Nov 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The investigation by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (published by the New York Sun) into the Ford Foundation's funding of anti-Israel radicals seems to be paying off:When the Ford-funded anti-Israel Web site, www.palestinereport.org, deleted its "armed revolution" pages and its direct links to the Web sites of terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad--steps taken after JTA published its investigation--Ford officials declined to acknowledge the change or their role in it.
A staffer at www.palestinereport.org said, "Ford's Cairo office called and insisted we remove the links at once because of the funding articles--and the problems with the Congress was the reason. We redesigned the entire site without those links."
Congress and Jewish groups are insisting on more than cosmetic changes: They want the funding to stop.
The groups funded by Ford have refused to sign a Certification Regarding Terrorist Financing, a pledge required by Usaid, which affirms that no funds have made or will make their way into organizations to "advocate or support terrorist activities."
"A note of reality crept in when Ford saw that the JTA information was credible and the facts against them were solid," said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents. "We are seeing the first signs of change, but they are still funding these same organizations. That is a matter of concern and hopefully we will see a change."
The following day the foundation announced it would work to make sure it did not fund anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activities (though a Sun editorial noted that, given its past history, "Any suggestion that the Ford Foundation was surprised by the kind of charges the JTA raised is poppycock.")
Nov 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
FoxNews reported yesterday: Lawmakers Work to Wrap Up Medicare Bill.
Enjoying the blessing of the politically influential AARP, President Bush on Monday began the push for one of his top legislative priorities -- providing a prescription drug benefit to America's seniors.Bush met with lawmakers on the 10-year, $400 billion package of benefits -- the largest expansion of social services in America since the Great Society -- and practically dared negotiators to stop a bill that provides subsidized drug coverage to 40 million elderly Americans.
Comments Allen Forkum: "The Democrats are complaining about the bill, but only because they want it to be even more socialistic. This is what Bush gets for trying to out socialist the Democrats."
Capitalism Magazine has a two recent editorials on the subject that are well worth reading:
The New Medicare Program: A Prescription for Disaster by Richard E. Ralston
Rather than reduce the cost of drugs, like all government medical plans the new program will just add more of the poison that created the disease. Rigid controls and the vast bureaucracies of Medicare and the FDA already add billions of dollars to the cost of drugs. This, not the market place, is responsible for the current high cost of drugs. New government programs and "benefits" will further explode drug costs and result in rationing, restrictions, regulations, less research, and fewer drugs. Adding yet more federal bureaucracy to administer another program will just layer on more expense.Fewer new drugs will become available as a consequence of these plans. When the government is "surprised" after the escalation in drug costs that result from a plan that promises to pay all of the bills, it will inevitably proceed to price controls and other new restrictions on drug companies
How do these Republican advocates of less government and free markets justify this huge new program? The woefully inadequate fig leaf they provide is the introduction of competition to Medicare from private insurance companies. However such competition will be available temporarily in only six cities during a six year test period beginning seven years from now (2010). What a triumph for Capitalism! Yet Senator Edward Kennedy says it will destroy Medicare. Yea. Sure.
Free-Lunch Medicine by Thomas Sowell
None of the various schemes for lowering the prices of medicines seems willing to face up to the simple fact that each new medicine developed costs hundreds of millions of dollars. This huge inescapable fact seems to just evaporate from the discussion as politicians vie with one another for the best way to make these medicines "affordable" at "reasonable" prices.Politicians who claim to be able to "bring down the cost of health care" are talking about bringing down the prices charged. But prices are not costs. Prices are what pay for costs.[...]
Government price controls on medicines and medical care simply mean that these costs do not all get covered. This works in the short run -- and the short run is what politicians are interested in, because elections are held in the short run. But the rest of us had better think ahead, if we value our health.
Nov 19, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From a review of Lutz Kleveman's book The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia:American policy in Central Asia and the Caucasus is helping to consign tens of millions of people to life under dictatorships that range from kleptocracies worthy of central Africa to the frankly Stalinist. This shortsighted, corrupt, and morally compromised policy aims to ease our reliance on despotic and unstable OPEC nations by turning to the equally despotic, even less stable nations of the former Soviet Union. It can only end in catastrophe. [NYSun]
Nov 19, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the UK Telegraph:Chancellor Gerhard Schröder implored sceptics in his Social Democratic Party yesterday to rally behind his efforts to modernise the ailing economy . Many in his centre-Left party are angry at reforms they see as undermining its 140-year history of protecting the weak. But Mr Schröder insisted...that Germany risked a "fatal error" if it kept on raising contributions to pay for a welfare state hit by a lack of economic growth and an ageing population. "Our reforms are necessary and right," said the German leader. "We're trying to ensure that people can get work and lead lives worth living rather than relying on handouts...." [11/18/2003]
Nov 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Inside the thought processes of Howard Dean:
In an interview around midnight Monday on his campaign plane with a small group of reporters, Dean listed likely targets for what he dubbed as his "re-regulation" campaign: utilities, large media companies and any business that offers stock options. Dean did not rule out "re-regulating" the telecommunications industry, too..."In order to make capitalism work for ordinary human beings, you have to have regulation," Dean said.
...Voters are clearly hungry for government efforts to force better corporate behavior, especially with scandals hitting such industries as mutual funds and accounting, pollsters say. At the same time, they are unlikely to accept price spikes Republicans and some Democrats warn could accompany some new regulations.
Unfortunately many of the new regulations punish and regulate innocent businessmen, rather than specifically punishing those who violate the rights of others. For another view see Bush's Regulatory Crackdown on Business Has Harmed the Economy, Paralyzing America's Producers: The Government's Crackdown on American Businessmen Is Devastating Our Economy, and Unlimited Liability.
..."California is proving it does not work," he said. "I think the reason the grid failed is because of utility deregulation." [Washington Post, Nov 18, 2003]
For the real resons why California power did not work see New State Regulations During "Deregulation" are the Cause of California's Energy Crisis.Nov 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Here's former New York Comptroller H. Carl McCall, who lost the governor's race last year, in the November 17 New York Sun:"We have found a way to bring about change in New York. And it's called utter failure.... That's the only way we make progress in this state, is when things fail."
In other words, our political system is so unresponsive to people's needs that crisis-mongering is the only way to bring about political change.
Nov 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From FoxNews yesterday: Report: Suicide Drivers Were Turks.
Picking through the rubble at one of the synagogues, searchers Monday found the remains of an 85-year-old Jewish woman, whose 8-year-old granddaughter also was killed in the blast. Some analysts believe Saturday's attacks were meant as a warning to Turkey's Islamic-rooted government against continuing close relations with Israel and the West. Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation and NATO member, has close relations with Israel, including joint military exercises. Israeli has also helped modernize Turkey's military equipment.
Also: Report: Al Qaeda Behind Synagogue Bombings
The Sunday e-mail from al-Ablaj warned that attacks will be carried out against Japan, which was to send troops to Iraq but decided not to after the Italian bombing. It promised more attacks on other targets associated with Israel and the United States. "The attacks against Jews and America will follow. Let America and Israel cry for their dead from today and the destruction that they will suffer," his e-mail said. There was no way to independently confirm the authenticity of either claim of responsibility.
Nov 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Thomas A. Bowden, author of The Enemies of Christopher Columbus: Answers to Critical Questions About the Spread of Western Civilization, is interviewed at Insight Magazine. Here is a brief excerpt:Q: In our age of multiculturalism and politically correct attitudes, it is considered bad manners and even wrong to claim any superiority for Western civilization and its achievements. Multiculturalism regards all societies and traditions as of equal merit and is very critical of the West, claiming to see in America an explanation for the world's evils. How can you defend the West, as you do in your book, and claim that its traditions and civilization are superior?
A: Our core value is reason. Western civilization is the culture that is most concerned with natural law, the scientific method, religious toleration and the application of reason to the task of living - all of that. This cannot be said enough.
Defending Western civilization is not defending the "superiority" of white men. That other peoples had not developed the application of reason to life does not mean that they are in any way inferior. It means that they had not yet achieved what the Europeans achieved over many centuries. But if we take an objective look at the standards of men's lives, then Western civilization is superior in very visible ways. The Indians might have developed it all on their own, but they did not. There is no such thing as a racial inferiority that says they couldn't have done it. But you don't have to invent everything yourself to benefit from it, and any gift of knowledge is a great gift.
...I always point out that there is no shame in having ancestors called "savages" since everyone living on Earth today has ancestors who were in fact savages...
Q: But what about the ways the Europeans treated the Indians in America? Doesn't that prove that Western civilization was corrupt and brutish?
A: What happened is that there were Europeans who abandoned civilized standards in dealing with the Indians. The problem wasn't that those Europeans had too much civilization. The problem was that they had too little. It is true that many Christian Europeans treated the Indians brutally. But it is also true that the Europeans treated the Indians no differently [than] they treated one another. Think of Europe's endless wars. And it is true that the Europeans treated the Indians in ways the Indian tribes treated one another...
Read the rest at Insight Magazine.
Recommended Reading:
Nov 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Yahoo News:Yemen's government on Sunday freed 92 followers of the al-Qaida terrorist network who have repented, a Yemeni judge responsible for dialogue with suspected terrorists said.
Nov 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Yahoo News:Breaking with most of his Democratic rivals, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Tuesday he favors amending the Constitution to ban flag burning.
Nov 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Critics and defenders of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown attacked each other Wednesday....Prominent blacks charged President Bush deliberately chose a conservative black woman so it would be harder for senators to vote against her. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/06/03]
Comments WSJ's Taranto: "Having long ago achieved the indisputably noble goal of ensuring that America lives up to the promise of equal justice under the law for all citizens regardless of race, the civil rights movement turned to the more dubious pursuit of 'affirmative action.' Now, however, they are complaining that blacks receive favorable treatment."
Nov 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses, Dollars & Crosses 2
Daniel Pipes writes about George Bush's new commitment to democracy in the Middle East:'Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe.' This sentence, spoken last week by President Bush, is about the most jaw-dropping repudiation of an established bipartisan policy ever made by an American president....Understanding the rationale behind the old dictator-coddling policy makes clear the radicalism of this new approach. The old way noticed that the populations are usually more anti-American than are the emirs, kings, and presidents. Washington was rightly apprehensive that democracy would bring in more radicalized governments; this is what happened in Iran in 1979, and it nearly happened in Algeria in 1992. It also worried that once the radicals reached power, they would close down the democratic process (what was dubbed ³one man, one vote, one time²).Mr. Bush¹s confidence in democracy--that despite the ³street¹s² history of extremism and conspiracy-mindedness, it can mature and become a force of moderation and stability--is about to be tested. This process did, in fact, occur in Iran; will it recur elsewhere? The answer will take decades to find out. [NY Sun]
To the contrary, it won't take decades to find out.Individual rights, not democracy, is the fundamental in politics; representative government is merely a means to the protection of individual rights and the consequent limitation of the power of government. An attempt to establish majority rule unconstrained by the principle of individual rights is destined to collapse in a power struggle over the reins of power sooner or later--and in the Middle East, there's no reason to believe it won't be sooner.Recommended Reading: Freedom--Not Democracy--for the Arabs in the Middle East and De-mystifying Democracy.Nov 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The Daily Telegraph's Barbara Amiel breakfasts with the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi:The EU was also sorry about Turkey, but that country could not be a member until it put its human rights and democracy in order. Meanwhile, Romania and Bulgaria were ahead in the queue.
His remarks struck me as peculiar. Turkey has been an EU candidate-member since 1997 and first applied to the EEC in 1959 when Romania and Bulgaria were still singing the Internationale. Doubtless Romania has substantially improved since the heyday of Mr and Mrs Ceausescu, but in a country where all libel is a criminal offence and Romanian journalists investigating government activities were told last year by the defence ministry's press office that "life is short and your health has too high a price to be endangered by debating highly emotional subjects", there can't be much to choose between it and Turkey....
In Iraq we are trying to build a new government with some democratic standards. Why won't you help us?" [Roger Ailes] asked. "No, no, no," Prodi said theatrically. "We will not give money when we don't know to whom." Which of course explained the hundreds of millions given to the Palestinian Authority by the EU. They must have known it would end up in Mr Arafat's Swiss bank account. I had fleeting visions of jolly African dictators cashing their Euro-cheques.
Nov 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
James Taranto points out that librarians are all against restricting "offensive" speech through the use of porn filters, but then again there are some people whose "offensive" views even they won't allow in their libraries:It seems that a local charity asked Addie Ciannella, the head public librarian in Haverford Township, Pa., to put what she characterizes as a "symbol" on display in the library. She nixed the idea on the ground that the symbol might offend some people. Here's her explanation, in a letter to library trustees quoted by columnist Gil Spencer:
"It was a rather awkward situation" but she didn't feel as if she had much of a choice given her "professional opinion" which is "the library (any public library) is a place for all people of all beliefs, backgrounds, etc. Symbols can send a message of unwelcome philosophical orientation, expectations of others, and can produce ill will and even fear. I know we are an adjunct of the government but we are not the (township) or county or other government...." [Daily Times]
And what was this symbol that was so threatening to certain Haverfordians that it could not be displayed at the library? The American flag.
Nov 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Randy Barnett is a libertarian, but he makes some excellent points about how judicial philosophy is relevant to choosing justices in the NYSun:"Judicial liberals" are willing to ignore the Constitution when it leads to political results they find objectionable. That is why they place so high a premium on whether a particular nominees favor the outcomes of certain hand-picked cases, and why they lambaste any effort by the Rehnquist Court to hold Congress to its enumerated powers as "activist," notwithstanding that this is clearly required by the Constitution....
Some Republicans, on the other hand, are quite willing to ignore portions of the Constitution they find objectionable. The Ninth Amendment specifies that: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People." The 14th Amendment says that: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." Both of these provisions authorize the judicial protection of unenumerated liberty rights. "Judicial conservatives" would have judges disregard them....
...senators ought to vote to confirm candidates nominated by the other party whom they believe have the required intelligence and ability to do the job of judges, and whose judicial philosophy is to follow the dictates of the Constitution, even where it cuts against a nominee's political inclinations. Those unwilling to do so lack "judicial virtue" and are unqualified. But more than this the opposing party cannot expect....
That no judge should ignore the Constitution when doing so suits their ideological agenda is a philosophy all nominees must accept. So must all senators. For they too have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, the whole Constitution, and not just the parts that, for the moment at least, lead to results they happen to like.
Nov 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses, Dollars & Crosses 2
I wrote the following letter to the editor of the New York Sun:In your editorial ["Moore's Next Move," Nov. 14, 2003], you write: "No one can dispute that the Ten Commandments are fundamental to Alabama¹s and our nation¹s law and government." Yet the Ten Commandments had existed for millennia before anything like the Constitution was envisioned, and for good reason. America is a product of the Enlightenment, until then the most secular era in history and the one that overthrew religion's hold on politics. John Locke and Enlightenment intellectuals insisted on basing law upon the empirical observation of human nature, not on divine revelations. American government rests on a view of man as sovereign and independent, with the law protecting his freedom from religious authority and his right to pursue his own self-interest. The view that the Ten Commandments undergirds our law and government is simply false.
Recommended Reading: The Ten Commandments vs. America, America: Under Rights or "Under God"? and Bush's Faith-Based Initiative Against FreedomNov 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the UK Telegraph:[With regard to problems of harmonization, European Commission president] Prodi cared about one thing only: tax harmonisation. "Can you imagine," he asked with astonishment, "what would happen if Estonia decided it would have zero tax? All the business in the EU would go and locate in Estonia!!"
The bureaucrats know full well they represent the forces of destruction; they just don't care.
Nov 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the UK Telegraph:The BBC has appointed a "Middle East policeman" to oversee its coverage of the region amid mounting allegations of anti-Israeli bias.
...The BBC has also been the target of Downing Street accusations that it toed a pro-Baghdad line over the Iraq war and that it influenced the Today programme's handling of the dossier story that is the subject of the Hutton Inquiry.
...The [BBC's World Service] Arabic Service has been singled out by some critics as the most anti-Israeli source of the corporation's Middle East output. The BBC denied that the appointment amounted to an admission that it had "got its coverage wrong"... ["BBC appoints man to monitor 'pro-Arab bias'", November 11, 2003]
Then why did the Baghdad Bob Corporation appoint someone in the first place?
