrockwell.com

 

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Newt Gingrich Dreams Of Launching Weapon Of Mass Destruction On State Pension Plans

Amplify’d from bigthink.com

Newt Gingrich Dreams Of Launching Weapon Of Mass Destruction On State Pension Plans

Kris Broughton

Newt Gingrich’s latest op-ed, ostensibly penned along with co-writer Jeb Bush, reads as if it is vintage Gingrich speak, demanding in bold declarative sentences that the federal government give the states the power to pee on their citizen's heads and tell them it is raining by proposing that states be allowed to go through a Bankruptcy Lite process that leaves state assets and income streams undisturbed while permitting them to legally discharge their pension obligations as they see fit. If this isn't a weapon of mass destruction, I don't know what is.

“a new bankruptcy law would allow states in default or in danger of default to reorganize their finances free from their union contractual obligations. In such a reorganization, a state could propose to terminate some, all or none of its government employee union contracts and establish new compensation rates, work rules, etc. The new law could also allow states an opportunity to reform their bloated, broken and underfunded pension systems for current and future workers.”

Better off bankrupt    By Jeb Bush and Newt Gingrich

The opening description of the Gingrich state bankruptcy proposal may seem stark but there is really no other way to explain a scenario that seeks to strip the retirement accounts from the people who staff the departments in a typical state government, the large majority of whom earn nowhere close to the kind of six figure income it would take to generate the $100,000 a year pension payouts to the 10,000 California retirees Gingrich and Bush cite in their opinion piece.

In fact,the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that the median annual salary for nearly 2.3 million workers who work for state agencies and state government is $49,240, hardly the king's ransom Gingrich would have you believe, union or no union.

States and localities currently make annual contributions to their pension trust funds equaling an average of 3.8 percent of their general (operating) budgets.  They began to make deposits to pre-fund their pension costs in the 1970s.  Each year, they are supposed to deposit in a trust fund an amount that equals the present value of the future pensions their employees earned that year

Misunderstandings Regarding State Debt, Pensions      Iris J. Lav and Elizabeth McNichol

You won’t hear any of the conservatives on talk radio like Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh call the Gingrich plan to erase state pension obligations a redistribution of wealth, but that’s exactly what it is – a naked and unapologetic asset grab to pay for the investment malfeasance perpetrated by state executive branches with the legitimately earned retirement money of the people who work in the departments just like the ones below that are typically found in most states.

Administration Education Revenue Agriculture & Forestry Environmental Quality Secretary of State Attorney General Health & Hospitals Transportation & Development Children and Family Services Insurance Treasury Civil Service Natural Resources Veterans Affairs Culture, Recreation & Tourism Public Safety and Corrections Wildlife & Fisheries Economic Development Public Service Commission Workforce Commission     The guy who invented the term “overfunded pension fund” gave corporations and governments the political cover necessary to explain why they could skip their scheduled contributions during boom times, as if the proverbial “rainy day” was impossible to imagine. Now that our country is in a financial typhoon, no one wants to talk about why this mess is not a political problem, but an actuarial one, similar to the situation the Social Security program finds itself in, where we as Americans have simply not exercised the kind of financial discipline necessary in boom times to help weather the occasional economic bust. No one wants to admit that every single pension plan funding ratio in the country is dependent on the plan sponsor making ALL scheduled contributions, not just the ones they can make in boom times. Nobody in the news media or any position of responsibility wants to talk about Arkansas, which actually did default on its obligations back in the 1930’s, or how the default affected the state in future decades.    In 2000, more than half the states had fully funded state employee pension funds; that dropped to six states by 2006 and four states by 2008, according to a new report from the Pew Center on the States. That’s partly because some states took holidays from contributing fully to the pension plans, according to Girard Miller, an expert on public pensions and a senior strategist for Public Financial Management Group. Capitol Ideas   State Pension Funding Gap Has Grown By Mary Branham   Deep down, on both sides of the political spectrum, there are many people who won’t admit it publically, but privately are pulling for Newt Gingrich and Jeb Bush to be right, even if they don’t agree with them ideologically. There are some Americans who want to minimize the point of financial pain we will have to endure so badly that they are willing to get behind any cockamamie idea that tells us “this will all be over soon”, even though it has been decades in the making. Thank God that Newt Gingrich, the Master of the Art Of Pompous Nothingness, a man who thinks not in duplicate or triplicate or high fidelity but only in Grand Master Plans to save America, has become so wrapped up in the caricature he has created of himself that it is practically impossible these days for the country's political center to take him seriously. Read more at bigthink.com

 

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President Obama, say the 'D-Word'

Amplify’d from english.aljazeera.net

President Obama, say the 'D-Word'

US appears to shy away from talk about democracy in Middle East, despite historic anti-government rallies in ally Egypt.

Mark LeVine

Obama has 'sought to equate Egypt's protesters and government as equally pitted parties in the growing conflict' [AFP]

It's incredible, really. The president of the United States can't bring himself to talk about democracy in the Middle East. He can dance around it, use euphemisms, throw out words like "freedom" and "tolerance" and "non-violent" and especially "reform," but he can't say the one word that really matters: democracy.

How did this happen? After all, in his famous 2009 Cairo speech to the Muslim world, Obama spoke the word loudly and clearly - at least once.

"The fourth issue that I will address is democracy," he declared, before explaining that while the United States won't impose its own system, it was committed to governments that "reflect the will of the people... I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere."

"No matter where it takes hold," the president concluded, "government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power."

Simply rhetoric?

Of course, this was just rhetoric, however lofty, reflecting a moment when no one was rebelling against the undemocratic governments of our allies - at least not openly and in a manner that demanded international media coverage.

Now it's for real.

And "democracy" is scarcely to be heard on the lips of the president or his most senior officials.

In fact, newly released WikiLeaks cables show that from the moment it assumed power, the Obama administration specifically toned down public criticism of Mubarak. The US ambassador to Egypt advised secretary of state Hillary Clinton to avoid even the mention of former presidential candidate Ayman Nour, jailed and abused for years after running against Mubarak in part on America's encouragement.

Not surprisingly, when the protests began, Clinton declared that Egypt was "stable" and an important US ally, sending a strong signal that the US would not support the protesters if they tried to topple the regime. Indeed, Clinton has repeatedly described Mubarak as a family friend. Perhaps Ms Clinton should choose her friends more wisely.

Similarly, president Obama has refused to take a strong stand in support of the burgeoning pro-democracy movement and has been no more discriminating in his public characterisation of American support for its Egyptian "ally". Mubarak continued through yesterday to be praised as a crucial partner of the US. Most important, there has been absolutely no call for real democracy.

Rather, only "reform" has been suggested to the Egyptian government so that, in Obama's words, "people have mechanisms in order to express legitimate grievances".

"I've always said to him that making sure that they are moving forward on reform - political reform, economic reform - is absolutely critical for the long-term well-being of Egypt," advised the president, although vice-president Joe Biden has refused to refer to Mubarak as a dictator, leading one to wonder how bad a leader must be to deserve the title.

Even worse, the president and his senior aides have repeatedly sought to equate the protesters and the government as somehow equally pitted parties in the growing conflict, urging both sides to "show restraint". This equation has been repeated many times by other American officials.

This trick, tried and tested in the US discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is equally nonsensical here. These are not two movements in a contest for political power. Rather, it is a huge state, with a massive security and police apparatus that is supported by the world's major superpower to the tune of billions of dollars a year, against a largely young, disenfranchised and politically powerless population which has suffered brutally at its hands for decades.

The focus on reform is also a highly coded reference, as across the developing world when Western leaders have urged "reform" it has usually signified the liberalisation of economies to allow for greater penetration by Western corporations, control of local resources, and concentration of wealth, rather than the kind of political democratisation and redistribution of wealth that are key demands of protesters across the region.

Al Jazeera interview says it all

An Al Jazeera English interview on Thursday with US state department spokesman PJ Crowley perfectly summed up the sustainability of the Obama administration's position. In some of the most direct and unrelenting questioning of a US official I have ever witnessed, News Hour anchor Shihab al-Rattansi repeatedly pushed Crowley to own up to the hypocrisy and absurdity of the administration's position of offering mild criticism of Mubarak while continuing to ply him with billions of dollars in aid and political support.

When pressed about how the US-backed security services are beating and torturing and even killing protesters, and whether it wasn't time for the US to consider discontinuing aid, Crowley responded that "we don't see this as an either or [a minute later, he said "zero sum"] proposition. Egypt is a friend of the US, is an anchor of stability and helping us pursue peace in the Middle East".

Each part of this statement is manifestly false; the fact that in the midst of intensifying protests senior officials feel they can spin the events away from openly calling for a real democratic transition now reveals either incredible ignorance, arrogance, or both.

Yet this is precisely an either/or moment. Much as former US president Bush declared in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, we can either be "with or against" the Egyptian people. Refusing to take sides is in fact taking sides -the wrong side.

Moreover, Crowley, like his superiors, refused to use the word democracy, responding to its use by anchor al-Rattansi with the word "reform" while arguing that it was unproductive to tie events in Egypt to the protests in other countries such as Tunis or Jordan because each has its own "indigenous" forces and reasons for discontent. That is a very convenient singularisation of the democracy movements, which ignores the large number of similarities in the demands of protests across the region, the tactics and strategies of protest, and their broader distaste and distrust of the US in view of its untrammelled support for dictatorships across the region.

Systematic silence

Ensconced in a system built upon the lack of democracy - not just abroad, but as we've seen in the last decade, increasingly in the US as well - perhaps president Obama doesn't feel he has the luxury of pushing too hard for democracy when its arrival would threaten so many policies pursued by his administration.

Instead, "stability" and "reform" are left to fill the void, even though both have little to do with democracy in an real sense.

Perhaps Obama wants to say the D-word. Maybe in his heart he hopes Mubarak just leaves and allows democracy to flourish. By all accounts, the president is no ideologue like his predecessor. He does not come from the political-economic-strategic elites as did Bush, and has no innate desire to serve or protect their interests.

Feeling trapped by a system outside his control or power to change, maybe president Obama hopes that the young people of the Arab world will lead the way, and will be satisfied by congratulations by his administration after the fact.

But even if accurate, such a scenario will likely never come to pass. With Egyptians preparing to die in the streets, standing on the sidelines is no longer an option.

A gift that won't be offered again

The most depressing and even frightening part of the tepid US response to the protests across the region is the lack of appreciation of what kind of gift the US, and West more broadly, are being handed by these movements. Their very existence is bringing unprecedented levels of hope and productive activism to a region and as such constitutes a direct rebuttal to the power and prestige of al-Qaeda.

Instead of embracing the push for real democratic change, however, surface reforms that would preserve the system intact are all that's recommended. Instead of declaring loud and clear a support for a real democracy agenda, the president speaks only of "disrupting plots and securing our cities and skies" and "tak[ing] the fight to al-Qaeda and their allies", as he declared in his State of the Union address.

Obama doesn't seem to understand that the US doesn't need to "take the fight" to al-Qaeda, or even fire a single shot, to score its greatest victory in the "war on terror". Supporting real democratisation will do more to downgrade al-Qaeda's capabilities than any number of military attacks. He had better gain this understanding quickly because in the next hours or days the Egypt's revolution will likely face its moment of truth. And right behind Egypt are Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, and who knows what other countries, all looking to free themselves of governments that the US and its European allies have uncritically supported for decades.

If president Obama has the courage to support genuine democracy, even at the expense of immediate American policy interests, he could well go down in history as one of the heroes of the Middle East's Jasmine winter. If he chooses platitudes and the status quo, the harm to America's standing in the region will likely take decades to repair. Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His most recent books are Heavy Metal Islam (Random House) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books).

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera Read more at english.aljazeera.net

 

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The Waning of an Old Established Order

Amplify’d from www.realclearpolitics.com

The Waning of an Old Established Order

By Victor Davis Hanson

American reality has been turned upside down in just 20 years.

Americans no longer count on their news to be filtered and shaped by the Associated Press or the New York Times. Nor do millions have it read to them in the evening by CBS, ABC or NBC anchorpersons -- not with the Internet, cable news and talk radio. Matt Drudge's website, "The Drudge Report," reaches far more Americans than does CBS anchor star Katie Couric.

The old notion that America's most successful citizens are turned out by prestigious four-year universities -- the more private and Ivy League, the better -- overseen by disinterested professors is also nearing an end. Private for-profit trade schools and online colleges are certifying millions in particular skills.

Meanwhile, the high jobless rate among recent college graduates, who are burdened by thousands of dollars in student loans, is starting to resemble the Freddie Mac- and Fannie Mae-spawned financial bubble of 2008, in which millions of indebted and unemployed borrowers could not pay back exorbitant federally insured home loans. The notion that parents are going to keep borrowing $200,000 to certify their children with high-prestige BA degrees that don't necessarily lead to good jobs seems about as wise as buying a sprawling house that one can't afford. James Cameron, Bill Gates, Sean Hannity, Tom Hanks, Steve Jobs, Rush Limbaugh, Tiger Woods and Mark Zuckerberg all made a good living without earning BAs.

A therapeutic college curricula and hyphenated "studies" courses have not made graduates better-read or more skilled in math and science. For many employers, the rigor of the new BA is scarcely equivalent to that of the old high school diploma. The global warming/climate change/climate chaos "crisis" has reminded Americans that careerist university Ph.Ds can be just as likely to fudge evidence and distort research as political lobbyists. The old blanket respect for academia and academics is eroding.

After the Greek financial fraud and collapse, the European Union identity crisis, and insolvency in California, there will be no more new defined-benefit retirement programs. A shrinking and debt-ridden youth cohort cannot and will not continue to subsidize an expanding and more affluent retired generation. Soon, 65 will be the new 50. We are going to see lots more seniors working well into their 70s.

Few believe that Detroit's problem is too few unionized autoworkers, or that the SEIU has resulted in far better public service and efficiency from government employees. A government conspiracy or an ignorant public does not explain why union membership has now fallen to 12 percent of the American workforce.

The welfare-entitlement state is likewise a relic. Only a few political dinosaurs are calling for more spending, more entitlements and more taxes. Fairly or not, most Europeans and Americans accept that the limits of redistribution have been reached. President Obama's talk of "spread the wealth" and "fat cat" bankers has not done much to lower $1.3 trillion deficits and 9.4 percent unemployment. So he has dropped the high-tax, more-benefits, class-warfare rhetoric in favor of writing editorials in the Wall Street Journal assuring business of less regulation and more government help.

Race relations are being redefined as never before. Interracial marriage, integration and immigration have made the old rubrics -- "white," "black," "brown" -- obsolete. Rigid, half-century-old affirmative action preference programs have not caught up with everyday reality. Their overseers are likewise ossified, now that millions in an interracial America do not fit into their precise racial slots, and being white -- to the degree that it can be easily defined -- is not synonymous with innate privilege. The notion that Tiger Woods' children need an admissions or employment edge over natives of Appalachia or immigrants from India is surreal.

Abroad, things are just as upside down. Russia is no longer the avatar of global communism but the world's largest cutthroat capitalist oil producer. China's cultural revolution is now about making tons of money and driving a luxury car. The European Union has been reduced to finger-pointing and standing in line to beg Germany for cash -- a far cry from its advertised 21st century utopian brotherhood. Our old neighbor Mexico is now a near-failed narco-state, bearing a greater resemblance to Afghanistan than to its brethren North American nations.

In response to this topsy-turvy world, the traditional media, tenured professors, well-paid public employees, rigid ethnic and racial lobbies, unions, organized retirees, open-borders advocates and entrenched politicians all are understandably claiming that we live in an uncivil age.

We well may, but we also are seeing the waning of an old established order. And the resulting furor suggests that the old beneficiaries are not going quietly into that good night.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. Read more at www.realclearpolitics.com

 

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Amplify’d from www.newsmax.com

Religious Persecution Thrives Amid Egypt's Crisis

By Edward Pentin

Political instability in Egypt and a media misinterpretation of remarks by Pope Benedict XVI were the principal reasons behind a surprise suspension of dialogue between one of Islam's foremost universities and the Vatican, according to Catholic Church experts on the region. On Jan. 20, the Al Azhar University in Cairo announced it was suspending dialogue with the Vatican indefinitely. The university, known as the pre-eminent institute of Islamic learning in the Sunni Muslim world, ostensibly made the move in protest at calls by the Pope for greater protection of Christians in Egypt after the massacre of Orthodox Coptic Christians by Islamic extremists in an Alexandrian church on New Year's Day. Al Azhar complained the Pope was interfering in internal Egyptian affairs, but Catholic Church experts believe a misinterpretation of the Pope's words were at fault. Some Western media, such as Al-Jazeera, falsely portrayed the Pope as calling on all Western governments to intervene to protect Christians in Egypt. The pontiff, in fact, called on the “practical and constant effort of the leaders of nations” to ensure religious freedom for their citizens. Egyptian Jesuit and adviser to the Vatican on Islam, Father Samir Khalil Samir, also blames pressure from the government of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak for the decision, noting that Church leaders in Egypt had shown the rector of Al Azhar, Sheikh Ahmad Al Tayyib, the Pope's original text. The rector promised to write a declaration which was expected to be positive, but instead relations were cut. “Al Azhar has been known for decades for submitting totally to the government,” Fr. Samir tells Newsmax. “The rector was probably asked by an official in the government, perhaps in the ministry of foreign affairs, to suspend dialogue for religious reasons.” The government, he said, wanted to appear strong in the face of internal instability — a view supported by other regional Catholic observers who believe the freezing of dialogue is also a “smokescreen” to conceal Egypt’s responsibility for the Alexandria attack and ongoing discrimination against Christians in the country. Relations will be restored eventually, observers believe, and although the Vatican takes this move seriously, it is not unduly alarmed by Al Azhar's decision and is prepared to wait for relations to return to normal. In an interview today with the Vatican newspaper, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Vatican's inter-religious dialogue council, stressed the importance of dialogue in building peace, saying it “must continue” and that future appointments with Al Azhar were “still valid.” But he also made a slight criticism for misinterpreting the Pope's words. “If we want progress in dialogue, we must first find the time to sit down and talk person to person and not through the newspapers,” he said. “I hope that whoever reads the speeches of Pope Benedict XVI is helped to understand how communities of believers are called to become schools of prayer and fellowship.” Despite Sheikh Ahmad Al Tayyib saying Al Azhar will not be attending a major interreligious meeting which the Pope plans to hold in Assisi in October 2011, the Vatican is also hopeful the dispute will have been resolved by then. Arguably of greater concern to the Catholic Church is the future of Egypt in the wake of ongoing protests in the country against the Mubarak government, and the possibility that Islamists may fill any power vacuum. Egypt's population is less educated that Tunisia's and tends to follow more closely the preaching of imams, according to Fr. Samir, who advises the Vatican on Islam. He believes the recent protests in Egypt and Tunisia — both of which have been directed against corrupt rulers and elites — have connections with Islamists. “When the governments are corrupt, even just a little, immediately the Islamists exploit this weak point and say: 'Look, they are against God, against Muslims, they are not true Muslims. They are not helping the poor,'” he said. He added that the Islamists step in to carry out the social work that the government is expected to do. “It's a case of either a dictatorial system or the Islamists take power,” Fr. Samir said. “We absolutely and urgently need a real democratic social government.” He said he expected protests in Egypt would mirror those in Tunisia but noted that the structure of the country is such that regime change cannot be achieved “except through a revolution.” “In Egypt they will concede something, recognize some errors and give some rights,” Fr. Samir said, “but they are not ready to change.” A Catholic Church official in Egypt, reluctant to speak on the record to Newsmax for fear of reprisals, said he expected the situation in the country to worsen before it improves. Read more at www.newsmax.com

 

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US Policy of Supporting Dictators and Punishing Democracies Continues

Joe Clifford for Salem-News.com

Far reaching results may follow the Tunisia revolt with two nations being particularly important.

Haitian dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and his son, Jean-Claude, known as "Baby Doc" in undated photo. Courtesy: The Reid Report

(JAMESTOWN, RI) - The US government continues its policy of supporting dictators and punishing democracies.

Last week Baby Doc Duvalier returned to Haiti and the US government said nothing. For readers who might be too young to remember, he, like Papa Doc, his father who preceded him, was a cruel murdering dictator who looted his country of millions. Baby Doc murdered thousands and prospered by selling drugs and body parts. After supported the Duvalier’s for years the US finally tired of Papa Doc and helped oust him in a popular uprising in 1986.

On the other hand, Haiti's first ever democratically elected president, the former Jesuit priest Jean Bertrand Aristide, was ousted from power with US assistance, primarily because he wanted a minimum wage law of one dollar per day for Haitian workers. U.S. corporations would not allow this and he was undermined, eventually kidnapped, and flown out of Haiti by the US, and forced to live in exile. When the scoundrel and murderer Baby Doc returned, Jean Bertrand Aristide asked for permission to return as well, but the Obama administration flexed its muscles and prevented the return of the only democratically elected leader in Haiti’s history.

When Haiti had its earthquake, the US sent, not food or supplies, but 27,000 Marines, supposedly to insure that rioting did not occur, but the real reason was to insure that Aristide, the popular reform leader, could not return to his country.

Meanwhile in North Africa the government in Tunisia has been overthrown, in part because Wikileaks cables made public just how corrupt the government of Tunisia had been over the years. While many suspected and thought this to be true, the leaked cables proved to the people of Tunisia just how corrupt their government really was, and in a peaceful revolt took to the streets bringing down their government. The cable also revealed the US government was very well aware of the massive corruption in Tunisia’s government but continued to support it.

Far reaching results may follow the Tunisia revolt with two nations being particularly important. Leaders in Jordan and Egypt are backed and supported by the US government with massive amounts of aid. Both are puppets of the US and Israeli governments. Both Jordan and Egypt will do the bidding of the US government, in return the puppets are rewarded with generous sums of aid from the US. While accurate figures are difficult to establish, we know that Egypt’s government which is headed by the repressive dictator Mubarak, is given well over one billion dollars per year to do our bidding. The same is true in Jordan.

Folks in Egypt who have learned much from citizens in Tunisia have taken to the streets in an attempt to duplicate the accomplishment in Tunisia. The US and Israel have grave concerns that both governments could fail. We have helped insure Israel’s security by buying off the leaders of Jordan and Egypt, neither of whom reflects the democratic wishes of their people. The last thing the US government wants is for “democracy “to prevail, for in both countries both puppets would be quickly removed.

In nearby Lebanon the US and Israel attempted to manipulate the UN into putting the blame for the assassination of Lebanon’s prime minister on Hezbollah. If the US can rig this properly, and place the blame on Hezbollah, the party now in control of Lebanon could be labeled a “terrorist organization”, even though it is apparently supported by the majority of Lebanon’s population. Hezbollah is not considered, and never has been considered a terrorist organization by most of the nations of the world, but it has proven to be Israel’s military nemesis by defeating Israel in its attempt to invade and take over Lebanon in the 2006. The US has already threatened to withdraw aid if Hezbollah rules Lebanon. Once again so much for the idea of the US supporting “democracy” in the Middle East.

In nearby Palestine, the Palestine Papers have been released by Aljazeera, demonstrating how the puppet government of the Palestine Liberation Organization has betrayed its own people, which surely will have long term ramifications, one of which could be the supremacy of Hamas, already the democratically elected government of nearby Gaza. Readers will remember when Hamas won the election in Gaza, supervised and declared fair by former President Jimmy Carter’s monitoring organization, both the US and Israel rejected the election results and initiated a policy of starving the poor folks of Gaza for voting the wrong way. So much for democracy in Gaza.

Recent Presidents have preached the spread of democracy, but obviously they mean only if the democracy does what we want it to do. Presidents should be careful in preaching rhetoric about spreading democracy around the world; they might just get what they wished for. Read more at www.salem-news.com

 

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Police search for missing Jesuit

Police in Chennai are searching for an elderly Jesuit Brother who has not been seen since Jan. 17.

Brother Mariadoss Antonimuthu, 65, was working with Pathai Illam, a Jesuit-run organization helping the rural poor.

“Brother Antonimuthu was supposed to arrive at the office on January 17. He is still missing,” Jesuit Father Joe Arun, secretary of Jesuit-managed Loyola College in Chennai, told ucanews.com Jan. 26.

“We are still searching for him,” he said.

Meanwhile, police have launched a statewide search for the Jesuit.

The Brother had been expected back at his office following a three-day charismatic retreat conducted by a fellow Jesuit.

After he didn’t show up on Jan. 17, staff contacted the Jesuits to inquire as to his whereabouts. They also discovered his mobile phone had been switched off.

The Jesuits later lodged a missing person’s report and two police teams are currently searching shrines and ashrams in Tamil Nadu.

Father Arun said the Jesuits believe the Brother may be suffering from memory loss.

“Till now, he has not communicated with anybody in our community or his relatives,” the priest said.

“We are deeply pained by his disappearance and hope that we will soon find him, the Jesuit priest added.

The missing Jesuit, who wears saffron clothes and has a beard, is known to lead an austere life and was interested in the Catholic charismatic movement.

He had worked in government as an engineer before joining the Jesuits.

Source: ucanews.com Read more at www.cathnewsindia.com

 

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