Nov 27, 2011 | Politics
Richard Salsman on GOP Conservatives - Not Romney - Are the Real Flip-Floppers - Forbes:
In that answer Gingrich was directing his remarks about faith and
politics at Romney. Yet consider the hubris of Gingrich believing some
deity hears his prayers and responds with sound public policy advice.
The man can’t imagine an alternative to judgment apart from faith, even
though it is, obviously, judgment based on the facts of reality, using
reason and logic. The man says he cannot trust political leaders who
don’t pray, whereas in fact we should distrust those who don’t think. In
viewing candidates like Gingrich, one might be excused for uttering one
worthy prayer, as was spray-painted on a wall in D.C., in the wake of
9/11, a day Americans could not live free from religion: “God please
save us from all those people who believe in you.”
Mr. Romney spelled out his view of religion and politics in a speech, “Faith in America,” in December 2007:
“We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good
reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state
interfere with the free practice of religion.” I am an American running
for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person
should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected
because of his faith.” “As governor, I tried to do the right as best I
knew it, serving the law and answering to the Constitution. I did not
confuse the particular teachings of my church with the obligations of
the office and of the Constitution — and of course, I would not do so as
President.” I believe in what Abraham Lincoln called America’s
‘political religion’ — the commitment to defend the rule of law and the
Constitution.”
At this stage in America’s history, as it seems to be hurtling toward
bigger and bigger government, voters can probably ask nothing more from
a candidate than his plain pledge to at least try and abide by the U.S.
Constitution. In this regard it’s worth reminding both the religious
right and religious left among us that the Constitution never once
mentions a deity or Christianity and that in Article VI it specifically
requires officers of government in America “to support this
Constitution” and says “no religious test shall ever be required as a
qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
Conservatives should grow up, cease their promiscuity in the GOP
primaries, and take Article VI seriously.
Nov 23, 2011 | Business, Politics
The failure of the "Super Committee" to reach an agreement concerning spending reductions of at least $1.2 trillion over ten years seems to symbolize the growing philosophical divide in America. Despite the "marriage" between Grover Norquist and the Republican party, the Democratic party remains more consistent in their beliefs of expanding the size and scope of government than their Republican counterparts are about diminishing it. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial by the Committee's co-chair, Representative Jeb Hensarling, reveals the mindset of his Democratic counterparts:"President Obama summed up our debt crisis best when he told Republican members of the House in January 2010 that "The major driver of our long-term liabilities . . . is Medicare and Medicaid and our health-care spending." A few months later, however, Mr. Obama and his party's leaders in Congress added trillions of dollars in new health-care spending to the government's balance sheet.""Democrats on the committee made it clear that the new spending called for in the president's health law was off the table. Still, committee Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements—Medicare and Medicaid—based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year.""The Medicare reforms would make no changes for those in or near retirement. Beginning in 2022, beneficiaries would be guaranteed a choice of Medicare-approved private health coverage options and guaranteed a premium-support payment to help pay for the plan they choose.""Democrats rejected this approach but assured us on numerous occasions they would offer a "structural" or "architectural" Medicare reform plan of their own. While I do not question their good faith effort to do so, they never did.""Republicans on the committee also offered to negotiate a plan based on the bipartisan "Protect Medicare Act" authored by Alice Rivlin, one of President Bill Clinton's budget directors, and Pete Domenici, a former Republican senator from New Mexico. Rivlin-Domenici offered financial support to seniors to purchase quality, affordable health coverage in Medicare-approved plans. These seniors would be able to choose from a list of Medicare-guaranteed coverage options, similar to the House budget's approach—except that Rivlin-Domenici would continue to include a traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan among the options.""This approach was also rejected by committee Democrats."This article contains two unique components. First, Democrats refuse to alter the manner in which their beloved programs operate--despite the looming fiscal peril. Second, and likely in the hopes of sounding bipartisan, Mr. Hensarling does not challenge the merits of the entitlement state. Essentially, Republicans agree that an individual's rights end where someone else's needs begins. In attempting to promote the concept of the mixed economy, Mr. Hensarling continues:"In the midst of persistent 9% unemployment, the committee could have enacted fundamental tax reform to simplify the tax code, help create jobs, and bring in over time the higher revenues that come with economic growth. Republicans put such a plan on the table...""Republicans were willing to agree to additional tax revenue, but only in the context of fundamental pro-growth tax reform that would broaden the base, lower rates, and maintain current levels of progressivity. This is the approach to tax reform used by recent bipartisan deficit reduction efforts such as the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission and the Rivlin-Domenici plan.""The Democrats said no. They were unwilling to agree to anything less than $1 trillion in tax hikes—and unwilling to offer any structural reforms to put our health-care entitlements on a permanently sustainable basis."Republicans fail these debates because, fundamentally, they concur with their Democratic colleagues; the entitlement state is a moral priority. The matter on which the two parties disagree is the method for funding the entitlement programs. As Mr. Hensarling argues, lower tax rates help "broaden the base, create jobs, and bring higher revenues." He does not say that wealth is created and earned as a result of production. He does not argue that, in a capitalist system, all wealth is earned.Instead of defending the utility of liberal economics in terms of funding entitlements, the politicians who want to stand against the socialist/liberals need to address the immorality of redistributing other peoples' money.Nov 11, 2011 | Politics
From New York Post reporter spends night with Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park - NYPOST.com:
“I just talked to two gentlemen who were raped last night, and they don’t want to press charges because [authorities] wanted to take them in an ambulance and . . . do a rape kit,” she said. She passed on their account to the security force, while encouraging them to press charges.“There was another girl raped by the same man,” she said from a table in the McDonald’s, which has become the headquarters of the revolution. It’s a place to meet, to get warm, to scarf down dollar-menu grub and to use the bathroom that becomes increasingly vile as the night goes on.
Nov 9, 2011 | Politics
Writes David S. Addington over at Heritage on Obama's Christmas Tree Tax:
President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).
To pay for the new Federal Christmas tree image improvement and marketing program, the Department of Agriculture imposed a 15-cent fee on all sales of fresh Christmas trees by sellers of more than 500 trees per year (7 CFR 1214.52). And, of course, the Christmas tree sellers are free to pass along the 15-cent Federal fee to consumers who buy their Christmas trees.
[...] The economy is barely growing and nine percent of the American people have no jobs. Is a new tax on Christmas trees the best President Obama can do?And, by the way, the American Christmas tree has a great image that doesn’t need any help from the government. [Obama Couldn't Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax]
Nov 4, 2011 | Politics
From Scott Holleran: CBS Fights FCC and Wins in Philadelphia
In a victory this Wednesday for freedom of speech, an appeals court rejected the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to punish CBS for airing an expressive portion of Janet Jackson’s broadcast performance during the 2004 Super Bowl. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled by 2-1 (CBS Corp et al v. FCC, 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 06-3575) that, by imposing a penalty, the FCC “arbitrarily and capriciously” departed from prior policy that exempted “fleeting” indecency from sanctions and that the FCC “improperly imposed a penalty on CBS for violating a previously unannounced policy”. The FCC released an antagonistic and harsh statement that says the federal agency is disappointed by the decision and intends to use “all the authority at its disposal” to force broadcasters to serve the public interest when they use the so-called public airwaves. A CBS spokeswoman said the network hopes the FCC will “return to the policy of restrained indecency enforcement it followed for decades.” The FCC fined CBS $27,500 for each of the 20 stations it owned when part of Janet Jackson’s anatomy was accidentally and briefly exposed during the halftime performance.
Nov 3, 2011 | Politics
Robert Spencer has some excellent commentary over at Jihad WatchIn my article at Front Page today I wrote this: "The worst aspect of this firebombing is that there are certain to be voices in the West over the next few days – some of them no doubt quite prominent and respected – who will call on Westerners to be more 'sensitive' toward Muslims, and to end this unacceptable hurting of Muslim feelings by drawing cartoons of him and making him the honorary editor-in-chief of a comedy magazine."
And here we are. The reason why this is the worst aspect of the firebombing is that these pleas to be more "sensitive" to Muslims amount essentially to calls for restrictions on the freedom of speech and the creation of a special, privileged class that is beyond criticism. That is the death of free society and the road to tyranny, for the class that is beyond criticism will have a free hand to do whatever it wants, and what will anyone be able to say?
But Bruce Crumley of Time Magazine, like so many other enlightened liberals, camouflages his slouch toward totalitarianism in the guise of "sensitivity" and resistance to "Islamophobia." The huge, gaping hole in his argument, however, is that he is making it after Muslims reacted violently to satire. Judaism and Christianity are lampooned on a regular basis, but Bruce Crumley never lifted a finger to call for "sensitivity" toward the religious feelings of others when Piss Christ was being displayed as a serious work of art. So Crumley's argument boils down to saying that we should capitulate in the face of violent intimidation. This is not really about being sensitive. It is about doing what the thugs want so they won't hurt us again.I'd rather die first."Firebombed French Paper Is No Free Speech Martyr," by Bruce Crumley for Time Magazine, November 2 (thanks to Anne Crockett):
Okay, so can we finally stop with the idiotic, divisive, and
destructive efforts by “majority sections” of Western nations to bait
Muslim members with petulant, futile demonstrations that “they” aren't
going to tell “us” what can and can't be done in free societies? Because
not only are such Islamophobic antics futile and childish, but they
also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their
authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common
good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting
belligerent reaction?The difficulty in answering that question is also what's making it
hard to have much sympathy for the French satirical newspaper firebombed
this morning, after it published another stupid and totally unnecessary
edition mocking Islam. The Wednesday morning arson attack destroyed the
Paris editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo after the paper published an
issue certain to enrage hard-core Islamists (and offend average Muslims)
with articles and “funny” cartoons featuring the Prophet
Mohammed—depictions forbidden in Islam to boot. Predictably, the strike
unleashed a torrent of unqualified condemnation from French politicians,
many of whom called the burning of the notoriously impertinent paper as
“an attack on democracy by its enemies.”
We, by contrast, have another reaction to the firebombing: Sorry for
your loss, Charlie, and there's no justification of such an illegitimate
response to your current edition. But do you still think the price you
paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient
parody on the logic of “because we can” was so worthwhile? If so, good
luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring....
Read the rest of Time Magazine calls for censorship, blames victims of Islamic attack on French magazine that lampooned Muhammad.
Nov 2, 2011 | Philosophy, Politics
FrontPage Magazine has an excellent interview by Jamie Glazov with Robert R. Reilly, author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind. Here are some choice excerpts:[...] FP: Why is the West, aside from some few and brave thinkers, so blind in confronting the Islamist crisis?Reilly: Self-delusion is one problem and ignorance is another. Many in the secular West find it hard to believe that anyone takes religion seriously anymore. Since they have lost their faith, they don’t have the ability to comprehend the terms of faith in anyone else’s life. In fact, their incomprehension, their obliviousness to the sacred, is one of the things that inflames Islam against the West. We are essentially facing a theological problem and a profound spiritual disorder. People ignorant of theology are unable to recognize the nature of the problem. They want to create another economic development program in the Middle East, as if that will solve it. This is delusional and a total waste. The problem needs to be addressed at the level at which it exists, not by sociologists or psychiatrists.FP: What hope is there that some kind of “moderate” Islam can ever emerge?Reilly: [...] At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century there was far more intellectual ferment for reconciling Islam and modern science, for finding ways to adopt the best of the West to the Muslim world. These efforts largely failed. Things are now likely to get worse, not better.The intellectual impetus in the Muslim world is not with those who see the need to reopen the foreclosed questions from the ninth century as to who God is and what his relationship to reason is. (There are such Muslim thinkers but they get no support from us.) It is with those who wish to return to the seventh century and replicate the feats of the Companions of the Prophet in creating the greatest empire the world had seen up to that point. The worse things get in the Muslim world, the more support these jihadists receive because they provide an explanation and a program that can be easily understood by those who deeply feel the grievances and humiliation of their situation.It is not inevitable that the Islamists should succeed, except in the absence of any strategy to counter them. Muslim leaders like the former president of Indonesia, the late Abdurrahman Wahid, the spiritual head of the largest Muslim organization in the world, Nahdlatul Ulama, have called for a counter-strategy that would include offering “a compelling alternative vision of Islam, one that banishes the fanatical ideology of hatred to the darkness from which it emerged.” Wahid advocated a partnership with the non-Muslim world in a massively resourced effort to uphold human dignity, freedom of conscience, religious freedom, and the benefits of modernity before the juggernaut of Islamist ideology swamps the Muslim world. It was a compelling summons. It has yet to be answered.There is another way to state this at its heart. The Arab Muslim world reached its apogee when it was at its most Hellenized, i.e. under the influence of Greek philosophy. It then underwent a process of dehellenization, a divorce from reason and the extirpation of philosophy. Its path to recovery must be in these same terms – a rehellenization, a restoration of the status or reason and a return to philosophy. Is that possible? As a twentieth century Moroccan Muslim thinker put it, either the future of Islam will be Aristotelian, or it will not be.
Read the rest of the interview.Related: Book Review: The Closing of the Muslim Mind by Robert R. ReillyNov 2, 2011 | Politics
Writes Richard Salsman on TARP After Three Years: It Made Things Worse, Not Better at Forbes:
The $700 billion “Troubled Asset Relief Program” (TARP) was enacted in Washington three years ago this week, and while most economists, policymakers and journalists still believe it made things better (“helping us avoid a second Great Depression,” they like to say), in fact it made things much worse – and today we’re still suffering from its bearish effects. As just one example, a similar scheme, modeled on TARP – the “European Financial Stability Facility” (EFSF) – is being adopted abroad, further undermining bank stocks.
Those who fail to grasp TARP’s true impact will find it difficult to comprehend the currently-bearish impact of the EFSF. The problem with most U.S. banks in 2008 was not that they were “under-capitalized” but that they held so many shaky (sub-prime) residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), assets which bank regulators insisted were some of the safest assets they could own, because they were “backed” by the taxpayer-backed mortgage GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and thus required virtually no capital.
Instead of U.S. banks shedding bad assets, merging and raising private capital, TARP compelled them to take unwanted, high-cost capital injections with “strings attached” that became a noose around their necks.
[...]
The critics of bank bailouts are right to oppose bailouts per se,
but most of them ignore the irrefutable fact that in 2008-2009 most
U.S. banks were forced to take TARP funds, coerced into paying
above-market rates on preferred dividends, and compelled to run their
operations as Washington prefers (the source of the financial crisis in
the first place). Yes, most banks by now have repaid TARP funds, but the
Dodd-Frank “reform” bill (enacted July 2010) continues or intensifies
its evils while further institutionalizing government interference in
banking. Even though U.S. bank profits have rebounded in recent years,
bank stocks today remain 47% below where they traded when TARP was
enacted in October 2008, and 23% below where they traded when the
Dodd-Frank bill was enacted in July 2010. It is politically unsafe to
invest in the banks.
The majority of U.S. banks were perfectly healthy in 2008-2009 and
should have been left free of TARP. Instead they were exploited by
Washington – and unwittingly by U.S. taxpayers – not the other way
around.
Nov 2, 2011 | Business, Philosophy, Politics, Sci-Tech
Capitalism Magazine has another excerpt from Dr. Northrup Buechner's Objective Economics: How Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Changes Everything About Economics.
The book sold out at this year's OCON conference and though somewhat controversial, is definitely worth a read.
Read What Facts of Reality Gave Rise to the Science of Economics?
Nov 1, 2011 | Business, Philosophy, Politics
Dr. John David Lewis talks about his book Nothing Less Than Victory.Dr. Lewis is a visiting associate professor in the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke University. He holds a PhD in classics from the University of Cambridge, has taught at the University of London. He has been a senior research scholar in history and classics at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University, and a fellow of the Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship. He has published in journals such as Journal of Business Ethics, Social Philosophy and Policy, Polis, Dike, and Bryn Mawr Classical Review, and has lectured on classics, military history, and contemporary political issues at numerous universities and for private groups. His research interests are in ancient Greek and Roman thought, military history, and their connections to the modern day. His books are Solon the Thinker: Political Thought in Archaic Athens (Duckworth, 2006), Early Greek Lawgivers (Bristol Classical Press, August, 2007), and Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History (Princeton, 2010). His website is www.JohnDavidLewis.com.Oct 25, 2011 | Politics
Apparently "Obama for America is seeking poster submissions from
artists across the country illustrating why we support President
Obama's plan to create jobs now, and why we'll re-elect him to continue
fighting for jobs for the next four years."
Andy Rutledge has an excellent post on Designers as Pawns and Useful Idiots
that starts with the headline: "Attention Designers: President Barack
Obama wants to hire* you! Get to work now making propaganda posters for
the U.S. government and get paid…nothing! I know this sounds like
unpaid spec work—and it is—but this is not about you. It’s about the
important people: the people in the government!"
Other gems...
If you’re going to do the responsible thing and forego your profit in exchange for engaging in class warfare community service, I believe that it’s best to say what you mean. Yes, yes, I know that the SEIU has already approved some candidate slogans, but these stop short of being direct and factual. Let’s not mince words. Try these on for size in your propaganda posters:
- Let’s tax our way to prosperity!
- You won’t have to march on Wall Street when government has all the money!
- We’re running out of other people’s money! Help us take more!
- Redistribution! What we lose in bureaucratic waste, we make up for in volume!
- Money: Why earn it when you can just get the government to steal it for you?
- Union Rights! What’s ours is ours and what’s yours is ours.
- One nation, under
God government unions. With equality and service for all.
That’s better. If you’re going to say something, say what you mean.
Apparently all creative types are not robot-Lefties.
