Saudi Arabia was funding Muslim radicalism in mosques and charities at the time the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were gathering in the United States and making contacts with Saudi nationals, according to a declassified intelligence document.
To jihad watchers, the paper confirms their charges that the Saudi government and its wealthy citizens fund extremist teachings in America. To this day, the kingdom is pressing its harsh Wahhabi Sunni Islam on American Muslims as it seeks to spread Islam around the world, they say.
In the document, one Saudi who was receiving money from Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Riyadh’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time, made a startling statement to an FBI informant. The man, who had ties to some of the hijackers, told agents that it would do the U.S. no good to limit entry visas because a sufficient number of Muslims were already in the country to destroy it and create an Islamic state.
The disclosure was tucked in the “28 pages” — a long-secret chapter in a 2002 report by the House and Senate intelligence committees after an investigation in the immediate aftermath of the al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon. Of the 19 who hijacked four airliners, 15 were Saudis.
The report section, referred to as “Part 4,” deals mainly with one topic: suspected Saudi government support for the Sept. 11 plot. The George W. Bush administration insisted that the section remain classified. Under pressure, the Obama administration released the pages last week.
The high-powered 9/11 Commission conducted a more extensive investigation into the attacks. Its leaders assert that the commission ran down every lead in the 28 pages but was unable to confirm that the Saudi kingdom or its agents helped plan or knowingly financed the attack, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
But the 28 pages also touch on an issue beyond the question of the attack itself. The Saudi government and Saudi citizens were funding groups that spread jihadi messages against the U.S., funded terrorist groups and were seen as recruiters for Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda terrorist leader.
Fifteen years later, the Riyadh government asserts that it undertook a monumental campaign to stop its citizens from funding terrorism.
Ties to terrorism
Here are some of the Saudi-linked entities mentioned in the 28 pages, which derived from the FBI’s and CIA’s earliest investigation into Sept. 11:
The King Fahad mosque in Culver City, California. Sheik Fahad al-Thumairy was a Saudi diplomat in its mission in Los Angeles and an imam at the mosque.
Said Part 4: “The mosque was built in 1998 from funding provided by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdelaziz. The mosque is reportedly attended by members of the Saudi consultant in Los Angeles and is widely recognized for its anti-Western views.”
The Ibn Tamiyah mosque in Culver City. The report called it “a site of extremist-related activity.” This mosque appears to be associated with the King Fahad Mosque.
The report: “Several subjects of FBI investigations prior to September 11 had close connections to the mosque and are believed to have laundered money through this mosque to non-profit organizations overseas affiliated with [O]sama bin Ladin. In an interview, an FBI agent said he believed that Saudi government money was being laundered through the mosque.
“In approximately 1998, the FBI became aware of millions of dollars in wire transfers from the Somali community in San Diego to A Bazakaat Trading Company and other businesses affiliated with Osama Bin Laden. At the time, the funding appeared to be originating from the local Somali community in the form of donations to various Somali non-profits. However, the FBI now believes that some of the funding actually originated in Saudi Arabia and that both the Ibn Tamiyah mosque in Los Angeles and the Islamic Center of San Diego were involved in laundering the money.”
Omar al-Bayoumi. He met two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, in San Diego in 2000. He helped the two find an apartment and obtain driver’s licenses. He managed a mosque in Cajon, California.
He received $400,000 from Saudi Arabia to fund a new mosque in San Diego. The FBI searched his papers and concluded, “after an exhaustive translation of Bayoumi documents, it is clear that in Bayoumi correspondence, he is providing guidance to young Muslims and some of his writings can be interpreted as jihadist.”
He also received money from Princess Haifa bit Faisal, wife of Prince Bandar. The FBI suspected him of being a Saudi intelligence agent.
The Islamic Center of San Diego. The FBI suspected it of laundering Saudi money to al Qaeda. A center employee helped Hazmi and Mihdhar attend flight school and served as their translator.
Osama Bassnan. An associate of Bayoumi’s, Bassnan praised Osama bin Laden and talked by phone with his family members. Bassnan worked at the Saudi Arabia Education Ministry in Washington. He later moved to San Diego.
He hosted a party in 1992 for the “Blind Sheikh,” a convicted plotter in the World Trade Center attack in 1993. Egyptian Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheikh, received a life sentence.
The report: “According to an FBI asset, Bassnan spoke of bin Laden ‘as if he were a god.’ Bassnan also stated to an FBI asset that he heard that the U.S. government had stopped approving visas for foreign students. He considered such measures to be insufficient as there are already enough Muslims in the United States to destroy the United States and make it an Islamic state within ten to fifteen years.”
Bassnan and his wife also received money from Prince Bandar and his wife.
Al Haramain Islamic Foundation. The FBI was alarmed by its ties to the Saudi kingdom and terrorists.
Said the report: “Intelligence reporting suggests it is providing financial and logistical support to al Qaeda.”
Al Haramain opened a U.S. office in Oregon and received about $700,000 from its parent organization in Saudi Arabia. Its documents show it wanted to appoint the imam for al-Bayoumi’s mosque.
The U.S. Treasury Department subsequently cited Al Haramain several times for ties to terrorism, and Riyadh banned its operations at home.
The Islamic Assembly of North America. The Michigan-based group was “dedicated to the spread of Islam worldwide,” the report said.
“According to the FBI, the IANA’s mission is actually to spread Islamic fundamentalism and Salafist doctrine throughout the United States and the world at large. The IANA solicited funds from wealthy Saudi benefactors, extremists Islamic Sheikhs and suspect non-governmental organizations,” the report said.
The New York Times reported that half its budget came from the Saudi government. Its phone number in Michigan has been disconnected.
The World Arab Muslim Youth Association and the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America. Both organizations are based in Riyadh.
The report: “There is reason to believe that WAMY is closely associated with the funding and financing of international terrorist activities.”
‘Men, money and mind-set’
Jihad watchers in the U.S. say the 28 pages are further evidence that Saudi money ends up in the hands of extremists.
“Next to Iran, which is the leading state sponsor of jihad, what we call ‘terrorism,’ Saudi Arabia has spent more money funding the global Islamic movement than any other nation on the planet,” said former FBI agent John Guandolo, who runs the nonprofit Understanding the Threat website. “The U.S. State Department and our national security apparatus should see Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States.”
Frank Gaffney, who runs the Center for Security Policy, said: “The 28 pages make clear that the Saudis were neither reliable allies of the United States prior to 9/11 nor are they today. Rather, they are adherents to a jihadist agenda driven by the Islamic supremacists’ Sharia doctrine. To that end, they have built a vast infrastructure inside the United States, including mosques, front groups and influence operations.”
According to a 2011 survey by Islamic groups, there are now more than 2,000 mosques in the United States, an increase of nearly 100 percent since 2000.
Anti-jihad scholars estimate that 80 percent of U.S. mosques are funded by Saudi money.
The Saudis, however, viewed the release of 28 pages as vindication because the U.S. never proved that the government knew of or supported the plot.
Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, a press aide under Prince Bandar when he was U.S. ambassador, sent out a number of statements on Twitter.
“Now that the declassification is complete, we hope to continue our close cooperation with the U.S. in the fight against terrorism,” he said. “Since 9/11, the Kingdom has embarked on a series of major steps to confront the men, money and mind-set that foments terrorism.”
“We have put in place an unprecedented financial control system to stop the funding of extremist causes and terrorism. The Kingdom is committed and determined to use all of its resources to go after terrorists and to work with other countries to do so.”
The website home page of the King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles features an imam preaching against the evils of terrorism and specifically condemns recent terrorist attacks in Turkey and France.
“Their actions have no place in Islam,” he says.
No proof of direct support
Along with releasing the 28 pages, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified a 2005 letter from the FBI and CIA. It served as an update to the agencies’ input into the 2002 intelligence committee report.
It was signed by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and CIA Director Porter J. Goss, and was addressed to the House and Senate intelligence committees.
The letter absolved the Riyadh government of knowingly funding the Sept. 11 attack.
“There is no evidence that either the Saudi government or members of the Saudi royal family knowingly provided support for the attacks of 11 September 2001 or that they had foreknowledge of the terrorists operations in the Kingdom or elsewhere,” the FBI and CIA said.
The letter said neither al-Bayoumi nor Bassnan, the men in San Diego, knew of the Sept. 11 plot.
But the letter was less exculpatory when it came to the actions of Saudis in the U.S.
One heavily censored sentence says, “Saudi-funded clerics have been found to be [censored] Saudi-Americans and other communities in the United States.”
Another finding states: “There is evidence that official Saudi entities [censored] and associated nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), provide financial and logistical support to individuals in the United States and around the world, some of whom are associated with terrorism-related activity.”
And this conclusion: “The Saudi government and many of its agencies have been infiltrated and exploited by individuals associated with or sympathetic to al Qaeda.
“The Saudi government and private Saudi individuals support the propagation of the conservative Wahhabi-Salafi sect of Sunni Islam in the United States. Jihadists adhere to and interpret this sect’s beliefs to justify their actions.”
Writing in the New York Post in April, Fox News military analyst Ralph Peters said: “Consider how idiotic we’ve been, allowing Saudis to fund hate mosques and madrassas, to provide Jew-baiting texts and to do their best to bully American Muslims into conformity with their misogynistic, 500-lashes worldview. Our leaders and legislators have betrayed our fellow citizens who happen to be Muslim, making it more difficult for them to integrate fully into our society.”
The United Nations has issued a plea for nations to fast-track ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement as some countries are backtracking on support for the deal’s sweeping restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged nations to attend a “special event” Thursday where they may deposit their “instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession to the Paris Agreement on climate change.”
“I urge you to accelerate your country’s domestic process for ratification of the Agreement this year,” Mr. Ban said in a statement.
His push for rapid ratification comes amid the increasingly chilly reception for the agreement, adopted by 195 parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris, by nations concerned about the impact of the carbon restrictions.
The change of heart even has a name: “Clexit,” short for “climate exit,” a take-off on “Brexit,” the successful June 23 British vote to leave the European Union.
The most dramatic repudiation was from Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, elected in November, who said Monday that he “will not honor” the proposed restrictions on emissions. He called them stupid and cited his country’s need for greater economic development and industrialization.
Developed nations “were enjoying the booming [economy] and flooding the air with contaminants. Now that they are rich because of coal and industrialization, we are being asked to cut emission and limit our activities,” Mr. Duterte said in the Philippine Star.
Meanwhile, U.N. special envoy for climate change Mary Robinson decried Monday what she described as recent efforts by Germany and Britain to support the fossil fuel industry despite their previous support for the agreement.
The British government “introduced new tax breaks for oil and gas in 2015 that will cost U.K. taxpayer billions between 2015 and 2020, and, at the same time, they’ve cut support for renewables and for energy efficiency,” Ms. Robinson told The Guardian newspaper.
“It’s regrettable. That’s not in the spirit [of Paris],” she said. “In many ways, the U.K. was a real leader, and hopefully the U.K. will become again a real leader. But it’s not at the moment.”
Marc Morano, who runs the skeptics’ website Climate Depot, said Tuesday that the cold feet on global warming shows that some countries are realizing the international climate agreement is “not in their best interests.”
“More and more nations are realizing that the U.N. climate treaty is nothing more than an effort to empower the U.N. and attack national sovereignty while doing absolutely nothing for the climate,” said Mr. Morano, who debuted his film “Climate Hustle” during the negotiations in Paris.
He said that the “time has come for a U.S.-led ‘Clexit’ from … the climate treaty.”
President Obama has positioned himself as a strong champion of the accord, which is viewed as a cornerstone of his policy legacy as he prepares to leave office in January.
Under the Paris Agreement, 177 nations and the European Union agreed to set nonbinding limits on their carbon output in an effort to keep global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.
Since then, 19 countries have ratified the agreement, which goes into effect 30 days after ratification by 55 nations responsible for 55 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The Obama administration is expected to follow with an executive order before the end of the year, despite objections from Republicans who argue that the agreement is a treaty and therefore must be ratified by the Senate.
The clock is ticking: Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he will “cancel” the agreement if elected in November.
The website Climate Analytics estimates that 51 countries accounting for 53.28 percent of global emissions are expected to ratify the agreement by Dec. 31, which would fall short of placing the accord into effect.
In Australia, climate skeptics launched what they dubbed the “Clexit” movement after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull participated in a ceremonial signing of the agreement April 22 at U.N. headquarters in New York City.
Signers from 175 nations participated in the ceremony, including U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry.
Mr. Ban said an accelerated ratification for the agreement would “create incentives for early implementation of nationally determined contributions and build support within markets and societies for increased climate ambition.”
“As Ban Ki-moon’s tenure as U.N. secretary-general draws to a close, he is no doubt thinking about his legacy, how history will remember him,” said Eric Worrall in a Monday post on the skeptics’ website Watts Up With That.
“Given the accelerating collapse of political climate enthusiasm across the world, my prediction is Ban Ki-moon will be remembered as the U.N. Secretary General who presided over the downfall of the green movement,” Mr. Worrall said.
Want to reduce cigarette sales? Just raise taxes on cigarettes. Reduce gasoline consumption? Raise gas taxes. Cut carbon emissions? Easy! Just slap a tax on carbon.
This is not to say that these are good policies. Rather, the point is that taxes matter because they change prices. And when prices rise, families, businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs change their behavior accordingly. The greater the price increase, the less people buy.
This principle is not at all controversial. Yet for some reason, the premise does not enjoy the same broad acceptance when it is applied to income taxes, which are an added cost to working, saving, and investing. When taxes rise on these things, you get less of them, which shrinks the economy.
Liberal politicians support hiking taxes on cigarettes, gasoline and other fossil fuels precisely because they know it will reduce consumption of these commodities. Yet at the same they insist we can raise income taxes on the rich without triggering any ill effects on the economy.
They’re wrong, and recently released data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows why.
Back on New Year’s Day 2013, Congress passed and President Obama signed into law a massive tax increase. Rather than continue all the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts that expired at the end of 2012, they decided to let them lapse for higher earners, thus raising their taxes.
Congress and Mr. Obama also let the then 2-year-old payroll tax holiday expire, raising taxes for all working Americans. Because of this, according to CBO, the total average federal tax rate for all Americans rose from just over 18 percent in 2012 to more than 20 percent in 2013 — a relative increase of 10 percent. But taxes rose the most for high earners. The top 1 percent’s taxes increased almost 19 percent.
The CBO data also show that the before-tax income of upper income taxpayers ticked up sharply from 2011 to 2012, but then plummeted in 2013. This is before-tax income, so the tax increases are not the direct cause.
What likely happened was that high earners shifted as much of their income as they could from 2013 when it would be taxed more into 2012 when it would be taxed less. They can do this because they earn more capital gain and dividend income. They can control the timing and content of that income more than those of us who rely mostly on wages and salaries. Shifting capital gain and dividend income into 2012 would account for the spike in 2012 and part of the decline in their before tax incomes in 2013.
The rest of the decline likely occurred from high earners working and investing less. After all, their incentives for doing those things dropped sharply due to the tax increases. The decline in before-tax incomes indicates this was the case in 2013 and will continue to be going forward. Less working and less investing shrinks the size of the economy, hurting Americans at all income levels by reducing job creation and wage growth.
The CBO data further show that raising taxes on the rich does not reduce income inequality. The shares of total federal taxes paid and the shares of after-tax income earned by the various income groups changed little after the 2013 tax hike.
As the new CBO data demonstrate, if the next president continues to pursue tax increases on the rich, all Americans will feel the pain. High earners will reduce their productive activities even further, in ways that will reduce opportunity at all income levels.
Americans have had enough of that approach. It is time for a new direction on taxes that looks to make everyone better off, rather than taking a pound of flesh from the rich with no gain for the rest of us.
The horrifying slayings of eight law enforcement officers in the past 10 days may come back to haunt Democrats funding protests against police behind the scenes in hopes of energizing black voters in November.
Instead of juicing turnout for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the unrest may wind up backfiring by whipping up public sympathy for police and creating an opportunity for Republicans to run on a law-and-order message, analysts say.
“The proof of that will be on Election Day. But I would say the problem with the strategy is that it has contributed to a climate of support for law and order, and that, I think, is an immense advantage for Donald Trump,” said political analyst Floyd Ciruli.
“It’s a theme Republicans have often used, and frankly helped elect Richard Nixon in the similarly tumultuous year of 1968,” Mr. Ciruli said. “So I think this is an advantage for Trump, and I think it has contributed to his most recent strength demonstrated in a number of polls where he’s at least closing the gap.”
A surge of Black Lives Matter protest marches pegged to the high-profile deaths of two black men shot by police in early July has been followed by attacks on officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in both cases by young black gunmen who had accused police of racism.
Three officers were killed Sunday in Baton Rouge, and five Dallas police officers died from a sniper’s ambush July 7 as they worked security for a Black Lives Matter demonstration. Both gunmen were killed by police.
While Black Lives Matter supporters have called it “dangerous and irresponsible” to smear the movement based on the actions of a few, there is little doubt that the deaths of officers have spawned a backlash.
Milwaukee Police Chief David Clarke said Monday that the situation has devolved into “guerrilla urban warfare” against police, and a petition filed with the White House calling for Black Lives Matter to be labeled a “domestic terrorist” group gathered more than 141,000 signatures in less than two weeks.
The conservative group Accuracy in Media launched a website Monday called Black Lives Matter Exposed, aimed at “uncover[ing] the truth” about the movement.
“The Black Lives Matter movement has metastasized from a valid, legitimate, nonviolent series of demonstrations and public statements, constitutionally protected and fully appropriate, into a terrorist group assassinating police officers,” Republican analyst Dick Morris said in a Monday podcast.
“That’s not to say that all the participants are or all the millions of people who have joined marches for them are terrorists,” Mr. Morris said. “But we have to understand that elements within the BLM are now a terrorist group.”
Republican strategist Michael McKenna compared the movement to Occupy Wall Street, another liberal-funded venture that was aimed at stoking outrage among younger voters over income inequality.
“It’s not coincidental that we see this in an election cycle when the Democratic nominee is going to need African-Americans to turn out in numbers every bit as large as [President] Obama, the guy she hopes to succeed,” said Mr. McKenna.
That’s a tall order: A record number of black voters turned out in 2008 and gave 95 percent of their support to Mr. Obama. Four years later, he won 93 percent of the black vote.
“And if they don’t, she’s going to be in real trouble in about half a dozen states because the African-American vote, the extra thing that Obama brought, was dispositive in about a half a dozen states,” Mr. McKenna said of Mrs. Clinton. “If she doesn’t get that, it’s going to be problematic.”
Data indicate that fewer suspects are being shot by police, but that has not slowed the protests. Neither have studies showing that officers are less likely to fire on blacks than whites over fear of the political and social recriminations. Nor did a report released this month by a black Harvard economics professor showing no racial bias in police shootings.
The movement is “designed to inject this notion of police brutality, police racial bias, when no matter how you look at it, the numbers over the years tell you that instances of brutality and police officers shooting black victims has gone down,” Mr. McKenna said.
“It’s swimming against a pretty significant statistical tide, but that doesn’t slow anybody down because it’s not about facts and it’s not about organic sentiment in the community,” he said. “It’s a political organization designed to drive turnout and complicate Republicans’ lives.”
Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The War on Cops,” says it’s a myth that white police are targeting black civilians and that pressure from the Black Lives Matter movement has resulted in a spike in crime in large urban centers.
“And now, after these Dallas shootings, officers are going to be even more reluctant to engage. And the result is going to be more carnage,” Ms. Mac Donald said in a July 8 interview with conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
Pro-Democrat donors have been linked to groups affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement since anti-police rioting and protests launched after the August 2014 death of black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
The case fell apart after the Justice Department cleared the white police officer who fatally shot the 18-year-old Brown. The movement might have petered out but for millions of dollars from pro-Democrat funders such as billionaire George Soros.
The founder of the Open Society Foundations, Mr. Soros spent $33 million in one year on groups that descended on Ferguson and helped transform a local crime story into a national cause celebre, as reported by The Washington Times’ Kelly Riddell.
Both Open Society and the Democracy Alliance, the richest political fundraising arm of the left, provide funds to Color of Change, a prominent group within the Black Lives Matter coalition that doesn’t pull punches.
Four days after the Dallas rampage that left five officers dead, Color of Change issued a press release accusing police of “terrorizing Black communities.”
Color of Change also has taken on the Republican Party. The group was among the leaders of a petition drive to stop Coca-Cola and other companies from donating to the Republican National Convention, under the slogan “Share a Coke with the KKK.”
Defenders of Black Lives Matter point out that not every group affiliated with the movement is actually Black Lives Matter, which was founded by LGBT activists in 2013 and has espoused nonviolence.
At the same time, groups with more extreme messages, such as the New Black Panther Party and the African American Defense League, have gained prominence as the movement picks up steam.
Mrs. Clinton arguably has benefited from the racial tension. She has aligned herself with the Black Lives Matter movement’s goals, running television ads during the Democratic primary contests naming unarmed black men killed by police and promising to “fight for justice.”
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released Sunday found that 58 percent trusted Mrs. Clinton more on race relations, versus 26 percent for Mr. Trump. At the same time, the poll found that 55 percent believe race relations are getting worse, which the Trump campaign has blamed on Democratic leadership.
“President Obama just had a news conference, but he doesn’t have a clue,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter after the Baton Rouge shooting. “Our country is a divided crime scene, and it will only get worse!”
Given that any social unrest tends to hurt the party in power, that could be a problem for the Clinton campaign, especially with Black Lives Matter showing no signs of throttling back on protests.
Remember the 1968 election, say analysts, when the Republican Nixon defeated the Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey during a time of historic civil rights demonstrations but also after eight years of Democratic rule in the White House.
“Anything that adds to instability and the sense that current leadership is indifferent to that works against the Democrats in general,” said Mr. McKenna, “and Mrs. Clinton in particular.”
The U.S. House Intelligence Committee finally released 28 pages of the long-suppressed findings of its investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, and the interesting stuff appears to have been written between the lines. A reasonably talented sixth-grader can connect some of the dots.
Passages in the report, classified by both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations until pressure by the families of Americans who died on Sept. 11, 2001, finally forced the disclosure, say that Saudi nationals connected to the government in Riyadh and even the royal Saudi family, may have aided the hijackers who seized control of the airliners they piloted into the Trade Center.
The report was released on Friday, the day of the week that governments reserve for disclosing information they had rather not disclose, in hopes that the disclosures will get lost in the events of the weekend, such as reports of a weekend coup in Turkey. Right on cue, top U.S. intelligence officials, some of whom work closely with Saudi counterparts, said they didn’t consider the report “accurate or reliable.” Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sprinkled more cold water. The 28 pages do not “put forward vetted conclusions,” he said, “but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the committee.”
Later on Friday, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence weighed in with even stronger language warning everyone not to take seriously the conclusions in the 28 pages. “There is no evidence that either the Saudi government or members of the Saudi royal family knowingly provided support for the attacks of Sept. 11. 2001, or that they had foreknowledge of terrorist operations in the Kingdom or elsewhere.” This is not as reassuring as the authors of the report intended; note the weasel words, “knowingly” and “foreknowledge.”
Some families of those killed on Sept. 11, noting that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, observed that organizations and wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia financed certain of the hijackers, and that the government and the royal family, which for all intents and purposes are the same thing, declined effectively to crack down effectively on Islamic militants.
For their part, the Saudis eagerly quote CIA Director John Brennan, who told a Saudi interviewer in June that the report was only “a preliminary review” and “people shouldn’t take [the report] as evidence of Saudi complicity in the attacks.” He conceded, however, that the report shows “it was very unfortunate that these attacks took place.” He’s all heart, the director.
A White House spokesman on Friday said “we do not think” the 28 pages shed new light on Sept. 11, but acknowledged that “it took quite some time” to find the right Friday to release the material. The Saudi government thinks the release of the report finally spells relief. The Saudi foreign minister said Friday that his government hopes that with the release of the 28 pages “aspersions that have been cast against the kingdom” in the past decade “will come to an end” and “we can focus on moving ahead.” Even a king and his dozens of princes will need more than a little luck for that.
The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a congressional investigation concluded Tuesday.
Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report.
In one stunning finding, the subcommittee said OneVoice even told the State Department’s top diplomat in Jerusalem of its plans in an email, but the official, Consul General Michael Ratney, claims never to have seen them.
He said he regularly deleted emails with large attachments — a striking violation of open-records laws for a department already reeling from former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s handling of official government records.
Mr. Netanyahu survived the election, and the U.S. spending was not deemed illegal because the State Department never put any conditions on the money. Investigators also said OneVoice didn’t turn explicitly political until days after the grant period ended.
“The State Department ignored warnings signs and funded a politically active group in a politically sensitive environment with inadequate safeguards,” said Sen. Rob Portman, chairman of the investigative subcommittee. “It is completely unacceptable that U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to build a political campaign infrastructure that was deployed — immediately after the grant ended — against the leader of our closest ally in the Middle East. American resources should be used to help our allies in the region, not undermine them.”
Sen. Claire McCaskill, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said the Obama administration followed the law.
But she said their investigation exposed “deficiencies” in the State Department’s policies.
OneVoice had been politically active in Israel’s 2013 elections, which should have been a red flag to U.S. officials to put strict controls on how American taxpayers’ money was spent, the investigation said.
While it wouldn’t have necessarily disqualified the group, the State Department should have written a specific prohibition against using American money to influence a foreign election, the subcommittee said.
It’s part of a pattern of bad behavior at the State Department. The Government Accountability Office reviewed more than five dozen department grants and found officials cut corners and missed red flags in 80 percent of them.
The Israeli Embassy didn’t respond to a request for comment on the findings.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said they had not had time to go through the report and he couldn’t comment on it. He also didn’t comment on Mr. Ratney’s practice of deleting official records.
The Senate investigation found that the State Department funded two sister groups — OneVoice Israel and OneVoice Palestine — to hire a U.S. political consulting firm, recruit volunteers, build a social media network and run advertising.
But it was also building its anti-Netanyahu political strategy, at a time when the Israeli leader was quite controversial in U.S. politics, celebrated by Republicans but feuding with the Obama White House over differences in policy.
OneVoice told at least two State Department officials of its political plans, even as it was collecting taxpayer money. But the department “took no action in response,” the subcommittee concluded.
Mr. Ratney, one of the two officials, said he remembered getting an email from OneVoice, but didn’t recall seeing the attached file detailing the group’s political strategy.
The State Department was unable to recover the email, but investigators got it from OneVoice.
Mr. Ratney later told investigators he regularly deleted emails with attachments “in order to maintain my inbox under the storage limit.” He told investigators he “did not know [he] was required to archive routine emails.”
The Justice Department said Thursday it has warned sanctuary cities to quit shielding illegal immigrants from deportation agents or else lose federal grant money, putting some muscle behind Republicans’ push to punish cities and counties that have refused to cooperate.
That could prevent future situations like the Kate Steinle case, where an illegal immigrant was released by the sheriff's department in San Francisco despite a request that he be held for deportation. The man would go on to kill Steinle, according to authorities, as she walked on the city waterfront with her father.
Justice officials confirmed the move in a letter to Rep. John Abney Culberson, Texas Republican and chairman of a key spending subcommittee, who had demanded action from Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch earlier this year.
Under the new guidance, local authorities don’t have to track down illegal immigrants, nor are they required to inquire about someone’s status. But when the government requests information, or when a local officer wants to report someone, the communications can’t be barred, the Justice Department ruled in its new guidance.
That could include situations when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement asks to be notified when someone they want to deport is being released from a local prison or jail — such as in the Steinle case.
Jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate would lose funding under Justice Assistance Grants and the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which provide hundreds of millions of dollars a year to local law enforcement.
“Sanctuary cities are a hub for illegal aliens and criminal activity, and we’ve seen the tragic results of these policies time and time again,” Mr. Culberson said. “It has been more than a year since Kate Steinle was murdered at the hands of a criminal illegal alien who intentionally sought out shelter in San Francisco due to the city’s sanctuary policies. This violence and suffering is intolerable and completely preventable.”
The administration’s move could spur a backlash from immigrant rights activists, who have fought to defend sanctuary cities, insisting local authorities shouldn’t be enlisted in enforcement. The activists say immigrants will trust police less, leaving communities less safe.
Homeland Security officials counter that sanctuary cities release dangerous criminals onto the streets, endangering federal officers who must risk their lives to round the people up.
ICE has been pushing for years for the Justice Department to move against sanctuary cities, but made no headway under former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
But under Mr. Culberson’s prodding, the Justice Department reviewed existing federal law and determined that sanctuary cities violate what’s known as Section 1373, which forbids restrictions on sending or receiving information from federal immigration officers.
The inspector general issued a report looking at 10 reputed sanctuary cities, but it is being withheld as a sensitive law enforcement document, so it’s unclear what the findings were in those specific cases.
The Center for Immigration Studies has compiled a list of more than 300 jurisdictions that have sanctuary policies.
Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the center, said the new Justice Department guidance should free up local police and sheriffs who want to cooperate with federal authorities but are prohibited by a local ordinance or state law. Now officers can make the case that the policy will cost them money.
Some communities will still resist, however, Ms. Vaughan predicted.
“They’re going to have to decide between protecting criminal aliens and obstructing ICE, and receiving federal funding,” she said. “The hope is that many of them will reconsider, but if they don’t, they’re going to pay a price.”
The new guidance says the Justice Department will listen to “any source” that delivers credible evidence that a jurisdiction is acting as a sanctuary. The inspector general will investigate the reports and will refer any guilty jurisdictions back to the department for action.
Those deemed in violation will not only lose the chance at future money, but could have their previous grants clawed back, Ms. Vaughan said.
The Justice Department action comes just a day after Democrats in the Senate filibustered to defend sanctuary cities, blocking a GOP-led bill that would have stripped offending jurisdictions of economic and community development grant money.
Minority Leader Harry Reid said going after sanctuary cities was equivalent to embracing GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
More than 2,400 doctors nationwide have been sanctioned for sexual misconduct involving patients between 1999 and 2015, yet over half still maintain active medical licenses, according to a new investigation.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday said it became aware of the staggering statistic after one of its reporters was examining state medical records. Upon learning that several doctors maintained medical licenses in light of being accused of sexual misconduct, the newspaper launched a coast-to-coast investigation to examine if similar trends exists elsewhere in the country.
After reviewing more than 100,000 public disciplinary documents, the AJC determined more than 3,100 doctors have been sanctioned during a 16-year span for sexual misconduct, including 2,400 for instances involving patients. Of those, over half of the sanctioned doctors — more than 1,200 of them across the country — held on to their medical licenses after being punished.
“We found a culture of secrecy,” investigative journalist Carrie Teegardin, a reporter for the paper, told ABC News.
“It’s treated with a sort of secrecy that we don’t see in other arenas when we’re talking about allegations this serious,” she added. “It’s still swept under the rug in so many cases.”
Indeed, the newspaper said this alleged culture of secrecy emerged despite public probes being waged during the last couple decades aimed at investigating similar instances within the military, Boy Scouts and Catholic Church.
“In each case, institutions and professions responded to create strict accountability and restore public trust,” the newspaper said Tuesday. “But one profession has escaped broad scrutiny.”
“One thing we found that was shocking to us is some of these doctors are the most prolific sex offenders in the country, with hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of victims,” Ms. Teegardin told ABC News.
Despite reviewing tens of thousands of disciplinary documents, however, the newspaper believes that their investigation has only exposed the tip of the iceberg.
“These cases appear to represent a fraction of incidents of sexual abuse,” AJC Editor Kevin Riley said in a statement. “Many cases remain obscured because state boards and hospitals handle many sexual misconduct cases in secret, and some public orders are so vaguely worded that patients would not know that a sexual offense occurred.”
“What’s more, the profession and its national lobby — the American Medical Association — have exercised clout to ensure the issue stays out of the public eye,” Mr. Riley added.
The AMA declined to comment when reached by ABC News this week, but provided a copy of its ethical guidelines, the network reported Wednesday.
Senate Democrats launched filibusters Wednesday to protect sanctuary cities and to shield repeat illegal immigrants from mandatory minimum five-year prison sentences, saying Republican lawmakers were following the lead of Donald Trump in attacking immigrants.
The votes were taken slightly more than a year after the slaying of Kate Steinle, whose death at the hands of an illegal immigrant shielded by San Francisco’s sanctuary policy ignited a fierce debate over localities’ laws that limit or ban police from turning over immigrants to federal deportation officers.
Steinle’s death on July 1, 2015, drew attention to victims of illegal immigrant crime — a part of the debate that is often overlooked.
But Democrats said the Republicans’ solutions — stricter penalties on repeat illegal immigrants and punishing cities and counties for shielding illegal immigrants — were wrong.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said incarcerating illegal immigrants who repeatedly sneak into the U.S. after deportations would end up overcrowding prisons and cost Americans billions of dollars.
“Republicans are legislating Donald Trump’s vision that immigrants and Latinos are criminals and threats to the public,” Mr. Reid said.
He led Democrats in blocking the sanctuary bill, which fell seven votes shy of the 60 needed to override his filibuster, and the mandatory minimum bills, which fell five votes shy.
The man who killed Steinle had been repeatedly deported but sneaked back into the U.S. each time. He served a term in federal prison and was released to San Francisco, which asked to prosecute him on a years-old drug warrant.
Local prosecutors ultimately decided to drop the case rather than return the man to federal agents who wanted to deport him. The sheriff’s department, following the county’s sanctuary policy, released him.
“This is madness,” said Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, the Pennsylvania Republican who proposed the crackdown on sanctuary cities, including Philadelphia in his home state.
Mr. Toomey’s bill would have denied some federal criminal justice grant money to localities that refused to cooperate with immigration agents. Republicans said it made no sense to have taxpayers spend money on communities that refuse to work with the federal government.
The vote on his bill fell mostly along party lines, with two Democrats — Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana — voting for the crackdown. A single Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, voted against the crackdown. Chicago helped pioneer the sanctuary city concept.
The legislation imposing a mandatory minimum sentence of at least five years on repeat illegal immigrants was more popular. Mr. Kirk voted with the other Republicans in favor of it, as did Mr. Manchin, Mr. Donnelly and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota Democrat.
“Americans are tired of politicians standing with violent criminal illegal aliens,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who sponsored the measure, which he named “Kate’s Law,” after Steinle.
Immigrant rights activists warned Democrats against cooperating with Republicans on the bills. The activists said the immigration system is so broken that nobody should be deported until Congress passes broad legalization of most illegal immigrants in the U.S.
The activists have rallied to defend sanctuary cities, arguing that local police break trust with minority communities when they report illegal immigrants to federal officials.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, has been internally divided on the issue. The chief of the deportation agency at one point welcomed a crackdown on sanctuary cities, saying that it was a public safety risk to release dangerous illegal immigrants.
But the White House quickly squashed that sentiment and insisted the problem was broken federal laws, not a patchwork of local policies.
U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement says thousands of dangerous criminals it wanted to deport have instead been released onto the streets thanks to sanctuary policies.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton met privately as they crossed paths at a Phoenix airport earlier this week — a meeting that took place as the FBI continues its investigation into likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.
“I did see President Clinton at the Phoenix airport as I was leaving, and he spoke to myself and my husband on the plane,” Ms. Lynch told reporters. “Our conversation was a great deal about his grandchildren. It was primarily social and about our travels. He mentioned the golf he played in Phoenix, and he mentioned travels he’d had in West Virginia.”
“He did come over and say hello and speak to my husband and myself and talk about his grandchildren and his travels and things like that,” she said.
“So that was the extent of that, and no discussions were held [on] any cases or anything of that. And he didn’t raise anything about that, either,” Ms. Lynch said.
The meeting came as the FBI continues to investigate Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as the nation’s top diplomat.
Two top Senate Democrats defended Ms. Lynch’s honor on Thursday as reports of the meeting came to light.
“I can’t control who meets with whom. All I can say is Loretta Lynch is one of the most outstanding human beings I’ve ever known,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told reporters.
“Her ethics is above reproach,” said Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat. “No one could ever question her strong feelings about the rule of law. And her ethics, I repeat, are the best.”
“She’s an honorable person — we know that,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat. “Our Republican colleagues have said it.”
“She has said nothing was discussed related to the investigation, so you have two choices: to say this didn’t matter, or she’s lying,” Mr. Schumer said. “I think it didn’t matter. I don’t think she’s lying.”
But Sen. Chris Coons, who is also supporting Mrs. Clinton for president, said Thursday that the meeting “doesn’t send the right signal.”
“I am impressed with Attorney General Lynch — the work that she’s done in combating violent crime and in leading the Department of Justice,” Mr. Coons, Delaware Democrat, said on CNN’s “New Day.” “She has generally shown excellent judgment and strong leadership of the department, and I’m convinced that she is an independent attorney general.”
“But I do think that this meeting sends the wrong signal. … I think she should have steered clear, even of a brief, casual social meeting with the former president,” he said.
“I think she should have said, ‘Look, I recognize you have a long record of leadership on fighting crime, but this is not the time for us to have that conversation. After the election’s over, I’d welcome your advice and input,’ ” Mr. Coons said.
When President Obama endorsed Mrs. Clinton for president earlier this month, the White House insisted the move would not affect the Justice Department’s investigation.
The meeting also came shortly before the Tuesday release of the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s report on the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Libya that claimed the lives of four Americans. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Clinton’s wife, was secretary of state at the time of the attack.
Fixed like Polaris in continually shifting skies, Supreme CourtJustice Clarence Thomas points unwaveringly toward the founders in his approach to constitutional interpretation.
Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the justice’s nomination to the nation’s highest court — a tenure marked by no shortage of public and scholarly scrutiny. Speaking to Justice Thomas’s former clerks and constitutional law analysts, though, one gets the sense that the public and scholarly communities give so much attention to Justice Thomas for drastically different reasons.
One of those clerks, John C. Eastman, who now heads the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, compared Justice Thomas‘ jurisprudence to a guide who lights lanterns down intellectual paths unknown — or, at least, long forgotten.
“I call it laying down markers for future litigation — invitations to the legal profession and the legal academy to start re-exploring issues that we had forgotten about,” Mr. Eastman said.
That guidelike quality is captured, in part, by Justice Thomas‘ habit of writing stand-alone concurring and dissenting opinions from the bench, refusing to compromise on principle in order to attain the late Justice William Brennan’s “law of five.”
Over the past three terms, no justice has written more concurring opinions or dissents than Justice Thomas — patiently planting seeds that, though they had no immediate impact, may eventually flower by the strength of their reason.
Several of those lonely opinions have come to set the precedent on significant constitutional issues, perhaps most notably concerning the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.
In his concurrence in the 1997 case Printz v. United States, which held that Congress could not use the Necessary and Proper Clause to regulate handgun purchases, Justice Thomas forcefully laid the groundwork for an individual right to gun ownership.
“The Constitution, in addition to delegating certain enumerated powers to Congress, places whole areas outside the reach of Congress’s regulatory authority,” Justice Thomas wrote in Printz. “The First Amendment, for example, is fittingly celebrated for preventing Congress from ‘prohibiting the free exercise’ of religion or ‘abridging the freedom of speech.’ The Second Amendment similarly appears to contain an express limitation on the government’s authority.
“As the parties did not raise this argument, however, we need not consider it here,” he continued. “Perhaps, at some future date, this court will have the opportunity to determine whether the right to bear arms ‘has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic.’”
More than a decade later, in a pair of landmark decisions, District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, the court affirmed Justice Thomas‘ reading of the Second Amendment.
“The Second Amendment cases of Heller and McDonald arrive because of a short concurring opinion in Printz v. United States, saying we’ve been for too long overlooking the individual rights aspect of the Second Amendment,” Mr. Eastman said. “Well, lo and behold, there’s a whole branch of scholarship and litigation that flows from his invitation.”
Justice Thomas also has laid the groundwork for the court to overturn governmental race preferences, such as with regard to affirmative action, and to challenge the constitutionality of the administrative state.
The principled approach to the Constitution has no doubt cost Justice Thomas personal influence on the court. Although he has authored more opinions than any other justice over the past three years, few of those have been majority opinions on the most pressing issues of the day.
John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who clerked under Justice Thomas, said the jurist’s “fidelity to the original meaning of the Constitution results in not getting to write a lot of majority opinions for the court.”
“The more a justice has fidelity to principle, the less they are going to be that fifth justice in the middle who is like a weather vane,” Mr. Yoo said, adding that, if there is an instrument guided by the wind perched atop the courthouse, it is Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
The humility with which Justice Thomas approaches the Constitution is emblematic of his character, Mr. Yoo said. He pointed to the associate justice’s penchant for spending his summers traveling the country in an RV rather than joining his colleagues on posh vacations to Europe.
“One thing that most people don’t know about him is that he spends his vacations not doing what other justices do, like jutting off to Salzburg, Austria. I don’t know why they go there, but it can’t be for the food or the scenery of the people — but they go, nevertheless, every year,” Mr. Yoo said. “Or Aspen, Colorado, hanging around the self-appointed elites in our country. You know what he does over the summer? He drives around the country in a big RV.
“He’s a regular guy, regular American,” he said. “He likes to get out and drive around and look at and meet regular America.”
Mr. Eastman recalled a story in which Justice Thomas dedicated the Donald P. Kennedy Law School building at Chapman University.
Although there was no shortage of glitzy dinners and VIP cocktail parties, Justice Thomas, who grew up in poverty and was raised by his grandparents in the Deep South, spent as much time talking with the service staff as he did hobnobbing with elites.
“Just by his own actions, outside of public view, outside of camera’s eye, meeting with ordinary people and taking them seriously, their life goals and concerns seriously, and talking to them genuinely, person to person, revealed more about his understanding of the equality principle of the Declaration of Independence than anything you could write,” Mr. Eastman said. “It was really extraordinary.”
Mr. Eastman said the Thomas clerks are like a tight-knit family — in no small part because of the efforts of the jurist’s wife, Ginni.
“He and Ginni really take each of the clerks under their wings as if they’re their kids,” he said. “You become part of the family. It doesn’t end in June when the term ends. It stays in place.”
With the death of his longtime colleague and friend Antonin Scalia, and the direction of the court mired in uncertainty by a tumultuous presidential race, perhaps Justice Thomas‘ most significant years defending the Constitution are yet to come.
Conservatives probably wouldn’t mind Justice Thomas lighting the way for 25 years more. A term celestial in its length would be fitting, indeed, for the Constitution’s lodestar.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton met privately as they crossed paths at a Phoenix airport earlier this week — a meeting that took place as the FBI continues its investigation into likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.
“I did see President Clinton at the Phoenix airport as I was leaving, and he spoke to myself and my husband on the plane,” Ms. Lynch told reporters. “Our conversation was a great deal about his grandchildren. It was primarily social and about our travels. He mentioned the golf he played in Phoenix, and he mentioned travels he’d had in West Virginia.”
“He did come over and say hello and speak to my husband and myself and talk about his grandchildren and his travels and things like that,” she said.
“So that was the extent of that, and no discussions were held [on] any cases or anything of that. And he didn’t raise anything about that, either,” Ms. Lynch said.
The meeting came as the FBI continues to investigate Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as the nation’s top diplomat.
Two top Senate Democrats defended Ms. Lynch’s honor on Thursday as reports of the meeting came to light.
“I can’t control who meets with whom. All I can say is Loretta Lynch is one of the most outstanding human beings I’ve ever known,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told reporters.
“Her ethics is above reproach,” said Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat. “No one could ever question her strong feelings about the rule of law. And her ethics, I repeat, are the best.”
“She’s an honorable person — we know that,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat. “Our Republican colleagues have said it.”
“She has said nothing was discussed related to the investigation, so you have two choices: to say this didn’t matter, or she’s lying,” Mr. Schumer said. “I think it didn’t matter. I don’t think she’s lying.”
But Sen. Chris Coons, who is also supporting Mrs. Clinton for president, said Thursday that the meeting “doesn’t send the right signal.”
“I am impressed with Attorney General Lynch — the work that she’s done in combating violent crime and in leading the Department of Justice,” Mr. Coons, Delaware Democrat, said on CNN’s “New Day.” “She has generally shown excellent judgment and strong leadership of the department, and I’m convinced that she is an independent attorney general.”
“But I do think that this meeting sends the wrong signal. … I think she should have steered clear, even of a brief, casual social meeting with the former president,” he said.
“I think she should have said, ‘Look, I recognize you have a long record of leadership on fighting crime, but this is not the time for us to have that conversation. After the election’s over, I’d welcome your advice and input,’ ” Mr. Coons said.
When President Obama endorsed Mrs. Clinton for president earlier this month, the White House insisted the move would not affect the Justice Department’s investigation.
The meeting also came shortly before the Tuesday release of the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s report on the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Libya that claimed the lives of four Americans. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Clinton’s wife, was secretary of state at the time of the attack.
Following Brexit, Europe may witness even more plebiscites against the undemocratic European Union throughout the continent.
The furor of ignored Europeans against their union is not just directed against rich and powerful government elites per se, or against the flood of mostly young male migrants from the war-torn Middle East. The rage also arises from the hypocrisy of a governing elite that never seems to be subject to the ramifications of its own top-down policies. The bureaucratic class that runs Europe from Brussels and Strasbourg too often lectures European voters on climate change, immigration, politically correct attitudes about diversity, and the constant need for more bureaucracy, more regulations and more redistributive taxes.
But Euro-managers are able to navigate around their own injunctions, enjoying private schools for their children; generous public pay, retirement packages and perks; frequent carbon-spewing jet travel; homes in non-diverse neighborhoods; and profitable revolving-door careers between government and business.
The Western elite classes, both professedly liberal and conservative, square the circle of their privilege with politically correct sermonizing. They romanticize the distant “other” — usually immigrants and minorities — while condescendingly lecturing the middle and working classes, often the losers in globalization, about their lack of sensitivity.
On this side of the Atlantic, President Obama has developed a curious habit of talking down to Americans about their supposedly reactionary opposition to rampant immigration, affirmative action, multiculturalism and political correctness — most notably in his caricatures of the purported “clingers” of Pennsylvania.
Yet Mr. Obama seems uncomfortable when confronted with the prospect of living out what he envisions for others. He prefers golfing with celebrities to bowling. He vacations in tony Martha’s Vineyard rather than returning home to his Chicago mansion. His travel entourage is royal and hardly green. And he insists on private prep schools for his children rather than enrolling them in the public schools of Washington, D.C., whose educators he so often shields from long-needed reform.
In similar fashion, grandees such as Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos do not live what they profess. They often lecture supposedly less-sophisticated Americans on their backward opposition to illegal immigration. But both live in communities segregated from those they champion in the abstract.
The Clintons often pontificate about “fairness” but somehow managed to amass a personal fortune of more than $100 million by speaking to and lobbying banks, Wall Street profiteers and foreign entities. The pay-to-play rich were willing to brush aside the insincere, pro forma social justice talk of the Clintons and reward Hillary and Bill with obscene fees that would presumably result in lucrative government attention.
Consider the recent Orlando tragedy for more of the same paradoxes. The terrorist killer, Omar Mateen — a registered Democrat, proud radical Muslim and occasional patron of gay dating sites — murdered 49 people and wounded even more in a gay nightclub. His profile and motive certainly did not fit the elite narrative that unsophisticated right-wing American gun owners were responsible because of their support for gun rights.
No matter. The Obama administration and much of the media refused to attribute the horror in Orlando to Mateen’s self-confessed radical Islamist agenda. Instead, they blamed the shooter’s semi-automatic .223 caliber rifle and a purported climate of hate toward gays.
Many Americans were bewildered by the logic. It’s reasonable to conclude that the shooter was conflicted over his religion’s strict prohibitions about his lifestyle — and especially the American brand of tolerance as exemplified by the nightclub. Mateen’s immigrant father from Afghanistan is a crude homophobe who had praised the murderous Taliban. Mateen somehow had cleared all background checks and on at least two occasions had been interviewed and dismissed by the FBI.
In sum, elites ignored the likely causes of the Orlando shooting: the appeal of ISIS-generated hatred to some young, second-generation radical Muslim men living in Western societies, and the politically correct inability of Western authorities to short-circuit that clear-cut connection.
Instead, the establishment all but blamed Middle America for supposedly being anti-gay and pro-gun.
In both the United States and Britain, such politically correct hypocrisy is superimposed on highly regulated, highly taxed and highly governmentalized economies that are becoming ossified and stagnant.
The taxpaying middle classes, who lack the romance of the poor and the connections of the elite, have become convenient whipping boys of both in order to leverage more government social programs and to assuage the guilt of the elites who have no desire to live out their utopian theories in the flesh.
America’s version of the British antidote to elite hypocrisy is the buffoonish populist Donald Trump. Like the architects of Brexit, he arose not from what he was for, but what he said he was against.
The British people decided that they had enough of the chains clamped on them by the bureaucratic nightmare known as the European Union. A lot of issues factored into their decision to check out of the Hotel EU: nonexistent borders, unchecked immigration, sclerotic regulations, oppressive rule from a distant capital.
But the upheaval is about something much bigger, more unifying and transcendent than a particular set of issues.
It’s about freedom.
It took a quarter-century, but the British people finally put their collective feet down. They want their independence, economic liberty and national sovereignty restored. They want to rid themselves of the stultifying socialism of Brussels. They want to be Britain again.
This should be a five-alarm wake-up call to those who love freedom — and those who seek to crush it. Free people are in revolt, rejecting the destructive, leftist, one-world approach in favor of economic and political independence, and cultural restoration.
The sore losers on the “Remain” side will continue to whine about “consequences,” but there is always a natural resistance to change. Freedom comes with a bit of hardship, and instead of rejecting it in favor of an illusory “safe space,” it should be embraced as part of the process.
And so it is by a growing number of free people across the continent. In Austria, Germany, Iceland, Rome and Turin, we have already seen resounding gains and victories by populist, anti-establishment figures promising a restoration of the rule of law and cultural identity.
But the British vote was the first truly earth-shattering domino to fall. That decision will now do the political blocking for millions of others across the world. It made it safe to reject the status quo. Within hours of the vote, the exit movements in a number of other EU nations — France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Finland — grew fiercer. The British people, in their courage and wisdom, have unleashed a world order-shaking earthquake.
It’s often argued that the upheaval is being driven by voters who are exceedingly angry. But perhaps they are angry because they have been betrayed. Betrayal can drive tumultuous change in ways that more static anger cannot.
The seismic shift away from globalism and “multiculturalism” has given rise to Republican nominee Donald Trump and continues to fuel his campaign. This is exceedingly bad news for Hillary Clinton, who is the insider’s insider. In this environment, the Democrats literally could not run a worse candidate.
Mr. Trump has been in front of this curve since he announced his candidacy one year ago, advocating enforced borders and immigration controls, reversing destructive trade deals, economic nationalism, and protecting and advancing America’s national interests.
These are the issues that got him to the Republican nomination — and may very well win him the presidency.
After all, many Americans have hit a wall of their own, after decades of abuse by the bipartisan ruling class, which has given them:
Like the British, Americans will take a lot, but they will not tolerate the dilution of their nation by the forces of a discredited redistributionist ideology. And like the British, they reject it even more intensely when they believe their own leadership is deliberately diluting American exceptionalism in order to serve a global redistributionist scheme.
Americans — like the British — don’t just want secure borders. They want a secure country. They want a secure life. They want their once-great nation to be great again. (Sound familiar?)
The desire to restore freedom and independence is a powerful force. The British people finally realized that the ultimate power to achieve it rests with them. They have exercised that power.
Next in line: the American people.
Kansas, Alabama and Georgia can demand their residents submit proof of citizenship before signing up to vote even if they’re using the federal government’s registration forms, a judge said Wednesday, delivering a win to states concerned about voter fraud.
The League of Women Voters and the Obama administration had tried to halt the practice, arguing that federal law doesn’t require an extensive citizenship check when people register to vote, and saying the three states were imposing an extra burden on voters.
But Judge Richard J. Leon said that while it may be an inconvenience to require proof of citizenship, and voter registration drives may have to do more work to get folks signed up, it’s not an insurmountable burden — and certainly less so than trying to explain Obamacare.
“The organizational plaintiffs and their members will undoubtedly have to expend some additional time and effort to help individuals,” Judge Leon wrote. “But let’s be candid: doing so pales in comparison to explaining to the average citizen how the [Affordable Care Act] or tax code works!”
Since the voter groups didn’t show a real and irreparable harm, he rejected their request for a preliminary injunction.
The ruling is the latest in a years-long struggle by some states to combat potential voter fraud by insisting voters prove they are citizens. In one Kansas count alone, officials count 25 instances of non-citizens attempting to register to vote.
“This is a very real problem and the only way to solve the problem is to require proof of citizenship on the front end,” said Kris W. Kobach, Kansas’ secretary of state.
Voting rights groups dismiss those concerns, saying the bigger problem is barriers that prevent eligible voters from registering and showing up on Election Day. They and the Obama administration said requiring proof of citizenship adds to the burden, and said an oath affirming citizenship should be good enough.
The voting-rights groups said they are confident in their case, and they’d already begun to set up an appeal.
“While we are disappointed in today’s decision, we will appeal to protect the critical rights of voters in these three states, especially during this election year,” said Chris Carson, president of the League of Women Voters.
Hours before Judge Leon’s ruling, the voting-rights groups had filed a request for a new hearing to pressure him to decide, saying that time is running out to get folks registered for the November elections. Figuring they knew the outcome of his decision, they wanted to ensure they had enough time to appeal.
The case stems from what’s become a confusion patchwork of federal and state voting requirements after Congress wrote the so-called “Motor Voter” legislation in the 1990s. That law was designed to boost voting by making it easier to register, pushing state agencies to offer the chance to register when folks come in to use their services.
Federal forms are supposed to respect states, which under the Constitution are allowed to set most voter requirements.
But when states began to demand proof of citizenship at the front end, and asked the federal forms to respect their laws, some voting-rights groups balked. They tried to get the federal government to invalidate those state demands.
The Election Assistance Commission, which is the federal panel set up after the voting problems in the 2000 election, had previously sided with the groups — but earlier this year it approved requests from Kansas, Georgia and Alabama to reflect their demands for proof of citizenship.
The League of Women Voters says the EAC broke its own procedural rules in approving the states’ requests.
The Justice Department is supposed to defend the EAC in court challenges, but the Obama administration refused to do so in this case, saying it believes the EAC is going beyond the requirements of federal law.
That drew a rebuke from Judge Leon, who said it was unprecedented in his years on the bench for the department not to defend an agency it was required to represent under the law. He said it was even more stunning for the department to side with the voting-rights groups and demand the court overturn the EAC’s decision.
Mr. Kobach said the Justice Department is supposed to defend agencies whenever they have a plausible argument for their actions, and in this case the EAC can show it’s following the law.
“Here, the Justice Department discarded the law and discarded tradition and is going purely on partisan impulse,” Mr. Kobach said.
Kansas is already enforcing its citizenship requirement, but Alabama and Georgia have theirs on hold right now.
Mr. Kobach is also fighting another case in which a federal judge in Kansas ruled against him, finding that the state can’t demand proof of citizenship for voters who sign up at motor vehicle offices. Judge Julie Robinson said the motor-voter law says voters only need to provide a minimum amount of information, and that doesn’t include proving their citizenship.
She ordered Mr. Kobach to re-register thousands of people who’d tried to register but failed to meet the proof of citizenship requirement.
Mr. Kobach has appealed that decision.
The 800-plus-page report of the House Select Committee on Benghazi was released earlier this week. It slams former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her willful indifference to her obligation to repel military-style attacks on American interests and personnel at the U.S. consulate and a nearby CIA annex in Benghazi. She particularly failed to save the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues, all under her care and control while she was secretary of state.
The report also slams Mrs. Clinton for her repeated lies about the cause of the attacks. After she told her daughter in an email that the Benghazi consulate had been attacked by an organized terrorist group using heavy military hardware, she told her colleagues at the State Department that the attacks were a spontaneous overreaction by locals to an American-made internet video about the Prophet Muhammad.
After telling that lie, she sent another email, this one to the Egyptian foreign minister, repeating what she had truthfully told her daughter.
The Obama administration then spread the “internet video-inspired” myth by dispatching Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to repeat it to five Sunday morning American television talk shows. This was met with profound disbelief in the diplomatic and intelligence communities. Yet, still unwilling to acknowledge the truth publicly, Mrs. Clinton then retold the myth to the families of the four dead Americans in the presence of their loved ones’ bodies as the bodies were being reverently removed from a U.S. transfer plane at Joint Base Andrews.
What does all this say of the character of Mrs. Clinton? How cold and heartless is she? How can she expect voters to reward her with the presidency when she failed to lift a finger to save Americans and then she repeatedly lied in public about her failures — while being truthful about them in private?
Yet the committee’s report is incomplete and has aroused dissent from some Republican members of the committee. The essence of their dissent is that the unstated and unacknowledged but true mission of the committee was not to reveal facts but to conceal them. There is ample evidence to support their argument that Benghazi was the unintended consequence of Mrs. Clinton’s private war against Libyan strongman, Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
Yet the report does not delve into that.
The war against Gadhafi was, of course, never declared by Congress. It was conceived by Mrs. Clinton, approved by President Obama and agreed to by leadership in both houses of Congress and from both major political parties. It was supposed to be the crown jewel of Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy stewardship — ousting the dictator, replacing him with a democracy, putting no American boots on the ground and avoiding American bloodshed.
As is often the case in war, particularly illegal ones and especially secret ones, there were unintended consequences. Here the consequences have been the destruction of the government of an American ally, the imposition of mob-ruled chaos in Libya, the empowerment of terror groups in the Middle East, the deaths of innocent American civilians, the rejection of the rule of law and the obfuscation of the truth.
One of those who signed off on this secret war was the person who appointed the committee and its senior staff with personal loyalists — former House Speaker John Boehner. Another is a former congressman whose wife personally prospered from all this by serving as the go-between in the delivery of military hardware from Western sources to terror groups on the ground.
The method of those who authorized the secret war was for Mrs. Clinton to issue waivers — as the secretary of state may do — to the U.S., NATO and U.N. embargo of arms sales to Libya. What did this do? Instead of issuing waivers so as to permit arms to be sold to a friendly government, Mrs. Clinton and her colleagues conspired to get arms into the hands of terrorist organizations masquerading as local militias. The CIA warned her about this, but she was indifferent to the warnings.
Those who signed off on this war and its methodology were arguably conspirators in an effort to provide material support to terrorist organizations by supplying them with military equipment, allegedly to be used to topple the Gadhafi government. That is a felony — and the beneficial or strategic use of the weapons is not a defense to the charge of providing them to terror groups.
How dangerous and reckless was Mrs. Clinton? She ignored the CIA’s advice and let the weapons spread among deranged madmen and committed killers. Who in the intelligence community would work for her in light of this behavior? Ambassador Stevens and the others were killed by heavy military hardware that Mrs. Clinton and her colleagues permitted to make its way into the hands of terror groups.
Though Mrs. Clinton was the creator of the conspiracy and remained at its heart and hoped to ride it triumphantly into the White House — and though she bears more blame than any other conspirator — the committee’s work fails as a seeker of the whole truth.
The truth is that some of the committee’s congressional allies set in motion the awful events that led to the tragedy in Benghazi. The truth is that these people will probably escape accountability for their lawless behavior. The truth is that Congress knows that the president wages secret wars and it does nothing to stop them. The truth is that Hillary Clinton put her own political ambitions above fidelity to the rule of law and properly doing her job.
The truth is that the House Select Committee on Benghazi concealed more truth than it revealed. Yet the government is supposed to work for us. Aren’t we entitled to know what the government has done in our names?
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned the bribery conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, saying that while his acceptance of more than $170,000 worth of gifts and loans may have been “distasteful,” it didn’t violate federal law — a ruling that is not expected to have far-reaching effects on public corruption cases.
In an opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the high court said that setting up a meeting or organizing an event does not meet the definition of an official action, and is neither a kickback nor a bribe.
Mr. McDonnell — once a rising star of the Republican Party — expressed his “heartfelt gratitude” after the decision.
“From the outset, I strongly asserted my innocence before God and under the law,” he said in a statement. “I have not, and would not, betray the sacred trust the people of Virginia bestowed upon me during 22 years in elected office.”
A Virginia jury in September 2014 found Mr. McDonnell guilty of 11 corruption charges stemming from his acceptance of more than $170,000 worth of gifts and loans from Star Scientific Inc. CEO Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in exchange for promoting his dietary supplement. The former governor’s attorneys argued that Mr. McDonnell never took any official action to help Mr. Williams set up meetings with other state officials for the businessman.
Mr. McDonnell had been sentenced to two years in prison. His wife, Maureen, who was convicted of eight similar charges, was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Both have remained free during appeals.
Court watchers said they did not know what Monday’s ruling means for Maureen McDonnell, but her attorneys said the court decision applies to her as well. William A. Burck of the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP said the Supreme Court ruling means her conviction will be thrown out. The Justice Department declined to comment.
“All the court said was that an ‘official act’ requirement must be something akin to an administrative action,” said lawyer Andrew T. Wise, who has argued public corruption cases. “In the run-of-the-mill political corruption case, you’d hope the government would have more than the fact that someone set up a meeting. Those cases would go largely undisturbed.”
Daniel Weiner, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program at New York University, also said the high court ruling likely won’t affect many other cases.
“A lot of people are going to make hay about this decision, but it’s a narrow decision based on the oddities of this case. Sure, it makes it harder [to secure future corruption convictions], but it’s unclear that this is the radical curtailing of corruption laws we could have seen,” Mr. Weiner said. “The next couple months, we’re going to see defense attorneys and prosecutors going back and forth about the scope of the decision.”
But the former governor is not yet cleared. The justices’ decision sends his case back to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which must decide whether a jury could have been able to convict Mr. McDonnell if they were given the correct legal definition for an “official action.”
If the Richmond-based court rules that Mr. McDonnell would have been convicted had the jury instructions been correct, federal prosecutors can retry the case. But if the appeals court reasons that Mr. McDonnell would not have been found guilty under a clarified definition of “official action,” the prosecutors won’t be able to bring the case again for the court.
The ruling could affect the cases of governors, senators and other elected officials who either are under indictment or have been convicted. In New York, for example, a federal judge said last month that former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, convicted of illegally pocketing $5 million, could wait until after the Supreme Court ruling to report to prison.
The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York issued a statement Monday saying Silver’s case satisfies the high court’s standards. Other politicians who have been convicted of corruption, such as former Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, could try to get their cases overturned.
But Mr. Wise and Mr. Weiner said the narrow ruling won’t affect most previous convictions and current cases, though there could be exceptions.
Mr. Wise, who represented lobbyist Kevin A. Ring in an “honest services fraud” case in connection with the Jack Abramoff scandal, said Mr. Ring’s case could have gone a different way under the court’s clarification of “official action.”
Mr. Ring gave Washington Wizards basketball tickets to former Justice Department Deputy Chief of Staff Robert E. Coughlin. In return, Mr. Coughlin emailed another agency to help secure about $16.3 million in grants for the Choctaw Indians, whom Mr. Ring represented with Mr. Abramoff.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld Mr. Ring’s 2010 conviction, saying the evidence was sufficient because of the impact and influence an email from the Justice Department would have.
“I don’t know if a case like that survives after this decision,” Mr. Wise said. “Not only do you have to forward the email and set up a meeting, but you need evidence that an official tried influence the ultimate result. We could see cases like that subject to challenges.”
Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, agreed that even with the narrowing of the statute, some cases could be challenged and future cases will face a different set of parameters.
“Bribery has always been a difficult charge to prove, and the Supreme Court just made it more difficult,” Mr. Bookbinder said. “There are a few instances of what a lot of us see as corruption which will be more difficult to prove now. It could be more rare going forward.”
‘Distasteful … tawdry’
Mr. Bookbinder said it’s not enough now to say that public officials set up meetings or expressed support for someone in order to level corruption charges against them.
“That’s a hurdle that wasn’t there before,” he said.
In his relationship with Mr. Williams, Mr. McDonnell accepted gifts such as golf outings, rides in the businessman’s Ferrari, a Rolex watch and $15,000 for catering at the McDonnells’ daughter’s wedding. But the former governor’s efforts on Mr. Williams‘ behalf failed to secure state support of the businessman’s products, with state universities declining to research his supplement.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice Roberts said the instructions to Mr. McDonnell’s jury were so broad that any action a public official might take could be considered an “official action.”
“Setting up a meeting, talking to another official, or organizing an event (or agreeing to do so) — without more — does not fit that definition of official act,” the chief justice wrote.
“There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that,” he wrote. “But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute.”
Mr. Weiner noted that the court didn’t say whether Mr. McDonnell broke any laws, just that the case was mishandled when jury instructions were given.
“The court said that the behavior issue here was distasteful and maybe worse, so that suggests that they didn’t rule out the fact that laws were broken,” he said.
The Supreme Court last weighed in on what counts as honest services fraud in 2010, when it significantly narrowed the scope of the law in response to an appeal by Jeffrey Skilling, former chief executive of Enron.
The court found that for quid pro quo arrangements to be prosecuted as “honest services” fraud, bribes and kickbacks had to be involved. What was left open for interpretation was the level that the “quo” or official action must rise to in order to be considered a crime.
The elites across the world had a dreadful weekend. Britain’s historic goodbye to Europe — and it was indeed historic — reverberated in capitals on every continent. The elites, the people who run things (or think they do and who certainly think they should) were told, in language plain and unsparing: “You stink!”
People who run things, whether a government, a business, or a bureaucracy, as in Brussels, are not accustomed to hearing sentiment like that, and it not only stings but hurts. The smartest folk among them may learn something. Democracies are watered by blood, sometimes the real thing but most of the time the metaphorical stuff will suffice.
The elites in the governments and in the media fell over themselves and each other over the weekend reaching for analogies and comparisons to explain what happened. One hysteric even likened it to the French revolution. One pundit at London’s Daily Telegraph, the bible of the English establishment, says it’s impossible to overstate how remarkable the result actually is. Sometimes hyperbole hits the mark.
Two decades ago, skepticism and mistrust of “the new Europe,” where centuries of mistrust and ethnic jealousies were to be washed away in a cleansing rain of love, beauty, goodwill and happy thoughts, was a cult of the old fogies who had fought and won a war and who now had to learn to love a new consensus forged at the expense of the Britain of Churchill and Maggie Thatcher. But it didn’t happen quite so simply. “Slowly,” writes Tim Stanley in The Telegraph, “the establishment consensus came to resemble not just a conspiracy, but worse, a confederacy of dunces.”
A consensus, as we have learned to our sorrow in America, is deadlier than a conspiracy. A conspiracy can be broken, but a consensus, when the nice people agree and agree not to question what they agree on, is the most dangerous mindset of all.
The prospects for a British exit from the European Union, conveniently called “Brexit” for headline purposes, were not bright only a year or two ago, which is why Prime Minister David Cameron finally agreed to call a referendum. Britain would surely vote to stay, as it had voted to stay in the European Common Market in 1975, and that would settle it for another generation or two, and probably forever.
The global establishment, that vast syndicate with a yen to run everything, was against Brexit. So were the financial wizards, the International Monetary Fund, even the president of the United States. How could they be wrong? Weren’t they the smartest people anywhere? They certainly thought so. Then the third world decided to move north and soon vast unwashed multitudes arrived, many with no intention of becoming Englishmen but bringing with them the makings of the misery they were fleeing.
Even on the eve of the voting the elites reassured themselves that there was nothing to worry about. The momentum was with the nice people and the campaign called “Remain.” The public-opinion polls said the vote was too close to call, and the bookies — bookmaking is legal in Britain — said a good result was in the bag. And then the deluge, which only the willfully blind could not see coming. From the Labor strongholds in the northeast, up against the Scottish border, to the Tory towns in the southeast of Mrs. Miniver and roast beef on Sunday, English voters gave the verdict told in the snappy slang of the London tabloid Sun: “See EU later!” Scotland, Northern Ireland and London voted to stay put, but the vote in England and Wales was more than sufficient.
In the wake of the 52 percent to 48 percent vote to leave, not a landslide but decisive enough, some of the 2.2 million Londoners who voted to stay now say they’re dreaming of declaring their own independence to stay with Europe.
On the morning after, in the ruins and litter of defeat, many foolish things are imagined and some of them are actually said. But cooler heads will pick through the debris of a campaign and a new consensus will emerge. Stock markets that fell will rise again. Money that left will return. The elites will get over their pout, perhaps having learned a lesson. Their world that was turned upside down will be set aright, but it will be a different world. They might as well get used to it. That’s the lesson of Brexit.
It’s not the crime, but the cover-up. This is the first rule that every administration, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, learns, and usually the hard way. Some crimes are more serious than others, but a little crime, like a little acorn, can grow into a mighty scandal or a mighty oak.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch learned this Monday when, no doubt under careful instructions from the White House (which the White House naturally denies), she released a heavily edited transcript of the conversations between Omar Mateen and police negotiators when he was in the midst of killing 49 men and women in Orlando.
Someone, whether at the Justice Department or at the White House, had carefully cleaned up the transcript to change references to “Allah” to “God.” In his actual words, Mateen told negotiators: “Praise be to Allah, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of Allah. I let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.” The words were spoken in Arabic.
The transcript, as rewritten by the Obama administration, was sanitized: “Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God. I let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.” The rewritten version further deleted the words “Islamic State” and the name of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to whom Mateen said he pledged allegiance. Ms. Lynch later reversed course and released an uncensored version.
The original transcript was clearly released under pressure from Republicans and the media — House Speaker Paul Ryan called the altered transcript “preposterous” — and it supports the consistent Obama narrative that Omar Mateen was not a radical Islamic terrorist, just a religious nut of no particular religious belief who had slipped off the rails. He could have been a Jew from Brooklyn, a Baptist from Mississippi, a blue-eyed Lutheran from Minnesota or a fair-haired Episcopalian from anywhere.
The administration assigned its crack theologians to defend the rewrite. “[Mateen] does not represent the religion of Islam,” says Ron Hopper, the assistant special agent in charge of the revisions, “but a perverted view. Part of the redacting is meant to not give credence to individuals who have done terrorist attacks in the past. We’re not gonna propagate their violent rhetoric.”
Agent Hopper may well be correct that Omar Mateen propagated a perversion of Islam; there are indeed millions of loyal and peaceful Muslims in America and elsewhere. But it is not the job of the White House, the FBI or any other government agency to interpret the doctrines of any religious group. A law-enforcement agency has a responsibility to find and report “just the facts, ma’am,” and leave the interpretation to others.
The rewritten transcript is of a piece with the president’s stubborn refusal to call the radical Islamic threat by its real name. He thinks this is the way to make the terrorists go away. Language accomplishes something fundamental when it is used to distinguish fact from fiction. If the president understood that he would not now have scrambled egg arrayed across his face. The U.S. military would not have been hobbled to win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, grandmothers would not be subjected to full-body pat-downs at airports, and the FBI might have connected enough dots to stop Omar Mateen before he killed 49 innocents.
Loretta Lynch, faithful to the president as all presidential aides are expected to be, would not now be nursing cuts and bruises sustained when President Obama threw her under the bus. Mr. Obama is afflicted with a deadly view that the world’s No. 1 danger is not Islamic terrorism, but American exceptionalism. The American people are a fair and generous people, perfectly capable of reading the facts and acting accordingly. Barack Obama, for all his gifts, does not understand America, and never has. If he did, he would know that Americans have no appetite for lies, deceptions and humbug, washed down with moonshine.
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore took a jab at the climate change movement Monday with a study arguing that far from endangering life on Earth, increased greenhouse gas emissions may be saving it.
Mr. Moore, a Greenpeace turncoat who now challenges the catastrophic climate change narrative, said in a treatise that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere dipped so low about 18,000 years ago that plant life was threatened.
“All life is carbon-based and the primary source of this carbon is the CO2 in the global atmosphere,” Mr. Moore said in his executive summary. “As recently as 18,000 years ago, at the height of the most recent major glaciation, CO2 dipped to its lowest level in recorded history at 180 ppm, low enough to stunt plant growth.”
At about 150 ppm, plant life dies due to carbon dioxide starvation, he said in his paper, “The Positive Impact of Human CO2 Emissions on the Survival of Life on Earth,” released Monday by the Canada-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
“It is calculated that if the decline in CO2 levels were to continue at the same rate as it has over the past 140 million years, life on Earth would begin to die as soon as two million years from now and would slowly perish almost entirely as carbon continued to be lost to the deep ocean sediments,” according to the summary.
“The combustion of fossil fuels for energy to power human civilization has reversed the downward trend in CO2 and promises to bring it back to levels that are likely to foster a considerable increase in the growth rate and biomass of plants, including food crops and trees,” the study says.
As a result, said Mr. Moore, “Human emissions of CO2 have restored a balance to the global carbon cycle, thereby ensuring the long-term continuation of life on Earth.”
A senior fellow at the Frontier Centre, Mr. Moore has long been a burr in the side of Greenpeace, which has accused him of exploiting his ties to the international environmental group to cash in as a “paid representative of corporate polluters.”
Greenpeace has also said that while Mr. Moore “played a significant role in Greenpeace Canada for several years, he did not found Greenpeace.”
His defense of the importance of rising carbon dioxide at an October global warming conference drew a heated reaction from the anti-skeptics website Hot Whoppers.
“He thinks that pouring waste CO2 into the air is saving humanity and the planet. He’s nuts. (In case you haven’t figured that out for yourself.),” said the website in an Oct. 16 post. “Or you might prefer to think of him as one of those despicable disinformation propagandists.”
Anthony Watts, who runs the widely read skeptics’ website Watts Up With That, described the study as “a sensible and practical take on the issue.”
Mr. Moore’s 2013 book “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout” details his experience as Greenpeace Canada president and Greenpeace International director.
If Democratic attorneys general can pursue climate change skeptics for fraud, then also at risk of prosecution are climate alarmists whose predictions of global doom have failed to materialize.
The “cuts both ways” argument was among those raised by 13 Republican attorneys general in a letter urging their Democratic counterparts to stop using their law enforcement power against fossil fuel companies and others that challenge the climate change catastrophe narrative.
Consider carefully the legal precedent and threat to free speech, said the state prosecutors in their letter this week, headed by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.
“If it is possible to minimize the risks of climate change, then the same goes for exaggeration,” said the letter. “If minimization is fraud, exaggeration is fraud.”
The letter comes as Exxon Mobil fights off subpoenas by two prosecutors — Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude E. Walker — for decades’ worth of climate-related documents and communications with academics, universities and free-market think tanks.
New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and California Attorney General Kamala Harris have also reportedly launched probes.
The 17 attorneys general — 16 Democrats and one independent — announced at a March 29 press conference that they had formed a coalition, AGs United for Clean Power.
“We think this effort by our colleagues to police the global warming debate through the power of the subpoena is a grave mistake,” said the letter.
The name of the coalition itself shows that the attorneys general “have taken the unusual step of aligning themselves with the competition of their investigative targets,” namely the solar and wind energy.
“If the focus is fraud, such alignment by law enforcement sends the dangerous signal that companies in certain segments of the energy market need not worry about their misrepresentations,” said the GOP letter.
Democrats have denied that the effort violates Exxon’s free-speech rights. Schneiderman spokesman Eric Soufer said in a statement that, “The law is clear: the First Amendment does not give any corporation the right to commit fraud.”
The campaign against Exxon, backed by a bevy of climate change groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has advised the Democrat-led coalition, also violates the Constitution by sending the message that certain viewpoints represent a prosecutable offense, the letter said.
“Actions indicating that one side of the climate debate should fear prosecution chills free speech in violation of a formerly bipartisan First Amendment consensus,” said the Republicans.
In addition to Mr. Strange, those signing the letter were Attorneys General Ken Paxton of Texas, Bill Schuette of Michigan, Craig Richards of Alaska, Doug Peterson of Nebraska, Adam Laxalt of Nevada, Mark Brnovich of Arizona, Sean Reyes of Utah, Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas, Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, Brad Schimel of Wisconsin, Jeff Landry of Louisiana and Alan Wilson of South Carolina.
Blanchardville, Wis. — Kriss Marion was an organic farmer, not a fighter.
But Wisconsin’s restrictive law on homemade baked goods forced this peaceful sustainable homesteader to fight back.
Marion and her husband, Shannon, Chicago transplants, fell in love with the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin more than a decade ago and never looked back.
They launched Circle M Market Farm in rural Blanchardville, about 40 miles southwest of Madison. They share their 20 acres with their sheep, goats, chickens, horses, beef cows, pigs, dogs, cats, ducks and a “crazy goose.”
Like a lot of small farmers, Marion is constantly looking for ways to monetize the farm. Organic veggies don’t have a big profit margin.
So Marion and others in her circle turned to baking.
“A lot of us do farmers markets or roadside stands,” she said.
But Marion learned that in Wisconsin, selling muffins, cookies, brownies or any other such homemade baked goods could get her into trouble.
In fact, she was told by inspectors at the Dane County Farmers Market not to do it.
She could face a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail for peddling her homemade baked goods.
Lisa Kivirist knows too well the restrictive nature of the “cake law.” She and her family can serve muffins and other baked goods to the guests of their Inn Serendipity Farm and Bed and Breakfast near Monroe. But selling those muffins could come with a stiff penalty.
“It is not clear to me why I can serve you this muffin legally, but I cannot sell you this muffin legally,” said Ms. Kivirist.
For several years cottage industry advocates have tried to work with lawmakers to change the law, one of only two like it in the United States (New Jersey has a similar statute on the books).
Along the way, Marion changed from relaxed organic farmer to passionate activist, helping to lobby legislators to pass the so-called “cookie bills.” The first proposal in 2013 would have allowed home-kitchen bakers to sell up to $10,000 worth of homemade goods per year without having to obtain a commercial baker licenses.
The bill had bipartisan support, but it went nowhere.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, who owns Rojos Popcorn in Burlington, killed the bill.
He did it again in the last session, heeding the call of his friends in the commercial bakery industry to keep even the modest reforms of the “cookie bill” — which would have allowed up to $7,500 in annual homemade baked goods sales — from seeing the light of the day in the Assembly. This after the bill easily moved from the Senate.
Ms. Kivirist said it was like living in the movie “Groundhog Day.”
“The same thing happened this spring. It passed the Senate unanimously but never got on the Assembly floor for a vote,” she said.
“It frustrating, and not the way Wisconsin can claim its ‘open for business’ title,” she said, referring to Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s oft-repeated pro-business slogan.
Critics of the cookie bill claim the legislation would hurt small commercial bakers who, unlike home-kitchen entrepreneurs, must pay for expensive professional licenses.
“If several people in a certain market or particular community are doing that, they’re eating away at a local baker that’s been there for 100 years and taking away his livelihood. How is that fair?” Dave Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Bakers Association, told Wisconsin Public Radio.
Fed up with the one-man legislative impasse, Marion, Kivirist and fellow organic farmer Dela Ends, filed a lawsuit against the state Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection, asking the court to strike down the law.
“We are going this route with the lawsuit to establish a legal precedent,” Ms. Kivirist said. “It is my constitutional right to earn an honest livelihood, and the government does not have the right to impose arbitrary laws.”
The women are being represented by the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice, a national limited-government public interest law firm.
Erica Smith, an attorney for the organization, said the obstruction to reform has nothing to do with food safety and everything to do with politics and protectionism.
“What we have here is one representative in the Legislature, Robin Vos, who is pretty much committed to the idea you shouldn’t have stay-at-home moms competing with the established bakers and the idea you don’t want people to make a couple extra bucks selling out of their home kitchens because they could potentially put an established commercial baker out of business,” she said.
Wisconsin does allow the sale of some homemade goods. The 2009 “Pickle Bill” allows individuals to sell up to $5,000 of high-acid canned goods produced in a home kitchen. But Wisconsin is alone in the Upper Midwest when it comes to its lack of cottage food laws.
That’s why the “cookie ladies” are so engaged in the legal fight.
“Other states are much more forward thinking in what types of regulations they have to protect food safety and at the same time champion entrepreneurship. We can’t even get to the table here,” Ms. Kivirist said.
For now, the legal battle is moving through the slow discovery process, and it will be months before the Legislature is back in full-floor session.
That’s the way the cookie crumbles in politics and lawsuits.
“I’d rather be baking cookies than going to court,” Marion said. But she is fighting on behalf of the entrepreneurial spirit, and that puts her, Ms. Kivirist and Ms. Ends among the unsung heroes of The Washington Times.
Christopher Scalia may not have been barred from the university for his conservative beliefs, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t play a role in his decision to walk away from the academy.
With an emphasis on Sir Walter Scott and other Scottish Romantics, Mr. Scalia taught English for eight years at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. He published enough to secure tenure, got along well with his colleagues and enjoyed opening bright, young minds with the help of great books.
But with a budding family and more lucrative employment prospects in other sectors, Mr. Scalia last year decided to hang up his academic regalia to pursue a career in public relations.
“For me, it was a financial issue,” he said. “I wasn’t earning enough money to raise a family, and there was no prospect of me earning more money anytime soon.”
In an anemic market for Ph.D.s, professors of all political stripes face financial pitfalls. But the obstacles placed before conservatives are perhaps especially severe.
Mr. Scalia said attempts to find higher-paying positions at other universities were futile, largely because the only openings were “for somebody who wrote on race and empire.”
“Those are great topics as subjects, but in the academy you go a certain direction with those topics,” he said. “My suspicion is conservative applicants won’t have written about those particular topics as much as others and won’t be as drawn to them.”
Although Mr. Scalia does not believe he faced discrimination in hiring as a conservative, that may be in part because he kept his beliefs hidden from his colleagues.
“I would very rarely state my political beliefs openly because I knew that nine times out of 10, they would disagree with them, and I would just rather not get in fights with my colleagues all the time,” Mr. Scalia said.
A new book suggests Mr. Scalia’s experience is typical of conservatives trying to navigate the choppy progressive waters of higher education.
In “Passing on the Right,” Jon Shields, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, and Joshua Dunn, professor of political science at the University of Colorado, contend that insidious discrimination alone cannot explain the disparity between liberal and conservative professors.
They say the ratio of conservatives to liberals varies by field. While conservative economists are prevalent across the higher education landscape, the authors could find only 12 sociologists out of a pool of 6,000 who identify as conservatives.
Dominant progressive worldviews, the authors contend, in some of the social sciences and humanities naturally filter out would-be conservative scholars.
“Certain fields like sociology and history, which have been very leftist disciplines for a long time, I think they’re just not especially appealing to conservatives,” Mr. Shields said at the American Enterprise Institute last week.
A conservative’s first instinct after reading Jane Austen, for instance, isn’t to draw parallels to third-wave feminism. Contorting the great books through the apertures of race, gender and class has come to define scholarship in many of the humanities and social sciences — and conservatives like Mr. Scalia want no part of it.
The authors point to research suggesting conservatives face overt discrimination in hiring, too.
George Yancey, a sociologist at the University of North Texas, found in a study that 30 percent of professors would be less likely to hire a Republican applicant than a Democrat.
There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence to support the conjecture.
In 2014, a court awarded Mike Adams, a conservative professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, a promotion, a raise, $50,000 in back pay and $710,000 in legal fees when he won his seven-year fight against the school for refusing to promote him because of his political beliefs.
The University of California, Los Angeles agreed to settle a case last year with James Enstrom, who was fired in 2012 for challenging research regarding the effect of diesel emissions on climate change.
Last week, Robert Oscar Lopez, a former professor of literature at California State University, Northridge, resigned from his tenured position after enduring years of harassment for his conservative beliefs.
Steven Teles, professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, said the way professors are hired and promoted lends itself easily to discrimination.
“Given the collegial form of decision-making, all it takes is one person on an admissions committee or an entry-level job committee to throw the file on the ding pile to exclude them, or for one person who strongly opposes someone to get them excluded,” Mr. Teles said at AEI.
But Mr. Shields and Mr. Dunn said harping on discrimination against conservatives is ultimately counterproductive. It brings to mind the victimhood culture supposedly disdained by conservatives, they said, and conservatives run the risk of overstating the severity of the problem and further discouraging like-minded scholars from entering the academy.
Indeed, Mr. Scalia was uncomfortable discussing whether he faced discrimination in the academy “because in the academic bias debate, the positions of liberals and conservatives are flipped.”
“Conservatives complain that liberals perpetuate the culture of victimhood, but in this context it is conservatives complaining about how victimized they are,” he said.
He noted that there are good and bad reasons to enter the academy regardless of political affiliation.
“Know that if you go into the academy, graduate school will be an extended state of arrested development, where you are going to be struggling to earn money, to raise a family, even if you do get a tenure-track job, which is a long shot,” he said. “If those are sacrifices you’re willing to make, then go for it.”
Despite the challenges, Mr. Scalia said, he would do it all over again if given the choice.
“I met my wife because of academia. I made some of my best friends because of it, and I got to spend 15 years between grad school and my job reading wonderful things and studying people I wouldn’t have known about otherwise,” he said. “I don’t regret that, no.”
It is a bedrock principle of America’s founding: Congress, as elected by the people, shall write all laws that govern the United States. Yet while that principle remains on paper, it has eroded today to a degree likely unrecognizable by the Founding Fathers. In what has come to be known as “Chevron deference” — a reference to a 1984 Supreme Court case — the federal government has found a powerful tool for expanding the size and reach of government to a scope never intended. And perhaps more importantly, it is a factor contributing to the congressional gridlock so many Americans bemoan today.
Chevron deference is a judicial doctrine established by the Supreme Court in its 1984 opinion, Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. It requires judicial deference to federal agency interpretations of statutory ambiguity or gaps, so long as such interpretations are reasonable. What’s “reasonable” is left to the prerogative of federal agencies, which are mostly run by partisan appointees.
The result is legislation being exploited years or decades later by overzealous federal agencies for partisan ends. See, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan, which relies on a novel interpretation of the Clean Air Act to permit regulating emissions “outside the fence” of individual power plants. More than two-dozen states are now challenging the rule as unconstitutional, with Chevron deference expected to play a key role in the EPA’s case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the fall, and likely the Supreme Court next year.
It might seem obvious that allowing federal agencies to decide for themselves how to interpret laws will lead to their growth. This is reason enough for the Supreme Court to reconsider the scope of its Chevron doctrine. Less obvious, though, is how restoring the traditional role of the judiciary to interpret legislation passed by Congress could provide the appropriate checks and balances necessary to break congressional gridlock.
This debate couldn’t occur at a more important time. The job approval rating of Congress is at a dismal 11 percent. Americans think so poorly of Congress principally because it is not acting as a representative legislature. Largely overlooked, however, is how Chevron deference has contributed to this impasse.
By not passing well-drafted legislation, Congress enables the executive branch to fill the void by interpreting ambiguous laws in a way that fits its agenda. But by ceding the executive branch so much authority, de facto, to create laws of its own, the judicially created Chevron doctrine allows executive overreach to go unchecked.
This undermines our tripartite system of checks and balances among the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, which only works if there is constant and equivalent tension among the three branches. The lawmaking function of Congress works best when it, not the executive branch, holds itself responsible to the public for the enactment and clarity of laws. To do otherwise is for Congress to cede some of its constitutional responsibilities to the president, thus weakening the tension that is necessary to compel congressional action.
Congress should have the incentive of robust judicial oversight of administrative interpretations to statutory ambiguities or gaps. After all, it is Congress that writes the laws; lawmakers should want them interpreted and applied in a fair and consistent manner. The availability of judicial review is what makes the lawmaking process effective.
We see the costs of the current system all around us today. Republican congressional leaders are often caught in a Catch-22 situation. If they pass more precisely worded legislation that is consistent with constituent interests, it may be vetoed by the president. If they pass compromise legislation with more ambiguous language, it may be signed into law, then “authoritatively” interpreted by agencies with a political agenda of their own.
To be clear, the problem of excessive judicial deference is not one of congressional making, nor is a legislative solution the sole method to restore balance to the separation of powers. The Supreme Court should address the imbalance that it helped create, given the scholarly consensus that it did not intend to cause a major shift in judicial deference doctrine. The Supreme Court can help restore the rightful places of Congress and the judiciary as coequal branches of government by reversing or revising the Chevron doctrine.
Chief Justice John Roberts famously stated in his Senate confirmation proceedings: “My job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.” Applying this analogy to administrative law, Congress is the pitcher, the executive branch, the batter, and the Supreme Court, the umpire. The Chevron doctrine inappropriately cedes the umpire’s role to the batter. That is the type of unfair insider baseball that causes the pitcher to stay in the dugout, undermining the American system of government.
The school board of Gloucester County, Virginia, has announced that it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court whether federal law requires schools to allow restroom and locker room access on the basis of gender identity.
The school district said its solution of creating several unisex, single-stall restrooms was “a practical, nondiscriminatory answer that met everyone’s interests and properly balanced the needs of transgender students with other students’ right to bodily privacy.”
That policy was struck down in April by the Richmond-based U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said prohibiting students from using the bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity violates Title IX.
“As such, the School Board intends to file a petition with the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari,” the school board said in a statement.
The school board also filed a motion with the appeals court to take no further action until the Supreme Court has decided whether to hear the case.
The lawsuit was filed by high school student Gavin Grimm, who identifies as a boy and said the school board discriminated against transgender students by regulating restrooms on the basis of biological sex.
The legal fight comes as the Obama administration has sought to interpret Title IX, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex in education, to apply to gender identity.
The president issued an order last month compelling public schools nationwide to permit access to intimate facilities on the basis of gender identity, or risk losing federal education funding. Eleven states have sued the administration over the edict, saying the executive does not have the authority to redefine federal law.
Citing Title IX, the U.S. Department of Justice last month sued North Carolina over a law regulating access to public facilities on the basis of biological sex. North Carolina has also sued the Justice Department.
The 4th Circuit is the highest court to weigh in on the meaning of Title IX. The Obama administration filed a brief in support of the transgender student in that case.
After Gavin’s high school said students cannot use the facilities of the opposite sex, the student appealed to the school board to intervene.
The board voted 6-1 denying the request, and the school sought to accommodate students who do not identify as their biological sex by building several unisex, private stalls.
The ACLU, which represents Gavin, said students have a right to use accommodations consistent with their gender identity.
Gavin praised the 4th Circuit’s ruling as a step toward transgender equality.
“Today’s decision gives me hope that my fight will help other kids avoid discriminatory treatment at school,” Gavin said in a statement after the ruling.
The Environmental Protection Agency findings posted last month were welcome news for the herbicide industry: Glyphosate, a key ingredient in popular weed killers such as Roundup, was unlikely to cause cancer.
Days later, however, the final report of the Cancer Assessment Review Committee was removed from the EPA website. It hasn’t been seen since.
What happened to the report, and whether the EPA pulled it under political pressure from anti-industry forces, has become a hot topic within the industry as well as the subject of an investigation by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
Rep. Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who chairs the committee, has fired off a letter demanding that four EPA officials involved in the glyphosate analysis take part in transcribed interviews. Last month, he asked the EPA for documents related to the report, which he says he has not received.
Mr. Smith noted that the Cancer Assessment Review Committee report, which was posted April 29 and removed May 2, contradicted an analysis released in March 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which found that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
“Given the apparent contradictions of the CARC and IARC findings for glyphosate and the participation of EPA officials in IARC’s report, the Committee has concerns about the integrity of the IARC process, the role played by agency officials in the IARC study, and the influence that EPA officials involved in the IARC process have on the agency’s analysis of glyphosate,” Mr. Smith said in the letter Tuesday.
EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison said the agency has received the letter and “we will review and respond.”
After removing the report last month, the EPA described the Cancer Assessment Review Committee documents as “preliminary” and said they were “inadvertently posted to the agency’s docket.”
“EPA has not completed our cancer review. We will look at the work of other governments as well as work by HHS’s (Health and Human Services) Agricultural Health Study as we move to make a decision on glyphosate. Our assessment will be peer reviewed and completed by end of 2016,” according to the EPA statement.
Critics have expressed skepticism over the agency’s explanation, noting that the memorandum dated Oct. 1, 2015, was labeled “Final Report,” that it was signed by 13 committee scientists and that each of its 88 pages had the word “FINAL” in the upper right-hand corner.
“The CARC concluded that the epidemiological studies in humans showed no association between glyphosate exposure and cancer of the following: oral cavity, esophagus, stomach, colon, rectum, colorectum, lung, pancreas, kidney, bladder, prostate, brain (gliomas), soft-tissue sarcoma, leukemia, or multiple myelomas,” the report said.
During its brief posting on the EPA website, the report came under fierce criticism from environmentalists. The Center for Biological Diversity blasted the EPA for its “industry-friendly determination” and said the agency “relied heavily on industry-funded studies that have not undergone public scrutiny.”
“We shouldn’t gamble with the risk of cancer and must take appropriate precautions until we get a conclusive answer about the true dangers of glyphosate,” the center’s Nathan Donley said in a May 2 statement. “The indiscriminate drenching of farms, ball fields and backyards with glyphosate needs to end.”
Mr. Donley argued that the report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization, should be viewed as the “gold standard.”
A top official at Monsanto, which makes Roundup, said last year that the assessment from the International Agency for Research on Cancer excluded “the most relevant, scientific data” and that research did not support its conclusion.
“As recently as January, the German government completed a rigorous, four-year evaluation of glyphosate for the European Union,” Philip Miller, Monsanto vice president of global regulatory affairs, said in a March 2015 statement. “They reviewed all the data IARC considered, plus significantly more, and concluded glyphosate was ‘unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk in humans.’”
The stakes for Monsanto are enormous. The European Union has threatened to halt sales of products containing glyphosate, and personal injury lawyers are putting together a “mass tort” action against Monsanto by cancer patients who have been exposed to Roundup, according to Reuters.
In his May 4 letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, Mr. Smith said the removal of the Cancer Assessment Review Committee’s report “appears to be yet another example of this agency’s attempt to allow politics rather than science to drive its decision making.”
“Sound, transparent science should always be the basis for EPA’s decisions,” Mr. Smith said.
EAMON DE VALERA: A WILL TO POWER
Had Eamon de Valera, one of the key players in the Irish Easter Rising almost exactly a century ago in the spring of 1916, not been born in New York, he would have been executed along with the other ringleaders. At least that’s the legend, but one of the many fascinating areas probed by Ronan Fanning, a professor emeritus of Modern History at University College Dublin, in his compact but searching biography is that there’s much more to this story than the conventional wisdom.
De Valera’s wife certainly approached the American consul in Dublin with the relevant information, and certainly British Prime Minister Asquith and his government — desperate for the United States to enter the war on the Allied side — were loath to execute one of its citizens. But Mr. Fanning tells us that “de Valera made no such representations on his own behalf [and] he also said he always regarded himself as an Irishman” and that there were other domestic political reasons — British as well as Irish — as well as technical issues behind the commutation of his sentence.
This nuanced look behind the facade is typical of Mr. Fanning’s scrupulousness as a scholar as well as his subtlety. He subjects de Valera’s role in the uprising to an exhaustive analysis, revealing in the process many lesser known facts. But being dedicated to unearthing the underlying truth does not mean that he is unaware of the power of myth and its uses: “What mattered, in short, in paving the way for de Valera’s subsequent rise to power was not what he did in 1916 but the political purposes to which what he did could be bent.” Drawing on excellent secondary sources — and even primary ones like interviewing de Valera’s son — he shows us the motivations behind the great man’s often enigmatic actions as well as their effect on making and strengthening an independent nation.
All the controversies that marked de Valera’s career, from his rejection of the partitioning Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 — which led to a dozen years in the electoral but definitely not the political wilderness — to Irish neutrality in World War II receive their always enlightening due. Mr. Fanning is no simplistic apologist for his subject, but nor he is he hostile toward him. This approach is more than usually valuable, for de Valera was a polarizing and controversial figure, and so a balanced assessment is especially welcome in assessing his decades-long political dominance.
There are many surprises along the way, even for those readers well-informed on Irish history and politics, not least de Valera’s surprisingly pragmatic view of partition, despite his abhorrence of it. For him Ireland’s sovereignty as a nation was supreme and it was to establishing it absolutely that all his efforts were in the end aimed. As an elder statesman, he lived to see Ireland become a member of the EEC (precursor of today’s European Union). He was all for the trade and other economic advantages, but he was concerned about political federalism, which would inevitably weaken or even destroy Irish sovereignty.
Mr. Fanning writes that “Ireland’s entry into the EEC in 1973 signaled that sovereignty was no longer an issue because by then independence had long been taken for granted. Yet without Eamon de Valera Ireland would never have achieved independence so quickly.” Reading this book amid the continentwide debate about ever-increasing European federalism leaves me in no doubt that, delighted as de Valera would be that membership of the EU has finally liberated Ireland from residual British influence, he would now be a determined political Eurosceptic.
Ireland’s neutrality in World War II kept it out of the United Nations for a full decade. As a leading light in the League of Nations between the wars, one might think that this might have upset de Valera, but he was cool to the new organization: “While he recognized that the ‘democratic character of the League’ had inhibited ‘its ability to take action when action should have been taken,’ ” he thought the U.N. “represented a swing round from the democratic to the dictatorial form of organization. What is being substituted now is a dictatorship of the great powers.” Indeed, it was a Soviet veto that initially kept Ireland out of the U.N. in 1946 despite British and U.S. support.
In his great poem “Easter 1916,” W.B. Yeats invokes the names of the executed rebels to proclaim that they were “transformed changed, changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born.” Had de Valera been shot with them, his name would have been similarly immortalized, but Mr. Fanning doubts that Ireland could have achieved true national sovereignty for several decades — or perhaps ever — without his indomitable will, steely determination and political skill. This biography makes a strong and ultimately convincing case for de Valera as the indispensable founding father of the sovereign Irish Republic we know today.
Some believe that soon after Tuesday’s final presidential primaries the FBI will interview Hillary Clinton about her handling of emails while she was secretary of state. What comes next is the subject of much speculation.
One of the better speculators is Bradley Blakeman, who served as a member of President George W. Bush’s White House staff.
We spoke in the “green room” at Fox News before our separate interviews. The following is culled from our conversation.
Mr. Blakeman says the FBI has deliberately waited to interview Hillary Clinton until after the primaries because the bureau did not want to interfere with the nominating process. He thinks the FBI is “likely” to recommend to the Department of Justice whether or not she should be indicted for violating what she says are agency rules and what others call the law between now and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, which begins July 25.
If she is indicted before the convention, Mr. Blakeman says, it will give the party an opportunity to make changes in the rules that could result in an alternate nominee.
Here is the intriguing part about Mr. Blakeman’s scenario: “If a grand jury is empaneled, or if she were to be indicted before the convention, the Democrats would have to let her go.” If an indictment were to come after the convention, he says, it presents a different problem because each state needs to certify their ballots before November. If an indictment occurs after the states have certified their ballots, it would be nearly impossible to replace Hillary Clinton with another candidate.
Here’s where things might get even more interesting. In states where ballots have been certified, the party would have to go to court to ask that Mrs. Clinton’s name be replaced. “They also have another problem,” says Mr. Blakeman. “Once the convention ends, how do they reconvene to substitute Hillary? They have no rules for that.”
What if a court denies a ballot change? Mr. Blakeman says the Supreme Court would almost certainly have to decide. That might look to many like a replay of the 2000 election in which the court certified Florida’s vote count, awarding the state’s electoral votes — and the election — to George W. Bush.
But what if the court — with its one vacancy — divides 4-4? In that case, the lower court ruling would prevail and if that court decided to strike Hillary Clinton’s name from the ballot, a write-in would be the only option.
“Timing is not on Hillary’s side,” says Mr. Blakeman, who thinks “the silver lining for Hillary is that, if she were indicted, there is no doubt Obama would pardon her on Jan. 19 as he walks out the door. She will never have to answer for her crimes.”
What about any others who might be indicted, such as top aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills? If they are indicted, but not pardoned by the president, will they go public? It’s the stuff of big book contracts.
Should any of these scenarios prove true, as Mr. Blakeman thinks they might, President Obama, unlike President Ford and his pardon of Richard Nixon, will never have to face the voters and be held accountable for his action.
In this unpredictable election season, any one — or all — of these scenarios are possibilities, including the ultimate scenario: The delegates turning to Vice President Joe Biden to save them from Hillary and defeat in November.
More than three years after it admitted to targeting tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny, the IRS has finally released a near-complete list of the organizations it snagged in a political dragnet.
The tax agency filed the list last month as part of a court case after a series of federal judges, fed up with what they said was the agency’s stonewalling, ordered it to get a move on. The case is a class-action lawsuit, so the list of names is critical to knowing the scope of those who would have a claim against the IRS.
But even as it answers some questions, the list raises others, including exactly when the targeting stopped, and how broadly the tax agency drew its net when it went after nonprofits for unusual scrutiny.
The government released names of 426 organizations. Another 40 were not released as part of the list because they had already opted out of being part of the class-action suit.
That total is much higher than the 298 groups the IRS‘ inspector general identified back in May 2013, when investigators first revealed the agency had been subjecting applications to long — potentially illegal — delays, and forcing them to answer intrusive questions about their activities. Tea party and conservative groups said they was the target of unusually heavy investigations and longer delays.
Edward D. Greim, the lawyer who’s pursuing the case on behalf of NorCal Tea Party Patriots and other members of the class, said the list also could have ballooned toward the end of the targeting as the IRS, once it knew it was being investigated, snagged more liberal groups in its operations to try to soften perceptions of political bias.
“As we have identified in our filings in this case, important questions still exist regarding changes to the IRS‘ case listings that occurred after the IRS learned that the [inspector general] and congressional investigations had begun,” he said. “Based on these changes, which to date remain unexplained, a very real possibility — if not probability — exists that the IRS modified its targeting in light of the investigations, packing its own internal lists of targeted groups to support its preferred narrative, including by adding ideologically diverse groups.”
He said if that did happen, it would have “tainted” the list the IRS has now released.
The IRS declined to comment, saying its filing spoke for itself.
A series of investigations found the IRS did ask intrusive questions and did delay applications for years, in violation of policy. But so far no investigation has found any order from the White House to conduct the targeting.
‘Tea’ and ‘patriot’ groups
Sixty of the groups on the list released last month have the word “tea” in their name, 33 have “patriot,” eight refer to the Constitution, and 13 have “912” in their name — which is the monicker of a movement started by conservatives. Another 26 group names refer to “liberty,” though that list does include some groups that are not discernibly conservative in orientation.
Among the groups that appear to trend liberal are three with the word “occupy” in their name.
And then there are some surprising names, including three state or local chapters of the League of Women Voters — a group with a long history of nonprofit work.
Some of the most active and prominent tea party groups snared in the targeting aren’t on the class-action list. At least some of them opted not to be part of the joint legal action to preserve their own lawsuits.
Congressional Republicans say IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who was brought in by President Obama to clean up the agency after the targeting scandal, has failed — and even misled Congress during the investigation. Some Republicans are even pursuing impeachment against Mr. Koskinen, accusing him of defying a subpoena for former senior IRS executive Lois G. Lerner’s emails by allowing computer backup tapes to be destroyed.
Even outside of impeachment, the House GOP has proposed a new round of budget cuts for the IRS, aimed at trying to deliver a message that Mr. Koskinen’s tenure has been unacceptable.
And the tax agency is still defending itself in a series of court cases. In addition to the NorCal class action case, the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., is currently considering an appeal by tea party groups who argue the targeting is still going on.
“One thing remains clear: Continued litigation is the only way to force the IRS‘ hand in order to expose its targeting scheme that was coordinated with the help of the DOJ and other federal agencies so that we can obtain justice for those patriotic Americans who were unconstitutionally targeted by their own government,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, which is representing some of the plaintiffs in the appeals case.
In yet another case, the conservative group Cause of Action has been pursuing the IRS to turn over documents the group believed would show White House officials requesting secret taxpayer information on conservatives.
But in a filing Friday, the IRS said it has conducted a final search and can’t find any evidence that the White House either asked for or received protected information.
In something of a Shakespearean twist, English majors at Yale University don’t want to study the greatest English writers.
That’s what a group of undergraduates at the Ivy League school in New Haven, Connecticut, said in a petition started last week. They are demanding that the English Department “decolonize” the curriculum by dropping a pair of Major English Poets required courses that feature works by dead white men.
“It is unacceptable that a Yale student considering studying English literature might read only white male authors,” the petition states. “A year spent around a seminar table where the literary contributions of women, people of color, and queer folk are absent actively harms all students, regardless of their identity.”
The petition says forcing students to read the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton and T.S. Eliot, among others, “creates a culture that is especially hostile to students of color.”
“It’s time for the English major to decolonize — not diversify — its course offerings,” the petition says.
Kim R. Holmes, author of “The Closing of the Liberal Mind,” said the petition threatens to undermine not just the Yale English Department but also the entire purpose of the university.
“The very place where you would expect to have liberal education, you have illiberal education,” said Mr. Holmes, a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “They’re closing people’s minds, they’re not opening them. It’s not only an offense to knowledge, but to the whole idea of a liberal education.”
Yale is not the only college where such demands have been issued this academic year, which has been marked by race protests and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement on college campuses nationwide.
But Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, said the drama is ironic justice, given the Yale English Department’s previous efforts at undermining literature.
He pointed out that the Yale English Department pioneered the literary theory of deconstructionism midway through the 20th century. Under the tutelage of professors such as Paul de Man, English majors at Yale for decades were taught that language has no meaning.
“The very English Department that pioneered a self-destructive approach to literature is now encountering a generation who took the lesson seriously and now wants to abolish literature altogether in the name of studying English,” Mr. Wood said. “That’s why it’s laughable.”
But if the drama’s first act is comedy, then its second is tragedy, he said.
“Why it’s tragic, of course, is that this is one of America’s great universities that is spiraling down from one absurdity to another,” Mr. Wood said. “Students, were they to succeed in this ambition, would be impoverishing themselves for the rest of their lives. They would be forgoing their best opportunity to study the greatest works in English literature under the tutelage of professors who know those works and their historical context well.”
It has been a tumultuous academic year at the elite university. Yale was a hotbed of political activity that came to a head in a public altercation between students of color and one of the college’s masters.
In the incident captured on video, Dr. Nicholas Christakis defended an email sent by his wife and Yale lecturer, Erika Christakis, on the right to wear offensive or inappropriate Halloween costumes. Several students were debating the point with Dr. Christakis when one student began yelling and cursing at him.
Mrs. Christakis later resigned from her position over the brouhaha, and Dr. Christakis is taking a one-semester sabbatical.
The university responded to the incident by promising to abolish the title of “master,” which students said was offensive because of connotations of slavery.
The English undergraduates said they were inspired to start their petition by “student activism across the university.”
“It is your responsibility as educators to listen to student voices,” the petition concludes. “We have spoken. We are speaking. Pay attention.”
Mr. Holmes said the same strain of multiculturalism that inspired campus activism is evident in the undergraduate petition. He said it is another example of “liberal intolerance” on campus aimed at subverting Western culture.
“It’s identity politics,” Mr. Holmes said. “The whole movement of radical multiculturalism, basically, the idea that supposedly all cultures are equal except, of course, Western culture, which is less equal than the others in their own minds.”
“They’re not interested in diversity; they’re interested in conformity,” he said. “It’s really an ideological movement dedicated to closing people’s minds to the great wealth of knowledge and wisdom of Western civilization.”
Given Yale’s response to the student protests last year, Mr. Holmes said he is not optimistic about the English Department’s ability to rebuff its students’ demands.
“My guess is it’s like pushing on an open door,” he said. “This is where these ideologies began.”
On June 4, 2009, President Obama gave a speech at Cairo University which the White House calls “A New Beginning” meaning a change in the relations between the West and the Middle East North Africa (MENA), the region from Morocco to Iran. It is now seven years later and a useful point to consider whether the policies derived from the speech were successful or not. In the words of Ronald Reagan, are we or the peoples of MENA “better off”?
President Obama opened the speech quoting the Koran, praising Islamic contributions to world culture and describing his personal experiences with Islam. The idea was to shift the thinking of his audience away from nationalism to an Islamic definition. No longer would the peoples of MENA consider themselves as Egyptians or Jordanians but rather their identity would Islamic, something the President would never do with Europe and Christianity.
As former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Fox’s Sean Hannity in the fall of 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s contribution to the Cairo speech was to force the Egyptian government to give “front row seats” to members of the Muslim Brotherhood, “to the mortification of the Mubarak Government”. In due time, the Mubarak Government was replaced by a Muslim Brotherhood regime until the Egyptian people demanded that the Army save the country, which it did. The intervening years have been difficult for average Egyptian citizens. Tourism has fallen precipitously as Islamic radicals have fought the Egyptian police in Sinai and put bombs on civilian airplanes. Christian Copts, previously a tolerated 10% of the population where they have lived for two thousand years, are wondering if they have a future in the country as attacks by Islamic radical-influenced mobs continue.
Libya under the rule of Col Qaddafi was difficult both for the people of Libya and the West, the Lockerby Pan Am bombing being only one example. However, when Col. Gadhafi saw the American Army drag Saddam Hussein out of a hole in December 2003, a new and improved version of the Colonel made an appearance on the world stage. He stopped all of his weapons of mass destruction programs and even turned over to us the atom bomb plans he got from the Chinese. By the time of Obama’s Cairo speech, the Qaddafi regime, if not all we may have wanted, was making some useful contributions. He was sitting on his own fundamentalists and sharing intelligence.
Today, Libya is a failed state, the county is in chaos, its cities are in ruins, no one knows how many people have died, and the country is the North African Headquarters for ISIS. PBS has recently done a feature on life in Libya and the pictures are very disturbing. Without Qaddafi’s strong hand, the country has become the launching point for tens of thousands of migrants fleeing misrule by African Governments and a better life in Europe. If CNN is correct, ISIS is salting terrorists into the flood of migrants. As her assistant Jake Sullivan told Secretary Clinton in a now-famous email, “it shows [Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s] leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish.”, something she doesn’t emphasize on the campaign trail these days.
And then there is Syria. As the Israelis like to point out privately, “The Assad Family is what it is but their ambitions end of the border of Syria. Not so ISIS or any of its allies”. Nobody really knows how many Syrians have died since President Obama decided “Assad must go”. According to Reuters’ early May reporting, close to half a million Syrians who were alive when Obama gave his Cairo speech are now dead. This doesn’t count the hundreds of thousands maimed and traumatized, especially children. Millions have lost their homes and were sent fleeing across the Mediterranean. Syrian cities will take decades and billions of dollars to rebuild, if there were funds to rebuild them, which there aren’t. The Christian community established by St. Paul faces total extinction.
This short space cannot do justice to the disaster which has befallen the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa since President Obama’s Cairo speech lit the fuse of the Islamic death cult of ISIS and its relatives. Just the body count alone makes it the largest human catastrophe the world has seen since the end of World War II. The horrific judgment of President Obama and his team, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has led to nothing but death and devastation for millions of people and there is no end in sight.
In the wake of an undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood’s fetal parts sales, the California legislature is considering a bill that would criminalize publishing secretly recorded video footage of “health care providers.”
AB 1671, which has been backed by Planned Parenthood, would criminalize the publication of confidential interactions with state-licensed medical personnel, including abortionists and clinic staff, punishable by up to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine per violation.
Introduced by Los Angeles Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, the bill has received criticism from both pro-life activists and those who worry about its potential to chill free speech and investigative journalism.
Lila Rose, president and founder of Live Action, said the Planned Parenthood-backed legislation is an effort to decrease transparency at the nation’s largest abortion provider.
“For years, undercover journalists have documented Planned Parenthood employees covering up for sex traffickers, failing to report child sexual abusers, and trafficking in baby body parts,” Ms. Rose said in a statement. “Rather than be more transparent with the public, Planned Parenthood wants to make it a crime for the media to publish evidence that it might be doing something illegal.”
Ms. Rose pointed out that since Planned Parenthood receives public funding in order to keep its doors open, the public has a right to know what goes on behind those doors.
“A watchdog media is a cornerstone of a democratic society, and when the public funds half of the abortion giant’s operations, it has a right to know that its money isn’t being used to break the law or commit abuses,” she said.
On its website, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California Action Funds describes AB 1671 as a “key improvement that closes a current loophole in privacy laws around illegal videotaping.” The group could not be reached for comment.
Several state publishing and broadcasting groups have come out against the bill, which initially banned any secret recordings without the consent of all parties before being trimmed to apply only to content involving “health care providers.”
California Newspaper Publishers Association legal counsel Nikki Moore wrote to Mr. Gomez, warning about the bill’s stifling implications for investigative journalism.
“AB 1671 seeks to criminalize the exchange of information,” Ms. Moore wrote. “It exposes the media and individuals alike to criminal penalties for simply pushing the send button on an email. And it ties the hands of California journalists whose job is to report on issues of public concern.”
CNPA testified against AB 1671 during deliberations, and in a press release issued May 27, described the bill as a “content based regulation and presumptively unconstitutional.”
Writing in the San Jose Mercury News recently, investigative reporter Thomas Peele lauded Planned Parenthood’s efforts to provide “vital medical services,” but said the bill’s speech-stifling potential “should have First Amendment advocates, journalists and good-government types gravely concerned.”
He compared the press restrictions to those floated by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“You know who has alluded to such measures of press control and criminalization of journalism? Donald Trump,” Mr. Peele wrote. “Whether he could achieve such things, such as the threat to ‘open up’ libel laws so he could sue reporters, remains unknown. But here, Gomez’s bill is reality, not ignorant demagoguery.”
Mr. Gomez in 2015 received the Champion of Choice Award from Planned ParenthoodLos Angeles, a branch that came under scrutiny after the Center for Medical Progress released its undercover video series.
Through the investigation, PPLA was revealed to have partnered with fetal tissue procurement firm Novogenix Laboratories, LLC, whose executive director, Dr. Ben Van Handel, can be heard in one of the videos admitting that “the [baby’s] heart actually is still beating” after some abortions.
Mr. Gomez has also received $13,500 in campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood during the last two elections, reported Live Action News.
AB 1671 cleared the appropriations committee on May 25 by a party-line vote of 14 to 6 and will now head to the assembly floor.
Bernard Sanders‘ appeal among young people has focused on the supposed benefits a socialist society can give them: free education, free health care and a government-mandated “living wage.” But his vision for a socialist utopia flies in the face of reason — and the sad saga of socialism in Europe.
Mr. Sanders‘ latest missive accusing Sen. Mitch McConnell of denying pensions to coal miners in Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania typifies a fervent belief that the government can cure all ills. The coal industry has been hit hard over recent years — in particular because of the shift to cheap natural gas, but also, because of increasingly onerous government regulations that raise the cost of production. As a consequence several large producers are now threatened with bankruptcy and restructuring. A bipartisan bill was floated in Congress to let the federal government step in and fund the miners’ pensions in situations in which the companies go out of business.
In recent speeches Mr. Sanders has also called for increasing the minimum wage, making college free and criticizing the fact that student loan costs exceed cost for other types of credit. “It makes no sense that students and their parents pay higher interest rates for college than they pay for car loans or housing mortgages,” he tweeted recently.
But the people who actually price credit and measure risk in lending might beg to differ. There are all sorts of reasons that student loans might be more expensive than car loans or mortgages. Chief among them is the fact that student loans are often given to individuals with no assets, income or productive capacity. Although the hope is that a student will eventually graduate from college, get a job and repay the loan — there is really no guarantee. And in the absence of some sort of asset to use as collateral, the costs of default to the lender would be high. This risk gets baked into the interest rates charged for such loans.
As part of his campaign platform on education, Mr. Sanders proposes that all state college education be tuition-free. He points to countries like Germany and Chile as having made public education free, but fails to mention the sky-high taxes that make such a deal possible. These proposals are designed to appeal to young people because at the end of the day they won’t be the ones paying for the supposedly free lunch.
This kind of government wealth transfer is exactly the opposite of what the country needs at this point. While funding college for able-bodied students might be nice, the government is already deeply in debt to existing unfunded liabilities to seniors. If there is to be any tax transfer this is where it should be going — to those who are too sick or too old to work.
Europe has been stung by its blank-check socialism and is quickly retreating from the welfare state policies of the last century or so. Countries like Greece and Portugal are practically on the verge of economic collapse, facing massive unemployment and — ironically — the very problems that socialism was supposed to solve. Pensions have been cut, and people are being put out on the street.
The social welfare system in France, which leads the world in spending an incredible 32 percent of its GDP on social programs, has become totally unsustainable. When old-age pensions were introduced there, workers outnumber retirees by almost seven to one. Now there are more people on welfare than actually working. Businesses have left France en masse, and many of the wealthiest members of society have sent most of their assets overseas, placing a greater burden on a shrinking tax base.
Even more insidiously, socialist countries have so disincentivized entrepreneurship and work. Young people rightly calculate that in many cases it is more beneficial to live off the state than become economically productive.
America could soon follow suit if people buy into Mr. Sanders‘ socialist vision. America already spends 20 percent of GDP on government benefits. We already have a regulatory environment that constrains business development, saddling young vulnerable enterprises with costs that make them almost unsustainable. Rural America in particular is suffering from a dearth of small business development, as only large, politically powerful enterprises are capable of thriving in such environments.
All of this works perversely against the very workers and people Mr. Sanders purports to want to help. Corporate consolidation driven by regulation and cost minimization has a direct impact on driving down workers’ salaries and benefits. And it is too late, once an industry has been regulated into oblivion, to try to save the workers’ pensions. Government does not have all the answers, and neither does Bernard Sanders.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did break her department’s rules by setting up her own secret email server, the inspector general concluded in a report sent to Congress on Wednesday that says she failed to report hacking attempts and waved off warnings that she should switch to a more official email account.
Inspector General Steve Linick, appointed by President Obama, said he couldn’t find any evidence that Mrs. Clinton received approval for her odd email arrangement, and when lower-level staffers pressed the issue, saying she was skirting open-records laws, they were ordered “never to speak of the secretary’s personal email system again.”
In one instance in 2011, Mrs. Clinton’s tech guru thought the server was being hacked and shut it down for a few minutes. Months later, Mrs. Clinton feared yet another hack attack was underway — yet never reported the incident to the department, in another breach of department rules.
“Notification is required when a user suspects compromise of, among other things, a personally owned device containing personally identifiable information,” the investigators wrote. “However, OIG found no evidence that the Secretary or her staff reported these incidents to computer security personnel or anyone else within the Department.”
The report was transmitted to some members of Congress but has not been officially released. The Washington Times and other press outlets obtained a copy Wednesday.
Mrs. Clinton refused to cooperate with the probe, as did a number of her top aides from her time at the department, leaving investigators with a number of questions they weren’t able to nail down.
Her predecessors as secretary of state — Madeleine K. Albright, Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice — did speak with investigators.
Mr. Powell, in particular, did use personal email for government business, and his records were not properly stored by the State Department, the investigation found. Democrats seized on that information to say it proved Mrs. Clinton was not blazing a trail of illegal behavior, but rather following the lead of her predecessors.
The inspector general, however, rejected that explanation, noting that at the time email was new, policies were “very fluid” and the department wasn’t aware of cybersecurity risks in the early part of the Bush administration. By the time Mrs. Clinton took office in 2009, those policies had been firmed up — and they preached exactly against Mrs. Clinton’s practice.
“Beginning in late 2005 and continuing through 2011, the Department revised the [manual] and issued various memoranda specifically discussing the obligation to use Department systems in most circumstances and identifying the risks of not doing so. Secretary Clinton’s cybersecurity practices accordingly must be evaluated in light of these more comprehensive directives,” the inspector general wrote.
Mrs. Clinton’s odd email arrangement was first exposed under prodding by the congressional investigation into the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, which happened on Mrs. Clinton’s watch and cost the lives of four Americans.
In the two years since the breach, Mrs. Clinton has turned over some 30,000 messages from her server that she said constituted government business. She withheld another 30,000 that she said were purely personal.
The inspector general said returning some of the messages in December 2014 — nearly two years after she left office — “mitigated” her behavior. But investigators said there are still troubling gaps in what she produced.
One email exchange mentioned in the report, which Mrs. Clinton did not turn over in her 30,000 messages, seemed to indicate that she intended for her system to hide communications from the public.
In the 2010 exchange, top personal aide Huma Abedin suggested that it was time to look into getting an official state.gov email address because Mrs. Clinton’s messages from her clintonemail.com account were landing in staffers’ spam folders.
Alternatively, Ms. Abedin said, Mrs. Clinton could release her secret address to the department so she could be designated as a verified account, keeping her messages out of spam folders.
Mrs. Clinton refused, saying she didn’t “want any risk of the personal being accessible.” The inspector general at that point in the report notes that Mrs. Clinton refused to cooperate, and Ms. Abedin did not respond to a request to be interviewed.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said the report offers little new and instead confirms Mrs. Clinton’s belated efforts to fulfill her duties under open-records laws.
“We think there’s a lot in this report that corroborates what we’ve been saying all along,” he told MSNBC.
He said Mrs. Clinton and her aides refused to cooperate because they were instead focusing on defending themselves in other probes — particularly the FBI’s investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton compromised secret information.
Mr. Fallon also denied that Mrs. Clinton or her top aides were involved in the decision to silence staffers who questioned her email arrangement.
“We’re not familiar with that. There were certainly no instructions given that this should be kept secret,” he said.
Mr. Fallon said that despite hacking attempts, there was no evidence her server was compromised.
The report lays out many of the details of Mrs. Clinton’s server. The domain name clintonemail.com was registered on Jan. 13, while she was still serving in the Senate and before she was confirmed to be secretary on Jan. 21.
State Department staffers were repeatedly asked to help solve problems with Mrs. Clinton’s server and her devices, such as her BlackBerry — particularly while trying to communicate between her secret address and the state.gov accounts used by most of her subordinates.
But the inspector general was unable to find anyone who gave the final approval for Mrs. Clinton to use the odd arrangement. The department’s legal office said it was not asked to review or approve the setup and was unaware of anyone else approving it — though some of them did email Mrs. Clinton on her secret account.
None of the messages Mrs. Clinton returned to the department was marked classified at the time, though some 2,000 messages have since been redacted in whole or in part because of information now deemed too secret to be seen publicly.
Mrs. Clinton did, however, send emails with “sensitive but unclassified” over her secret server, again breaching department rules put into place in 2008 — the year before she took office — that said such an arrangement required prior approval from the Office of Information Resources Management.
“OIG found no evidence that Secretary Clinton ever contacted IRM to request such a solution, despite the fact that emails exchanged on her personal account regularly contained information marked as SBU,” the investigators said.
A coalition of 11 states led by Texas is serving as the first line of defense against President Obama’s mandate compelling schools nationwide to permit toilet and locker room access on the basis of gender identity, not biological sex.
The states on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the administration, challenging the directive as unconstitutional executive overreach and a misinterpretation of federal antidiscrimination law.
The lawsuit says the privacy and safety of children are recklessly put at risk through the mandate, arguing that the decision of how to accommodate transgender students is a matter properly left to the states.
“Defendants have conspired to turn workplace and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights,” the lawsuit said.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, said legislating through “executive fiat” is par for the course for the Obama administration, accusing the president of “bullying” schools into adopting his ideology.
Mr. Paxton said Title IX, a federal law barring “sex” discrimination in education, has no bearing on whether transgender students can use the restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.
“I think the definition that they’re adding to Title IX is a new definition that Congress has not put in there,” Mr. Paxton told The Washington Times. “He doesn’t have the authority to change law. His job under Article II is to faithfully executive the law, and this isn’t faithfully executing the law; this is making up a law.
“He’s basically acting outside of his constitutional authority, and he’s trying to bully school districts into changing a policy that he literally has no authority to change,” he said.
Texas is the lead plaintiff in the case and is joined by the state governments of Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah and Georgia, as well as the Arizona Department of Education and the office of the governor of Maine.
Joseph Backholm, director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, said he likes the states’ chances against the federal government, saying the legislative intent of Title IX concerned only “sex” discrimination.
“Title IX was written by Congress, and this is what Congress said, and this is what they meant,” Mr. Backholm said. “Despite the administration’s desire to have Title IX say something different, there’s no evidence that that’s what Congress intended. And since they are in conflict, you have to go with the body that actually created Title IX, which is Congress. You have to defer to the legislative intent rather than the executive restructuring.
“I have a high degree of confidence that once this question gets into court, it’s going to be struck down,” he said of Mr. Obama’s order.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, commended the states for standing up to Mr. Obama, saying the president has “ignored the boundaries of his constitutional power.”
“If the White House can dictate the policies for every school locker room, shower, and bathroom in America, what could possibly be beyond its reach?” Mr. Perkins said in a statement.
Gay rights groups called the lawsuit “shameful,” pointing to Mr. Paxton’s opposition to the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which created a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
“Ken Paxton has already disgraced himself and his office by undermining the rule of law and shamefully encouraging state officials to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision last June,” Human Rights Campaign Communications Director Jay Brown said in a statement. “Now, he’s gone so far as to attack transgender youth, whom he has a responsibility to protect as Attorney General.”
Mr. Obama issued the federal guidance this month amid an escalating legal battle in North Carolina over transgender bathroom access. The directive is legally nonbinding, but puts federal education dollars at risk for schools that do not comply with the order.
The guidance followed dueling lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and the state of North Carolina against each other regarding a North Carolina law regulating public facilities on the basis of biological sex. The Justice Department said the law violates federal civil rights law, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch compared it to Jim Crow race codes adopted after the Civil War.
The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights signaled where the Obama administration was headed in 2014, when it issued a guidance interpreting the law to bar discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.” The law never mentions the phrase, and it was passed decades prior to the current ascendance of the transgender movement and even the term “LGBT.”
Several federal courts have recently weighed in on the meaning of Title IX, ruling both for and against the federal government’s interpretation.
The highest court to take up the case, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, last month sided with a transgender teenager from Virginia, who said a local school board had violated Title IX by creating single-stall, unisex restrooms for transgender students. The school board has requested that the whole court hear an appeal of its three-judge panel’s ruling.
Many of you do not know and do not remember that public transit used to be privately owned and operated.
And it’s time to query whether Metro, the D.C. region’s public and heavily subsidized transit system, should be privatized.
Our tri-jurisdictional Metrorail and Metrobus system, which was conjured by a Democrat-controlled Congress in 1967 (with Lyndon Johnson in the White House), is run by the D.C., Maryland and Virginia governments with considerable federal oversight.
So let’s take a fairly quick ride in the way-back machine. The District’s first streetcars, like those in much of the nation, were drawn by horses. Next came electric cars, and by the mid-1930s, folks were hankering for “rapid” transit, and three regional rail lines merged into the Capital Transit Co., and some rail lines switched to bus lines.
In the mid-1950s, the company was ordered to end the streetcars and switch to bus routes. New York financier O. Roy Chalk bought Capital Transit Co., renamed it D.C. Transit, and bought new streetcars and buses. But the system was a money loser.
After Congress created the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in 1967, the new transit agency sucked up Chalk’s D.C. Transit, including the streetcar system.
Metro failed to heed a lesson, however. Chalk did not raise fares and began losing money — and he received no public subsidy. So, poof! Presto, change-o!
Metro, which is a money loser, is left holding an empty bag.
Interestingly, Jackie Jeter, longtime president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, opposes privatization of transit service. She said in an email that “outsourcing public transit drives up fares, jeopardizes safety, results in service cuts, and fosters an environment for political corruption.”
Yet Metro has a very troubled history that ” jeopardizes safety,” “results in service cuts” and “fosters an environment for political corruption.” Indeed, she makes a cogent argument for privatization and the need for fare increases.
Moreover, experts say that transit unions increase government costs in many ways. For example, union contracts limit the use of part-time workers, making it difficult for transit agencies to deploy workers at will.
Metro might tumble into that firing line when it tries to uses buses to replace rail service during the upcoming Metrorail overhaul. And do not forget that public officials don’t exactly play the Big Mama role during negotiations. When they’re seated at the table, they’re more likely counting votes in the next election than dollar signs being racked up by concessions.
Remember, all politics that matter are local.
Which brings us to Matthew F. Letourneau, vice chairman of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, who used the “P” word when he and colleagues learned Metro is facing an $18 billion capital budget deficit over the next 10 years.
“I haven’t heard that kind of discussion from the Metro Board,” said Mr. Letourneau, a Republican on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. “We just heard everybody talking about how Metro can’t fail and that it’s the spine of the region, so that needs to be on the table.”
That a regional leader who represents a Virginia county that is not even connected to Metrorail and Metrobus but has Metrorail and Metrobus riders is a good sign.
These are the types of policymakers who need to be at the table when dollar signs are dancing in union leaders’ eyes.
When it comes to public transit, the past is always prescient.
Kudos to The Washington Times’ Valerie Richardson for her reporting on the global warming industry’s misdeeds (“Exxon threatened with ‘climate deceit’ lawsuit in latest effort to penalize dissent,” Web, May 17). As for those 17 Democratic attorneys general trying to bring suit against Exxon Mobil and applying Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statues, it seems to me the tables could quite easily be turned.
If there were ever a group that deserved to be indicted and convicted using RICO statutes, it is the global warming cohort. The fraud and data manipulation going on there would be a lot easier to prove than any nefarious “cover-up” committed by Exxon Mobil or the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
It should be easy enough to find 17 Republican state attorneys general willing to recognize this opportunity and follow through. CEI and two states have hit back. Perhaps they should now repel the enemy’s opening salvo with a full-frontal assault against the global warming industry and its war on fossil fuels and affordable American energy.
Although technology-in-education advocates are quickly tearing down the boundaries between the computer lab and the classroom, a study examining the influence of laptops and tablets on collegiate performance indicates that, as with Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, innovation can come back to harm the innovator.
A group of economists went to West Point to measure the effects of integrating computerized devices into the classroom by prohibiting laptops and tablets in some introductory economics course, while permitting them in others.
One-third of the classes allowed students to use laptops or tablets to take notes during lecture, while one-third permitted tablet use only for the purpose of looking at course materials, and one-third prohibited electronic devices outright. Researchers found that, in the permissive classes, 80 percent of students chose to take advantage of the technologies available to them to some extent.
The results: The technology-ridden classrooms scored 1.7 points lower on average in a 100-point exam than their pen-and-paper counterparts.
Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, said he is not at all surprised by the results given studies that have shown the human mind’s limited ability to multitask and the Internet’s unrivaled temptation to (try to) do that.
“I’m not at all surprised that there’s erosion in student performance,” Mr. Wood said. “The result of the study is hardly jaw-dropping. I don’t know who thinks laptops in class are a good idea. Apparently some professors do, but most of us don’t.”
The study’s findings hold even when accounting for factors such as GPA and standardized test scores. In fact, students with higher ACT scores took the biggest hit when technology was introduced, perhaps revealing the hubris of top students who think they can skate by without paying attention.
The study also found that men perform much worse in the presence of technology than women. Although the results may be skewed by West Point’s heavily male student body, women did as well regardless of the availability of laptops and tablets, while men may have been more likely to succumb to the Internet’s various distractions.
The disparity may also be due to the difficulty of processing information typed onto a screen rather than written down in a notebook.
A 2003 study in the Journal of Computing in Higher Education found students who typed notes during class had more trouble remembering the content of lectures, while a 2014 study showed students who took notes longhand understood the concepts they wrote about better than students who typed them out.
Despite studies demonstrating the pitfalls of multitasking, and a dearth of evidence to support the link between technology and academic performance, innovators continue to usher screens into the classroom.
The U.S. now spending more than $3 billion every year on digital content in public schools — part of a budget that equips one in five students with a computerized device, according to Education Week.
Mr. Wood said part of the problem is interest groups, such as technology and digital manufacturers, who contract with the government and have a financial incentive to promote education technology. On the other hand, critics possess less of an immediate incentive to halt the spread of such devices.
“High schools and grade schools now are increasingly going all-in for this technology, and there are plenty of folks who benefit from it — that is, the manufacturers of laptops, sellers of software to companies who are singing the praises of technology all the time,” he said. “The skeptics are less heard from.
“Given the large amounts of money at stake, I think we need a better voice for techno-skepticism than we generally have.”
Some “education activists” continue to call for more government-funded preschool programs despite mounting evidence that they don’t work.
Studies of large-scale preschool programs in Quebec and Tennessee show that vastly expanding access to free or subsidized preschool may worsen behavioral and emotional outcomes for students. Even proponents acknowledge that universal preschool does nothing to improve future academic performance.
Proponents hang their hats on two studies that have found benefits of preschool attendance: the Perry Preschool Project and the Abecedarian Preschool Study. The Perry study began in 1962 and included just 123 children (58 in the treatment group), all from low-income households. It tracked a half-century-old program that provided around-the-clock, comprehensive preschool and care services to a few dozen “at-risk” children.
The Abecedarian Program, which began in 1972, had a sample of 111 (57 in the treatment group) children from low-income households. The program included individualized education services, transportation, and social and nutritional services, among other interventions.
Both studies identified positive outcomes from these boutique programs, such as increasing the likelihood of attending college and lower incarceration rates. Yet both studies suffer from flawed methodologies. Among their shortcomings: violation of random assignment rules, small sample size and management of the evaluations by the program developers themselves.
So why do government preschool proponents continue to appeal to these two nearly half-century-old studies? Because their findings have never been replicated on a larger scale.
In fact, the dated nature of the findings should largely exclude them from consideration of the efficacy of subsidized preschool programs.
Current, rigorous evaluations of preschool programs tell a very different story. Recent evaluations of Head Start and Tennessee’s large, statewide preschool program should carry much more weight with policymakers considering expanding taxpayer-funded preschool.
With regard to Head Start, the federally funded preschool program for children from low-income families, a random assignment evaluation by the Department of Health and Human Services (which manages Head Start) found little to no impact on the parenting practices or the cognitive, social-emotional and health outcomes of participants. Moreover, on a few measures, access to Head Start actually had harmful effects on participating children.
A team of researchers from Vanderbilt University found that the Tennessee program, open to some 18,000 children and lauded as a model, state-based preschool program, produced no significant differences between the control group and the preschool group by the end of kindergarten. In other words, even so-called high-quality preschool programs are failing to live up to the promises made by proponents.
It is also worth examining Quebec’s publicly funded day care program. The Canadian province introduced universal, low-cost day care for children through age 4 beginning in 1997. The program has had a large impact on the day care market: Privately funded child care arrangements have almost disappeared. Quebec now has the highest rate of subsidized child care in Canada, at 58 percent in 2011.
And how are the children faring? Economists Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber and Kevin Milligan found that children exposed to the program were subsequently 4.6 percent more likely to be convicted of a crime and 17 percent more likely to commit a drug crime. Their health and life satisfaction rates were worse.
Proponents of universal government-subsidized preschool have to grapple with the fact that universal programs have failed and had negative effects on children.
What’s more, additional federal subsidies for early childhood education would crowd out private providers from the preschool market, which ultimately would limit options for families and trap their children in counterproductive public programs.
Universal preschool proposals would create a subsidy for middle-income and upper-income families while adding to the tax burden for Americans. A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that, in the long run, the government-run preschool experience leaves many children worse for the wear.
The Obama administration on Friday ordered every public school in America to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex.
The letter, which is legally nonbinding, was issued Friday and came amid a heated debate over which facilities transgender people should use.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday sued North Carolina over a law in the state prohibiting people of the opposite sex from using public facilities.
Now, every other state is liable to a similar lawsuit, and could risk losing millions in federal education funding if they do not comply with the order.
In response to the letter, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory on Friday called for the judiciary and legislative branches to restrain the executive, which he said has overstepped its authority.
He said the interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 — both of which bar discrimination on the basis of “sex,” not “gender identity” — should be left to the courts.
“We believe a court, rather than a federal agency, should tell our state, our nation, and employers across the country what the law requires,” Mr. McCrory said at a press conference.
Mr. McCrory also called on Congress to clarify the meaning of the law.
“Ultimately, I think it’s time for the U.S. Congress to bring clarity to our national anti-discrimination provisions under Title VII and Title IX,” the governor said. “Let me repeat that one more time, to all of our U.S. representatives and the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic Parties in Congress: Ultimately, I think it’s time for the U.S. Congress to bring clarity to our national anti-discrimination provisions under Title VII and Title IX.”
Republicans contend keeping the sexes separate for the purpose of bathroom and locker room access is a matter of privacy and safety, while transgender advocates argue gender nonconforming people suffer irreparable harm by being denied access to the facilities of their gender identity.
“No student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling unwelcome at school or on a college campus,” John B. King Jr., secretary of the Department of Education, said in a statement to The New York Times. “We must ensure that our young people know that whoever they are or wherever they come from, they have the opportunity to get a great education in an environment free from discrimination, harassment and violence.”
But conservative groups said such laws are dangerous to women and children. Peggy Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, accused the Obama administration of disingenuously purporting to protect children, while potentially putting them at greater risk by opening facilities to the opposite sex.
“Meanwhile, schools all over this nation, which have rightly worked on a case-by-case basis to accommodate kids struggling with gender dysphoria, may be forced to violate the privacy of other students and perhaps even create trauma for the very kids Obama pretends to protect,” Ms. Nance said.
The Obama administration has compared the fight for transgender rights to civil rights movements concerning race and sexual orientation. By implication, laws denying transgender people access to sex-segregated amenities are akin to state-sanctioned discrimination.
Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch made this position clear at a press conference on Monday announcing the lawsuit against North Carolina, when she compared that state’s law to Jim Crow race codes adopted after the Civil War.
“This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation,” Ms. Lynch said. “We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation.”
Federal courts will ultimately decide the fate of the North Carolina law — and could determine the issue nationwide if a case reaches the Supreme Court.
The judiciary has so far split on whether federal “sex” discrimination laws also apply to “gender identity.” The highest court to weigh in on the issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, ruled last month that such laws do apply to gender identity, even though they do not mention the phrase.
The 25-page letter from the Obama administration will reportedly contain information on “emerging practices” for dealing with transgender students, including installing privacy curtains in locker rooms or allowing students to change in bathroom stalls.
Commenting on the North Carolina law last month, President Obama said it was “wrong and should be overturned.”
The announcement of the directive came just house after the White House said it would not attempt to curtail federal education funding from North Carolina in response to the law there.
A federal judge dealt President Obama and his health care law a major blow Thursday, ruling in favor of House Republicans who said the administration broke the law and trod on Congress’ fundamental powers by paying Obamacare insurers without permission from Capitol Hill.
An appeal is certain, but should U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer’s ruling be upheld, it could spark the economic “death spiral” Republicans have predicted and Democrats feared would doom the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
But the ruling has implications far beyond Obamacare, signaling that federal courts may begin to play a more active role in reeling in executive powers that many legal experts say have grown far beyond what the country’s founders intended.
Judge Collyer, presiding in Washington, said the administration violated the Constitution when it made “cost-sharing” payments to Obamacare insurers, over the objections of Congress, which had zeroed out the funding.
The White House was stunned by the ruling and railed against the House for bringing the fight to the courts in the first place.
“This suit represents the first time in our nation’s history that Congress has been permitted to sue the executive branch over a disagreement about how to interpret a statute,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
The cost-sharing program was written into Obamacare to make it more attractive for poor people without insurance to buy plans on the new health exchanges. In addition to tax subsidies, those with incomes just above the poverty line were supposed to have some of their costs paid directly by the government to insurers.
The Affordable Care Act authorized the payments, but Congress and the Obama administration have feuded over whether Capitol Hill needed to take the next step and appropriate the billions of dollars each year.
Initially the administration seemed to think it did need an appropriation and requested the money in its budget. But after Congress refused, Mr. Obama changed tune and said he felt he could spend the money even without a new OK.
In court the administration argued that it wouldn’t have made sense for Congress to approve the program but not come up with the money.
Judge Collyer rejected that, saying Congress authorizes programs all the time but never finds the money to carry them out. She spanked the secretaries of the Treasury and Health and Human Services departments for trying to spend the money anyway.
“Such an appropriation cannot be inferred,” she wrote. “None of the secretaries’ extra-textual arguments — whether based on economics, ‘unintended’ results, or legislative history — is persuasive.”
Millions of Obamacare customers with incomes between 100 percent and 250 percent of poverty rely on the payments, and health plans are required to reduce their out-of-pocket costs whether they’re reimbursed or not, so they’d likely increase rates to balance their ledgers.
House Republicans’ decision to sue Mr. Obama in 2014 was unusual, though then-Speaker John A. Boehner said he had no choice after the executive branch doled out cost-sharing payments and twice delayed the part of Obamacare that requires large employers to provide health coverage to employees.
Judge Collyer shocked Democrats in September by saying House Republicans had legal standing to pursue their central claim: that the administration injured Congress as an institution by usurping its power.
House lawmakers said Thursday’s ruling on the merits offered further vindication.
“The court ruled that the administration overreached by spending taxpayer money without approval from the people’s representatives. Here the executive branch is being held accountable to ‘We the People,’ and that’s why this decision is very good news,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, said.
Analysts have said the constitutional and political considerations behind the case may outweigh the economic ones. Without the reimbursements, insurers may hike the price of their benchmark Obamacare plans.
But those higher costs could end up being covered by the federal government anyway through the tax subsidies paid directly to Obamacare customers to help them buy insurance on the exchanges.
“Federal payments to insurers for cost-sharing subsidies would end, but would essentially be replaced by larger federal premium subsidy payments to insurers,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a September study.
For now, the ruling offers a timely jolt to congressional Republicans who want to repeal and replace Mr. Obama’s signature domestic achievement in 2017, and who say its existence is proof the president has stepped out of bounds in using his powers.
“Here’s what the court just said on Obamacare: America still has three branches of government, and the president cannot rewrite the law — even if it is his namesake,” Sen. Ben Sasse, Nebraska Republican, said.
For his part, Mr. Obama has been hoping to shore up his health legacy — roughly 20 million have gained coverage under his reforms — instead of fending off repeated legal challenges to reforms.
Mr. Obama had urged his opponents to move beyond legal challenges to Obamacare last year, when the Supreme Court turned back a second major challenge that would have gutted his reforms.
Now he will have to fend off one more challenge.
“It’s unfortunate that Republicans have resorted to a taxpayer-funded lawsuit to refight a political fight that they keep losing,” Mr. Earnest. “They’ve been losing this fight for six years. And they’ll lose it again.”
The Obama administration rocked the energy sector Thursday by unveiling a finalized methane standard even tougher than the one proposed last year in the name of combating climate change.
The reduction standards on methane from new and modified oil and gas operations, aimed at reducing emissions by up to 45 percent by 2025 from 2012 levels, come at an estimated cost to the industry of $530 million per year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
That figure is about 25 percent higher than the preliminary figures released in August, which the EPA attributed to “new science and data have shown that methane emissions from existing oil and gas sources are substantially higher than was previously understood.”
“Today, we are underscoring the Administration’s commitment to finding commonsense ways to cut methane — a potent greenhouse gas fueling climate change — and other harmful pollution from the oil and gas sector,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in a statement.
But critics described the rule as an unscientific, punitive gesture intended to mollify the climate change movement even though the industry has shown significant progress in voluntarily reducing methane emissions.
“No industrial sector has done more to drastically reduce methane emissions through voluntary and other measures,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
“EPA continues to impose its ‘command and control’ mentality to impose strict rules on industrial sectors it does not like, disregarding the great strides that industry has made to reduce emissions on its own,” Mr. Smith said. “The EPA has become a rogue agency trying to implement costly and unnecessary regulations.”
He described the methane rule as the latest regulatory hit to the private sector as President Obama nears the end of his second term, following the Waters of the United States, the Clean Power Plan and the Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
The cost of those rules has been estimated in the tens of billions of dollars. In the case of the methane rule, however, the EPA reported Thursday that the costs to society would be outweighed by factors such as improvements to public health and “climate benefits” such as fewer natural disasters driven by global warming.
“EPA estimates the final rule will yield climate benefits of $690 million in 2025, which will outweigh estimated costs of $530 million in 2025,” said the agency’s press release.
A 2014 EPA report found that the oil and gas industry had reduced methane emissions by 12 percent since 2011, “the largest reductions coming from hydraulically fractured natural gas wells, which have decreased by 73 percent during that period.”
Lee Fuller, executive vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said the rules would actually increase methane emissions by making it more expensive to produce natural gas.
“Even worse, EPA’s new rules will have virtually no impact on global temperatures,” Mr. Fuller said in a statement. “Instead, they will make it much more difficult for companies to continue producing the clean-burning fuel that has been responsible for making the United States the world leader in greenhouse gas reductions.”
Sen. Tom Carper, Delaware Democrat, acknowledged the industry has made “significant strides” in reducing methane emissions, but that further government regulation is needed to guard against a projected increase.
“Today’s common sense regulations from the EPA will help to ensure that we produce energy responsibly and that we reduce our carbon footprint,” said Mr. Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s clean air subcommittee.
Anti-fracking groups praised the methane rule but also said it fell short of their goals, including a ban on hydraulic fracturing and fossil fuel production.
“To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must make deep cuts in all global warming pollutants, including methane. Today’s rule is a step forward, but it falls short of what’s needed to avert climate disaster,” said Rachel Richardson, director of Environment America’s Stop Drilling program.
She cited an EPA inventory released in April showing that methane emissions from 1990 to 2014 were 34 percent higher than previous agency estimates.
“In the near term, we need controls on existing fracking and drilling operations,” she said in a statement. “In the long term, we need to phase out our use of dirty fuels altogether and transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy.”
A study released last year by the National institute of Water and Atmospheric Research published in the journal Science challenged the contention that fossil-fuel operations are driving rising methane levels, saying farming practices were the actual culprit.
The taking of Metro one, two, three — minus the guns and thrill seekers. In today’s real-life situation, we all are hostages.
Like the transit workers and hijackers in the original 1974 Hollywood flick “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three,” passengers and overseers of the D.C. region’s system, Metro, are situated between a rock (money) and a hard place (public safety). In “Pelham,” the money involves a finite amount; with Metro, not so much.
Taxpayers have been bleeding money as Metro grew bigger and bigger without positive results, while accountability rarely came into view, leaving Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to deliver some choice words about Metro on Tuesday.
“We have the ability to withhold [federal] funds from Metro. We have the ability to shut Metro down, and we’re not afraid to use the authority we have,” Mr. Foxx said. “This is serious business.”
Federal transportation officials already know part of the problem: Metro has spending, planning and union issues, as would any single public agency the size of Metro, which has 13,000 workers.
But Metro has another problem: It has been hoodwinking Mr. Foxx’s agency.
Metro’s own Office of the Inspector General in a May 2014 report laid bare some of the agency’s spending problems and lack of accountability as they relate to labor. In short, the inspector general audit found that labor hours were improperly categorized, improperly reported and mischaracterized as capital expenditures and questionably charged to the federal government. (Good conservatives and liberals would be upset that taxpayers were footing such bills.)
The bottom line is that Metro’s internal controls are internally controlling spending, which explains why Mr. Foxx had to throw down the gauntlet.
Now, let’s turn our attention to the upcoming budget year, when we’ll be in the beginning phases of closing rail stations and lines while expecting Metrobus to pick up the slack.
First of all, Metro is starting out $18 billion in the hole, and, again, federal authorities are rightly reluctant to fill in the gap. The potential hole is in the capital budget over the next decade — the very expenditures that cover rail maintenance and renovations, the very problems we have been facing in recent years. Metro’s capital budgets also cover contracts, labor costs, and new rail lines and stations — expenditures that have been made courtesy of appropriations from Congress.
Still, the hijacking also comes via the three regional jurisdictions — D.C., Maryland and Virginia — whose leaders act more like they are partaking in a Three Stooges marathon than the elected officials of a coveted region.
So let’s peek at the 2017 budget, which takes effect July 1.
1) Metro wants to spend more on its maintenance facilities than it does on its rail rehab — $120.4 million vs. $86.7 million.
2) It wants to spend $1.7 billion on operations, such as personnel, labor and benefits. Knowing all the while that state and local governments have to pour tax dollars into Metro’s operations coffers lest they be further short-changed.
3) And the coffers are rock bottom — largely because Metro has long rejected fare increases and because any “extra” money goes to labor. Even the pension roosters are coming home to roost.
As I’ve said before, Metro was not imagined and built to be all things to all people. Something’s got to give, and give sooner rather than later.
We and Congress have been hijacked by Metro and our regional leaders, taken for granted.
Do we really want Mr. Foxx to exercise his due diligence because Metro did not?
This is serious. Because even if Mr. Foxx has only seen the Denzel Washington remake of “Pelham,” he would still to well to follow the money since all Americans are hostage to Metro’s hijacking.
Metro faces an $18 billion capital deficit over the next 10 years, news that shook regional lawmakers and prompted one to suggest privatizing the long-troubled transit agency.
In addition, the Federal Transit Administration ordered Metro to make immediate repairs to prevent fires on the subway system’s tracks, just days after issuing a safety directive with a threat of defunding and closures. The directive capped a week in which Metro’s new general manager laid out his plan for major repairs a day after the subway had suffered its eighth serious smoke-and-fire incident in two weeks.
At Wednesday’s meeting of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans told lawmakers about the $18 billion deficit the transit agency anticipates in its capital budget over the next decade. He pleaded with them to pressure the federal government to step up its contribution to the rail system’s operating costs, adding that little else can be done to improve Metro’s financial situation.
“I can’t even take this thing and put it into bankruptcy because there’s no law that covers this,” he told the group.
Mr. Evans, who was elected chairman of the Metro Board of Directors in January, also noted that maintenance costs will total $10 billion over the next 10 years.
“We have no way of paying for that. Nothing,” he said. “The finances are worse than the operations.”
COG Vice Chairman Matthew F. Letourneau suggested privatizing the system as a major step to fix Metro’s financial mess.
“I haven’t heard that kind of discussion from the Metro Board,” said Mr. Letourneau, a Republican on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. “We just heard everybody talking about how Metro can’t fail and that it’s the spine of the region, so that needs to be on the table.”
Mr. Evans, a Democrat who represents Ward 2 on the D.C. Council, said that privatizing some parts of the regional subway system could happen but that it isn’t likely.
What’s more, he said it’s going to cost about $3 billion to replace the aging railcars with the new 7000 series.
“If you want to see an original rail car from Metro in 1976, you think you’d go to the Smithsonian,” Mr. Evans said. “No, go to Metro; we’re still running them.”
Shortfalls in Metro’s revenue from fares and advertising are covered by contributions from the jurisdictions it serves in the District and its suburbs in Maryland and Virginia. The federal government finances Metro’s capital construction projects at $150 million a year, but it does not provide any funds for operations.
Funding for maintenance varies, with the District providing about $312 million for fiscal 2016 — the most of any jurisdiction in the region. In Maryland, Prince George’s County gave $180 million and Montgomery County $139 million. In Virginia, Fairfax County provided $118 million, Arlington County $58 million, Alexandria $34 million, and Falls Church and Fairfax City each gave $2 million.
Persuading regional lawmakers to donate more tax dollars to Metro could be difficult, and Mr. Letourneau said Democrats and Republicans will have to put politics aside to solve the funding problem.
“They’re going to have to come to the table and have discussions that are politically uncomfortable for them if they want Virginia to be on board,” Mr. Letourneau said of his Democratic colleagues in Maryland and District. “If that’s what it’s going to take to fix Metro, I hope it’s not an insurmountable hurdle.”
Metro celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, having grown to 118 miles of track and 91 stations in that time.
Meanwhile, the Federal Transit Administration, which assumed oversight of Metro safety issues in October, directed the transit agency on Wednesday to repair three segments of its tracks immediately to minimize the risk of smoke and fire.
Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said the FTA order will require changes to the “SafeTrack” repair plan that Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld announced on Friday. The plan calls for early subway service closures and single-tracking of commuter trains, as well as shutting down track segments for weeks at a time.
The FTA directive also orders Metro to reduce power flowing through the subway’s electrical cables, and Mr. Stessel said that transit officials have implemented new speed limits on trains in the system’s core in downtown Washington.
Metro has long been plagued by smoke incidents that have endangered passengers, delayed schedules and raised concerns about the subway system’s safety and reliability. The most infamous occurred in January 2015, when a passenger was killed and 86 others were injured in a smoke-filled tunnel at the L’Enfant Plaza station. In March Metro officials shut down the entire system for 29 hours to inspect power cables along the tracks.
COG Chairman Roger Berliner, who also serves on the Montgomery County Council, said the organization’s members need to come together to find a solution.
“We are completely committed as a region to doing what we must do to support this unbelievably important organization,” Mr. Berliner said. “We cannot wait to step in here, so we will be working very hard with our business community and legislators to come up with funding mechanism.”
The economy is gasping, the world shudders in violence, invaders heave across our southern border, and despair is etched on the faces of the American people. So, in the final year of his reign, what does our great Prophet of Hope and Change give us?
Bathroom liberation. Pee free or die! Equality before the commode!
President Obama and his crew of craven, lawless radicals have trivialized everything that is most sacred and cherished in America. And they have elevated and sanctified all that is trivial and pernicious.
In Cuba, Mr. Obama takes his foreign policy cues from Jay Z and Beyonce. In Iran, he makes secret dirty deals with the most hateful, murderous totalitarian fiends on the global stage.
In North Carolina, he has taken a Tempest in a Toilet and turned it into Bedlam in the Bidet.
What started as a ridiculous grasp for attention by silly people on the town council of a sleepy little city in North Carolina has now become, thanks to Mr. Obama, a national debate over whether people who are scientifically, technically male have the right to hang out in the women’s bathroom. You know, use the bathroom, powder their noses, take some selfies. Do a little lurking. Maybe rape somebody.
Seriously? Are these people serious?
In response, the State of North Carolina passed a law saying, No, people who are technically and scientifically men CANNOT hang out in the ladies’ room.
Well, this triggered something fierce in the Obama administration, who dispatched the most powerful law enforcement officer in the land to settle it. Because this is the issue that is so urgently pressing against America’s most vital interests today. And when Attorney General Loretta Lynch arrives on the scene, she does what?
This legal giant — the great legal scholar’s legal scholar — announced she is going to sue the state of North Carolina on behalf of you, the citizens of the United States. Not because some backwater city council is confused about which public bathrooms grown men and women should be using. No, she is suing the state of North Carolina for clearing it all up for them.
And, because absolutely everything this administration does is viewed through the distorted lens of race and racism, Ms. Lynch couched the controversy in terms of race.
“This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation,” she said, reading from a prepared statement we assume she had actually thought about before committing to paper.
“We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation,” she said, with a straight face.
Because telling a dude with his camera phone to stay out of the lady’s room is no different from telling a black woman she may not use the bathroom for white women. Or, that black people must sit at the back of the bus.
Having dedicated men’s rooms and women’s rooms is the same thing as denying black children an education.
This is some kind of joke, right? These people cannot be serious. Yet, they are. Deadly.
The path to lawless bedlam in America is paved by trivializing what’s important and amplifying the ridiculous.
Yes, it reveals much about the darkened souls of Mr. Obama and Ms. Lynch that they would choose to make political hay out of seriously disturbed people struggling with mental illness and sometimes even physical deformities. These poor people should be shown love and respect, not trotted around like some kind of freak show in Mr. Obama’s traveling political carnival.
Even worse, though, it reveals just how clueless Mr. Obama and Ms. Lynch are about the long and real struggles blacks had to overcome in America to become truly whole citizens in this great country.
They disgrace the truly brave and serious people whose shoulders they so undeservingly stand on.
Facebook employees tasked with telling users what’s trending are routinely told to dismiss articles of interest to conservative readers, former staffers at the social network claim, though Facebook said later in the day that its guidelines prohibit such discrimination.
The former “news curators,” as they’re known internally, told tech blog Gizmodo on Monday that links appearing in Facebook’s “trending” news section don’t necessarily reflect the web’s most popular articles, claiming management asked them to ignore the results of the network’s own algorithms when the results indicated articles involving right-wing topics were organically gaining in popularity.
“Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” claimed one former curator. “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.”
Other topics that were reportedly suppressed on the social network include IRS official Lois G. Lerner, Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and ex-Fox News contributor Steven Crowder.
According to one former employee, viral articles appearing on known conservative sites, including Breitbart and Newsmax, were purposely excluded from Facebook’s trending news section until they were picked up by mainstream outlets such as The New York Times and CNN.
“It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,” the former employee said. “Every once in a while a RedState or conservative news source would have a story. But we would have to go and find the same story from a more neutral outlet that wasn’t as biased.”
In response to the claims, Facebook said Monday it was taking the accusation of bias “very seriously” and claimed that rigorous guidelines are in place to ensure news articles listed as trending are kept consistent and neutral.
“These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics,” Facebook said.
Indeed, within hours of the Gizmodo article appearing online, accusations of bias against Facebook was a “trending topic” when users logged on Monday afternoon.
RedState managing editor Leon Wolf told Politico on Monday that he was not previously aware of the accusations made by the former Facebook staffers, but would be “extremely disappointed if a supposed honest broker of online news was putting a finger on the scales to harm conservative viewpoints.”
“We are glad that increased attention is being paid to the tremendous influence that Facebook wields in the way people consume their news and are hopeful that, at the end of the day, Facebook will honor its commitment to its users to be an honest broker of news content,” said Mr. Wolf.
Facebook has boasted over 1 billion account holders internationally since 2012, and around 63 percent of its U.S.-based users said, according to Pew Research, that they got news through the social network in 2015, up from 47 percent in 2013.
Breitbart News said Monday that the Gizmodo report confirms what “conservatives have long suspected: Facebook’s trending news artificially mutes conservatives and amplifies progressives.”
“Facebook claims its algorithm simply populates ‘topics that have recently become popular on Facebook’ in its trending news section, but now we know that’s not true,” Breitbart News said in a statement read in part, though it also noted that it “remained in the top 25 Facebook publishers for six months in a row.”
“In a spirit of transparency and community, we invite Mark Zuckerberg to do a Facebook Live interview with Breitbart News Tech Editor Milo Yiannopoulos to explain to the tens of millions of conservatives on Facebook why they’re being discriminated against,” the Breitbart statement said.
“In a spirit of transparency and community, we invite Mark Zuckerberg to do a Facebook Live interview with Breitbart News Tech Editor Milo Yiannopoulos to explain to the tens of millions of conservatives on Facebook why they’re being discriminated against,” the Breitbart statement said.
But it’s a stricture honored more in the breach than in compliance, according to statistics obtained by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which found that of the millions of legal immigrants living in the U.S. and collecting welfare or other public benefits, only a single person was kicked out of the country over the last three years for becoming a public burden.
That seems to fly in the face of federal policies that, dating back to the very first broad immigration law in the 1880s, have demanded that immigrants prove they will be able to support themselves.
New immigrants can be denied if they can’t show their financial means, and those already in the country can be deported if they fail to live up to the bargain — but that hardly ever happens, according to FAIR’s data.
The group had asked the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which hears the cases, for data on five countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba and Colombia. EOIR said it found just three cases brought between 2013 and 2015, all of them against Mexicans, and only one of those charges was sustained.
EOIR said it didn’t have data for all nationalities.
No enforcement means more impoverished immigrants willing to test their chances, said Ian Smith, the FAIR investigator who obtained the data.
“Like all removal grounds, they’re supposed to deter that behavior, and it’s there to make sure that [those] people come into this country are at least somewhat desirable,” he said. “It was supposed to be a filtration mechanism. It’s like anything. If you don’t enforce it, the deterrence element gets turned off.”
More than half of immigrant-led households use at least one welfare program, according to research by the Center for Immigration Studies. By comparison, 30 percent of households led by native-born U.S. citizens take welfare.
Immigrants from Mexico and Central America have the highest rate, with nearly three-quarters using at least one program. The Caribbean is second, with a 51 percent use rate.
The center said that’s not surprising given that welfare is inversely related to education, meaning the less educated someone is, the more likely he or she will be poor and will take welfare. Central American and Mexican immigrants are overwhelmingly less educated, according to the center’s findings.
But making charges stick against immigrants on the dole is exceedingly difficult, analysts say.
While the law doesn’t define “public charge,” court cases and guidance the Clinton administration issued in the late 1990s has restricted when agents can pursue cases.
According to those requirements, many welfare programs don’t even count against immigrants, and even when they do, states or federal agencies must have tried to get the immigrant to repay the money, a judge has to have sided with the government’s case, and the immigrant must have refused to comply in order for a public charge case to stick. The violation also must have occurred in the first several years after an immigrant was admitted.
“Collectively, the various sources addressing the meaning of public charge suggest that an alien’s receipt of public benefits, per se, is unlikely to result in the alien being deemed removable on public charge grounds,” the Congressional Research Service concluded in a report earlier this year.
Mr. Smith, the FAIR investigator who obtained the new data from the government, said it’s time to loosen the requirements.
“More programs, not just cash programs, should be made out of bounds for immigrants when it comes to public charge removability. America’s bountiful welfare system is a major magnet for unskilled foreigners to come here,” he said.
A top EOIR official told FAIR that the government’s rare use of public charge cases is likely due to the difficulty of making the charges stick. He said when federal officials decide someone needs to go, they go after some other breach that’s easier to prove.
The EOIR declined to comment to The Washington Times, saying the agency doesn’t interpret its data, nor will it discuss individual cases.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for bringing the cases in the first place, signaled that it’s focused on more serious cases such as risks to national security.
“ICE is committed to focusing on smart, effective immigration enforcement and makes custody determinations on a case-by-case basis, prioritizing serious criminal offenders and other individuals who pose a risk to national security or public safety,” said Jennifer Elzea, an ICE spokeswoman.
The Republican establishment has watched in horror this primary season as their presidential picks have, one after another, been marched out to slaughter, leaving the party’s leaders in Washington stunned and under growing pressure to give up the fight and rally around the insurgents.
It’s a massive reversal from the past few decades, when an establishment candidate would emerge and, after triumphing in the first couple of months of primaries, conservatives would be told to put down their rhetorical weapons and embrace the establishment candidate. The alternative, conservatives were warned, was to risk a loss to Democrats in the fall.
“The shoe is now on the other foot,” said Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian religious-conservative group.
This year, two anti-establishment Republicans have emerged: Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, who combined have won an overwhelming share of both the votes and the convention delegates.
But establishment figures have been slow to embrace either, fearing for their own grip on power within the Republican Party and warning of electoral disaster if either man is the nominee.
“I think the national contours of Republican politics is up in the air. The script has been flipped, and it being rewritten,” said Larry Jacobs, political science professor at the University of Minnesota. “The tectonic plates of Republican politics have shifted, and, frankly, I don’t know if it is ever going back.”
But Mr. Jacobs also warned that the fact that the party establishment has been toppled in the nomination race is “just part of the story.”
“What happens during the general election?” he said. “There is growing angst among Republican officeholder [as to] what this means. Senate races, statehouse races, these all are going to be impacted if you have a divisive candidate atop the ticket that discourages old-time Republican voters to sit it out.”
Coming into the presidential race, Republican insiders were giddy over the likes of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, backed by a fundraising juggernaut, lining up for the nomination.
They also were pumped up about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich climbing onto the national stage, alongside rising stars like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, whom Republicans thought could bridge the gap between establishment-friendly figures and the grass-roots conservative and tea party activists that helped Republicans flip control of the House and Senate in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.
Mr. Kasich has lasted the longest — though he has won only a single nomination contest in his home state.
Still, he has hung around in hopes of denying Mr. Trump — who has dubbed Mr. Kasich “1 for 46” — the 1,237 delegates he needs to wrap up the nomination and avoid a contested convention, where some Republicans would hope to steer the nomination away from the New York billionaire and toward a “white knight” of their choosing.
President Obama, speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend, poked fun at the jam Republican leaders find themselves in.
“Asked if you wanted steak or fish, a whole bunch of you wrote in [House Speaker] Paul Ryan,” Mr. Obama said with a chuckle, knowing that while Mr. Ryan has taken himself out of consideration, many had cast him in that “white knight” role. “That’s not an option folks — steak or fish. You may not like steak or fish, but that’s your choice.”
Indeed, high-profile Republican figures are torn.
Mr. Romney, who flirted with running a third time before the race began, exemplifies the path of the “Stop Trump” movement.
On Super Tuesday, he explicitly encouraged strategic voting, campaigning with Mr. Kasich in Ohio and recording calls and otherwise “endorsing” Sen. Marco Rubio to voters in his home state of Florida.
Almost immediately after Super Tuesday, he shifted again, backing Mr. Cruz and calling a vote for Mr. Kasich de facto support for Mr. Trump.
Meanwhile, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose presidential campaign flamed out early on, over the course of a couple of weeks went from joking about Mr. Cruz’s murder — “if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you” — to reluctantly embracing him as their best bet to torpedo Mr. Trump.
Former House Speaker John A. Boehner, however, signaled last week that he is more open to Mr. Trump. Mr. Boehner described Mr. Cruz, whose entire campaign is based on the very public way that he has challenged Republican leaders since being elected to the Senate, as “Lucifer in the flesh.”
Mr. Cruz’s image also has been tarnished by the deal he made with Mr. Kasich to make sure their campaigns did not overlap their resources in the hopes of stopping Mr. Trump.
“When Cruz became the vehicle of the ‘Stop Trump‘ movement, he took on a patina of being an insider in a way that kind of stopped him right in his tracks,” said Frank Cannon, president of the American Principles project.
“The thing that has been consistent the whole election cycle has been that people said they want somebody who is outside Washington, who doesn’t have experience, which is the most un-Republican thing that you could possibly say,” he said.
Whatever the case, polls show Mr. Trump is leading Mr. Cruz by double digits ahead of Tuesday’s primary in Indiana, putting him on the verge of notching his 28th win of the primary season. Mr. Cruz has topped the field in 11 contests and has claimed victory in the delegate chase in North Dakota and Colorado.
Trump and Cruz supporters are pressuring the rest of the party to rally behind their candidate.
Mr. Perkins said it is a stark turnaround from 2012, when a member of Mr. Romney’s campaign tried to compel him to support the former Massachusetts governor by asking: Where else do social conservatives go?
“That was the mindset — that conservatives had no place to go, so they had to vote for him,” he said of Mr. Romney. “The establishment, this time it is their turn. Where are they going to go? Are they going to go to Hillary?”
Even before the skeptical documentary “Climate Hustle” hits U.S. theaters Monday, it already has unsettled the climate change debate.
Weather Channel founder John Coleman rushed to the defense of the film, which challenges the catastrophic climate change narrative, after “science guy” Bill Nye slammed it in a clip released over the weekend as “not in our national interest and the world’s interest.”
“I have always been amazed that anyone would pay attention to Bill Nye, a pretend scientist in a bow tie,” Mr. Coleman said Saturday on the website Climate Depot.
“As a man who has studied the science of meteorology for over 60 years and received the [American Meteorological Society] Meteorologist of the Year award, I am totally offended that Nye gets the press and media attention he does,” Mr. Coleman said. “And I am rooting for the ‘Climate Hustle’ film to become a huge hit — bigger than ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by Al Gore.”
Indeed, the documentary by Climate Depot’s Marc Morano bills itself as a response to the former vice president’s Academy Award-winning 2006 documentary, which sparked international alarm with its warnings of imminent environmental disaster fueled by rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
“Climate Hustle,” which has a one-day screening at theaters nationwide Monday, argues that the climate change catastrophe scenarios are part of an “overheated environmental con job” aimed at creating hysteria to drive public support for bigger government and ever-increasing regulation.
The documentary’s full name is: “Climate Hustle: Are They Trying to Control the Climate … Or You?”
Anthony Watts, who runs the skeptical climate website Watts Up With That, said the documentary is the first aimed at debunking the claims of the climate change movement. He called the film “corny” at times but also vastly more entertaining than ponderous climate documentaries such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s 2007 “The 11th Hour,” which bombed at the box office.
“[T]hat’s the purpose of this film, to make people laugh at the ridiculous claims that have been created about global warming/climate change. Morano does this and does it well. That’s the power behind this film,” Mr. Watts said in his review.
The film has won similar praise in reviews on conservative and free market outlets including National Review, Breitbart and The Daily Caller. Hollywood in Toto’s Christian Toto called “Climate Hustle” “brutally effective” and “the most dangerous documentary of the year.”
Meanwhile, the climate change movement has blasted the film as propaganda. The liberal website DeSmog created another website, Climate Hustler, aimed at discrediting the film and Mr. Morano, a former Republican staffer for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
“Climate Hustle, Morano’s new ‘documentary film’ is pure propaganda. It is a snake oil salesman’s latest attempt to confuse the public about the urgent need for political action to address the global warming crisis driven by burning fossil fuels,” said the website.
In an interview with Mr. Morano, Mr. Nye says in the documentary, “I think it will expose your point of view as very much in the minority and very much not in our national interest and the world’s interest.”
Climate change advocacy groups routinely accuse skeptics of being funded by the fossil fuel industry — the Climate Hustler site shows dollar signs raining down from a factory smokestack — but several reviews of “Climate Hustle” point out that it’s clearly not a big-budget affair.
DeSmog quotes filmmaker Randy Olson describing the “Climate Hustle” as “very amateurish,” while Mr. Watts says that’s part of its charm.
“[D]espite the claims of millions of dollars from oil companies we are all supposed to be getting, its production values give away that it was made on a shoestring, and has none of the glitzy production values of these other films that bombed,” Mr. Watts said in his review.
Mr. Morano tries to interview scientists who end up fleeing from the microphone. Other scientists say that expressing skepticism on global warming comes with a price.
“The film’s most effective moments come when left-of-center experts describe how they abandoned their previous climate change positions,” Mr. Toto says in his review. “Doing so opened them up to scathing critiques from their colleagues.”
Mr. Morano, whose Climate Depot website is a project of the free market Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, has a knack for drumming up publicity. He spurred a kerfuffle in December by staging the “world premiere” of the film at the Paris climate talks, prompting environmentalists to plaster “wanted” posters with his face throughout the city.
“Climate Hustle” features a panel discussion after the film with Mr. Morano, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell and David R. Legates, professor of geography and climatology at the University of Delaware.
The global economy is sick and its central bank doctors risk making it sicker. There has been a steady worldwide march toward cheaper credit, in hopes of resuscitating lagging growth. However, this treatment threatens a twofold risk: encouraging moral hazard in the short run and harming the market mechanism in the long run.
In January, the Bank of Japan took the drastic step of instituting negative interest. The European Central Bank followed, taking certain interest rates to zero and instituted negative rates on deposits. While both are extreme, they are merely the vanguard of an ongoing global movement of “subsidized credit” by monetary authorities.
As growth has continued to slow, central banks have leaned ever further forward, exhausting the range of conventional remedies. The subsidized credit cure is just the logical extension of an illogical focus on symptoms instead of the disease. The resulting risk is that formerly short-term emergency measures are becoming extended-term ones, with long-term negative consequences.
Moral hazard is the first threat arising from subsidized credit. The risk of moral hazard increases when the consequences of bad decisions decrease. The more consequences diminish, the greater the threat that risks will be taken.
Contrary to common perception, it is not the excessive risk-taking that is the non-economic decision here — just the opposite: The non-economic decision is the initial one to reduce risk’s consequences.
By subsidizing credit below its true economic costs — even in the well-intentioned desire to stimulate growth — investments’ risk and reward equations swing dangerously out of kilter. With government-subsidized credit, an investment’s risk of failure is reduced, so its de facto return increases. Confronted with subsidized lending, all parties’ logical economic decision is to take increasing risk.
Subsidized credit also has more market-based repercussions.
Subsidized credit distorts market information, just like it encourages risky individual behavior. Properly functioning markets exchange information through the price mechanism. When the price mechanism is distorted — through the subsidization of credit costs and actors’ insulation from the true economic cost of credit, risk and return — the information the market disseminates through prices is distorted, too. The end result is a misallocation of resources, as the economy shifts from its most efficient course.
Once distorted, the market becomes dependent on the subsidies distorting it. Why seek paths other than those encouraged by subsidies offering lower risk and higher return? The process’ final step is market atrophy. Diverted from its proper course, the market becomes unable to pursue another — ceasing to operate as a free market at all.
Subsidized credit’s market-based threats most recently appeared during the financial crisis. Lenders, encouraged to increase housing ownership and then able to offload risk, reaped high returns from doing so. The returns on such low-cost and low-risk activity were disproportionately high. Resources, therefore, poured into that sector and the financial sector that securitized the transactions.
Of course, economic reality stretches only so far before snapping back. When it did — with a vengeance — it revealed an enormous misallocation of resources and, ultimately, wealth destruction.
Ironic indeed that central banks ostensibly aiming for today’s recoveries are following the path of yesterday’s financial crisis — only this time, doing so on a more massive scale, across sectors and continents.
The global economy is indeed hurting. Analogous to sickness, its symptoms are signals — attempts to communicate what ails it. Simply treating symptoms without diagnosing the underlying cause is to condemn the patient to continual convalescence.
The deepening and extending use of subsidized credit is similar to continuing use of painkillers to the point of addiction. There is a place for temporary government action in response to temporary crisis, just as painkillers play a role in allowing a patient’s recovery. However, they are meant to enable treatment; they are not treatment in themselves — means, not ends — and they certainly should not be mistaken for health.
Central banks and their governments are falling victim to dependency on subsidized credit. They continue to measure their efforts in increasingly meaningless — and decreasingly robust — gross domestic product figures that have less and less real growth supporting them.
Though pursued through a variety of forms — both monetary and fiscal policy — these attempts are merely variations on government subsidization of economic activity. It has become the numbing norm, instead of the needed but painful reform. The global economy is increasingly sedated — not healthier — while internally, risk mounts.
A severe drought currently ravaging Southeast and South Asia has helped spotlight China’s emergence as the upstream water controller in Asia through a globally unparalleled hydroengineering infrastructure centered on damming rivers. Indeed, Beijing itself has highlighted its water hegemony over downstream countries by releasing some dammed water for drought-hit nations in the lower Mekong River basin.
In releasing what it called “emergency water flows” to downstream states over several weeks from one of its six giant dams — located just upstream of where the Mekong flows out of Chinese territory — China brashly touted the utility of its structures in fighting droughts and floods.
But for the downriver countries, the water release was a jarring reminder of not just China’s newfound power to control the flow of a life-sustaining resource, but also of their own reliance on Beijing’s goodwill and charity. With 14 additional dams being built or planned by China on the Mekong, this dependence on Chinese goodwill is set to deepen — at some cost to their strategic leeway and environmental security.
Armed with increasing leverage, Beijing appears to be pushing its Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) initiative as an alternative to the lower-basin states’ Mekong River Commission, which China has spurned over the years. The Lancang-Mekong Cooperation, a political initiative emphasizing Chinese “cooperation,” is intended to help marginalize the Mekong River Commission, an institution with legally binding rules and regulations. China’s refusal to join the 1995 Mekong treaty, which created the commission, has stunted the development of an inclusive, rules-based basin community to deal with water- and environmental-related challenges.
It was no coincidence that Beijing’s water release started shortly before the March 23 inaugural Lancang-Mekong Cooperation summit of the leaders of the six Mekong basin countries in Sanya, China.
The LMC project is also designed to overshadow the U.S.-sponsored Lower Mekong Initiative, which seeks to overcome Chinese opposition to the Mekong treaty by promoting integrated cooperation among Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Mekong, Southeast Asia’s lifeline that is running at a record low since late last year, is just one of the international rivers China has dammed. It has also targeted the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra), the Arun, the Indus, the Sutlej, the Irtysh, the Illy, the Amur and the Salween.
Asia’s water map changed fundamentally after the communists took power in China in 1949. It wasn’t geography but guns that established China’s chokehold on almost every major transnational river system in Asia, the world’s largest and most-populous continent.
By forcibly absorbing the Tibetan Plateau (the giant incubator of Asia’s main river systems) and Xinjiang (the starting point of the Irtysh and the Illy), China became the source of transboundary river flows to the largest number of countries in the world, extending from the Indochina Peninsula and South Asia to Kazakhstan and Russia.
Before the communists seized power, China had only 22 dams of any significant size. But now, it boasts more large dams on its territory than the rest of the world combined. If dams of all sizes and types are counted, their number in China surpasses 90,000.
China’s dam frenzy, however, shows no sign of slowing. The country’s dam builders, in fact, are shifting their focus from the dam-saturated internal rivers (some of which, like the Yellow, are dying) to the international rivers, especially those that originate on the water-rich Tibetan Plateau. This raises fears that the degradation haunting China’s internal rivers could be replicated in the international rivers.
China, ominously, has graduated to erecting mega-dams. Take its latest dams on the Mekong: the 4,200-megawatt Xiaowan (taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris) and the 5,850-megawatt Nuozhadu, with a 190-square-kilometer reservoir. Each of them is larger than the current combined hydropower-generating capacity in the lower Mekong states.
Despite its centrality in Asia’s water map, China has rebuffed the idea of a water-sharing treaty with any neighbor.
Against this background, concern is growing among is downstream neighbors that China is seeking to turn water into a potential political weapon. After all, by controlling the spigot for much of Asia’s water, China is acquiring major leverage over its neighbors’ behavior in a continent already reeling under very low freshwater availability.
Asia’s annual water availability is barely one-tenth of that in South America, Australia and New Zealand; not even one-fifth of North America’s; nearly one-third of Europe’s; and a quarter less than Africa’s. Yet the world’s most rapidly growing demand for water for industry, food production and municipal supply is in Asia.
In the Mekong basin, China has denied that it is stealing shared waters or that its existing dams have contributed to river depletion and recurrent drought in the downstream region. Yet, by ramping up construction of additional giant dams, it has virtually ensured long-term adverse impacts on the critical river system. Indeed, with Chinese assistance, landlocked Laos also plans to build more Mekong dams in order to make hydropower exports, especially to China, the mainstay of its economy.
China is clearly not content with being the world’s most dammed country, and the only thing that could temper its dam frenzy is a prolonged economic slowdown at home. Flattening demand for electricity due to China’s already-slowing economic growth, for example, offers a sliver of hope that the Salween — which flows into Myanmar and along the Thai border before emptying into the Andaman Sea — could be saved, even if provisionally, from the cascade of hydroelectric mega-dams that Beijing has planned to build on it.
More fundamentally, China’s unilateralist approach underscores the imperative for institutionalized water cooperation in Asia, based on a balance between rights and obligations. Renewed efforts are needed to try to co-opt China in rules-based cooperation.
We’re told our money will be changing. A woman will displace President Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill. Already there is spirited public comment, both for and against. Arguments about tradition and political correctness versus change and honor dominate, with each side making persuasive points.
The woman at hand — abolitionist Harriet Tubman — would likely not be enthralled with the public debate. One of America’s most important citizens, she was born into slavery around 1820 and as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, personally delivered over 300 people from slavery into freedom. She was also a spy for the Union during the Civil War.
Miss Tubman was a busy woman saving peoples’ lives. She was a not a politician seeking to use our currency as a way to entrench identity politics into our daily routines. Like the good Republican she was, she fought to end treating people differently because of their complexion and she used money to set people free, not enslave them to the political system.
The issue, consequently, isn’t Miss Tubman per se on the front of a bill; it’s the use of her to distract from the multitude of political changes to the backs of the bills which are also planned. This astounding political makeover places groups of liberal icons on the backs of the $5 and $10 bills federally sanctifying identity politics.
If President Obama has his way, the back of the new $5 bill will include the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., opera singer Marian Anderson and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The back of the new $10 bill will feature suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Alice Paul and Sojourner Truth.
Andrew Jackson, you may be surprised to learn, remains on the $20 bill in the Obama/Lew proposal, but he will be relegated to the back of the bill.
A liberal friend loved it (as expected), and then said something I didn’t see coming, “You want to know another reason why this is great? Because now we can consider the side with our heroes [read liberals, perceived or actual] as the front of the bill and leave conservatives with their side of old, dead, white men.”
Everything Mr. Obama does is political so, of course, the remaking of our currency fits within his consistent and declared desire to “fundamentally transform” the United States. Making even our currency completely political is perfectly Obama.
Many conservatives are inclined to remind people that King was a Republican. My point is not, however, about the individuals involved, but the portrayal of what liberals and leftist special interest groups claim as liberal victories. It’s Mr. Obama’s intentions and the politics of identity and division are at issue and at which he excels.
By placing feminist and black civil rights events on the bills themselves the Obama administration and his liberal sycophants are removing iconic structures that are apolitical (the Treasury building, as an example, will be removed on the $10 bill in favor of a suffragist march) with events that reinforce a false Obama meme — that the country is divided against itself because of our racism and sexism.
Our currency, moreover, is transformed into a subversive instrument suggesting “our side” versus “your side,” as my friend’s excited utterance revealed.
What the Democrats are trusting in, of course, is any rejection of these changes will be immediately labeled as racist and sexist.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said as much. As The New York Times reports, “One wild card is that Mr. Lew and President Obama have just months left in office. But Mr. Lew expressed confidence that his successors would not veto the currency makeovers. “I don’t think somebody’s going to probably want to do that — to take the image of Harriet Tubman off of our money? To take the image of the suffragists off?” he said.”
But, of course, the changes have not yet been made and the argument is already: If you disagree you must be a bigot. But Mr. Lew’s comment itself confirms the intention of this action as one of politics and division.
Certainly Mr. Lew and Mr. Obama should face the same quizzical inquiry about intention. Why, as an example, would they want to shift the overall apolitical position of our currency to one that immediately sinks us into the usual toxic special-interest politics so favored by incompetent politicians? Why would they want to introduce into our daily lives the “us vs. them” narrative?
Media narratives can last for years, especially if contradictory evidence is suppressed or ignored.
In an extraordinary Imprimis essay based on a speech in March at Hillsdale College, City University of New York journalism adjunct professor Charles Leerhsen sets the record straight on one of baseball’s greatest players, Ty Cobb.
A former Sports Illustrated editor, Mr. Leerhsen began researching for a new book (“Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty,” 2015), figuring to add anecdotes to further the Georgia native’s reputation as a mean, racist, dirty player. Going back to original sources, he found a far different picture of the man.
Here’s the scoop: Mr. Cobb holds many baseball records from his 24-year career, including a .366 batting average. He out-balloted Babe Ruth for entry into the Hall of Fame. He even stole home 54 times. But “the Georgia Peach” has become better known for wildness, such as sharpening his spikes to injure fielders as he slid into a base, beating up black people and wreaking havoc on and off the field.
“It is easy to understand why this is the prevailing view,” Mr. Leerhsen writes. “People have been told that Cobb was a bad man over and over, all of their lives. The repetition felt like evidence.”
Most of the “bad Cobb” meme is based on a biography by a ghostwriter, Al Stump, who Cobb threatened to sue when he got to see the manuscript. The book, “My Life in Baseball: The True Record,” went to press months after Mr. Cobb’s death in 1961, followed by a well-circulated magazine article by Mr. Stump.
When Mr. Leerhsen tried to corroborate, he found no substantiation and even the opposite of what was alleged. The sharpened spikes, he concluded, was a myth about certain players that began long before Mr. Cobb ever took the field. He found no evidence that Cobb did it, although Cobb did slide in very hard, sometimes with spikes up.
Mr. Stump also wrote that Mr. Cobb was so hated that only three people attended his funeral. Despite the Cobb family’s wish to keep the service private, “thousands of people packed the church and lined the way to the cemetery,” Mr. Leerhsen said.
Another writer, Charles Alexander, in a 1984 biography, wrote that Mr. Cobb fought with three black men, which indicated his racist tendencies. But Mr. Leerhsen found that “all three of the black fighters were in fact white.”
In 1994, the Tommy Lee Jones movie “Cobb,” contained an entirely fictional scene with an elderly Cobb trying unsuccessfully to rape a girl in Las Vegas.
It’s not that Mr. Cobb was meek; he got into more than his share of brawls with whites and blacks. But the racist narrative was too juicy to pass up. Even Ken Burns, who produced the PBS series “Baseball,” bought into Mr. Cobb’s bad boy image.
Conversely, Mr. Cobb, in 1952, told the Sporting News that he wholeheartedly supported integrating the major leagues. At Negro League games, Mr. Cobb had “thrown out the first ball and often [was] sitting in the dugout with the players,” Mr. Leerhsen writes.
When I read this remarkable corrective, I couldn’t help but think about other media memes.
An ongoing meme is the August 2014 Ferguson incident with “white police officer Darren Wilson gunning down unarmed African-American teen Michael Brown.” Never mind that Mr. Brown, who had just robbed a store, had been attacking Mr. Wilson, who was exonerated in the fatal shooting.
Another is the left’s conflation of voter ID laws with “minority voter suppression,” absent any proof whatsoever and in the face of considerable contrary evidence.
A few years ago, the media wove a wildly misleading narrative about “violent” Tea Party rallies contrasted with idealistic Occupy Wall Street operations. The Tea Party rallies were unfailingly peaceful, with participants picking up litter as they went. Occupy events were plagued by rioting, assaults, unsanitary conditions and even rapes. The media meme of “bad” Tea Parties and “good” Occupiers was spun via the sin of omission — ignoring reality.
How about the “doctored” videos exposing Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of aborted baby body parts? Knowing the media would reflexively defend the abortionists, undercover journalist David Daleiden released large chunks of unedited video that left no doubt as to what transpired.
It didn’t matter. The “heavily edited videos” narrative still inhabits virtually every media report.
The Republican “war on women” is an ongoing meme. How many times are we going to hear about Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” phrase from 2012 with the context omitted so as to suggest the GOP harbors the view that some rapes are okay?
One might think the “legitimate rape” narrative is so absurd that people would see through it. But not when it’s repeated ad nauseam.
As Mr. Leerhsen notes, “What I didn’t understand before was the power of repetition to bend the truth. In Ty Cobb’s case, the repetition has not only destroyed a man’s reputation, it has obliterated a real story that is more interesting than the myth.”
President Obama has become one of the nation’s most successful commanders in chief when it comes to at least one battlefield: the liberal agenda.
In his final months in office, Mr. Obama is leaving a legacy of a more politically correct armed forces, with the top brass squarely behind him, save the Marine Corps.
Perhaps not since Harry S. Truman’s landmark 1948 order to racially integrate the military has a president unleashed his own collective social revolution on the Pentagon with such success. In the process, the building also has become one of the administration’s loudest voices on battling climate change, even as its ability to fight one major war on schedule is in doubt due to budget cuts.
The White House also has given the Defense Department a gun control mission. And the “white privilege” movement, in which speakers tell a negative history of the white race, sporadically has invaded some military units.
A recent snapshot of the U.S. Army: Its headquarters sent out a series of Twitter messages last week reminding soldiers to celebrate Earth Day, complete with a photo of a green-shaded globe. This was a few days after the Army announced it had selected a group of newly minted female officers to try out for armor and infantry jobs long closed to women until Mr. Obama interceded. The Army also said in budget documents that soldiers now have the right to “self-identify” who they are, an apparent reference to selecting a gender.
Militarywide, the summer should see scores of women trying out for direct land combat occupations, including the Green Berets and Navy SEALs. Overall, the administration wants a higher percentage of women in the 1.3 million-member active force.
The president’s salute to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual) activists, who represent an estimated 65,000 personnel, is not stopping with 2011’s removal of the ban on openly serving homosexuals, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
There is at least one final step in Mr. Obama’s revolution: The Pentagon now is taking steps to remove restrictions on transgender people. The ban has been in place for decades based on medical reasons. One issue to be decided is bathroom and shower access.
Social conservatives are aghast, worried that the world’s finest military has become a sociological test tube.
“Instead of preparing for transgenderism and related social experiments, our troops should be concentrating on combat readiness,” said Elaine Donnelly, who directs the Center for Military Readiness. “The military is a resilient institution, but strong leadership in the next administration will be needed to restore its strength and morale.”
Retired Army Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, a commander in the Iraq War and occupation, said the military must keep up with changing mores.
“The U.S. military is a reflection of the society on whose behalf it serves. As that society changes, so must its military,” he said. “African Americans serving in the Civil War, integrated units, expanded roles of women — all have been part of the American military history, as will the current changes. Each change brings a period of adaptation. I expect that to be true of the most recent ones.”
‘Urgent and growing threat’
The Pentagon’s liberal makeover even extends to weapons systems.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus began naming warships after liberal civil rights and labor activists, and wants to ban occupational names that include gender. He and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter nixed a Marine Corps proposal, based on real-life studies, to keep the infantry all-male, in what is the only public pushback against the Obama social agenda.
“President Obama has not ‘won’ anything,” Ms. Donnelly said. “Social experiments that Obama imposed over the best professional advice of military leaders have weakened morale and combat readiness. Abundant Marine Corps research that the president ignored indicates that gender-mixed units will be slower, less strong and less effective in combat operations 69 percent of the time.”
Mr. Obama has elevated climate change to the top of his priorities list. He credited a climate summit in Paris as being a display of allied power against the Islamic State terrorist army that has committed widespread atrocities.
The president’s political appointees have injected climate change into every aspect of military operations, from testing weapons to field exercises to war planning.
The order came earlier this year in a directive from Mr. Carter’s office to all commanders. The directive also sets up a climate change bureaucracy.
Said the directive, which called for “resilience” against this enemy: “Incorporate climate change impacts into plans and operations and integrate DoD guidance and analysis in Combatant Command planning to address climate change-related risks and opportunities across the full range of military operations, including steady-state campaign planning and operations and contingency planning.”
A year earlier, the Pentagon called climate change an “urgent and growing threat.”
National security conservatives view the priority as a distraction, arguing that the Earth’s climate has been changing for billions of years and that parts of the U.S. used to be glaciers thousands of years ago.
“When we are strapped across the world to protect vital interests and we are asking warrior heroes to leave the ranks, now is not the time to squander our slim defense funds on Obama’s boondoggles,” said Robert Maginnis, a retired Army officer and longtime critic of various Pentagon left-leaning policies. “Our enemies laugh at our stupidity, and our allies shake in wonderment [at] how America, the once-great nation, is collapsing into the toilet bowl of history.”
Another Obama priority is gun control. In a governmentwide executive order on the subject, he specifically tasked the Pentagon — likely the Army — to begin a research-and-development program on “smart gun” technologies. This includes configuring a gun with biometrics or a PIN number so only the owner can fire it.
Critics say the project is another distraction. The Army has spent a decade trying to find the right pistol and still has not made a decision, bringing derision from Senate Armed Services Chairman Committee John McCain, Arizona Republican.
New, special training
The Pentagon also has grown the bureaucracy designed to handle sexual assault complaints and has stepped up prosecutions.
The campaign is spurred by Internet surveys that show a much higher rate of sexual assault in the military than does a Justice Department face-to-face national poll of individuals in the same age groups.
The Washington Times told the story of an Air Force sergeant who faced 130 years in prison for making sexual advances at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. At trial the combat photographer in Iraq and Afghanistan was found not guilty of all sex charges. The defense portrayed him as a victim of a dysfunctional office setting.
Sexual assault is broadly defined conduct that can be rape but also can be unwanted touching or an attempt at sexual contact.
Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, obtained Army documents this year that showed that “white privilege” training was conducted in April 2015 at Fort Gordon, Georgia, for 400 soldiers.
A PowerPoint slide said, “Our society attaches privilege to being white and male and heterosexual.”
It further said, “Race privilege gives whites little reason to pay a lot of attention to African Americans.”
Matt Thorn, executive director of OutServe-Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said the agenda for the LGBT community is not yet met at the Pentagon. One big item: Change the service records for thousands of gays given dishonorable discharges.
“We also must keep moving forward, continuing to ensure that all LGBT service members are treated equally and without fear of discrimination or hostility,” said Mr. Thorn, whose group represented gays targeted under the old ban. “This includes lifting the ban on open transgender service, expanding the countries that spouses may accompany their service member to, the inclusion of gender identity within the Military Equal Opportunity Program and working to see the first openly gay person to be secretary of the Army.”
That is a reference to Eric Fanning, whose nomination was approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee. It faces a “hold” by Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican, related to Mr. Obama’s plan to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“Nearly five years after the repealing of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ we can firmly say that the sky has not fallen,” Mr. Thorn said. “Gay and lesbian service members have now been serving openly and honestly and for the vast majority without any issue.”
The Pentagon agrees.
“The repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ has had no impact on military readiness, effectiveness, unit cohesion, recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces,” said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Gabrielle M. Hermes, a spokeswoman. “We attribute this success to our comprehensive pre-repeal training programs, combined with the discipline of our service members and continued close monitoring and enforcement of standards by our military leaders at all levels.”
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tore a hole in North Carolina’s bathroom bill Tuesday, ruling in a separate Virginia case that public school students have a right to use the facilities of their self-identified gender, not necessarily their biological sex.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory on Tuesday said he will respect the federal court ruling that applies directly to public schools while attorneys for the state figure out the details.
“As governor, I will uphold my oath of office and respect these court rulings, and make sure these court rulings are abided to, because I’ve sworn an oath to do just that and I have a tradition of doing just that,” Mr. McCrory said at a press conference after the ruling was handed down.
The Richmond-based appeals court ruled Tuesday that a Virginia school board violated the federal Title IX law by denying Gavin Grimm, a 16-year-old student who identifies as a boy, access to the male facilities. Title IX forbids institutions that receive federal education dollars from discriminating on the basis of sex and is best known as the law that boosted women’s sports in high schools and colleges.
The circuit court’s jurisdiction comprises Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
Mr. McCrory last month signed into law HB2, which prohibits people from using public facilities intended for the opposite sex. The law says public facilities such as bathrooms or showers should be segregated on the basis of biological sex, not gender identity.
The court decision does not totally strike down North Carolina’s bathroom bill, which also applies to facilities such as government buildings and public restrooms.
In addition, a clarification signed by Mr. McCrory this month makes it explicit that the bill does not apply to private enterprises, which can segregate their restrooms and gyms according to gender or sex, offer gender-neutral facilities or provide other accommodations.
However, if other federal courts or the Supreme Court understand “gender discrimination” as the 4th Circuit did — applying according to “gender identity” rather than “sex” — no part of the bathroom bill could survive given the numerous federal laws and court precedents against sex and gender discrimination in every field.
Gay rights groups praised the court ruling as “historic” and argued that it overturns the North Carolina law insofar as it applies to public schools.
“Today’s historic decision is not only a victory for Gavin, but for all transgender young people who are being targeted by discriminatory actions — including North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory’s anti-transgender HB2 law,” said a statement by Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign.
“We therefore expect public schools, including those in North Carolina, to immediately comply, ensuring transgender students full protections under the law, which includes full access to the appropriate facilities,” she said.
Mr. McCrory said the circuit court ruling ushers in a “major, major change in social norms” and that he expects the decision will be appealed to the Supreme Court.
“It is my understanding that this ruling will most likely be immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court; however, in the meantime, I’ve got to get an evaluation from our lawyers on — does this mean everyone has to go back, or initiate these new standards demanding that our public schools or high schools allow boys who have a gender identity of a girl be allowed to use a girls’ restroom, locker room or shower facility?” he said.
The 2-1 decision by the circuit court panel overturned a U.S. district court decision that Title IX bans discrimination according to sex, the actual word used in the law. Neither the word “gender” nor the term “gender identity” appears in the 37-word law.
The appeals panel also overturned the Gloucester County school board, which, in a 6-1 vote last year, denied the student’s request to use the facilities of the opposite sex.
After that decision, Gavin’s high school sought to accommodate the student by building several gender-neutral, single-stall restrooms accessible to all students. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the teen, said students must be allowed to use the facilities that correspond with their gender identity.
“I feel so relieved and vindicated by the court’s ruling,” Gavin said in a statement released by the ACLU. “Today’s decision gives me hope that my fight will help other kids avoid discriminatory treatment at school.”
Matt Sharp, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, called the outcome “disappointing.”
“Title IX, a federal law that this lawsuit cites in its attempt to overturn the school district’s policy, does just the opposite of what the ACLU is arguing: Title IX specifically authorizes schools to have separate restrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls,” Mr. Sharp said in a statement.
He said the school district’s policy of accommodating transgender students with separate facilities respected the rights of “students who aren’t comfortable using facilities designed for their biological sex without neglecting the established right of children to bodily privacy and safety.”
Several states have faced similar legal challenges from transgender students who want to use restrooms of the opposite sex.
In Colorado, for instance, 6-year-old Coy Mathis, who identifies as a girl, won an appeal to the state’s Civil Rights Division in 2013 after the first-grader’s school created several one-stall, gender-neutral restrooms as an accommodation.
But this is the first time a circuit court has weighed in on the issue.
In response to an emboldened gay rights movement, several states have considered preemptively enacting legislation barring people from using facilities of the opposite sex.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 17 states this year have considered legislation that would restrict access to restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities on the basis of biological sex.
South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, last month vetoed a bill that would have restricted use of public school facilities on the basis of biological sex — as well as require schools to make reasonable accommodations for nonconforming students.
Dozens of corporations, largely based in Silicon Valley and Hollywood, have threatened to curb their business activity in states that enact such measures.
In the hours before they took the stage for their March 29 press conference, Democratic attorneys general received a secret briefing from two top environmentalists on pursuing climate change dissenters.
Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Climate Accountability Institute’s Matt Pawa spent 45 minutes each providing talking points behind the scenes on “the imperative of taking action now” and “climate change litigation,” according to a cache of emails released over the weekend by the free market Energy & Environmental Legal Institute.
For climate change groups, the New York press event was the culmination of four years of planning and advocacy in support of an explosive proposition: using the legal system to link fossil fuel firms and others challenging the catastrophic global warming consensus to fraud and even racketeering, the emails and other documents show.
The effort paid off. At the press conference, which included former Vice President Al Gore, a coalition of 16 Democratic attorneys general and one independent — Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude E. Walker — announced that they would use the power of state government to explore legal avenues to challenge climate change dissent.
Four of the attorneys general have reportedly launched investigations into Exxon Mobil Corp., and Mr. Walker has issued a subpoena for 10 years worth of climate change documents and communications from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank.
Mr. Walker also issued a subpoena last month to Exxon Mobil, citing the territory’s laws against racketeering. The company filed a motion Wednesday to block the subpoena in Texas state court.
David Schnare, legal counsel for E&E, called on the coalition, operating under the name AGs United for Clean Power, to reveal its relationship with the climate change movement.
“We call on these AGs to immediately halt their investigation and lay out for the public the full extent of this collusion, producing all records or information provided them in briefings or other work with the outside activists, including those they are trying to keep secret through a Common Interest Agreement,” Mr. Schnare said in a Friday statement.
He highlighted a March 30 email from Mr. Pawa telling two members of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s staff about a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter about his attendance at the press conference.
Mr. Pawa asked, “What should I say if she asks if I attended? No comment?”
Lemuel Srolovic, environmental protection bureau chief for the New York attorney general, advised Mr. Pawa to say nothing about his participation.
“My ask is if you speak to the reporter, to not confirm that you attended or otherwise discuss the event,” Mr. Srolovic says in the email.
Mr. Pawa said in a Sunday email to The Washington Times that it is “inaccurate in attributing to me the idea that lawsuits should be used to achieve political outcomes.”
“I have always been consistent in my position that lawsuits should be brought to remedy legal wrongs,” Mr. Pawa said in an email.
The New York attorney general’s office told Reuters that it routinely seeks input from outside organizations but pursues cases based only on the merits.
The push for legal action against climate change dissent dates back to June 2012 when climate groups held a workshop, Establishing Accountability for Climate Change Damages: Lessons from Tobacco Control, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
Last year, a coalition of environmentalists and lawmakers led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat, petitioned the Justice Department to file a racketeering lawsuit against “corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.”
The collection of emails sheds new light on the close working relationship between the climate change movement and Democratic lawmakers.
The emails were obtained under the Vermont Public Records Law. Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell’s office helped Mr. Schneiderman’s staff organize the event.
In a March 30 email, Vermont Assistant Attorney General Scott Kline recommended changing the name of the Exxon/Fossil Fuel Company Investigations working group by removing the word “investigations.”
“Not all of the states have yet opened a formal investigation and there is some sensitivity here (and I suspect in some other states) to saying or indicating we have,” Mr. Kline said in an email to Mr. Srolovic.
He also recommended removing the word “progressive” from the “Climate Coalition of Attorneys General Pledge,” which originally stated, “We pledge to work together to fully enforce the State and federal laws that require progressive action on climate change and that prohibit false and misleading statements to the public, consumers and investors regarding climate change.”
Elsewhere, Mr. Kline objects to an effort by Mr. Schneiderman’s office to enter into a common interest agreement that would enable the coalition’s communications, including those with outside groups, to be protected by the privilege and thus exempt from public disclosure laws.
“Our thought has been that anyone providing anything in writing at the conference should assume that it may get produced because of some state’s public records laws,” Mr. Kline says in a March 28 email. “Matt and Peter should stick to what is in the public domain or be prepared to have those materials become public.”
Mr. Schnare said the emails “show Schneiderman’s office suggested their outside-activist green allies deceive the press; meanwhile, AGs in his coalition have subpoenaed at least one policy group’s correspondence with the media.” His reference was to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Joining Mr. Schneiderman, Mr. Sorrell and Mr. Walker at the press conference were Attorneys General George Jepsen of Connecticut, Brian E. Frosh of Maryland, Maura Healey of Massachusetts and Mark Herring of Virginia.
“As we all know, global warming, if not reversed, will be catastrophic for our planet,” said Mr. Sorrell. “We, the states, have a role to play in this endeavor and intend to do our part.”
Several Republican attorneys general have called the coalition’s effort an attack on free speech.
“This scientific and political debate is healthy, and it should be encouraged,” said a March 30 joint statement by Attorneys General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma and Luther Strange of Alabama.
“It should not be silenced with threats of criminal prosecution by those who believe that their position is the only correct one and that all dissenting voices must therefore be intimidated and coerced into silence,” they said. “It is inappropriate for State Attorneys General to use the power of their office to attempt to silence core political speech on one of the major policy debates of our time.”
Both have joined a lawsuit filed by 26 attorneys general challenging the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which requires strict emissions reductions in the name of combating climate change.
If the debate over marriage looks like it’s becoming more polarized, that’s because it is.
Professor John C. Eastman, founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, said the Supreme Court opened a Pandora’s box in June when it struck down all laws nationwide defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Rather than resolving an issue once and for all — as the court often thinks itself capable of doing — the decision only “further emboldened” the gay rights movement and led to a series of fights at the state level, he said.
“Now, they’re going after any exemptions for religious liberty and whatever. It’s incredibly polarized,” he said.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has sought to resolve political discord only to further inflame an issue.
“The consequence of trying to settle the issue, ignoring the political resolution that was in the works in Dred Scott v. Sandford, led to the Civil War,” Mr. Eastman said, referring to the 1857 Supreme Court decision that said slaves and their descendants could never become U.S. citizens.
He also pointed to the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade creating a constitutional right to abortion, which has sparked a nearly half-century culture war in which the question of abortion has taken center stage in the political arena.
“You can’t run for dog catcher in this country without people asking what your position on abortion is,” Mr. Eastman said.
The most prominent legal issue has shifted from abortion to gay marriage and religious freedom.
In response to, or in anticipation of, the Obergefell decision, 22 states in the past two years have introduced legislation that would protect various religious objectors from having to serve at same-sex wedding ceremonies, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Tennessee, for instance, has proposed legislation that would allow religious marriage counselors to refuse to serve same-sex couples. Mississippi enacted a law that protects people who hold traditional views of sexuality and marriage from governmental discrimination.
Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, said conservatives are using the Obergefell decision as a pretext to enact laws that they have long wanted on the books but didn’t have the political capital to implement.
“I think that there are individuals who have long wanted this to be true across the board, and they’re using the marriage-equality decision to gin up support in a moment when people are sort of contemplating how the world has changed for LGBT people,” Mr. Warbelow said.
“So I think the fierceness and the fury that we’re seeing in some of these bills is an attempt to enshrine discrimination in a moment when Americans are increasingly supportive of the LGBT community,” she said.
Such laws often result in a tidal wave of opposition from Silicon Valley- and Hollywood-based corporations, breeding resentment from states that believe business interests are usurping the democratic process.
Pressure from the business community has recently influenced two Republican governors of conservative states, South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard and Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, to veto legislation that the gay rights movement said was discriminatory.
Although North Carolina has maintained its ban on the use of public facilities intended for the opposite sex, more than 130 CEOs signed a letter urging Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, to repeal the legislation. Corporations such as PayPal and Deutsche Bank have canceled expansions into the state that would have created hundreds of jobs.
Such an outcome doesn’t surprise Clark Forsythe, acting president of Americans United for Life, who said the Supreme Court is uniquely unfit to legislate untethered from the text of the Constitution because it by design lacks democratic legitimacy.
“When the court takes issues out of the political process, out of the democratic process, when there isn’t a clear constitutional basis for doing so — a basis that’s found in the text, structure or history of the Constitution — then the court creates unprecedented constitutional rights and tends to make them broad and abstract and not subject to deliberations in the democratic process,” Mr. Forsythe said.
He said the democratic process gives people an outlet through which they can express political disagreements, which “tends to mollify and ease divisions.” But when the court reframes these issues as legal fights over rights, the “interpretation tends to be extreme.”
Mr. Eastman said the debate over marriage, like the abortion decision, is not going away anytime soon.
“I do believe this is going to remain contentious, particularly because the other side, emboldened by their victory in Obergefell, is now pushing the envelope to places where very few people want to go, which is transgender bathrooms and men in girl’s showers and all of these things that are now happening,” he said.
Obergefell may not be the last case on the matter for the Supreme Court.
“By taking on an issue that they’ve got no constitutional title to take on, they’ve obligated themselves to stay involved and become the perpetual overseer of this political controversy,” Mr. Eastman said. “It’s an unseemly role for the court, an illegitimate and unconstitutional one. They’ve brought it on themselves, and I think the very legitimacy of the court and the rule of law is going to be one of the collateral harms from their illicit involvement here.”
Indeed, Ms. Warbelow said many of these state laws may be unconstitutional given the precedent set in Obergefell.
“We think the Mississippi bill in particular [is unconstitutional] because it engages in impermissible viewpoint discrimination — that is to say, it privileges certain views about marriage and gender identity over others.”
“Climate change” is all about us. Nearly everybody believes in it. Who could not? Sometimes a sunny day changes to rain, sometimes snow changes to sleet. The wind blows on Tuesday but changes on Wednesday, from knocking down trees to barely putting a ripple on the surface of the lake. Mark Twain, noticing that some things lie beyond the meddling of man, observed that “everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.”
Now someone has. The attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands thinks he has found the way to silence, once and for all, the debate over global warming, or climate change, or whatever the radicals-that-be are calling the scheme this week. Global-warming jeremiahs are determined to intimidate, frighten and eventually fine or put in prison anyone who says the wrong thing about this best laid scheme of government. They’re determined to eliminate traditional sources of energy and replace them with politically correct but unreliable sources of energy, such as wind and solar power. That’s the beginning.
Claude Walker, the Blackstone of the Caribbean who leads the assault of the attorneys general, presented a subpoena this week to compel the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank in Washington skeptical of the climate scam, to turn over all its documents relating to the Institute’s research.
His 14-page subpoena, issued through the District of Columbia’s Superior Court, demands the Institute’s documents, communications, emails, op-eds, speeches, advertisements, letters to the editor, research, reports, studies and memoranda of any kind — including drafts — that refer to climate change, greenhouse gases, carbon tax, climate science and the like that in any way are related to Exxon Mobil or the “products sold by, activities carried out by ExxonMobil that directly or indirectly impact climate change.”
Mr. Walker reveals the real intent of his lawsuit with a demand for a list of donors to the Institute, the better to harass them with threats of legal harassment. “We’ve been targeted for our ideas,” says Kent Lassman, the new president and CEO of the Institute. Mr. Walker, in fact, is merely the mouthpiece for the attorneys general of 20 states who have joined to investigate and prosecute organizations that have exposed the doom’s day exaggerations of the global-warming industry.
A state attorney general is the small fry in any state capitol, usually only an advisory officer with little enforcement authority, often hanging about in hopes lightning will strike and he’ll get his name in the newspapers often enough to make it worth his while to run for governor or Congress. This joint effort to exploit the global-warming craze smells like that, and putting a few skeptics out of business could be the route to a better and more important job. Global-warming is a scam in distress, and opportunities knock, if only each other.
“Not everyone believes that the planet is warming,” Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, writes in USA Today, “and not everyone who thinks [the planet] is warming agrees on how much; not everyone who thinks that it is warming even believes that laws or regulation can make a difference. Yet the goal of these state attorneys general seems to be to treat disagreement as something more or less criminal.”
In fact, the ultimate goal of these legal worthies has little if anything to do with global warming or climate change. The goal is clearly to demonstrate that the government — any government — has the power to punish dissent and silence criticism, shut down objections and disagreement, and let the government get on, undisturbed, with whatever it wants to do. To do that, there’s no power so great as the power of the purse.
“[The subpoena] is designed not only to silence us,” says Myron Ebell, an official of the Institute, “but it is also designed to defund us. These [are] efforts to defund us and other free-market groups that have politically incorrect views on climate and some other major issues. We’ve been dealing with this for a long time, but I think we have now reached another level. When you get an attorney general involved, it’s no longer just a debate in the public base that tries to shut us up, but it’s using the full force of the state to do so.”
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is only a collateral target, and to destroy the Institute the attorneys general must destroy the First Amendment, the sacrosanct guarantee of the freedom of just about everything a citizen can see, smell, and taste. The amendment guarantees every person, however humble and insignificant in government eyes, the right to say whatever he pleases. Get rid of it, and the government won’t be disturbed no matter what evil it imposes on the rest of us.
The generation gap has morphed into a generations gap. Like everything else in our swoosh, swipe, snap and selfie-obsessed world, the gaps multiply and separate with the speed of sound. What used to make up meaningful moral conflicts between parents and children, a guide to the future, have proliferated into “process differences” between various age groups, abetted by changes in swiftly changing values.
How you communicate becomes more important than what you say.
In the past adults called the shots and the following generation rebelled, and now it’s generations X, Y and Z rebelling against each other, exploiting the latest update of electronic trinkets. An anthropologist might recognize these conflicts as “tribal,” not generational.
Differences between social attitudes and fashion trends, moral perspectives and achievement goals have always created gaps between generations, but the separations leading to those gaps today spring mainly from the different means of communicating, rather than the content of that communication.
For Generation Z, the youngest adults among us, email is for communicating only with old people, “the digital equivalent of putting on a shirt and tie,” writes Christopher Mims in The Wall Street Journal. “Many of them used tablets before using laptops, streaming before downloads and chat before email.” They’ve moved on, and email is a relic for dealing with old fogeys.
We haven’t begun to calculate what this portends for future understanding, but lots of people are taking notes and asking questions. The implications on politics, and how we elect leaders, is profound. More than ever, the medium is the message.
The most threatened by these changes are those who have lost control of the means of communication. Aging seniors find themselves dependent on their children and grandchildren to bring them up to speed with the latest technology. Unlike the elderly in the past, who were the comforting wise old heads, dispensing their accumulated knowledge earned through long-life experience, the elderly today are toddlers on the Internet. They must rely on the technically competent teenagers to teach them how to use the latest updates of computers and smart phones. It’s an uneasy dependency.
Older tweeters in public life, up-to-date techies or not, have less trouble with the latest technology than with their own impulse to send hasty, damaging tweets for which they must apologize. Donald Trump, who rarely expresses regrets for anything he does, confessed to racing ahead of good judgment when he tweeted that unflattering photograph of the wife of Ted Cruz, next to a glamorous studio shot of his wife, a professional model. Heidi Cruz, campaigning for her husband, tells Megyn Kelly of Fox News that she was spared having to acknowledge it because “I don’t tweet.” (Isn’t that refreshing?)
Hillary’s problem with her emails might never have happened if she had grown up with the new technology. As a boomer, the message came to her late. In taking shortcuts for convenience, she made her official emails vulnerable to hacking, and now she’s paying the price.
Generations who grow up on short, informal, electronic bursts of communication confront hazards of a different sort. Sloppy writing habits of short texts, abbreviations and slang will make it difficult for them to find work that requires the discipline of carefully thought-out ideas, put down in neatly written form.
Educators observe that the new electronic mode of communication may be as radical today as the printing press was in 15th century. Instead of expanding the ability to read books, electronic communications run the risk of addicting the young to the medium. They’ll suffer self-imposed isolation in social situations, with the tiny screen the focus of attention.
David Denby, who visited three high school English classes for his book, “Lit Up,” observed problems for appreciating literature in an adolescent world saturated with mobile devices. By the time the screen-obsessed generation is 15 or 16 years old, “reading anything demanding and time-consuming threatens to cut off their smartphone sense of being in touch with everyone and everything at once.”
Neuroscientists observe that the brain in adolescence still has a genuine capacity to change, to expand for learning. They call age 15 the “sweet spot” for enlarging literary education, but can’t figure out how to develop and encourage an appetite for reading when it’s in constant competition with smart phones, Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram.
A Pew survey last year reported that 92 percent of teens say they go online daily, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, but 1 in 4 say they go online “almost constantly.” If that doesn’t surprise, it should dismay. In one of the cruelest remarks in the sparring between the generations, one high school student, no fan of the printed page, told David Denby that “books smell like old people.” Not a good omen.
For the legions of procrastinators who have yet to file their 1040 Forms, the hours to come before April 18 may be the most taxing of the year. It wasn’t always that way, however. The annual squeeze on our purses is only a century old and its history is a classic example of Potomac fever running through the Capitol corridors like the plague. Here’s a line-by-line account:
Line 21: Other income. List type and amount. When the idea of a permanent income tax was broached in Washington in the late 1800s, the Treasury was overflowing with money. In fact, from 1866 to 1893, there were surpluses, thanks to hefty revenue from tariffs and excise taxes. Not one penny of additional tax money was needed.
Line 19: Farm income or (loss). The individuals who were down and out at the time were southern and western farmers, hard hit by overproduction and falling prices. They resented the rising wealth of industrial barons and corporations. An 1890 study revealed that of the more than 4,000 millionaires, most lived in the Northeast. So farm congressmen campaigned for an income tax for these high-rollers.
Line 13: Capital gain or (loss). Congress passed an income tax bill in 1894, but the Supreme quickly disallowed it on the grounds that it violated the constitutional provision relating to direct taxes, which had to be apportioned among the states. Farmers were outraged because the court earlier had upheld the validity of a tax levied during the Civil War. Opponents were delighted.
Line 23: Educator expenses. In April 1909 when the high court was reconstituted, farm congressmen educated the public on the necessity for another income tax bill. But opponents fought back by sponsoring a constitutional amendment authorizing the tax, figuring that the legislative path would be abandoned in favor of their ploy, which would never be ratified by three-fourths of the states.
Line 26: Moving expenses. What followed was one of the most moving debates in Congress. Sponsors of the amendment — mostly Republicans — denounced it as a “tax upon honest men and exemption … of the income of rascals.” Yet Congress voted in favor, 77 to 0 in the Senate, 318 to 14 in the House.
Line 8a: Taxable interest. Not surprisingly, farm states rushed to approve the amendment after it left Congress in July 1909, but there was also some surprising support from eastern states; Maryland, for example, was one of the early ratifiers. New York, the No. 1 home of millionaires, also voted in favor. Still, by the end of 1911, 31 states had approved, five short of the required number. Opponents thought the measure dead, for no amendment in history had survived such a lengthy audit.
Presidential Election Campaign Contribution: Interest in the amendment was rekindled in the 1912 presidential election. The Democrats and third-party Progressives favored the amendment, while the GOP kept a low profile. When Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the election, the die was cast. The 36th state, Wyoming, put the amendment into effect in February 1913.
Line 42: Exemptions. The first tax affected only about one-half of 1 percent of the population. Only $800,000 was needed to administer the law, with a grand total of 34 field agents employed by the Bureau of Internal Revenue. State officers were exempt from paying taxes, as were federal judges and the president.
Line 64: Federal income tax withheld. Most Americans got their first exposure to a 1040 Form in 1943 during World War II when the tax was democratized. Withholding was introduced that year, but the tax specifics were so complicated that President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a veto, appropriately on George Washington’s birthday. “The American taxpayer,” wrote Roosevelt, “has been promised of late that tax laws and returns will be drastically simplified. This bill does not make good that promise . These taxpayers, now engaged in an effort to win the greatest war this nation has ever faced, are not in a mood to study higher mathematics.”
Line 78: Amount You Owe. Congress overrode the veto.
Border Patrol agents have been ordered to release dripping-wet illegal immigrants at the Rio Grande unless they actually see them climbing out of the river, creating what amounts to “an open border with Mexico,” the chief of the agents’ labor union told Congress in new testimony last week.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told the House Judiciary Committee that agents were given the orders verbally soon after President Obama laid out plans for limiting immigration enforcement in 2014.
“We have apprehended illegal aliens just north of the border who are still soaking wet from crossing the river. If they claim, as increasingly they are doing, that they have been here since January 1, 2014, we will process and then release them,” Mr. Judd said in written testimony following up on questions from a hearing earlier this year.
“They are still wet from the river and miles from any civilization and on their word alone we release them unless we physically saw them cross the river,” he said. “This policy de facto creates an open border with Mexico for any illegal alien who wants to claim that they were here before 2014.”
The Jan. 1, 2014, date is not set in law, but rather is part of President Obama’s enforcement priorities he laid out in November of that year, designed to carve most illegal immigrants out of any fear of deportation.
In memos requested by Mr. Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said long-time illegal immigrants were to be given lower priority in favor of recent border-crossers, and those with gang ties or who have amassed serious criminal records in addition to their immigration violations.
Mr. Judd and other enforcement advocates say illegal immigrants have learned to game the system, automatically claiming they arrived before 2014. Agents say they’ve been told they have to take illegal immigrants’ word for it.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Homeland Security branch that oversees the Border Patrol, denied any such order had been given.
“The U.S. Border Patrol has not issued any stand-down order to agents,” the agency said in a statement to The Washington Times. “The Border Patrol’s enforcement posture and operation is the same as it was in 2014 and 2015, agents are issuing Notices to Appear consistent with law, regulation, and enforcement priorities.”
Mr. Judd and CBP have engaged in a fierce war of words this year, with the union chief in his initial testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in February saying that the Obama administration has re-started the maligned “catch-and-release” policy of the previous decade for illegal immigrants.
Mr. Judd said the administration was embarrassed by the large number of illegal immigrants caught at the border, so the government ordered the releases.
CBP Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske, in his own testimony to Congress a month later, said the NBPC was “probably not the most knowledgeable organization about what’s actually going on.” He said Mr. Judd and fellow agents who objected to Mr. Obama’s policies should look for new jobs.
Mr. Judd says that under the verbal directions, agents have been told to fingerprint illegal immigrants and process them to see if they have serious criminal records. But those that claim to have been here since 2013, and who don’t show up with problems in their criminal history, are released into the U.S. rather than held for deportation.
Both interior and border agents report that illegal immigrants, coached by smugglers, have quickly learned the new priorities and know the right words to use to avoid stricter scrutiny.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican and Judiciary Committee Chairman, said that’s led to more illegal immigrants trying to make the trip into the U.S.
“Word has spread around the world about the administration’s lax immigration policies and now we see unlawful immigrants gaming the system and the administration’s so-called ‘enforcement priorities’ to come here,” said Mr. Goodlatte, whose committee received Mr. Judd’s testimony.
“President Obama must end his disastrous open border policies so that we can begin to restore integrity to our immigration system and secure the border,” the Virginian said.
The Jan. 1, 2014, cutoff date Mr. Obama and Mr. Johnson set for enforcement priorities has been controversial from the start.
Illegal immigrants already in the pipeline for deportation were told they could have their cases dropped if they met the new cutoff and didn’t have serious criminal records.
But Hispanic rights groups said it left out many illegal immigrant children and families who fled Central America that summer, and who the advocates say should be treated as refugees.
On the other side of the debate, meanwhile, enforcement advocates call the date “arbitrary” and say it’s forced agents to turn loose those who should have been sent back home.
President Obama’s cavalier attitude toward the Brussels terrorist bombing (a Benghazi bump in the road) — as well as his detachment from and “no-show” at last November’s Paris gathering of 41 world leaders showing their solidarity against the Islamic jihadi terrorist attacks — was an embarrassment for all Americans. His aloofness should not come as a surprise.
He understands better than most Americans that the plague of jihadi terrorism has its roots in Islam. It explains why he directed that all training manuals be purged of anything that linked Islam with terrorism. Furthermore, Mr. Obama’s deliberate obfuscation of the scriptures of Islam, as found in the Koran and Shariah law, which drives jihadi acts of terrorism, has facilitated the spread of Islam and its supremacist ideology. It has aided and abetted the enemy.
Clearly, that’s why Mr. Obama replaced the “Global War on Terror” with terms like “countering violent extremism” and “workplace violence.” It confuses the American public on the rationale derived from the Koran, Shariah law and the hadiths that drive jihadists to commit these acts of terrorism. The Islamic jihadists have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the core canonical beliefs of Islam as written in the suras (chapters) of the Koran. It certainly is not for a lack of job or education opportunities, which is part of the progressives’ nonsense propaganda.
Using the term “radical Islam” to describe the jihadi terrorism implies that there is some “moderate form of Islam.” Regrettably, that is not the case, nor have these jihadists hijacked Islam. The Islamic leader of Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who supports the establishment of a worldwide caliphate, has repeatedly rejected allied attempts to portray Turkey as an example of “moderate Islam.” He states that “there is no moderate Islam. Islam is Islam. Democracy is the train we ride to achieve our ultimate objective, which is a world dominated by Islam.” According to the Koran, it is an obligation for all Muslims to conduct jihad against all infidels.
While many progressives will argue that Islamic supremacism is not the only way of construing Islam, they point out that there are millions of Muslims who reject Islam’s supremacism and jihadi acts of terrors. However, this misses the point that the authoritative interpretation by the scholars of Islam is literally drawn from the scriptures. Those who stray from this line of thinking are cast as “racists” or “Islamophobic,” a term conjured up by the Muslim Brotherhood. We should never forget the Muslim Brotherhood’s creed, which is to destroy America from within by our own miserable hands and replace our Constitution with Shariah law. Further, the senior jurist of the Muslim Brother hood, cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has stated that the Koran or Shariah law cannot be amended to conform to changing human values and standards. His view, is that the Koran and Shariah present the absolute norm to which all human values and conduct must conform.
As Andrew Bostom points out, Shariah supremacism with its hateful bellicosity and bigotry remains, regrettably, the predominant mindset of the world’s Muslims. He states, based on the latest available information, that 77 percent of Muslims from the five largest Sunni Muslim populations (Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria) and 83 percent of Shiite Iranians want Shariah as the law of the land. Further, 91 percent of liberated Iraqis and 90 percent of Afghan Muslims support Shariah.
The late political scientist, Samuel Huntington, pointed out that Islam is totally incompatible with Western culture and traditions. They can never coexist. Islam is at war with the West. It is a clash of civilizations.
Even Alexis de Tocqueville, the French philosopher, commented after studying the Koran in 1838 that it not only encourages but commands a holy war against all infidels, as well as the necessity for obeying the Prophet Muhammad. This what drives the Islamic State today; its members believe everything should be done as it was during the reign of the prophet.
Every thinking American should be able to understand that the Koran and Shariah law command jihad warfare in order to subjugate the world to a totalitarian Islamic caliphate order. Islam is not a religion of peace. It is a “totalitarian ideology bent on world domination, masquerading as a religion.” Until the threat of Islam is understood, we will not be successful in defeating this enemy.
With all the ISIS atrocities committed, President al-Sisi of Egypt felt Islam was getting a “bad image.” Therefore, on Jan. 1, 2015, speaking at the Cairo site of the Vatican version of Sunni Islamic religious education, at al-Azhar University, Mr. al-Sisi charged the leading Sunni clerics with reforming Islam, which has not happened in over 1,300 years. Regrettably, not one western leader endorsed this “dramatic call.” For that matter, neither has the pope. Our leaders continue with the drivel of expanding “interfaith dialogue,” which is nonsense since it is part of the Muslim Brotherhood propaganda to gain acceptance for Shariah law.
There should be no doubt that unreformed Islam is the enemy. America must take the lead in addressing this enemy. The Islamic State is the current point of the spear which must be thoroughly crushed. A movement must also be started to support President al-Sisi’s call for a reformation of Islam to bring Islam into the 21st century.
The Republican establishment is determined to kill the Trump candidacy, and it may succeed. Donald Trump is assisting with the task. The mouth that roars rarely soars, and his unthinking vulgarity is beginning to bore. It’s hard to know what he was thinking when he said women who have abortions should be punished. Surely the consequence of an unwanted pregnancy is punishment enough.
Gaffes and boners and slips that could sink ships make the Wisconsin primary next week ever more crucial. The pollsters, who are often wrong but often right, say Ted Cruz, the last best hope of the Republican establishment, is gaining on The Donald. Late momentum is what produces upsets.
But the elites of the establishment — the elected Republican politicians and their tail of consultants, advisers, strategists and flotsam and jetsam of the endless presidential campaign — won’t have much time to celebrate for surviving with their dignity, civility and general wonderfulness intact. Donald Trump has changed things, and permanently. The peasants have tasted milk and honey, and they like it better than table scraps.
The Trump disease, as the elites regard it, is infectious and is likely to start an epidemic. A young and successful Minnesota businessman is challenging even House Speaker Paul Ryan, the pet rock of the establishment. Just out of the gate, Paul F. Nehlan III — with all those Roman numerals on his name he sounds like he might be the chairman of the house committee at the country club — talks like a thinking man’s Donald Trump.
He mocks Speaker Ryan’s remarks to a pep rally for House interns the other day in the chamber of the Ways and Means Committee as an example of the washingtonspeak that the speaker and his like-minded colleagues have perfected as the capital’s lingua franca. “Mr. Ryan appealed for unity,” he told the interns, “unity in Congress, unity among the public, unity as a nation. We should test theories and ideas, he asserted, rather than impugning motives. … The system works, he explained, only if we have mutual respect for one another.
“The problem is that the Washington class, of which Paul Ryan has become a top-ranking member, hasn’t had any respect for the rest of us for a very long time. Consequently, yes, we have lost faith in our representatives and in our government.”
This is at the core of the Trump message, spoken with considerable less felicity in the language of those in an earlier time who were called “the horny-handed sons of toil.” There’s anger at the embrace of big government, waves of illegal immigration, job-killing international trade on terms dictated from abroad. The Donald’s rivals have said similar things, except for that nice Kasich boy who doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of his bipartisan betters.
Mr. Ryan’s speech to the interns, available on the blog site of American Thinker magazine, is actually unintended mockery of the kumbaya sentiments the establishment class holds so dear. “All of us as leaders can hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity and decency,” the speaker told them. “Instead of playing to your anxieties, we can appeal to your aspirations. Instead of playing the identity politics of ‘our base’ and ‘their base,’ we unite people around ideas and principles. And instead of being timid, we go bold.”
He is said to have kept a straight face with this attempt at a Churchillian wind-up, because Mr. Ryan knows better than anyone that Republicans don’t do bold. Only former Democrats like Ronald Reagan bring a remembrance of bold to the fray. Once-born Republicans do caution, timidity and retreat. Big talk in November invariably becomes premature compromise in February.
Disappointment and disgust is what’s driving the revolt of the peasants, and compels some, like Paul Nehlan, to make the charge of the Light Brigade. Mr. Nehlan is a businessman, an executive of a Wisconsin company that makes water-filtration systems. He’s also an inventor, which is no doubt what draws him to challenge the inefficiency of something that’s not working the way it should.
His challenge of Mr. Ryan is a challenge of the Washington ruling class, and it’s a message for the smug and self-satisfied who hang out with the ruling class. The well of anger and disgust that Donald Trump, and Mr. Nehlan, are drawing water from is a deep one.
“The things we want [our representatives] to do, Mr. Ryan and his friends in Washington can never seem to find the stomach or backbone to do. Yet they clearly have the political courage to plunge neck-deep into the things we’ve literally begged them not to do. The Ryan establishment is going bold, all right. Boldly off track. Boldly amok. Boldly wrong.”
A coalition of Democratic attorneys general in 16 states announced Tuesday an unprecedented campaign to pursue companies that challenge the catastrophic climate change narrative, raising concerns over free speech and the use of state authority to punish political foes.
Standing beside former Vice President Al Gore, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the state officials are committed to “working together on key climate-related initiatives,” including queries into whether fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil have committed fraud by deceiving the public and shareholders about the impact of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.
Two states — California and New York — already have launched probes into ExxonMobil, while attorneys general from Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands indicated Tuesday that they would follow suit. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, an independent, is the only non-Democrat involved in the campaign, called AGs United for Clean Power.
“The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real; it is a threat to all the people we represent,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “If there are companies, whether they’re utilities, whether they’re fossil fuel companies, committing fraud in an effort to maximize their short-term profits at the expense of the people we represent, we want to find out about it. We want to expose it and want to pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.”
Mr. Schneiderman also announced that 20 attorneys general representing 18 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands filed a brief Tuesday in support of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan rule, which has been challenged by attorneys general in 25 mostly red states.
The campaign was spurred by articles last year alleging Exxon hid research conducted by its own scientists linking fossil fuel emissions and global warming. Exxon officials have denied the claims and countered that the investigation was conducted by journalism entities that receive funding from foundations known for their climate change activism.
Suzanne McCarron, Exxon’s vice president for public and government affairs, said Tuesday in a statement that the accusations are meritless.
“The allegations are based on the false premise that ExxonMobil reached definitive conclusions about anthropogenic climate change before the world’s experts and before the science itself had matured, and then withheld it from the broader scientific community,” Ms. McCarron said. “Such a claim is preposterous.”
Marc Morano, who heads the pro-industry website Climate Depot, warned that the state officials’ legal campaign against the oil-and-gas industry would “have a chilling effect on free speech and scientific dissent.”
“Gore joined with attention-seeking attorneys general to essentially try to shut down any ‘global warming’ views that differ from the United Nations’ or Gore‘s,” said Mr. Morano in an email. “Agree or face investigations is the new normal for the climate debate.”
Mr. Gore, who narrated the 2006 climate change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” said rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are fueling natural disasters ranging from flooding to snowstorms to the recent outbreak of the Zika virus.
“Every night on the news now it’s like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation,” Mr. Gore said at the New York press conference, which was live streamed.
Mr. Morano, whose 2015 documentary “Climate Hustle” disputes the disastrous climate change scenarios, called Mr. Gore “frustrated that his message is still not resonating 10 years after his movie came out.”
“So he apparently has decided that anyone who disagrees with him on ‘global warming’ should face investigations, fines and penalties and be silenced,” Mr. Morano said.
A chill on free speech?
At the press conference Mr. Schneiderman headed off queries about whether the state investigations would chill free speech by freezing legitimate debate over climate change. While many scientists support the catastrophic climate change narrative, others have criticized what the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Richard Lindzen describes as “climate alarmism.”
“There have been those who have raised the question, ‘Aren’t you interfering with people’s First Amendment rights?’” said Mr. Schneiderman. “The First Amendment, ladies and gentlemen, does not give you the right to commit fraud.”
Climate change groups launched the social media campaign #ExxonKnew last year in response to articles by InsideClimate News and the Columbia School of Journalism’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Project that cited internal ExxonMobil documents warning of global warming.
The news reports touched off a brouhaha over journalistic independence after ExxonMobil pointed out that both outlets receive funding from the liberal Rockefeller Family Fund, which has backed advocacy groups that oppose fossil fuels, including 350.org.
“I think the two big headlines coming out of this are that this entire issue continues to be based on a horrendously reported series of stories that rely on cherry-picked statements at every turn,” said Katie Brown of Energy in Depth, a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, in a Tuesday statement.
She added that “the vast majority of attorneys general that stood up on stage today have no interest at all in wasting their own state’s resources the way that New York has.”
Lew Wasserman, director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, told Reuters last week that “no specific company” was targeted by the grants, but that the fund supports “public interest journalism to better understand how the fossil fuel industry was dealing with the reality of climate science internally and publicly.”
InsideClimate News and Columbia have maintained that donors have no influence over their reporting. The Los Angeles Times, which ran the Columbia report in October, later added a note listing the project’s funders, including the Rockefeller Family Fund and Rockefeller Brothers Fund, as well as the pro-wind-and-solar Energy Foundation, according to Energy in Depth.
Mr. Gore compared the campaign to the state-led prosecution of tobacco companies that led to a multistate $206 billion settlement in 1998.
“[T]he Congress has been sharply constraining [the] ability of [the] executive branch to fully perform its obligations under the Constitution to protect the American people against the kind of fraud that the evidence suggests is being committed by several of the fossil fuel companies, electric utilities burning coal and the like,” Mr. Gore said. “So what these attorneys general are doing is exceptionally important.”
That comparison led Mr. Morano to suggest that the attorneys general may be seeking another payday, accusing them of targeting the oil-and-gas industry in pursuit of “huge financial settlements.”
Mr. Schneiderman also denied that the attorneys general have already made up their minds about the guilt of companies in committing fraud.
“We’re in [the] early stages of the case. We’re not prejudging the evidence. We’ve seen some things that have been published by you and others,” Mr. Schneiderman told reporters. “But it is our obligation to take a look at the underlying documentation and to get at all the evidence.”
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is a law adopted to fight organized crime. Yet, in recent months, a chorus has emerged calling for a breathtaking abuse of RICO by state attorneys general and the Department of Justice against political opponents.
Specifically, lawmakers, academics and the “green” lobby demand that prosecutors use the law to extort money from legitimate businesses who oppose them, under threat of RICO investigations and prosecution. The objective is to silence political opposition, extract a vow not to support other opponents and, finally, to force companies to underwrite the global warming industry. Yes, the global warming industry.
It’s an industry that includes not only professional activists and academics but also businesses hoping to profit from peddling climate fear. They have found allies in politicians seeking to deploy the awesome weight of the federal government to investigate those blocking the industry from getting every law and policy it wants.
In a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat, pressed Attorney General Loretta Lynch about using RICO to investigate climate change skeptics. Mr. Whitehouse specifically inquired into possible action against “the climate denial apparatus that the fossil fuel industry has erected.”
“This matter has been discussed,” replied Ms. Lynch. “We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on.”
Ms. Lynch’s response — specifically her use of “could” — suggests the Justice Department is looking for some way to intervene, an approach at odds with her department’s job of assessing what it “should” do. After all, investigations are costly, intrusive and even ruinous, and should be undertaken judiciously.
While RICO suits, or the threat thereof, can be costly for those at the receiving end, they can be lucrative for others. For example, we now know that the RICO chorus hopes to obtain massive settlements to fund the global warming machine’s academic and activist components.
RICO predators expect targeted companies to behave ritually: pay up under threat of years of bad press and litigation. These costs are passed on to consumers, of course. But the far greater threat is to democratic debate, given the lawsuits’ other objective, which proponents openly acknowledge: to coerce their critics into silence and extract vows not to fund further opposition.
Naturally, a group of largely taxpayer-funded academics echoed Mr. Whitehouse’s call. Known as the “RICO-20,” they sent a September letter asking Ms. Lynch to use RICO against opponents. Some members of Congress have specified two companies they want targeted: ExxonMobil and Shell.
However, the faculty lounge cheerleaders do not limit their aspirations to targeting mere oil companies. The RICO-20 co-ringleader, George Mason University’s Edward Maibach, has acknowledged that their target — those who “knowingly deceive on climate risk” — captures individual opponents, as well.
Mr. Maibach’s previous career involved running a campaign paid for by precisely the same model. So it was that he boasted, in an interview with Grist magazine, that “if a RICO suit were successful; and if there was a settlement between the government and the fossil fuel industry — there is no question in my mind that a good portion of that money should be spent on a national campaign to educate people on the risks of climate change, and build their resolve to work toward solutions.”
At George Mason, Mr. Maibach now teaches climate campaigning and runs the Center for Climate Change Communication, which studies “how to mobilize populations to adopt behaviors and support public policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Centers require funding.
Global warming is big business. As an industry, it appears far more vulnerable to credible investigation than those it seeks to haul into the dock. As a recent Wall Street Journal editorial reminded us about the global warming industry’s tactics, one prematurely sent Greenpeace press release still contained the instruction, “[Fill in alarmist and armageddonist factoid here].”
Under their own standard of “knowingly deceiving on climate risk,” the global warming alarmists seem ripe for investigations into, say, hyping climate risk for gain, at the expense of shareholders and communities that lose substantial tax and other revenues used for schools and infrastructure. We’re talking big bucks here — from $20 billion (for “renewable” and “green” energy vendors, by their own account) to $1.5 trillion in annual disbursements, all thanks to government edicts in the name of the elusive “climate crisis.”
Demanding the Justice Department employ the full might of the federal government against opponents is cowardly bullying. It also fits the commonly accepted definition of McCarthyism, “the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.” The global warming industry ought to be ashamed. Judged by its proclaimed standard, any investigation should be of the global warming industry rather than its critics.
A new study confirms what regular U.S. churchgoers have long known: Women tend to outnumber men.
But the Pew Research Center report also says the phenomenon is not universal. While Christian congregations may have difficulty keeping men in the pews, Islam faces no such trouble.
According to the study, less than one-third of American men say they go to church on a weekly basis, compared to 40 percent of American women. But in 40 Islamic countries surveyed by Pew, 70 percent of Muslim men said they attend religious services at least once per week, compared to 47 percent of Muslim women.
David Voas, a demographer and sociologist at University College London, speculated that Christianity’s emphasis on meekness, powerlessness and humility may be turning testosterone-filled men away from the religion.
“Christianity presents itself as a religion of the powerless: ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,’” Mr. Voas told Pew, quoting Matthew 5:5. “Depending on your point of view, that’s appealingly feminine or appallingly effeminate.”
Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family, said the findings are not new, pointing to a gender gap in the Christian church dating back to first century Judea.
“It’s captured in the kind of age-old thing, where, ‘you know, church is really important to my wife, she takes the kids, I go with her, but it’s really my wife’s thing,’” he said.
Mr. Stanton chalked up the disparity between the sexes to biological and psychological differences between men and women. He said women are just more fluent when it comes to matters of religion.
“I think it has something to do with female nature that women just tend to be more reflective, more inward-focused, and they have the ability to do that — whereas men, they want to go do something,” Mr. Stanton said. “That lends itself to more of a religiosity, if you will.”
As for why Islam has not seen a similar male exodus, Mr. Stanton said the more “muscular” components of the faith keep men interested.
“Islam is more of a muscular kind of faith, and women don’t — this is a controversial matter — but they don’t tend to fare as well,” he said, referring to the status of women in Muslim-ruled countries.
“You don’t think of Islam as really strong in the promotion and care of women. So that’s where that gender difference could really take place,” he continued.
But Greg Jao, vice president and director of campus engagement at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, said he disagrees with the notion that “Jesus isn’t macho enough” for men.
“I don’t find that in Jesus,” he said. “I think the public caricature of him is as this quiet man who walks around patting children on the head. But if you read the Gospel … he walks in and starts casting out demons, stilling storms on the sea, engaging in verbal confrontation with religious and government authorities.
“For every verse like ‘blessed are the meek,’ you have stories of Jesus overturning tables at the temple and of Paul’s shipwreck and other things, so I don’t think it’s the character of Jesus” that’s turning men away from the church, he said.
Rather than Scripture that abhors masculinity, Mr. Jao said Christianity has been infused with a culture of “processing” and “share your feelings” that repulses men.
“You rarely see groups of boys say, ‘Let’s sit down and talk. How are you feeling? How are you doing?’” he said. “I do think some of the practices don’t lend themselves to making it easy for men. I know we’ve talked with our Greek staff, our staff that works with fraternities and sororities, and what they’ve said is way too much processing, way too much discussion. We need more activity.”
He said churches can do more to integrate activity into spiritual life, pointing to examples of men in the church forming groups to repair cars and play sports.
“Once a month they go out to a pub together, grab a beer, but the goal is to have deep conversation,” he said.
Like every other civilized human being, I was horrified by the Islamic State terror attacks that rocked Brussels this week, killing and wounding dozens of people.
But pardon me if I’m unmoved by the latest flurry of outrage and condemnation that has predictably followed.
We’ve heard it all before: the pronouncements about being “at war,” calls for “solidarity,” the feel-good, meaningless hashtags and sad cartoons and signs saying “terrorists never win.”
Spare me the self-indulgent claptrap.
Terrorists do win. They are winning — because for all of the gnashing of teeth we get after each attack, the West does nothing meaningful to stop it. And by “stop it,” I don’t just mean acting militarily to halt violent jihad. I mean stopping every aspect of the civilizational jihad being waged against the West.
Unless and until we are willing to fight this war the way it must be fought, please quit the crocodile tears and pointless hashtags that accomplish nothing except make their re-tweeters appear “sensitive.”
Really fighting this war means acknowledging some hard truths. Islam is no mere religion. It is an all-encompassing ideological system that dictates everything from law (Shariah) to personal relationships which also have religious elements. Conquest and subjugation of the infidel lands are integral to this totalitarian ideology, by the sword, if necessary.
It therefore requires that we fight this war the way we fought the Nazis in World War II and Soviet communists during the Cold War: comprehensively and strategically, with every available military, economic, ideological, diplomatic, cyber- and religious lever. We must stop this threat before it metastasizes further and fully consumes Western Civilization.
After the Islamic State attacks in Paris, French President Francois Hollande rightly declared them “acts of war” deserving a “merciless” response.
And yet, not much has changed. Borders were tightened and states of emergency remained in places like Paris and Brussels, but they obviously won’t deter committed Islamists. Meanwhile, Muslims who have been born in Europe and those new to the continent courtesy of the latest “refugee” tsunami continue to infiltrate the West.
This latest act of violent jihad stems directly from another form of jihad, one that has been underway in Europe for decades but has ramped up dramatically over the past year.
Hijra is a core part of jihad going back to the Prophet Muhammad that involves Islamic conquest through migration. The objective is to overwhelm non-Muslim territories with Muslim populations until they achieve domination through sheer numbers. No weapons necessary — until they gain enough control.
For decades, the author Bat Ye’or has written extensively on Islam and dhimmitude (enslavement of the infidel by Muslim overlords who force them to “accept a condition of humiliation”). Her seminal work, “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis,” described — in 1985 — the deliberate Islamization of the continent with the encouragement of European leaders who desired cheap labor.
Sound familiar?
Many Islamists were born and raised in Europe, and many others are coming in with the fresh wave of “refugees.” But they are all part of the relentless hijra, which began decades ago and about which Ms. Ye’or warned. They have long used the European Union’s open doors-open borders policy to reach the West for social welfare and the longer-term goal of spreading Islam.
The waves of Muslim “immigration” have constituted an occupation of sorts, which has now reached critical mass. It was only a matter of time before the chaos turned far more convulsive and violent.
The European Union is apparently intent on committing continental suicide — largely because of misguided World War II guilt concerning “displaced persons” and the old, familiar desire for cheap labor. Paris and Brussels show us exactly how “cheap” that price really is.
Despite the latest round of terror and the rising national security risks, the invasion — in Europe and here as well — continues unabated.
Europe is likely already at the point of no return. We have more time to prevent such a transformation here, but that time may be shorter than we think.
The most committed Islamists — the networks of which are in every corner of the globe — cannot be contained. The civilizational jihad is more diffuse and even tougher to turn back.
The truth is that while Mr. Obama talks tough about “degrading” the threat, he will never execute a sustained and serious strategy to actually do it. And without his leadership, don’t expect it from the rest of the Western world, which is made up of cowardly, craven leaders so soft, so weak, so bound by political correctness that they will not act against the obvious threat.
Unfortunately, we’re not the only ones seeing the weakness. The enemy sees it, too. So they continue their advance, knowing full well that the only power that can truly stop them — a united West led by a determined U.S. commander in chief — does not exist.
So vacuous hashtags replace action, and the West hangs by a thread.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina legislators decided to rein in local governments by approving a bill Wednesday that prevents cities and counties from passing their own anti-discrimination rules. Gov. Pat McCrory later signed the legislation, which dealt a blow to the LGBT movement after success with protections in cities across the country.
The Republican-controlled General Assembly took action after Charlotte city leaders last month approved a broad anti-discrimination measure. Critics focused on language in the ordinance that allowed transgender people to use the restroom aligned with their gender identity.
McCrory, who was the mayor of Charlotte for 14 years and had criticized the local ordinance, signed the legislation Wednesday night that he said was “passed by a bipartisan majority to stop this breach of basic privacy and etiquette.”
Although 12 House Democrats joined all Republicans present in voting for the bill in the afternoon, later all Senate Democrats in attendance walked off their chamber floor during the debate in protest. Remaining Senate Republicans gave the legislation unanimous approval.
“We choose not to participate in this farce,” Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue of Raleigh said after he left the chamber.
Senate leader Phil Berger of Eden said the Democrats’ decision to leave was a “serious breach of their obligation to the citizens that voted to elect them.”
Republicans and their allies have said intervening is necessary to protect the safety of women and children from “radical” action by Charlotte. There have been arguments that any man - perhaps a sex offender - could enter a woman’s restroom or locker room simply by calling himself transgender.
“It’s common sense - biological men should not me be in women’s showers, locker rooms and bathrooms,” said GOP Rep. Dean Arp of Monroe before the chamber voted 82-26 for the legislation after nearly three hours of debate.
Gay rights leaders and transgender people said the legislation demonizes the community and espouses bogus claims about increasing the risk of sexual assaults. They say the law will deny lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people essential protections needed to ensure they can get a hotel room, hail a taxi or dine at a restaurant without fear.
“McCrory’s reckless decision to sign this appalling legislation into law is a direct attack on the rights, well-being and dignity of hundreds of thousands of LGBT North Carolinians and visitors to the state,” Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said in a statement. Civil liberties groups pledged to push for repeal and were weighing legal options. A Thursday evening rally was planned.
GOP leaders scheduled the one-day session at the cost of $42,000 because Charlotte’s ordinance was set to take effect April 1. Otherwise, the legislature wouldn’t have returned until late April.
Current Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts, who pressed to get the anti-discrimination ordinance approved, said she was appalled by the legislature’s actions.
“The General Assembly is on the wrong side of progress. It is on the wrong side of history,” Roberts said in a prepared statement. But McCrory said in a release “the basic expectation of privacy in the most personal of settings” was violated by “government overreach and intrusion” by Roberts and the city council.
The law bars local governments statewide from prohibiting discrimination in public places based on sexual orientation and gender identity. A new statewide nondiscrimination law included doesn’t contain those specific protections. It directs all public schools, government agencies and public college campuses to require bathrooms or locker rooms be designated for use only by people based on their biological sex. They can offer single-occupancy facilities.
Transgender people who have transitioned to the opposite sex wouldn’t be affected if they get their birth certificate changed.
Democrats said the measure makes North Carolina less inclusive and interferes with local governments. They say the state could also risk billions in federal education dollars with the school policy.
Ordinance supporters and opponents spoke to legislators in House and Senate committees. They included Skye Thompson, 15, of Greenville, who was born female but now identifies as male. He told senators they were putting him in danger by requiring use of a women’s restroom.
“I’ve dealt with bullying my whole life and now I worry that my own state lawmakers are bullying me as well. I feel bullied by you guys,” Thompson said.
Donna Eaton of Cary said everybody deserves to be treated with dignity and respect but is worried that without Wednesday’s legislation “it’s going to open the door for people with malicious intent who would masquerade as transgenders to come in and actually take advantage and have access to our kids.”
Legislation requiring transgender students to use bathrooms corresponding with their birth gender have failed recently. South Dakota’s legislature failed to override Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s veto and a similar bill in Tennessee bill died Tuesday.
The new law also would also make clear local governments can’t require area businesses to pay workers above the current minimum wage, with some exceptions. McCrory said that although items beyond the bathroom-related provisions in the legislation should have waited until later this spring for debate, he signed it anyway because it doesn’t change existing rights under state or federal law.
Back in 1993, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, warned against “defining deviancy down.” He was talking specifically about crime, about our getting used to it and not taking serious measures to fight it. But over the years since, is there any realm of American or European life where acceptance of ever-increasing deviancy has not become “the new normal”?
America’s universities are a distressing case in point. They were once places where young people went to read great books, learn to reason logically and acquire the skills necessary to become productive citizens. Countless hours in the library and classroom were required to become a real scholar — or even someone whose opinions deserved consideration.
Today, many campuses are dominated by students who spend more time nursing grievances than studying. They demand “safe spaces” and protection from ideas and language that might bruise their tender sensibilities. They suppress — belligerently and sometimes violently — the free speech of anyone they deem “privileged.” They stage protests for “social justice” — a concept they have neither the knowledge nor experience to understand. Professors indulge them. University administrators appease them.
One notable exception: Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, who earlier this month received the Jeane Kirkpatrick Award from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the American Conservative Union.
“In a time when university administrators are giving in to what amounts to student temper tantrums, Everett Piper stands out for his adherence to the tradition of academic integrity and open inquiry,” said Bradley Foundation President Michael W. Grebe. “Dr. Piper’s stand for open discussion, and genuine mutual tolerance of dissent on campus is both rare and overdue.”
Dr. Piper has famously told the tale of a student who, following a university chapel service, complained that he had been “victimized” by the sermon. “It appears this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love,” Dr. Piper wrote. “In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.
“Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic,” he continued. “Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims. Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them ‘feel bad’ about themselves, is a ‘hater,’ a ‘bigot,’ an ‘oppressor,’ and a ‘victimizer.’“
Dr. Piper went on to offer a bit of advice to the student: “This may not be the university you’re looking for. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up. This is not a day care.”
Academia has not been undermined overnight. It has been a longtime objective of the extreme left, starting with the Orwellian-named Free Speech Movement (FSM) of the mid-1960s.
“The claim that the FSM was fighting for free speech for all (i.e., the First Amendment) was always a charade,” according to journalist Sol Stern, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute who, back in the day, was a member of the FSM at Berkeley, where it was born. “Within weeks of FSM’s founding, it became clear to the leadership that the struggle was really about clearing barriers to using the campus as a base for radical political activity.”
“We distorted the plain meaning of words to gain political advantage and power,” he added. “Movement radicals turned on American liberalism (which we renamed “Cold War liberalism”) as the evil empire. Liberalism, unfortunately, retreated.”
These radicals were so self-deluded as to see “something hopeful and progressive in Third World dictatorships.” Among them: North Korea, today a hellhole for the vast majority of its people, one which we’ve allowed to become nuclear-armed, and the Castro regime in Cuba, with which President Obama has now restored diplomatic relations in return for nothing and despite its abysmal human rights record.
As Mr. Stern recalls, it was not long before a “once-idealistic student movement crossed the line to antidemocratic ideologies and undermined the possibility of a decent Left in America.” Nevertheless, those responsible were given refuge on campuses, not to mention the opportunity to indoctrinate the next few generations of students. The unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayres, Mr. Obama’s old friend, is only the most obvious example.
Sixties radicals-turned-professors also have been successful in denying teaching positions and tenure to scholars with more conservative views — their ostensible commitment to tolerance and diversity notwithstanding. Indeed, in recent years, anyone attempting to articulate perspectives the far left opposes can expect to be banned from campuses. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, anti-Islamist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde are just three examples.
What used to be institutions of higher learning have become, in Dr. Piper’s words, “bastions of speech codes rather than free speech” where “disagreement is now synonymous with hate” and “propaganda and power now reign.”
The situation is unlikely to improve — not until university presidents who value freedom and refuse to define academic deviancy down are once again so common that no one would think to give them awards. How we get from here to there is by no means apparent.
WHY SCIENTISTS DISAGREE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING: THE NIPCC REPORT ON SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS
The understanding of human impact on long-term global climate change is not settled science.
“Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming: The NIPCC Report on Scientific Consensus” by three distinguished scientists, Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter and S. Fred Singer, challenges the popular notion that science has concluded that humans are causing catastrophic climate change. The three authors are contributors to the NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change), a group of “nongovernmental scientists and scholars who have come together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change.”
Besides being a synopsis of a much larger work — a chapter in a forthcoming volume titled “Climate Change Reconsidered II: Benefits and Costs of Fossil Fuels” — the book is a rejoinder to the sound-bite science that is so popular today. “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” chews up these sound bites, such as: “97 percent of scientists agree” with the conclusion that humans are causing catastrophic climate change; or, skeptics of the “consensus view” are paid off by big fossil fuel industries.
“Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” is a virtual handbook of well-documented arguments and cogent perspective that counter nearly every assertion given to “prove” that human beings are responsible for climate disaster.
Take surface temperature, for example. “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” notes that “[o]ver (climatic) time scales of many thousand years, temperature is cooling; over the historical (meteorological) time scale of the past century temperature, has warmed. Over the past 18 years, there has been no net warming despite an increase in atmospheric CO2 of 8 percent — which represents 34 percent of all human-related CO2 emissions released to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.”
Good reasons abound as to why the short- and long-term temperature and other trends (like extreme weather) fail to adequately match “consensus” expectations. “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” points to natural decadal and multidecadal climate oscillations like those associated with El Nino-La Nina, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Solar activity and flux of cosmic rays among other important factors are also noted.
The book refers often to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the flaunted fountainhead of all received wisdom on the Earth’s future atmosphere. But the stated role of the IPCC is to assess “the scientific basis of the risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation .” No surprise that if your well-funded, politically expedient task is to find the risk of human-induced climate change, then your obligation is to find that particular risk. But that’s not how science is supposed to work. Rather than searching for support for pre-formed conclusions, pursuit of objectivity is one of the hallmarks of authentic scientific practice.
The IPCC depends on the veracity of global climate models (GCMs), which are global mathematical simulators of the climate. “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” states that “GCMs systematically overestimate the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide (CO2), many known forcings and feedbacks are poorly modeled, and modelers exclude forcings and feedbacks that run counter to their mission to find a human influence on climate.” Furthermore, climate models “generally assume a climate sensitivity of 3 degrees Celsius for a doubling of CO2 above preindustrial values, whereas meteorological observations are consistent with a sensitivity of 1 degree Celsius or less.” And limitations in computing power “restrict climate models from resolving important climate processes; low-resolution models fail to capture many important regional and lesser-scale phenomena such as clouds.”
Regarding the overestimation of a doubling of CO2 and its relationship to clouds, “IPCC models incorporate a strong positive feedback from increasing water vapor but exclude negative feedbacks such as a concomitant increase in low-level clouds — hence they predict a warming of 3 degrees Celsius or more.”
“Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” concludes, from ample references to peer-reviewed works and based on NIPCC reports “drawn from its extensive review of the scientific evidence,” that “any human global climate impact is within the background variability of the natural climate system and is not dangerous.”
So it looks like the science on climate change is nowhere near settled science. Not even close.
An Army general who reached the pinnacle of military intelligence says his service’s war-deployed data analytical network is a flop and needs to be stopped, rebuilt and renamed.
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who headed the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency until 2014 and held a number of terrorist-hunting jobs, is the most senior officer to publicly chastise the Army for how it has clung to the Distributed Common Ground System, or DCGS.
In doing so, Mr. Flynn sides with a number of field commanders who have written blistering internal criticisms of DCGS. Intelligence officers found it slow and susceptible to crashes. During the height of the Afghanistan War, some soldiers parked the hardware off to the side and relied on commercially available Web-linked computers.
When commanders made emergency requests to buy off the shelf, Army headquarters sometimes delayed decisions or simply said “no,” according to internal memos.
“Here we are in 2016 and we are still forcing a capability down the throats of our military units, special and conventional forces, that requires way, way too much training and basically contract support,” Mr. Flynn told The Washington Times. “The Army needs to move to a DCGS 2.0 quickly. Frankly, I would even change the name because it just has such a bad monicker right now.
“DCGS is hard to learn,” said Mr. Flynn, a hard-charging officer who has bluntly criticized President Obama’s approach to fighting radical Islam. “It takes a long time. You have to use it all the time, which means it’s not a simple technology that people are used to and can buy off the shelf today. And frankly, it doesn’t do what it’s touted to do. That’s why you see units out on the battlefield asking for very similar things.”
An in-battle computing system may not carry the star quality of sleek jet fighters or supersonic missiles. But in the painstaking war on terrorism, there are few battlefield tools more important than an intelligence network of server and software. The system can produce the information that helps warriors locate buried bombs, identify terrorists and plan the next raid.
DCGS too often failed in being able to store and produce retrievable classified data, Mr. Flynn said.
“I can’t sit here today and say in my nearly five years in combat over the last decade that I ever saw it applied on the battlefield the way it was touted,” he said. “We found other, more capable technologies that were essentially off the shelf that performed far better for the needs for the soldiers. I saw other technologies that were wildly successful that our forces definitely used quite a bit more than what they can get out of DCGS.”
He offered advice to the Army’s top intelligence directorate (G-2) at the Pentagon.
“If I was going in as the G-2 of the Army today, what I would do is take a big step back, and I would analyze whether the system is doing what it’s sold to do, and I would consider taking the best parts of it and sort of retooling given the new technology we have available to us today because the system was originally considered well over a decade ago,” he said.
“The point is technology and innovation have advanced far past what DCGS is capable of doing. It’s not an agile enough tool to be able to incorporate and integrate the most advanced technology that is on the shelf today that can be bought by our forces that frankly our war-fighting units want.”
Army headquarters steadfastly has defended DCGS and its projected $4 billion cost to buy and maintain over its life cycle.
Told of Mr. Flynn’s criticisms, the Army released a statement to The Times: “The Army continues to make improvements to DCGS-A, as a result of lessons learned throughout the development of the program. DCGS-A systems continue to support worldwide operations on a daily basis by providing our soldiers with the best intelligence available to conduct and win wars.”
From Afghanistan to Iraq
In December, the Army released requirements to the industry for an improved version called Increment 2. The project manager told reporters, “It really allows us to be able to tap into about 700 sources that range from human intelligence, signals intelligence, geospatial data and even allows us to target into things like weather and also tapping into [open source] and cyber,” according to Defense News.
At a 2013 House Armed Services Committee hearing, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who was Army chief of staff, clashed with Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican and former Marine Corps officer who is Congress’ most persistent DCGS critic.
Mr. Hunter cited the latest internal memo that showed the Army was denying the 3rd Infantry Division permission to buy a commercial server and analytical system called Palantir.
Gen. Odierno said he was tired of hearing that he didn’t care about his soldiers.
“You have a very powerful personality,” Mr. Hunter said. “But that doesn’t refute the facts you have gaps in the capability.”
“We have more capability today in our intelligence than we’ve ever had,” the general said. “I can go to 30 places that tell me [DCGS] is working tremendously. Is it perfect? No.”
Mr. Hunter said he feels vindicated by Mr. Flynn’s remarks, given that the general saw the system fail firsthand.
“Gen. Flynn’s assessment of DCGS is spot on, and it should signal to the Army that it’s time to change course,” the congressman told The Times. “There’s technology out there that actually works, but it’s being overlooked intentionally, and soldiers are still being forced to use a less than subpar system. DCGS has been great for providing soldiers with really expensive laptops and not much else. There are accounts of servers that have stayed unplugged or boxed up through entire deployments, which says something about the quality of DCGS and its effectiveness.”
Mr. Flynn confirmed this point by saying of his time in Afghanistan: “Units were coming to combat with DCGS because it was their tool kit, so to speak, but they basically had it boxed up and parked in a corner. They were using off-the-shelf stuff they were having to buy prior to coming into the theater.”
As deputy chief of staff for intelligence in Afghanistan, Mr. Flynn sounded the alarm in a July 2, 2010, memo to the command.
“Intelligence analysts in theater do not have the tools required to fully analyze the tremendous amounts of information currently available in theater,” he wrote in a memo to force the Army to introduce better intelligence computing systems into Afghanistan. “The impact of this shortfall is felt in almost every activity that intelligence supports.”
His memo spelled out the exact hardware-software architecture the war demanded — a network he says the military still lacks nearly six years later. He did not mention DCGS in the memo, but in fact it was the shortfall he was talking about.
He told The Times that word reached him later that Army generals at the Pentagon, whom he declined to name, dismissed his concerns.
He quoted them as saying, “Flynn doesn’t really know what he wants. We know what’s best for him, and that’s what we will provide.”
The intelligence gap has persisted from the Afghanistan War to the renewed conflict in Iraq, where special operations forces began in 2014 advising and training government troops to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIL.
In December 2014, 1st Special Forces Group wrote to Army headquarters at the Pentagon that it lacked a database from the first war and desperately needed 160 sets of a rugged Palantir computer to do their job.
“With no enterprise-level knowledge management capability, [special operations forces] are attempting to track” all its intelligence needs on “individual service-member laptops and share-drives,” the internal memo said. “The lack of an enterprise-level intelligence infrastructure degrades [special operations forces’] ability to collaborate across formations and echelons, and reduces our ability to target ISIL.”
Joe Kasper, chief of staff to Mr. Hunter, said the DCGS Increment 2 locks out Palantir as an integrated component.
Said Mr. Flynn, the former DIA director, “Basically, nothing has changed. Nothing’s changed.”
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The Virginia 2016 legislative session is over, closing a hectic 59 days that produced a landmark compromise on gun laws, a heated fight over a state Supreme Court vacancy and a new state budget that includes a large spending increase on public education as well as pay bumps for state workers and even bigger potential pay bumps for lawmakers.
The session ended Friday evening after lawmakers passed a $100 billion two-year spending plan that does not include any new taxes or increased fees.
The new budget includes about $900 million more in K-12 spending in the next two years than the last biennial budget did, a point of pride for both Republicans who control the General Assembly and Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
Republicans tried to make the school money as flexible for local school districts as possible, allowing them to spend it on new teachers, textbooks or in other ways.
“One size does not fit all, so allowing the localities the flexibility to meet their most critical needs was most important to us,” Del. Tag Greason said.
Higher-than-predicted tax revenues gave legislators more leeway in crafting their budget than in previous years.
The governor did not get everything he wanted in the budget, particularly in extra funding he wanted to help him make economic development deals. And the budget does not include any provisions related to expanding Medicaid, another top priority for McAuliffe.
Still, the governor said he was pleased with the vast majority of spending proposals and will also be able to try to veto or amend parts of the budget.
“It’s a great budget. I’m ecstatic about the budget,” McAuliffe said.
The spending plan includes a 3 percent raise for state workers and a 2 percent raise for public school teachers. Lawmakers also boosted their compensation for attending official meetings when the legislature is not in session from $200 to $300 a day. For some senior members who are on several committees and panels, that could mean an increase of several thousand dollars a year in extra pay on top of their annual salaries of about $18,000.
Before the session started, few expected much movement on perennial hot-button social issues from the split government. But McAuliffe and Republicans managed to forge a highly touted compromise on gun-related legislation with Republicans and the National Rifle Association. The measures will allow more out-of-state concealed-handgun permit holders to legally carry guns in Virginia, something Republicans wanted, while enacting Democratic priorities of prohibiting people subject to permanent protective orders from carrying firearms and requiring police presence at gun shows for voluntary background checks.
The governor, limited to a single four-year term, has been eager to cast the gun deal as a legacy item, calling the deal one of the biggest improvement on gun safety in years. But McAuliffe has faced withering rebukes from his former allies. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control group, Everytown for Gun Safety, ran ads in Virginia attacking him for the deal, saying it gives too much to gun-rights advocates. Bloomberg-funded groups have been some of McAuliffe’s biggest political donors.
The session was also marked by a high decibel and sometimes surprising fight over a state Supreme Court justice that continued right up until the end of session Friday evening.
Republicans ultimately got their way, when they elevated Court of Appeals Judge Stephen McCullough to the state Supreme Court the day before the session ended. But along the way Republicans were unable to get their first choice elected and caused a loud uproar from liberal groups and Democrats when they considered putting former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli - a staunch social conservative - on the bench.
Lawmakers are set to return to Richmond in April to take up the governor’s suggested amendments or vetoes of legislation.
In an earlier column in these pages, “Reforming Islam,” I documented the need for Islam to experience an internal reformation. This is not just a question of abstract theology but directly relates to how we defeat Islamic terrorism, and how we are viewed in the Muslim world.
For example, ISIS, the foremost terror threat in the world today, in its claim of responsibility for last year’s Paris attack condemned America and its allies as “crusader nations.” Osama bin Laden did likewise. Bin Laden railed against “Crusaders and U.N.” when President Bush used the “C-word” after 9/11. He was widely criticized for it and dropped it.
Use of “Crusades” and “Crusaders” as terms of abuse is clearly meant to stir up Muslim masses that they are under assault, not that we are defending ourselves against jihad. Perhaps more importantly, it is designed to evoke feelings of culpability and defeatism among guilty Western liberals, who are ashamed of Western civilization and indifferent at best to its survival. Not surprisingly, when President Obama addressed the National Prayer Breakfast last year on the issue of terrorism, he attempted to minimize the Islamic element of the Islamic State’s barbarity: “Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.”
Let’s set the record straight. The Crusades were a series of wars launched by Western Europeans in the wake of devastating defeats inflicted on the Christian Byzantine Empire by the Seljuk Turks. The First Crusade was launched in 1096. It was the most successful one, capturing Jerusalem.
But the gains were only temporary, requiring the launch of repeated efforts to maintain the small feudal statelets carved out in the Holy Land. The last crusader stronghold, Acre in today’s Israel, fell in 1291.
All told, the Crusades occupied a brief period of just over two and one-half centuries. They were limited in scope and essentially were a counterattack, seeking to retake Christian lands earlier seized by the Muslims.
How do the Crusades compare to Islamic jihad? Following the death of Muhammad in 632, his successors, the caliphs — the same office ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi claims to have revived — began their unprovoked war of conquest against the Byzantines. Within a decade, the jihad had claimed then-Christian Egypt, Palestine, and Syria.
Muslim armies swept across North Africa and crossed over into Spain in 711, only to be finally stopped in France by Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne, in 732. (At the same time, Muslim forces swept east, subduing Persia and reaching the frontiers of China.) Repeated assaults continued across the Mediterranean, including Arab sieges of Constantinople and conquest of Cyprus, Sicily, and Crete.
Motivated by Islamic jihad and lust for plunder and slaves — identical to today’s ISIS — not one of these assaults was defensive. These were not Muslim lands being liberated from occupation but Christian lands whose inhabitants experienced the horrors we see today in Syria, Iraq and now Libya with Israel waiting in the wings: amputations, beheadings, slavery and sex slavery (all of which are explicitly authorized by Allah in the Koran). When we see horrific videos of ISIS beheadings and the choosing of sex slaves, let’s remember it’s a scene repeated thousands of times before: in Jerusalem in 637, Egypt in 639, Spain in 711, and Constantinople in 1453. The only difference is that today there are cameras and instant worldwide communications.
The Islamic jihad against Christendom started more than four and a half centuries before anyone had even heard of a Crusade. The crusaders forced jihad into remission for a brief period from around 1100 to 1350, after which it resumed its full assault.
Most of Asia Minor — today’s Turkey — was quickly subdued as the Crusades ended. Islamic warriors of the new Ottoman Empire crossed into Europe at Gallipoli in 1356. In rapid succession the jihad overwhelmed Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, and southern Romania.
Constantinople fell in 1453. (This fulfilled the first part of a prophecy attributed to Muhammad and fondly cited by today’s jihadists that first they would take Constantinople and then Rome.) Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, and Southern Austria and Poland all fell. Muslim slave-raiders ravaged the coasts of Italy, Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, and they ranged as far north as Ireland and Scandinavia. (The Barbary Wars fought by the infant United States were a response to that same activity, which lasted well into the 19th century. It was America’s first clash with jihad but certainly not our last.)
The Muslim advance only began to be seriously blunted in 1683, with the failure of the Turks’ second siege of Vienna. While the ideology of offensive jihad had not changed, its capabilities could not withstand the scientific and technological revolution that had begun to take hold in Christian Europe.
To sum up, aggressive Islamic jihad was launched against the Christians and lasted 450 years. For 250 years, Christian crusaders counterattacked. After that counterattack failed, renewed jihad lasted another 350 years.
It’s clear who the aggressors are, which only emphasizes that we cannot afford to engage in moral disarmament in the face of jihad and unreformed Islam. Unfortunately, under Mr. Obama, moral and actual disarmament is official U.S. policy. This must be reversed.
President Clinton left the National Security Agency, the nation’s electronic eavesdropper, in shambles at the very moment al Qaeda was in the final planning stages of carrying out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.
Retired Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the NSA director at the time, describes the decline in a memoir, writing an insider’s view of an agency that the government at one time refused to acknowledge even existed.
One day in January 2000, the NSA’s clunky, aging computer network became so overburdened that it crashed. The NSA, he says, was “brain dead.”
The “coma” crisis lasted for several days as new computer hardware was flown into Fort Meade, Maryland, and techies shut down every node in order to reboot the nation’s largest spy machine.
But it was a symptom of something far more serious at the NSA, and for the country.
“The outside world had passed it by in many areas,” Mr. Hayden says in “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror.” “It was going deaf.”
“The computer crash was the perfect metaphor for an agency desperately in need of change,” he writes. “Antiquated computers were a problem. But the reality was actually worse. NSA was in desperate need of reinvention.”
In a dawning age of encrypted, fiber optic and mass communications, coupled with rising global Islamic terrorism, the NSA was losing a game called SIGINT, or signals intelligence.
“NSA had experienced years of declining budgets, a shrinking workforce, an aging infrastructure and little new hiring,” the agency’s former director says. “Running hard just to keep up, we had let the network become so tangled that no one really seemed to know how it worked. There was no real wiring diagram anyone could consult.”
Mr. Hayden, who went on to become CIA director under President George W. Bush, is the second top intelligence official to write about the Clinton 1990s as a dark age for American spying.
Mr. Hayden does not directly criticize Mr. Clinton, or any other politician, for the NSA’s fall into disrepair.
But not so George J. Tenet, who was Mr. Clinton’s CIA director. He stayed on in the early Bush administration, during the Sept. 11 attacks, and began rebuilding operations at Langley, Virginia, while jousting with critics who blamed the agency for not penetrating the plot beforehand.
Mr. Tenet’s memoir, “At the Center of the Storm,” stated that the CIA was in “Chapter 11” by the end of the 1990s and the White House refused to help.
“You can’t toss spies at al Qaeda when you don’t have them, especially when you lack the recruiting and training infrastructure to get them and grow them,” he wrote. “The fact is that by the mid- to late 1990s American intelligence was in Chapter 11, and neither Congress nor the executive branch did much about it.”
Of the NSA under Mr. Clinton, Mr. Tenet said: “You don’t simply tell NSA to give you more signals intelligence when their capabilities are crumbling and they are ‘going deaf,’ unable to monitor critical voice communications.”
Who is to blame for Sept. 11 is back in the public square, compliments of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. On the campaign trail, he has blamed Mr. Bush for failing to stop al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The other side of the story is the sorry state of U.S. intelligence. In the 1990s, the CIA greatly reduced the number of officers overseas — spies who recruit spies — from 1,600 to 1,200, and closed bases from which to run operations.
‘Omnipotence and incompetence’
Mr. Hayden’s book picks up that story line at Fort Meade’s NSA.
“For a signals intelligence agency, we had surprisingly antiquated IT systems, both for ourselves and to target our adversaries,” he wrote. “Shortly after I arrived, I asked, ‘How do I send an email to everybody?’ ‘Oh, we can’t actually do that,’ was the response.”
Mr. Hayden’s book puts his spin on a series of publicly known events, such as British translator Katherine Gun’s leaking of intelligence documents from inside the supersecret Government Communications Headquarters.
He says it signaled a new breed — unpredictable analysts who saw themselves as citizens of the world as opposed to their country — toiling deep inside intelligence agencies. She was a precursor to former contractor Edward Snowden, who divulged an unprecedented mound of NSA secrets.
Mr. Hayden notes that left-wing activists were accusing the NSA of intercepting all communications while critics in Congress said it wasn’t doing enough to blow up every terrorist plot.
“The irony was powerful: NSA was an agency that was simultaneously being accused of omnipotence and incompetence. It was going deaf and it was reading all of your emails,” he says.
But he abandoned such wry observations when he wrote of the NSA’s bleak budgets of the 1990s. The number of cellphones in the country had ballooned from 16 million to 741 million. The Internet exploded from a few million users to 361 million. Yet on that day in 2000, the NSA crashed.
“Now all those pillars were crumbling,” he said. “Still one of the largest employers in the state of Maryland, NSA had lost 30 percent of its budget and an equivalent slice of its workforce during the 1990s. And instead of one backward, oligarchic, technologically inferior, slow-moving adversary, the agency found itself trying to deploy against elusive terrorist groups, drug cartels, and rogue states, all using cellphones, the Internet and modern communications technology. And that was in addition to the full slate of traditional targets like Russia and China and North Korea.”
He further describes the chaos: “Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT, is a continuous process, a kind of espionage production line where communications are collected, processed, analyzed and reported 24 hours a day. At that moment satellites and earthbound collection points around the world were still intercepting communications, their vast take — telephone calls, faxes, radio signals — still pouring into memory buffers. But once in hand, the data froze. We couldn’t move it. Nobody could access it. Nobody could analyze it.”
By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court recently stayed implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan, a set of regulations that would have required the states to come up with plans designed to drastically reduce the use of coal as a source of energy for electric power generation.
Since first proposed in the summer of 2014, many and perhaps most lawyers looking at the issue have concluded that the Clean Power Plan would likely never survive judicial review on the substantive question of whether it was a reasonable interpretation of an ancient and seldom-used provision of the Clean Air Act (Section 111(d)).
Why would the EPA have ever taken the time and trouble to promulgate a regulation with such a low chance of ever being upheld by the courts? In persuading the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit not to stay the Clean Power Plan, the EPA itself provided the answer. The agency proclaimed proudly that even though its earlier 2013 regulations requiring reductions in mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants had been struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015, the mere threat that those regulations might be upheld had shut down many coal-burning facilities and caused others to spend up to $10 billion on compliance. Thus, the EPA argued, since unlawful regulations terrorize regulatory targets into compliance, there is no need to hurry in declaring those regulations officially unlawful when the targets have already suffered irreparable loss.
The cynical and strategic attitude underlying this argument is that the legality of regulation doesn’t matter. What matters instead is that by threatening regulation, the EPA can accomplish its ultimate goal of putting coal-burning electric-generating facilities out of business.
Climate change legal activists would likely argue that such use of regulatory power is far from cynical, but a heroic attempt to “stop” or “fix” global warming in the face of congressional failure to pass comprehensive climate change legislation. Indeed, after returning to Harvard Law School, former Obama administration climate change czarina Jody Freeman argued in some detail that when Congress fails to act to address pressing problems, regulatory agencies such as EPA should be free to creatively interpret old statutes, such as the Clean Air Act, to address new problems like climate change.
This argument rests on the explicit assumption that congressional failure to enact comprehensive climate change legislation represents another failure by a dysfunctional Congress. Less explicitly, it assumes that most intelligent people must agree that climate change is a problem demanding federal legislation designed to decarbonize the American economy, and that climate change is a bad problem requiring a fix, however costly and disruptive it might be.
The economics of climate change are much more complicated than this. The EPA has used Obama administration estimates of the total harm from future climate change (the so-called social cost of carbon) to justify its regulations under the Clean Air Act. However, buried in the technical support document used to generate those estimates (and a recent National Academies of Science review), one finds clearly that the EPA’s estimated harm from future climate change depends on a whole series of, at best, questionable assumptions. For example, the economic models used to estimate harm assume that even developed countries have very limited ability to adapt to changing climate, an assumption that if true would mean the Netherlands would not be a country, but a shoal in the North Atlantic. And Arizona would not be home to millions of people nor California’s San Joaquin Valley the most productive agricultural area on earth. Instead, they would be uninhabited deserts.
Another big part of the estimated harm from future climate change is the potentially catastrophic type depicted in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow,” in which the North Atlantic Ocean’s meridional circulation shuts down, causing an almost instantaneous Ice Age over the entire Northern Hemisphere.
As laughable as that scenario may be, no less laughable is the way that climate economists have come up with their estimates for the cost of such future climate change: asking other climate economists for their best guesses. And all estimates of future potential harm from climate change rest on estimates of future temperature change, even as University of Alabama’s John Christy has repeatedly testified before Congress that the warming forecast by the computer models is breathtakingly high.
A body of recent economic work (which I survey in an article forthcoming in the Cato journal Regulation) shows that whether one considers agricultural productivity, human health, or virtually any other determinant of human well-being, climate became less and less important over the course of the 20th century. It is poorer societies that suffer differentially from the vagaries of weather and climate. If the future will be different and people will lose their ability to cope with climate, it will be primarily due to populations becoming poorer and devoid of the capital required for investment in technological innovation.
In this light, it is hardly astounding that many people, including members of Congress, would decide against incurring now the enormous economic costs of decarbonizing the American economy in order to prevent highly uncertain and indisputably distant harm from climate change. Others are of the opposite view and believe that now is the time for ending the use of fossil fuels to generate power.
Those holding this view tend to be from states such as California, Washington and Oregon, which get very large fractions of their electricity from hydropower or nuclear. Members of Congress from such states know full well that the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and other steps to decarbonize electricity supply would confer a sizable competitive benefit on their constituents by forcing fossil fuel-reliant states to adopt more expensive energy sources.
Congressional failure to enact comprehensive climate change legislation is not a manifestation of a dysfunctional Congress, but of a Congress that is representative, in which the views of those who would lose a lot from immediate steps to decarbonize the American economy have prevailed over the views of those who would be net winners.
The EPA’s attempt to coerce decarbonization by promulgating regulations without regard to their legality is not only a cynical use of regulatory power, but an attempt to override a Congress that is not dysfunctional, but representative.
Disease, and how to deal with it, is the driving force of human history. It’s all the more dreaded when its primary victims are children because without children there is no future. Though plagues and pandemics are largely scourges of the past, pestilence nevertheless persists. Zika, a virus transmitted to humans by a species of mosquito, was barely known by the public a month ago, but it has already been labeled “a public health emergency of international concern” by the World Health Organization (WHO). Fortunately, there’s an effective solution on the shelf if the environmental ideologues will get out of the way of the lifesavers.
DDT, which has saved millions of lives, not only in other lands but in the United States as well, was banned decades ago because environmentalists concluded that it harms birds, fish and certain other wildlife. Nothing developed since has matched DDT’s ability to eradicate pests that threaten human lives. Prior to its prohibition, the pesticide had largely knocked out the mosquitoes that carry malaria, a disease often deadly in the tropics and in the Southern states. DDT was banished, but disease was not. Malaria has returned with a vengeance, killing 20 million persons since the ban. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported 627,000 deaths worldwide in 2012 alone.
Rachael Carson effectively vilified DDT in her 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” stirring an ecological backlash and launching the environmentalist movement. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972 and other nations followed, except for limited use in Africa and Asia. But opposition may be weakening. “Concern about DDT has to be reconsidered in the public health context,” says Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, director of the division of vector-borne diseases at the CDC.
The Zika virus, named for the Zika Forest in Uganda where it was first identified, produces only mild fever in adults, but scientists believe infected pregnant women can transmit it to the children they are carrying, resulting in microcephaly, a developmental malady causing babies to be born with abnormally small heads. Last week, the CDC further announced a link between the virus and Guillain-Barre, which can cause paralysis. The Zika virus was all but unknown in the West until it arrived in Mexico in 2015. Since then it has spread throughout Central and South America. More than 80 cases have been reported in the United States, all contracted abroad, and the WHO forecasts 3 to 4 million cases throughout the Americas over the next year. President Obama has asked Congress for $1.8 billion in emergency funds to combat Zika.
Some health officials argue that the spraying of pesticides is a throwback measure unworthy of the 21st century’s commitment to “sustainability,” and advocate scientific trials of genetically modified mosquitoes whose offspring will die before maturity. Researchers are studying whether mosquito populations can be controlled by using radiation to sterilize males before they mate with female mosquitoes. Certain environmentalists even defend the lives of the infectious bugs, arguing that they play a valuable role in the natural order by making life miserable for humans establishing settlements in the rain forests.
Radical environmentalists cling to their belief that DDT holds long-term risks for all living things. Millions of humans, many not yet born, could be saved by DDT. The EPA has saved millions of baby birds by sacrificing uncounted human babies by withholding the solution at hand. DDT should be enlisted in the struggle. Birds and fish are important, but children are, too.
What the world’s major central banks have been doing is not working. Rather than go back to the tried and true, they are now digging in deeper on policies that are bound to fail, such as the move to negative interest rates, which many will find personally harmful.
The first bank-like institutions started more than 2,000 years ago by serving as a place for safekeeping of one’s gold and silver coins, with the understanding that the “bank” would lend out some of these coins in exchange for a payment — known as interest.
Early on, people understood that there was a “time value to money,” meaning that money at the present time is worth more than the same amount at a future time due to its potential earning capacity. Over time, the safest investments, such as the bonds of solvent governments, tended to provide average annual interest rates of 2 percent to 4 percent above the rate of inflation. Most every student who ever took a course in economics, accounting or finance learned about the time value of money and about normal risk and inflation-adjusted interest rates.
Savers and investors for hundreds of years relied on these basic relationships in making decisions. But now the financial world has been upended with the efforts of the major central banks to depress interest rates far below normal for many years and now to move to negative interest rates, causing all sorts of unintended consequences.
The central banks of Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and the European Central Bank are now all utilizing negative interest rates. The goal of the policy is to limit capital inflows and try to create some inflation. The negative interest rates on deposits have not yet been levied on depositors in their normal savings accounts — with some exceptions — but have primarily been imposed on commercial banks depositing money with their respective central banks.
The central banks that imposed negative interest rates have done so to discourage bankers from holding excess reserves with the central bank, thus encouraging them to lend more to households and businesses, as a way of boosting economic growth. But in a world of falling prices (deflation), there is an incentive for households and businesses to hoard cash rather than spend. The incentive to hoard cash grows with economic uncertainty which, in part, is caused by the erratic policies of the central banks. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen in recent days said that she was open to negative interest rates in the United States — a comment that again added to market uncertainty.
Economist David Malpass of Encima Global has been correctly warning for some time that the Fed and other central banks have been on the wrong course. As Mr. Malpass wrote last week: “The Fed absorbs money from one hand (in this case banks and, indirectly, their customers) and channels it to another hand (bond issuers). This biases the system towards bonds at the expense of savers, lenders and the smaller businesses that rely on bank loans. Credit is guided or rationed towards big borrowers, a misallocation that hurts growth because credit is overly loose for bond borrowers that don’t need it and overly tight for some that do.”
There are many perverse and negative effects from an extended period of artificially low or negative interest rates. For instance, for a couple of hundred years, life insurance companies have been able to offer low rates for their policyholders by taking the insurance premiums and investing them in long-term, high-grade government or corporate bonds that would typically pay interest of around 4 percent per year after adjusting for inflation. If both mortality rates are highly predictable for large numbers of people (which they are) and if the real rate of interest is also highly predictable, it became possible to build a relatively low-risk life insurance business, which benefited both the policyholders and the insurance company owners. But when real interest rates are artificially reduced by central banks, the earnings of life insurance companies are greatly impaired, which will over time cause some of them to go out of business and for all of them to increase their insurance rates to the disadvantage of their customers.
One of the odder destructive effects of very low or negative interest rates is the increased incentive to hold cash. Government officials do not like for citizens to hold large amounts of cash because hoarding cash reduces consumer spending, thus slowing economic growth. The use of cash is largely untraceable, unlike checks and electronic transfers, thus making life more difficult for some in law enforcement. To make holding cash more difficult and inconvenient, there have been calls to eliminate the issuance of high-value bank notes (currency) in Europe and elsewhere. Last week, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers called for eliminating the $100 bill to make it more difficult to keep or use large amounts of cash, with the intention of forcing people into using electronic payments, which big brother government can monitor.
The policies of the central bankers and government financial regulatory officials, intentional or not, are destroying both economic opportunity and liberty. Do we really need these folks?
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The businesses that lobby Virginia politicians are also subsidizing meals at fancy restaurants, stays in the finest hotels, and personal expenses like gas and cellphone bills through campaign donations, records show.
Compounding the issue? Lawmakers in Virginia seldom face serious challenges; only a handful of races were seriously contested in 2015, and not a single incumbent lost in the general election. That means politicians who run up huge fundraising accounts to scare off challengers don’t have to spend the money on campaigning.
An Associated Press review of the state’s finance system turned up examples like Chesapeake Democrat Del. Lionell Spruill, who hasn’t faced an opponent in two decades.
Since 2011, Spruill has spent $300,000 from his campaign account on numerous luxuries: a membership in a private business club, meals at Ruth’s Chris steakhouses around the country, and more than $2,000 at high-end Richmond restaurants during legislative sessions. More than 90 percent of the money Spruill raised came from corporations, trade organizations or special interest groups.
Spruill, who has not listed an outside income in years, declined to comment.
The AP examined tens of thousands of campaign donations and expenditures collected by the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan money-in-politics tracker; interviewed several current and past lawmakers; and compared Virginia’s laws and habits to other states and the federal system. Among the findings:
Behavior that would get lawmakers locked up in other states or at the federal level is perfectly fine in the Old Dominion. Virginia is the only state where lawmakers can raise unlimited campaign donations from anyone, including corporations and unions, and spend the money on themselves.
A handful of lawmakers, including senior members in both parties, rely almost entirely on business interests and their representatives for campaign contributions. For instance, GOP Senate President Pro Tem Steve Newman has raised more than $360,000 since 2012; 99 percent of that money came from corporations, trade groups, lobbying firms or special interest groups. Newman said he didn’t have to do any serious fundraising because he ran unopposed and said his haul from corporate interests hasn’t unduly influenced his votes.
The current system has little accountability. Lawmakers must disclose their spending but are free to do so in the vaguest details. Some lawmakers reimburse themselves thousands of dollars from their campaigns with only scant explanation, like “travel reimbursement.” Further, Virginia’s State Board of Elections does not audit or investigate campaign finance reports. Elected prosecutors can investigate campaign finance violations, but longtime political watchers could not recall a case ever being brought.
Advocates say regulated businesses subsidizing a largely unregulated campaign finance system risks both sides getting too cozy.
“There’s nothing wrong with being business-friendly, but the question is whether they’re too friendly,” said Dale Eisman, a spokesman for Common Cause.
For more than two years, Virginia lawmakers have been trying to reform the state’s image in the wake of former Gov. Bob McDonnell’s corruption scandal. Those efforts have mostly focused on limiting gifts from lobbyists and corporate interests, and lawmakers have so far rejected calls from Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe and others to tighten the state’s campaign finance system.
Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax County, is carrying a bill to prohibit using campaign money for personal expenditures - something already illegal for federal politicians and in most states. Currently, Virginia officials are only prohibited from spending campaign money for personal use when they close out their campaign accounts.
A Republican-controlled panel punted on the bill earlier this year, saying it should be reconsidered next year. Simon said he fears the bill will die quietly and said his colleagues have told him they aren’t eager to take up the issue.
“If we allow the industries we regulate to fund our campaign system, at the very least, you ought to have some limit on how you spend that money and not make it a personal slush fund,” Simon said.
But other Virginia lawmakers are skeptical that new regulations are needed. When McAuliffe addressed the General Assembly last month and said he wanted to ban the personal use of campaign funds, virtually no one clapped.
“These are not government funds, these are private funds,” said GOP Del. Mark Cole, who leads the House committee overseeing election law. “Why should the government step into basically what is a private transaction?”
Many legislators say the unfettered use of campaign funds is necessary. A lawmaker is on duty 24 hours, seven-day-a-week, they said, and the line between what’s a personal expense and what’s a campaign or official expense is often blurry.
Lawmakers like former Sen. Steve Martin, who lost a GOP primary for his Richmond-area seat last year, say their official salaries of about $18,000 a year plus a $1,250-a-month office stipend don’t begin to cover all their costs.
Martin’s campaign reported spending more than $7,000 on tire and auto repair shops and several thousand at area gas stations in recent years. Martin, who had his Senate wages garnished and has been sued for alleged unpaid debts, said the campaign paid for those expenses because he usually traveled for official reasons.
“Other than going to church and grocery shopping and going to pick up my grandchildren and keeping them on Mondays and stuff like that, I wasn’t doing a lot of personal stuff with my car,” Martin said.
Lawmakers also get $185 a day to cover hotels and meals during sessions, which are either 45 or 60 days long. But records show they frequently spend upwards of $200 for meals labeled on reports only as “constituent meal,” ”working dinner” - or simply “dinner” because they aren’t required to report their spending in any level of detail. A favorite is Bookbinder’s Seafood and Steakhouse, where a surf and turf sells for as much as $96. Lawmakers have spent more than $5,000 there during the past two legislative sessions.
Others pay for expensive hotel stays, like GOP Del. Chris Peace, who stayed at Richmond’s storied Jefferson Hotel during the 2014 inaugural celebrations. He also paid for an out-of-town photographer hired to take pictures for his re-election campaign to stay at the hotel.
Peace said he chose the Jefferson, where his campaign has reported spending more than $1,000, in part to help promote tourism.
“The Jefferson is an icon of the city, and I encourage everyone to stay there,” he said in an email.
Antonin Scalia would surely be bemused — and maybe even amused — by a lot of the nice things being said about him now, sometimes by unexpected people. He long ago got used to people saying a lot of nasty things, and worse, few of them were original.
Nino, as his friends called him, was a man in full, someone who enjoyed the treasures of the badly abused culture — food, art, music, language and manly arts like hunting. He once carried a spear at the opera, and did it well. But he was clearly a man born to the wrong season.
Though kind and charming, even generous to the abundant fools his critics said he did not suffer gladly (why should he have?), he never adapted himself to the silliness and shortcomings of the tail-end of the age in which he was born. He mocked the obsessive pursuit of the trivial and the superficial by public men with the vapid intensity of a goldfish. But he knew it was a lost cause.
He was the rare lawyer who could speak and write without taking refuge in learned bloviation. This sometimes irritated colleagues with smaller gifts of language and rhetoric. Harry Blackmun, an earlier colleague whose opinions could be read as a surgical anesthetic to put the entire operating-room to sleep, once said of a 30-page Scalia opinion,” it could have been cut to 10 pages if he had cut out the screaming.”
But the text of a Scalia opinion, which sparkled with the relish of a man unafraid of putting words together to make them snap, crackle and pop, was eagerly awaited by other colleagues who, not necessarily agreeing with anything in them, read them with much-anticipated guilty pleasure. During oral arguments, he asked more questions than the other justices, occasionally more than the rest of them together, often bringing the room to nervous laughter. A social psychologist at the University of Kansas studied the Scalia archive and concluded that “he communicates a sense of urgency on the bench and his style is forever forceful.” Dahlia Lithwick of Slate magazine described him at more colorful length:
“Scalia doesn’t come into oral argument all secretive and sphinxlike, feigning indecision on the nuances of the case before him. He comes in like a medieval knight, girded for battle. He knows what the law is. He knows what the opinion should say. And he uses the hour allocated for argument to bludgeon his brethren into agreement.”
After nearly 25 years on the high court, Scalia characterized his victories as “damn few,” but as he visited law schools across the country, exposing law students to the fresh originalist thinking they were not getting from their professors, he was immersed in the missionary work he liked. His appearances were great box office, typically standing-room-only.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, his close friend on the Supreme Court whose politics and judicial philosophy shared little in common with his, once said her friend was “very much in tune with the current generation of law students. Students now put ‘Federalist Society’ on their resumes.” John Paul Stevens, a justice of the liberal persuasion who served with Scalia until he retired in 2010, once said of him, “He’s made a huge difference. Some of it constructive, some of it unfortunate.” Vice President Joseph R. Biden says he regrets that he had not opposed Scalia’s nomination — he was confirmed by a vote of 98 to nothing — “because he was so effective.”
He always had a lot to say, and worked as if he knew the night was coming. Over his three decades on the court he wrote more concurring opinions than any other justice (as if he were impatient that an opinion by his hand could say it better) and only two justices who wrote more dissents. Kevin Ring, who compiled a book of Scalia’s opinions, found the opinions, whether concurring or dissenting, “highly readable. His entertaining writing style can make even the most mundane areas of the law interesting.”
Dissents often come with the brightest gems of reasoning, insight and language. Conor Clarke of Slate magazine relished what he found in Scalia’s opinions, especially his dissents:
“His writing style is best described as equal parts anger, confidence, and pageantry. Scalia has a taste for garish analogies and offbeat allusions — often very funny ones — and he speaks in no uncertain terms. He is highly accessible and tries not to get bogged down in abstruse legal jargon. But most of all, Scalia’s opinions read like they’re about to catch fire with pure outrage. He does not, in short, write like a happy man.”
And why should he have, with the world on fire?
WASHINGTON — In an announcement that electrified the world of astronomy, scientists said Thursday that they have finally detected gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago.
Scientists likened the breakthrough to the moment Galileo took up a telescope to look at the planets.
The discovery of these waves, created by violent collisions in the universe, excites astronomers because it opens the door to a new way of observing the cosmos. For them, it’s like turning a silent movie into a talkie because these waves are the soundtrack of the cosmos.
“Until this moment we had our eyes on the sky and we couldn’t hear the music,” said Columbia University astrophysicist Szabolcs Marka, a member of the discovery team. “The skies will never be the same.”
An all-star international team of astrophysicists used a newly upgraded and excruciatingly sensitive $1.1 billion instrument known as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, to detect a gravitational wave from the distant crash of two black holes, one of the ways these ripples are created.
Some physicists said this is as big a deal as the 2012 discovery of the subatomic Higgs boson, sometimes called the “God particle.” Some said this is bigger.
“It’s really comparable only to Galileo taking up the telescope and looking at the planets,” said Penn State physics theorist Abhay Ashtekar, who wasn’t part of the discovery team. “Our understanding of the heavens changed dramatically.”
Gravitational waves, first theorized by Albert Einstein in 1916 as part of his theory of general relativity, are extraordinarily faint ripples in space-time, the hard-to-fathom fourth dimension that combines time with the familiar up, down, left and right. When massive but compact objects like black holes or neutron stars collide, their gravity sends ripples across the universe.
Scientists found indirect proof of the existence of the gravitational waves in the 1970s — computations that showed they ever so slightly changed the orbits of two colliding stars — and the work was honored as part of the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics. But Thursday’s announcement was a direct detection of a gravitational wave.
And that’s considered a big difference.
“It’s one thing to know soundwaves exist, but it’s another to actually hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,” said Marc Kamionkowsi, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University who wasn’t part of the discovery team. “In this case we’re actually getting to hear black holes merging.”
Gravitational waves are the “soundtrack of the universe,” said team member Chad Hanna of Pennsylvania State University.
Detecting gravitational waves is so difficult that when Einstein first theorized about them, he figured scientists would never be able to hear them. Einstein later doubted himself and even questioned in the 1930s whether they really do exist, but by the 1960s scientists had concluded they probably do, Ashtekar said.
In 1979, the National Science Foundation decided to give money to the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to come up with a way to detect the waves.
Twenty years later, they started building two LIGO detectors in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, and they were turned on in 2001. But after years with no luck, scientists realized they had to build a more advanced detection system, which was turned on last September.
The new LIGO in some frequencies is three times more sensitive than the old one and is able to detect ripples at lower frequencies that the old one couldn’t. And more upgrades are planned.
Sensitivity is crucial because the stretching and squeezing of space-time by these gravitational waves is incredibly tiny. Essentially, LIGO detects waves that stretch and squeeze the entire Milky Way galaxy “by the width of your thumb,” Hanna said.
Each LIGO has two giant perpendicular arms more than two miles long. A laser beam is split and travels both arms, bouncing off mirrors to return to the arms’ intersection. Gravitational waves stretch the arms to create an incredibly tiny mismatch — smaller than a subatomic particle — and LIGO detects that.
“We are fairly certain that we will find more and more signals,” Marka said. “This is just a start.”
While he was mocked for his performance in the last debate and had a disappointing showing in New Hampshire, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said what none of his rivals are willing to admit: “Let’s dispel [sic] with the fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to change this country” — with astonishing success.
Without this frame of reference, it’s impossible to understand what happened in the past seven years. The president of the United States is a man of the left — a hardcore ideologue with a soft facade who wants to make America poorer and weaker, grow government and increase dependence.
In the incompetent-ideologue debate, the other side is represented by Donald Trump, who responded to Mr. Rubio: “I think we have a president who as a president is totally incompetent. He has no idea of what he is doing and the country is going to hell.”
The president had no idea that Obamacare would be costly and coercive? He didn’t have an inkling of the impact of a $19 trillion national debt on the economy (almost half accumulated on his watch)? He couldn’t imagine that leaving four Americans to die in Benghazi would show terrorists we have the resolve of the French Army in 1940?
Incompetence is when the outcome is the opposite of what’s intended. Lyndon Johnson intended to win the war on poverty. Instead, it was poverty that won in the inner cities. He intended to defeat communism in Southeast Asia. The outcome was helicopters evacuating our personnel from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in what would soon be Ho Chi Minh City.
Like a guided missile that doesn’t waver from its trajectory, President Obama is right on course. His worldview is that of Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. When he told us before the 2008 election, “We’re just five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” he was not speaking of a return to constitutional government and fiscal responsibility.
The Affordable Care Act was always intended to be a way station on the road to a medical gulag. The president gave the game away in a 2003 speech to the Illinois AFL-CIO, when he declared: “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program.”
Thomas Sowell, dean of free-market commentators, says that whether Obamacare is a success or a failure depends on whether the president’s goal was “to improve medical treatment of Americans or leave as his permanent legacy a system of income redistribution through Obamacare and tight government control of the medical profession.”
Did the president believe that executive amnesties would result in improved border security? From Central America alone, 240,000 new illegal immigrants have entered the country since 2012, as Border Patrol agents were ordered to stand down. Illegal immigration is the perfect solvent to erode the national identity the left abhors.
In Mr. Obama’s first term, food stamp rolls grew 75 times as fast as jobs — 14.7 million new recipients versus 194,000 new jobs. More than 60 percent of the jobs created under this president are low-income employment in food services, home health care and temp work. In January, the labor participation rate was 62.7 percent. More than 90 million Americans are no longer looking for jobs. That’s exactly what the president wants. Every American out of work or in a low-paying job is another vote for more welfare and higher taxes on the rich.
When he came to office, the 44th president of the United States told us that America was overbearing, arrogant and a danger to world peace. He apologized for our alleged sins against Islam (from the crusades onward), bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia, created as much distance as politically possible between U.S. policy and Israel, and helped to oust friendly regimes in Egypt and Libya. The former was replaced with the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter descended into chaos.
After the president ditched Iraq, the Islamic State became the prom date from Hell. Weeks after we negotiated a deal to lift sanctions on Iran and release $150 billion in frozen assets — providing a big boost to its nuclear weapons program — North Korea tested a new ballistic missile.
Mr. Obama will leave America in global retreat with our enemies advancing on every front. The Islamic State now has chemical weapons.
And still most Republican candidates pretend that Barack Obama is Jerry Lewis in “The Disorderly Orderly,” instead of Jason Robards as Al Capone in “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
History shows Earth’s climate goes through cycles, long and short, tied to a variety of natural factors. In the latter part of the 20th century, some scientists began to wonder about the causes of a modest warming, then cooling, then warming, which had been occurring since the mid-1800s. They also began to worry about the possible implications of continued warming.
Unfortunately, before scientists had gotten very far along in their research, politicians became involved, virtually destroying any chance for unbiased research.
In 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his now-famous farewell address warning of two dangers: the growing arms industry driven by the Cold War, which he referred to as the “military-industrial complex,” and the growing government influence over the development and use of science and technology. Eisenhower, noting scientific research was increasingly funded by governments, warned science’s aims might become corrupted. He believed science could eventually be used as a force for advancing the political aims of a scientific-technological elite. Eisenhower said, “We must also be alert to the … danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
The history of governments’ involvement in climate research proves Eisenhower’s skill for predicting the future.
When the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted by governments in 1992, the die was cast. The convention was established on the assumption that human carbon-dioxide emissions were causing temperatures to rise to what many said were dangerous levels. The UNFCCC was established to determine ways to limit temperature increases. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed, it was charged with understanding the human causes of climate change, not with determining the cause of warming. As the saying goes, “If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” and so it was with the IPCC. The leaders of the panel are political appointees, and each Assessment Report and Synthesis Report issued by the IPCC on the state of climate science is vetted, altered and approved by member governments.
Although the scientists working on the various IPCC reports generally do good work, when their findings conflict with the panel’s dogma about humans causing dangerous global warming, the findings are ignored, downplayed or, in the summary reports, even altered.
For instance, one section of Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change: Contribution of Working Group I to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change originally stated, “While some of the pattern-base studies discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed] to [man-made] causes.” Political intervention led to the statement being altered to read, “The body of statistical evidence in Chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate.”
Scientists are charged with studying the human causes of climate change, but the IPCC’s “physical understanding of the climate system” is rather limited. Its own reports admit it has “low” understanding of 75 percent of the factors impacting climate change, although this hasn’t stopped the panel from having a high degree of confidence human greenhouse gas emissions drive climate change.
More recently, political leaders at the IPCC have honestly admitted the push to limit carbon-dioxide emissions is not about protecting human health or the environment; it’s about giving governments control over the world’s economy. In February 2015, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said, “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”
Cutting carbon-dioxide emissions by 80 percent below 2005 levels, as demanded by the convention, would bring per capita carbon-dioxide emissions down to levels not seen since the 19th century, because renewables can’t replace fossil fuels and carbon-dioxide emissions can’t be captured and sequestered underground for thousands of years. That means returning emission levels to a time before cars, trucks, airplanes, computers, cell phones, refrigerators, air conditioners, heating, electric lighting, electric tools, nighttime sporting events and concerts, and the long list of other modern technologies that make life longer, healthier and more fulfilling. In short, it means forgoing the vast majority of the technological innovations that have made Western societies wealthy.
The use of coal, oil, gasoline and natural gas make modern life possible. Where fossil fuels are in regular use, people are wealthy, and where they are not used, poverty, disease and hunger are rife. Repudiating the demands of governments behind the U.N. convention will allow fossil fuels to improve the lives of billions of people by providing low-cost energy for centuries to come.
The Supreme Court halted the EPA’s major anti-global warming initiative late Tuesday evening, dealing a major blow to President Obama’s hopes of overseeing a green energy transition in his final year in office.
The 5-4 decision by the court puts the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation on hold while a lower appeals court hears states’ challenge to the rules.
More than two dozen states sued to stop the rules, which were intended to control greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.
The EPA called the court’s decision disappointing but said it won’t stop the agency’s determination to press forward.
“You can’t stay climate change, and you can’t stay climate action,” spokeswoman Melissa J. Harrison said. “Millions of people are demanding we confront the risks posed by climate change. And we will do just that.”
Energy advocates had predicted the rules would force a major shift in the economy, pushing energy companies and consumers toward solar and wind power and away from the fossil fuels that currently underpin most electricity in the U.S. Estimates suggested consumers’ power bills would leap at least 25 percent, with some estimates putting the hike much higher.
“This wasn’t a rule so much as it was a reimagining of the entire electricity system of the United States,” said Michael McKenna, a Republican energy strategist.
While Tuesday’s stay isn’t a ruling on the actual merits of the EPA’s regulations, energy industry backers said it suggested a majority of the justices are skeptical of what Mr. Obama did.
The four Democrat-appointed justices on the Supreme Court dissented from the order granting the stay.
Known as the Clean Power Plan, the EPA’s regulation was intended to impose strict limits on the carbon emissions from existing power plants. It followed a rule on new power plants, but the industry said the restrictions on existing plants is tougher because it requires retrofitting — or shutting down — plants that can’t meet goals.
States were supposed to submit preliminary plans for how they would meet their emissions goals to the EPA later this year, with final plans slated for 2018.
The goal was to reduce emissions about 30 percent by 2030.
States were scrambling to decide whether to submit plans or wait it out. The Supreme Court’s stay will bolster states that took a wait-and-see approach — and likely pushes the big decisions beyond Mr. Obama’s tenure and straight into this year’s presidential election.
Mr. Obama came into office expecting major climate change legislation from Congress, but he failed to win over Senate Democrats in 2009 and 2010.
When Republicans took control of the House in 2011, the president changed tactics and began threatening executive action, hoping to pressure Congress to act. But after continued resistance from Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama struck out on his own last year.
It’s another in a long list of areas where the Obama administration did an end run around Congress.
Mr. Obama’s deportation amnesty for illegal immigrants, announced in late 2014, has also been halted by courts, with judges ruling that Mr. Obama broke procedural and immigration laws.
That immigration case is now pending before the Supreme Court, where the justices have asked attorneys to address even bigger questions of whether Mr. Obama violated the Constitution.
A lower court refused to halt the power plant rules last month while the appeals court heard the case.
The White House at the time cheered the move, insisting it had acted legally, and repeated that assertion Tuesday.
“We remain confident that we will prevail on the merits. Even while the litigation proceeds, EPA has indicated it will work with states that choose to continue to plan development and will prepare the tools those states will need,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is expected to hear oral arguments in the case in June.
Congress voted to try to overturn the rules, but Mr. Obama vetoed the disapproval and Democrats sustained his veto.
A senior administration official said Obama advisers were “very surprised” by the court’s decision, calling it unprecedented to stay a rule that had not been implemented.
Obama officials said the decision is a “temporary procedural determination” and they’re not worried that it could persuade other nations to withdraw from the groundbreaking climate accord that Mr. Obama sealed with 195 nations in Paris in December.
Mr. Obama pointed to the Clean Power Plan as proof of the U.S. commitment to lead the world in reducing emissions.
Obama aides also said they are not concerned about the possibility of the case going to the Supreme Court.
“We don’t think the Supreme Court’s been hostile,” one official said, adding that the high court has generally been “supportive and deferential” to EPA actions.
Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the court’s stay was a “major blow” to the promises Mr. Obama made to other world leaders late last year that the U.S. would reduce emissions.
“These regulations were the foundation of the president’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement,” Mr. Inhofe said. “The court’s action should demonstrate once again to the world that this president has committed the U.S. to actions that are unenforceable and legally questionable.”
But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat and one of the driving forces in Congress behind tackling global warming, called the court’s stay “deeply misguided.”
“In the face of rising asthma rates, record droughts and surging oceans, there can be no question: The damage of carbon pollution threatens the health of our children, the strength of our economy and the security of our nation,” she said.
“We cannot afford more willful blindness to the reality or the severity of the climate crisis.”
If there’s a clash of civilizations, both sides have to have one. A civilization, that is.
So when I hear about the ‘clash’ between migrants from various Muslim countries and their host countries in Europe, I certainly know it’s not “cultural.”
Oh sure, there’s a major problem Europeans are facing with the deluge of Arab Muslims sweeping into their countries, but one of the big revelations is how Islamist nations have chosen crazed religiosity over an actually civilized culture.
Up until the million-plus fighting-age Muslim men from Syria and Libya poured into Europe, the civilized world presumed the barbaric behavior of terrorists was limited to some freakish fringe of the Islamic world.
But what if it is a natural outgrowth of shunning normal civilization brought by an adherence to a backward, Stone-Age view of life? That is, after all, an excellent way for a few elites to control a massive population, no?
The misogynistic treatment of women, the execution of gays, the enslavement of foreign workers, the imprisonment of ‘heretics,’ and of course, murder of infidels, is well known throughout the Islamist world.
But another simple sign of backwardness is, well, literally making a toilet of Europe.
It’s the 21st century, and while Germany is dealing with the importation of a rape culture, they’re also finding if you have disdain for basic norms in the civilized world, you apparently also don’t like using toilets.
One would think the habit of migrants relieving themselves in public, on the street, in subway cars, in showers, and on floors in buildings would demand an intervention of some sort. Oh, like realizing if there’s going to be any assimilation, then teaching these people that defecating in public isn’t acceptable in Western civilization might be a good idea.
But no. Instead, the reaction has been predictably politically correct, and left to an enterprising company that has decided the civilized will adapt to the more… quaint requirements of invading cavemen.
According to Breitbart News, “German bathroom manufacturers are developing “multicultural toilets” to help ensure Middle Eastern migrants need not adapt to European sanitation norms. Multiple reports have emerged of recent arrivals finding themselves utterly “mystified” by Western loos. Some have resorted to doing their business on the floor or outdoors, others have used showers, and many migrants will have never seen toilet paper before.”
Hence, the toilet manufacturer has developed “a mobile “multicultural toilet” complete with a squatting platform and water hose for migrant friendly sanitation,” reports Breitbart.
Why a water hose? Up until 2015, water was the only permissible way for a Muslim to clean oneself in the bathroom. That is, until Turkey issued a fatwa allowing Muslims to use toilet paper. Yes, a fatwa was required. In the 21st century. Allowing Muslims to, well, wipe.
“The set of rules for how Muslims should relieve themselves, called the Qadaa al-Haajah, was established in the times before toilet paper or toilet seats were invented. Use of the left hand or three stones was also permissible,” reports the London Daily Mail. “The code also states that followers should not speak or read while on the toilet and should enter with their left foot and leave with their right, speaking a prayer,” notes the newspaper.
I’m surprised they didn’t also ban Big Gulps.
None of that, of course, has anything to do with hygiene, but everything to do with the state controlling every single action of the individual. All in the name of religion, of course, and especially when engaging in the most private personal actions which reinforce control, literally, of the state.
Think about it: if which foot you use to enter or exit the bathroom is dictated by the state, all autonomy of the individual is crushed.
While Islam was founded in the 7th century, hygiene was, thank you very much, an already familiar notion to human beings. In about 50 B.C., the Chinese were using a toilet paper made of cotton linen rags.
So while the rules for Muslims regarding the water closet were written before the concept of toilet paper in their region of the world, it was a practice in wide use for hundreds of years previously.
But still, we’re told it’s because of, well… religion. Just as the “kill the infidel” edict and the treatment of women like chattle hasn’t changed much for the Islamist world from the 7th century until now.
Fast forward to Germany in the 21st century.
One small town in Germany posted a bulletin on the town’s website informing the migrants of certain Western norms to which they were expected to adhere. Yes, toilet habits were among a variety of issues.
“Germany is a clean country and should remain so. We do our necessities exclusively on toilets, not in gardens and parks, not even in hedges and behind bushes,” according to Focus, a German news daily.
The town was excoriated as racist, and the bulletin was taken down.
This is also not about Islam per se, but leadership of a region of the world that has so abandoned the norms of civilization for its own people, they’ve condemned them to a barbarism at every level threatening the very fabric of normal life.
If Europe’s smug and arrogant left actually care about these Muslim migrants, the first order of business is to demand assimilation. And the distribution of some Charmin. There will be no turning back for anyone if liberal society capitulates to the Stone Age.
A case with the potential to redefine how police use secret cellphone tracking systems heads to an appeals court this week, where Maryland prosecutors will challenge a ruling that found the use of such a device to hone in on the location of a shooting suspect was a breach of his Fourth Amendment rights.
The case, which goes before the Maryland Court of Special Appeals on Tuesday, represents the first time privacy advocates say a judge has thrown out evidence obtained through use of a cell-site simulator, often known as a Stingray. Maryland’s Office of the Attorney General is challenging the ruling.
While the outcome of the appeals case would be binding only in Maryland, it will have national implications as defendants across the country increasingly uncover usage of the covert tracking systems by police and challenge the legality of it.
“Whatever this court decides, it’s going to be looked to by other courts around the country that are trying to grapple with the protection of the Fourth Amendment as it applies to new police technologies,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Maryland case centers on the Baltimore Police Department’s use of a cell-site simulator device called Hailstorm to track down Kerron Andrews, a suspect in a 2014 shooting that injured three people during a drug deal gone bad.
After Mr. Andrews became a suspect, police obtained a court order for a pen register for his cellphone, which allowed them to access his phone log information and locate the general area where the phone was last used. Police then deployed a Hailstorm, a simulator made by the same company that manufactures Stingrays, to pinpoint Mr. Andrews‘ exact location.
Devices like the Stringray and Hailstorm work by mimicking cellphone towers to trick cellphones to connect to them, enabling investigators to obtain identifying information about the phones and their locations. Law enforcement officers often deploy the suitcase-sized devices by hauling them around in vehicles as they drive through neighborhoods looking for a suspect’s phone, scooping up data on the cellphones of any passers-by in the process.
In Mr. Andrews‘ case, officers used the Hailstrom to pinpoint his location and found him inside a home sitting on a couch. Under the couch cushions was a gun that police eventually traced to the shooting.
The Baltimore Sun reported in April that police detectives admitted to using cell-site simulator devices more than 4,300 times since 2007. Dozens of police departments around the country have been found to own similar devices, though details about their use are scarce.
The ACLU’s Mr. Wessler said that police often try to hide their use of the devices because, when departments buy them, they must sign nondisclosure agreements with the FBI in which they promise not to disclose details about their use to the public.
Mr. Andrews‘ case followed that pattern. Prosecutors initially weren’t forthcoming with the fact that police used the Hailstorm to locate him.
More than a year into the court battle, and after prompting from Mr. Andrews‘ defense attorney, prosecutors did disclose use of the Hailstorm. At that point Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Kendra Ausby ruled that the use of the Hailstorm violated Mr. Andrews‘ Fourth Amendment rights and barred prosecutors from using any evidence gleaned from the use of the device — including the recovered gun.
Defending use of the Hailstorm, prosecutors from the attorney general’s office argue that a warrant to use the device is unnecessary. They argue that cellphone owners essentially are volunteering information about their locations to third parties at all times because cellphones regularly connect with nearby towers, providing phone companies with the information.
“Andrews was aware, or should have been aware, that an activated cellphone is constantly emitting a signal giving its location to the outside world,” prosecutors wrote in their latest arguments.
If he wanted to keep his location secret, “Andrews could have simply turned his cellphone off to stop broadcasting its location,” prosecutors wrote.
In September, the Justice Department revised its stance on the use of cell-site simulators, requiring that federal law enforcement obtain a search warrant supported by probable cause before using the devices. However, the policy does not apply to local or state departments and there are exceptions to the new rules, such as during emergencies like the pursuit of a fleeing felon or to protect human life.
The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed friend of the court briefs in support of Mr. Andrews, arguing that even if a warrant were obtained by police allowing use of the Hailstorm, that use of the device in and of itself raises Fourth Amendment concerns because of the large amount of data collected from the cellphones of bystanders in the process.
Mr. Wessler calls the attorney general’s argument that the data is being broadcast to a third party, and therefor accessible to police, an outdated argument that doesn’t consider the ubiquitous use of cell phones in everyday life.
“What that means for people is if a person goes to a psychologist’s office or an NRA rally, or their lover’s home, they are supposed to turn off their phone just in case the government is running around with a phone tracker and can figure out they are there,” Mr. Wessler said. “What they are asking people to do is throw away from their cellphones and pull away from parts of modern society.”
The Pentagon is ordering the top brass to incorporate climate change into virtually everything they do, from testing weapons to training troops to war planning to joint exercises with allies.
A new directive’s theme: The U.S. Armed Forces must show “resilience” and beat back the threat based on “actionable science.”
It says the military will not be able to maintain effectiveness unless the directive is followed. It orders the establishment of a new layer of bureaucracy — a wide array of “climate change boards, councils and working groups” to infuse climate change into “programs, plans and policies.”
The Pentagon defines resilience to climate change as: “Ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions.”
To four-star generals and admirals, among them the regional combatant commanders who plan and fight the nation’s wars, the directive tells them: “Incorporate climate change impacts into plans and operations and integrate DoD guidance and analysis in Combatant Command planning to address climate change-related risks and opportunities across the full range of military operations, including steady-state campaign planning and operations and contingency planning.”
The directive, “Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience,” is in line with President Obama’s view that global warming is the country’s foremost national security threat, or close to it. Mr. Obama says there is no debate on the existence of man-made global warming and its ensuing climate change. Supporters of this viewpoint label as “deniers” any scientists who disagree.
But there are stubborn doubters. A climate center in Colorado has said its researchers looked at decades of weather reports and concluded there has been no uptick in storms. The United Nations came to a similar finding, saying there is not enough evidence to confirm an increase in droughts and floods.
A previous Pentagon report on climate change attributed Super Storm Sandy to climate change.
Dakota Wood, a retired Marine Corps officer and U.S. Central Command planner, said the Pentagon is introducing climate change, right down to military tactics level.
“By equating tactical actions of immediate or short-term utility with large-scale, strategic-level issues of profound importance, the issue of climate change and its potential impact on national security interests is undermined,” he said. “People tend to dismiss the whole, what might be truly important, because of all the little silly distractions that are included along the way.”
He said climate change is typically measured in long stretches of time.
“The climate does change over great periods of time, typically measured in millennia, though sometimes in centuries,” he said. “But the document mentions accounting for such down to the level of changes in ‘tactics, techniques and procedures’ as if reviewing how a squad conducts a patrol should be accorded the same level of importance and attention as determining whether the naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, might have to be relocated as sea levels rise over the next 100 years.”
Multipoint strategy
The directive originated in the office of Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. Final approval came from Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work.
The directive is loaded with orders to civilian leaders and officers on specifically how counter-climate change strategy is to permeate planning.
“This involves deliberate preparation, close cooperation, and coordinated planing by DoD to provide for the continuity of DoD operations, services and programs,” it states.
“The DoD must be able to adapt current and future operations to address the impacts of climate change in order to maintain an effective and efficient U.S. military,” it adds. “Mission planning and execution must include anticipating and managing any risks that develop as a result of climate change to build resilience.”
Climate change must be integrated in:
Weapons buying and testing “across the life cycle of weapons systems, platforms and equipment.”
Training ranges and capabilities.
Defense intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance.
Defense education and training
Combatant commander joint training with allies to “assess the risks to U.S. security interests posed by climate change.”
Joint Chiefs of Staff collaboration “with allies and partners to optimize joint exercises and war games including factors contributing to geopolitical and socioeconomic instability.”
Mr. Wood, now a military analyst at The Heritage Foundation, said the directive is muddled.
“I understand the motivation behind and intent for such guidance,” he said. “The problem is that it includes such a wide variety of issues with no explication or context that enables the offices mentioned to differentiate and prioritize activities and efforts across time or intensity.”
‘A lack of evidence’
The Department of Defense last issued a broad directive on climate change in July. It declared climate change an “urgent and growing threat to our national security” and blamed it for “increased natural disasters.”
The report also told commanders there are “more frequent and/or severe extreme weather events that may require substantial involvement of DoD units, personnel and assets in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.”
This assertion is not supported by the U.N.’s most recent global warming predictions.
Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Police Research at the University of Colorado, also has come to conclusions at odds with the Obama administration. He has testified on Capitol Hill, clashing with liberals who say his data are wrong.
“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century,” he wrote in 2013. “No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin.
“In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.”
Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Democrat, tried to silence Mr. Pielke by unleashing allegations and starting an investigation.
Fellow scientists have come to Mr. Pielke’s defense and accused Democrats of violating academic freedom.
“Congressman Grijalva doesn’t have any evidence of any wrongdoing on my part, either ethical or legal, because there is none,” Mr. Pielke wrote on a blog. “He simply disagrees with the substance of my testimony — which is based on peer-reviewed research funded by the U.S. taxpayer, and which also happens to be the consensus of the IPCC.”
The IPCC is the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest. I never have. Rep. Grijalva knows this too, because when I have testified before the U.S. Congress, I have disclosed my funding and possible conflicts of interest,” Mr. Pielke said. “So I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically motivated ‘witch hunt’ designed to intimidate me [and others] and to smear my name.”
“Doomsayer” is probably not on Al Gore’s resume but it’s as descriptive as “almost president.” It perfectly describes the attention he has attracted in the decade since he took to the stage at the Sundance Film Festival and set off global warming fears with his agitprop film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“Humans may have only 10 years left to save the planet from turning into a total frying pan,” one terrified reviewer, who is presumably still unfried, put it. Humankind has blown past the point of no return that he said would render the damage from man-made greenhouse gases irreversible. Yet the world continues to turn, not burn. Atmospheric anxiety has subsided, despite all that Hillary and Bernie can do to keep it alive, and Americans have moved on to more immediate issues, such as who’s likely to win the Super Bowl on Sunday.
The people just aren’t that into Al and his scam. A YouGov poll of 18,000 men and women finds that only 9.2 percent of Americans rate climate change, the latest euphemism for global warming, as the most serious issue facing the world. Instead, 28 percent of Americans rank radical Islamic terrorism as the greatest worldwide concern. The only country with a wider yawn of skepticism is Saudi Arabia, where the oil economy produces jobs and wealth.
The poll confirms that Americans are of like mind with the rest of the world, 25 percent of whom put terrorism at the top of their list of worries. Climate change comes in third at nearly 13 percent, behind poverty, hunger and thirst at 15 percent. If there’s a lesson here, it’s that a doomsayer’s work is never done.
There is a truth that many Americans, including Mr. Gore, may find more inconvenient than global warming: Implementation of the Paris United Nations climate change agreement that President Obama endorsed in December which likely will cost a lot more than the expected $12.1 trillion over the next 25 years. That’s a finding by Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmentalists. Beyond the $100 billion that wealthy nations are expected to chip in annually to pay for clean energy projects in developing countries, annual investments of $484 billion are needed to build the solar, wind and green fuel infrastructure that the global-warming lobby says is necessary to limit the rise of the Earth’s temperature to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. That’s 75 percent more than current annual global expenditure of $276 billion.
Since global warming is not a hot-button issue on Main Street, private investment money won’t go to renewable energy projects unless governments guarantee profitability of otherwise unprofitable ventures. With congressional collaboration, President Obama engineered tax credit extensions for wind and solar industries with the passage of the Omnibus spending bill in December. “Why would we want to pass up the chance for American businesses to produce and sell the energy of the future?” he asked.
Subsidizing “the energy of the future” means that it can’t compete with the energy of now. Since everything the government spends comes from the pockets of taxpayers, the president wants to pay for global-warming initiatives with money collected from Americans who don’t share his obsession with the profits of doom.
What do campus microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes and censorship have to do with higher learning?
American universities want it both ways. They expect unquestioned subsidized support from the public, but also to operate in a way impossible for anyone else.
Colleges still wear the ancient clothes of higher learning. Latin mottos, caps and gowns, ivy-covered spires and high talk of liberal education reflect a hallowed intellectual tradition.
In fact, today’s campuses mimic ideological boot camps. Tenured professors seek to indoctrinate young people in certain preconceived progressive political agendas. Environmental studies classes are not very open to debating the “settled science” of man-caused, carbon-induced global warming — or the need for immediate and massive government intervention to address it. Grade-conscious and indebted students make the necessary ideological adjustments.
Few sociological courses celebrate the uniquely American assimilationist melting pot. Race, class and gender agenda courses — along with thousands of “studies” courses — have been invented. A generation of politicized professors has made the strange argument that they alone have discovered all sorts of critical new disciplines of knowledge — apparently unknown for 2,500 years — to ensure that graduates would be better educated than ever before.
Universities have lost their commitment to the inductive method. Preconceived anti-Enlightenment theories are established as settled fact and part of career promotion. Evidence is made to fit these unquestioned assumptions.
Two unfortunate results have predictably followed.
Students now leave campus largely prepped by their professors to embrace a predictable menu: the glories of larger government, income redistribution, greater entitlements, radical environmentalism, abortion, multiculturalism, suspicion of traditional religion, and antipathy to the international role of the United States in the past and present.
Unfortunately, this costly indoctrination comes at the expense of what is increasingly less taught: traditional mastery of foreign languages, great works of literature, philosophy, history, mastery of grammar and composition, and the Socratic method.
Careerism often drives campus politics. If poor, minority or first-generation college students could obtain the traditional tools of success — English and mathematic literacy, acquaintance with American history and protocols, oral and written language mastery — they would succeed as individuals without need for the college industry of collective victimology that assumes a permanent lack of parity.
Employers and the adult world no longer equate a bachelor’s degree with proof of a well-rounded education. Yet chastised universities usually oppose any objective measurement of their effectiveness. They certainly want federally insured student loans, but they do not want proof of their competency through national exit tests, which might help ensure that all graduates leave college able to compute, read and write well. How odd that standardized tests are permissible to judge entering students but not to certify exiting ones.
Colleges are schizophrenic in lots of other ways. They claim they are special institutions that should be free to form their own curricula, enjoy ancient rites such as faculty tenure, not worry much how much they charge students or treat part-time faculty, and establish radical new legal protocols that run contrary to the Constitution.
When colleges create “safe spaces” designated by race and gender, they butt up against U.S. law. Assuming the guilt rather than innocence of students accused of bad behavior does not stand up in court.
Most Americans who work in a mall or shop are not awarded lifelong guaranteed employment. Nor are our newspapers censored with “trigger warnings” in fear that readers might become hurt by depressing news stories.
Universities ask the public to subsidize these strange rituals by making endowments tax-exempt. The government extends federally guaranteed loans and ensures write-offs for charitable giving.
In the past, there was a clear bargain. The university said, “Leave us alone to do our business that we know best, and we promise to turn out the best-educated and most inductive generation of American youth.”
Universities are now breaking their word. Students, if they even graduate (about four in 10 do not, even after six years), are not “universally” educated. Instead, they are the least prepared yet most politicized graduates in memory. Arrogance and ignorance are a bad combination.
If the university cannot fulfill its original compact of broadly educating youth while keeping within bounds of American laws and protocols, then it will either have to change or slowly become irrelevant.
The market is already sensing a void and, thus, opportunity. Online degree programs proliferate. Private vocational and trade schools sprout up around college campuses. Even Ivy League degrees have become mostly empty brand names, like Gucci or Versace, that convey status and open doors but hardly guarantee that graduates are knowledgeable or inductive thinkers.
All of these growing alternatives to borrowing a collective $1 trillion for university education reflect that it may not only be a bad deal, but a rigged one as well.
Media outlets around the country have reported that 10 percent of college graduates think Judith Sheindlin — better known as TV’s “Judge Judy” — is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Behind this embarrassing yet hilarious finding is the fact that there is a serious crisis in American higher education. Not funny at all is another finding that nearly half couldn’t identify the term lengths for U.S. representatives and senators.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has issued survey after survey, all of which confirm that we have an epidemic of civic and historical illiteracy.
In 2000, ACTA released the results of a survey of the historical knowledge of college seniors at the 55 top-ranked colleges and universities in the country. More than 80 percent of those surveyed would have received a “D” or “F” if it had been an exam.
A 2012 survey found that less than 20 percent of American college graduates knew the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation, and only 42 percent knew that the Battle of the Bulge occurred during World War II.
And in 2014, a survey found that more than a quarter of college graduates didn’t know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during World War II, and one-third didn’t know he was the president who spearheaded the New Deal.
And all of these questions were multiple choice.
The American higher education system has fostered civic and historical illiteracy. Only 18 percent of the more than 1,100 colleges and universities in the What Will They Learn? study require a course in American history or government. In the other 82 percent of schools, students can graduate with no more knowledge of America than when they entered.
A newly released report, A Crisis in Civic Education, further reveals the extent of the problem.
The report notes that at prestigious Bates College, although students who major in history must take two courses in either Latin American history or East Asian history, they have no requirement to take a single one in U.S. history. Opponents of more rigorous requirements argue that students have already studied U.S. history in high school. But the surveys of college graduates, to say nothing of National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) results, show the fraudulence of that argument.
And it’s not just Bates that drops the ball. Of the top 25 ranked liberal arts colleges in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report, only two require students to take even one course in American history or government: the United States Naval Academy and the United States Military Academy.
Teaching about our history and government is particularly important today, as students around the country rally to eradicate the monuments to leaders of our past and, in some instances, even demand the curtailment of the First Amendment to eliminate perceived insensitivity and restrict news coverage.
At the College of William & Mary and the University of Missouri — Columbia, critics of Thomas Jefferson have defaced statues of the third president (and author of the Declaration of Independence), labeling him a “rapist” and “racist.”
At Hamilton College, the call is to topple alumnus Elihu Root, winner of the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize — because he oversaw territories acquired in the Spanish — American War.
These schools are among the many that don’t require the study of American history or government. So while the protests raise important issues, one can rightly ask: Do the protesting students bring sufficient knowledge and context to ensure an informed discussion? Sadly, there is little reason to believe that the debate will be premised on a strong understanding of our Constitution and our shared history.
An annual survey by the Newseum Institute revealed that in 2014, almost 40 percent of Americans said the First Amendment goes “too far.” If we want liberty and civic empowerment, it is more important than ever that students understand the fundamentals of our government and our history. It is time for trustees to stand up for substantive and rigorous requirements.
Just as radar warns of approaching storms, so does the flood of migrants entering Europe warn us of a deluge yet to come, not only for Europeans, if they continue to allow unrestricted immigration, but for the United States.
Reports that women in Cologne, Germany, have been groped and robbed by men described by authorities as having “a North African or Arabic” appearance should be warning enough, but there are other and more ominous warnings that suggest worse lies ahead, unless the problem receives immediate attention and action. And it’s not just Cologne.
The Gatestone Institute, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit international policy council and think tank, is in possession of what it describes as a “leaked German intelligence document,” which says, “We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples, as well as a different understanding of society and law.”
Last October, reports Gatestone, Andrew Parker, the director general of Britain’s Security Service, said that ” ‘the scale and tempo’ of the danger to the [United Kingdom] is now at a level he has not seen in his 32-year career. British police are monitoring over 3,000 homegrown Islamist extremists willing to carry out attacks on the U.K..”
On Wednesday, President Obama visited a Baltimore mosque. According to The Daily Caller, the mosque “has deep ties to extremist elements, including the Muslim Brotherhood.” That mosque is not alone, as a map on the paper’s website reveals.
Explaining the president’s visit, White House spokesman Keith Maley said, “The president believes that one of our nation’s greatest strengths is our rich diversity.”
I doubt terrorists believe that. I don’t believe that diversity, as practiced in America, exists in any country with a Muslim majority.
Benedicte Bjornland, head of the Norwegian Police Security Service, recently warned against further Muslim immigration. When U.S. politicians suggest a similar approach, they are denounced as “bigots” and “Islamophobes,” but in Norway and Sweden, two of the most liberal nations in Europe that have welcomed Muslim immigrants, that charge will be difficult to make stick.
What we are witnessing is the complete breakdown and failure of multiculturalism. Dictionary.com defines multiculturalism as “the preservation of different cultures or cultural identities within a unified society, as a state or nation.”
That definition contains a glaring contradiction. A society cannot be unified if it preserves different cultures and cultural identities within itself. That’s why our national motto is translated “out of many, one.” To the multiculturalist it appears to be, “Out of one, many.”
History demonstrates that no nation can long survive if it forgets why it exists. Our failure to inculcate American traditions, beliefs and history, even in the native born, not to mention immigrants, is rapidly destroying the country bequeathed to us by our forebears.
Leftists in Europe and the United States have promoted multiculturalism, believing that once Muslims experience our freedoms and dedication to equality they will want to be like us. It doesn’t appear to be working and anyone familiar with the Koran and its “kingdom of this world” instructions knows it likely won’t.
European leaders, from Germany’s Angela Merkel, to Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, have deliberately closed their eyes to what they see unfolding in their countries, and in others.
President Obama is doing the same thing with his trip to the Baltimore mosque. Our enemies see our weakness and failure to understand their objectives, which include destroying the West and establishing a worldwide caliphate. This is not top secret information. Not all Muslims are terrorists, to be sure, but large numbers of radical Islamists profess allegiance to the faith and they are more than willing to wreak havoc in pursuit of their goals.
An ancient proverb reminds us: “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
Lobbing firecrackers into the crowd gathered in the square outside Cologne’s cathedral on New Year’s Eve, a thousand-strong violent flash mob of Middle Eastern and North African Muslim men then took their celebration to the next level, breaking into smaller groups and isolating German women to rob, grope, fondle and in two cases (so far), rape them.
The 100 police officers on the scene were outnumbered 10 to one. In modern Western law enforcement protocol, it is unthinkable that the police would discharge firearms in order to protect their citizens. So the robberies and sexual violence continued as the overwhelmed police awaited reinforcements.
The German government’s immediate reaction was to deny the extent of the violence and to admonish people not to conclude the mob was made up of Muslim migrants and refugees. For days, the media cooperated. But in the age of the Internet, cell phones and social media, the government no longer has a monopoly on information.
When women came forward with the gritty details of the sexual assaults, the government looked all the worse for its deception. “They all looked at us like we were free meat at the supermarket, fair game,” one 26-year-old victim openly told the media. “They were exploring our bodies to see if the meat was still fresh.”
Similar assaults took place in other German cities. In Norway, the government is sponsoring anti-rape seminars for immigrants, attempting to teach them that because a woman is not draped in a tent does not mean she is fair game for assault.
Sweden, which has experienced a rising rate of rape coinciding with its expansive immigration and refugee policies, is now opening a rape crisis center for male victims. Many see this as also a consequence of those policies.
And as a result of the New Year’s Eve sexual violence in Cologne and other European cities, our multicultural knowledge has been enhanced with new vocabulary words, “Taharrush Gamea,” an Arab rape game in which a mob of sexual predators breaks up into posses, which then surround women and repeatedly explore every orifice of their bodies and sometimes have forcible sexual intercourse with them. In 2011, “60 Minutes” journalist Lara Logan fell victim to this heinous phenomenon. While reporting on the much-vaunted Arab Spring from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Ms. Logan was stripped and gang raped by a mob of a dozen Egyptian men.
Western societies speak glowingly of multiculturalism, confident that immigrants and refugees will integrate into the host culture while innocuously retaining colorful aspects of their own culture. The assumption that newcomers will naturally aspire to become part of the “superior” (Western) host culture is ethnocentric delusion.
The reality is far more complicated. Muslims believe their culture and their Shariah law is superior. As Council on American Islamic Relations co-founder Omar Ahmad is reported to have said, “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
It should be remembered that during the Korean War not a single Turkish prisoner of war succumbed to the Chinese Communists’ brainwashing experiments. Why? Because Turks believe their culture is superior and the Chinese culture is inferior. For a people grounded in such a fundamentally, radically different culture, Western civilization’s multicultural ideal is antithetical.
That is a reality that both the immigration and refugee policies of Western Europe and the Obama administration fail to comprehend. But it is something that every American with an Internet connection can easily see streaming across his or her computer screen.
People do not leave their culture at the water’s edge. If America follows Europe’s immigration policies, it will experience the tragic consequences of Europe’s cultural conflicts. Taharrush Gamea is only one of them.
With the first real votes being cast in the presidential race on Monday, this is an opportune moment to do some last-minute comparison shopping on the candidate tax reform plans. On this issue there’s a lot to cheer about. All the Republican candidates have crafted plans that would slash tax rates for everyone and most would vastly simplify the thousands of pages of IRS tax code too.
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The chart shows how low tax rates would go under the Republican plans.
Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have endorsed flat tax plans that, for full disclosure, were designed by Arthur Laffer and myself. These plans have drawn some criticism on the right of late, though as you will see below, these attacks are mostly baseless.
Ben Carson wants a low-rate flat tax too and he would heroically eliminate all special interest deductions and carve-outs. Mike Huckabee is pushing a national sales tax to entirely replace the income tax. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich and Donald Trump want to cut personal income tax rates down to between 20 and 25 percent while eliminating indefensible loopholes.
One common goal of nearly all these plans is to turbocharge growth by dramatically lowering the business tax rate (now the highest in the world) and reducing the punitive double taxation of investment income. Most Republican plans would cut the corporate/business tax to between 15 and 25 percent.
All of this contrasts sharply with the two Democratic candidate plans. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders seem to be in a weekly bidding war to see who can raise tax rates the most. Hillary favors hiking maximum capital gains and personal income tax rates to the mid 40s or higher. Bernie Sanders said last week that he wouldn’t go to a 90 percent tax rate, but anything below that seems to be fine by him.
The Tax Foundation has recently ripped both of these plans finding that they would lower business investment and cut middle income pay by about 10 percent over a decade. Somehow making the middle class poorer is supposed to strike a blow for equality. Since most of the rich who would be plucked are business owners and investors, wage and salary workers will suffer the collateral damage from the class warfare shots. In short, wealth redistribution is not an economic growth or jobs program.
The sparks are flying on the Republican side of the aisle over which tax plan works best for American workers. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is running attack ads slamming Sen. Ted Cruz’s flat tax as something Ronald Reagan would have opposed. He says that the Cruz plan is a European-style “VAT tax.”
This is a bit of a scurrilous jab because almost all flat tax plans have this type of business net income tax — dating back to the Steve Forbes plan 20 years ago.
But it is hard to see why conservatives wouldn’t be excited about what Mr. Cruz and Mr. Paul have put forward. It’s what tax filer’s have been waiting decades for:
First, the Cruz/Paul plan would give America the lowest tax rates since the income tax was devised 100 years ago. For this reason, these plan are estimated by the Tax Foundation to grow the economy by a gigantic $2 trillion extra GDP per year after 10 years. That’s exactly the opposite effect of the Hillary and Bernie show plans.
Second, both the Cruz and Paul plans eliminate almost all deductions and credits — which is how they get the rate so low. The IRS could be dramatically shrunk in size. Don’t forget, when there are fewer deductions, there are fewer ways to cheat on your taxes. The lower the tax rate, the less incentive to cheat, which means greater voluntary compliance.
Third, because the Cruz and Paul plans are “border adjustable,” imports are taxed at the flat rate when they are brought into the United States, but American products sold abroad are not taxed at all. This would level the global playing field for American manufacturers, tech firms, and drug companies and bring these jobs scampering back to the United States. Mr. Trump’s tariff ideas could be put back on the back shelf and those who want “fair trade” should celebrate.
Mr. Rubio and his allies are charging that the flat tax that imposes a low tax rate on the broadest possible business tax base, which includes wages and salaries and benefits will quickly rise from the teens to the 20s or even 30 percent.
What is ironic about these attacks is the those rates that he imagines would still be lower than the Rubio income tax rate of 35 percent.
It’s hard to imagine that the two most relentless anti-big government crusaders in Congress, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, have a secret tax plan to supersize the government.
Finally here is why this is not a VAT tax as Europe has. In Europe the VAT has been an add-on tax to existing income and payroll taxes. The flat tax is a replacement for the corporate and payroll taxes.
Some conservatives complain that the tax is too efficient and so it will raise too much money. Liberals will try to raise the tax rates to finance even more spending. But no matter what the tax system, liberals always want to raise tax rates. Any new pro-growth tax system is subject to the same criticism. In other words, this is the argument to do nothing with our tax system and retain the mess of a code we have right now.
Mr. Rubio is right to advise that with any flat tax Republicans should press for a supermajority vote requirement in the House and Senate to raise the rate.
I’d take any of the Republican plans over the current tax laws. But it’s hard to see how cutting individual tax rates from 40 percent and business taxes from 35 percent down to 17 percent or less isn’t a big winner for the economy. The flat tax won’t make America look like Europe, it will make American race past Europe and the rest of our competitors. That’s conservative and pro-growth — and fair.
President Obama’s plot to use the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to kill federal coal mining with a thousand paper cuts is not the first time he has used NEPA to try to end energy development. Disturbingly, his scheme is a throwback to President Carter and a decade-long moratorium that ended only when President Reagan took office. Meanwhile millions of Americans, vast regions and the nation’s economy will suffer.
In 2009, the Obama administration settled a “sweetheart lawsuit” by environmental groups by agreeing to a NEPA study on oil and gas drilling in the Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania. The region had seen oil and gas activity since the nation’s first successful oil well there in 1859, but Marcellus Shale gas foretold a boom the groups wanted to kill. Trouble was the settlement was illegal. A federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vetoed the deal, ended the moratorium, which was to last years, put thousands of locals back to work and saved a region from economic disaster.
States that mine federal coal may not be so lucky. The Ford administration sought to end the Nixon administration’s coal leasing moratorium, but NEPA, signed by Nixon in 1969, was in its ascendancy, with increased paperwork for federal agencies, suits by environmental groups, and judicial rulings on how much paperwork constitutes the requisite “hard look.” In 1976, the Ford administration won a NEPA case at the Supreme Court of the United States, which sustained its limited view of NEPA’s requirements as it prepared for coal leasing in Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. In 1977, however, the Carter administration lost a NEPA challenge to its coal leasing program, declined to appeal, and embraced the central planning mandated by a federal judge. In fact, Carter officials while “toy[ing] with the idea of hiring a U.S. specialist in Soviet economic planning to look at the federal [coal] leasing program,” spent the rest of the decade completing the plan.
The Reagan administration, although unhappy with the Carter program, recognized that “[l]ess than 1 percent of federal coal lands were under lease and new leasing had been at a virtual standstill since 1971” and that “35 percent of the coal will come from public lands,” and thus implemented the program. From early 1981 to late 1983, Reagan officials leased 2.5 billion tons of federal coal, which netted $128.6 million in bonuses, including 1.5 billion tons of coal beneath 32,000 acres in Montana and Wyoming.
In 1983, President Reagan agreed with congressional calls for another review of the federal coal program. In late 1985, Reagan officials revealed the new program, which increased flexibility, was orderly and predictable for state and local governments and industry, promoted competition, assured fair market value, ensured adequate data, clarified surface owner consent, and established well-defined standards. Later minor modifications allowed more leasing to ensure continued production from Reagan era leases. Today, Wyoming leads the nation in coal production; its output exceeds that of the next top six coal-producing states combined. Mr. Obama intends to kill mining of all federal coal, and the jobs, communities, and foreign trade payments that go with it, to placate environmental groups that say the United States is not getting “fair market value” for its coal.
Ronald Reagan, to whom Mr. Obama compares himself, faced that issue in 1983. In his own hand, he wrote, “Now voices are being raised on the Hill saying that a moratorium should be put on the leasing of all coal bearing government lands. Totally forgotten is the fact that the American people as customers will end up paying for that coal. Included in the price will be the cost of the lease and even [the royalty paid to the government]. It seems to me [our lease sale] not only protected the government interests, [it showed] consideration for the ultimate consumer — you and me.” Imagine that, a president concerned about “you and me.”
France is once again responding to a Paris slaughter at the hands of Islamic radicals by trying to root out extremism entrenched in its growing Muslim population.
This time, however, the socialist government of President Francois Hollande seems to mean it.
Last January, after the Charlie Hebdo killing spree by three Muslims tied to al Qaeda and the Islamic State terror army that left 17 dead, the Hollande government put more suspected jihadis on a watch list, imposed intrusive surveillance and blocked jihadi websites.
But all the monitoring did not stop at least nine Islamic State terrorists from an even larger slaughter of 130 persons at restaurants and a concert hall on a Friday night in November.
This time Mr. Hollande ratcheted up the response. He declared war on the Islamic State, imposed a state of emergency that suspended civil liberties and, for the first time in France, shut down three mosques deemed to be inspiring and supporting murderous zealots.
Some terror experts believe fabric of French Muslim life is woven with so many threads of radicalism that even these steps are not enough.
“France is still very slow to understand the vast majority of Islamic centers/mosques are the problem, not just a few extremist ones,” said John Guandolo, a former FBI agent who leads a group, Understanding the Threat, which reports on what it sees as radical Islam.
Mr. Guandolo takes a hard line against Islamists. Some liberals brand him as “anti-Muslim.”
Robert Maginnis, a retired Army officer and author of the book on radical Islam “Never Submit,” said French officials are taking a harder line because they more clearly see the threat posed to the country’s political traditions and way of life.
“Now as we see in France, and in countries like Germany and Sweden, Europeans are beginning to see the clash of civilizations as the tsunami of Islamic people flood into Europe and refuse to assimilate,” he said. “This fact is beginning to wake up Europeans who understand their civilization is at risk.”
The crackdown has not been universally accepted inside France. On Wednesday Christiane Taubira, Mr. Hollande’s popular and high-profile justice minister, unexpectedly resigned to protest the government’s push to revoke citizenship from convicted terrorists with dual nationality.
France has Europe’s largest Muslim population, estimated at 8 percent to 10 percent of the country’s total population of 66 million. Many live in the “banlieues,” the mostly poor, semisegregated suburbs that ring Paris and other cities. Officials refer to some neighborhoods as “no-go” zones for police and security officials because of their isolation and governance by authoritarian religious clerics.
The French Center for Intelligence Research, a Paris think tank, estimates that a half-million Muslim citizens identify with radical Islam.
The Paris newspaper Le Figaro reported last summer on a secret intelligence assessment that 41 of some 2,200 mosques in France are “now destabilized” by Salafists — the ultrafundamentalist Sunni Muslim extremists who drive al Qaeda and Islamic State ideology.
“Usually quite young, well structured and sometimes advised by lawyers, they first install a small prayer room or create an ultra-orthodox school right next to the place of worship target,” the article said. “Then they infuse their radical theories that appeal to young people and fuel rumors about the alleged maladministration.”
The ‘Islamization’ of France
Soeren Kern, an analyst at the nonprofit Gatestone Institute, writes a regular column on “The Islamization of France” based on news reports and other sources.
His Jan. 19 update quotes Dalil Boubakeur, the rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, saying he wants the number of mosques in France to double over the next two years and that unused churches should be converted into Islamic prayer centers.
Mr. Kern reports that about 40,000 cars are burned each year in France by Muslim gangs.
His article lists a chronology of Islamic-related news events, such as the teacher who quit a Muslim school because it teaches anti-Semitism and the Muslim cleric who preaches that women are naturally selfish and must acknowledge “the goodness that man bestows upon her” or be condemned to hell.
On Dec. 13, he reports, 70 airport employees in Paris had their security clearances revoked after the government identified them as Islamic extremists. They included mechanics, baggage handlers and gate agents.
On Jan. 13 the minister of the interior announced details of how it used current law to close a mosque in Lagny-sur-Marne, a suburb east of Paris, which had become a prime recruiting center for jihadis in Syria.
The government also dissolved the three Islamic associations operating the mosque, essentially saying they were front organizations for radicals.
“Under the guise of ritual purposes,” the minister’s statement said, “these three associations, interlinked by their leaders and common objects, in reality aimed at promoting a radical ideology causing jihad and organize the departure of fighters in Syria-Iraq area.”
France had also shut down mosques in Gennevilliers in Paris‘ northern suburbs and in the town of L’Arbresle near Lyon.
“Such measures to close mosques because of radicalization have never before been taken by any government, including during the last state of emergency in 2005,” said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency.
Mr. Cazeneuve told parliament in December that, one month into the state of emergency, authorities had conducted 2,235 raids, producing 262 arrests.
Paris continues to be in the Islamic State’s cross-hairs. The terror group, based in Raqqa, Syria, released a video homage last Sunday to the nine terrorists who died in the attack that killed 130 civilians on Nov. 13. One clip put a target on Mr. Hollande’s head, and it vowed to also attack Great Britain.
The video showed some of the nine shooting and beheading prisoners in Syria and Iraq. The gruesome scenes tell this troubling storyline: The Islamic State can recruit foreign fighters, train them to kill and then deploy them back to Europe.
The conservative government of British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced a series of steps to stem Islamic extremism, including closing mosques and deporting clerics. Mr. Cameron also issued a damning report on the global fraternity Muslim Brotherhood and said it might be banned.
The organizer of the Nov. 13 massacre had photos of British tourist sites in his cellphone.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Republican lawmakers have reached a deal that strengthens some gun control measures while reversing a policy that would have invalidated concealed handgun permits in Virginia held by residents of 25 other states.
McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy said the governor is willing to walk back a new reciprocity policy set to be implemented by Attorney General Mark Herring in exchange for concessions on other measures. The deal is set to be announced Friday at a news conference.
GOP leaders have agreed to support a measure prohibiting people from carrying a firearm if they are subject to a permanent protective order for a domestic violence offense, according to House Speaker William J. Howell’s office. The policy has long been sought by McAuliffe and Democrats. Republicans have repeatedly rejected such measures in the past.
“Everyone gave something up,” Howell spokesman Matthew Moran said. “Everyone got something.”
Republicans have also agreed to require state police to be present at gun shows to perform voluntary background checks.
Herring said he’s encouraged to see both sides finally come together to address the issue of gun violence.
“If finally enforcing our concealed handgun reciprocity laws helps break the legislative logjam on efforts to expand background checks and force domestic abusers to turn over their guns, then I’m glad we could provide some momentum and I hope this is just the first step in enacting sensible gun safety measures,” he said in a statement.
Coy, the governor’s spokesman, called the proposed deal “balanced” and a milestone moment.
“This deal is a major advancement for public safety in Virginia,” said Coy. “That’s the governor’s priority.”
The proposal deal, which must still gain approval from the entire GOP-controlled General Assembly, marks a rare spot of compromise between McAuliffe and Republican leaders on a contentious social issue. The 2016 legislative session began with a war of words, as McAuliffe vowed to veto any gun rights legislation he found objectionable while Republicans promised to pass new laws aimed at buttressing gun rights.
Feelings over gun issues were also inflamed during last year’s legislative elections. Gun groups on both sides - and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group, in particular- spent heavily trying to influence a handful of key state Senate campaigns.
Herring’s move in December to revoke reciprocity agreements infuriated Republicans. Herring has said it was needed because the other states’ concealed weapon laws don’t meet Virginia’s standards.
Coy praised Herring’s move, but declined to say directly whether it was part of a broader Democratic strategy to force Republicans to negotiate.
“Without General Herring’s actions, this deal would not have been possible,” Coy said.
But the reversal of Herring’s policy drew sharp criticism from Andy Parker, the father of Virginia journalist Alison Parker who was shot and killed on live TV in August. Parker, who campaigned for tougher gun control laws alongside McAuliffe after his daughter’s death, accused McAuliffe of putting “the gun lobby agenda ahead of the safety of Virginians.”
“Gov. McAuliffe should not be willing to recognize concealed carry permits from states where you can get a permit with no safety training, or even if you have a violent criminal record or a stalking conviction - all in exchange for the NRA’s support of watered-down gun safety bills,” Parker said in a statement.
Philip Van Cleave, president of the pro-gun rights Virginia Citizens Defense League, said he would withhold judgment on the deal until he learns more details, but stressed that nothing is set in stone yet. The General Assembly must sign off on the measures.
“There’s a lot that can go wrong between now and the ink drying,” Van Cleave said. “It’s a positive sign, but we need to see the deal.”
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Public schools and courts across the country will be closely watching a Virginia case for guidance on restroom policies about gender and gender identity, a lawyer for a transgender teenager said Wednesday after a hearing before a Richmond-based federal appeals court.
“In some respects, this will be a bellwether,” said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Joshua Block, who represents 16-year-old Gavin Grimm in a lawsuit challenging a policy that bars him from using the boys’ restrooms at Gloucester High School.
He said that some other appeals courts have ruled in favor of transgender people on the basis of federal employment law or constitutional issues, but Grimm’s case will be the first to determine whether policies such as Gloucester’s violate the federal law against sex discrimination in education.
Grimm, who was born female but identifies as male, was allowed to use the boys’ restrooms at his school for several weeks in 2014. But after some parents complained, the Gloucester County School Board adopted a policy requiring students to use either the restroom that corresponds with their biological gender or a private, single-stall restroom.
Board members said at the time that the policy respects the privacy of all students.
“Schools can and should have privacy protections, but what they can’t do is exclude transgender students,” Block told a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Grimm is appealing a judge’s dismissal of his sex discrimination claim and refusal to issue a preliminary injunction that would have allowed Grimm to use the boys’ restrooms. The appeals court typically takes several weeks to issue a decision.
Block told the panel during the 45-minute hearing that multiple judicial rulings and federal regulations support Grimm’s right to use the boys’ restrooms. The U.S. Justice Department filed a “statement of interest” in Grimm’s case in July declaring that failure to allow transgender students to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity amounts to sex discrimination under Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972.
David Corrigan, an attorney for the school board, argued that the restroom policy is not discriminatory because anyone can use the alternative unisex restrooms.
“Our position is that all students are treated the same,” he said.
Judge Andre Davis challenged Corrigan on that point, suggesting that “there’s no stigmatizing impact” on anyone other than Grimm in having the private restroom as the only viable option.
Grimm said at a news conference after the hearing that he continues to struggle with the restroom policy, which he called humiliating and dehumanizing. He has little vocal support among his peers, he said, but also not much opposition.
“It’s the elephant in the room nobody talks about,” Grimm said. “In a way, that’s worse.”
He said he is waging the court battle for transgender students who come along after him, although it’s not a duty he necessarily wanted.
“I did not set out to make waves,” Grimm said. “I set out to use the bathroom.”
As a political emotion, anger has long been controlled by the left.
Leftists market their anger as “righteous,” leverage it as a tool of asymmetrical warfare, and then sell it as a virtuous driver of collective action for the collective good. The left’s leaders and activists are trained and encouraged to display unapologetic anger against sundry injustices (i.e., Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Rev. Al Sharpton, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street). Even its “comedians” (Bill Maher, Jon Stewart) cloak leftist anger in “humor” to promote its agenda and destroy conservatives. They’re not called social justice “warriors” for nothing.
But when conservatives have tried to channel their righteous anger, they have been smeared, intimidated and crushed (i.e., the Tea Party movement, which, once attacked unjustly by the left, media and Internal Revenue Service, could not fight back).
It all has to do with the left’s control over “tone” as a way to neutralize anger as a potent — and acceptable — weapon for the right.
Voters’ fury — over particular issues, unresponsiveness and failure of leadership, the state of the country — has long been accepted as a normal state of affairs.
But Republican leaders’ and candidates’ anger about those same things has long been condemned as childish, unacceptable in content and “tone.” Forced, then, into adopting a more “acceptable” tone, they lose anger as an organic political tool and end up submitting to the left’s rules.
For decades, the political class maintained its power in part by attacking GOP candidates’ anger as negative in tone, unserious, radical and immature as a way to disqualify otherwise legitimate hopefuls. This is how both sides pushed radical leftists and mushy moderates on us and cemented their own power. As a result, voters’ fury only grew worse.
Until Donald Trump smashed the cycle and the “tone trance.”
Mr. Trump embraces voters’ anger in a way that mirrors and validates it rather than spurns or fears it. He is unafraid to reject the counterproductive and destructive “restraint” forced on previous generations of candidates — and to put a stop to it.
Mr. Trump’s decision to walk away from Fox News’ Iowa debate because of his anger over how the network has treated him is a case in point. The message he’s conveying: I won’t allow myself to be disrespected, and I won’t let America be disrespected.
He is also demonstrating that anger is necessary (though not sufficient) to win elections and to get the country back on track. Mr. Trump has turned fury into not just an appropriate political emotion, but an asset.
In her response to President Obama’s State of the Union address, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley reached for the old establishment default position against candidates’ anger. She warned against the temptation “to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” by whom she meant Mr. Trump, among others. After the predictable backlash, she attempted to recast her comments about Mr. Trump’s “anger,” but by then the damage to her and the establishment had been done.
Two days later during a Republican presidential debate, Mr. Trump was asked about Mrs. Haley’s characterization. He made no apologies:
“I’m very angry because our country is being run horribly and I will gladly accept the mantle of anger . I’m angry because our country is a mess.”
There it is: anger, as necessary (though not sufficient) to fixing our nation’s problems.
Mr. Trump’s full and fearless embrace of his own anger has turned it into a righteous motivator of real, restorative change for the party — and the country. Having allowed Mr. Trump to do the political blocking for it, most of the other candidates have now, to varying degrees, carried their own anger into the fight.
They have also managed to maneuver anger into effective pushback on the deeply entrenched presumptions and false choices the leftists have pushed into our collective thinking. These straw men show up in all kinds of questions to the candidates: How do you fight Islamists without harming innocent civilians? How do you respect the Second Amendment if you want to stop gun violence? How do you cut government budgets without hurting average Americans? How do you protect our borders without penalizing immigrants who just want a shot at the American dream? And so on.
In order to justify leftist policies, liberals have set up these false choices, and the political culture has gotten so used to accepting them that they have enslaved us. This group of Republican candidates is finally torching the bogus setup, by first getting angry about it and then explicitly rejecting it.
What Mr. Trump and the others are proving is that most voters are not turned off by anger or by a rejection of the elites’ buried assumptions. They are embracing those things because they finally feel understood and respected. They finally feel seen.
Mr. Trump is making asymmetrical warfare more symmetrical at last. And all future GOP candidates will benefit from his achievement — if they are gutsy and savvy enough.
Beware the latest nasty virus sweeping the East Coast, particularly the most elite citadels of New York City and Washington, D.C.
It is a fast-moving, highly contagious disease that attacks the nervous system. Early stages include inexplicable, fast eye-blinking, light palsy, stammering and overbearing snobbery. Sometimes redness of the face and shortness of breath accompany.
Later stages include total delusion, dementia, an inability to think clearly and, ultimately, a madness that cannot be contained.
Basic rule of thumb is that if you are blinking and twitching like Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus, Inspector Jacques Clouseau’s boss in The Pink Panther, then it is still early and there is still hope.
In final stages, patients are often found wild-eyed, naked, frothing at mouth and writhing on the floor. This behavior has been likened to that of Antonio Salieri in the final scenes of “Amadeus.”
Researchers have yet to arrive at a scientific name for the debilitating disease, but it is generally referred to as Donald Trump Derangement Syndrome (DTDS). It is found in its most virulent and contagious strain among media and punditry circles and top ranks of Republican Party leaders.
While researchers are still confounded about almost everything about DTDS, they do believe that early detection could be vital. Here are symptoms and remedies they recommend:
The disease-stricken often say things like, “He is Hitler!”
It is best to calmly explain to the person that Adolph Hitler exterminated six million Jews. Mr. Trump has not. Also, advise the patient to read “Mein Kampf,” and then read “Art of the Deal.”
Some victims, it is found, take the extermination of six million Jews more seriously and, instead, compare Mr. Trump to “Mussolini,” kind of a Hilter lite. Sometimes in their hallucinations, people suffering DTDS see a similarity in the ways both men purse their lips and speak.
Best remedy is to explain that Benito Mussolini was Hitler’s stooge and, to date, it is safe to say Donald Trump has never been anybody’s stooge.
Another symptom has people in hysterics over how “vulgar” Donald Trump is and talking about how he lacks the virtue and morals to be president.
Recommended remedy is to explain to victim how Lyndon Baines Johnson used to force reporters and staffers to join him in the bathroom to conduct business while he took care of his own business in front of them.
Or have them read the memoir detailing how John F. Kennedy took the virginity of a teenage intern within minutes of meeting her while she was touring the White House.
It is advised not to get into the known exploits of Bill Clinton because, well, they are just so disgusting that it could trigger other complicating illnesses, such as vomiting.
A startling recent symptom has one member of Congress demanding to know whether Donald Trump has repented for past sins. The best remedy for this is to remind members of Congress they are not preachers and that ordering people into the confessional booth is both very creepy and unconstitutional and totally violates the separation of church and state in America.
Some victims of DTDS are found agonizing over how Donald Trump threatens to destroy the Constitution.
It is best to advise these people that Donald Trump is the most litigious person ever to run for president and that the very foundation of litigiousness is the Constitution. He probably reveres the Constitution more highly than anybody suffering from DTDS.
Sadly, researchers do not have the slightest hope of a cure for those in advanced stages of the disease. The only known Hail Mary prescriptions have been to either send victims to Syria as DTDS refugees or allow them to sneak across the Mexican border before the Trump Wall and Casino is built.
Scientists, meanwhile, are hurriedly developing an 8-year, slow-release Ambien that can be taken now so that the patient wakes up in the final months of the Trump administration, once America has been Made Great Again.
We have begun to hear the drumbeat that we may be on the verge of another 2008. Truth is, if you really want to better understand where we may be heading, you might want to look back even earlier: It’s time to party likes it’s 1937.
The stock market has started 2016 with its worst performance ever. This has provoked a bandwagon of prognosticators to come out to foretell why this is the next recession. My question is, what took them so long? Looking at cycles, it was predicted, and I wrote about this downturn for 2016 more than three years ago. What you should be asking — and even more frightening — is what the cycles predict is coming next.
Donald Trump is correct that our country is disappearing — he just misses the mark on why and understanding that it cannot be fixed by his ego. Pundits and politicians add fuel to the problems, and benefit from the chaos and instability. People like George Soros and Andrew Roberts from the Royal Bank of Scotland feed the narrative to feed their wallets but don’t see past the next collapse.
Looking at economic indicators and current conditions confirms a recession is inevitable. It is not that the experts are entirely wrong about 2016; it is just that they fail to see a larger cycle that may exist and the bigger problem that may be looming. If you want to understand what may be coming and learn from history, we need to go further back than 2008 and first look at 1937.
We can begin with not a recession but the Great Depression, which engulfed our economy until the early 1930s. The recovery in the four years after Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 was incredibly rapid. Annual real gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged more than 9 percent. Unemployment fell from 25 percent to 14 percent. By 1937, production and wages had regained their pre-1929 Great Depression levels.
The economy faltered in the spring of 1937 and tanked in the autumn. Unemployment jumped from 14.3 percent to 19.0 percent. Manufacturing output fell by 37 percent. Real GDP fell 11 percent, and industrial production fell 32 percent. Producers reduced their expenditures on durable goods and inventories declined, making it one of the worst U.S. recessions in the 20th century.
At the time of that recession, there were large imbalances of power and indifference was rampant. Liberties deteriorated not because of FDR but because a culture that accepted it. The period started with a major economic collapse; the disaster elicited a mix of apathy and anger kept at bay by paralysis. There began the general feeling that the culture was heading into peril and things built to an ultimate climax in 1941.
The actual lessons of Roosevelt’s recession are much different than many of the history books. The 1937 dip was not the product of tight fiscal and monetary policy but of excessive government regulation and loose monetary policy; but more importantly a reflection of the culture, people and attitudes of that time.
Perhaps the experts could have looked 80 years earlier to the Panic of 1857, a time that the nation was in uncertainty and government was driving policies that led to the apex of disaster in the 1861 Civil War — a war that was the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, claiming more than 2 percent of the population.
Perhaps they would have seen similarities another 85 years prior with the credit crisis of 1772. The majority was not taking up arms against the crown but instead was uninterested, angry or paralyzed with fear and subordinate to power. Ultimately, the times saw a foreign government that overregulated, and drove social and economic conditions that exploded in 1775 with the shot heard around the world and the Revolutionary War.
The prognosticators could have even learned looking just 82 years before at the seven ill years and crisis of the 1690s that led to the War of the Spanish Succession. Eighty years before that was the downturn of economies of the 1610s that ultimately begot the English civil war, which claimed 3 percent of the population.
We can go back over 400 years and see this same pattern play out every 80-85 years. In 1937, the culture in the United States and the world was primed for social, economic and geopolitical problems. Not because it would be a repeat of eight years prior but because liberties continued shrinking and centralized power and apathy were growing. In those days of 1937, Americans saw unprecedented overreach of government, increased taxes and stagnant growth, unrest and instability abroad, and an underestimation of potential problems. The climax was not the recession of 1937 but the years that followed that enveloped us in World War II, which claimed more than 400,000 U.S. casualties.
Almost exactly 82 years later, we wake up now to a shift in culture and attitudes that are repeating history. It’s not because it is a repeat of 2008 but because we not only do not learn from the past, but through the generations we relive it. Many of the same phenomena and sentiments of 1937 are playing out today and we are heading full-steam toward similar consequences.
Unfortunately, we have already paved the “road to serfdom,” and as many fight to change policies and institutions to preserve liberty, one fears — and facts are beginning to support — that the cycle has progressed past the point of no return.
History is repeating itself, and I am less worried about the recession of 2016 than I am the reset of 2020.
Is not being a jerk an important part of what’s required to be president? Jeb Bush thinks so. While it would be fabulous to have another Ronald Reagan — a wonderful, decent man who was also a powerful leader — not being a jerk isn’t at all a necessary component of the leadership this nation now needs.
Mr. Bush’s new ad released in New Hampshire is titled, “Enough.” It highlights one of Donald Trump’s now famous moments of mocking someone. In this case, a disabled New York Times reporter. Mr. Trump denies that he was making fun of the reporter’s disability, but Mr. Bush uses the clip of Mr. Trump allegedly doing just that.
Mr. Bush pleads in the ad, “I believe life is precious, I think life is truly a gift from God. And we’re all equal under God’s watchful eye. And when anybody, when anybody disparages people with disabilities, it sets me off. That’s why I called him a jerk. What kind of person would you want to have in the presidency that does that?”
What kind of person do we want in the presidency? The first thing on voters’ minds isn’t whether we’d want that person to marry into the family; it’s whether they will reverse the ruinous course set for us by the current inhabitant of the White House and his party of malevolent malcontents.
For Jeb Bush to be arguing that Mr. Trump or even Mr. Cruz are morally inferior is laughable. It does illustrate, however, how disconnected Mr. Bush is from the reality of why we’re kicking the Establishment, and all their affectations, to the curb. We’ve had enough because those who have been in charge of the system for generations have dangerously failed. It’s that simple.
It’s becoming apparent voters would rather have a jerk who can lead us out of this mess than a nice guy who wants to drag us back through the last 15 years insisting that if we only keep showing the world how nice we are maybe they’ll love us.
Those days are over. We tried the Oliver Twist approach and it failed. We are rejecting the liberal tripe insisting America is the problem. Progressives may want to desperately believe that, and they’re welcome to wallow in that pit, but we’re not going to let that misery infect the country any more.
Mr. Trump and even Mr. Cruz may be occasionally grating, but anyone touting Establishment business as usual is the last person who should be lecturing anybody else about morality.
Since President Reagan left office, we have been subjected to the massive immorality of a Washington Cartel whose policies have destroyed the economic future for millions of Americans; insisted on “winning the hearts and minds” of terrorists who have neither; ignoring then passively watching the growth of a global terrorist army, while doing nothing as another madman in Syria massacres 250,000 of his own people.
Crime is rising here at home and these first few weeks of January seem to portend another recession is on its way. And Jeb Bush has the gall to point fingers at others for their supposed immorality?
The Bushes, Bill Clinton, and Barack “No Drama” Obama, have presented a steady, charming front to the American people. They have also overseen the destruction of our economy, the ruination of our international standing, the abandonment of our allies, and a world in chaos.
But hey, they’re collegial. They smile at the right time and make an effort to not sound like, well, a jerk. All while destroying the future for uncountable millions because of their failed policies and self-obsession.
I am one of many who has criticized Mr. Trump for his boorishness. Yet in this election we’re not choosing a boyfriend, husband, brother or best friend. We are electing a man who will order our military to annihilate our enemy and keep this nation safe; someone who understands how to revive our economy.
We are choosing someone who can pick us up, throw us over their shoulder and run us down 10 flights of stairs to save us from the raging fire to which Barack Obama has subjected us.
I don’t know if that person is Donald Trump, but I do know this: Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Cruz’s family and friends are not responsible for the catastrophe we face as a nation. Very nice people, like the Bushes and the Obamas, are.
The posturing of moral superiority from the Establishment is gobsmacking. As they’ve studiously applied their collegial attitude of respect for each other, Western civilization has become paralyzed and rudderless.
When it comes to moral superiority I’ll take an honest jerk who gets things done instead of the pleasant man who so nicely plunges that knife in your back.
Muslims around the world know that America is a Judeo-Christian country and its Constitution has been based on those canons. They also know that this Constitution respects all faiths, does not force Christianity on the citizens and allows freedom of worship.
It is also a fact that like all others, the Muslims who have immigrated to the United States came knowing in advance that this country was founded by Europeans with Western values, traditions and culture. Yet they stood in long lines, filled out long forms and waited, some for years, to get the green light to come to America. They all took the oath of allegiance to become a citizen and all they expected was freedom and opportunity for a better life.
Many of these Muslims, including Iranians, are secular and fled to America because the Islamic rulers mistreated them and took away their freedoms, equality and human dignity. They came to live in democracy free from Shariah law in a country where religion is separated from the state.
Others came because they were condemned to live in poverty, ignorance and hopelessness. The corrupt Islamic homeland did not provide them with economic security, jobs and a better future for their children. They came to have the opportunity to work and feel proud as a sovereign human being, providing their children a future to grow and prosper. They are grateful for the opportunity that they would have never had in the Islamic homeland.
However, as time goes on, they become indoctrinated by Americans to hate America, they are told that this is not the great country they had envisioned. They listen to National Public Radio and MSNBC and are told by their new compatriots, how unjust this country is. At work they learn from the ideologues that the 1 percent is in charge of this country. They are taught that white people are racists and discriminate against every non-white, and they are now living under the unjust privileged white.
Their children who have no knowledge of what their parents fled, go to American schools where they learn that Christianity is the white man’s intolerant religion that they are fighting. They are told that Christians are against Muslims and have massacred Muslims and stolen their lands and wealth for centuries, but that very Islamic despotism that their fathers fled is a religion they respect in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism.
Under the progressive atmosphere of academia at the universities, young American Muslims are taught anti-Americanism by professors. They are taught that America is a racist society that discriminates against them because of their religion and that the Founding Fathers of this country were a group of white, privileged slaveowners. They are led to buy into the rhetoric that Americans are war-mongers who have mistreated Muslims, and who support Israel and American oil companies while becoming billionaires as a result of looting the wealth of Muslim nations. The young and uninformed Muslims will naturally want to join the “progressive” crowd.
The daily news from the Muslim world is unsettling, and it leaves them no choice but to go along and become a part of the anti-American movement of the intellectual elites, gravitating toward animus and retribution.
It is American intelligentsia, the mainstream media and leftist politicians who teach young Muslim Americans to hate America, not ISIS, al-Shabab, al Qaeda or the Khomeiniist regime in Iran.
Even the jihadists learn anti-American propaganda from Americans themselves and repeat what they hear from American universities, the media and political attacks by Democratic candidates.
In spite of what President Obama and Hillary Clinton say, the tools of Muslim tyrants and jihadi terrorists are not Gitmo or proposed policies of the opposition. Their real tool is what the left repeatedly puts out for the sake of getting votes.
The young Muslims learn to hate America from the words of the president of the United States and candidate Clinton, not from ISIS.
The Islamic regime in Iran hands out big paychecks to American professors to deliver lectures during their summer vacations in universities in Iran, where they invariably become advocates for Islam and a reference point in their anti-American propaganda.
The repeated story that Gitmo and every word against Islamic terrorism is a recruiting tool for Islamic terrorism is made up by Democrats as a political talking point to glean Muslim votes. The jihadists hear, learn and are only too happy to use the same talking points to their advantage.
With this cacophony of self-loathing in the United States, there is no need for ISIS to lift a finger to recruit the young and uninformed Muslims.
The warm and comfortable feeling of “home” is partly a state of mind, but it’s as tangible as the familiar squeak of a front door or the welcoming hug of a loved one. The man bereft of the sights and sounds of home is a restless soul, never knowing the affirmation of belonging in a place “where everybody knows your name.” For many Americans, the land of the free and the home of the brave doesn’t feel much like home anymore. Change is often hard to accept, and now more than ever familiarity is giving way to disorientation. Even the future, as Yogi Berra put it, ain’t what it used to be.
The polling organization Ipsos surveyed American attitudes and concluded that it had found “strong nativist tendencies in America.” Fifty-eight percent of Americans agree with the statement, “I don’t identify with what America has become.” That includes 45 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Republicans. And 62 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats say, “These days I feel like a stranger in my own country.” Cultural disenfranchisement is becoming the norm.
The study labels the American who experiences a sense of disorientation a “neo-nativist,” the favoring of native inhabitants over new immigrants. Ipsos’ calling a substantial majority of Americans “neo-nativists” is not exactly a compliment. The pollsters credit the rise of neo-nativism with the success of Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primaries: “Simply put, Trump’s candidacy taps into a deep, visceral fear among many that America’s best days are behind it. The land of freedom, baseball and apple pie is no longer recognizable, the survey finds, and that ‘the other’ — sometimes the immigrant, sometimes the non-American and almost always the nonwhite — is to blame for these circumstances.”
Millions of voters who have rallied to Ben Carson’s candidacy would nod in agreement with those sentiments, except for the last part about blaming nonwhites for the nation’s ills. Ben Carson is black, and so what? What matters to his admirers is his partiality for the red, white and blue. They cheer when he says, “President Obama doesn’t get to decide whether America is a Judeo-Christian nation — we get to decide.” When Mr. Trump cries, “Let’s make America great again,” the cry goes to the heart, not to fear. Many liberals seem to think loving your country and cherishing the traditions that made the United States the envy of the world, and where a good part of the world wants to live, is something to be ashamed of. It’s not.
The liberal political establishment that dreams up “isms” with which to tar its opponents should meditate on this one: “neo-alienism.” It’s an accurate description of President Obama’s campaign to untether the nation from its heritage and replace it with a gauzy notion of undefined “hope and change.”
Donald Trump, Ben Carson and other Republican candidates urge voters to rediscover the spirit that lifted a nation of immigrants to make America exceptional, and this is what the “deep thinkers” call neo-nativism. But it’s actually pride in the exceptional nation. When the sentiment that “there’s no place like home” declines to the feeling that “there’s no place that’s home,” it’s a signal to Mr. Obama that his goal of fundamental transformation tracks over the line. There’s nothing sinister about taking pride in the nation’s founding principles. It’s what draws the tired, the poor and the wretched refuse to these shores. Risking everything to get here is what Jeb Bush might call the ultimate act of love.
Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring announced Tuesday the commonwealth will no longer recognize concealed carry handgun permits form 25 states that have reciprocity agreements with the state.
Mr. Herring’s office said that permits from states with more lax concealed carry laws than Virginia’s will no longer be considered legal in the commonwealth. Out of 30 states that Virginia has entered into reciprocity agreements with, 25 have regulations that are weaker than Virginia‘s.
“In order for another state’s concealed handgun permit to be recognized as valid by the Commonwealth of Virginia, that state’s laws must be “adequate to prevent possession of a permit or license by persons who would be denied a permit in the Commonwealth,” Mr. Herring’s office said in the statement.
The states are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Agreements will remain with West Virginia, Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.
The move also means Virginians with a history of stalking, drug dealing or inpatient mental-health treatment cannot obtain a permit in a state with comparatively weaker laws and carry a handgun legally at home.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Mr. Herring called the law a “common-sense step that can make Virginians and our law enforcement officers safer by ensuring that Virginia’s laws on who can and cannot carry a concealed handgun are applied evenly, consistently and fairly.”
Mr. Herring’s announcement is the latest push for stricter gun control in Virginia, a trend the state’s Democratic administration has strongly and publicly supported in the wake of mass shootings in which the attackers obtained guns legally or suffered from mental illness.
Virginia law lists 20 conditions that would disqualify a person from being issued a concealed carry handgun permit. They include anyone in the United States illegally, subject to a protection from abuse order, or convicted of various criminal charges from drunken driving to assault and battery, The Post reported.
The year 2015 will be remembered as the season of the sophomores. With their new learning, sophomores can correct all error, make all rough places plain, and fix everything that isn’t working right.
Sophomores sometimes mean well, and never again, no matter how long they live, will they know as much as they know in their sophomore year. That’s a hard truth for anyone of any age to live with.
The sophomores (and this includes upperclassmen who have never got over being a sophomore) this year sacked several presidents, deans, and other administrators. They have stifled academic freedom on several famous if no longer particularly distinguished Ivy League campuses. A professor at Yale was driven off campus when she suggested that young people be allowed to design outrageous costumes for Halloween night, whether the ghosts and goblins like it or not.
The academic life is particularly attractive to soft men, and when the sophomores tell soft men to jump, they only ask, “How high?”
Sombreros, gifts of a Tex-Mex restaurant near the campus, have been banned at the University of East Anglia as racist symbols mocking Mexicans. A debate about abortion was canceled at Oxford after several young women were offended by the very presence of “a person without a uterus.”
Political correctness blights everything it touches, and several brave dissenters in the faculty lounges of Old Blighty have had enough. A group of academics at British universities warn that free speech, the active ingredient in the freedom to inquire, has fallen to the fear that someone, somewhere, may be offended by something they see or hear in a classroom, the commons or on a stroll under the elms.
An entire generation of students, the professors say, is denied “the intellectual challenge of debating conflicting views,” because self-censorship is turning campuses into oversanitized “safe spaces.”
The scholars, led by Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at the University of Canterbury, and Joanna Williams, an editor of Spiked magazine, write in The London Daily Telegraph that the campaign to sanitize the campus joins a “long and growing” list of people and objects barred from British campuses, including pop songs (with the wrong lyrics), sombreros (that might offend a stray Mexican), and even visiting atheists who might stir controversy (when the proper reaction is to pray for them). This “deeply worrying development” is curtailing freedom of speech “like never before” because almost nothing is safe from student censors.
The British mob eerily resembles mobs at the gates of American universities, but in Britain a number of professors have been roused to fight. May their tribe increase, and jump the pond in fearsome numbers.
Many universities in Britain, like most American colleges and universities, recruit students who are paying customers — or, rather, their parents are — and this puts a fearsome economic weapon in their hands. The small but ignorant and noisy minority are thus enabled to break furniture and smash dishes in the no longer so hallowed halls of academe.
“Few academics challenge censorship that emerges from students,” the British professors say. “It is important that more do, because a culture that restricts the free exchange of ideas encourages self-censorship and leaves people afraid to express their views in [fear] they may be misinterpreted. This risks destroying the very fabric of democracy. An open and democratic society requires people to have the courage to argue against ideas they disagree with or even find offensive.”
The current cause celebre in Britain is statuary honoring Cecil Rhodes, whose discovery of diamonds made him fabulously wealthy and who left many of his millions to educate the young, including black Africans. More than 8,000 Africans of various hue have studied at Oxford, including student leaders of the campaign to tear down the Rhodes statues. Rhodes held the views on race of nearly every white man of his time. “Remember that you are an Englishman,” he told the English youth, “and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.” Rhodes (but not his millions) must be wiped from history.
Rhodesiphobia echoes the demand of students at Harvard who demand that classroom discussions of rape law be prohibited lest someone who was once a victim of sexual assault (gender intimidation?) hear about it and flee in terror.
The sophomores have not yet learned what life is eager to teach them, that comparing their standards to those of a previous generation is a fool’s errand. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, its truths ringing still down the age, and contributed to the Constitution that inspires revolutionaries everywhere. But he owned slaves. Lincoln freed the slaves and saved the Union but he was a white supremacist who was aghast at the idea that blacks might one day vote. Churchill saved Europe from Hitler and the Nazis, but he, too, grew misty-eyed considering Anglo-Saxon legacy. The sophomores will save us from them all.
Many Americans believe our entire government is dysfunctional and can’t — or won’t — correct itself. While this may be true, the thesis here is that “we are where we are” mainly because of specific national security leadership failures going back more than 20 years — through both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Bill Clinton inherited two terms of post-Cold War prosperity (thank you Ronald Reagan). However, Mr. Clinton mostly ignored the rather obvious indications of the growing terror threat, both from the many attacks abroad and the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. But did the Clinton administration have indications and warnings of more large-scale terrorist attacks such as occurred on 9/11?
This question probably explains why the late Sandy Berger, Clinton’s last National Security adviser (and also Mr. Clinton’s designated representative to the 9/11 Commission) stole several highly classified documents during a series of visits to the National Archives.
Why would he do such a thing? Did he know, believe, or was he afraid that there was a “smoking gun” that he and Mr. Clinton would be accountable for, insofar as there were specific warnings of an attack that were ignored? Seems a very plausible explanation as to why he risked a criminal conviction and forfeiture of his license to practice law — which in fact happened. Finally, would it surprise any of us to learn that this was just another “Clinton cover-up”?
George W. Bush’s primary response to 9/11 was to invade Iraq, replace Saddam’s Sunni/Baathist regime with a Shiite one and disband the Iraq army — all based on the assumption that Saddam was presiding over a vast weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. The WMD justification turned out to be false, albeit described as a “slam dunk” by Bush’s CIA Director, a political appointee and holdover from the Clinton administration.
Instead of leaving Iraq mostly intact, especially the Army (sans the leadership loyal to Saddam) Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and their minions came up with a new policy justification to stay in Iraq for a decade and spend billions of dollars, building a “new” army and a “democratic” Iraq. This was a disaster.
The Bush Iraq policy solidified the growing influence of the Shiite militias (loyal to Iran) and drove moderate Sunnis out of government, many becoming supporters of the more radical Sunni groups. In effect, the Bush policy turned Iraq into a Shiite prefecture of Iran, and served as a proximate cause for the increased influence of ISIS in the region.
The only worse decisions that affected Iraq, the region and our security at home were yet to come.
Barack Obama began his term by naming a date certain for our departure from Iraq, rather than address the mistakes that were made in Iraq — for example, Vice President Biden had earlier suggested three semi-autonomous Iraq regions. Mr. Obama simply pulled out and essentially gave it away to ISIS — especially after the U.S. trained, very expensive and so-called “new” Iraq army abandoned their weapons, turned and ran. Iraq is still in turmoil and will not recover without some kind of external intervention — which will be opposed, of course, by the Iran backed government we installed there.
Another failed Obama policy in the Middle East was the toppling of the Gaddafi regime in Libya without any idea what to do thereafter. Libya remains in chaos and a hotbed for terror groups of all kinds.
In Syria, Mr. Obama surrendered the initiative and the future of the Assad regime to Russia, which will use the opportunity to dramatically increase their influence and military presence in the region. However, the Obama administration had squandered any opportunity to replace the Assad regime — also backed by Iran — long before the Russians stepped in to defend Mr. Assad, and has now had to agree with the Russians that Mr. Assad can stay.
The agreement with Iran regarding their nuclear weapons program was nothing but a very expensive political nod from Iran — not rub our nose in it until after the Obama administration left town. The agreement is not verifiable because it puts Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program and facilities off limits. In fact, Iran could have already built nuclear weapons and certainly has made enough “special nuclear material” to continue their covert weapons program. In short, the Obama administration essentially put its head in the sand on Iran nukes.
The Obama administration responded to the Charlie Hebdo attack that it was an issue of Islamic “assimilation” in Europe. The recent massive Paris attacks totally destroyed this thesis, as have the more recent mass killings in San Bernardino. Mr. Obama’s initial response to San Bernardino — was that it was primarily a U.S. gun control issue.
Our borders are woefully insecure, yet the Obama administration is reluctant to aggressively control them, and to meaningfully restrict or regulate immigration categories or definitions. Some have even suggested that a long-term political motivation is behind this, as immigrants vote predominately Democratic.
It’s totally understandable why many American voters, Republican and Democrat, are looking for dramatic change in the way our government “works” — especially with regard to our most basic national security exposures. For these voters, Donald Trump represents an “escape from the ordinary” in how we might do it. One thing for sure, the collective record for the last three administrations is not good — and because of it, our world is more dangerous today than it was at the height of the Cold war.
Now will the climate-change swindlers shut up?
They got the treaty in Paris that Barack Obama says saved the world from vanishing into a black hole in space.
Have the nations of the world finally resolved the ills and pains of prostitution, wars, disease, rush-hour traffic, date rape, racism, sexism, Confederate flags waving in the breeze, airline turbulence, the infield-fly rule and diplomatic gasbaggery that make Planet Earth all but uninhabitable?
Well, not exactly. President Francois Hollande of France, the host at the Paris gasbaggery and basking in his new role as leader of the free world now that Mr. Obama has marched to the rear, told the assembled prime ministers and presidents that he can’t separate terrorism from the fight against global warming.
“These are two big challenges we have to face up to,” he says. “I believe we can act boldly and decisively in the face of a common threat. I just want to say that we are running out of time.”
We’re all running out of time, of course, and others have said it better. The Bible warns that it’s appointed unto man once to die (and after that the judgment), and Winston Churchill, in a less solemn mood, observed that in the long run there is no long run. The beggar nations of the world, addicted to their corruption and inefficient governments, showed up in Paris with their biggest begging bowls and left town as the only winners.
The “developing” nations got promises of $100 billion a year from the “developed” nations, which won’t necessarily have to be spent on anything actually helpful to their ailing, starving millions but will pay for a lot of nice things — cars, houses, additional wives, shopping tours to New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong — for the hundreds of new deputy associate assistant undersecretaries the developing countries will have to create to supervise the spending of the largesse from the United States and other sucker nations.
President Obama, who considers himself the advocate for the interests of what used to called “the third world,” was first delirious months ago at the prospect of having a big celebration in Paris. “This has to be the year the world finally reaches an agreement to protect the one planet we’ve got while we still can,” he said on his return from a visit to Alaska, which he wanted to see before it melts under global warming. “There is no Plan B,” the chief negotiator for the European Union in Paris said on the eve of the Paris session. “There’s nothing to follow. [These are] not just ongoing U.N. discussions. Paris is final.”
But after the hosannas and shouts of joy from President Obama and his like-minded friends, Paris didn’t actually deliver anything. Each nation will be required to submit a plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but there is no objective standard it must meet or no requirement that it must achieve any reduction at all.
The beggar countries blocked a requirement that the authors of the promises use a common format, and they did not even have to mention the emissions they wouldn’t have to promise to reduce. China and India, leading the developing nations, rejected “any obligatory review mechanism for increasing individual efforts of developing countries.” Only Mexico submitted a plan by the initial deadline of March 1 of this year.
Everyone knew nobody was taking any of the “promises” seriously, that there would be no enforcement of the promises. The only consequences for non-compliance would be international “shame,” to be shamed by the likes of Lower Slobbovia and the Peoples Republic of Upper Corruptiana. India, for one example, submitted an unserious plan but said it would need $2.5 trillion in support to implement its plan.
Not everything is expected to be unenforcible. Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, returned to New York on Monday and told the developed nations to get the checks in the mail. “Actions should begin from today,” he said. “The Paris agreement is a victory for the people, for the common good, and for multilateralism.” He will convene a nagging “summit” next May, at a luxury resort to be named later, to hector and bully the donor nations to get cracking. The beggar nations, their diplomats exhausted from the work of making promises they will not be required to keep, must not be further disturbed.
The functionaries at the U.N. bristle at suggestions that the agreement will be difficult to enforce. There’s no need for climate-change cops.
The United Nations will boldly point the finger at nations that won’t keep their commitments, he says. The shame, the disgrace, the mortification of it all: Getting the finger from the U.N.
McLEAN, Va. (AP) - The Commonwealth Transportation Board unanimously approved a plan Wednesday to allow solo motorists to begin driving on Interstate 66 inside the Capital Beltway during rush hour if they are willing to pay a toll.
The highway is a key route for commuters in northern Virginia to the nation’s capital. Currently, that stretch of road is restricted during rush hour to carpools of two or more. It is the only segment of the interstate highway system in the country where such a restriction exists, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Under the plan, solo drivers could use the highway if they pay a variable toll estimated to average about $6 each way. Carpools can still drive for free.
The tolls would take effect in 2017.
The plan also sets aside money that could be used to widen eastbound I-66 if a future study determines it to be necessary.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, has supported the plan as a step toward relieving the region’s traffic congestion. Variable tolls have been implemented on the 495 Express Lanes as well as on Interstate 95.
In last month’s elections, Republican candidates attacked the plan, noting that at times of peak congestion, a motorist might have to pay as much as $17 each day for a round-trip commute.
Supporters of the plan said the opposition was misleading. Those who don’t want to pay the tolls can take alternate routes, just as they are required to do now when the highway is restricted to carpool use only.
“It is opening up an opportunity that doesn’t now exist,” Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne said during Wednesday’s meeting.
By 2040, VDOT estimates that the changes will move an additional 40,000 people through I-66 and the parallel roads of U.S. 29 and U.S. 50 each day. Currently those roads carry an average of 334,000 people a day, according to VDOT.
The uproar over the plan did result in some modifications. During the morning rush, tolls will be implemented only on the inbound lanes. In the evening rush, the tolls will only be imposed on the outbound lanes. The original proposal called for tolls in both directions during rush hour.
Carpools of two or more will be allowed to use the lanes for free until 2020, when plans call for increasing the carpool minimum to three.
Separate plans are in place to expand Express Lanes on I-66 outside the Beltway as well.
The state expects to generate $18 million in toll revenue in 2018, the first year in which tolls will be fully implemented. The money can be used to support mass transit options on the I-66 corridor, as well as the possible widening of eastbound I-66.
Supreme Court justices grappled Tuesday with how to balance the “one person, one vote” principle against late-20th century affirmative action policies, hearing two cases testing how far states can go in accommodating noncitizens or racial minorities when it comes time to draw voting districts.
One case, out of Texas, asked the court to allow states to count only voters when drawing state legislative districts, and to exclude illegal immigrants or other noncitizens.
Another case, stemming from Arizona, challenged state lines drawn to pack thousands of extra white voters into districts in order to dilute their strength and give more power to individual Hispanic voters in neighboring districts.
“What we have is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause,” Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich told the court as he asked the justices to overturn his own state’s lines, drawn by an independent commission.
Both cases are being closely watched amid the ongoing immigration debate, with Hispanic rights groups saying their political power is at stake.
Under current practice, all persons, including illegal immigrants, are counted when states decide where to draw the lines to create voting districts. In Texas, which has a heavy noncitizen population, that means one state Senate district has 584,000 eligible voters while another has just 372,000 — potentially resulting in a voter in the first district having less weight in picking his or her representative than a voter in the second district.
“The only way to make sense of the one-person, one-vote rule is to make it about eligible voters,” said William S. Consovoy, the lawyer for the plaintiffs.
The Constitution requires congressional districts to be apportioned based on total population, but it’s less clear what the rules are for the states.
The court’s liberal justices peppered Mr. Consovoy with questions about problems with the Census Bureau data that would be used to determine eligible voters. And Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said under his interpretation, women wouldn’t have been counted in determining districts up until they earned the right to vote in 1920.
In the Arizona case, meanwhile, the redistricting commission wrote districts trying to enhance the voting power of Hispanics in order to meet what it believed were the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, which pushes states with histories of discrimination to carve out seats with heavy minority populations.
But two members of the five-person commission also had political motives in writing the lines to try to help Democrats, a court found.
Tuesday’s arguments seemed to turn on how big a role those political motives played.
Justice Ginsburg said if that was the motive, the panel did a poor job: Republicans ended up winning 56 percent of Senate seats and 60 percent of House seats, despite only being 54 percent of registered voters.
“An incompetent gerrymander is no less a gerrymander,” Mark F. Hearne, the lawyer for those challenging the Arizona map, replied.
The Obama administration defended the maps in both cases, arguing that protecting Hispanic voters’ interests was an important goal in Arizona, and that relying only on eligible voters to divide up voting districts would hurt the rights of noncitizens in Texas and elsewhere.
Hispanic rights groups, meanwhile, said they’re closely watching the court, particularly in the Texas case, where they said millions of Hispanics could lose political power if noncitizens are stricken from the counts.
“The most affected by a negative ruling would be the millions of U.S. citizen children who would be without representation at the state level, where crucial decisions about school, health care and infrastructure are made,” said Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino. “This is a radical challenge of our constitutional guarantees and the democratic ideals for which we strive.”
There is much to do for the student with awakened conscience. Scrubbing out the moral stains on America, to make the grove of academe the bright spot of the fruited plain, is a job bigger than anyone first imagined.
But a new wave of Nancy men is hard at work. Amherst College in Massachusetts, whence so much politically correct moonshine bubbles and flows, is finally getting around to throwing Lord Jeff out of his job as Official Mascot. Minerva, the Roman goddess of the arts, will be altered in the spirit of the times to keep her place as the inspiration of students of Union College. Another Indian tribe has fallen to the white man at the University of North Dakota. The Fighting Sioux are reduced to mere birds.
All across the land university administrators are chipping away with trembling hands at names of American heroes, early professors and benefactors on statuary and buildings, all to assuage the pain of students, many of whom are of minority races and religions. But not all. Many students of paler hue, including some of that palest hue of all, are demanding that everyone feel their pain, too.
The Amherst mascot, Lord Jeff, is actually a figment based on Gen. Jeffery Amherst, a British general who defeated the French in the French and Indian War. The Americans in Massachusetts, grateful that they would not have to become Frenchmen, named the town and the college for Amherst. He was accused of sending blankets infected with smallpox to Indians helping the French, but some historians say it never happened.
Never mind, the students demanded that all traces of Lord Jeff be removed from college memorabilia, seals, documents and imagery. Even if he hadn’t done the bad stuff he was guilty of having “an inherent racist nature.” The students demanded that the college president make a speech condemning such bad thought. He’s working on it.
Observant women at Union College in Schenectady discovered that the college motto was taken from a French phrase and translated as “Under the laws of Minerva we all become brothers.” The motto dates from a time, before 1970, when all the students were men and probably always had been, and Minerva was a lady. Retaining the motto as historical remnant was never considered. Even a goddess can’t get no respect.
Minerva has been a busy goddess, often hanging out with a bad crowd. She’s on the seal of the state of California and now that she has come out California will soon need a new goddess. Bad news for faint-hearted generals at the Pentagon, always looking for routes of retreat: Minerva is depicted on the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest decoration for bravery. And there’s guilt by association: Minerva was prominently depicted on the Confederate $100 bill.
That’s worth not very much in today’s U.S. dollars, but it ought to be enough to get a good riot started, particularly at Washington’s National Episcopal Cathedral, where consciences are on the boil since someone discovered two tiny Confederate flags depicted in stained-glass windows depicting Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson humbled in prayer. The dean of the cathedral, notoriously easy to rattle, is treating it as if someone had found an evangelical Protestant, maybe even a Presbyterian, in the pulpit of the cathedral.
The current froth on campus may be more than evidence of rowdy students, who have always been with us. The kids may be learning a little history, and lessons learned on campus can be applied later to the boss when they’re out in their first jobs. They will be surprised by how eager a boss will be to get their assistance in cleaning up his act.
This current crop of students, generously donating their time and energy to cleaning up the stains their elders wrought, is getting an easy time of it. Once, years ago, students at Boston University, fed up with news of injustice somewhere, built several shanties in a prominent corner of the campus to protest. The shanties were meant to represent revolutionary change, but most people, including the college president, thought the shanties were not a treasure, but trash. The president, the late John Silber, told them to clear the ground, or he would. They didn’t, and he did.
He instructed the campus cops to escort the students to the paddy wagons with a little music. “I want you to sing, loud, ‘Just a shanty in old shanty town.’ ” He wanted to demonstrate that he did not see their cause as deeply felt or an offended conscience, “but showboating of a very insincere kind, and I see through their pretensions.” Alas, he did not become the model of the American college president, and everyone would live unhappily ever after.
Despite the exposure refugee resettlement has received lately, there has been little discussion of how the program actually operates.
Each year the administration establishes source regions and numbers for next year’s quota. The U.N. refugee agency refers most of the refugees that come through the system, though embassy staff and State Department contractors may also make referrals. An influential network of private contractors implements the program.
Speaking of the contractors running refugee resettlement, David M. Robinson, a former acting director of the refugee bureau in the State Department, wrote in 2000, “The agencies form a single body [that] wields enormous influence over the Administration’s refugee admissions policy. It lobbies the hill effectively to increase the number of refugees admitted for permanent resettlement each year and at the same time provides overseas processing for admissions under contract to the State Department. In fact, the federal government provides about ninety percent of its collective budget. If there is a conflict of interest, it is never mentioned.”
“[Its] solution to every refugee crisis is simplistic and the same: increase the number of admissions to the United States without regard to budgets or competing foreign policy considerations”
Today, the money is even better and for many of the private contractors the taxpayer portion of their income tops 95 percent. They are free to lobby lawmakers with what little money they raise from donations. Quarter million dollar executive salaries are the norm at the roughly 350 organizations affiliated with the nine major contractors. There are additional hundreds of supporting NGOs — most started and staffed by refugees and recent immigrants — soaking up grants from every agency of government except NASA. The U.S. government, according to its own audits, finds “U.S. resettlement communities awash with refugee NGOs that exist in name only but provide little meaningful assistance.” Think ACORN without borders.
Prior to the 1980 Refugee Act, refugee resettlement was a work of true sacrificial charity where sponsors and charities committed to maintaining and supporting the refugees with housing and employment, even medical care if needed. There was an explicit bar to the access of public assistance. In other words, the sponsor bears all costs and responsibility. This helped to guarantee assimilation and is how we absorbed post-WWII refugees, those fleeing communist oppression in Eastern Europe, the Hungarian revolution, the Cuban revolution and so on.
With the 1980 Refugee Act and other related laws, the charities morphed into private contractors whose job it is to link the refugees with social services. The 1980 Act made all welfare available to refugees upon arrival — for life, if eligibility is maintained.
But even this new model was intended to merely supplement resources that the “sponsors,” by their own efforts, brought to the problem. It was never intended that the sponsors, known as “Voluntary Agencies,” would be purely federal contractors with all the behavior, untoward incentives, money and influence peddling that this brings. Yet, that is what we have today.
The refugee industry’s very meager contractual obligation to provide assistance to the refugees — three or four months in most cases — and utter refusal to use their own resources has guaranteed that there will be isolation, not assimilation, and staggering welfare dependency.
The role of states in the Refugee Act has also changed since 1980. The Act intended to insulate states from refugee costs. It guaranteed 3 years of federal medical support and cash support to refugees upon arrival. It also required, additionally, federal reimbursement to the states for 3 years of the state’s portion of Medicaid, TANF, SSI, etc. paid out on behalf of refugees.
This latter stream of support was halted completely by 1991 resulting in a significant cost shift to the states. At the same time the direct support to refugees was reduced from three years to eight months — another cost shift to the states.
It’s no wonder that states are trying to assert their, as yet untested, right to refuse resettlement.
A recent GAO report quotes a state refugee official who notes, “funding is based on the number of refugees they serve, so affiliates have an incentive to maintain or increase the number of refugees they resettle each year rather than allowing the number to decrease.”
No kidding. And in a blizzard of atrocity propaganda and outright disinformation, we stand on the verge of a vast expansion of a program already by far the most generous in the world.
It is proper for Congress to make security concerns paramount, but that should be just the beginning of a thorough review of the program.
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernard Sanders‘ economic plan triggered Gmail’s “phishing scam” antenna, with the mail system saying the senator’s liberal campaign promises — including lower prescription drug prices and free college for all — sound like frauds.
“Be careful with this message. It contains content that’s typically used to steal personal information,” Gmail said in a bright red warning box that appeared at the top of a message sent by Mr. Sanders‘ campaign Friday, laying out his “Agenda for Working Families.”
“This message could be a scam,” Gmail says in its page explaining why it flagged the message as a “phishing scam.” Phishing is a specific type of spam email that scammers use to try to entice users to disclose bank accounts or other sensitive information.
The Sanders campaign declined to comment for this article, but a representative for Google, the Internet giant that runs Gmail, said the company thinks it has figured out the problem.
“A regression in the spam filter’s machine learning framework was determined to be the root cause. The issue affected only a very small percentage of the overall email received by Gmail and it has now been resolved,” the representative said.
According to Gmail, messages are automatically analyzed based on the sender and the content of the message. In this case, the Sanders press release was sent by Michael Briggs, a campaign spokesman, and similar messages weren’t marked as spam or phishing, so it’s probably that Mr. Sanders‘ wording caused his message to be labeled a scam.
The offending email complains that America’s economy is failing, stiffing working families while rewarding billionaires.
“My plan would make Wall Street banks, profitable corporations, millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. My plan would provide living wages for working people and ensure equal pay for women,” Mr. Sanders says, ticking off his plans to raise taxes by $1 trillion and spend it on infrastructure, guarantee free tuition at public colleges and universities, raise the minimum wage, raise Social Security benefits and cut prices on prescription drugs.
Ira Winkler, president of Secure Mentem and a cybersecurity specialist, said the campaign likely triggered Gmail’s filters because it included phrases that spammers use to try to sell prescription drugs and by offering things free of charge — in this case, the promise to pay for education at public colleges and universities.
“The way spam filters tend to work is you’ve got scoring. And the more time trigger words are used, scoring tends to go up. So if you see words like ‘free,’ if you see words like ‘prescription drugs,’ that keeps triggering it,” Mr. Winkler said.
“When you put out a campaign message filled with fluff it’s not unexpected,” he said.
He said one solution for businesses is to sign up with a trusted bulk emailing company, which works with services such as Gmail to make sure they know the messages are legitimate — a practice known as “whitelisting.”
Mr. Winkler said spam labels could happen to any politician emailing promises to voters and using red-flag words.
“If you use the word guarantee, that’s another flag,” he said.
It was unclear why Mr. Sanders‘ message was deemed phishing rather than regular spam. Phishing messages usually include links scammers use to collect sensitive personal information.
Mr. Sanders‘ message did not appear to have any such links.
If you were wondering what the Spanish word for “Solyndra” is, this week provided the answer: “Abengoa.”
Abengoa is a Spanish company that was another of President Obama’s personally picked green energy projects, and it’s now on the verge of bankruptcy too, potentially saddling taxpayers with a multibillion-dollar tab and fueling the notion that the administration repeatedly gambles on losers in the energy sector.
The renewable energy firm, which is constructing several large-scale solar power projects in the U.S. and has received at least $2.7 billion in federal loan guarantees since 2010, said Wednesday it will begin insolvency proceedings, a technical first step toward a possible bankruptcy.
The news comes at an especially awkward time for Mr. Obama. On Sunday he’ll travel to Paris for a historic climate change summit and is expected to call on world leaders to reject fossil fuels and spend heavily on renewable energy, including solar power.
Abengoa’s looming demise is eerily reminiscent of the fall of solar power firm Solyndra in 2011, a colossal failure of government investment that left taxpayers on the hook for more than $530 million.
A potential Abengoa bankruptcy could be much worse for taxpayers, although it’s unclear how much of the guaranteed loans the company has paid back. Neither the White House nor the Energy Department responded to requests for comment Wednesday seeking information on how much the company still owes on the loans, for which the federal government might be left on the hook.
Critics say Abengoa is yet another reminder that the administration’s meddling in the energy sector — and its insistence that, with enough government financial backing, ambitious renewable projects can compete in the free market — leads to disaster for taxpayers.
“When you have a company that is based on subsidies, it is no surprise they run into financial trouble because their business model isn’t based on economics; it’s based on politics,” said Daniel Simmons, vice president for policy at the conservative Institute for Energy Research, a leading critic of the administration’s spending on renewable fuels and of the president’s energy policy more broadly.
“The government money fueled Abengoa’s growth. They fueled their desire to take on more debt. It’s now obvious they have a very serious debt problem,” Mr. Simmons added. “What is troubling is that if there are large projects that private-sector people think they’ll be able to make money on, there’s no need to take those projects to a government. That’s where these projects go wrong: thinking governments will necessarily make good investment decisions.”
Wednesday’s news sent Abengoa’s stock price falling by about 60 percent. International banks’ total exposure to a full Abengoa bankruptcy stands at about $21.4 billion, according to Reuters news agency, meaning the company’s downfall would end up being the largest bankruptcy in Spanish history.
The announcement came after private Spanish backers said they were bailing on plans to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the company.
Company officials say they’re continuing to work with creditors in the hopes of staving off a full-on bankruptcy filing.
“The company will begin the negotiating process with its creditors with the aim to reach an accord to guarantee the financial viability under Article 5 of the Bankruptcy Act, which the company intends to request as soon as possible,” Abengoa said in a statement.
The company has received loans from governments around the world. In the U.S. the administration awarded the company about $2.7 billion for two majors projects — the Solana Generating Station in Arizona and the Mojave Solar Project in California.
Mr. Obama personally touted the company in 2010 in an attempt to justify to taxpayers why he was committing nearly $1.5 billion to the Solana project.
“In the short-term, construction will create approximately 1,600 jobs in Arizona. What’s more, over 70 percent of the components and products used in construction will be manufactured in the USA, boosting jobs and communities in states up and down the supply chain,” the president said on July 3, 2010. “Once completed, this plant will be the first large-scale solar plant in the U.S. to actually store the energy it generates for later use — even at night. And it will generate enough clean, renewable energy to power 70,000 homes.”
But the Solana project has run into a multitude of hurdles. The Arizona Republic reported earlier this year that the plant has fallen far short of its targets, generating about 603,567 megawatt hours of electricity in 2014 as opposed to the projected 900,000 megawatt hours. The project came online in 2013.
Throughout the construction process, subcontractors also alleged that Abengoa routinely changed plans on the fly and sometimes failed to make payments, creating a frustrating and confusing situation on the ground in Arizona. More than a half-dozen subcontractors have been involved in payment disputes with the company, according to the Arizona Republic.
Abengoa and its public relations representatives have maintained that, with a project the size of Solana, such disputes are inevitable, and the company has worked hard to resolve them as soon as possible.
Moving forward, critics such as Mr. Simmons believe the administration may, for public relations purposes, back away from further renewable energy investment in the short-term.
Eventually, however, he argues Mr. Obama and his deputies will continue to put taxpayer money on the line in the name of fighting climate change.
“There might be a pause, but the administration believes it is smarter than private investors,” Mr. Simmons said. “They will continue to make these sorts of investments, subsidies, because they think they know best.”
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) - Virginia will extend out its Interstate 95 Express Lanes in northern Virginia in both directions, Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Tuesday.
McAuliffe said Tuesday on WTOP-FM that the lanes will be extended about two miles on their southern end in Stafford County. The current terminus regularly produces backups, especially during the afternoon rush hour.
The Express Lanes are free for carpools of three or more. Other drivers can use the lanes by paying a variable toll.
On the northern end, the Interstate 395 Express Lanes will be extended all the way to the border with the District of Columbia. The state had wanted to do that in the first place, but was stymied by opposition from Arlington County.
As a result of Arlington’s opposition, the Express Lanes project was scaled back. The stretch of I-395 in Arlington County from Edsall Road to the Potomac River remained as traditional HOV lanes when the Express Lanes made their debut last year.
Mary Hynes, who chairs the Arlington County Board, said the county has not yet adopted an official position on McAuliffe’s plan, but said at first glance it appears to be a significant improvement over the original proposal that Arlington opposed. Hynes said McAuliffe’s plan includes funding for additional mass transit and will include studies to test whether local Arlington roads will be affected and money to fix any problems that result from the change.
The plan to convert the HOV lanes into Express Lanes also calls for the addition of a third lane.
A study released Monday ranked a stretch of I-395 in Arlington as one of the nation’s worst bottlenecks.
Construction on the southern extension will begin next year and is expected to take two years. Construction on the northern extension is also expected to take two years, but won’t begin until 2017.
New evidence has emerged that a tiny, highly addictive pill commonly known as Captagon is fueling the war in Syria and its fighters.
According to new investigations by both Reuters and Time magazine, the illegal drug is being used both to keep Syrian fighters on their feet and is likely being used to fund the weapons trade in the region.
The illegal sale of Captagon, the brand name of the original synthetic amphetamine drug known as “fenethylline,” funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into Syria’s black-market economy each year, likely giving militias access to new arms, fighters and the ability to prolong the conflict, according to The Guardian.
The drug quickly produces a euphoric intensity in users, allowing fighters to stay up for days and attack with reckless abandon.
“You can’t sleep or even close your eyes, forget about it,” said a Lebanese user, one of three who appeared on camera without their names for a BBC Arabic documentary that aired in September. “And whatever you take to stop it, nothing can stop it.”
“I felt like I own the world high,” another user said. “Like I have power nobody has. A really nice feeling.”
“There was no fear anymore after I took Captagon,” a third man added.
A drug control officer in the city of Homs told Reuters that interrogators would have to wait for the effects of Captagon to wear off before questioning detained fighters.
“We would beat them, and they wouldn’t feel the pain,” the officer said, Reuters reported. “Many of them would laugh while we were dealing them heavy blows. We would leave the prisoners for about 48 hours without questioning them while the effects of Captagon wore off, and then interrogation would become easier.”
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said Syria has typically been a transit point for drugs coming from Europe, Turkey and Lebanon en route to the Gulf States.
But amid the 4½-year-long civil war raging in the country now, armed groups have turned Syria into a major drug producer.
It is cheap and easy to produce using legal materials and can be purchased for less than $20 a tablet, The Guardian reported.
Doctors told the BBC that the drug has dangerous side effects, including psychosis and brain damage.
One ex-Syrian fighter said the drug is tailor-made for the battlefield because of its ability to give soldiers incredible energy and courage.
“So the brigade leader came and told us, ‘This pill gives you energy, try it,’ ” he said. “So we took it the first time. We felt physically fit. And if there were 10 people in front of you, you could catch them and kill them. You’re awake all the time. You don’t have any problems, you don’t even think about sleeping, you don’t think to leave the checkpoint. It gives you great courage and power. If the leader told you to go break into a military barracks, I will break in with a brave heart and without any feeling of fear at all — you’re not even tired.”
During a raid in Alforttville, a Paris suburb, French police found needles that the Paris attackers had used to inject themselves with Captagon, McClatchy reported Wednesday.
Police believe the drug helped the killers remain calm enough to carry out their brutal massacres.
Captagon was used in the West since the 1960 when it was given to people suffering from hyperactivity, narcolepsy and depression, Reuters reported. Most countries banned the drug in the 1980s due to its addictive qualities.
The U.S. classified fenethylline as a Schedule I drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act in 1981, The Washington Post reported.
While France remains in a state of shock over the ISIS terrorist attacks in Paris, they are also most likely confused and disappointed over President Obama’s declaration that there will be no fundamental change to his current policy and strategy to “now contain and defeat ISIS.” During his Nov. 12 remarks in Antalya, Turkey, Mr. Obama appeared to be petulant and arrogant when responding to legitimate reporter’s questions, perhaps a “crack” in the carefully constructed veneer that has concealed his true character and now has been exposed. However, on Nov. 17, The New York Times editorial board quickly came to the rescue by declaring that Mr. Obama “hit the right tone” in his remarks.
But his remarks should leave no doubt that he has a far-reaching strategy. That strategy is embedded in his declaration to fundamentally transform America. Actually, the way we are restricting our operations in the Middle East today has its roots in America’s transformation. Those who say the administration is incompetent — are wrong. With the complicity of our congressional leadership and the mainstream media, the administration has executed their strategy brilliantly.
In order to understand Mr. Obama’s strategy, you first have to understand the threat that has been deliberately distorted. When President Erdogan of Turkey was prime minister, he said it best — Islam is Islam. There are no modifiers, such as violent extremism. Democracy is the train we ride to achieve our ultimate objective, Mr. Erdogan implied, which is world domination. It must be understood that Islam is a political movement masquerading as a religion. The Islamic movement will seize power as soon as it is able.
No matter how many times “progressives” try to rationalize or accommodate perceived Muslim grievances, the fact remains that Islam has been involved in a struggle for world domination for over 1,400 years. What the world witnessed in Paris, and certainly here in America on Sept. 11, 2001, was a continuing clash of civilizations between Islam and the Judeo-Christian values of the West. As the noted historian Samuel P. Huntington implied, Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western values and cultures. There can be no peace or co-existence between Islam and non-Islamic societies or their political institutions. Clearly, there must be a reformation of Islam.
Once the Islamic threat has been exposed and understood, then any thinking American should be able to grasp Mr. Obama’s strategy. It is anti-American; anti-Western; but pro-Islamic; pro-Iranian; and pro-Muslim Brotherhood. This raises the question: Why would an American president with his country’s Judeo-Christian heritage, who professes to be a Christian, embrace Islam? Or for that matter, why would an American president embrace Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, which has been at war with the United States for over 35 years? They have caused the loss of thousands of American civilians and military lives.
Also, why would an American president embrace the Muslim Brotherhood, whose creed is to destroy America from within by our own miserable hands, and replace our Constitution with seventh century Shariah law? They have been able to penetrate all our national security and intelligence agencies. Consequently, they have had a major impact on our foreign and domestic policies as well as the way our military is restricted on fighting our wars.
It is not possible to list all of President Obama’s executive orders and policies that have imposed undue restraints on our military forces and first responders, but illustrative of those are the following:
The unilateral disarmament of our military forces. This makes no sense when we are being challenged throughout the world.
Compounding the unilateral disarmament issue is the social engineering that has been forced on our military to satisfy an ill-advised domestic agenda. It has adversely impacted the military’s moral fiber, unit cohesiveness, integrity and most importantly the “will to win.”
The purging of all our military training manuals that links Islam with terrorism. Our forces are being denied key information that properly defines the threat.
Emasculation of our military capabilities by imposing highly restricted Rules of Engagement. It makes our military look ineffective.
Curtailment of Christianity and its symbols in our military, e.g., restricting the display of the Bible.
Making our military forces in the Middle East either ignore or submit to the atrocities authorized by Shariah law, tribal customs and traditions, e.g. wife beating, stoning, sodomizing young boys.
Unfettered immigration with open borders, plus seeding Muslim immigrants throughout the country.
Shifting sides in the Global War on Terror by supporting al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood militias, and facilitating the removal of all vestiges of secular rulers who were in fact our allies in the war on terror.
When President Obama gave his June 4, 2009 speech at Cairo University, co-hosted by Al-Azhar University, the center of Sunni doctrine for over 1,000 years, he stated, “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear,” that said it all. Again, when he spoke at the U.N. on Sept. 25, 2012, after the Benghazi tragedy and stated that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” — case closed. Andy McCarthy, author and National Review columnist, made a compelling case for Mr. Obama’s impeachment in his book, “Faithless Execution.” Clearly, the president has exposed where he stands when the issue is Islam versus our Judeo-Christian heritage. Certainly, the case is there to be made for his removal from office for his illegal, unconstitutional and treasonous acts.
Last week, I was attacked by so-called “diversity” groups at Yale Law School because I had accepted an invitation from a student group (providing a forum for diversity of ideas), to speak on the meaning of the Birthright provision of the 14th Amendment. Without having heard what I would say, this speech-suppression coalition sought to prevent me from speaking by charging that I would utter “anti-immigrant rhetoric,” rest on “racist assumptions,” and express “racist and xenophobic ideas,” and “hateful ideologies.”
As a 1955 graduate of Yale Law School, it was difficult to believe that students who came to this excellent school would seek to prevent a diverse view from being expressed. After all, lawyers in the real world must be trained to hear their adversary’s differing views and be willing to answer them. Yale Law School itself proudly announces on its web site that it is “renowned as a center of constitutional law” — attained certainly by constant discourse, including differing views on the meaning of Constitutional provisions.
This was not simply an attack on my free speech right. It was an attack on all students’ right to obtain the benefit of free speech by hearing different views. Most disconcerting, it was not a single incident, but one of many in the nationwide movement at schools to suppress any thinking that the self-appointed student and faculty thought-police find unacceptable.
Almost simultaneously, the master of one Yale undergraduate residential grouping was viciously vocally attacked, and then required to grovel and apologize, for having the temerity to extol students’ free exercise of imagination in Halloween costumes over “institutional bureaucratic exercise of implied control over college students.” At the University of Missouri, a faculty member publicly shouted for “muscle” — physical enforcers, years ago known in Germany as Storm Troopers — to eject a reporter to prevent reporting what student demonstrators were doing and demanding. At the University of Texas, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators invaded a room reserved for an Israeli study event, the administration announced that it was investigating if the disrupters were treated properly, not addressing discipline of the disrupters
Yale’s president’s multipage response to the anti-free speech bullies was devoid of even a verbal reprimand of those bullies. Instead, he kowtowed to their crusade for “diversity” enhancement, without a mention of protecting the right to express diversity in ideas. He thus provides a green light to the politically correct speech police to continue their destruction of academic freedom.
Many similar recent examples have occurred showing academia’s leaders and teachers’ treatment of free speech as undesirable, or, at least, not important enough to defend.
The American Association of University Professors, in the past, repeatedly declared that academia’s “common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition,” and that it “is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning.” Now, this axiom of freedom for teaching and learning is being bullied out of the vocabulary, with no opposition to those who prevent expressions of opinion they find “unacceptable.”
When faced with this demand that I be disinvited to speak, I could have stood on principle, insisting that I speak at a program where only my view would be expressed, consistent with the invitation. Leaders of the group that invited me proposed that I change the format to a debate with someone taking the opposing position that citizenship was granted on the sole condition of being physically in this country when born, without regard to the parents’ citizenship and whether or not the child remained domiciled in this country.
I was frankly troubled by the appearance of rewarding intolerant bullies with acceding to their demand that I not speak unless “equal time” were given to their contrary position. Yale Law School has a long history of hosting speakers espousing one side of an issue, without conditioning the appearance on sharing the podium with a contrary view. I was being singled out only because these censors didn’t agree with me. Consistent with the proclaimed pro-free speech policy of university professors, I would have expected an outcry from Yale administration and faculty against this violation of academic freedom. But no, the thought-police bullies had scared them into silence.
I decided that speaking — the exercise of free speech — was more important than the principle that bullies not control who speaks without an opposing speaker. I therefore agreed to and did debate the issue. While I believe that I won the debate on the facts and the law, I leave that decision to the students and faculty who were there. What I know I won was establishing to students that free speech — the right of students to hear any opinion that an invited speaker wishes to express — must be protected against all adversity as essential to a free society. President Obama has spoken forcefully in support of that principle: “anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with them, but you shouldn’t silence them by saying you can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.”
Would that academia’s administrators and faculty demonstrate that they too recognize their responsibility to defend open and free speech.
Roanoke Mayor David Bowers said Thursday he has been asked to step down from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s leadership team in Virginia for voicing his support for halting the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S. by apparently endorsing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
“Secretary Clinton has to do whatever she thinks is right, and I have to do what I believe is right,” Mr. Bowers told The Washington Times. “I was more supportive of the president’s foreign policy when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, and I still support her candidacy. I hope she wins, and I believe she will win.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Bowers joined 26 governors from across the country in rejecting President Obama’s plan to resettle as many as 10,000 refugees from war-torn Syria in the United States next year.
In a written statement, Mr. Bowers said he was “reminded that Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from [the Islamic State] now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.”
Shortly after his letter was released, Mr. Bowers was asked to leave the Clinton campaign’s Virginia Leadership Council.
“The internment of people of Japanese descent is a dark cloud on our nation’s history and to suggest that it is anything but a horrible moment in our past is outrageous,” Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin said late Wednesday.
The Roanoke mayor’s comments also drew pointed criticism from former “Star Trek” star George Takei, a Japanese-American who was born in Los Angeles and was sent to an internment camp with his family in 1942.
Mr. Takei, 78, took Mr. Bowers to task in a widely circulated Facebook posting.
“The internment (not a ‘sequester’) was not of Japanese ‘foreign nationals,’ but of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. I was one of them, and my family and I spent 4 years in prison camps because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It is my life’s mission to never let such a thing happen again in America,” Mr. Takei wrote on his Facebook page.
“There never was any proven incident of espionage or sabotage from the suspected ‘enemies’ then, just as there has been no act of terrorism from any of the 1,854 Syrian refugees the U.S. already has accepted. We were judged based on who we looked like, and that is about as un-American as it gets,” he wrote. “If you are attempting to compare the actual threat of harm from the 120,000 of us who were interned then to the Syrian situation now, the simple answer is this: There was no threat. We loved America. We were decent, honest, hard-working folks. Tens of thousands of lives were ruined, over nothing.”
The actor’s Facebook post has been “liked” by more than 91,000 people and shared nearly 43,000 times.
Mr. Takei, who currently is starring in the Broadway show “Allegiance,” concluded his post by inviting Mr. Bowers to be his guest at an upcoming performance.
“Perhaps you, too, will come away with more compassion and understanding,” he wrote.
As the full magnitude of Friday’s Paris carnage became known, President Obama spoke to America people and the world about the horrific bloodshed in that great Western city. The president said this was not an attack simply on Paris or the French people. “It was an attack,” he said, “on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.”
This is dangerously wrongheaded. History is not about all of humanity struggling to preserve and protect universal values against benighted peoples here and there who operate outside the confines of those shared values. History is about distinct civilizations and cultures that struggle to define themselves and maintain their identities in the face of ongoing threats and challenges from other civilizations and cultures.
Compare the president’s gauzy notion to what the late Samuel P. Huntington, probably the greatest political scientist of his generation, had to say about the relationship between the West and Islam. “Some Westerners,” wrote Huntington, ” have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.”
This is not to say, of course, that all or even most Muslims are Islamist extremists or that Western values don’t inspire many within that civilization. But the Islamist fervor we see bubbling up within Middle Eastern Islam today emanates directly from the doctrines and history of Islam. Most Muslims of the Levant know in their hearts, in a way that most Westerners don’t recognize, that Islam and the West have been locked in a civilizational struggle for centuries — reflected in the Moors’ conquest of Spain and incursion into France in the 8th century; the centuries-long Spanish struggle to push the Moors south and finally expel them entirely from Iberia; the wars of the Crusades, inexplicable as anything but a civilizational clash; the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans and slow push up the Danube to Vienna; the two Ottoman sieges at Vienna; the long effort to push the decaying Ottoman forces back toward Istanbul (a highly civilized seat of Christianity before it fell to Islam in 1453); the European takeover of large segments of the Islamic Middle East after World War I; and the eventual pushback by angry and frustrated Muslims bent on protecting their civilization through whatever means they can devise.
That’s a lot of civilizational clash, and it belies the notion that the Paris slaughter reflects the forces of civilization struggling to preserve universal values against the forces of darkness bent on destroying those values. Huntington again: “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world.”
If Huntington presents the more accurate depiction of the relationship between the West and Islam, then certain conclusions follow. First, expect the clash to intensify with Western military incursions into the lands of Islam. This isn’t conjecture. President George W. Bush played into the hands of Islamist extremists when he invaded Iraq, and Mr. Obama did the same when he expanded the Afghanistan mission to reshape political structures and behavior in the Afghan countryside. The threat to the West is greater today than it was before those actions were undertaken.
Second, Muslim immigration into the West inevitably will heighten prospects for bloodshed of the kind we saw in Paris on Friday. We learn from news reports that at least one of the Paris killers probably entered the country with the refugees now flooding into Europe. That should not surprise anyone, certainly not those who understand the true nature of the civilizational clash between the West and Islam.
France’s 4.7 million Muslims now constitute about 7.5 percent of the country’s population, and that number is projected to hit nearly 7 million by 2030. Generally, these people have not assimilated well into French society and hence constitute a mass of political and cultural anger that can only intensify in coming years.
And yet we see the Continent’s most influential leader, Germany’s Angela Merkel, beating the drums for ever greater infusions of Muslim refugees into Europe. And we see the editors of The Economist labeling her “the indispensable European.” This is what happens when humanitarian universalism supplants civilizational consciousness.
Europe is beginning to show some signs of civilizational consciousness, and that sentiment likely will intensify in the wake of the Paris bloodshed. But humanitarian universalism is powerfully embedded into the Western consciousness. Mrs. Merkel’s remarks after the Paris massacre showed little inclination to adjust her view of the world or of Europe’s future. Certainly the editors of The Economist and other like-minded liberals will never alter their gauzy notions. And news coverage of the Paris aftermath reflected the prevailing sentiment by habitually characterizing those who want to curtail Europe’s Muslim immigration as “xenophobic” and “radical.”
But the Muslim infusion represents an existential threat to Europe and the West. Maybe the people there will get rid of their current leaders now living in another world and install leaders who understand the true nature of the threat. Then again, maybe not.
Do not expect to get a higher real rate of interest on your savings — ever. Traditionally, people could expect to receive 2 or 3 percent more than the rate of inflation on their savings or money market accounts. For instance, if inflation was 2 percent, many people received 5 percent interest per year on their government-insured savings accounts. The Internal Revenue Service would then tax the entire amount of interest received (even the portion due only to inflation, which is obviously not income, but who expects the IRS to be ethical?). So, even after inflation and taxes, most received a small, 1.5 to 2 percent real positive rate of return on their savings.
Contrast the current situation with what people traditionally expected. Now, if you are lucky, you may be receiving a half percent or so interest rate, about equal to the rate of inflation, yet the IRS still taxes you on this meager amount even though you have had no real interest income. So, at the end of the year, you are worse off — a negative return — because you did the responsible thing, and that was to save for your retirement or for various emergencies that come along with life.
The following is a simplified but accurate description of how we got into the mess and why the situation will not get better. Back in 2009 during the Great Recession, the government greatly increased spending, all of which was borrowed. At the same time, the Federal Reserve decided it needed to strengthen the balance sheets of the big banks. Without going through all of the mechanics, to accomplish those two operations, — large banks bought bonds from the U.S. Treasury (at restricted auctions) and then sold many of these U.S. government bonds to the Fed at a small profit. Using this mechanism, the U.S. Treasury was able to sell more than a trillion of dollars of debt at very low interest rates.
The Fed earns interest on the U.S. government bonds that it holds, but at the end of the year it remits its interest earnings — after deducting a couple of billion dollars to pay for its own operations — back to the Treasury. Currently, it is remitting back more than $100 billion a year, making the government’s cost of debt service very low. Again, it is important to understand that Fed and the Treasury are running an unsustainable scheme — whereby the Fed creates an artificial demand for government debt, driving down the interest rates, and then remits most of the interest earned back to the Treasury. If a private party engaged in such activities, it would be called “money laundering,” and the participants might well go to jail.
The reason this monetary game has not resulted in inflation up to now is that even though the Fed is buying the bonds from the banks with money created out of thin air, the banks are increasingly subject to greater regulatory restraints on what they can do with the money. The big banks have “bank accounts” with the Fed. The Fed started paying a small amount of interest on these accounts to the banks. So the big banks, in essence, get free money from the government on which the government pays them interest. If the banks lend the money to private parties who are willing to pay a higher interest rate, the banks risk fines, or worse, if the loans happen to go bad. As a result, the banks increasingly restrict their lending to big companies and the politically favored where the risks are perceived to be lower — rather than to small business and entrepreneurial enterprises that create most of real jobs.
Because of all of the new financial regulatory restrictions that make it more difficult to borrow, the demand for loans is artificially depressed. At the same time, the population pyramid is changing. Young people typically are borrowers — for education, homes and autos. As people get older, they tend to increase their savings rates to prepare for old age and borrow less. As a result of the decline in birth rates and an aging population, there are fewer borrowers and more savers. As the real return on savings declines, many save more, as the Japanese have been doing for the last few decades, to make up for the lower rate of return on the savings.
The Fed has no costless way to wind down its massive holdings of U.S. government debt and its holdings of government-backed mortgages that it bought from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Who would buy all of this stuff if the Fed decided to sell, and at what price? If the Fed interest rate subsidy to the Treasury stops — the cost of debt service will soar, either crowding out other spending or forcing massive tax increases or inflation.
Rapid economic growth is the only real solution to the government debt problem and negative interest rates for savers. Such growth will require large cuts in regulatory costs, a far less damaging tax system, and major real cuts in government spending. Which politician is going to deliver that?
Everything “politically correct” threatens to strangle the public conversation that nurtures democracy, and the growing numbers of skeptics eager to show their righteous contempt for it might be interested to know the origins of the term, which has been revived from its original use. It’s a wicked attitude intended to stifle the conscience and suppress belief and conviction.
The term “politically correct” was coined in the late 1920s by the Soviets and their ideological allies around the world to describe why the views of certain of the party faithful needed correction to the party line.
The great example was the Spanish-French artist Pablo Picasso. Picasso, a commercial opportunist and a gifted and original artistic thinker, signed on to Communist causes from his sinecure in the West. It was always healthier and more convenient in the era of Josef Stalin be a Communist at a safe distance from the original source. No one wanted to risk joining the long line to the graveyard of Stalin’s domestic enemies, as his ideology zigged and zagged according to the needs of the Kremlin to keep a firm hold on power.
Stalin was determined to control every aspect of life. He didn’t know much about art, but he knew what he liked. He proclaimed “Soviet realism” as the only norm at the artists’s easel. Soviet realism was the art of the poster, usually of big-muscled men and women working on tractors or harvesting grain. The art was less inspired and refined as Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers, but realistic in the Rockwell way. Abstract art, which deviated from “photographic realism,” was taboo, and Soviet artists who dared to stray suffered for even attempting anything original.
This created a problem, particularly in the West. What must be done with Picasso? The Communists wanted to make maximum use of Picasso’s name to recruit followers and to support Communist initiatives in the West. Picasso’s art was anything but photographic, depicting brawny farmers and resolute ironworkers, and there had to be an explanation of why the contradiction was tolerated. The phrase “politically correct” was introduced as the “but” of why a public figure could be nominally considered a loyal and faithful member of the party while straying. Because he was useful to the party, Picasso was nevertheless to be regarded as correct for politics’ sake.
So now we’ve come full circle. The young “revolutionaries” on the college campus who style themselves “leftist,” can be politically correct. They demand suppression of the virtues of the larger public in pursuit of an unassailable noble cause.
Liberty and freedom of expression are always vulnerable, and in any society. Listening to someone with whom you disagree can make your head ache and your teeth itch. Their defense requires a subtlety far beyond being politically correct. The lodestar of conscience, attributed, falsely, to Voltaire (the sentiment is older than he is) is the guide to a free and open society: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The young self-proclaimed idealists are far from understanding, appreciating and implementing this basic demand for human liberty. It’s a sad comment on our times that the spirit of the university, which is meant to be the heart of free discussion and exchange of ideas, has been abandoned on many campuses. The Communists invented the term “politically correct” to camouflage their destructive manipulation of idealism to suit it for totalitarian purposes. The term carried no honor then and it carries none today.
When MSNBC used inaccurate and misleading maps in October to illustrate Jewish and Arab land claims in the Holy Land, it took only hours for it to admit their error. Church groups have been using the same set of maps for many years, with no sign of slowing down.
The maps are a set of four (sometimes five) panels purporting to show the shrinkage of “Palestinian” land from 1946 and on. The first panel shows what is currently called Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank almost entirely colored Palestinian green, with the faintest amount of Jewish blue. As the maps progress through 1947 to 1967 to the present day, wending their way through the U.N. partition plan of 1947, the aftermath of the June War and Oslo, the blue gobbles up more and more of the green. The conclusion is obvious: Those nasty Zionist imperialists have been stealing more and more Palestinian land, leaving the real owners no recourse but to try to take it back by murdering elderly Jewish women with kitchen knives.
Wrong. The maps are a sham. It took MSNBC very little time to investigate and to publicly apologize the next day. Later, “MSNBC Live” host Kate Snow admitted that the maps attempted to show that Palestinians once had control over all of modern-day Israel and have seen it shrink since. “We realized after we went off the air the maps were not factually accurate and we regret using them.”
Veteran NBC Middle East correspondent Martin Fletcher added: “There was no state called Palestine. It gave the wrong impression.” What the maps called “Palestine” was the name the British, who conquered it from the Turks in WWI, called until it left the Holy Land in 1948. Indeed, the hundreds of thousands of Jews living there during that period were called Palestinian Jews. The English language newspaper of the Jews was called The Palestine Post. It would only be renamed The Jerusalem Post in 1950. Local Arabs didn’t emerge as a distinct national group called Palestinians until the ‘70s.
As for the land depicted in pre-1948 maps, it included large parcels bought by Jews. Vast amounts of land were either desert, or otherwise not considered arable — at least not until the Jews would later make the desert and rocky terrain bloom. Much land was considered government land, which meant that neither Jews nor Arabs owned it. Yet, even back then, Arabs insisted that everything belonged to the Arab nation.
None of these facts deter a Who’s-Who of mainline churches who continue to deploy the map with impunity, decrying the theft of “Palestinian” land by the Jews and rallying members to vote for punitive measures against Israel.
The maps, apparently the work of an Anglican canon, first appeared nearly a decade ago on the Sabeel U.K. website. The group’s long-standing animus to Israel is so great that they label the two colors Palestinian and Jewish — not Israeli. The Lutheran Church (ELCA) as early as 2009 began offering free cards with the 4-panel graphic on its Peace Not Walls/”Stand for Justice in the Holy Land” handouts and is still used by one of their synods. The Presbyterians (PCUSA) included the maps in the historical analysis prepared for delegates at the 2010 General Assembly, and they accompanied an anti-Israel overture in 2014. Right before a successful United Methodist boycott vote at their last General Conference, committee spokesperson Rev. We Hyun Chang rose to show the maps to all the delegates. The United Church of Christ sports the map on its Church Funds chronicle of Mideast “engagements.”
In 2012, churches lost their exclusive to the lie. The Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine paid $25,000 to display map posters at 50 Metro-North Railroad stations for 30 days.
How does a lie live so long? Seems that a convenient untruth can often trump the real story. Evidence the celebrated link between homo sapiens and his simian ancestors. Or so people thought of it until that hoax was discovered.
At a meeting of the Geological Society of London in 1912, Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum reported on a skull that had been unearthed in a Piltdown gravel pit. The jaw was like that of a modern chimp; the rest similar to a modern human, other than containing a brain about two-thirds the size of that of a human. The fossil was hailed as the missing link between ape and man that scientists were looking for. Piltdown Man was cited by Clarence Darrow at the Scopes trial as evidence for evolution.
It took 50 years before researchers were able to confirm that it was actually a fraud. Someone — probably Charles Dawson, an associate of Woodward’s — had assembled the hoax using a human skull only a few hundred years old, fossilized chimpanzee teeth, an orangutan jaw, some staining liquids, and a file. It took a half-century for the truth to be heard because people preferred to believe the lie. They were comfortable with the idea of human evolution producing a large brain even before the jaw adapted to new foods. They were even more comfortable with human ancestry beginning with a proper Englishman, rather than an African or Asian savage.
So truth will eventually prevail — but only if and when people are prepared to hear it.
In a Gallup poll of attitudes toward the honesty and ethical standards of people in various professions, well over twice as many Americans trusted clergy over television news reporters. Judging by the way the four-panel map of Palestine hoax continues to be recycled by some church groups, they may want reconsider their preference.
The federal government has piled up debt since the latest budget deal was signed into law, tacking $462 billion onto the national credit card since Nov. 2 as the Treasury Department replenished its funds and began another round of borrowing to take it all the way into 2017.
A staggering $339 billion in total debt was added on just the first day after President Obama signed the budget agreement — the single largest hike in history.
The debt has continued to rise, albeit more slowly, in the days since, putting the president on track to come close to the $20 trillion mark by the time he leaves office in January 2017.
Meanwhile, the early deficit numbers for fiscal year 2016, which began Oct. 1, are already looking more grim.
The government ran a deficit of $136 billion last month, up 12 percent compared with the previous October, as spending ballooned and taxes remained nearly flat. It was the worst October since 2010, when the government was still spending on the stimulus and was on pace for a deficit of more than $1 trillion that year.
The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment on the debt spike, but analysts said it wasn’t unexpected.
“It’s not going to keep rising at that pace. It’s like putting a cap on a geyser. It was being held at an artificially low pace,” said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, which pushes for policymakers to control debt and deficits. “It’ll increase at a more traditional level from this point on.”
Despite the massive spread of red ink, the government has been getting away with small debt service payments because of historically low interest rates over the past several years.
But as rates rise, so will those payments — from about $220 billion a year now to $755 billion a year in a decade.
The size of the debt has begun to take a starring role in the 2016 presidential campaigns. In the Republican debate Tuesday, Fox Business Network prodded candidates on their plans.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky poked fellow candidate Sen. Marco Rubio for a tax and defense spending plan that Mr. Paul said would hike deficits by $1 trillion.
“As we go further and further into debt, we become less and less safe. This is the most important thing we’re going to talk about tonight,” Mr. Paul said. “Can you be for unlimited military spending, and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to make the country safe?’ No, we need a safe country, but, you know, we spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined.”
Mr. Rubio said defense comes first.
“We can’t even have an economy if we’re not safe,” he said.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who as chairman of the House Budget Committee in the late 1990s helped write the deals that produced four years of surpluses, said he has plans to do it again — including a freeze on nondefense discretionary spending.
But it was just such a freeze that Congress rejected this year, forcing the budget deal that allowed for unlimited borrowing for another 16 months.
Mr. Bixby said Congress should use those months to work on long-term fixes rather than preparing for another knock-down fight over the debt limit.
“The way to keep the debt from going up is to change the policies producing the debt,” he said.
The government began bumping up against the debt limit in March and was borrowing from other funds — using “extraordinary measures” — to keep from breaching the $18.1 trillion level. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew was able to stretch that borrowing through the end of October, when Congress passed a debt holiday lasting into March 2017, allowing him to borrow as much as needed to keep the federal government operating.
The first move was to replenish all of the funds depleted under the “extraordinary measures,” which is what sent debt skyrocketing on Nov. 2.
Such spikes are normal. In 2013, when a debt deal was reached, the government added $328 billion to its borrowing in one day. After the August 2011 debt deal, the amount rose $238 billion in one day.
But the Nov. 2 spike topped them all, at $339 billion in one day.
Of that, about $199 billion is public debt, which is money borrowed from outside sources, and $140 billion is borrowing from within government accounts.
As of Monday, the gross total debt stood at $18.6 trillion, with $13.4 trillion of that public debt borrowed from the outside.
When Mr. Obama took office in 2009, total debt stood at $10.6 trillion.
We live in a weary age of fable.
The latest Hollywood mythology is entitled “Truth.” But the film is actually a fictionalized story about how CBS News super-anchor Dan Rather and his “60 Minutes” producer supposedly were railroaded by corporate and right-wing interests into resigning.
In reality, an internal investigation by CBS found that Mr. Rather and his “60 Minutes” team — just weeks before the 2004 election — had failed to properly vet documents of dubious authenticity asserting that a young George W. Bush had shirked his duty as a Texas Air National Guard pilot.
The fabulist movie comes on the heels of the Benghazi investigations. An email introduced last month at a House Benghazi committee hearing indicated that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — just hours after the attacks on the consulate that left four Americans dead — knew almost immediately that an “al Qaeda-like group” had carried out the killings.
Mrs. Clinton informed everyone from her own daughter to the Egyptian prime minister that the killings were the work of hard-core terrorists. Yet officially, she knowingly peddled the falsehood that a video maker had caused spontaneous demonstrations that went bad.
Apparently, the truth about Benghazi clashed with the 2012 Barack Obama re-election narrative about the routing of al Qaeda. For days, Mrs. Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and the president himself likewise sold the fantasy of video-driven killings.
The Black Lives Matter movement grew out of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo. The protesters’ signature slogan, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” evolved from the belief that Brown raised his hands after Officer Wilson had fired the first shot and told the officer, “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting” in the seconds before his death.
Yet the Justice Department exonerated Officer Wilson, concluding that Brown was shot after struggling with, and then charging toward, the officer. Brown, who had allegedly stolen cigars from a liquor store shortly before his encounter with Officer Wilson, neither put up his hands to surrender nor was shot in the back while fleeing, according to the Justice Department report.
Utter disregard for old-fashioned truth is now deeply embedded in contemporary America, largely because it advances a particular agenda. It reminds of an earlier age of politically correct fable, when evidence in the Alger Hiss case and the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case got in the way of ideologically useful mythologies.
In another example of fantasy reinvented as reality, a Texas teen, Ahmed Mohamed, brought a strange contraption with dangling wires to class. He was promptly detained, understandably so in a touchy post-September 11 climate.
Ahmed claimed that he was a young inventor and was just showing off his creation. He became a cause celebre — an iconic victim of Texas-style anti-Islamic bigotry. President Obama invited him to the White House. Silicon Valley’s zillionaire techies pronounced him a budding genius.
But the bothersome truth again was not so glorious. A number of experts have shown how Ahmed had simply taken out the insides of an old Radio Shack digital clock, put it in a different case with some wires hanging out, and passed it off as some sort of new electronic timepiece.
No matter. The myth of supposed religious and racial bigotry thwarting a young, modern-day Alexander Graham Bell proved more powerful than the banal trick of repackaging a cheap clock.
Subsequent fact-finding does not seem to dispel these untruths. Instead, what could or should have happened must have happened, given that the noble ends of social justice are thought to justify the means deemed necessary to achieve them.
The “60 Minutes” memos about Bush’s Air National Guard service were never authenticated. Everyone now rejects the myth that the Benghazi attack was a result of a video. Investigators proved that Michael Brown was not executed by Officer Wilson. Ahmed was neither a young prodigy nor a victim of bias.
But the legends are created and persist because they further progressive agendas — and the thousands of prestigious and lucrative careers invested in them.
“Noble lies” alter our very language through made-up words and euphemisms. In our world of fable, there can be no such people as “illegal aliens” who broke federal laws by entering the United States. “Workplace violence” is how the Obama administration described the Fort Hood shootings, rather than calling it terrorism. American servicemen who shoot and die in Iraq are not supposed to be called “combat soldiers.”
The enlightened ends of seeking racial and religious tolerance, equality of opportunity and political accountability are never advanced by the illiberal means of lying. What makes this 2016 election so unpredictable are fed-up voters — in other words, Americans who finally are becoming tired of being lied to.
College kids do the darndest things. You send them away to open up their minds and they learn to close them, for themselves and for others. The tantrum generation just managed a left-wing coup at the University of Missouri, stifling freedom of expression and forcing out the president and chancellor of the university.
In his 1987 book, “The Closing of the American Mind,” Allan Bloom wrote a surprising bestseller demonstrating how college students are no longer exposed to the great books and that higher education impoverishes rather than enhances the intellect. Someone could write a sequel called “The Closing of the American Mouth,” where political correctness silences dissent on campus, revealing a deep ignorance of many things, including the classic essays on behalf of free speech from John Milton and John Stuart Mill to the Bill of Rights. Ignorance breeds intolerance.
Once upon a time, panty raids and swallowing goldfish was the rite of passage for sophomores, challenging authority on campus with innocence and high spirits. Student rebellion darkened with the free speech movement at the University of California in the 1960s. Today free speech on campus is under attack from the students themselves.
Protests at the University of Missouri started over concerns of racism, but moved quickly to suppress free speech for anyone who disagrees with the politically correct. The protesters tried to prevent student reporters from covering the story, and a video gone viral shows Melissa Click, a professor of media in the department of communications, assisting the students challenging a photographer for the student newspaper, calling for help to chase him away: “I need some muscle over here.”
Her outburst took place in a space on campus that is specifically designated for free expression, and though she later apologized for her “language” and “strategy,” and might have expected students to line up to take her course next semester, she felt the better part of valor was to resign from the School of Journalism. Freedom of speech won that one.
Jonathan Chait of New York magazine compares the tactics of political correctness on campuses to traditional Marxist methods of repression, the ideology that “prioritizes class justice over individual rights and makes no allowance for legitimate disagreement.”
At the University of Missouri, concern over racism became increasingly self-serving and selective. In calling for a 10 percent increase in black professors, for example, the offended students were not at all concerned by the disproportionate number of black athletes on the football team, whose refusal to play was the tipping point for the resignations of the president and chancellor.
Proportional increases based on race are a double-edged and dangerous strategy. Columnist Victor Davis Hanson suggests wryly that such logic requires a rewrite of the dictum from George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”: “All hiring, admission, and participation shall reflect the racial diversity of the campus — except sports teams, given that sports is a far more important activity than scholarship and teaching and thus alone requires selection solely on legitimate criteria of merit.”
When and where you’re born determines your politics, of course, but this generation of college students seems particularly fearful of thinking for themselves, and is quick to stifle debate on issues they oppose. A bizarre controversy over Halloween costumes at Yale is particularly to the point. Two Yale professors, Nicholas and Erika Christakis, husband and wife who are resident masters in a Yale dormitory, spoke up for the rational and suffered abuse for not getting with the program.
Erika Christakis, a child development psychologist, lauds being inoffensive in selection of costumes of ghosts and goblins, but questioned administrative “control” of what could be “properly” worn. She asks, plaintively, “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?” She suggests taking personal responsibility in an appeal to “self-censure” rather than seeking prohibitions from institutional authority. For that she was reviled for sanctioning imaginative costumes that could degrade and marginalize minorities. Hundreds of students are now shouting offensive epithets and insults at the resident masters, demanding their ouster.
If Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind” was the first shot in the culture wars, it has been followed by a barrage of bullets to silence free speech, spreading intolerance through ignorance, infantilizing students who want to be coddled rather than challenged. College was once a preparation for adulthood, where exposure to different points of view taught a student how to think rather than what to think. Without the ability to reason and argue, they fall prey to thuggish tactics. They become the narrow and intolerant force they rail against. Life gets complicated, as the Statler Brothers once sang, “when you get past 18.”
Although the rot has been visible for some time, recent actions by President Obama’s Department of Justice and director of national intelligence make it possible to say definitively that the United States we once extolled as a nation of laws and not of men no longer exists. Our federal laws are today being manipulated by political operatives in ways that would have made those running the old Daley machine in the president’s hometown blush.
First, the Department of Justice announced that Lois Lerner and her merry little Internal Revenue Service crew that spent much of their time sitting on paperwork from conservative nonprofits and the rest, peppering them with questions no free government should ask its citizens, hadn’t really done anything wrong and certainly weren’t “targeting” conservatives for political or ideological reasons. The announcement could hardly survive the giggle test, but meant Ms. Lerner will skate for using the IRS to go after Mr. Obama’s “enemies” in ways that Congress included in the articles of impeachment filed against former President Richard Nixon for merely suggesting in an earlier day.
Then just a few days ago, Mr. Obama’s director of national intelligence slapped down his own inspector general by announcing that Hillary Clinton really hadn’t done anything wrong, either, in keeping her email account on a private server. In both cases, the actions of these appointees came after the president said publicly that there is no “there” there in either case.
Meanwhile, the FBI and Department of Justice have been busily pursuing corporate executives or employees in an effort to send people to prison just to make a point. Anyone who doubts the horror of this need merely read Kurt Mix’s Wall Street Journal account of the police raid on his home and subsequent prosecution in the aftermath of the BP oil spill. His crime was that he was a BP employee who had worked nonstop for days to stop the spill. The investigators were seeking not truth and justice, but scalps on the wall and more Americans behind bars.
They, like the team of prosecutors unleashed on Alaska’s late Sen. Ted Stevens, ignored the rules, refused to turn over exculpatory evidence, and went ahead hell-bent to send yet another innocent to prison. Cases like these are why former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli once said the real problem is that too many prosecutors and others in this country forget that the term criminal justice system includes the word justice.
Mr. Obama’s minions have prosecuted an oil producer for inadvertently allowing a duck that landed in a waste pond to die while granting solar and wind power producers the right to kill thousands of ducks, geese, eagles and endangered birds that get in their way, and they argue for more and more criminal penalties to be imposed on men and women who have unwittingly violated regulations they don’t even know exist.
The vagaries of Mr. Obama’s laws and the willingness of his enforcers to use those laws to punish men and women who irritate him and his agents, while excusing the misdeeds of his friends and financial supporters, has made businessmen and women afraid to expand their businesses or take the financial risks so important to a vibrant and free economy, while empowering criminals to ignore the rules of a civil society.
It isn’t just the hated 1 percenters his enforcers are after, either. His Justice Department is increasingly using civil asset forfeiture laws to confiscate the savings, operating capital and property of small retailers and business owners who, for innocent reason, can be accused of violating the laws against making multiple bank deposits of under $10,000. These abuses ruin the lives of people who have never done anything wrong and are drawn into a trap intended to catch big-time drug dealers and then treated like members of a Mexican drug cartel by federal officials who know better but don’t care.
History makes clear that a free and prosperous society depends on the rule of law to survive. In this country we are increasingly forced to refer to the stability protected by the rule of law as something that once existed but, like the eagles fried by modern solar collectors or shredded by energy-producing windmills, may soon be but a historic memory.
Some of the most reliable yardsticks in monitoring academic progress in K-12 education are the assessments known as the Nation’s Report Card, officially the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The results from its 2015 assessments are in, and they are not encouraging.
Perhaps the most interesting performance measure reported by NAEP is the percentage of students who have “passed” the criteria for grade-level performance. Looking at the national testing done on eighth grade students in the subjects of mathematics and reading, we can identify three eras of student performance:
1970-1990 brought stagnation in NAEP math and reading proficiencies. Somewhat less than 30 percent of students were proficient in reading, and approximately 20 percent were proficient in mathematics. Performance levels did not improve over these two decades.
1990-2013 was a period of modest but significant performance improvements, particularly in mathematics. It was also the period of the school choice reform movement and implementation. During those years we saw the introduction of school vouchers and public charter schools. By the end of this interval, NAEP testing revealed both mathematics and reading proficiencies had risen to about 35 percent. That trend has now abruptly stopped and reversed.
2013-2015 is admittedly a short period, but NAEP proficiencies in both of these subjects have now dropped. Math proficiencies went from 35 percent to 33 percent, and reading proficiencies slid from 35 percent to 34 percent. This period of study coincides with the rollout of Common Core academic standards and their accompanying testing programs in many states.
The recent declines are not just statistical fluctuations, as we know from a statistical error analysis I and my colleagues at Asora Education Enterprises performed.
The skeptic might say, “Well, correlation does not prove much. You shouldn’t be so quick to blame Common Core.” That’s correct. We need more evidence if we are to confirm our suspicions.
So we looked at the NAEP results state by state. We grouped states according to their participation in Common Core. Did they formally adopt the standards without rescinding them? Did they participate in one or the other official Common Core testing consortia? After grouping the 50 states and District of Columbia accordingly, we found this:
Every grouping showed a drop in proficiencies.
In math, these declines were 0.5 percent worse for the Common Core states.
In reading, these declines were 1.0 percent worse for Common Core states.
How can we explain these results?
First, we must acknowledge these numbers are of the same order as the published statistical error rates involved. This means we do not yet have firm statistical proof of what we are about to say. However, we do have indications of an effect.
We see two correlations between Common Core and the witnessed degradation in performance: direct and indirect, a double whammy.
The direct effect of Common Core is attributed to actual changes in instructional practices within those states implementing some or all of the Common Core standards.
The indirect effect of Common Core is an informal one within nonparticipating states wherein some changes have been made “toward” Common Core without actual formal involvement.
What, then, can parents and other stakeholders of K12 education conclude from this?
What’s clearest is that Common Core has not brought any improvements in the important subjects of mathematics and reading. In fact, the presence of this unfortunate “experiment” correlates with performance degradation in both subjects.
Less clear, but likely, is the fact that states which have formally participated in Common Core have fared worse than those not doing so. And it appears the “infection” has spread to states not officially adopting and using these so-called standards.
Other scholars have criticized Common Core from a number of other perspectives. They note, for example, it violates federal law; the standards for mathematics are at odds with college expectations of student skills; the reading standards reduce student exposure to literary classics; and it reflects a clear progressive (leftward) perspective evident in the history standards.
Those of us who were skeptical of Common Core had strong theoretical arguments on which we based our negative views. Now we have numbers in confirmation.
Common Core is not yet dead. But it should be.
Conservatives have long accused academics of shredding the Constitution, figuratively speaking, but a Project Veritas sting operation recently caught them doing it literally.
Undercover video released last week showed administrators at Yale, Cornell, Syracuse, Vassar and Oberlin agreeing to rip up copies of the Constitution handed out off campus after an investigator posing as a student described the document as “triggering” and “oppressive.”
“Well, I think that the Constitution means things to different people; like you said it is a flawed document and the people who wrote it are certainly flawed individuals in my mind,” Cornell lead Title IX investigator Elizabeth McGrath says on the video.
Ms. McGrath agrees to rip up the hand-held copy of the Constitution and run it through a shredder after the female “student” asks, “Is there any way that maybe like we can get rid of it somehow or I can just see that like maybe it will be like therapy for me, like if you can like shred it or something?”
Project Veritas president James O’Keefe, known for his undercover video operations against ACORN and the National Public Radio, said the videos showed that the willingness to cut up the Constitution was “not an isolated incident.”
“Using a shredder, scissors, and bare hands to destroy the U.S. Constitution, makes you stop and think: where did we go wrong?,” said Mr. O’Keefe in a Thursday statement. “In this latest investigative series we have been to five schools so far and the results have been frightening at each one.”
Only Cornell reacted the videos with an official statement. Joel M. Malina, Cornell vice president for university relations, said that the administrator, “whatever her personal views,” was “appropriately focused on addressing the apparently urgent need of the person before her and not on any larger political context.”
“The Project Veritas video released today would have you believe an employee was helping a student make a political statement by denigrating the U.S. Constitution,” said Mr. Malina in a Thursday statement. “In fact, the video shows a ‘reporter’ misrepresent herself as a student with a mental health crisis. Under the guise of addressing her mental health issues, the ‘student’ asked the employee to help her shred the document she brought with her that was the apparent source of her anguish.”
At Oberlin, spokesman Scott Wargo called the episode “deplorable” in a comment to the Oberlin Review.
“Posing as a student in crisis, secretly recording a private conversation and then strategically editing the footage in order to support a specific, predetermined agenda is deplorable,” Mr. Wargo said.
College Fix editor Jennifer Kabbany agreed that the investigator had put up the administrators to destroying the Constitution copies, and that none volunteered to do so until it was suggested.
“So they are, on some level, trying to ease her ‘pain,’” said Ms. Kabbany in a Friday commentary. “And in fact that is part of their job descriptions.”
At the same time, she said the biggest surprise was that the administrators actually fell for the Project Veritas con, which she said reveals something about the “whiny” attitude of students on college campuses.
“Because in the end, you have got to laugh out loud at these videos as you listen to this chick moan and groan over the Constitution,” she said in a Friday commentary. “It the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard, and these officials swallow it hook, line and sinker.”
Mr. O’Keefe, who makes a cameo dressed up as a copy of the Constitution, said he was also surprised that the operation worked.
“When this idea came up in our newsroom about campus administrators shredding the Constitution because it’s a trigger against students, we didn’t think people would actually fall for it,” he told Campus Reform. “We underestimated just how stupid and politically correct these people are.”
He is an award-winning combat photographer who stands accused of trying to pick up women in the public affairs office at MinotAir Force Base in North Dakota, and for that prosecutors wanted to put him in prison for 130 years.
The prosecutorial zeal was so great that an Air Force officer appointed to investigate the case said the piled-up charges were combined to “artificially exaggerate the criminality of the accused,” who often was simply “socially maladroit and crass.”
This is a glimpse into the new U.S. Armed Forces and its gender wars. It is a slice of military life stemming from the Pentagon’s order in 2013 to erase all sexual harassment and, to enforce it, staff the ranks with an advocacy bureaucracy to empower victims and make sure complaints are filed.
The accused is Tech. Sgt. Aaron D. Allmon II. The 39-year-old arrived at Minot, a nuclear arsenal on the northern edge of the continental United States, to teach others as one of the Air Force’s best at capturing war in photographs.
What he witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan stalked him all the way to North Dakota, along with diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol abuse. He carries prescription drugs to fight off nightmares and excruciating back pain. His supporters say the stigma of being an accused sexual harasser is so deep-seated that Minot top brass isolated him and deliberately tried to block medical care.
Sgt. Allmon, who denies wrongdoing, goes on trial Monday. The setting is a general court-martial, the military’s most severe, a felony arena. He is charged with unwanted sexual contact with four women: three Air Force and one civilian. The case does not involve rape or what the public might consider overt sexual assault or what could be defined as fondling.
A Washington Times examination shows that, over a 14-month span, the women’s accusations, in total, amount to three kisses and six touches, plus a series of reported inappropriate comments of a sexual nature. If the married Sgt. Allmon did what the women said, he was tastelessly hitting on them.
Sgt. Allmon’s sister, Lisa A. Roper, does not believe the women. The business executive in San Antonio, Texas, is her brother’s fiercest defender. She estimates she will spend $200,000 on his legal defense, which includes a former sheriff’s deputy as investigator, a civilian lawyer and a former Army judge advocate who took the case pro bono. Sgt. Allmon is also represented by an Air Force judge advocate.
“I want you to understand how women can destroy a man,” said Ms. Roper. “It was out and out vindictiveness set up to destroy a man who didn’t do what they wanted. A group of young women who are brand new in the military and because they didn’t get their way they set out to destroy a man of 19 years in the Air Force.”
Maj. Jamie Humphries, a Minot public affairs officer, said the Air Force does not tolerate any form of sexual harassment.
“Sexual harassment or assault of any kind in our service is unacceptable and simply not tolerated,” he said. “I’ve never been in a USAF unit stateside or deployed where it was accepted. Does it happen? Sure. Is it unacceptable? Absolutely. When parents/guardians send their loved ones off to Basic Military Training, they expect guys like me will care for them, guide them and mentor them to the best of my ability. That’s my No. 1 job, and the officers I know take that responsibility very seriously.”
The Times’ examination produced a picture of the Minot public affairs office that was at times disorganized and needed discipline.
The Times viewed a homemade video of staff members moving furniture in December last year. The “F” word was thrown around freely. Faces were made into the camera. A man referred to a female service member as a “donkey.” An enlisted man made fun of Sgt. Allmon’s ailments by shaking a bottle of pills like a rattle.
‘Artificially exaggerate the criminality’
As Sgt. Allmon was entering his second year at Minot in May 2013, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declared war on sexual abuse in the ranks. He elevated the offense as a threat to national security. He put every command on notice that his goal was to eliminate the offense. The gender wars, if not starting that day, were entering an escalation.
“Sexual assault is a despicable crime and one of the most serious challenges facing this department,” Mr. Hagel told reporters. “It’s a threat to the safety and the welfare of our people and the health, reputation and trust of this institution. This department may be nearing a stage where the frequency of this crime and the perception that there is tolerance of it could very well undermine our ability to effectively carry out the mission.”
Next, he warned the accused.
“We need cultural change where every service member is treated with dignity and respect, where all allegations of inappropriate behavior are treated with seriousness, where victims’ privacy is protected, where bystanders are motivated to intervene, and where offenders know that they will be held accountable by strong and effective systems of justice,” he said.
Defense attorneys said at the time that remarks such as Mr. Hagel’s, and similar statements from commanders, would make it difficult to impanel military jurors who did not think it their mission to convict people.
Sgt. Allmon is now facing that military justice system.
The Times investigated the Allmon case not to assess guilt or innocence. The trial promises to be a series of “he said, she said.” (Sgt. Allmon denies saying many of the things attributed to him.) The Times wanted to examine one major battle, in a North Dakota courtroom, in the broader global war Mr. Hagel announced more than two years ago.
What strikes Sgt. Allmon’s supporters from the start is the fervor with which Air Force Office of Special Investigations and prosecutors went after him.
When the Air Force convened a pretrial hearing, known as an Article 32, in December, the government had stacked so many charges against the enlisted man that, if convicted, he faced over a century in prison.
“I cannot fathom how this got to the level this got to,” Ms. Roper said.
On Sgt. Allmon’s legal team is Jeffrey Addicott, a former Army judge advocate who is now a law professor at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. The lead civilian defender is Virginia Hermosa, who practices law in Austin and has served as a prosecutor for the Texas attorney general.
Mr. Addicott is also director of the school’s Center for Terrorism Law from which he goes to bat for service members, pro bono, who he believes are treated unfairly by the military justice system.
In the Allmon case, he expresses astonishment that the Air Force is trying him in a felony court instead of seeking other administrative or lesser judicial options. As a comparison, he notes that the hearing officer in the case of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who is charged with the serious offense of desertion for abandoning his buddies on the battlefield, recommended a special court-martial, the lowest level, for misdemeanors.
“The full weight of the military chain of command has come down on Aaron because the chain of command has abandoned justice and elected expediency,” Mr. Addicott said.
“Because of the hypersensitivity associated with real sexual assault cases, the Air Force in particular has overreacted against Aaron in a manner that is absolutely an injustice but is also degrading the esprit de corps of unit cohesion all across the military. Even assuming all the charges are true, which they are not, this conduct as charged would warrant nonjudicial punishment, not the highest level of action at a general court-martial where Aaron could lose all his retirement benefits and go to jail.”
Mr. Addicott’s view has an ally, of sorts, in Lt. Col. Brendon K. Tukey, the investigative officer who presided over the Article 32 pretrial hearing where the four accusers testified. Sgt. Allmon did not testify, nor did he put up a defense.
Col. Tukey is a veteran of the military’s gender wars. He was the hearing officer in 2014 for a sexual assault case at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The woman testified that she was asleep in the male’s cadet’s room and woke up to find him raping her.
“If there was some other disposition short of court-martial, could you support it?” Col. Tukey asked the woman, according to The Gazette newspaper.
“Sure,” she said.
The Air Force declined to say what action Col. Tukey recommended. In the end, the criminal charges were dismissed against the male cadet, who faced administrative actions that the Air Force also refused to disclose.
For Sgt. Allmon, Col. Tukey scolded the prosecution in his post-hearing recommendation.
“Given the sheer volume of charges in this case, and the apparent tendency of that volume to artificially exaggerate the criminality of the accused, it is entirely possible that the trial judge will simply dismiss the offending specifications,” he wrote.
He also wrote, “The charging scheme exaggerates the criminality of the accused (as charged the accused faces 20 specifications carrying a maximum punishment including 130 years of confinement) for no real purpose.”
“In many of the individual specifications,” he wrote, “it could be argued that the accused was not so much motivated by sex or a desire to humiliate or degrade as simply being socially maladroit and crass.”
Still, he concluded, “Having heard the witnesses and examined the evidence presented at the Article 32 investigation, I conclude that generally speaking, probable cause exists to believe that Sgt. Allmon engaged in the conduct in the charges.”
Writing about one of the women, who said Sgt. Allmon moved her shorts up to look at her tattoo and touched her back, Col. Tukey wrote, “As with the other victim witnesses, I found her testimony generally credible and found no motive on her part to fabricate her allegations.”
Though Col. Tukey criticized the prosecution, he recommended a remedial way to help win a conviction at trial.
He condensed and rewrote the charge and then recommended the highest court-martial possible to what the military calls the convening authority. In this case, it is Maj. Gen. Richard Clark, the 8th Air Force commander. Sgt. Allmon faces a maximum penalty if convicted of 15 years in prison, loss of all retirement benefits, reduction to the lowest enlisted rank and a dishonorable discharge.
Mr. Addicott, Sgt. Allmon’s legal adviser, said criticizing the case, but then pushing for the highest court-martial, shows the grip that sexual abuse accusations exert on the military judicial system.
“The role the Article 32 officer is to make objective findings and recommendations to the convening authority putting aside all the inevitable ‘noise’ associated with any given criminal charge,” he said. “Sadly, he succumbed to the noise, which in this case involves the shrill screams of expediency. If nothing else, even a cursory review of the 32 officer’s report demonstrates how deep the insidiousness of political correctness has penetrated our military and its justice system.”
Allmon comes to Minot
Sgt. Allmon arrived in Minot in 2012 as one of the military’s most recognized combat photographers. After tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he worked with a joint unit in Hawaii tasked with recovering the remains of U.S. war dead in Asia.
The sergeant was expecting Minot to be a low-key assignment, sort of like a teaching position, showing young public affairs personnel how to use the camera.
Minot had been a place of scandal. An atomic powerhouse able to unleash mass destruction in wartime, Minot is the only U.S. base to house two arms of the triad: Silo-based Minuteman III intercontinental missiles and B-52H bombers, affixed with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.
In a major miscue in 2007, a B-52H flew from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, its pilots unknowingly carrying live nuclear weapons.
In 2013, a major scandal among Minuteman III operations officers involved test cheating and drug use. Morale hit rock bottom. That December, the overall Minuteman III arsenal commander, Maj. Gen. Michael Carey, was fired for drunkenness and erratic behavior during an official trip to Moscow.
At this time, the public affairs office at Minot became a dangerous place. Depending on whom one believes, either Sgt. Allmon or the women around him were the victims.
Sgt. Allmon’s previous stops seemed to have prepared him for anything. He hooked up with special operations warriors, fighter pilots and Army brigades to capture in pictures the horrors and glories of Iraq and Afghanistan.
He deployed with an Army regiment that took part in the battle for the town of Tal Afar, Iraq, on the Syrian border in 2005.
The regiment’s citation for January and February 2006 said he “demonstrated technical expertise and his efforts to preserve the legacy of the regiment was critical to completing the regimental history project and documentary. His actions reflect great credit upon himself, the regiment of riflemen, and the United States Air Force.”
Sgt. Allmon had accompanied troops during the U.S. invasion’s earlier days. In 2004, he posted at the huge air base in Balad, Iraq, leaving 14 times to snap photos of American troops.
“He demonstrated exceptional composure by continuing to photograph, while receiving direct small arms fire and mortar rounds during combat patrols,” said a citation for an Air Force Achievement Medal. “He entered a tent moments after it was hit by mortar to ensure all occupants were out, and he assisted with the care of injured airmen.”
In 2008, he was named “military photographer of the year” for photographs titled “Solitude” of an F-16 jet fighter.
At Minot, Sgt. Allmon’s tenure quickly started going bad. In early 2013, he and a co-worker got into a dispute over a work product and she filed a complaint that he hit on her. That complaint was handled administratively.
The master sergeant who conducted the investigation said that in an office, with other airmen present, one knocked into her knee and Sgt. Allmon then touched the point right above the kneecap to show what had happened.
The master sergeant said he interviewed others in the public affairs office and none complained about Sgt. Allmon. The master sergeant could not substantiate the woman’s accusations of inappropriate remarks. Sgt. Allmon denied making such comments.
That summer, the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office came to Minot to talk about sexual harassment. A young public affairs service member covered the event and concluded that the offenses they talked about matched what Sgt. Allmon had done to her. She went to the sexual assault response coordinator. Shortly afterward, Sgt. Allmon found himself under criminal investigation.
Said Maj. Humphries, the Minot spokesman, “There is a tremendous amount of training we all accomplish each year in an effort to report/curb any sort of harassment or assault. Our sexual assault response coordinator program is robust and very active at every wing across the force. It’s drilled in our head from the moment we step off the bus at Lackland AFB for basic training. And all of this is a good thing. We spend a lot of time on this topic.”
The young woman accused Sgt. Allmon of propositioning her. She said he touched her hips while she was positioning herself in the turret of a Humvee vehicle to take photographs, and, another time, when he directed her as a model for a photo shoot.
Office of Special Investigations agents went to every office in the public affairs building and asked each woman whether Sgt. Allmon had ever touched them.
The Air Force did not only have the Pentagon telling it to wipe out sexual harassment. It also was dealing with the aftermath of a scandal at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas where scores of male instructors were found to be sexually abusing scores of young female recruits.
At Minot, Office of Special Investigations agents found five women total, one of whom said she did not want to participate in a court-martial.
Of the four who do, one Air Force woman said that during a basketball game at the base gym, she and Sgt. Allmon were sitting next to each other on the bench. They were talking about tattoos. The discussion moved to one on her thigh, an inking of rose petals. He moved up her shorts to see the entire tattoo. He later touched her back as they were leaving the gym.
Another public affairs woman, a lesbian who was going through a divorce from her wife, said he kissed her on the forehead and held her shoulders, and had made sexually inappropriate comments.
Sgt. Allmon’s third marriage was also failing. He made it known during discussions of gays in the military that he opposed same-sex marriage.
The Times generally does not identify accusers in sexual harassment cases.
A prisoner of Minot
By this July 2014, when Sgt. Allmon sat down for a lengthy videotaped interview with Office of Special Investigations, his mind and body were breaking down.
Multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan — carrying heavy gear and one hard landing in a chopper — had injured his spine.
Meanwhile, the aftereffects of battle, post-traumatic stress disorder, sent him into bouts of depression and nightmares.
By this summer, his medical condition grew acute, but he encountered roadblocks to treatment. His sister found a dogged ally in Jared Broderick of Austin, Texas, a medically retired Army veteran of Iraq who fights for wounded warriors.
Mr. Broderick went to Minot in June and demanded meetings with its medical staff. What he found was that the criminal case against Sgt. Allmon had melded with his medical needs.
“They didn’t want him to get treatment,” Mr. Broderick told The Times.
A letter from the Trinity Medical Group, a private psychiatric practice in Minot, said the clinic treated Sgt. Allmon last year and this year for “major depressive disorder, single episode, moderate to severe; post traumatic stress disorder; anxiety disorder and sleep issues.”
The letter said it ended care on orders from the medical staff at Minot.
The letter, written by the clinic’s nurse practitioner, said the Air Force criminal investigation had isolated Sgt. Allmon professionally and socially. This, she said, “are risk factors for exacerbation of depression, PTSD, and anxiety, which could ultimately lead to self-harm or suicide. Aaron Allmon suffers from all three of these conditions.”
Mr. Broderick said the Minot personnel treated Sgt. Allmon as a malingerer. They resisted the PTSD diagnosis for fear of turning him into a sympathetic figure. He decided in July to take the sergeant to the San Antonio Military Medical Center to seek mental health care.
While there, with Sgt. Allmon having difficulty walking, Mr. Broderick went to the emergency room and pressed Army doctors to admit him for emergency back surgery. It worked. He said Minot officials immediately tried to get him back.
“They wanted to claw him back there and court-martial him,” he said.
“What I feel happened is there was a concentrated effort by senior Air Force leaders who were determined to keep him at Minot at all times, even at the expense of his medical care, and make sure he was not classified as a wounded warrior,” Mr. Broderick said, “to essentially keep him on lockdown.”
He said Army doctors stood firm, and Minot backed off. Sgt. Allmon had his second back surgery, to widen the spinal canal, on Aug. 13 and is now recuperating at his sister’s home. His medical chart shows he has chronic cauda equina, which damages nerves and disrupts bladder function and lower-extremity movement.
Asked about Mr. Broderick’s story, Maj. Humphries, the Minot spokesman, said, “All personnel at Minot AFB are provided the highest-quality medical treatment according to their medical needs. If specific medical treatment is not available in the local area, the USAF sends patients to the locations where health care is available. I’ve seen this routinely occur since my arrival in May.”
By the time Sgt. Allmon reached the emergency room in San Antonio, Ms. Roper said, “He learned that he was only evacuating 10 percent of his bladder and had not had a full evacuation in months. This was all related to the pressure on his bladder from the crushed disk and nerves in his spine.”
She provided the hospital’s notes about her brother’s care in San Antonio. One entry said that a doctor at Minot told the hospital not to perform surgery and to send him back to the air base.
“He is just starting to get feeling back in his feet,” Ms. Roper said.
With the court-marital set to begin Monday, one charge is not “he said, she said.” Sgt. Allmon told an Office of Special Investigations agent that he did not have his cellphone with him. A few hours later, he corrected the lie and handed it over during the same interview session. He could be convicted of lying to the investigator.
Ms. Roper said he did not want to turn over nude photos of his wife. She said a forensic examination of his phone revealed no text messages or emails between him and his accusers.
If you loathe Obamacare, you’re going to hate what the Democrats have planned next. Their imminent assault on health care will go far beyond the quasi-socialized medicine of Obamacare.
While Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed satisfaction with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in King v. Burwell, which upheld federal subsidies in states that did not establish their own exchanges, she must have been disappointed that she didn’t have the decision to herself. Her major primary opponent, Sen. Bernard Sanders, a Democratic-Socialist, has long been in front of her on full-blown socialized medicine, generally known as single payer.
For the left, the King v. Burwell decision is a prelude to total federal control of the health care system. Forget insurance. They want complete government control — the British National Health Service on steroids.
Mr. Sanders is playing the single-payer card, and Mrs. Clinton is playing catch-up.
Mrs. Clinton is, of course, the grandmother of socialized medicine. She was pushing for it more than 20 years ago, when Mr. Sanders was an obscure local Vermont pol. And yet, she’s struggling match Mr. Sanders on the issue.
Another irony: A single-payer system was tried — and went down in spectacular flames — in Mr. Sanders’ home state. That, of course, is immaterial to committed leftists, for whom ideological purity and warfare are everything.
Since the passage of Obamacare, the left has very effectively moved the goalposts so far to the extreme that single payer will no longer seem like a radical approach but the logical solution to fixing the program’s problems. Mrs. Clinton will argue that single payer is the obvious next step, a fait accompli.
Consider: Obamacare is currently being smothered by a raft of existential problems: ever-higher premiums, disappearing subsidies, the collapse of Obamacare co-ops, fewer enrollees, rising loss ratios. The program is entering the long-anticipated and feared “death spiral.”
That, of course, was the endgame all along. The Obamacare architects rigged the system to implode so they could ride to the rescue with single payer.
That was always the leftists’ ideal vision. In 2003, then-Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama laid out his deepest health care wish: “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program . But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”
The leftists’ ambitions laid bare. But Democrats facing re-election in 2010 and 2012 did not want to have to vote for a highly unpopular single-payer system, so they pursued an easier political path.
They designed a health care scheme that was as close to single payer as was politically possible and stacked the deck so single payer would be the inevitable result.
A parade of leftists then broadcasted that intention. When Obamacare was passed in its final form in March 2010, Sen. Tom Harkin said, “I think of this bill as a starter home. It’s not the mansion of our dreams, but it has a solid foundation.” He added, “By passing this legislation, we will achieve a progressive prize that has eluded Congresses and presidents going back to Teddy Roosevelt.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chimed in, “Once we kick through this door, there’ll be more legislation to follow.” Mr. Obama himself told then-Rep. Dennis Kucinich, “We’ve gotta start somewhere.”
This is why they purposefully built collapse into the program: They want employers to drop private coverage and have evermore Americans pushed into Obamacare.
They will next argue that we tried the market approach, but gosh golly, it just didn’t work, so we’re going to have to do the full socialized medicine monty.
The night of the King v. Burwell decision, Mrs. Clinton released a fundraising email, indicating that she was ready to go far to the left, and destroy the GOP as villains.
“This ruling is a reminder that while progress never comes easy, if we keep working, keep pushing, and never, ever give up, anything is possible,” she wrote.
“Add your name if you agree that access to health care is a basic human right.
“Despite two clear rulings by the highest court in the land, Republicans running for president still want to take basic health security away from millions of Americans ” she continued.
“The next president will either protect and expand health care for every American, or undo the progress we’ve made.”
Note her language: “keep pushing,” “basic human right,” “protect and expand health care for every American.” This is code for moving Obamacare quickly and seamlessly into a single-payer system — under the guise of “improving health care for all.”
The real reason is to finalize the critical cornerstone of what Mr. Obama in 2008 called the “fundamental transformation of the nation.” After all, if the government controls your health care, the government controls you.
Mission (soon to be) accomplished.
The majority of Fairfax County School Board members who approved a nondiscrimination policy to include “gender identity” without consulting parents won re-election Tuesday, despite many parents calling on voters to oust the panel over the controversial policy.
Eight of the ten board members who voted for the transgender-inclusive policy change were reelected, including at-large member Ryan McElveen, who spearheaded the policy change initiative.
Ted Velkoff was the only board member who approved the policy to be defeated Tuesday. He lost to Jeanette Hough, a parent who decided to run for the education panel because of the policy change controversy.
“I am so thankful for the slate of School Board candidates with whom I had the honor of running,” Ms. Hough told The Washington Times in an email. “Together, we knocked [on] tens of thousands of doors and went to many events listening to the concerns of the community. I look forward to continuing that engagement as I serve as a School Board member At-Large with the intent of being a voice for the whole community and ensuring fiscal responsibility.”
Tom Wilson, another candidate who ran against the gender identity policy change, defeated Kathy Smith to take over the Sully district seat.
Elizabeth Schultz, the only board member to vote against the gender identity policy in May, ran unopposed.
Ms. Hough, Ms. Schultz and Mr. Wilson are now the only Republicans on the 10-member board.
Board member Patty Reed, who had abstained from the policy change vote but supported Ms. Schultz’s amendment to delay the measure, was defeated by Dalia Palchik, who supports the amended policy.
“I’m very, very sorry to lose Patty Reed, who I think is a very reasonable and representative voice, not only for her district but for residents across the county,” Ms. Schultz told The Times.
Although the school board retained its Democratic majority, Ms. Schultz said the fact that Republicans were able to pick up two seats, including one at-large seat, demonstrates that voters are ready for change.
“People are not happy with the school board, and we do need to endeavor to get back to the business of the people,” she said.
The results of Tuesday’s election likely ensure that the new nondiscrimination policy and any curriculum implemented to accommodate transgender students and staff will not be repealed. The policy change could allow male students who identify as female to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms, among other changes.
Late last month parents discovered that school administrators already had begun implementing the amended policy before the school board approved it in a vote in May.
Several emails and documents obtained by parents through Freedom of Information Act requests filed by Judicial Watch showed that administrators had hired a consultant to advise them on “best practices” for implementing the new policy before the May 7 vote.
In addition, the cache of documents shows that the school system had been paying the consultant — Jeffrey Poirier, a researcher on LGBT youth at the American Institutes for Research — with taxpayer funds without a written contract.
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — It works like this: No interest on investments, but the borrower and the lender share the risk and split the returns. This growing form of banking, known as Islamic finance, is now making significant headway into Africa, one of the fastest-growing regions in the world.
In fact, proponents of Islamic banking are touting this alternative to classic Western financial practices as a better way to help Africa improve roads, develop state-of-the-art health care systems and create a massive middle class to address some of the issues hindering growth.
“Islamic finance offers excellent prospects for the African continent, which we should seize,” Ivory Coast Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan said last month before an audience of around 500 people at the region’s first Islamic Finance Forum.
Nigeria’s securities commission last month staged a roundtable discussion to educate local lenders and businesses about the benefits of an “Islamic capital market.” The Central Bank of Djibouti this week is putting together a two-day event billed as the International Banking Summit Africa, which is designed to boost trade and investment between the oil-rich Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa using Islamic financing practices.
This form of financing — Standard & Poor’s estimates that Islamic finance grew by as much as 15 percent in the past decade to reach $2 trillion globally — could also be a way for rich Muslims from the Middle East and beyond to enhance their portfolios while adhering to their religion, which prohibits “riba,” or the charging of interest on monetary loans.
Those same investors might not otherwise recognize the potential in markets such as western Africa, said Fabrice Toka, a South Africa-based senior director covering sub-Saharan Africa at Fitch Ratings.
“Islamic finance doesn’t take away from that which you can already do with traditional financing,” Mr. Toka said. “It adds another pool of investors.”
Rather than charging the borrower a set interest rate for a set period, Islamic lending is based on Shariah principles and works on the basis of risk- and profit-sharing. The customer and the bank share the returns and risk of investments on negotiated terms.
“There is a level of return that is expected,” said Nida Raza, advisory director of the Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector, or ICD. “The difference is, it’s not interest; it’s profit.”
Home to roughly a quarter of the world’s Muslim population, Africa represents a growing market for faithful Muslims to put their money to work, according to an ICD report.
“Although the potential contribution of Islamic finance in favor of African economic development has long since been recognized by experts, the rhythm is now accelerating,” said the report, titled “Islamic Finance in Africa: A Promising Future.”
Ready for takeoff
Economic growth in Africa averages roughly 5 percent a year, rivaling Asia and other regions, according to the International Monetary Fund.
But since 2001, at least half of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world have been in Africa. The continent also sports 15 percent of the world’s population, two-thirds of the Earth’s uncultivated arable land, rich energy resources and a rising youth population, according to the IMF.
Developed nations such as the United States, Japan and China have actively wooed African countries in recent years, typically with high-profile summits in which billions of dollars in deals and financing projects have been struck. Last week, India hosted its first such gathering for 54 African countries, including 41 heads of state, announcing a doubling of subsidized loans to the continent to $10 billion over the next five years, along with some $600 million in grants.
But around 340 million people in sub-Saharan Africa still lack reliable access to traditional banks, the ICD report noted.
Those trends have led the ICD to boost its funding in Africa by more than double to around $12 billion in the next five years.
“Africa has the highest growth in the world. It needs more finances to back up the growth,” said Islamic Corporation CEO Khaled Al-Aboodi. “Access to finances presently here are scarce and difficult to attain.”
Islamic financing can take different forms. An “ijara” investment involves a bank buying an asset — such as a tractor — that is leased to the debtor, who uses it for business. In “murabaha” lending, banks purchase goods and resell them to customers, who make installment payments on the goods at markups. In a “musharaka” deal, the bank and its customer launch a joint venture and share the resulting profits or losses.
Ms. Raza said Islamic banking protects debtors from interest charges that cut into debtors’ revenue whether or not they are operating in the black. Islamic financing also gives lenders more flexibility when debtors encounter hardships and threaten default, she said.
“The majority of Islamic finance transactions do carry a level of risk-sharing,” she said.
Ms. Raza noted, however, that debtors couldn’t necessarily exploit banks in Islamic financing. Banks can quickly repossess assets loaned under the terms of most transactions, for example. “There are deterrents put into place during the structuring process to avoid any sort of misuse of the flexibility that Islamic financing is supposed to ensure,” she said.
In West Africa, where at least 80 percent of the population is Muslim, Islamic financing has grown in popularity. Since 2014, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Niger and Senegal have issued “sukuks,” or Islamic bonds, totaling almost $800 million, according to the countries’ financial filings.
A sukuk pays a dividend based on a return from a tangible asset. It is similar to a traditional Western-financed bond, without the interest. Proceeds from sukuks often finance large state development projects for purposes such as education, agriculture and infrastructure.
“With these tools, we could build a freight terminal at the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Airport,” Ivory Coast’s Mr. Duncan said at the forum. “Cote d’Ivoire can use these finances for infrastructure development.”
Despite its promise, Mr. Toka said, it will take more than a new financing mechanism to bring prosperity to a region that has struggled with issues such as political instability and corruption, epidemics such as Ebola and terrorist threats from Islamic extremist forces such as Boko Haram.
“For Islamic finance to thrive, we need to provide the legal and regulatory framework that goes with it,” he said. “Countries need to have those frameworks put into place so it can actually help with the expansion of Islamic finance in Africa.”
In the election races across the country Tuesday, Houston voters rejected a transgender “bathroom bill,” Ohioans torched legal marijuana, and Republicans captured both gubernatorial contest races at stake.
With 30 percent of precincts counted, The Associated Press declared that Houston’s Proposition 1 had gone down to defeat. The measure was taking a beating with 62 percent of voters against the measure and 38 percent in favor.
The vote capped a pitched 18-month battle between Houston pastors and Mayor Annise Parker, the first openly lesbian mayor of a major city, who had championed the ordinance allowing people to use restrooms, showers and other public accommodations based on their gender identity, not their biological sex.
In Kentucky, Republican businessman Matt Bevin defeated Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway by 53 to 44 percent, with independent Drew Curtis taking 4 percent in the race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear.
Meanwhile, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant easily won a second term over Robert Gray, a Democrat who spent just $3,000 in a token campaign in the overwhelmingly Republican state.
Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected Issue 3, which would have legalized recreational marijuana for adults 21 and over, handing the pro-pot movement its first defeat since Colorado and Washington approved legalization measures in 2012.
In Ohio, however, there was a twist: The proposal would have also created a monopoly on cultivation for 10 investors, prompting opponents to denounce the measure as an example of “weed greed.”
“When it comes to the broader debate about legalizing marijuana, the defeat of Issue 3 won’t be a case of ‘as Ohio goes, so goes the nation,’” said Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, in a statement.
Unlike Ohio, the four states — Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska — that have approved recreational pot for adults began with medical marijuana.
“This was about a flawed measure and a campaign that didn’t represent what voters want,” Mr. Angell said.
Mr. Bevin, a Kentucky business owner who had challenged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the 2014 GOP primary, ran as a political outsider with strong tea party support. He won the GOP gubernatorial primary in a crowded Republican field by just 83 votes.
In his victory speech, Mr. Bevin issued a clarion call for unity, praising Mr. Conway and saying “this is our opportunity to come together as one. We have much work ahead of us.”
It is time “to get the overalls on, get the boots on and get out of bed,” he said.
His running mate — Lt. Gov.-elect Jenean Hampton, who introduced him Tuesday night — became the first black person to win a statewide race in Kentucky.
Mr. Conway made a concession and congratulations call before 9 p.m., telling supporters at the Frankfort Convention Center that he had told his rival that he “remained positive about moving this state forward, and that if he ever needed any assistance, that this Democrat was at his disposal.”
The result came as a bit of an upset because every poll had shown Mr. Conway ahead of Mr. Bevin, albeit only slightly in recent weeks. His election nearly completes Kentucky’s shift from Democratic to Republican over the past few decades as GOP candidates gain ground in statewide races.
Running as a conservative Christian, Mr. Bevin was known for his unswerving support of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who drew national attention over her refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
By contrast, Mr. Conway, when he was attorney general and a year before the Supreme Court’s ruling, decided not to appeal a federal judge’s order that the state marry same-sex couples, effectively imposing gay marriage on the state by default.
The Bevin campaign hammered Mr. Conway over his support for President Obama, with ads saying that the Democratic candidate was in favor of Obamacare, gun control and abortion but against coal, “just like Obama.”
The American Principles Project declared in a news release that social issues and candidates who support traditional values had won big.
“Bevin’s upset victory in Kentucky is a victory for Kim Davis, a rebuke to those who say social issues hurt the GOP, and a call for Republicans nationally to support the First Amendment Defense Act,” said the American Principles Project’s Maggie Gallagher in a statement.
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood was also leading in his bid for a fourth term. The Democrat’s race was especially significant in that he is believed to be the only Democrat still holding statewide elected office in the Deep South.
Whatever happens in Mississippi, Louisiana could change that later this month. That state already had its so-called “jungle primary” for governor last month, narrowing the field to the top two vote-getters, Democratic candidate John Bel Edwards and Republican David Vitter. They now square off on Nov. 21.
More than 300 cities held mayoral elections, the biggest being Houston and Philadelphia, America’s fourth- and fifth-largest cities.
In Houston seven candidates face off in a nonpartisan race to succeed Mayor Annise Parker, who pushed the transgender ordinance but is term-limited herself.
In overwhelmingly Democratic Philadelphia, former city council member Jim Kenney easily defeated a Republican businessman to succeed term-limited Mayor Michael Nutter.
A Virginia school board has filed a lawsuit that blocks until after Election Day Tuesday the public release of documents on a controversial transgender policy, prompting several candidates for the board to say Monday that voters now must toss the incumbents.
Several documents released last week under Freedom of Information Act requests filed by Judicial Watch have revealed that Fairfax County Public School district board members already began implementing policy changes to accommodate transgender students before hastily voting on the gender identity policy amendment in May.
The documents also revealed that the school board had moved to hire a transgender identity consultant on the night of the vote and had been paying him without a written contract.
But the documents released last week are just a few of the many that have been requested by Judicial Watch, and the others are now being withheld until after Election Day.
In a joint statement on Monday, seven candidates running to oust the sitting board members said the lawsuit demonstrates the school board’s disregard for parents and called on voters to “clean house,” on Tuesday.
“Refusing to release information, rightfully requested by citizens, is the height of arrogance and suggests there is something to hide. The majority of the board has stopped listening to the community, and it’s time for them to go,” the candidates said.
The seven candidates include three at-large hopefuls: Jeanette Hough, Bob Copeland and Manar Jean-Jacques. The four candidates hoping to represent specific districts are Mark Wilkinson in Hunter Mill, Peter Kurzenhauser in Dranesville, Anthony Stacy in Mount Vernon and Tom Wilson in Sully.
FCPS is the largest school district in Virginia and the tenth largest in the country. The school system’s policy changes are usually adopted across all Virginia school and it is likely they could domino into other school districts across the country.
Democratic elected officials in Northern Virginia worked together to engineer a campaign against a Fairfax County firearms store in a bid to politicize gun violence and drum up support for a Democrat in an election Tuesday, an exchange of emails shows.
JB Gates, owner of Nova Firearms, opened a shop in McLean after protesters thwarted his expansion efforts in Arlington County by pressuring his landlord into breaking his lease.
Delegate Kathleen Murphy, McLean Democrat, wrote an email to state Sen. Barbara Favola, Arlington Democrat, seeking help in shutting down the gun store. Ms. Favola was instrumental in organizing opposition to Mr. Gates’ shop in Arlington.
“Basically, we convinced the land owner that his business tenants would lose business,” Ms. Favola told Ms. Murphy in a reply. “In other words, moving a gun shop to a small cluster of shops in the middle of a neighborhood was bad for business.
“The argument has to be about supporting small businesses,” Ms. Favola wrote in her email. “The ‘we’ versus ‘they’ argument is winnable with the NRA.”
Ms. Murphy forwarded that email Sept. 25 to other Democrats in her district, including Fairfax County Supervisor John Foust, who is up for re-election Tuesday, saying, “Lets do it.”
Bearing Drift, a gun rights blog, obtained the officials’ emails via a Freedom of Information Act request and made them available to The Washington Times.
Ms. Murphy and Ms. Favola did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the emails. Mr. Foust declined to comment on the messages.
On Sept. 26, when Mr. Gates held the grand opening of his McLean gun shop, protesters picketed outside.
That same day, an online petition was created to thank the protesters and demand a boycott of the McLean Service Center, Mr. Gates’ new landlord.
Online forums on the Fairfax Underground public message board posted the landlord’s personal cellphone and home address and encouraged protesters to demand he break his lease with Mr. Gates.
“We’re not leaving, and our new landlords are backing us 100 percent,” Mr. Gates told The Times. “Our customers who live in the area have asked us not to back down and stay, and a lot of our customers are from McLean.
“They protested us the day we opened, had about 115 people there. But, to be honest, that helped us more than it hurt us,” he said. “[The protesters] put us on the map. I have people statewide, in Maryland, Pennsylvania, D.C., all the way down to Florida, saying they saw us on the news and want to support us. Business is good.”
Still, Mr. Gates is perturbed by the politicizing of the issue. His shop is less than two blocks from his previous location but is closer to a school, which Democrats have cited in efforts to pique voter turnout Tuesday.
Mr. Foust issued campaign handbills saying his Republican opponent, Jennifer Chronis, is “wrong on guns” and defends Mr. Gates’ shop.
“There have been 47 school shootings this year alone,” the Foust handbill reads. “Don’t let Jennifer Chronis become Supervisor. Because it’s not right to sell guns next to a school.”
However, Virginia county supervisors have no jurisdiction over gun stores that are established in accordance with national and state laws.
Mr. Foust acknowledged as much to his Democratic comrades, noting in an email that “State law pretty much prohibits the county from regulating guns.” He attached a verbatim copy of the law.
“They’re turning my store, my livelihood, into a political debate,” Mr. Gates said. “You have this guy running for supervisor, saying without a doubt he’s going to shut us down and equating our gun shop with the reason there’s gun violence. For one thing, he can’t shut us down because we operate within Virginia state and federal laws.
“It’s just insensitive and unwise. He is using it for political gain,” Mr. Gates said.
Mr. Foust sees things differently.
“Chronis remained silent while I and other McLean area elected officials were publicly condemning the gun store owner’s decision to locate next to an elementary school,” Mr. Foust said in an email to The Times. “It appears that the pro-gun shop people were and are supporting her.”
He cited a Nova Firearms Facebook post Oct. 6 — long after the store’s grand opening and subsequent protest — that displayed Ms. Chronis’ campaign banner and said, “Make the Second Amendment an Issue in the Local Election. By now you’ve learned about the efforts of NOVA Firearms, and the threats they’ve received from their local county Supervisor.”
Mr. Foust emailed The Times a screen shot of the post, which has since been taken down.
Mr. Gates blamed Mr. Foust for publicly agitating the issue of his store’s closure and helping to organize the protest, but he said Ms. Chronis has remained largely silent on the issue.
Ms. Chronis did make a statement at the McLean Citizens Association debate in October.
“I know John [Foust] has already addressed that there are very few things really that can be done at the county level, other than addressing potentially some zoning changes,” she said at the forum, according to a transcript posted on her campaign website. “So here’s where I disagree with the way that my opponent has handled the situation. I believe it is the role of elected officials to do something about solving the problem, to de-escalate the situation and work with both parties to come to resolution.
“It is not the role of our elected leaders to publicly insult law-abiding business owners, and in my opinion, to fan the flames of an issue and only make worse the fears of the parents for political gain,” Ms. Chronis said.
Mr. Gates said Mr. Foust has yet to sit down with him to discuss the issue.
Five months after the Fairfax County School board hastily moved to change its nondiscrimination policy to include “gender identity” without consulting parents, a series of new documents has revealed that school administrators had already begun implementing controversial transgender policy changes before the vote even took place.
On the night of the May 7 vote, school board members informed concerned parents that a consultant would be hired to advise FCPS administrators on “best practices” for implementing the new policy, which was rushed through to a vote in the spring.
But several emails and documents obtained by concerned parents through Freedom of Information Act requests filed by Judicial Watch this week, revealed that on the night of the vote, school administrators had already hired a consultant.
In addition, school board members have been paying the consultant with taxpayer money without a written contract.
“They have tried to hide this consultant’s identity and payment. They have been deceptive. There’s been no formal contract, it’s like they signed a contract on a cocktail napkin; now we’re going to have to FOIA a cocktail napkin,” said Andrea Lafferty, president of the Traditional Values Coalition, who worked with Judicial Watch to obtain the documents.
On the night of the vote, one parent emailed school board member Ryan McElveen to make a suggestion for a potential transgender policy consultant. The emails disclosed by the FOIA show Mr. McElveen responded that “the final candidate has already been chosen. Should be officially hired in the next couple of days.”
Mr. McElveen did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Times.
Elizabeth Schultz, the FCPS board member for Springfield, Virginia, and the only board member who voted against the transgender policy amendment in May, said she was also kept in the dark about the new consultant and has yet to receive any updates on the policy changes that are already being implemented.
“Staff is meeting privately with this guy, and he is already advising them and they are planning on using him going forward to advise and train staff. Train staff on what? We were told nothing would change,” Ms. Schultz told The Times.
School board staff told parents that a report on suggested “best practices” and policy changes would be assembled and made available to them in September, but so far no report has been issued.
When Ms. Schultz and other concerned parents asked about the status of the report, school administrators said that a written report could not yet be issued because they were awaiting the results of ongoing lawsuits on school transgender policies across the country. School administration staff said the board would continue to work with the consultant in the meantime.
The emails disclosed by the FOIA reveal that FCPS hired Jeffrey Poirier, a researcher on LGBT youth at the American Institutes for Research, to serve as the gender policy consultant for FCPS.
“He is one of a few experts in the country in the field of school policies and regulations regarding transgender students and teachers,” an FCPS staff member wrote in an email.
Mr. Poirier has authored several books and studies on school policies for LGBT youth and was a member of the Technical Assistance Partnership for Child and Family Mental Health, for which he led the LGBTQ, Intersex and Two-Spirit (LGBTQI2-S) Learning Community. He has also managed projects for several school districts, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education.
Excerpts from Mr. Poirier’s books shed some light on the kinds of changes he is likely to suggest.
In his book, “Improving emotional and behavioral outcomes for LGBT youth: A guide for professionals,” Mr. Poirier suggests creating an atmosphere to address “heterosexism and transphobia,” including strategies to allow transgender students to room with peers that match their gender identity on overnight field trips.
He also recommends that all school staff members, including bus drivers, cafeteria workers, etc., should receive compulsory professional development on LGBT topics.
He adds, “… It is irrelevant whether a person’s objection to a student’s identity or expression is based on sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Mychele Birckner, a former FCPS school board member, told The Times that the school board likely kept Mr. Poirier’s identity a secret to keep parents in the dark about his bias toward the LGBT community.
“His position and his report are definitely skewed to his viewpoint,” she said.
Mr. Poirier directed requests for comment from The Times to FCPS. A representative for FCPS did not immediately respond to inquiries for comment.
Concerned about the delay in assembling the policy report and rising consultation fees, Ms. Schultz asked school board staff for a copy of Mr. Poirier’s contract. She was told there was no written contract and that Mr. Poirier had been hired on a verbal agreement.
“I was utterly stunned. We’re at the point on something major where there is obviously a predictable foreseeable interest by the greater public, and we don’t have a written contract or any documentation. there’s nothing?” Ms. Schultz said.
Ms. Schultz, Ms. Brickner and other concerned parents who inquired about the contract were told that when a consultant’s fees are less than $5,000, there is no need for a written contract. Mr. Poirier had lowered his standard fee to only charge $4,800, according to the emails.
“Money is changing hands on a verbal agreement on behalf of the taxpayers, and there literally is nothing written to describe what is happening. I can’t even inform our electorate on what is going on,” Ms. Schultz said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Poirier has already been advising FCPS staff and school policy changes are already being implemented, despite parents being told in May that school operations would not change.
“This is a lie, we’ve already got little boys using little girl’s bathrooms. These things are already being implemented,” Ms. Lafferty said.
Earlier this week, parents learned that one FCPS middle school is already allowing a biologically male, transgender student to use the female bathroom. Parents only found out about the bathroom policy change at the middle school when a female student felt so uncomfortable that she told her parents about the issue.
“We know of no other situation like that in the past, so our assumption is that they’ve already changed regulations and they just didn’t want to tell parents,” Ms. Brickner said.
Parents say they do not object to policies that prevent discrimination against sexual minority students, but say their main concern is for their children’s safety.
“None of us wants any child or staff member to be discriminated against. You teach your children that that’s not nice, and you don’t do that. No parent wants that. This situation with the boy using the girls bathroom came to light because one girl was uncomfortable and talked to her mother about it.
Children will feel uncomfortable over and over again if in fact that is the new policy,” Ms. Brickner said.
FCPS is the largest school district in Virginia and the 10th largest in the country. Any changes to FCPS’ gender identity policy could, and likely will, roll over to other Virginia school district and could one day become the norm across the U.S.
The revelations about FCPS’ hidden policy updates comes just before the school board is up for re-election on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Thursday night’s presidential debate on CNBC may go down in history as a major turning point in candidate-news media relations.
For years the elite news media has assumed it was in charge — that it could define the topics, lengths of answers, and who got to speak.
For me, the brutal dishonesty and anti-conservative bias became unbearable when Chris Matthews “moderated” the Republican debate at the Reagan Library on May 3, 2007. This was the very first debate of that cycle and there was Tip O’Neill’s press secretary, a hard-line left-wing partisan Democrat, pretending to “moderate.” A few months later, Mr. Matthews would say that he “felt this thrill going up [his] leg” as he listened to then-Sen. Barack Obama speak. And he had the gall to show up at the Reagan Library as a “journalist.”
By the 2012 campaign, Republican candidates and Republican audiences had begun to recognize the bias, hostility and in some cases open contempt the so-called moderators had for Republican values, ideas and personalities. In more than 20 debates, the most emotional audience responses came when candidates stood up to media bias and attempted bullying.
The elite media has not yet caught on that an increasingly anti-elite, conservative audience rewards candidates for fighting back against the liberal media. Pollster Frank Luntz reported Thursday night that he had never seen as strong a response as Ted Cruz got for blasting the CNBC team. That is an indication of the incentives Republicans now have for standing up to liberal journalists.
The miraculous part of Thursday night’s debate came in two stages. First, the CNBC team was amazingly, consistently biased, arrogant and even contemptuous to such a degree that virtually everyone understood that this was not a debate but a battle between two sides.
Second, at some point the Republican candidates rallied in mutual defense, forming a united team by praising each other and attacking their real adversaries, the CNBC opposition.
At times I felt I was watching the scenes in “Gladiator” where Russell Crowe teaches his group to fight as a team. After the battle (it was not a debate) candidate after candidate went on television to speak positively about his or her fellow candidates. When Donald Trump is speaking fondly of his fellow Republican candidates, you know something has changed profoundly.
Chris Christie may have set the right tone for future debates when he ridiculed the question about regulating fantasy football. In one sweeping statement, he exposed the infantilism and trivia which pass for much of modern journalism. It would be a real turning point if future moderators met the Christie Standard for seriousness.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus made clear how bad the CNBC performance was in a statement issued immediately after the debate. Mr. Priebus tweeted: “In spite of the moderators, I’m proud of our team for standing up against the improper and unprofessional display put on by CNBC. CNBC should be ashamed of how this debate was handled.”
This outcome came despite Mr. Priebus’ best efforts. He had worked exhaustively for more than a year to put on a fair and responsible series of debates. The RNC cannot literally tell journalists what to ask. But Mr. Priebus did tell NBC they could not use left-wing MSNBC to host a Republican debate.
He insisted that they had to use their business channel. He went on to insist that the theme of the debate had to be about the economy and spending. He went a step further and insisted that Rick Santelli, whose rants had launched the Tea Party movement, be one of the questioners.
Despite all that effort, the liberal culture of NBC asserted itself nonetheless and CNBC returned to the very gotcha games the RNC had fought to oppose.
Mr. Priebus responded to this broken commitment by promising that he will “fight to ensure future debates allow for a more robust exchange.”
Ted Cruz on Hannity may have offered the right principle for future debates: Simply ensure that the moderators have voted in a Republican primary. If the Cruz Proposal gets adopted, Thursday night will really have been a miraculous debate.
A Planned Parenthood doctor describes how she uses what may be a partial-birth abortion technique to deliver fetal trunks intact, then laughs as she says she will “strive” for an intact fetal skull in an undercover video released Tuesday.
The latest footage, the eleventh in a series of graphic videos by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress targeting the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, raises more questions as to whether the abortion provider is in violation of federal law.
“My aim is usually to get the specimens out pretty intact,” says Dr. Amna Dermish of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, speaking to center investigators posing as representatives of a fetal-tissue procurement company.
In the footage from Oct. 21, 2014, Dr. Dermish said she performs abortions up to 22 weeks’ gestation, and that she does not use the chemical digoxin on fetuses before 20 weeks.
Instead, she said she will sometimes use ultrasound guidance to flip a second-trimester fetus to a breech presentation, meaning that the feet exit the womb first, and described how she recently performed the procedure an abortion on a 20-week-old fetus.
“It was a trunk intact, so usually what I do, if it’s a breech presentation, I’ll remove the extremities first, the lower extremities, and then go for the spine and sort of bring it down that way,” said Dr. Dermish.
She added that, “Especially the 20-weekers are a lot harder versus the 18-weekers, so at that point I’ll switch to breech,” she says in the video.
In a statement, the center accused her of performing the procedure on “living fetuses” and described her technique as a “hallmark” of a partial-birth abortion, which is illegal.
“Dermish does not use the chemical digoxin to kill the fetus before 20 weeks, so her feet-first, intact extraction abortions are done on living fetuses,” said the CMP statement. “Using ultrasound guidance to manipulate the fetus from vertex to breech orientation before extracting the yet-living fetus is a hallmark of the illegal partial-birth abortion procedure (18 U.S.C. 1531).”
Planned Parenthood did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the latest video, but officials have repeatedly denied violating federal law while accusing the center of waging a politically motivated battle with “deceptively edited” footage.
Dr. Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, said in a statement that the abortion process described by Dr. Dermish “confirms the need to investigate whether Planned Parenthood performs illegal partial-birth abortions in order to obtain intact organs from aborted infants.”
In the video, Dr. Dermish said she had not been able to deliver an intact calvarium, or skull, during an abortion procedure, but added with a laugh that, “Well, this will give me something to strive for.”
At the same time, Dr. Dermish also said that she had not provided fetal specimens for research during her year at the Austin clinic.
Partial-birth abortion is prohibited under federal law, as is altering abortion procedures in order to keep fetal specimens intact for medical research. A previous video showed Planned Parenthood Dr. Deborah Nucatola saying that she uses certain procedures to avoid crushing fetal tissue so that it can be used for medical research.
Planned Parenthood has come under attack since the first video was released in July for selling fetal tissue, including livers, hearts and kidneys, for medical research, while PPFA officials countered that their affiliates were only reimbursed for expenses, which is allowed by law.
Last week, Texas officials moved to end state funding of Planned Parenthood, while state health investigators served subpoenas on Planned Parenthood clinics as part of an investigation into Medicaid fraud.
“Texas does have hard evidence showing Medicaid fraud as well as violations of federal and state law concerning abortion procedures,” said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, in a Fox News interview.
Ken Lambrecht, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, called the document search “unprecedented and unnecessary” and “another political attack targeted at Planned Parenthood.”
“We believe this is a fishing expedition,” Mr. Lambrecht told the Associated Press.
Palestinians are on the wrong track and will not get off it until the outside world demands better of them.
News comes every year or two of a campaign of violence spurred by Palestinian political and religious leaders spreading wild-eyed conspiracy theories (the favorite: al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is under threat). A spasm of unprovoked violence against Israelis then follows: rocket attacks from Gaza, car-rammings in Israel proper, stone-throwing in the West Bank, street stabbings in Jerusalem. Eventually, the paroxysm peters out, only to start up again not too much later.
True, these bouts of violence bring some gains to the Palestinians; in the United Nations, in faculty lounges, and on the streets of Western cities they win support against Israel. Each round ends, however, with the Palestinians in a worse place in terms of dead and wounded, buildings destroyed and an economy in tatters.
Further, their immoral and barbaric actions harden Israeli opinion, making the prospect of concessions and compromise that much less likely. The cheery Israeli hopes of two decades ago for a “partner for peace” and a “New Middle East” long ago gave way to a despair of finding acceptance. As a result, security fences are going up all over, even in Jerusalem, to protect Israelis who increasingly believe that separation, not cooperation, is the way forward.
It may be exhilarating for Palestinians to watch UNESCO condemn Israel for this and that, as it just did, but its actions serve more as theater than as practical steps toward conflict resolution.
Whence comes this insistence on self-defeating tactics?
It dates back nearly a century, to the seminal years 1920-21. In April 1920, as a gesture to the Zionists, the British government created a region called “Palestine” designed to be the eventual “national home for the Jewish people.” Then in May 1921, it appointed Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974) as mufti of Jerusalem, a dreadful decision whose repercussions still reverberate today.
Husseini harbored a monstrous hostility toward Jews; as Klaus Gensicke puts it in his important 2007 study, “The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis,” Husseini’s “hatred of Jews knew no mercy, and he always intervened with particular zeal whenever he feared that some of the Jews could escape annihilation.” Toward this end, he initiated an uncompromising campaign of rejectionism — the intent to eliminate every vestige of Jewish presence in Palestine — and used any and all tactics toward this foul end.
For example, he can be largely held responsibility for the Middle East’s endemic anti-Semitism, having spread the anti-Semitic forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the blood libel and Holocaust denial throughout the region. His other legacies include making Jerusalem into the flash point it remains today, spreading many of the anti-Zionist conspiracy theories that afflict the Middle East, and being one of the first Islamists to call for jihad.
He encouraged and organized unprovoked violence against the British and the Jews, including a three-year long intifada in 1936-39. Then he worked with the Nazis, living in Germany during the war years, 1941-45, proving so useful that he earned an audience with Hitler. Nor was this a courtesy visit; as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu correctly pointed out on Oct. 20, Husseini had a central role in formulating the Final Solution that led eventually to the murder of 6 million Jews.
Husseini tutored his young relative, the future Yasser Arafat, and Arafat faithfully carried out the mufti’s program for 35 years, after which his apparatchik Mahmoud Abbas keeps the legacy alive. In other words, Husseini’s rejectionism still dominates the Palestinian Authority. In addition, he spent the postwar years in Egypt, where he influenced the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Hamas spin-off also bears his hallmark rejectionism. Thus do both principal Palestinian movements pursue his murderous and self-defeating methods.
Only when the Palestinians emerge from the cloud of Husseini’s dark legacy can they begin to work with Israel rather than fight it; build their own polity, society, economy and culture rather than try to destroy Israel‘s; and become a positive influence rather than the nihilistic force of today.
And how will that happen? If the outside world, as symbolized by UNESCO, stops encouraging the Palestinians’ execrable behavior and impeding Israeli defenses against it. Only when Palestinians realize they will not be rewarded for homicidal conduct will they stop their campaign of violence and start to come to terms with the Jewish state.
If you’re wondering how America and Western Europe went from marriage-centered societies to post-Christian sexual anarchy abetted by massive government growth enforced by brutal political correctness in just a few decades, let’s just say it was no accident.
Here’s a brief history:
The progressive left has been in a death struggle with religion, the family, capitalism and morality itself since becoming a political and philosophical force during the French Revolution.
With the advent of Marxism in the mid-19th century, the battle intensified, with the left eagerly expecting the collapse of capitalism.
When the West failed to succumb to an economic and political upheaval of the type that seized Russia in 1917, the strategy changed. To liberate people from free market capitalism, it became necessary to liberate people first from bourgeois morality.
Man’s natural inclination is to provide for himself and his own extended family, then for his neighbors and community. Socialism must remove existing loyalties and institutions in order to replace them with government power. That’s why progressives have been a major force behind abortion, easy divorce, single-parent welfare incentives, pornography, collective child-rearing and sexual excess of all kinds. All of these manifestations of the progressive disease weaken the natural family. As families crumble, the state steps in to take their place.
Italian communist Antonio Gramsci saw the value of this in the 1920s, calling for his fellow revolutionaries to “capture the culture,” that is, infiltrate the institutions that transmit cultural values. So they did, especially in the universities.
Revolutionaries such as John Dewey, Margaret Mead, Margaret Sanger, Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich, all of whom waxed poetically about the Soviet Union, inspired progressive educational and social policies that weakened support for organized religion, marital fidelity and the family while empowering the state.
With the help of like-minded people in Hollywood, they hammered away at social conventions of all kinds. The weapons of choice were radical individualism and moral relativism, which they peddled on college campuses to credulous liberal faculty who passed it on to their students.
By the time the 1960s rolled around, with the advent of the pill, Playboy magazine and mass communications, Western civilization was ripe for takeover by a heretofore alien, ideology of limitless sex. Of course, people weren’t told about the downside of “free love” — the destruction of families, social chaos, the loss of freedom to disagree, and a tightening statist grip on economic and intellectual liberty.
In his masterful new book, “Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage,” author Paul Kengor traces a direct line from the founders of communism to today’s liberal social “reformers.”
The elements change with the times, but not the ultimate objective, which is to “progress” indefinitely toward an evolved, socialist Eden where all is shared and all are equal. Mr. Kengor notes that the progressive canon changes rapidly, and in ways that even progressives cannot always predict.
“But we do know this much: what is seemingly inconceivable to all of us right now, including to progressives themselves, may become the dogmatic position of progressives in a generation,” he writes.
For example, “just five years ago, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton” supported “retaining the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman by 2012, that was completely gone. Now, anyone who opposed redefining marriage — and who stands now where virtually all Democrats stood a mere two decades back — is derided as a bigoted extremist.”
A case in point: The ninth World Congress of Families, which will be held this coming week in Salt Lake City, has drawn fire from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Human Rights Campaign and other leftist organizations, which falsely and strategically portray the pro-family gathering as a “hate” event and the speakers as bigots. I have done some writing for the WCF, and will be on a panel about “How the Culture Undermines Life and the Family.”
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx, who had an affair with his children’s nurse and mistreated his own family badly in other ways, railed against religion and the middle-class family: “The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”
His co-author, Frederic Engels, was a prolific philanderer who preached free love in an 1884 essay as a benefit of political revolution, a few decades before abortion became the holy sacrament of the political left:
“With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not. This removes all the anxiety about the ‘consequences’ … Will not that suffice to bring about the gradual growth of unconstrained sexual intercourse …?”
The progressives’ contempt for the family contrasts with the timeless definition of marriage given in Genesis 2:24 and reiterated by Jesus: “A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
Voters and other residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia have much to ponder this year ahead of 2016’s presidential election.
As usual, 2015 means there are no statewide elections for governor and the like, and that means all the politics are local.
A buttinsky nonetheless is trying to be a powerbroker in your hometown, and his name is Michael Bloomberg.
Mr. Bloomberg, recall, is no longer mayor of New York City, but for a decade he has tried to sway America’s voters and politicians to his way of thinking about guns.
You know, there are people who are anti-motorist, right? Well, Mr. Bloomberg is anti-firearms.
His Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit founded in 2014, is a kissing cousin to the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, which has announced plans to spend $700,000 on one election in Virginia — a state Senate race in the Richmond area that could easily deliver control of the chamber into the hands of the Democratic Party. Everytown said it will spend another $1.1 million to influence Virginia’s November elections.
When and precisely how conservatives and Republicans in the former red state flipped the script and handed it to their blue-hued counterparts is not the topic of this day, however.
Today, let’s look at the topics of guns and gun control, since “gun safety” is a favored term of Mr. Bloomberg‘s.
Virginia, of course, is red meat for anyone who opposes the right to bear arms, supports outsiders’ hefty roles in local politics and thinks, quite naively, that we can have “a future free from gun violence.”
What are our local, state and federal law enforcers going to use? Whistles and lightsabers?
One of the Bloomberg fans’ grand notions is that a gun-free America will become a reality if we create more laws that restrict gun rights.
With so much at stake, perhaps this is the perfect time to educate — and in some instances, re-educate — readers about some of the gun control laws already on the books that target gunrunners, straw purchasers, drug criminals and the like.
After poking around the Internet, I found a Virginia case that fits the enforce-the-law advocates. The criminal case hit the sentencing docket in Northern Virginia in May 2013, a few months after Kimberly Yvette Dinkins had pleaded guilty to dealing firearms without a license.
Dinkins, 44 at the time, had bought 31 handguns from three different gun shows in three different parts of Virginia — Hampton, Chantilly in Fairfax County and Richmond. Her maximum prison sentence was five years in a prison.
Now, consider these facts:
Her sentence gives the appearance of weakness in federal gun laws, the kind of laws anti-gun rights folks love to target. The contrary is true.
Had federal prosecutors utilized the long arm of John Law, Dinkins would still be behind bars — and not because orange is the new black. She would still be imprisoned because she violated the federal Gun Control Act.
Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association (NRA) explains it this way in a recent article that advocates enforcing existing laws: “If any violator of the Gun Control Act provisions can be shown as intending to commit a state or federal felony involving a firearm, that individual has committed an additional federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison on each count (Sec. 924(b)).”
One woman. One state. Three gun show events. Thirty-one handguns. Eighteen months in prison. Doesn’t add up, does it?
OK, OK. You know the NRA is spending money this election year too — and I hope it’s because you read it in The Washington Times. In case you didn’t, I’ll educate you: The NRA has spent $340,000 — less than half of the Bloomberg gang’s targeted spending.
What’s more, the Bloomberg gang also is targeting the pain and suffering of gun victims’ loved ones, including those who were victimized — indeed traumatized — by legal gun owners.
What about those who became victimized by Dinkins’ dirty hands?
Billionaire Bloomberg can take up whatever causes he pleases and whatever causes he can afford. But, look, I have a lot of family, friends and coworkers who live in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I wouldn’t wish that the constitutional rights of my worst enemy be yanked.
I bet Mr. Bloomberg has yet to pore his own eyes across all the local, state and federal laws regarding firearms, and I feel comfortable making such a statement because our tax dollars pay people to explain to mayors and other politicians what the laws mean.
With the anti-gun crowd locked and loaded, Virginians shouldn’t jump the gun and begin electing politicians because Billionaire Bloomberg says so.
Leverage your own power. You only get one vote.
The IRS did mishandle tea party and conservative groups’ nonprofit applications, but their behavior didn’t break any laws, the Justice Department said in a letter to Congress Friday that cleared the tax agency and former senior executive Lois G. Lerner of any crimes.
“Ineffective management is not a crime,” Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik said in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee. “The Department of Justice’s exhaustive probe revealed no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution. What occurred is disquieting and may necessitate corrective action — but it does not warrant criminal prosecution.”
The decision comes more than two years after the IRS’s internal watchdog reported that auditors singled out tea party groups’ applications for special scrutiny and delayed those applications beyond reasonable timelines, preventing the groups from being able to say they were officially recognized nonprofits.
The agency initially admitted its bad behavior, and President Obama vowed an investigation — but he later said, in the middle of the probe, that there was no evidence of corruption.
Some Republicans have questioned the validity of the probe from the beginning, after learning that one of the Justice Department lawyers assigned to the investigation was a contributor to Mr. Obama’s political campaigns.
In its letter Friday the Justice Department specifically cleared Ms. Lerner, a senior executive in charge of approving the groups’ applications, who had authored a number of emails that suggested a bias against the tea party movement.
Investigators said none of the witnesses they interviewed believed Ms. Lerner acted out of political motives, and said that Ms. Lerner seemed to try to correct the inappropriate scrutiny once she “recognized that it was wrong.”
“In fact, Ms. Lerner was the first IRS official to recognize the magnitude of the problem and to take concerted steps to fix it,” Mr. Kadzik wrote.
Congressional Democrats said the decision confirmed what they’d figured out years ago — that there was no underhanded political dealing at the agency.
“Over the past five years, Republicans in the House of Representatives have squandered literally tens of millions of dollars going down all kinds of investigative rabbit holes — IRS, Planned Parenthood, Benghazi — with absolutely no evidence of illegal activity,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Benghazi investigation and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee.
The House Ways and Means Committee conducted its own investigation into the IRS’s tea party targeting, as did the Senate Finance Committee. The House panel was the one that voted to refer Ms. Lerner’s behavior to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.
Rep. Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, called the Friday letter “deeply disappointing,” but said it wasn’t a surprise given the bent of the Obama administration.
He said his committee’s probe did find “serious and unprecedented actions” by Ms. Lerner that deprived tea party groups of their rights.
“The American people deserve better than this. Despite the DOJ closing its investigation, the Ways and Means Committee will continue to find answers and hold the IRS accountable for its actions,” he said.
Ms. Lerner’s lawyers, in a statement, said they were “gratified but not surprised” by the announcement.
“Anyone who takes a serious and impartial look at the facts would reach the same conclusion as the Justice Department,” they said, adding that she cooperated with the investigators and answered their questions.
That stands in contrast to her interaction with Congress, where she refused to answer questions, invoking her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent — but only after she delivered a statement declaring her innocence.
The House Oversight Committee concluded that she was not, in fact, able to invoke the Fifth Amendment at that point, and when she refused to answer questions, the House voted to hold her in contempt of Congress.
The Justice Department declined to pursue that case, too, arguing that her claim of Fifth Amendment rights was likely to succeed.
Groups that faced targeting by the IRS were infuriated by Friday’s decision.
“To say there is no evidence of discrimination makes a mockery of all we witnessed in the last two years,” said Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, which had its application for nonprofit status delayed as it and another group she was involved in faced scrutiny by everyone from the FBI to federal occupational health authorities.
DENVER — A coalition of 24 states and a power company are suing to stop the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, calling it an unlawful federal bid to control state power grids.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on the same Friday that the Environmental Protection Agency published the plan, also known as the 111(d) rule, in the Federal Register.
“The EPA’s latest power grab — disguised as a ‘Clean Power Plan’ — takes already burdensome federal regulations a step further by driving up energy costs, stagnating job growth, threatening the reliability of our electric grid and treading all over the State of Texas’ sovereignty,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said in a statement.
“With seemingly no concept of what it costs to support a family, start a business or save for retirement, the federal government has yet again proven its readiness to sacrifice American jobs in the name of expanding bureaucratic authority and pushing its liberal agenda,” Mr. Abbott said.
As part of the lawsuit, the states seek to place a hold on the Clean Power Plan’s deadlines for meeting its carbon emission goals, which supporters have described as necessary to improve air quality but foes have criticized as arbitrary and unrealistically strict.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, announced that he and Sen. Joe Manchin III, West Virginia Democrat, will file a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act in an effort to stop the agency’s rule against new coal-fired plants.
“Here’s what is lost in this administration’s crusade for ideological purity: the livelihoods of our coal miners and their families,” Mr. McConnell said. “Folks who haven’t done anything to deserve a ‘war’ being declared upon them.”
He said he plans to join another Congressional Review Act effort spearheaded by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia Republican, and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota Democrat, against the plan’s limits on existing coal-fired plants.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy defended the Clean Power Plan in a Friday statement and predicted that the agency would “again prevail against these challenges.”
“The ‘Clean Power Plan’ has strong scientific and legal foundations, provides states with broad flexibilities to design and implement plans, and is clearly within EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act,” Ms. McCarthy said.
White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz called the regulations consistent with the Clean Air Act and said the Obama administration is “confident that this plan is on strong legal footing.”
“It also gives the states the flexibility they need to implement it, and it reflects unprecedented public engagement, and finally is responsive to all of the feedback we received from stakeholders during this very long engagement process,” he said.
Mr. Schultz blamed Republicans for acting out of partisanship in opposition to the plan.
A coalition of states attempted to challenge the rule before it was published, but the lawsuit was ruled premature.
Environmental groups defended the plan, a key piece of the Obama administration’s climate change agenda, saying the crackdown on coal emissions is needed to combat global warming.
“Global warming is here, and it’s affecting us now,” said Anna Aurilio, director of Environment America’s office in Washington
She said “2015 is almost certain to be the hottest year on record. Extreme storms have caused unusually large floods from South Carolina to Texas. California is still in the middle of a drought that is causing huge losses to agriculture and to the states’ forests. Today, North America braces for the landfall of Hurricane Patricia, called the strongest hurricane ever recorded.”
One of China’s most outrageously cool superstars is a high school history teacher, wildly popular among the nation’s young, who follow him online and offline in the tens of millions. Ironically, he is also one of the nation’s most censored public intellectuals.
Yuan Teng-fei, a boyish 43-year-old teacher in Beijing, has a wicked sense of humor and a passion for anonymity. His enormous fame came about by accident, almost entirely in spite of himself, when someone posted to the Internet some video clips of his lectures in 2008 meant originally for internal use only within the small school where he was moonlighting as a history instructor. The leaked lessons quickly made him a household name, albeit a name that usually is uttered in hushed tones as his analysis is considered highly toxic and subversive to the official Chinese government line.
Consider, for example, Mr. Yuan’s take on the very history textbook he is using in his classroom, which follows exactly the Chinese Communist Party’s interpretations of world events.
“The distortions in the history textbook in Japan are far fewer than the distortions in our own history textbook,” Mr. Yuan said in one of the lecture clips posted online. “If you ask me how much truth is contained in China’s history textbook, I’d say it’s below 5 percent. I urge you to burn your history textbook after you have taken the exam. You let it stay in your home for one day, it will dirty your home, which is why I never bring the history textbook home. It’s full of BS!”
This was said in the midst of a high-pitched government propaganda campaign against a controversial Japanese history textbook that has never been adopted by more than 2 percent of all Japanese schools, while all China’s students must use the only version of history textbook written and approved by the Chinese Communist Party.
Mr. Yuan’s stardom reached its zenith in May 2010 when another batch of his taped lectures on the history of Communist China under Mao Zedong was uploaded by someone on the popular video portal Youku, a Chinese knockoff version of YouTube, which is banned in China by the government.
In these lectures, Mr. Yuan delivered devastating blows to the officially sanctioned version of the PRC history under Mao, accompanied by humor and acerbic observations. After narrating the detailed carnage and stupefying human suffering under Mao’s rule, Mr. Yuan concluded that “Mao Zedong was a butcher whose hands were soaked with blood of Chinese people he had killed!”
He went on: “Mao Zedong was addicted to talking nonsense. In fact he was an ‘IBM,’ an ‘international big mouth’ whose poems were just unbearably lousy. Mao Zedong was clueless as to how to govern a country, but was an expert in harassing the Chinese people.”
Similar salvos went on for nearly three hours, peppered with jokes, sarcasm, personal experiences and eruptive laughter from the audience.
The video clips caused a sensation in a nation where any open and frank discussion of Mao and his maniac policies remains a taboo nearly 40 years after his death. Within days, more than 4 million visits were registered for the Youku website. The nation was shocked by the boldness and detailed narratives of Mao’s pogroms as detailed in Mr. Yuan’s lectures. He became an instant Internet phenomenon.
Government censors moved quickly, taking down all of Mr. Yuan’s contrarian lectures from the Youku site. But officials also recognized the uncomfortable reality that the meek high school history teacher had become a national hero among tens of millions Internet users for his frankness.
Nevertheless, Mr. Yuan was summoned by the Beijing District Education Department officials for a severe dressing down. He was forced to appear on the Internet to admit “mistakes” made in his lectures. And his public appearances have since been closely followed by Maoists, who disrupt and verbally abuse Mr. Yuan on a routine basis.
But it has proved too little too late. Countless fans are solidly behind him. There are fan clubs all over the country, with supporters discussing obsessively whether and when Mr. Yuan will be arrested by the authorities for his views. While Google is banned in China, Baidu, the nation’s largest search engine, features results about the huge number of searches for information about Mr. Yuan’s safety and whether he has been jailed.
Even more significantly, his fans have reposted all of his banned lectures to U.S.-based YouTube, which is only accessible to ordinary Chinese for those who dare to “climb over” the Great Firewall of China. Up to this day, those lectures, highly entertaining yet utterly somber, are among the most visited Chinese-content videos on YouTube.
Perhaps due to his national stardom and huge cyberfollowing, Mr. Yuan has not yet been locked up by the government, which no doubt fears the eruption of public outrage that might spark. Instead, the government has prohibited him from giving any lessons on recent Chinese history, while granting him a spot on national TV, against his own wishes, to deliver entertaining and humorous lectures about ancient Chinese history.
But dead emperors and past dynasties are not what the people really want to hear from the witty Mr. Yuan. His YouTube lectures on the history of Communist China are more popular than ever, making him one of the most effective and subversive voices against a political order that survives only on historical untruth.
Crime is back up in California. Los Angeles reported a 20.6 percent increase in violent crimes over the first half of 2015 and nearly an 11 percent increase in property crimes.
Last year, cash-strapped California taxpayers voted for Proposition 47, which so far has let thousands of convicted criminals go free from prison and back onto the streets. Now the state may have to relearn what lawbreakers often do when let out of jail early.
The state may be entering the fifth year of a catastrophic drought, but California has not started building any of the new reservoirs that were planned but long ago canceled under the unfinished California Water Project. Water may remain scarce, but legislators — many of whom have their daily water needs met by the ancient reservoirs and canals that their grandparents built — don’t seem overly bothered. They prefer to designate transgender restrooms, ban plastic bags at grocery stores, and prohibit pet dogs from chasing bears and bobcats.
Never has a region been so naturally rich but so poorly run by its latest generation of custodians.
California endures some of the highest gasoline taxes, sales taxes and income taxes in the nation. Yet its roads and public schools rate near the very bottom of U.S. rankings.
Traffic accidents in California increased by 13 percent over a three-year period — the result of terrible roads and worse drivers. Almost half of all accidents in Los Angeles are hit-and-runs where the drivers leave the scene.
California has lots of petroleum and natural gas. It used to be a pacesetter in building nuclear and hydroelectric plants. Yet because of inept governance, the state’s electricity and gasoline prices are among the highest in the nation.
Why is California choosing the path of Detroit — growing government that it cannot pay for, shorting the middle classes, hiking taxes but providing shoddy services and infrastructure in return, and obsessing over minor bumper-sticker issues while ignoring existential crises?
The cause is political. California is a one-party state, without any serious audit of authorities in power.
The California State Assembly currently includes 52 Democrats and 28 Republicans. The California State Senate has 26 Democrats and 14 Republicans.
All of the state’s executive officers are Democrats. Both of its U.S. senators are Bay-area progressives. California’s House delegation is overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic. The party in power can do as it pleases without being held accountable at the polls.
But what turned a once bipartisan and purple state bright blue? A perfect storm of events.
Higher taxes and increased regulations have driven out lots of small-business owners. In the last few years, hundreds of thousands of disgruntled middle-of-the-road voters voted with their feet and left for no-tax Nevada, Texas or Florida.
The state devolved into a pyramid of the coastal wealthy and interior poor — the dual constituencies of the new progressive movement.
A third of America’s welfare recipients reside in California. Nearly a quarter of Californians live below the poverty line.
Yet nowhere in America are there more billionaires. California’s long, thin coastal corridor has become a tony la-la land unto itself. Some of the highest housing prices in the nation and richest communities are clustered along the Pacific coastline, from the wine country and Silicon Valley to Malibu and Hollywood, dotted by marquee coastal universities and zillionaire tech corporations.
Meanwhile, poorer people in the interior, in places such as Madera and Delano — far from Stanford, Google, Pacific Heights and Santa Monica — require ever more public services. The very rich don’t mind paying the necessary higher taxes, while the strapped, shrinking middle class suffers or flees.
Demography also explains the new true-blue California. It is one of the youngest states, with a median age of 35. Voters tend to be more liberal before they reach 40 — and must take on increasing responsibilities, often for people other than just themselves.
California hosts more undocumented immigrants than any other state. Its percentages of minority and foreign-born residents are among the highest in the country. (One of four California residents was not born in the United States.) As with the young, immigrant groups are likewise traditional liberal constituencies, at least in the early generations.
Good money in California along the affluent coast, for the most part, is not made the old-fashioned way — in mining, timber, ranching, farming and construction. Instead, California specializes in high-tech, social media, the Internet, government employment, academia, lawyering and acting.
Profits usually involve programming, investing, financing, hedging, talking, dealing, suing, instructing and regulating. The money is better, the physical work less grubby, and utopia seems attainable in a way impossible when growing lettuce, mining granite, drilling gas wells, producing two-by-fours, building dams or shipping steel.
Could California change?
Only when voters of all persuasions decide to return to the old give-and-take politics that keeps politicians honest.
Or when water taps in the suburbs go dry.
Or perhaps when the state’s growing poor populations connect their exorbitant gas, power and housing costs with an elite agenda of rich coastal liberals, who do not seem to care about the people working hard to glimpse what the elites take for granted.
Every 30-40 years, riding some type of generational learning curve, the United States must suffer through a spasm of socialist lunacy and suffer the consequences. It’s our turn, so let it be written, so let it be done. The good thing is, we never stay with these fantasies because we, as a country, learn the ugly truth—that weakening our national defense, stealing from the other guy, taking all we can until the lights go out, just doesn’t work. At the end of the day, reality sinks in for enough people to vote the communist-lites out of power.
The last period this happened was during the hippie glory days of the ‘60s and Jimmy Carter’s disastrous presidency in the ‘70s. Many Americans are not old enough to remember Soviet tanks rumbling through Afghanistan. They don’t remember how weak and pathetic Mr. Carter looked in his cardigan sweater sitting by the fireplace as 52 Americans were taken hostage in Iran and held for 444 days. They don’t remember the charred bodies of American servicemen paraded through the streets of Tehran after the failed hostage rescue mission.
Millennials just don’t realize that appeasing an enemy or a dictator doesn’t work. After all, they’ve been taught to be good Young Pioneers in college and to sing kumbaya. To confront that fantasy would comprise a macroaggression. They don’t realize the reason they can’t get a job is because the Obama administration has its sneaky fingers into every facet of the American economy, stifling job creation and innovation. To them, it’s all George W. Bush’s fault or those evil males of the species, you know, like the one who held the door open for them today, the bastard. Why deal with reality when you can deal with climate change? That makes them feel so much better inside (and it’s so much easier).
Well, I’ve got another thing coming for our socialist half of the country, you know, the ones who want all the free stuff and to make you and I pay for it. There is a whole world of conservative, rational, effective hurt coming your way. The country has had enough of the charades, the lies, the corruption, the weakness, and the spin. Even the Democrats admitted in the recent debate that the economy sucks and we know it, damn that George Bush.
Want evidence of this coming revolution? How about the recent Fox News poll that shows every Republican candidate beating Hillary Rodham Clinton in the general election? How about the fact that Republicans hold so many governorships and state legislatures at the moment? How about the two wave elections of 2010 and 2014, when Congress was handed to the Republican Party? And, yes, how about the fact that the GOP is in the middle of a revolt by conservatives who want their country back?
Several recent polls this year have showed that national security is atop the minds Americans going into 2016. Does anyone seriously believe the Obama administration has given the American people a security blanket? I think most serious Americans are scared to death. Yes, this will be a national security election. Americans will look past the blue light special, free stuff, giveaway promises of the say-anything-to-get-elected party. The adults over 30 will get out and vote because they see how dangerous the future looks to anyone with half a brain or anyone that seriously cares about their children’s future.
Democrats have lost the independents, and those voters will show up big time to defeat Mrs. Clinton in the general election.
Speaking of Hillary, I haven’t even touched on her lying criminality. Anyone with any time in the military or government, which is a lot of Americans, can see that she broke the law and should be in jail. She endangered national security. She even outed the name of a spy on her server that was hacked by every intelligence service worth its salt. Remember the Valerie Plame scandal? This is exponentially above that in regard to its seriousness.
Most Americans get it, no matter how the media spins it. Stick a fork in Hillary Rodham Clinton, she’s done, and so is the Democratic Party for another 40 years.
Some said it could never be done. Ever. But it’s done. The Washington Times announced Wednesday it achieved in September the first profitable month in its 33-year history, successfully transforming a traditional money-losing print publication into a leaner multimedia company with diverse revenue streams and a growing national audience.
“The hard-working employees and patient owners of The Washington Times have waited for this day for a long time,” President and CEO Larry Beasley said after surprising his staff Wednesday afternoon with an impromptu champagne celebration in the company ballroom.
The media landscape has been particularly unforgiving in recent years. Cutbacks, job losses and “newspaper death watches” have been the norm since 2009 as the Internet proved to be a profound game-changer in the news business. The Times went into reinvention mode, but never abandoned its original calling as a credible news source with a conservative backbone.
“A lot of people said this couldn’t be done, especially in the difficult media marketplace today,” Mr. Beasley said. “But I’m proud of our team for its determined effort to remake their company into a digital-first business that can sustain a print publication that still wields enormous clout inside the Beltway.”
The journey has been long. The announcement comes after a three-decade run in which The Times achieved outsize influence in the nation’s capital while accumulating losses that far exceeded $1 billion since its inception in 1982.
“I know the owners can’t wait for us to pay them back,” Mr. Beasley joked during the company celebration.
Under Mr. Beasley’s watch, The Times went from losing more than $2 million a month at the end of 2012 to profitability in less than three years, while more than doubling its Web audience to become the 17th largest newspaper online, according to the Pew Research Center.
The Times has posted three straight months with more than 40 million page views and 5 million video views, drawing on a national platform that now counts California, Texas, New York, Florida and Virginia as its five largest states of readership.
Dr. Michael Jenkins, the chairman of Operations Holdings, the newspaper’s parent company, joined the celebration to toast the media company’s business success.
“Since we burst on the scene in 1982, we’ve always been known for providing an exclusive, original news report unrivaled by others and one that resonated with conservative thought leadership,” Mr. Jenkins said. “It’s now rewarding to know we have a business model to sustain us well into the future.”
The unexpected announcement was cheered by many of The Times’ longest-serving employees, who stood fast through the startup of a newspaper meant to take on the much-larger Washington Post. With a combination of credibility, optimism and some guts, the staff has shepherded the brand and its content through both robust and lean years.
“I think the importance of The Times to Washington, to America and to the world can’t be understated,” said Chief Financial Officer Keith Cooperrider, who joined The Times just a week after its inception. “We’ve stood for family values and freedom and faith, and we’re determined to bring out the truth about what’s going on in Washington — without fear and without currying favor.”
Mr. Cooperrider said that throughout that time, “the owners were incredibly supportive and gave us the confidence to be fearless. But at some point it became important for us to stand on our own and to guarantee the next generation we were going to be around for another 33 years.”
“If there is anything I looked forward to more than a larger footprint in the media, it was reaching profitability,” said Deborah Simmons, a 30-year veteran of The Times whose roles have included copy editor, Metro news editor, editorial page editor and now assistant managing editor for the newspaper’s robust Communities blog portal.
“For so many years, decades actually, The Times was made fun or and mocked because journalism when we started out was all about print and we weren’t profitable there,” she added. “But now that we’re competing against a much larger media world and have succeeded, after taking all the hard knocks, it makes it a professional and personal satisfaction.”
John Solomon, the editor and vice president of content and business development, applauded the newsroom reporters and editors for refocusing efforts on rapid breaking news, exclusive political, security and investigative reporting and multimedia assets. A new business model was born.
“Larry said from the beginning that our revolution needed to begin with content. To work alongside a team that embraced the mission, rewired the workflows, changed the mindset and kept the newspaper true to its brand throughout has been an absolute privilege,” Mr. Solomon said.
“I have often marveled at the dedication of The Times team, its ability to row together in the same direction even under challenging circumstances and to be motivated by a common vision that the ultimate credibility in journalism is to build a product good enough to pay for itself,” he said. “Today that team finally hit its goal.”
There’s some history to consider. The Washington Times made an immediate and emphatic impact on the nation’s capital media scene in May 1982 — an unexpectedly scrappy rival to The Post, and the brainchild of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, the founders of the Unification Church.
The paper quickly built a loyal following with its relentless opinion onslaught against communism and its ability to break and pursue stories others ignored. Soon it counted the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher among its VIP readers. Its opinion pages were often cited by the leaders of the 1994 Republican congressional revolution and its reporters recognized with countless reporting awards.
By the early 2000s The Times and its tagline of “America’s Newspaper” began attracting a national following with the advent of the Internet. Today it serves more than 10 million monthly readers nationwide with digital and print products.
A bill signed Saturday by California Gov. Jerry Brown aimed at improving voter turnout has critics predicting that it will ramp up voter fraud by making it easier for noncitizens to cast ballots.
The New Motor Voter Act automatically registers to vote all eligible voters when they obtain or renew their driver’s licenses at the Department of Motor Vehicles instead of requiring them to fill out a form. Those eligible may opt out of voter registration.
The goal is to ease barriers to voting, but election-integrity advocates warn that the measure could inadvertently add millions of illegal voters to the rolls given that California allows undocumented aliens to obtain driver’s licenses.
Anti-fraud groups True the Vote and the Election Integrity Project of California had urged Mr. Brown, a Democrat, to veto the bill, saying it would lead to “‘state sanctioned’ voter fraud” and pointing out that the legislation exempts from penalties ineligible voters who wind up being registered.
“This bill is terrible. It makes an already bad situation much, much worse,” True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht said in a statement.
Ms. Engelbrecht said California’s registration databases “lack the necessary safeguards to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls.”
Eleven states and the District of Columbia now allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, which are different in appearance from those issued to citizens. In California, noncitizen licenses carry the words “Federal Limits Apply” and “not valid for official federal purposes,” according to DriveCA.org.
In California, however, state officials “specifically chose not to make noncitizen license holders searchable in their DMV database,” said True the Vote spokesman Logan Churchwell, who called the newly signed bill “unprecedented.”
The measure, Assembly Bill 1461, “will effectively change the form of governance in California from a Republic whose elected officials are determined by United States citizens and will guarantee that noncitizens will participate in all California elections going forward,” Election Integrity Project of California President Linda Paine said in a statement.
Supporters, including California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, argued that the bill is needed to increase flagging voter turnout. In 2014 only 42 percent of eligible voters cast ballots even as other states saw increased turnout, while an estimated 6.6 million eligible state voters remain unregistered.
“The New Motor Voter Act will make our democracy stronger by removing a key barrier to voting for millions of California citizens,” Mr. Padilla said in a statement. “Citizens should not be required to opt in to their fundamental right to vote. We do not have to opt in to other rights, such as free speech or due process.”
Although the law goes into effect Jan. 1, the first automatic registrations will not take place until next year, after the state finishes work on its revamped voter-registration database, VoteCal. The upgraded system is expected to be completed in time for the June primary.
California becomes the second state to provide for “opt-out” voter registration, following Oregon, where Democratic Gov. Kate Brown signed a similar bill in March.
Ms. Brown’s office said in a statement that the bill would “help improve elections and expand voter rights and access in California.”
So far the concept enjoys public support. A poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California released in June found that two-thirds of those surveyed favored the idea of automatic DMV voter registration.
Critics argue that California’s low voter turnout can be attributed to other factors, starting with the state’s impregnable Democratic majority, increasingly rare statewide contested elections and historically safe congressional seats.
Stephen Frank of the conservative California Political Review predicted the latest bill will actually reduce voter turnout by increasing fraud and reducing confidence in the integrity of the voter rolls.
“AB 1461 assures corruption of our elections — our elections will look like those of Mexico and other corrupt nations — and honest people will stop voting since illegal aliens will out vote them,” Mr. Frank said in a website post.
A federal appeals court dealt the Obama administration’s environmental agenda a major blow, halting a water rule and saying more time is needed to determine whether the regulations are legal.
Critics had said the rule would give the Environmental Protection Agency control over irrigation ditches, canals and small streams and that the federal government would have a say in permitting and land-use decisions over millions of acres of land surrounding those waters.
A lower court blocked the rule in 13 states, but the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a nationwide stay Friday, undercutting the EPA’s push to try to carry out the rule in the rest of the country.
In a 2-1 decision, the majority said the process the EPA used to write the rules was “facially suspect” because the agency didn’t seek public comment on the far-reaching limits it imposed.
Eighteen states challenged the rule in court, and the judges said a more “deliberate determination” is needed to determine whether the rule is “proper” under federal law.
The court also said there is no proof that American waters will suffer significant harm if the rule is put on hold.
In a statement, the EPA said it respected the court’s call “for more deliberate consideration of the issues in the case.”
“The court acknowledges that clarification of the Clean Water Act is needed and that ‘agencies conscientiously endeavored, within their technical expertise and experience, and based on reliable peer-reviewed science, to promulgate new standards to protect water quality that conform to the Supreme Court’s guidance,’” the EPA said.
For now, though, the less-intrusive rules go back into effect.
EPA officials said its plans — known as the Waters of the U.S. rule, or WOTUS — were intended to clear up confusion over earlier court decisions on the Clean Water Act. That law gives the EPA power over “navigable” waters and any land where water runs off into those waters. What that meant has been hotly debated.
Last year, the administration rewrote definitions that would mean all waters within 4,000 feet of a navigable water would be subject to EPA review.
Critics said that would put land under EPA control even if it had no connection to the rivers and lakes the Clean Water Act was designed to protect.
The rules were supposed to take effect in August, but a federal judge in North Dakota issued a halt in 13 states, saying the administration appeared to be making an illegal end run around Congress.
The appeals court’s ruling expands that halt.
“A stay temporarily silences the whirlwind of confusion that springs from uncertainty about the requirements of the new Rule and whether they will survive legal testing,” Judge David McKeague said in the majority opinion.
Judge Damon J. Keith dissented, saying he wasn’t sure the court had jurisdiction to hear the case.
Opponents cheered Friday’s decision and said it represents a win for a variety of stakeholders who would have faced harsh federal mandates.
“The 6th Circuit’s order to suspend nationwide the implementation of the Obama administration’s final WOTUS rule is a victory for all states, local governments, farmers, ranchers, and landowners,” Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement.
The list of sanctuary cities has grown to more than 340, and they shielded an average of 1,000 immigrants a month from deportation last year — and more than 2,000 of those released have been arrested for yet more crimes, according to a report released Thursday by the Center for Immigration Studies.
Among those released are illegal immigrants accused of murder and brutal assaults, said Jessica Vaughan, the report’s author.
The report was released just as the Senate was poised to begin debating legislation to crack down on sanctuary jurisdictions.
Indeed, hours after the report was released, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, set up an early test vote this month on a bill that would crack down on sanctuaries. The proposed legislation would take away some federal grant money and distribute it to counties and cities that cooperate with federal authorities.
Sanctuary cities exploded onto front pages in July, when a Kathryn Steinle, a 32-year-old woman, was killed while walking with her father in San Francisco, and an illegal immigrant released by the county was charged with the shooting.
Ms. Vaughan said San Francisco ranked eighth worst on the list of offenders after releasing 252 immigrants last year whom federal officials asked to be held.
Worst of all was the Santa Clara County Jail in California, which released 1,349 immigrants that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had asked to be held for custody transfer. Los Angeles and Santa Rita jails were tied for second worst, with 572 releases each.
“Our elected officials must not sit back and watch these sanctuary jurisdictions continue to release thousands of criminal aliens back into our communities in defiance of ICE efforts to deport them, and then witness the harm that inevitably ensues when these removable offenders strike again,” Ms. Vaughan said.
All told, 9,295 immigrants whom ICE wanted to pick up from January through September last year were released instead.
Of those, 5,947 had significant criminal records, Ms. Vaughan said, citing an internal ICE report.
ICE agents were able to track down about 30 percent of them. Of the others, 1,377 have been arrested in connection with crimes committed since their release.
ICE also confirmed to Ms. Vaughan that 340 jurisdictions are refusing to cooperate to some extent with federal deportation requests.
The Center for Immigration Studies keeps a map and tally of those jurisdictions and recently added nine names to its list. They include Prince George’s County and Montgomery County in Maryland and Chesterfield County in Virginia. The map is available at CIS.org/Sanctuary-Cities-Map.
Immigrant rights advocates defend sanctuary cities, saying deportation is a job for the federal government, not local jurisdictions. The advocates also say that when local police do cooperate with ICE, it strains relationships with Hispanic communities in particular, whose members then fear reporting serious crimes.
The conflict has left Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in the middle. Bowing to legal challenges, he scrapped the Secure Communities program that mandated state and local prisons and jails to hold illegal immigrants.
Instead, he has taken a voluntary approach through the Priority Enforcement Program, which asks communities to cooperate and promises to ask for only the most serious criminal offenders.
On Wednesday, Mr. Johnson said 13 of the 25 biggest sanctuary localities have expressed interest in the Priority Enforcement Program.
“More are coming online, and I expect we will reach agreement with major cities in the near future,” the secretary said in a briefing on the state of immigration enforcement, delivered to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
Mr. Johnson said sanctuary cities’ refusal to cooperate has hurt his deportation efforts, and it’s one reason why deportations in fiscal year 2015, which ended Oct. 1, are at their lowest level in a decade, down nearly 50 percent from their peak in 2012.
From January through June, the secretary said, localities released more than 16,000 illegal immigrants whom his agents wanted to be held for deportation.
Ms. Vaughan said the Priority Enforcement Program is a poor substitute because it allows localities to control the process.
Some jurisdictions, such as Los Angeles, have agreed to participate but under strict conditions they set, meaning hundreds of illegal immigrants who could be deported will be shielded instead, she said.
The effect of sanctuary cities is huge. If officers can pick up a target from a jail, they can schedule several in a day, and the process takes only a few people. If authorities have to pick up a target who has been released, it requires locating the person, a full team to conduct hours of surveillance, a case officer to handle paperwork — and the potential for a violent public confrontation.
The House has passed a bill to crack down on sanctuary cities, and Senate Republicans have introduced their own version this week. Mr. McConnell has scheduled an Oct. 20 vote to test whether Democrats will filibuster.
The legislation would require Mr. Johnson to publicly list sanctuary cities, would withhold some federal grant money from those jurisdictions, and would distribute that funding to cities, counties and states that cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
It would also create a mandatory five-year minimum prison sentence for any illegal immigrant found guilty of sneaking into the U.S. twice or sneaking back even once after a felony conviction.
Ms. Vaughan said that type of legislation is the best step Congress could take to have an immediate effect on illegal immigration.
Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier is often portrayed by an admiring media as an almost uniquely popular and effective law enforcement leader, who has made the District safer than ever by putting together one of the most effective big city police departments in the country.
Sometimes what is reported is the result of spin and public relations rather than fact. District police officers had an opportunity in August to express an opinion of Chief Cathy Lanier. Of those who voted, 97.5 percent cast a “no confidence” vote. The results were released on Aug. 31 by the D.C. Police Union shortly after Chief Lanier had told a WAMU radio questioner that she “was taking the vote seriously.” Her attitude changed significantly once the results were known, however, demonstrating once again to those who look to her for leadership why the vote came out as it did.
After the results were published, The Washington Post weighed in supporting the chief, dismissing the vote as “misguided” and questioning the wisdom of the union in even holding such a vote and three days later, publishing a piece by D.C. Police Commander Ralph Ellis, one of Chief Lanier’s staunchest allies within the department, titled “Why I support Chief Lanier.”
The public had to have been confused by why almost all of those who voted expressed no confidence in such an effective leader, but any attempt to tell “the other side of the story” was ignored by many in the area media.
The Post’s editorial position could have been predicted in advance as the paper’s editors have backed her since she first became chief in 2007. Whenever Chief Lanier’s integrity, judgment or leadership has been questioned, The Post has weighed in on her behalf. There are many reasons for rank-and-file dissatisfaction with Chief Lanier’s leadership, but the controversy surrounding her decision to dismantle the department’s drug and vice squads has been a major factor. The paper’s Sept. 1 editorial dismissed the union’s criticism of the chief’s decision to dismantle the District’s drug squads, arguing that the squads had proven ineffective and claiming that “drugs do not seem to be a driving factor in the increase in homicides.”
The evidence suggests that the chief’s argument on this score was more fantasy than fact. The drug squads had been remarkably effective and anyone familiar with the increase in violent crime in D.C. and elsewhere knows better than to dismiss drugs as a primary cause.
On Oct. 24, 2014, Chief Lanier issued a Teletype message to the force (the teletype is part of an internal communication system used to announce department-wide changes or publications), numbered TT-10-111-14. That message read the following: “All District Vice Lieutenants shall ensure that all current and ongoing vice operations are closed out, or transferred to the Investigative Services Bureau, Narcotics and Special Investigation Division (NSID), by January 4, 2015. On that date, all district drug enforcement operations will be centralized and conducted out of NSID. Additional details are forthcoming.”
And yet, on Aug. 26, the chief provided Mayor Muriel Bowser “facts” on drugs and crime in the District for inclusion in the mayor’s newsletter alleging, among other things, that: “The productivity of the vice units had dropped precipitously. In the first four months of 2015, non-marijuana drug arrests had decreased by 31 percent. Search warrant and gun recoveries by these units were also declining. Those were telling signs that we had to modernize our approach and change our tactics.”
Those of us on the force found this interesting. The squads had been disbanded as of Jan. 4 and were here being blamed for poor performance during the next quarter. One can imagine the internal reaction among officers familiar with what had actually happened.
The facts according to the Department’s own records, are that in 2014, the last year of their existence, District vice units recovered 279 illegal guns, executed 355 search warrants, made 3,960 arrests, and seized $292,289.68 in U.S. currency. Officers who served in these units and our colleagues on the streets were proud of these statistics and were shocked both when the units were disbanded and by the chief’s denigration of those who put so much effort into making them as effective as they were.
It was this performance on her part along with a new deployment strategy that relegated police to simply standing guard at light towers, standing under tents handing out fliers, and being assigned to fixed posts from which they were forbidden to depart without the express permission of the watch commander that led to the vote of no-confidence.
Sadly, this was not the first time Chief Lanier has been caught misleading the public or the D.C. Council. When it was revealed that the department had, provided a police escort for actor Charlie Sheen, Chief Lanier made public and sworn statements that the MPD provides escort to the president, vice president and dignitaries only. After investigating the incident, however, the inspector general for the District of Columbia concluded, contrary to Chief Lanier’s claims, the department was almost routinely providing such escorts to celebrities and sports teams.
It would be absurd to claim that Chief Lanier is without friends or supporters within the department, but those who have given her outspoken support are officers who, like Commander Ennis, have little experience on the streets of the District, but who have been part of her immediate staff. Loyalty is an admirable quality, but not when it requires one to sell a false narrative to the press and the public on behalf of one’s superior.
Billions of dollars worth of taxes once destined for government coffers in Virginia, Maryland and the District has instead bankrolled states elsewhere as new statistics highlight migration patterns out of the mid-Atlantic.
In addition to keeping track of how much is owed to Uncle Sam, the Internal Revenue Service also looks at Form 1040 filings from previous years in order to gain an understanding of the state-to-state movements of taxpaying Americans.
The latest data, released by the IRS in raw form last week, indicated a net migration loss for the D.C. region in 2013 and 2014 that was among the worst in the U.S.
Florida saw the biggest net migration gains in those years, according to the data, followed by Texas, South Carolina, Nevada and North Carolina. With regards to adjusted gross income, the Sunshine and Lone Star states, neither of which has any state income tax, saw gains of $10.7 billion and $5 billion, respectively, in residents income.
Virginia and Maryland meanwhile each placed among the 10 states that experienced the greatest loss of its residents’ adjusted gross income during that span.
The capital’s two state neighbors each saw its tax base shrink by more than $1.2 billion apiece as residents moved out of state during that time, falling behind only New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania with in terms of biggest net losses, the data revealed. The Empire State lost $5.8 billion, or almost 1 percent of its taxable base.
If taken as its own entity, the District of Columbia itself, Fairfax County in Virginia and Maryland’s Montgomery County incurred a gross adjusted income loss of roughly $1.97 billion, said Frank Howard, a Republican candidate for Congress in Maryland.
“In Maryland we must recognize that we are competing not only with countries like India and China but states like South Carolina and Florida for jobs,” said Mr. Howard, who is seeking to represent the 6th Congressional District, which includes part of Montgomery County.
According to the candidate’s analysis of the data, the 6th Congressional District, currently represented by Democratic Rep. John Delaney, lost nearly $600 million in taxable income between 2013 and 2014, or roughly half of the state’s total loss.
Mr. Delaney’s office did not return multiple requests for comment by Tuesday afternoon.
Between 2013 and 2014, 28,174 former Washingtonians filed tax forms elsewhere in the U.S. or abroad, according to the data. The same number was 85,359 for Maryland, and 299,595 in Virginia.
Nationwide, the latest statistics confirm previous figures in which states with lower taxes have seen an influx of taxpayers.
“This is people voting with their feet,” Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist told The Washington Times on Tuesday, adding that polls have indicated historically that Americans are more willing to accept fewer government services at the cost of lower taxes than the polar opposite.
Now thanks to the latest statistics from the IRS, Mr. Norquist said tax data proves citizens are indeed betting their future on lower taxes and less spending.
“If people were moving to Vermont and into New York and into California and into Illinois, you’d wonder about whether this poll was real. What people do is always more important than what people say,” he said.
Bill Clinton’s administration gathered enough evidence to send a top-secret communique accusing Iran of facilitating the deadly 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist bombing, but suppressed that information from the American public and some elements of U.S. intelligence for fear it would lead to an outcry for reprisal, according to documents and interviews.
Before Mr. Clinton left office, the intelligence pointing toward Iran’s involvement in the terror attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen and wounded hundreds was deemed both extensive and “credible,” memos show.
It included FBI interviews with a half-dozen Saudi co-conspirators who revealed they got their passports from the Iranian embassy in Damascus, reported to a top Iranian general and were trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), officials told The Washington Times.
The revelations about what the Clinton administration knew are taking on new significance with the recent capture of the accused mastermind of the 1996 attack, which has occurred in the shadows of the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran.
Ahmed al-Mughassil was arrested in August returning to Lebanon from Iran, and his apprehension has provided fresh evidence of Tehran’s and Hezbollah’s involvement in the attack and their efforts to shield him from justice for two decades, U.S. officials said.
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh told The Times that when he first sought the Clinton White House’s help to gain access to the Saudi suspects, he was repeatedly thwarted. When he succeeded by going around Mr. Clinton and returned with the evidence, it was dismissed as “hearsay,” and he was asked not to spread it around because the administration had made a policy decision to warm relations with Tehran and didn’t want to rock the boat, he said.
“The bottom line was they weren’t interested. They were not at all responsive to it,” Mr. Freeh said about the evidence linking Iran to Khobar.
“They were looking to change the relationships with the regime there, which is foreign policy. And the FBI has nothing to do with that,” he said in an interview. “They didn’t like that. But I did what I thought was proper.”
Mr. Freeh made similar allegations a decade ago when he wrote a book about his time in the FBI. He was slammed by Clinton supporters, who accused him of being a partisan, claimed the evidence against Iran was inconclusive and that the White House did not try to thwart the probe.
But since that time, substantial new information has emerged in declassified memos, oral history interviews with retired government officials and other venues that corroborate Mr. Freeh’s account, including that the White House tried to cut off the flow of evidence about Iran’s involvement to certain elements of the intelligence community.
Chief among the new evidence is a top-secret cable from summer 1999 showing that Mr. Clinton told Iran’s new and more moderate president at the time, Mohammad Khatami, that the U.S. believed Iran had participated in the Khobar Towers truck bombing.
“Message to President Khatami from President Clinton: The United States Government has received credible evidence that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. (IRGC) along with members of Lebanese and Saudi Hizballah were directly involved in the planning and execution of the terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia of the Khobar Towers military resident complex,” reads a declassified version of the cable obtained by the National Security Archives group.
“The United States views this in the gravest terms,” the cable added. “We acknowledge that the bombing occurred prior to your election. Those responsible, however, have yet to face justice for this crime. And the IRGC may be involved in planning for further terrorist attacks against American citizens. The involvement of the IRGC in terrorist activity and planning aboard remains a cause of deep concern to us.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Clinton declined to comment on the record for this story.
Today, there is little doubt in U.S. circles that Iran and its Saudi Hezbollah arm participated in the deadly Khobar Towers attack. Shortly after Mr. Clinton left office, an indictment was issued against Mr. Mughassil that cited the IRGC’s assistance. And in 2006 a federal judge ruled in a civil case brought by families of the Khobar victims that Iran was liable for hundreds of millions of dollars for its role in the attack.
The revelations about what Mr. Clinton knew about Iran’s involvement and what was kept from the public could have implications on the campaign trail for his wife Hillary’s emerging Iran policy. Seeking the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton has embraced the controversial nuclear deal she helped start with Iran as secretary of state but also declared she wouldn’t hesitate to use military force if Tehran cheats.
It was the specter of public pressure for such a military engagement, however, that concerned her husband’s White House after a link to Iran in the Khobar Towers case was established.
Former aides told The Times that Mr. Clinton originally ordered the military to create a contingency plan for a formidable retaliatory strike on Iran, and in 1997 gave permission to the CIA to conduct Operation Sapphire that disrupted the activities of Iranian intelligence officers in several countries.
But with the 1997 election bringing about a new moderate leadership in Tehran, Mr. Clinton tried instead to handle the matter privately in summer 1999, hoping that a new Iranian leader at the time would renounce terrorism and cooperate in the Khobar case after signaling a desire to moderate relations with America.
But Tehran responded with a harsh denial, backed by its more radical theocratic ruling elite, and it even threatened to make public the cable Mr. Clinton had sent the Iranian leader. At the same time, the Iranians also made clear in their response that they did not harbor ill will or intention against the United States at the present time.
The threat of going public alarmed top U.S. advisers, who feared the disclosure would lead to public pressure inside the United States to retaliate against Iran militarily or diplomatically, contemporaneous memos show.
“If the Iranians make good on their threats to release the text of our letter, we are going to face intense pressure to take action,” top aide Kenneth Pollack wrote in a Sept. 15, 1999, memo routed through White House aide Bruce Riedel to then-National Security Adviser Sandy Berger.
Mr. Riedel, who was instrumental in facilitating the top-secret cable to Iran, and Mr. Pollack are now both scholars at the Brookings Institution. They did not return calls and emails Monday seeking comment. But in his 2014 book, Mr. Pollack unequivocally linked the Khobar attack to Iran.
“The 1996 Khobar Towers blast was an Iranian response to an $18 million increase in the U.S. covert action budget against Iran in 1995,” Mr. Pollack wrote. “The Iranians apparently saw it as a declaration of covert war and may have destroyed the Khobar Towers complex as a way of warning the United States of the consequences of such a campaign.”
Flow of intel restricted
Former Clinton aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the evidence pointing to Iranian involvement had become substantial by 1999. Still, some in the administration worried it was not solid enough to warrant military action, and might have been exaggerated by Saudi Arabia and its Sunni-Shia rivalry with Iran. They argued that working for moderation with Mr. Khatami was a better alternative than blaming it for an attack that happened under an earlier regime, the former aides said.
Others believed there was little doubt Tehran was involved but worried about the American public’s appetite for a military action against Iran and the possibility it would unleash a wider terror war, the former aides explained.
Whatever the case, the White House opted to downplay the concerns, suggesting in public that the evidence linking Iran was “fragmentary” or uncertain. Behind the scenes, steps were also taken to restrict the flow of any further evidence that Iran assisted the Khobar attack, according to interviews with law enforcement and intelligence officials.
At the time, the FBI and the State Department’s intelligence arm were gathering significant new cooperation from Saudi authorities that pointed toward Iranian involvement. But suddenly the flow of information was stopped, officials told The Times.
“We were seeing a line of traffic that led us toward Iranian involvement, and suddenly that traffic was cut off,” recalled Wayne White, a career intelligence officer inside the State Department from 1979 to 2005 who served as deputy director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia.
Mr. White and other colleagues first disclosed the stopped flow of intelligence during an oral history project for a career diplomats group, and he agreed to recount the details to The Times. During the Clinton administration, his team was responsible for intelligence inside State for Iran, Iraq, the Middle East and North Africa, and was taking a lead role in the Khobar probe as well as evaluating other regional terrorism threats.
When the intelligence flow stopped on Iran’s involvement in Khobar, Mr. White said he made a “very heated demand up the chain of command.”
“We did not sit idly by and accept this,” he said in an interview. “When we found out we and the originating agency were being denied intelligence, we went upstairs to the front office to find out what was happening and to let them know we were outraged.”
Mr. White said his team tried several different ways to try to get intelligence flowing again, including seeking a deal to restrict the information to the secretary of state or a senior deputy. Eventually, he said, he learned the blockade had been ordered by Mr. Clinton’s top national security aide.
“We later found out the stream had been cut off by Sandy Berger, and the original agency producing the intelligence was struggling to work around the roadblock,” he said.
Mr. Berger, who later was convicted of trying to smuggle Clinton-era classified documents about terrorism out of the National Archives, now works for a consulting firm in Washington. His office said he was unavailable for comment.
Mr. White’s account was confirmed to The Times by foreign diplomats and several U.S. law enforcement officials with direct knowledge of the matter, including former FBI Director Freeh.
Mr. Freeh said when his agents returned from Saudi Arabia in 2000 with clear-cut statements from the co-conspirators about Iran’s involvement, he went to see Mr. Berger and was instructed not to disseminate the information.
“He asked, ‘Who knows about this?’ And I said, ‘Excuse me?’ ‘So, who knows about it?’ he says. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘the attorney general of the United States, me, you, about 50 FBI agents and the Saudi government,’” Mr. Freeh recalled.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s just hearsay.’ And I said, ‘Well, with all due respect, it’s not hearsay. It would be a statement by a co-conspirator in furtherance of a conspiracy and would come into court under the rules of evidence,’” he added.
Mr. Freeh said he first began encountering resistance to making a case against Iran when he first wanted to send the agents to Saudi Arabia a year earlier.
“What we were told by the Saudis was the only way that we can do this is if your president asks the king or the crown prince for this access,” he said. “And if so, we can probably deliver it at that level. But we can’t do it at your level.
“So we spent a number of months, more than a number of months, writing talking points for the president. We’d give them to Sandy Berger, and the president would then have whatever meetings he would have with the king or crown prince. And the word kept coming back to us that he never raised the talking points.
“I’d go back to the White House and say we are told the talking points, the requests, weren’t raised. And we would get a variety of different answers,” he continued. “But the bottom line was we couldn’t get the president to raise this. So what I did was I contacted former President George H.W. Bush. He had a very good relationship with the Saudis. I explained to him what my dilemma was and asked if he would contact the Saudis. And he did.”
Mr. Freeh said he witnessed another example of the Clinton administration showing deference to Iran that he feared risked national security.
“They were encouraging me not to do surveillances on the cultural teams and athletic teams that were starting to come in from Iran,” he said. “And I refused as director, saying we had good evidence that the Iranians had put their agents on these wrestling teams and they were coming into the U.S. to contact sources.”
Mr. White said his intelligence analysts didn’t want Iran to have been behind the Khobar Towers attack because it would have serious long-term ramifications for America. But once the evidence established a link, it was wrong for the information to be cut off for political reasons, he said.
“It polluted the entire intelligence process, which is not supposed to be interfered with in any way with political priorities,” he said. “You cannot provide your intelligence community selective intelligence without corrupting the process, and that was an outrage.”
Apolitical revolution is taking place in America. The process of selecting party presidential candidates has been transformed in the last two or three election cycles. Now we have the early debates designed to drive poll numbers and tell us who’s “ahead” and who’s “behind,” who’s “gaining” and who’s “dropping.” Yet not a single vote has been taken, not a single voter has pulled a lever in a voting booth or gone to a single caucus.
And yet candidates are being winnowed out. Take, for example, Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Is he out because he couldn’t get any voters to vote for him? No, few voters have even bothered to focus on the race thus far with any intensity, much less actually vote. It’s because his debate performances proved lackluster, which sent his poll numbers down, which led to a sharp decline in his ability to raise money. He lost in a contest that was extra-electoral.
So who’s running the show? First, the cable networks, which host and hawk the debates. Second, the campaign media, particularly the selfsame cable shows, that then go wild in their coverage and analysis of who won and lost. Third, the pollsters, who rush out to assess opinion in the wake of the debates, thus giving the impression that the race has actually begun when in fact their polls reflect nothing more than a “snapshot” look at political sentiment months before it actually congeals into something meaningful. Fourth, the money guys, who absorb all the drama perpetrated by the cable provocateurs, the political reporters and the pollsters, and then direct or withhold their dollars based on that superficial drama.
Is this not a push toward oligarchy? Here we have crucial matters of state, nothing less than the selection of our elected leaders, more and more residing in the hands of a well-positioned few who manage to influence the outcome, perhaps even effect an outcome, before the voters get into the game.
History tells us that, in the old days, these early polls often got superseded by actual political sentiment that emerged when the race finally began. Consider the view of the political pundits on Sen. John McCain’s chances of getting the GOP presidential nomination in the fall of 2007. The polls had him down, and hence the prevailing perception of punditry was that he was down for the count. I attended a weekend retreat of political pundits and campaign consultants during that season, and when we went around the table to venture our predictions on the nomination, only one person predicted Mr. McCain, and he worked for the guy. Those pundits and professionals were wrong because they based their predictions on early polls.
Four years earlier, in the fall of 2003, the polls and pundits told us the Democratic nominee would be former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. Not only did he lead in most polls, but he outpaced his party rivals in fundraising. And yet when Iowans marched to their caucuses the next January, he came in third. His campaign sputtered from there. Clearly, the emergence of actual voter sentiment doesn’t always follow those early polls.
And in the old days those poll numbers seldom set off a winnowing process. True, sometimes it would become clear to a candidate that his or her campaign was fundamentally a pretense. But cable didn’t play the role then that it does now; the polls, while taken seriously, didn’t drive the process as they do now; and the money guys were generally inclined to stay with their candidates until they could see what the voters would do. Hence, the voters still mattered.
They matter still today. But less than at any time in our history. Even when the nominees were selected by the so-called party bosses in smoke-filled rooms, and primaries were confined to just a few states, the role of the voters could be crucial. The bosses, in their wisdom, refrained from picking presidential candidates until they saw who could garner support in the primaries.
When John Kennedy ran against Hubert Humphrey for the 1960 Democratic nomination, he beat the Minnesotan in the Wisconsin primary. But his victory margin wasn’t sufficient to give the bosses, who dominated caucus and convention states, enough confidence they to award Kennedy the nomination. So the Massachusetts senator had do battle in West Virginia, a state that few expected to be hospitable to a Catholic. He won handily and that sealed the deal for him.
Thus, voter sentiment played a significant role even back then. And bear in mind that those party bosses in those back rooms put a lot more care into assessing the collective sentiment of the voters than Bill O’Reilly or Rachel Maddow do. For them, their own careers could crumble if they picked the wrong person. No such incentive animates those cable show hosts or their allies in the polling game.
Yes, Scott Walker’s campaign performance was lackluster, and perhaps that would have caught up with him when the voters finally stepped into voting booths. But a lot can happen between the autumn before the campaign year and the actual start of the campaign. Maybe Mr. Walker could have found his footing in time to impress voters and generate a surge. Perhaps not. But we’ll never know because he couldn’t get that far. The pre-voter winnowing defeated both him and the voters.
With the Governors Club members Scott Walker and Rick Perry gone, the bloated Republican presidential field is showing the inevitable signs of radical shrinkage by year’s end, with donors’ reluctance to bet on long shots.
A few more debates and some bad fundraising reports this fall almost certainly will winnow the field, veteran observers say.
“A number of candidates are having a hard time raising sufficient hard cash,” said former New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Steve Duprey, a member of the Republican National Committee’s governing body.
“I don’t see any of them following Walker and Rick Perry out of the race at this moment. But after a couple more debates, it’s entirely possible by year’s end more candidates will be forced to suspend their campaigns,” he said.
Added former Reagan White House official Mary Ann Meloy, a conservative activist from Pennsylvania: “It won’t surprise me if the field narrows to five or six or even four by the end of this year — it’s the money, or the lack of it, that will force so many out.”
The expectation that fundraising organizations would help keep what was once a field of 17 Republican candidates in the race for a long time was dispelled when Mr. Walker abruptly dropped out despite having a healthy super PAC behind him.
With the reality setting in that even the 15-candidate field is unsustainable, Republicans are beginning to contemplate what the Final Four might look like.
Here is a handicapping of who is up and down, and who might not be around by spring.
IN TROUBLE
Bobby Jindal
He can talk policy with the best of conservatives and has an impressive record in Louisiana, but Mr. Jindal just doesn’t seem to resonate as presidential material with rank-and-file primary voters. His parents are immigrants from India who retain their Hindu religion even though their son, the governor, became an evangelical Catholic in high school. He has always been a favorite of Republicans looking for someone who is smart, accomplished and conservative and reflects the diversity of America. But the only thing electric about him as a speaker is the microphone he’s holding.
“Why he’s not getting traction, honestly I don’t know,” said Louisiana Republican Party Chairman Roger Villere. “He’s kept taxes from rising, defunded Planned Parenthood in this state, changed ethics rules for the better, brought new businesses into Louisiana, led the nation on school choice — and on charter schools.”
Mr. Jindal seems stuck in low gear, registering no better than 4 percent in early-states polling.
Rand Paul
The latest fall for the senator from Kentucky was a big one. Ed Crane, a founder of the libertarian Cato Institute and of a super PAC backing Mr. Paul’s candidacy, has announced that he won’t ask major donors for more money because he can’t justify the appeal on behalf of a man whose commitments to a freedom-first, noninterventionist agenda he no longer trusts.
Time magazine once named Mr. Paul the most interesting man in politics. He went to Israel a few years ago to assure Israelis and their supporters in the United States that he wasn’t to be feared as a presidential contender. A straw poll winner for three years straight at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Paul, 52, was an early favorite, but the endorsement of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentucky Republican, has cost him dearly with many rank-and-file conservatives. His back-and-forth stands in an attempt to sound less doctrinaire than his libertarian father, former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, and his lack of personal warmth have pushed his support into the single digits. Fundraising bumps and an inner-circle gaps only add to his campaign’s woes.
Supporters have seen him waffle on some basics of libertarian conservatism. He told the Detroit Economics Club that he favors county-sized enterprise zones with tax breaks that direct capital to some businesses and away from others. He proposed what he styled as a flat, single-rate tax that turned out to be a single rate for individual incomes but a value-added tax for businesses, even though many on the right despise VATs as concealed licenses to raise taxes.
Mr. Paul, banking on the support of younger voters, is the only candidate prodigiously mining high schools and colleges for February’s first-in-the-nation contest in Iowa.
He has registered 4 percent in a recent Iowa poll, but supporters prefer to think it is actually 8 percent because surveys don’t normally sample people too young to be on voter registration lists.
Mike Huckabee
Polling in the early states in the middle to low single digits, the 60-year-old Mr. Huckabee has done it all before, having been a popular Arkansas governor, a Fox TV show host, a Baptist preacher, a winner of the 2008 Iowa presidential preference caucuses, a second-place finisher in the delegate count behind John McCain and a third-place finisher behind Mitt Romney in the popular vote. Some conservatives in past years labeled him soft on crime — as governor, he pardoned some convicted murderers — and soft on spending and tax restraint. He was the favorite of many evangelical conservatives for years, but they are dividing their vote this cycle mainly among Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. Some are staying with former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Mr. Paul and almost everyone else running.
George Pataki
As New York governor, Mr. Pataki, 70, never made a big splash. He has not held an elected office for almost a decade and has not made it on the radar screens of voters outside New York. His is not a name that falls readily from the lips of any conservatives anywhere in the U.S.
He can give a good, coherent speech but rarely generates sparks. He has barely registered in any polls anywhere. His popularity extends mainly to his family and friends.
Rick Santorum
At 57, Mr. Santorum has won a few races, getting elected to the House and then to two terms in the Senate from Pennsylvania. He finished second to Mitt Romney in the 2012 Republican presidential nomination contest and established himself as a full-menu religious conservative. He has barely registered in Iowa polls — though he won the caucuses four years ago — and he’s been virtually invisible in New Hampshire polls. He has competence and tenacity without dazzle on the stump. His shelf life for the race is considered somewhere between short and expired.
Lindsey Graham
A talented, knowledgeable hawk and superinterventionist, the 60-year-old senior senator from South Carolina is in the low-to-zero portion of the single-digit poll range in the early primary states. He got no lift out of his sharp-witted, entertaining performance in the undercard debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Sept. 16.
He has no political base to speak of and will make an undoubtedly graceful exit soon enough.
Jim Gilmore
Mr. Gilmore, 65, has more resume than performance to his credit and is polling below 1 percent in the early states. This is his second time around the GOP presidential nomination track. He’s not showing signs of improvement. More than intellectually competent in any debate on foreign policy, terrorism (he headed a presidential commission on the subject) and constitutionally protected freedoms, he conveys the gravitas but not the magnetism of a serious presidential contender.
ON THE BUBBLE
Jeb Bush
At 62, the former Florida governor has something of a Scott Walker problem — he isn’t turning out to look and talk like what voters remember when he was in Tallahassee and was thought to be the smartest of the Bush boys. Surprised and disappointed Republicans were saying similar things about Mr. Walker when he quit the contest Sept. 21.
Mr. Bush’s wake-me-when-it’s-my-turn performances on the debate stage and campaign stump and his massive campaign bureaucracy could sink this onetime favorite, but anyone who can raise more than $140 million can’t be counted out yet.
Despite Mr. Bush’s failing aspiration to be the Energizer Bunny, he has a huge advantage besides money. Two generations of voters will go to the polls in November 2016 having lived under at least one president named Bush. Having a third Bush at the nation’s helm will seem only natural and even comforting to many of them.
Rumors have it that even with all that advantage, Mr. Bush faces pressure to start producing in the polls lest major donors start looking elsewhere.
He has had a surprisingly difficult time deciding whether he wants to separate himself from his brother’s eight-year presidency and, if so, by how much. His latest take on all this is that the oceans of blood and trillions of dollars expended for the Iraq War were wrong not because regime change unleashed the bloodthirsty sectarianism now threatening the world but because there were no weapons of mass destruction buried in Baghdad bunkers after all. Regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan may have been unwise in retrospect, but, Mr. Bush notes, his brother did keep America safe.
John Kasich
Mr. Kasich, 63, was a House Budget Committee chairman who managed to bring smiles to liberals, moderates and conservatives. He supported President Clinton’s 1995 assault weapons ban that liberals and some moderates loved. He introduced a genuine welfare reform bill that Mr. Clinton finally signed that had moderates and conservatives beaming. In 1997, he made his biggest splash nationally as what he called the “architect” of a deal with Mr. Clinton that balanced the federal budget for the first time since 1969.
Though unpredictably prickly at times, Mr. Kasich is far more popular in Ohio than tough-guy Gov. Chris Christie is in New Jersey or than the union-slaying but sleepy-eyed Mr. Walker is in Wisconsin. Who cares? Ohio has been a make-or-break state in the general election. Conservatives are somewhere between skeptical and downright hostile to Mr. Kasich for stances such as support for Common Core education standards and agreeing to sales, cigarette and fracking taxes. His temper makes even those tempted to consider him as a vice presidential nominee worry that instead of bringing Ohio to the Republican Party, he would manage tick off enough leaners to sink the ticket in a close general election. He is averaging under 3 percent in Iowa and New Hampshire polls and under 4 percent in South Carolina.
Ted Cruz
Some people say that if you close your eyes and listen, Mr. Cruz, 44, sounds a bit like Ronald Reagan. But with eyes wide open, the senator from Texas seems too caustic and finger-waggingly preachy to be a Reagan replica. Glaringly missing is that all-important Reagan likability factor.
Mr. Cruz has gone to the mat for conservative principles since his arrival in the Senate in 2013. He has been able to do much of what Donald Trump so far can only promise to do. Yet Mr. Trump got instant traction while Mr. Cruz has been stuck in the middle-single-digit range in national polls. But Mr. Cruz has raised more money than most of his rivals. He knows the issues better than almost all of his rivals. Mr. Cruz takes on the fights over principle, but he doesn’t win. He hasn’t shown himself the successful dealmaker in legislating that The Donald has shown himself to be in business.
Apples and oranges? Yes. Who said life’s fair?
Chris Christie
Now 53, the former state’s attorney was for a few years a favorite of some conservatives and many middle-of-the-roaders for his pugilistic directness in speech and nose-punching in action toward teachers unions as governor of blue-state New Jersey. But his office’s ham-fisted retaliation against a Democratic mayor who failed to endorse Mr. Christie for re-election turned off a lot of his fellow Republicans and further convinced movement conservatives that he wasn’t one of them.
His ceiling in polls in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina has been 3 percent. As a presidential aspirant, he seems to have gravitas but more from build than presence. That leaves a lot of hill-climbing for Mr. Christie to do quickly before donors stop huffing and puffing with him.
THE PROJECTED FINAL FOUR
Donald Trump
The Great Deal Maker, 69, is included in the Final Four for all the unconventional reasons. He successfully defies conventional wisdom about who may run — and how — for the top office in the major leagues of politics. He started out with the name recognition of a big-time entertainer. He talks with supremely self-confident disjointedness and occasional non sequiturs that hit his more-scripted candidates just right.
He also has more money to spend in the expensive media markets of the biggest states than all the other candidates and their super PACs combined.
Mr. Trump is the toughest, most forthright candidate in the field on dealing with the millions of illegal immigrants in the United States and on virtually sealing the southwestern border. What makes him the weakest of the projected Final Four is the tarnishing of his image. He began what a few analysts thought would be a downward slide to oblivion when he apologized on the Reagan Library stage to Carly Fiorina for remarks critical of her looks.
On what he calls the “stupidity” of launching a war to remove Saddam Hussein in Iraq, his arguments are at least as firmly enunciated as those of Mr. Paul. The most-feared billionaire turned nonpolitician politician in America, Mr. Trump — even interviewers and news anchors revealingly use the honorific in front of his name — has begun talking more diplomatically in general, sounding to some perked-up ears like the scripted pol he had successfully ranted against.
But the latest polls suggest those who think the wheels have come off the Trumpmobile might want to think again.
Ben Carson
In the year of the anti-politician, a likable former pediatric neurosurgeon who can raise boatloads of money is likely to stick around, even if his policy pitches sound inexperienced and his stage presence at times seems sheepish alongside bigger personalities.
His popularity stems from his obvious intelligence and his ability to learn the crux of campaign issues quickly — but not thoroughly. He is new to the politics craft in a way Donald Trump is not. Mr. Trump dealt all his life with politicians — “buying” them and their favors as he puts it. Until recently, Mr. Carson has stuck to his Bible and to performing near miracles surgically on infant patients. He has disappointed some of his enthusiasts by retreating from or clarifying the clarification of a few of his more contested statements, including his disapproval of a Muslim as president.
A sizable number of the estimated 90 million or more evangelical Christians are predisposed to reject Mr. Carson because they see his Seventh-day Adventist faith as marginally Christian at best and a cult at worst. This is similar to the negative predisposition some evangelicals had toward former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012 for his adherence to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.
Carly Fiorina
The former Hewlett-Packard CEO, the most fluent and fluid of stump speakers in the Republican field, got the mother of all bounces in the Reagan Library debate by rocketing from low single digits to 15 percent in the CNN postdebate poll. That put her second only to Mr. Trump’s 24 percent score.
Ms. Fiorina has been talked about in the press and in political circles as likely to run circles around most of her rivals, including, eventually, The Donald. Though still in the low double digits to high single digits in Iowa and New Hampshire polling, she is expected to climb well into the double digits after the third Republican debate.
Commentators in both parties say she has already shown she has the right stuff when it come to intellect and style. Ms. Fiorina, 61, answers all questions without a pause, in complete, grammatically perfect sentences that contain facts and nuance.
A millionaire but far from a billionaire, she has kept her expenses to a minimum, with a staff of only about 20, though she is ramping up staff and spending now that she is in the top tier of the field.
Her sometimes stern, serious countenance and Iron Lady composure make her a potential American Margaret Thatcher, which many Republicans and independents say would fulfill their dreams that this nation finally elects a woman who can make it great again.
Marco Rubio
Mr. Rubio, 44, has lots going for him. He could satisfy the yearning of the Republican Party to attract the make-or-break Hispanic vote. He has never been shy about reminding audiences that his parents immigrated from Cuba.
(OK, Mexico might have been more electorally useful, but a pol’s parentage is what it is, and Mr. Rubio does speak Spanish.) Polls and focus groups are showing that he brings out the motherliness in female voters — a big, unalloyed plus. He talks like a man possessed of more than just a passing acquaintance with the issues that trouble America. But some think he sounds scripted, especially when he is teleprompting his wisdom and insights.
For all his youth and attractiveness, the senator from Florida is still polling in the middle single digits among likely Republican voters in early-state caucuses and primaries, and there are some vulnerabilities in his record.
“If he starts to gain traction, rivals will attack him over his misuse of that state GOP-issued American Express card when he was Florida House speaker,” said former Arizona Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen.
“He used the card many times for personal expenses instead of just party purposes and not just the one time he claimed,” Mr. Pullen said, nothing that former Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer went to the slammer for credit-card-related hanky-panky.
It is difficult for many of us to imagine having to choose between paying the rent on time or purchasing our sick child’s prescription medicine. But for many Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, circumstances like these are an all-too-familiar reality. For these individuals who are credit-constrained, payday loans provide a financial solution when emergencies or other unforeseen events arise.
I know how important these loans can be: I myself relied on a short-term loan to establish my first law practice. At the time, it was the only avenue available to me.
It is both because of my own personal experience, and because I understand that many Americans at times require access to small-dollar loans to make ends meet, that I firmly believe consumers must maintain access to regulated payday loans. To assume that those of us in Washington, the vast majority of whom have never faced a similar predicament, know which types of financial products best fit consumers’ needs is both patronizing and counterproductive.
The payday statute in my home state of Florida is among the most progressive and effective in the nation. In the 14 years since its enactment, payday lenders have undertaken radical reforms that encourage the responsible use of payday loans. Floridians who utilize the services of payday lenders are treated fairly and with dignity. Indeed, it has become a national example of the successful compromise between strong consumer protection and increased access to credit.
Florida’s law prohibits a borrower from taking out a second payday loan to cover the original loan, often termed as “rollovers,” and limits a customer to a single advance of $500 or less. Payday lenders must cap their interest fees at 10 percent of the original loan, with the loan ranging from 7 to 31 days. Most significantly, a statewide database was established to monitor the industry and those who take out loans. Finally, if a borrower cannot repay a loan, the law provides for a 60-day grace period, during which the consumer must take part in credit counseling and set up a repayment schedule.
In March, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it intends to implement rules to regulate payday lenders and other forms of short-term credit. The purpose of this regulation, CFPB asserts, is to eliminate “debt traps” by requiring lenders to ensure that customers can repay their loans through a variety of regulations.
While the CFPB has been consistent in its assurance that these new regulations will work in conjunction with existing state laws, the practical effect of such a regulatory framework will almost certainly result in a de facto prohibition on payday loans. To be sure, the commissioner of the Florida Office of Financial Regulation has, on numerous occasions, insisted that the cost of compliance with the CFPB’s proposed rules would far exceed any revenue received, rendering the service completely impractical. Credit reporting agencies and experts in the financial industry alike estimate that the implementation of the CFPB’s current proposals would put 70 percent of the industry out of business.
What, then, may we expect if a majority of those currently providing short-term, small-dollar loans are forced to close their doors? In Florida, thousands of jobs across the state will be lost. But perhaps even more discouraging, Floridians who use these services will be left with few legal options.
It is estimated that currently one in five households depend on payday loans and other forms of short-term credit to cover unexpected emergencies or ordinary living expenses. If we assume, as we must, that the principle of supply and demand will continue to hold true in the absence of payday loans, those same Americans will unquestionably be forced to turn to more costly and potentially unlicensed alternatives that are beyond the reach of regulators.
Several recent studies, including one conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, confirms this notion, finding that in states where payday loans are prohibited households bounce more checks, complain more to the Federal Trade Commission about lenders and debt collectors, and have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection at a higher rate. These statistics demonstrate what many of us already believe to be true — that a reduced payday credit supply results in increased credit problems — the exact phenomenon the CFPB seeks to avoid with its proposed rule.
Financial protection comes in many forms, and we must ensure that meaningful and robust safeguards exist to prevent predatory lending practices. However, the CFPB’s insistence on regulating payday loans to the point of near-extinction is not in the best interest of American consumers. Payday loans have served as a valuable safety net to countless individuals, and eliminating them outright would fail to provide financial protection to those who need it most.
Politicization — the shading of analysis to fit prevailing policy or politics — is the harshest criticism one can make of an intelligence organization. It strikes beyond questions of competence to the fundamental ethic of the enterprise, which is, or should be, truth telling. That’s why we had a permanent ombudsman to address politicization at the CIA.
Now some are charging U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, with politicizing its analysis of the war in Iraq and Syria.
I need to make clear that I know nothing of the particulars of that situation beyond what has been reported (or alleged) in publicly available press accounts. But those accounts raise serious questions, so I wanted to share a few thoughts on how folks might want to think about this.
First of all, dissenting analysts passionate about their positions are not unusual in the American intelligence community. Their presence — or even the rejection of their favored positions — is not prima face evidence of politicization. In fact, their presence is rather the norm — and that’s a good thing. I always had a few dissenters, no matter where I worked. Sometimes I agreed. Sometimes I didn’t.
We have seen the same kind of iconoclastic views at high policy levels. White House adviser Richard Clarke was famously insistent about the looming threat from al Qaeda in 2000-2001. Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith was equally insistent in 2002-2003 about an operational relationship between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government. Mr. Clarke was right, Mr. Feith was not.
Vice President Dick Cheney was more convinced of nuclear programs in Iraq and Syria than were many in the intelligence community. He was dead wrong about Iraq (as were many, myself included). He was dead right about Syria, though.
All this is to say that disagreements are not usually about intellect or moral worth. They’re more a reflection of just how tough some of these questions really are.
Beyond the assessment, there is an equally challenging dynamic in relaying intelligence judgments to policymakers when those judgments cut across preferred policy or political positions, something common enough that I gave it a name while I was in government: “the phenomenon of the unpleasant fact.”
I saw it in the George W. Bush administration as the analysis of what was going on in post-invasion Iraq moved from dead-enders, to insurgency, to civil war, to something even worse. Each change in analytic judgment prompted heartfelt, often emotional, sessions with policymakers, as we were no doubt making their days worse than they would otherwise be. But the tough dialogue eventually led to a change in policy and the decision to surge five more U.S. brigades into the fight.
Today’s challenge appears similar, except that the accusation now is that seniors in Central Command’s intelligence shop are overruling analysts and putting a happy face on the command’s progress against the Islamic State. And that, the argument goes, is designed to spare the Obama administration bad press and bad politics, not to mention the brutal necessity of reassessing a failed Middle East policy.
My experience has been that military assessments on “how goes the war” are consistently more optimistic than those made by the CIA and other agencies. That was certainly the case in Iraq, and it appears the Agency reprised the dynamic when it briefed newly arrived Director David H. Petraeus (fresh from command in Afghanistan) on its appreciation of the Afghan battlefield.
Most of the time when this happens, no one is attempting to mislead. It’s just an unhappy but predictable byproduct of the military giving itself a grade.
Take this example. During most of the war in Bosnia, NATO conducted something called Deny Flight, an alliance effort to keep the Bosnian Serb air force grounded. Lots of NATO resources went into this, but intelligence sometimes indicated that Serb aircraft had scooted from their bases for quick reconnaissance or ground attack missions. Of course, NATO operators were incredibly skeptical of such reporting when it popped up. They were being told they had failed. It got so bad that one officer told me that he had finally figured out what Deny Flight really meant: “The Serbs fly, and we deny it.”
That’s an argument for why you want more than just the local command assessing the situation. But you still want the local command’s view, too.
There have been charges that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has had an unusual amount of contact with Centcom’s intelligence chief, suggesting to some that President Obama’s senior intelligence adviser was pressuring the command to pretty up the analytic books. Knowing Jim Clapper, I seriously doubt that. And a claim that these “unusual” contacts are evidence of such a conspiracy betrays an ignorance of how intelligence works.
While at the CIA, I would routinely call my Baghdad or Kabul station chief before sprinting downtown for a meeting with the president or the National Security Council. I wasn’t leaning on them. Quite the opposite. I wanted the latest and I wanted it without bureaucratic filters. I suspect that Jim Clapper operates the same way.
So there may be less here than meets the eye or perhaps not. Press accounts suggest that dissent was not confined to a few analysts but was widespread. If true, that’s really troubling. Even when a chief of intelligence might not agree with his analysts’ body of work, he has a responsibility to pass it on.
At more than one NSC meeting I prefaced my remarks with phrases like, “Mr. President, my guys are a little more dark in their assessment on this than I am ” and I then proceeded to brief their views before I added my own. You owe that to a policymaker, and to your own people.
If the current investigation finds that darker views were indeed suppressed and unreported, the hammer should fall. And not just in Tampa. If charges are substantiated, everyone in the intelligence community will need to examine their conscience to see what they did to create a climate where someone could think that such behavior was acceptable.
And senior policymakers could stand some of the same soul-searching themselves.
The Dodd-Frank Act doesn’t address the principal causes of the financial crisis and Great Recession but it does suppress economic growth. If a Democrat wins the White House in 2016 it won’t be repealed. If however a Republican wins, repeal may be possible, which would take Washington regulatory mandarins’ boots off banks’ and the economy’s throats.
Certain conditions must be changed. The president must be committed to repeal. Joe and Sally Sixpack need to come to understand Dodd-Frank doesn’t address the cause of the financial crisis and puts a damper on economic growth. Greg Baer, the new president of the Clearing House Association, says banks need to restore their credibility with the public, but doesn’t go far enough. The demonized banking industry must make the case it is morally noble. That may jar some ears, but surely enabling retirees to earn a return on their savings and funding business expansion creating jobs and wealth, improving Americans’ quality of and opportunities in life is morally noble.
Republican presidential candidates have criticized Dodd-Frank. Sen. Ted Cruz promised outright repeal. During the August Fox Republican presidential debate Sen. Marco Rubio declared Dodd-Frank was “eviscerating small businesses and small banks,” and called for its repeal and replacement.
To achieve good policy Nobel-laureate Milton Friedman counseled it’s vital to establish a political climate of opinion making it “politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing” and warned if it wasn’t, “the right people will not do the right thing either.”
AEI’s Peter Wallison in “Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again” makes a cogent case that government-housing-finance policy was the principal cause of the financial crisis, the critical factor without which it wouldn’t have occurred. The Fed’s easy credit contributed, as did dumb regulation by the SEC requiring financial institutions to mark mortgage-backed securities to market when the market had frozen. Unfortunately however, the false narrative that Wall-Street buccaneers and insufficient regulation was the problem still reigns on Main Street.
America remains mired in an economic malaise. The 62.6 percent labor-force-participation rate is the lowest since 1977. Median income in 2013 was the lowest since 1995. The 63.4 percent home-ownership rate is the lowest since 1967. Yet voters know more about the New England Patriots’ deflated footballs than Dodd-Frank suppressing job and wealth creation. Investors’ Business Daily opined Dodd-Frank cost “millions of lost jobs, trillions of lost income and a crippled small-business sector.” Former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm noted if growth had just averaged previous post-WW2 recoveries there’d be 14.4 million more jobs and per capita income would be $6042 higher.
Dodd-Frank massively increased regulatory uncertainty and the costs of starting and running a bank, impairing credit and payment markets critical for economic growth. There were 1271 fewer commercial banks in March, 2015 than January, 2010. At the end of 2014 there were 304 fewer savings banks and 1281 fewer credit unions than at 2010’s outset. From January, 2010 through 2014 only six new commercial and one new savings banks were chartered. During the previous 25 years two and half thousand new banks were chartered.
Dodd-Frank undermines the rule of law. On its fifth anniversary DavisPolk reported 22,296 pages of Dodd-Frank-related rules have been published, 13,115 of which are final. The CFTC, SEC, FDIC, Fed, OCC and CFPB have issued 631 Dodd-Frank-related regulatory releases. Dodd-Frank is the administrative state on steroids. In “Is Administrative Law Unlawful?,” Columbia law professor Philip Hamburger makes a powerful argument it is.
Compliance costs are enormous. Citi estimated it spent $180 million in the second half of 2014 on the Fed’s stress tests alone. The greater cost however is management focused on serving their Washington overlords rather than on competing, innovating and delighting customers and shareholders.
Dodd-Frank’s vise on financial services is tightening. Its politburo, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, designated GE Capital, insurance carriers AIG, Prudential and MetLife and nine “financial market utilities” as systemically important and therefore subject to its prudential oversight. But even if large U.S. banks lost 100 percent of their exposure to MetLife, it wouldn’t exceed 2 percent of their capital. Mr. Wallison notes MetLife showed DOJ fines on giant banks were four times greater than the largest loss any would suffer from its meltdown, but they didn’t skip a beat.
With the possible exception of fossil fuels no industry does as much moral good as banking while being so vilified. On the other end of the continuum, the sacrosanct solar-and-wind-energy industry makes consumers poorer and businesses less competitive by boosting the cost of electricity. Yet the banking industry has been reluctant to make a righteous case against being treated as a public utility, on its behalf and of Americans suffering stagnant wages or unemployed or out of the labor force.
When tens of millions of average Americans understand banks do good and Dodd-Frank is a millstone around their necks and thus around the neck of the beleaguered economy, its repeal will be inevitable.
One candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination is not playing by the rules. He is rude and crude and having a very good time of it. Oh, and by the way, he is leading the field by a lot. He has 29 percent of the vote among Republicans, according to an NBC online survey the other day. His next closest opponent is Dr. Ben Carson with 14 percent and after that Carly Fiorina with 11 percent. Both, incidentally, are new to politics as is the target of the conservative intellectuals’ wrath, Donald Trump. Interestingly the intellectuals are markedly out of touch with the conservative rank and file.
Mr. Trump’s rambunctious presence in the race is responsible for a miracle. The conservative intellectuals have finally thrown in with the left intellectuals. Both disrelish Mr. Trump, and, if truth be known, they are not very happy with Dr. Carson or Mrs. Fiorina, who with Mr. Trump account for over 50 percent of the Republican vote. A year ago these three would be sitting in the politicians’ audience.
Meanwhile Mr. Trump is flying around the country having a great time discomfiting the intellectuals and gathering abundant support from conservative voters, independents, and even from the left. How is this happening? Well, Mr. Trump speaks boldly. He has taken the measure of the political class and finds it wanting. And he has identified issues that most of the other candidates are too timid to tackle. He is an optimist. Like Ronald Reagan he sees America as a shining city on a hill, and it does not make him wince. My guess is that Mr. Trump likes movies starring John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. He is a regular American.
The think tank eggheads bring to politics neatly tailored plans to address such problems as income distribution or the immigration conundrum. Mr. Trump clarifies issues. To income distribution he brings plans for economic growth and jobs. To the immigration question he identifies the problem. It is illegal immigration, and the illegals leap to supply him with evidence by murdering and raping the citizenry. Mr. Trump’s solution is to build a wall and to return the illegals. As for those immigrants who arrived here legally, they can continue to prosper. There is evidence the legals approve.
Aside from identifying and clarifying issues, Mr. Trump spots as issues matters that the establishment politicians hardly notice, for instance, political correctness. Somehow he has perceived that political correctness rankles average Americans. It angers them when political correctness intrudes into school curricula, political discourse, and how government treats its citizens. When Mr. Trump speaks out against it the ordinary American discovers that Mr. nTrump is their kind of guy. He is also their kind of guy when he speaks out against tax loopholes and for fairness in the tax code. Mr. Trump has his finger on the pulse of average Americans. His touch for markets that has made him billions he applies to finding constituencies, and it appears he has been brilliant at finding constituencies or, as he says, “The Silent Majority.” He, and for that matter the other late arrivals to politics Dr. Carson and Mrs. Fiorina, have caused anxiety in the establishments of both parties, to say nothing of the intellectuals.
How is it that Mr. Trump anticipates the issues better than the establishment politicians? Well, despite his fortune, Mr. Trump is a regular American. I think a lot of Americans recognize this. The best of America is like Mr. Trump, optimistic, self-confident, energetic, can-do, and they enjoy a good laugh. Mr. Trump has made running for political office fun again, much as Ronald Reagan made running for office fun again after the lugubrious Jimmy Carter. Reagan spoke of “Morning in America.” Mr. Trump has trademarked “Make America Great Again.”
How is Mr. Trump going to do when the voting begins? I can see him getting at a minimum 25 percent of the vote going into the convention, maybe more. It depends on his ability to develop an organization to get out the vote, his continued anticipation of issues, and his continued ability to address them boldly. If he succeeds, as I think he will, he will have a strong hand to play in the convention. I suspect his strongest opponent will be Jeb Bush, but Dr. Carson and Mrs. Fiorina will also be candidates to reckon with. Then the players will sit down and cut a deal, but remember they will be dealing with the billionaire who wrote “The Art of the Deal.” I am looking forward to an exciting summer in 2016.
TALLINN, Estonia.
Most Eastern European countries that were controlled by the communists have had successful political/economic transitions and are far more prosperous than they were two decades ago, but none has come as far as Estonia. The Estonians are closely related to the Finns, and their languages are close as well. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is only about 50 miles from Helsinki, the capital of Finland, and they are in commuting distance by hydrofoil across the Gulf of Finland.
Before the Soviet Union conquered Estonia in 1939, the Estonians and Finns had close to the same standard of living. But the Finns were able to maintain their freedom by conducting a vigorous defense against the Soviet invasion in 1939. The Finnish economy prospered after World War II, while the Estonian economy was destroyed by the Soviets. By 1987, it is estimated that the Finns were seven times richer per capita than the Estonians. But as a result of undertaking the most radical free-market reforms of any of the transition countries, the Estonians have been gaining on their Finnish neighbors, who also have continued to do well, and now have about two-thirds of the per capita income of the average Finn.
My first trip to Estonia came when it was still under Soviet occupation. Basic goods, including many foods, were scarce. Tallinn was a dangerous city after dark, as drunken bands of Russian soldiers wandered the streets taking whatever liberties they wished. The old town in Tallinn is one of the most picturesque medieval places on the planet, but the communists let it decay - like everything else they touched. I remember thinking, how glorious it would be if it were restored. Once property rights were re-established after the Estonian “singing revolution” and liberation more than 20 years ago, the old town was quickly restored and it is indeed glorious.
In 1992, a 32-year old historian by the name of Mart Laar became prime minister. As Mr. Laar often mentions, at the time he had only read one economics book and that was Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose.” He says, “It sounded good to me so we went ahead and did it.” Under Mr. Laar’s leadership, they did not diddle with reform, they went at it on all fronts full speed ahead - “shock therapy.” They re-established the rule of law, property rights and were serious about getting rid of corruption. They opened themselves to trade and privatized most of the economy. Also, they instituted a flat tax, which was quickly copied by many other countries, including Russia.
In 2004, Estonia joined the European Union and NATO, and it adopted the euro in January 2011, which, in retrospect, might have been a mistake, given the debt burdens of many of the euro economies.
As can be seen in the accompanying chart, the Estonians have done many things right, but still have some problems. Estonia is one of the most economically free countries in the world and it is easy to do business there. It has the lowest debt/GDP ratio in Europe and has maintained fiscally sound policies, unlike most countries, including the United States. It had a boom from 2003 to 2008 when the economy grew by more than 8 percent a year, but, like the U.S. and many other places, a property bubble developed and the crash of 2009 resulted in a sharp drop in gross domestic product and a huge increase in unemployment. The good news is Estonia is now back on a growth path and, unlike the U.S., Estonia is still following free-market principles and the expectation is it will soon recover its lost ground. It is a tribute to Mart Laar that during his two terms as prime minister (1992 to 1994 and 1999 to 2002) and in the years since, despite different parties controlling the government, the basic economic policies and freedoms that he had a major role in designing and implementing are still in place.
Estonia serves as an example - even for the United States - of what can be accomplished by keeping down deficits and debt, and utilizing a flat tax rather than a progressive income tax. The Estonians have also been the leaders in utilizing “e-government” whereby most government-citizen interactions are done over the Internet, which reduces both cost and bureaucracy. Every country could benefit from this Estonian innovation.
WARSAW, Poland — Thirty-five years ago it was a symbol of defiance of communist oppression. Fifteen years ago it appeared to be a victim of remorseless capitalist competition.
Today, the former Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, where a rebellious electrician named Lech Walesa and his fellow workers helped give birth to the Solidarity movement, is a symbol yet again, this time of a flourishing Polish shipbuilding industry that has survived and unexpectedly thrived in a brutally competitive industry.
After the collapse of Poland’s socialist economy following the dismantling of the Soviet empire 26 years ago, the Gdansk shipyards seemed on the brink of bankruptcy, technologically far behind rivals in Europe and Asia. But despite today’s sluggish global economy, Polish shipbuilders have hired thousands of employees in recent years, bringing the $2.6 billion industry’s workforce to around 31,500, according to the Association of Polish Maritime Industries.
“I have been working in a shipyard for the last three years,” said Adam Wojcik, a grinder in Crist Offshore, a Gdansk shipbuilder. “This is a tough and very tiring work but surprisingly rewarding. I have a contract with no end date, which is rare nowadays in Poland. I am planning to buy a car soon, and only part of it will be covered by credit.”
Driving the growth is worldwide demand for the advanced ships that Polish shipbuilders now produce. Eschewing container and tanker ships that inexpensive Asian workers produce en masse, Polish firms have focused on oil rigs, specialized cargo ships that carry wood, chemicals and wind turbines and advanced ship repairs.
“We moved from producing big numbers of ships of low market value to manufacturing complicated, technologically advanced vessels,” said Jerzy Czuczman, director of the Association of Polish Maritime Industries. “Diversification and specialization of production is our main advantage.”
It wasn’t always this way. The former Soviet Union once accounted for almost 60 percent of Polish ship sales. The collapse of communism in the early 1990s nearly destroyed the industry. The big facilities — the Lenin site was renamed as the Gdansk Shipyard — laid off thousands of workers, gutting a way of life in northern Poland.
The global financial crisis seven years ago was another shock, with shipbuilding employment reportedly falling by half in just a year as global demand withered. The crisis, incidentally, coincided with revelations that the Polish government was giving the shipyards subsidies that were illegal under European Union rules.
Those subsidies reflected how Warsaw wasn’t addressing the competitive marketplace in shipbuilding, said Jerzy Tabor, a lineman who lost his job in the Gdansk Shipyard in 2008.
“For many years no one cared about the shipyard — its technological development, the safety of workers, new customers,” said Mr. Tabor, who has since retired. “Our company could not compete with cheaper producers like China, and no one had any plan for competing with the West.
“Politicians were only promising a great future for us, but the truth is they did not care,” he added. “They were simply afraid we would go out in the streets if we knew how bad the situation was.”
Privatizing push
In recent years, however, the Polish government has privatized most of the shipyards, forcing them to become competitive or perish. Today they export around 90 percent of their products to clients around the world.
Remontowa Shipbuilding is one of the best examples of the transformation. Established in 1945 by the Polish government, its 8,000 workers generate $600 million annually under private management. The company’s Gdansk Ship Repair Yard is one of the biggest facilities of its kind in the world, specializing in ship conversions — turning a conventional tanker into a shuttle tanker, for example — as well as repairs and new builds, from Canadian ferries to buoy tenders in Britain.
Remontowa now reinvests 30 percent of its profits into research and development, said the company’s chief executive, Andrzej Wojtkiewicz.
“The philosophy of the company and the industry is to find niches in the market and find ideas how to fill them,” he said. “We do not want to compete with China. They specialize in producing large ships, with their main advantage being steel processing. We want our products to have high added value, like technologically advanced systems.”
Not all the old jobs have come back — in part a reflection of the more efficient, more focused operational approach. The Lenin Shipyards employed over 20,000 workers. Today the docks employ about 2,000 workers, and Gdansk city officials earlier this month signed an agreement to create a new modern art museum on a portion of the old shipyard grounds.
Still, specialization has reaped dividends. Polish shipyard companies generated around $3 per kilogram of materials in the 1990s, said Mr. Czuczman. Today, a kilogram represents around $15 in value after construction.
Other privately owned, niche-oriented Polish companies are also doing well these days. Stocznia Safe in nearby Gdynia built one of the first hybrid electric-diesel tugboats in the world. Marine Projects, based in Gdansk, specializes in luxury sailing and motor yachts, custom-built for individual customers, and Sunreef Yachts, also from Gdansk, is a world leader in luxury catamarans. Vistal from Gdynia built a smart bridge for Copenhagen that adjusts according to the force of the wind.
Growth has improved labor relations in Poland too. There are almost no strikes among shipyard workers these days.
“We used to be the loudest in expressing our demands, just after the coal miners,” said Piotr Raczak, who works as a welder in Remontowa Shipyard. “We have the work, and we get decent money.”
“Prospects for the future are good too — new contracts signed by the company assure us that our jobs are stable,” he added. “No one is talking about crisis anymore. The company is hiring, so people don’t need to search for work abroad.”
Not all the yards are experiencing success. Around 200 miles away from Gdansk, the shipyard in Szczecin bounced back from the collapse of communism, but then went bankrupt in 2002 and laid off 6,000 workers. The Polish government then renationalized the facilities. Today Szczecin is in the process of liquidation.
“The main problem lies in politics,” said Mr. Czuczman. “The managers were politically appointed and therefore care more about satisfying politicians than about bringing profits and winning new markets in the post-communism reality. The company’s assets were not used optimally.”
The government’s role in shipbuilding has always been a hot topic in Polish politics, from the days when Mr. Walesa, then a dissident trade union activist, was agitating against communist leaders on the docks in the 1980s, up to when he became the first directly elected Polish president.
In May, when he was a candidate running for office, President Andrzej Duda waded into debate over the shipyards, calling for the country to revamp the industry.
“A nation of 38 million, living in one of the largest European countries, with a long coastline, even for strategic reasons, cannot afford not building ships here at home,” Mr. Duda said last month at an event celebrating the anniversary of the Gdansk Agreement, a deal between protesting shipyard workers and the then-communist government that led to the creation of Solidarity on Sept. 17, 1980.
But shipyard managers said politicians like Mr. Duda can often misunderstand the market.
“If someone in Warsaw says that Poland does not build ships, that is true,” said Mr. Czuczman. “We do not build ships. We mainly produce vessels that are more advanced than ordinary ships. In the ‘90s, we sold tons of steel in the form of ships. That’s a thing of the past now.”
AUSTIN, Texas — On the morning of Oct. 18, 1962, 36 hours into the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA presented President John F. Kennedy with the sobering news that seven out of 12 potential Soviet launch sites in Cuba “now have missiles on launcher,” and at least some of them are “probably operational.”
That’s just one of the nuggets contained within a 19,000-page treasure trove of secret documents the CIA declassified on Wednesday, an unprecedented mass release of daily intelligence briefs the agency once crafted for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
The roughly 2,500 briefs, spanning from 1961 through 1969 and now publicly accessible and searchable on a CIA website, present an unparalleled window into the conclusions and inner workings of American intelligence in a bygone era.
But there is a catch: Some 20 percent of the material in the documents has been whited out — considered still too sensitive for public dissemination a half-century later.
Despite the passage of time, intelligence officials felt extensive redactions were necessary to protect “national security,” according to a CIA fact sheet. Even in the missile crisis brief given to Mr. Kennedy, chunks of information are missing.
The release was the highlight of a ceremony at the LBJ Presidential Library on Wednesday with CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper in attendance.
The material covers a momentous period that witnessed the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King, along with a string of international Cold War clashes from the standoff with the Soviet Union over Cuba to the Johnson administration’s struggles in the Vietnam War.
But the documents also run the geopolitical gamut — from India-China border violence to civil wars in Yemen and the Congo, the reign of Mao Zedong in China and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Six-Day War between Israel and Arab states.
Wednesday’s release includes the “President’s Intelligence Checklist,” typically an eight-page brief produced daily for President Kennedy and known in the intelligence community as the “Pickle” because of its acronym: PICL.
It was the precursor of the “President’s Daily Brief,” which the CIA began producing for President Johnson in 1964 and that the intelligence community continues to this day to produce, albeit in a revised digital format, for President Obama.
“The PDB is among the most highly classified documents in all of our government. It represents the intelligence community’s daily dialogue with the president in addressing the challenges and seizing the opportunities related to our national security,” Mr. Brennan said Wednesday. “For students of history, the declassified briefs will lend insight into why a president chooses one path over another when it comes to statecraft.”
President Kennedy’s assassination is barely mentioned, aside from one brief on Nov. 25, 1963 — just three days after he was shot in the head in Dallas. The brief alerts newly appointed President Johnson that “press stories to the effect that Lee Harvey Oswald recently visited Mexico City are true.”
Soviet obsession
The briefs portray the sheer level to which American intelligence officials were obsessed throughout the 1960s with countering the Soviet Union’s efforts to spread communism across the globe.
They offer a near-daily drumbeat examining internal workings of the Kremlin, the personalities of its leaders and its weapons deals with foreign nations from Indonesia to Latin America.
They paint a picture of a CIA with bugs and human sources deep inside the Soviet regime. In a pre-Internet age, and when even television was still a relatively new thing, the agency appeared to know almost every movement and statement of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
As President Johnson was informed in the brief for Dec. 9, 1963, “Khrushchev was still talking to the central committee plenum as of the time we went to press this morning.”
It was also a time before political correctness had seeped into the American lexicon, let alone the language used by the CIA briefers in their top-secret surveys.
Some of the PDBs are downright jocular. One from Nov. 17, 1966, highlighted by Mr. Brennan, refers to Ecuador’s then-provisional leader Otto Arosemena Gomez as a “high living, fifth-of-Scotch-a-day man.”
“Back then, articles were full of colorful language and personal asides that would never make it past a PDB editor today,” the CIA director said.
But the briefs also provided excruciatingly detailed and condensed analysis on potential threats to U.S. interests in almost every corner of the world.
In February 1962, President Kennedy was informed that Nasser, the leader of Egypt, was “promoting Middle East turbulence.”
“His incessant propaganda attacks on Saudi Arabia and Jordan during the past several months have begun to give them the jitters,” the assessment said.
A PDB from 1963 refers to Chinese attempts to urge the Soviet party to “get rid of Khrushchev.”
Another report details the coup that year in Syria and the role played in it by Hafez Assad, the father of current Syrian President Bashar Assad.
President Johnson was given intelligence on the Six-Day War between Israel and neighboring Egypt, Jordan and Syria. “Early this morning the Jordanian prime minister told our embassy that Israeli tanks were moving into northwestern Jordan,” stated one brief. “The ultimate aim of such a movement might be to attack Syria.”
But one of the largest enemy military campaigns of the Vietnam War — the Tet Offensive — carried on for a full five days before President Johnson was told “there are signs that the enemy intends to conduct a prolonged offensive against the major population centers.”
Mr. Brennan acknowledged Wednesday that the “CIA missed some important calls,” most notably the severity of the Tet Offensive.
At the same time, he asserted, “Just as collecting intelligence often requires physical courage, reporting it requires intellectual courage — the proverbial ability to speak truth to power, and that quality shows in the agency’s coverage of the conflict that overshadowed all others of the era — Vietnam.”
Still keeping secrets
However, such nuances may be lost in the large number of redactions intelligence officials made before making the PDBs public. Agency officials declined to comment on the reasoning behind the whited-out sections.
The sense among former intelligence officials is that sources and secret information-gathering techniques remain sensitive despite the passage of time — even decades later.
The CIA apparently determined that the 1960s material contained nuggets that might reveal sources in a way that could still endanger individuals who once worked with the agency overseas — or hurt ongoing U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts.
“The kind of stuff they redacted is typically the sourcing information,” said Paul D. Miller, a former CIA analyst who now serves as associate director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Clements Center for History, Strategy and Statecraft.
“When I was writing PDBs, I might say a head of state in some part of the world is considering starting a war, according to such-and-such a source. Well, that may be redacted from these documents because [CIA officials] don’t want to tip their hand on how we get our information.”
“There’s no reason to make it easier for Russian intelligence officials reading these documents to figure out how we spied on them back then, which is oftentimes the same way we spy on them today,” Mr. Miller said.
That being said, intelligence officials have promoted the release as an example of a shift toward much needed “transparency” within the U.S. government. President Obama said he would push hard for such a shift during his time in the White House — an era that has seen widespread criticism that the U.S. government classifies far too much material for far too long.
A CIA fact sheet noted Mr. Obama’s signing of a 2009 executive order calling for all classified material to “undergo declassification review and release after 25 years.”
One prominent example of redaction involves the death of leftist South American revolutionary and longtime Fidel Castro confidant Ernesto “Che” Guevara, long believed to have been the target of a 1967 CIA assassination plot in Bolivia.
Guevara’s name appears in no less than 43 separate briefs. One in May 1967, five months before his death, states: “‘Che’ Guevara, Castro’s will-o’-the wisp guerrilla theoretician who disappeared from the Cuban scene in 1965, may be with the guerrillas in southeast Bolivia.”
A roughly seven-line section is then redacted. And the next reference to Guevara, on Oct. 14, 1967, is nearly entirely redacted. What is left on the page states: “Fingerprints taken from the body of ‘Che’ Guevara … [whited out section] … confirm that the slain leader was indeed Guevara.”
A week later, the following assessment is given: “Reports are filtering in on the reaction of Latin American radical leftists to ‘Che’ Guevara’s death. These reinforce our view that Guevara’s fate was the sharpest psychological blow ever suffered by Castro’s guerrilla warfare program in the hemisphere.”
“Extremists are disheartened and the Moscow-line parties now have effective new ammunition for arguing against the Castro guerrilla warfare line. The defeat in Bolivia comes at a time when rebel groups in Venezuela, Colombia and Guatemala are also suffering reverses at the hands of the military. Nothing we have seen, however, suggests that Castro has any intention of discontinuing his efforts to export revolution.”
The globalists have a problem: They want money, lots of it. And they want the prosperous nations to give it to them so they can redistribute it to poor nations. That would make the world “fair.” But how can the prosperous be separated from their wealth?
They start with the belief that nature is good because it is, well natural. Humans, though natural, are unnaturally nasty, who scrape away the forests and meadows to build towns and cities, and even kill their own kind when they get in the way. Armed with a philosophy that favors the environment, or environmentalism, the globalists have done a pretty good job of persuading people that some countries have prospered by driving their gasoline-powered machines all over creation, releasing greenhouse gases that put rich and poor alike in danger from global warming. The prosperous must be stripped of their earned income.
In December, nearly 200 nations will meet in Paris to complete details of the globalists’ holy grail: the Green Climate Fund, which they expect to collect $100 billion a year from developed nations by 2020 to help wean the worldwide victims of unrestrained development of fossil fuels. This will be the most successful robbery since the Jesse James gang made life miserable for the railroads of Missouri.
Only $10.2 billion has been pledged during the past year, leading such thinkers of big ideas as economist Jeffrey Sachs of Wall Street to complain, “The rich countries are completely irresponsible in not laying out what is in that $100 billion; they want to count everything in it whether it’s publicly provided or from the private sector.” Every taxpayer knows there is no reward for paying more than what’s owed.
Neither are there kudos for the victim of scams, and the schemes to punish the purveyors of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel are fraught with fraud. Russia and Ukraine are suspected of selling bogus credits for 600 million tons worth of carbon-dioxide emissions on the European Union Emissions Trading System, according to the Stockholm Environment Institute. Europe’s cap-and-trade system obligates electric utilities to either reduce their emissions or purchase credits from other producers. Verification of reductions has been lax, enabling companies to falsely claim clean-energy progress and sell their credits. Fraudsters have hacked the EU’s online emissions marketplace, and in 2011 collected $41 million in undeserved credits.
If Europe’s dodgy carbon taxing scheme provides a juicy target for chicanery, the U.N.’s $100 billion Green Climate Fund is likely to attract more treasure hunters than seekers of the crown jewels of England. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has a hard time keeping a straight face dispensing high-minded nonsense to hector nations to chip in.
It’s not at all clear that the U.N.’s grand plan to restrain greenhouse gases will make a substantial impact on the actual climate. The Cato Institute observes that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that “the economic compliance costs of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius would likely be higher than the climate change damages that such a cap would avoid.”
Thus the U.N.’s own findings show that aggressive emission cutbacks — even if achieved through an “efficient” carbon tax — would probably cause more harm than good. President Obama intends to commit the United States to reducing its greenhouse gases to a level 32 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2030, and paying its “fair share” into the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund. This will require fleecing the Americans. Nobody knows how to do that like the con artists at the U.N.
As Saudi Arabia faces mounting criticism for refusing to take in any of the millions of Syrians fleeing conflict in their homeland, it was revealed this weekend that the country has over 100,000 empty, air-conditioned tents that could house up to 3 million refugees.
The tents, located roughly 2,150 miles from Syria in the city of Mina, are only used a few days a year to house pilgrims on their way to Mecca for the hajj, the news station TeleSUR reported.
The huge tents are also fireproof and equipped with kitchen and bathroom facilities.
But while Europe struggles to find space to take in the millions of asylum seekers making the perilous journey there, Saudi Arabia has been largely unresponsive to the crisis.
According to the to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are about 500,000 Syrians living in Saudi Arabia, but they are not classified as asylum seekers and it is not known when they arrived in the country.
Other reports indicate that Saudi Arabia has not taken in any new refugees, along with Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
No Gulf country has signed the U.N. Convention on Refugees, an accord standardizing the level of treatment of people fleeing to new countries.
Saudi authorities insist they had done all they can to support refugees by allowing them residency in the country, but say they do not brag about their support to the media.
“[The kingdom] was keep to not deal with them as refugees or to put them in refugee camps,” said one Saudi spokesman Friday, Reuters reported, adding they did so to “preserve their dignity and safety and gave them complete freedom of movement.”
The representative added that Saudi Arabia has given $700 million in humanitarian aid to Syrians.
Last week Saudi officials offered to build 200 new mosques in Germany to accommodate Muslim refugees.
The latest undercover pro-life video on Planned Parenthood captures officials discussing ways in which they keep fetal-tissue operations out of sight, due to fears of scandal and “headlines.”
“Obviously, we would have the potential for a huge P.R. issue in doing this,” Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, senior medical adviser for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said referring to fetal-tissue operations, on the 10th undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress.
Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president of external medical affairs, urged the undercover videographers, who posed as biotech officials seeking to procure fetal tissue for researchers, to pay attention to the way the issue is handled.
“This could destroy your organization and us, if we don’t time those conversations correctly,” Dr. Cullins said.
The videos, designated a citizen journalist project named “Human Capital,” seek to blow the whistle on a secretive but longtime practice in which abortion clinics harvest and distribute fetal body parts for research.
In the 10th video, released Tuesday, Deborah VanDerhei, national director for the Consortium of Abortion Providers at Planned Parenthood, said the abortion industry has been trying to figure out “how we’re going to manage remuneration,” due to the potential for scandal.
“The headlines would be a disaster,” Ms. VanDerHei said.
She also noted that fetal-parts operations are not unusual, and that Planned Parenthood has “independent colleagues who generate a fair amount of income doing this.”
Pro-life critics say Planned Parenthood is profiting by selling the parts — and congressional panels, as well as several states, are investigating these charges.
On Tuesday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a subpoena to the Center for Medical Progress, asking for “all unedited video footage in their possession, relating to the acquisition, preparation and sale of fetal tissue.”
“This subpoena is a demand for transparency,” Mr. Chaffetz said, noting that Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation (NAF) have acted to block release of the videos.
Vicki Saporta, president of the NAF, has told reporters that since the video “smear campaign” began in July, anti-abortion hate speech, threats and criminal activity has escalated, and her organization is seeking law-enforcement help to prevent violence at clinics.
Planned Parenthood and other officials have publicly lambasted the Center for Medical Progress as having released deceptive videos that are “heavily edited” to omit exculpatory comments by officials.
A group of House Democrats say they have investigated the matter, and found no wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood.
However, a House committee has held its first hearing into the videos and fetal-tissue operations, and several more committees in the House and Senate are investigating the issue.
It is legal to donate fetal tissue to research with the pregnant woman’s consent, and recompense is permitted for certain necessary service costs.
Pro-life groups say the videos show that consent is not obtained properly, that human tissue is sold, abortions are illegally manipulated to get the best “specimens,” and illegal partial-birth abortion procedures appear to be used to get “intact” fetuses and their brains.
In the 10th video, several Planned Parenthood officials agreed that there were no written guidelines or policies about fetal-tissue operations, and that discussions about it would be done in conversations, not by email, to avoid a written trail.
Comments like these prompted David Daleiden, project leader of the Center for Medical Progress, to conclude that the abortion giant seeks to cover up its practices.
“From email black-outs to contorted oxymorons like ‘donation for remuneration,’ the lengths to which Planned Parenthood leadership will go to cover-up their illegal sale of aborted baby parts are nothing less than the desperation of a guilty conscience,” Mr. Daleiden said Tuesday.
Separately, a new CNN/ORC poll found that most Americans want a government-spending bill passed this month and do not support shutting down the government over Planned Parenthood funding.
Some 40 members of the House have signed a pledge not to approve any spending bill that includes funding for Planned Parenthood, which currently receives some $528 million in public money from all levels of government.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has announced his intent to disregard the best professional advice of the Marine Corps. It’s not on a minor issue, like buying helicopters. This is about “gender diversity” mandates that could cost lives in land combat missions involving national security.
In 2012, the Marines initiated scientific research on the physical and operational consequences of assigning women to combat arms units such as infantry, armor, artillery and Special Operations Forces. At the point of the bayonet, these units attack the enemy with deliberate offensive action.
Hundreds of male and female Marines volunteered for nine months of tests with the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force. During field exercises simulating ground combat, University of Pittsburgh experts used body-monitoring and other scientific methods to gather empirical data reflecting actual experience, not theory.
A recently released summary reported that all-male task force teams outperformed their mixed-gender counterparts in 69 percent (93 of 134) ground combat tasks. For Mr. Mabus, however, facts stop being facts when they aren’t politically correct.
Apparently, Mr. Mabus doesn’t care whether physical differences were more pronounced in “specialties that carried the assault load plus the additional weight of crew-served weapons and ammunition.” Individual combat arms soldiers often carry burdens exceeding 100 pounds on their backs.
None of this matters to “gender diversity” advocates whose priorities differ from the task force’s primary consideration: “combat effectiveness of Marine ground combat units.” As the report states, factors such as “speed and tempo, lethality, readiness, survivability, and cohesion [are] critical components to fighting and winning in direct ground combat.”
In this environment, “speed is a weapon.” It matters, therefore, that “All-male infantry crew-served weapons teams engaged targets quicker and registered more hits on target as compared to gender-integrated [counterparts.]”
These findings reinforce a report that the British Ministry of Defense produced last December. British gender-integration research pointed to “a reduced lethality rate [among women], in that combat marksmanship degrades as a result of fatigue when the combat load increases in proportion to body weight and strength.”
Because men have 10 times more androgenic hormones, which determine muscle size and power, not a single study has shown that training can overcome significant load-carriage and endurance gaps between men and women. Lives and missions depend on these factors.
The Marines’ second research consideration was the health and welfare of each individual. Debilitating injuries detract from career success as well as combat effectiveness. It matters, therefore, that during the task force assessment, women’s musculoskeletal injury rates were more than double those of men (40.5 percent and 18.8 percent, respectively).
These findings mirror Army Medical Command data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. In tests with artillery and armor units in 2013, and basic combat training since 2010, women’s injury rates averaged twice those of men.
The task force summary reports that in earlier tests at the Marine Corps’ Infantry Training Battalion for enlisted personnel, females were injured at more than six times the rate of their male counterparts. Do we really need to increase the number of female disabled veterans?
Only two women out of two-dozen completed task force infantry exercises. Comparable attrition during a war, plus predictable medical conditions and pregnancy, would leave fighting units short-handed, dangerously exposed to hostile fire, and less capable of taking the fight to the enemy.
Mr. Mabus can’t handle these truths. Failing to recognize irony in his insult, Mr. Mabus criticized male Marines for “presupposing” the outcome of the study. Perhaps the secretary did not get the memo from Marine Lance Cpl. Chris Augello.
According to Marine Corps Times, Cpl. Augello started out believing that women should get a shot at the infantry if they could meet existing standards. Months later, Cpl. Augello submitted to officials a 13-page memo explaining why he changed his mind.
In his light armored vehicle platoon, Cpl. Augello reported that discipline broke down, noncommissioned officers hesitated to hurt junior women’s feelings with corrections, and male-female emotional entanglements were distracting. Others reported resentment of perceived unequal treatment, which broke down unit cohesion.
While rescuing a 200-pound “casualty” out of a vehicle turret, Cpl. Augello injured his back compensating for smaller-framed, less-capable women. A four-woman team struggled but failed to move the heavy dummy. When Cpl. Augello was paired with a short male Marine smaller than some women, the man’s inherent muscle strength made a significant difference.
Cpl. Augelo concluded that the “female variable in this social experiment has wrought a fundamental change [that is] sadly for the worse, not the better.”
Two female soldiers who recently passed Ranger School deserve respect, but their success does not cancel voluminous Marine research from boot camp to the elite infantry officer course. Critics demand analysis of individual capabilities, but Marine Training and Education Command already conducted “proxy tests” during 2013. Twenty-eight percent of women, compared to 1 percent of men, could not lift a 95-pound artillery round and carry it 50 meters in two minutes.
Would Mr. Mabus order Navy SEALs to conduct HALO (high-altitude, low-opening) missions with parachutes known to fail 28 percent of the time? If not, Mr. Mabus and other policymakers should stop putting defense of a political position ahead of defense of our country.
U.S. companies that benefited from more than $65 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees have kept nearly $458 billion in profits offshore — avoiding paying billions in taxes to the government that helps them sell their goods overseas at a competitive rate, a Watchdog.org investigation found.
The tabulation was computed by Watchdog.org using a variety of databases from the Export-Import Bank, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and through corporate filings. The research concluded 50 companies made billions of dollars in exports using bank guarantees yet kept nearly half a trillion dollars offshore and away from the Internal Revenue Service.
The offshore proceeds of the companies benefiting from the bank, if taxed at the 35 percent corporate tax, would have contributed as much as $160 billion to U.S. coffers between 2012 and 2014, the analysis shows.
Matt Gardner, the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said companies that are both benefiting from federally backed loans and who are keeping some of their profits offshore are shortchanging U.S. taxpayers.
“It’s pretty ludicrous that the federal government would subsidize any company engaging in this kind of tax avoidance,” he said. “But it’s not surprising, because the way the federal government and Congress spend money and conduct the tax system are basically disconnected. They don’t talk to each other.”
The 71-year-old Ex-Im Bank mostly guarantees loans for private lenders or government borrowers for foreign entities who want to buy products built in the United States. Many U.S. companies benefit from these loans because its their products being purchased by these entities with the government’s help, but the bank’s future is in doubt as congressional opponents on Capitol Hill accuse it of practicing “corporate welfare” and have vowed to block its lapsed reauthorization this fall.
U.S. companies don’t always return the favor to the U.S. government when helped by the bank. At least some of what they earn offshore they keep offshore.
General Electric Co. and its subsidiaries exported nearly $5 billion worth of products since 2006 using Ex-Im guarantees. In the past three years, the company has kept nearly $120 billion in profits offshore, corporate records and the ITEP database show. That’s more than twice as much deferred taxes as any other company that received Ex-Im guarantees, databases show.
General Electric spokeswoman Meghan Thurlow declined an interview request but provided a statement, saying the company pays $1 billion in federal, state and local taxes as well as U.S. income taxes.
“We support corporate tax reform, even if that means higher taxes for GE, and support renewing the U.S. Export-Import Bank because both will help us compete around the world and create more jobs at home,” the statement said.
However, an analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission records by Citizens for Tax Justice, an advocacy and lobbying think tank, determined GE’s effective state income tax rate was less than 2 percent over the past five years, with no state taxes paid in 2010 and 2014.
In another example, Boeing Co., the largest U.S. exporter of manufactured products, received $57 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees since 2006, but has kept $800 million in corporate funds offshore, avoiding U.S. taxes.
Boeing spokesman Tim Neale said the company isn’t improperly dodging U.S. taxes.
“The $800 million you asked about represents the total accumulated earnings of Boeing-owned subsidiaries in several other countries,” he wrote in an email. “We have not repatriated the earnings (and therefore paid U.S. taxes on them) because we have, or soon expect to, reinvest the money in the subsidiaries that earned these profits.”
But ITEP’s Mr. Gardner argues those profits should be repatriated, taxed by the IRS, then used to invest.
“There’s a degree of a double standard when it comes to corporate welfare,” Mr. Gardner said, adding Ex-Im Bank is just one of several government programs where companies have benefited by keeping their profits abroad. “Why aren’t the people who are critics of subsidies also asking the same tough questions of [these] lavish giveaways?”
Many beneficiaries
GE and Boeing aren’t isolated examples.
Exxon-Mobil and its subsidiaries exported $2.5 billion using Ex-Im Bank guarantees but kept $51 billion offshore. Caterpillar benefits from $1 billion in taxpayer guarantees but made sure $18 billion was offshore and not subject to U.S. coffers.
Caterpillar declined to comment.
Exxon is one of the largest taxpayers in the United States, and the company doesn’t expect a significant tax savings from its offshore proceeds, said spokesman Scott Silvestri.
–ExxonMobil strictly follows all applicable regulations and laws and is current on all tax returns and payments,” he wrote in an email exchange, adding that included sales, property and income taxes. “Over the past five years (2010 to 2014), the company’s total U.S. tax expense was $54 billion, which is $8.8 billion more than the company earned in the U.S. during the same period.”
Ex-Im Bank spokesman Lawton King declined to comment on how some U.S. companies that benefit from the bank loans also are shielding corporate proceeds from the IRS.
While ITEP’s Mr. Gardner suggested crony capitalism may be to blame, other experts say the United States corporate tax system is to blame for inducing companies not to repatriate their earnings. It’s cheaper to keep proceeds overseas where corporate tax rates can be a third or less of the 35 percent U.S. corporate tax rate.
“Companies would love to bring back some of this money, quite frankly, but it’s just too expensive,” said Sharon Lassar, a professor in the accounting school at University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. “That’s a lot of tax to be paid just to get use of your income when you’re a global company, and there are other places you could use that income.”
Diane Katz, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation who studies the Ex-Im Bank, said it’s not clear the money these companies generate offshore is directly tied to Ex-Im loan guarantees, weakening the crony capitalism arguments. Additionally, because these offshore funds are often reinvested, the American worker may still ultimately benefit.
The funds are “being put to use,” Ms. Katz said. Corporations “don’t just sit on it. They want the money to work by reinvesting in operations, and there is a benefit to the U.S. or they repatriate it.”
Ex-Im Bank’s Mr. King said U.S. taxpayers are not bearing the costs of the Ex-Im Bank guarantees.
“First thing — it’s not a subsidy, and we charge for it,” he said in a brief phone exchange. “That’s why the bank turns a profit.”
Bank officials tout that Ex-Im has had annual surpluses since 2008 and contributed $675 million to the U.S. Treasury last year.
Budgeting battle
But like much of the budgeting in Washington, D.C., it gets complicated.
The Congressional Budget Office contends the Ex-Im Bank’s surpluses are the result of the accounting method the bank uses and would disappear — or require a taxpayer subsidy — if the bank used a more appropriate accounting standard.
The bank’s own accounting projects a surplus of about $14 billion through the next decade. However, former CBO director Douglas W. Elmendorf told Congress last year that the Ex-Im Bank will more likely lose $2 billion in the same period using the CBO’s method of accounting.
Ex-Im Bank has been a source of controversy this summer, opening a rift between tea party-backed Republicans who are fighting to close the bank and establishment Republicans who say Ex-Im helps keep U.S. companies competitive in the global economy.
Major business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, are strong backers of the bank, saying the country’s biggest trading rivals offer the same kinds of subsidized financing to their companies.
The House blocked reauthorization this summer, which stopped any new loan guarantees. But the bank retained enough funding to continue basic operations.
Traffic congestion is the dark lining of the silver cloud of prosperity. There’s good news and bad news for commuters trying to navigate the tangled web of overflowing highways in Los Angeles. The good news, misleading as it may be, is that L.A., the city that first struck up a love affair with the automobile, no longer has the worst traffic congestion in the nation. The bad news is that L.A. seems determined to recapture that dreadful honor. The euphoria of mild weather and extreme politics has a dizzying effect.
Washington has displaced Los Angeles as the city with the longest commutes, according to Texas A&M Transportation Institute and Inrix, a travel information firm. The nation’s capital tallied an average traffic delay of 82 hours per commuter per year, nosing out L.A. by two finger-drumming hours. For commuters in the outer suburbs, the figure is twice or three times that. It’s the price Washingtonians pay for deliberately limiting access to the expressways.
The Los Angeles City Council has approved a plan to transform hundreds of miles of automobile traffic lanes into bus lanes and bicycle paths. Mobility Plan 2035 is touted as a strategy for encouraging residents to forsake their cars and learn to love public transportation. Given the barely bearable condition of the L.A. daily grind, the council appears to be throwing in with the green fanatics who intend to eliminate the ability of plain folks to go where they want to go, and do what they want to do, in their gasoline-powered cars.
In a city of 500 square miles, a bicycle has its limits, even if, as they usually do, the bicyclists breeze through red lights and ignore stop signs. (Just watch them.) Not everyone is fit enough to power through an hour or so of cycling, morning and evening, especially during the summer sizzle. As more lanes are designated off-limits to drivers, the streets and roads will become jammed and cars will become immovable objects. “What they’re trying to do is make congestion so bad, you’ll have to get out of your car,” an Angeleno tells the Los Angeles Times. With the price of gasoline a dollar a gallon above the national average, California motorists are stuck between a truck and a hard place.
Washington’s streetcars, a throwback mode of public transportation that once stitched the city together seamlessly, disappeared in 1962, and are trying to make a comeback. Buying modern streetcars and laying the rails has cost the city $200 million so far, and the fare boxes are expected to collect only about $500,000 a year when the streetcars finally roll.
Transportation engineers envision the day when self-driving cars and trucks take over streets, and traffic flows like a light pancake syrup instead of the sorghum molasses that makes traffic stick together now. But there’s always a dark side to technology, and a software scientist has demonstrated how a computer-guided car can be disabled with a $60 homemade laser device. The gadget creates false images of obstacles in the path of the car, forcing it to stop. With cities competing to devise the worst solutions for gridlock, a genius may yet be driven to invent a device that commuters can point to a car ahead — perhaps adorned with the bumper-sticker that boasts “I may be slow but I’m ahead of you” — and make it vanish. That’ll be the day.
Despite the saga over Hillary Clinton’s emails, Donald Trump’s sprint to front-runner status in the Republican presidential race and some interesting pennant races, the news this summer has never drifted far from the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
That’s because it’s a big deal. And a tough one to assess.
I’ve worked hard not to be reflexive about that assessment. Even when I’ve been critical, I’ve allowed that I know how hard this issue really is.
Over the past several weeks my personal thoughts and emotions about the deal have been sorting themselves out through a three-step process: first anger, which admittedly still lingers; then recognition, the product of assessing domestic and global political realities; and finally determination, a less emotional and more reasoned calculus on a way forward.
That’s a lot for one column, so let me take these three stages one at a time.
ANGER
Today, anger, and that’s anger over both process and substance.
First, there was blatant (and conscious) overpromising by President Obama’s administration. We were going to substantially dismantle the Iranian nuclear program. The hardened centrifuge facility at Fordow and the plutonium reactor at Arak had no place in a peaceful nuclear program. No deal could be considered effective without including Iran’s nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. The Iranians would have to come clean about their past efforts to actually craft a bomb. Inspections would be anywhere, anytime.
These positions kept potential critics at bay during the negotiations, but their hedging or outright exclusion in the final agreement created a maddening gap between promise and performance.
Then, beyond these headlines, there was the fine print of the agreement and some sidebar arrangements, which have been trickling out as the minutiae of the deal have been studied and dissected. I must admit that I wasn’t prepared for a U.S. promise to help the Iranians produce nuclear fuel or to protect the Iranian nuclear program against third-party sabotage. Color me surprised, too, for the late insertion of ballistic missiles into the agreement, not as a way to limit Iran’s nuclear delivery systems, but to end sanctions and limits on Tehran’s missile development program. Ditto the lifting of the embargo on conventional arms deliveries to the Islamic Republic.
Happily, the deal creates a mechanism for “snapback” sanctions that avoids potential Russian or Chinese vetoes in New York, but it also seems to create a grandfather clause for any contracts signed with Iran before the snapback process goes into effect and then explicitly allows Iran to abrogate the entire agreement if any sanctions are reimposed. Not exactly a user-friendly formula.
Then there is the definition of access, as in international inspectors can “access” suspect sites. Apparently the common English meaning of the word access will not apply here as inspectors are not guaranteed that they can actually enter such sites. We have now learned that the international inspectors (who cannot include any Americans because the Iranians say they cannot) will outsource the taking of soil samples at the weapons development site at Parchin to the Iranians themselves.
The concessionary mood that continued after the deal suggests what life will be like post-agreement. Kassim Soleimani, head of Iran’s deadly Quds Force and still sanctioned from international travel, was recently welcomed to Moscow for discussions. The Russians then closed a deal to sell the Iranians the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, a violation of the spirit if not the actual language of the current arms embargo, and a sale sure to complicate the regional balance in the Gulf.
The Iranians, for their part, apparently felt emboldened enough to do some suspicious landscaping at Parchin, the site they will themselves later inspect. An IRGC brigadier announced massive ballistic war games. And a deputy foreign minister indicated that Tehran will seek the release of 19 Iranian “political prisoners” being held in the United States. Made me wonder if all this was the Persian equivalent of an extended middle finger.
Then, of course, there was the selling of the deal here in the United States. We were told that accepting this deal wasn’t even a close call, its merits were so obvious compared to other alternatives. We were told that opponents of the deal should be discounted because many of them had supported the war in Iraq. Besides, so-called hardliners here were making common cause with hardliners in Teheran. (Hmmm — in my experience, people often resort to ad hominem attacks when they aren’t that sure of their arguments.)
We were then told that the only alternative to this deal was war — if not immediately, then soon. I found it really hard to reconcile what we had been told for more than a year — that no deal was better that a bad deal — with the position that now it was this deal or inevitable conflict.
And so it went. Not for the first time, I felt like I had just been treated to a bait-and-switch at the large appliance department at Sears. And I’m pretty much reacting now the way I did when that first happened.
Anger can be a useful emotion; it’s built into our genetic code to help with self preservation. But it can also be destructive, even when it is justified.
RECOGNITION
Sometimes you can live with bad details if you’ve got the big idea right. I suspect that that’s the case in our normalization of relations with Cuba. Lots of folks have pointed to the fine print there saying that we didn’t push the Castros hard enough for concessions on human rights and political freedoms. Probably so, but the long-term effects of an island of 11 million repressed people snuggling up to a nation of 320 million democrats with an economy hundreds of times larger than theirs are fairly predictable and positive.
But the Iran deal was going to be a near-run thing either way. The specifics of this deal really matter, and they matter in at least three dimensions.
The first is the core element of the agreement itself, the part that the president is asking us to focus on. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman summarized it this way after 45 minutes with Mr. Obama: “Judge this agreement on whether or not it prevents Iran from getting a nuclear weapon in the next 10 years.”
There are arguments that the deal is actually insufficient for even that narrowly defined, time-limited task but, frankly, of the three elements I’m going to describe, this is the strongest. Even with the enumerated shortcomings of this element, the impacts of other elements are simply worse.
One of these is time. If the agreement is honored and works as advertised, in 10 years we will have an Iran where deal constraints are sunsetting with an industrial-strength nuclear complex permanently on the threshold of a nuclear weapon. That’s what we negotiated, and that’s actually a more important consideration than what we may or may not have stopped for the deal’s first 10 years.
And then there are the more immediate non-nuclear implications of the agreement — what it means for all the other aspects of Iranian behavior so troubling to us in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and what Iran’s leaders are doing with regard to terrorism, Hamas and Hezbollah.
Iran is doing all that now as an isolated, impoverished, renegade state. What might it do if it were no longer isolated, no longer considered renegade and considerably richer than it is today?
As Vice President Biden might put it, this agreement is a “big no-fooling deal,” and most Americans and most members of Congress oppose it (from my point of view, with good reason).
The House will almost certainly reject the deal; the Senate is iffy since deal opponents lack the 60 votes needed for cloture, but it’s still possible that both chambers will vote no. If they do, the president has promised to veto their rejection. If Congress fails to muster the two-thirds vote to override (as seems likely), we will be left with the most important international agreement since the end of the Cold War looking like Obamacare Redux, except that this bill couldn’t even get approved along straight party lines.
I am no more sanguine about the future even if Congress does somehow manage to override Mr. Obama’s veto. Certainly Congress has the right to do so, and American history is filled with examples of the executive being sent back to amend proposed agreements.
But that would be a heavy lift. Our side of the negotiations with Iran had five other members, and they have already voted their approval of the deal at the U.N. Several have obscenely rushed trade delegations to Tehran in anticipation of an end to international economic sanctions. Our reopening the text for renegotiation would be incredibly irritating to them.
Still, we have a powerful economy to use as a tool of influence. And if this turns out so badly that further action needs to be taken down the road, no one will be turning to Chancellor Angela Merkel for an inventory of the German air force’s long-range bunker-busting capabilities. All eyes will be on us.
So we have a strong position and a strong argument, but I have no faith these are things that this administration would exploit. This administration has a habit of acting like the will of Congress was not controlling, and they have shown no stomach to re-engage the issue, cajole or pressure partners and allies or to reconfront the Iranians. The administration has staked its future on their deal, and their predictions of the dire geopolitical effects of the “hard no” of an overridden veto will sadly all come true because they will not act to make it otherwise.
As already noted, the effects of the “soft no” of the veto being sustained are also bad. The prospect of the deal surviving only through a clever parliamentary maneuver of Congress — being forced to vote against rather than for the proposition — has already put it in the 2017 Inauguration Day crosshairs of a variety of presidential candidates.
That would carry a cost too. Superpowers act most responsibly and effectively when they are consistent and predictable. The Obama administration has made much of its sharp turn from its predecessor in withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, undercutting not just U.S. forces there but the premises of previous American policy. And we’ve all seen how well that discontinuity has worked.
So my recognition is that, without some new thinking, we have only two destinations, and they are both bad places. Perhaps we should be determined to find an alternative. That’s what I will consider next.
WAY FORWARD
So here we are. Most Americans and most members of Congress oppose the nuclear deal with Iran. But because of global politics and the corner we have painted ourselves into, an outright rejection could even be worse.
So how about a “yes, but ” or — if it suits your temperament — a “no, unless ” In other words, there are things about the proposed deal that may be worth preserving, but only if we can add some things and take some other steps.
Of course, that requires a rejection of the “it’s this deal or war” meme and some serious negotiating between (as opposed to politicking by) Congress and the White House.
A standing congressional authorization for the use of military force should Iran seriously violate the agreement seems a no-brainer. The president has promised that all options would be on the table should Iran break out or sneak out, so why not cut to the chase, remind the Iranians of what “all options” really means and relieve this president and any of his successors of later time-consuming negotiations with Capitol Hill.
It seems equally obvious that lifting sanctions changes a lot of geopolitical calculations in the Middle East and some rebalancing, including military rebalancing, will be necessary. That means more arms for our Arab friends and for Israel. And, for the latter, I would include (as former administration adviser Dennis Ross suggests) a promise of the “MOP,” the 30,000-pound bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrator capable of destroying the hardened Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow.
President Obama said that Fordow had no place in a peaceful nuclear program. He was right. It’s too small to make enough fissile material for nuclear energy, but it’s big enough to make enough for a weapon. Fordow somehow survived the negotiations (in an admittedly modified, but still reversible, form).
I feared giving the Israelis the MOP. I thought it gave them the means and the temptation to put America at war. On reflection, though, when it comes down to whom to trust on Fordow, I’ve decided it better to bet on our friends than on our adversaries.
American forces are part of the military balance in the region, and their continued strength — threatened by the last decade’s ops tempo, today’s budget cuts and tomorrow’s threat of sequestration — needs to be assured.
Whatever the deal may or may not do to the Iranian nuclear program, Iran’s ability to do mischief through proxies and conventional forces will be increased by the ending of international isolation, sanctions and the arms embargo. That the Navy has to gap its carrier coverage in the Gulf now should make a prima facie case that the cost of any deal must be making the DOD budget healthy. Period.
In that light, we also need the ability to meter the windfall that will come to the Iranians from the future sale of oil should we see that it is being used to support terrorism, threaten Israel, bolster dictators such as Syria’s Bashar Assad or destabilize countries like Iraq or Yemen. Whatever the economic arguments for easing restrictions on American energy exports, they are now joined by the strategic argument that lower energy prices can help limit Iranian (and Russian) adventurism.
Within the nuclear deal itself, there are short-, mid- and long-term issues that need to be addressed, and they translate to the three critical components of a nuclear arms program: weaponization, delivery systems and fissile material.
The weaponization component is immediate: The IAEA is due answers from Tehran by mid-October on previous efforts to design an actual bomb and must report out by mid-December. Ideally, congressional action would be delayed until then since Iranian forthrightness (or lack thereof) will say a lot about how the overall deal will be implemented.
At a minimum, Congress should demand the administration publicly account for the access Iran did (or did not) provide to facilities, documents and scientists, and consider this accounting in any congressional decision to permanently end (as opposed to the president temporarily suspending) sanctions.
In the mid-term, at year eight, international sanctions against the Iranian ballistic missile program will end, an almost-inexplicable result of eleventh hour negotiations in Vienna since Iran had declared this off the table when the U.S. earlier attempted to restrict the program.
Congress should direct the executive to aggressively apply tough and broad secondary U.S. sanctions against any state, business or entity that assists Tehran’s ballistic missile program before or after the eight-year mark.
The long-term issue is the production of fissile material.
The Iranians will be allowed to deploy far more capable centrifuges in year eight of the agreement. Limits on the number of centrifuges expire at year 10. Limits on the quality and volume of stockpiled enriched uranium expire at year 15.
The president has admitted that by then, breakout time — the time needed to dash to a weapon’s worth of highly enriched uranium — would be near zero. This is more an act of faith than statecraft.
We wouldn’t concede these things to today’s Iran; why do we presume that tomorrow’s Iran will be different? U.S. adherence to this course should be conditioned on the totality of Iranian behavior over the next decade. Congress should preserve the option that if “that Iran” looks like “this Iran,” bets are off, at least as far as the U.S. is concerned.
Ideally that would be a product of the executive formally renegotiating the terms of the agreement. With or without that, Congress should express its will in American statute. That’s inconsistent with the deal that’s been agreed to, but the American president has characterized this as merely an executive agreement, not a treaty, and the Iranian president has said that it is not legally binding.
Even with these changes, the Iranian nuclear deal is far from a safe bet. But these changes will make it a safer bet, putting some steel — and perhaps some political consensus — into the way forward.
It might even have some staying power, representing as it would the will of America rather than just that of an outgoing president.
President Reagan, 1981
Today, as we set our minds to a new season of work, we begin what I hope will be a new age of the American worker, an age in which all of us again are free to prosper.
Together, we’ve swept away many government-created obstacles to our prosperity. In our fight against inflation and high interest rates, we enacted the largest budget cuts ever considered by the Congress. We produced the first real tax cut for working men and women in nearly 20 years. We slowed the pace of federal rule-making. We saw to it our money supply followed a pattern of slow, stable growth.
These dramatic changes in economic policy are the dynamic result of millions of individuals coming together, committed to preserving a society where we can each seek our own goals, assured of the freedom to climb as high as our own drive, ambition and talent can take us.
Let me make our goal in this program very clear: jobs, jobs, jobs and more jobs … .
We built this great nation, built it to surpass the highest standards ever imagined, through the hard work of our people. I would match the American worker against any in the world. The people whose labor fuels our industry and economy are among the most productive anywhere.
But too many Americans don’t have a job, and too many Americans who do, don’t have the tools they need to compete. Past, stagnated policies have made it too difficult to modernize and too risky to expand. Our people, our workers, have cried out for change, and in the last seven months have achieved a historic reversal of the failed policies of an era gone by. We returned to the principles that made us great.
Legislation now in effect has dawned a new age for American workers, an age in which once again we are free to achieve all that we can … .
All of us must take advantage of the incentives for savings, investment and hard work that have been restored. I urge American workers who traditionally saved to make their families secure to do so again. I urge American investors who traditionally took risks to make a profit to do so again. I urge American workers to save and invest, because I believe that when our economic program takes full effect, Americans again will be rewarded for working extra hours or assuming more responsibility.
In a few short months, we’ve accomplished much. But merely signing legislation is not going to bring about an instant cure. We’re only beginning a recovery that will take many long months. We’re only beginning to emerge from an economic crisis still gripping the rest of the world … .
As President Eisenhower told us once: A crisis can be deadly when inert men are smothered in despair. But a crisis also can be the sharpest goad to our creative energies, particularly when we recognize it as a challenge and move to meet it in faith, in thought and in courage. We must act today in the name of generations still to come.
As we work to solve our economic problems, let us tap that well of human spirit. For too many years now, we’ve trusted numbers and computers. We’ve trusted balance sheets, organizational charts, policies and systems. We’ve placed trust in rules, regulations and government dictates. I think it’s about time that we placed trust in ourselves and in each other.
Henry Ford, 1922
When you get a whole country — as did ours — thinking that Washington is a sort of heaven and behind its clouds dwell omniscience and omnipotence, you are educating that country into a dependent state of mind, which augurs ill for the future. Our help does not come from Washington, but from ourselves; our help may, however, go to Washington as a sort of central distribution point, where all our efforts are coordinated for the general good. We may help the Government; the Government cannot help us. The slogan of “less government in business and more business in government” is a very good one, not mainly on account of business or government, but on account of the people. Business is not the reason why the United States was founded. The Declaration of Independence is not a business charter, nor is the Constitution of the United States a commercial schedule.
The United States — its land, people, government and business — are but methods by which the life of the people is made worthwhile. The Government is a servant and never should be anything but a servant. The moment the people become adjuncts to government, then the law of retribution begins to work, for such a relation is unnatural, immoral and inhuman. … The welfare of the country is squarely up to us as individuals. That is where it should be, and that is where it is safest. Governments can promise something for nothing, but they cannot deliver. …
The economic fundamental is labor. Labor is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men. It is mens labor that makes the harvest what it is. That is the economic fundamental: Every one of us is working with material which we did not and could not create, but which was presented to us by Nature.
The moral fundamental is mans right in his labor. This is variously stated. It is sometimes called “the right of property.” It is sometimes masked in the command, “Thou shalt not steal.” It is the other man’s right in his property that makes stealing a crime. When a man has earned his bread, he has a right to that bread. If another steals it, he does more than steal bread; he invades a sacred human right. If we cannot produce, we cannot have — but some say if we produce it is only for the capitalists. Capitalists who become such because they provide better means of production are the foundation of society. …
The only strong group of union men in the country is the group that draws salaries from the unions. Some of them are very rich. Some of them are interested in influencing the affairs of our large institutions of finance. Others are so extreme in their so-called socialism that they border on Bolshevism and anarchism — their union salaries liberating them from the necessity of work so that they can devote their energies to subversive propaganda. All of them enjoy a certain prestige and power, which, in the natural course of competition, they could not otherwise have won.
If the official personnel of the labor unions were as strong, as honest, as decent, and as plainly wise as the bulk of the men who make up the membership, the whole movement would have taken on a different complexion these last few years. But this official personnel, in the main — there are notable exceptions — has not devoted itself to an alliance with the naturally strong qualities of the workingman; it has rather devoted itself to playing upon his weaknesses, principally upon the weaknesses of that newly arrived portion of the population which does not yet know what Americanism is, and which never will know if left to the tutelage of their local union leaders.
The workingmen, except those few who have been inoculated with the fallacious doctrine of “the class war” and who have accepted the philosophy that progress consists in fomenting discord in industry, have the plain sense which enables them to recognize that conditions change. The union leaders have never seen that. They wish conditions to remain as they are, conditions of injustice, provocation, strikes, bad feeling and crippled national life. Else where would be the need for union officers? Every strike is a new argument for them; they point to it and say, “You see! You still need us.” …
The workingman himself must be on guard against some very dangerous notions — dangerous to himself and to the welfare of the country. It is sometimes said that the less a worker does, the more jobs he creates for other men. This fallacy assumes that idleness is creative. Idleness never created a job. It creates only burdens. The industrious man never runs his fellow worker out of a job; indeed, it is the industrious man who is the partner of the industrious manager — who creates more and more business and therefore more and more jobs.
It is a great pity that the idea should ever have gone abroad among sensible men that by “soldiering” on the job, they help someone else. A moment’s thought will show the weakness of such an idea. The healthy business, the business that is always making more and more opportunities for men to earn an honorable and ample living, is the business in which every man does a day’s work of which he is proud. And the country that stands most securely is the country in which men work honestly and do not play tricks with the means of production. We cannot play fast and loose with economic laws, because if we do, they handle us in very hard ways.
The fact that a piece of work is now being done by nine men which used to be done by 10 men does not mean that the 10th man is unemployed. He is merely not employed on that work, and the public is not carrying the burden of his support by paying more than it ought on that work — for after all, it is the public that pays!
This week I am filing a world exclusive. Remember you read it here first.
For years I have maintained a team of investigators sedulously trailing our president. They have studied pictures of him. They have inquired of photographers and camera crews who employ both still and video cameras to cover the president. My investigators have interviewed White House journalists, occasionally White House employees, and, of course, White House visitors even tourists. All have been asked the same question: “Have you ever seen the president’s shadow?”
Every interviewee who would answer the question has confirmed my suspicion. They have not seen President Barack Obama’s shadow. The reason for this curious phenomenon is that he casts no shadow. Despite all the power at his command he roams the world leaving no shadow. The sun may shine down upon him. A wall of floodlights may illuminate him. Yet beyond his neat and well-tailored physique he leaves no shadow, no silhouette, nothing. Zilch, as they say. He is that insubstantial. He is a community organizer. He is not a president.
Gertrude Stein is famous for saying “There is no there there.” Well, with Mr. Obama things get worse. There is no shadow there. Our 44th president will go down in history as the first American president who left the White House leaving nothing but a vast diapasonal sigh of relief across the nation. Even some of his supporters will be relieved when he is gone.
Oh there will be wreckage. Our healthcare system, once the ideal of the world, is in ruins. Fragments of legislation clutter the landscape such as Dodd-Frank. The national debt was dangerously high when he entered office; now it has more than doubled — if not tripled, according to Rand Paul. Yet nothing substantial or constructive has been achieved. A year after President Obama vacates the White House almost any Republican president working with the Republican Congress will have cleaned up the mess — except for the debt. That will take longer. In foreign policy things may be even worse. A nuclear Iran will have to be dealt with. When the President without a shadow leaves office after withdrawing American power from every corner of the world, Americans will see how dangerous a community activist can be in the White House.
So the President will leave wreckage, but he is not going to leave a shadow. He has not got one.
Now reportedly he has been trying to sabotage Hillary Rodham Clinton’s run for the presidency. He has sent Valerie Jarrett out to leak damaging information about her. Hillary apparently sent and received classified information on her personal server whose backup was a toilet in Colorado. She committed various misdemeanors and felonies. Well, Mr. Shadowless President, you have got to do better than that with a slippery lady like Hillary.
President Obama seems to realize this, and so last week he came up with a candidate of his own, Vice President Joe Biden. At a press conference the President’s spokesman, the amusingly named Josh Earnest, was asked about the spreading rumors that Mr. Biden was going to enter the race. Mr. Earnest’s response was: “The president has indicated that his view that decision that he made, I guess seven years ago now, to add Joe Biden to the ticket as his running mate was the smartest decision that he has ever made in politics [italics added]. And I think that should give you some sense into the president’s view into Vice President’s aptitude for the top job [italics added once again].”
Asked further by reporter Jonathan Karl if the “President would support Vice President Biden if he were to run? And this is obviously, you know, a better decision than the secretary of state that he chose [Hillary].” Earnest answered: “Yeah, it was.” No italics necessary.
Now with her polls sinking across the nation, and voters indicating to the Quinnipiac poll that they associate her name with words such as “dishonest,” “liar,” and “untrustworthy,” this is about the best news Hillary has had in months. President Obama, the president who casts no shadow, is endorsing Joe Biden to be his successor. Nothing to worry about with a Biden candidacy, right Hillary? Now all Mrs. Clinton has to worry about is Donald Trump and a dozen or so other Republican candidates. For Hillary things are looking up.
But remember you first read it here. President Obama casts no shadow!
Another school year is underway, and more parents than ever are using school choice to ensure the best education for their children. Or should I say trying to use them? Some groups, after all, are trying to thwart them.
Who, you ask? Just ask parents in Nevada. The Silver State is one of five nationwide (along with Arizona, Mississippi, Florida and Tennessee) to have Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) that enable families to deposit their child’s state per-pupil funding in an account that can be used for a variety of education options.
No longer will students there have to put up with one-size-fits-all education. If the neighborhood public school provides the best fit for their child, fine. But if they want to use the money that would’ve been spent at their child’s “assigned” school for a different education option, they can do that instead.
Unless the American Civil Liberties Union gets its way. They recently filed a lawsuit to stop Nevada’s ESAs from taking effect.
This despite the fact that Gov. Brian Sandoval signed the program into law this spring and that it began accepting applications a few weeks ago. More than 2,200 parents have applied, and who can blame them? They know they’ll be able to use ESAs to pay for a host of education-related services, including private-school tuition, online learning, special-education services and therapies, textbooks and curricula.
“As the name implies,” writes education expert Lindsey Burke, “parents can also save unused funds, rolling dollars over from year-to-year to pay for future education costs.”
In short, they have high hopes for their children. They want the best possible future for them, and they know a good education is key to that. ESAs can help them get there.
So why does the ALCU object? Its lawsuit alleges that Nevada’s ESA program “violates the Nevada Constitution’s prohibition against the use of public money for sectarian (religious) purposes.” Yet the ESA funds go from the state to parents, not from the state to religious schools. The parents are the ones who can then use it to choose the right education option for their child, which may or may not include a religious school.
As the Foundation for Excellence in Education told the Arizona Court of Appeals in a similar case in 2013:
“The ESA does not result in an appropriation of public money to encourage the preference of one religion over another, or religion per se over no religion. Any aid to religious schools would be a result of the genuine and independent private choices of the parents. The parents are given numerous ways in which they can educate their children suited to the needs of each child with no preference given to religious or non-religious schools or programs.”
That’s been a godsend to students such as Max Ashton. Max is legally blind and used an ESA prior to finishing high school. According to Max’s father, Marc, a blind student in Arizona gets about $21,000 a year, which represents what the state spends to educate a student such as Max in the public-school system.
“We took our 90 percent of that, paid for Max to get the best education in Arizona, plus all of his Braille, all of his technology, and then there was still money left over to put toward his college education,” Marc explains. “So he is going to be able to go on to Loyola Marymount University, because we were able to save money, even while sending him to the best school in Arizona, out of what the state would normally pay for him.”
So on top of everything else, ESAs save taxpayer money, even as they expand opportunity for children. And opponents of school choice want to stop this?
That completely defies logic. Somebody is truly blind here, all right, and it’s not Max Ashton. We need more school choice, not less. You don’t need a diploma to see that.
The Environmental Protection Agency has twisted 280 words in the Clean Air Act into 2,690 pages of Clean Power Plan regulations and appendices. The Clean Power Plan requires that states slash their utility-sector carbon-dioxide emissions an average of 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
At least 12 states will have to impose 40-48 percent reductions. Those states now get 50-96 percent of their electricity from coal, and nearly all their electricity from coal and natural gas. Further complicating matters, even replacing coal-fired units with natural gas turbines is highly restricted under the plan.
Replacing this power generation with wind and solar will disrupt grid reliability, risk brownouts and blackouts, and bankrupt many businesses, families and communities.
Coal-reliant states currently pay 8-9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Their rates will likely go well beyond the 15-17 cents per kilowatt-hour that families, hospitals, factories, schools and businesses now pay in “green energy” states such as California and Connecticut. They could skyrocket to the 36-40 cents that Germans and Danes are paying — or 70-80 cents when taxpayer subsidies are included.
The EPA claims more taxpayer-financed energy subsidies will help the poorest families. What about everyone else?
Millions of workers will lose their jobs, leaving more families destitute and welfare-dependent. Many will have to choose between buying food and gasoline, paying the rent or mortgage, visiting doctors, giving to charities, or saving for retirement. Those still working will pay for everyone else.
Families will face sleep deprivation, greater stress and depression, and more drug and alcohol abuse, spousal and child abuse, and theft and robbery. Nutrition and medical care will suffer. More people will have strokes and heart attacks. More will die prematurely or commit suicide. More elderly people will perish from hypothermia, because they cannot afford to heat their homes properly.
Sprawling wind and solar installations and transmission lines across millions of acres of wildlife and scenic areas will kill millions of eagles, hawks, and other birds and bats.
These are among the reasons Congress has rejected nearly 700 climate bills. The Clean Power Plan is the result of the EPA colluding regularly with radical environmentalist pressure groups and circumventing our legislative process, laws and Constitution.
The EPA also uses a “social cost of carbon” scheme that places arbitrary, inflated costs on damages it claims result from carbon-based fuels disrupting Earth’s climate. The agency includes every imaginable cost of using hydrocarbon energy — but ignores even the most important and obvious benefits of using those fuels.
The Clean Power Plan also ignores the real world outside the EPA’s windows. Contrary to climate model predictions, global temperatures haven’t budged in 18 years, and no Category 3, 4 or 5 hurricane has hit the United States in nearly a record 10 years. Moreover, slashing America’s carbon-dioxide emissions, destroying jobs and impairing human welfare will prevent less than 0.03 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming 85 years from now.
These totalitarian green decrees are fraudulent, illegal and unconstitutional. They severely impair the rights of people to enjoy affordable, reliable energy and the quality jobs, living standards, health and welfare such energy brings.
We must demand debate on every aspect of climate and energy issues — and honesty, transparency and accountability in all regulatory processes. There is no room for fraud and deceit.
States should refuse to comply with the Clean Power Plan. Elected officials, presidential candidates and citizen groups should speak out loudly, clearly and often — and begin curbing the excessive power and representation of extreme environmentalists and bureaucrats in our government.
Congress and courts must end the constant collusion and sue-and-settle lawsuits between the EPA and radical pressure groups. Congress must cut agency budgets, especially the billions of dollars the EPA and other agencies give to anti-energy advocacy organizations and rubber-stamping advisory panels.
Congressional committees and our next president must subject secret data, computer codes, models and studies to full review by independent experts — to determine which assertions, policies and regulations are reasonable and legitimate, and which are based on serious error, deceptive claims or outright fraud.
During this review process, they should suspend and defund implementation of regulations and programs that raise serious questions about honesty and validity. Rules and programs ultimately found to be based on junk science, doctored data, collusion or concocted evidence should be terminated — and agency personnel who have engaged in deceptive or fraudulent practices should be penalized or fired.
We must ensure that regulatory agencies and their advisory councils become more honest and transparent; represent a broader spectrum of expertise, viewpoints and interests than they do now; fully assess evidence for and against alleged “dangerous man-made climate change”; and carefully evaluate the impacts of regulatory actions on jobs, living standards, health and welfare.
Congress and states must reassert their legislative roles, restore federalism and separation of powers as the foundation of our American system, and address the extreme deference that courts too often give “agency discretion.”
These steps will be opposed by President Obama, many Democrats and members of the climate crisis and renewable energy complex.
However, these actions are essential if the United States is to have an economic and employment revival, and poor, minority and blue-collar families are to be protected from regulatory excess and unaccountable ruling elites.
The Obama administration, top climate change crusaders and governors from across the country have engaged in a highly coordinated effort to publicly sell the president’s green agenda and put private pressure on opponents, according to newly released emails and other records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.
The striking report from the Energy and Environment Legal Institute’s Christopher Horner — who first revealed Lisa P. Jackson’s use of private email accounts and aliases while at the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency — sheds new light on the level of cooperation among top White House officials, billionaire and climate change activist Tom Steyer, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and other backers of Mr. Obama’s global warming regulations, including restrictions on carbon pollution from power plants.
The documents show frequent communication and meetings among Democratic officials at the state and federal levels and, among other environmental groups, representatives of NextGen Climate, a leading climate change advocacy group led by Mr. Steyer.
The emails show Rohan Patel, a special assistant to the president and the White House deputy director of intergovernmental affairs, as a liaison between the administration and state officials and a key figure in developing the broader plan to sell Mr. Obama’s climate proposals.
The report was released last week, just days before Mr. Obama traveled to Alaska to promote his environmental agenda. The president will remain in Alaska through Wednesday. He delivered a speech Monday evening on the threats posed by climate change.
Specifically, the report lays out in detail how environmental activists and public officials coordinated on how best to drum up support for Mr. Obama’s climate agenda.
The strategy centered on, among other things, Democratic governors’ offices enlisting utility companies to put pressure on Republican governors who are vehemently opposed to Mr. Obama’s environmental regulations.
“The emails cite one tactic seemingly lifted from an episode of ‘House of Cards’: Democratic governors will ‘creatively engage’ electric utilities under their jurisdiction to bring Republican governors on board, instead of using green groups to pressure Republicans,” the report reads in part.
Democratic governors — including Mr. McAuliffe, Mr. Beshear and former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber — would privately pressure utilities whose jurisdictions crossed state lines into Republican-controlled states.
At the same time, leading environmental groups would work with the White House and state Democratic leaders to roll out a comprehensive public relations strategy and otherwise generate support for Mr. Obama’s climate initiatives.
Mr. Patel referred all questions to the White House press office, which did not respond to a request for comment. NextGen also did not respond to a request for comment.
Critics say the lengthy report is more proof that the Democratic Party and the environmental movement essentially function as one entity with a shared goal of forcing fossil fuels out of the U.S. energy mix. They also point out that significant taxpayer money apparently is being used to promote Mr. Obama’s climate goals.
“The extent of it is pretty impressive — the idea that you could get a bunch of grown people from all varying perspectives pointing in the same direction is an impressive testament to the uniformity of thought among Democrats,” said Michael McKenna, a Republican strategist and president of the lobbying firm MWR Strategies. “It’s pretty hard confirmation of something we already knew … that the modern-day Democratic Party is handmaiden to the environmentalists.”
The emails also reveal a “core group” of officials in governors’ offices across the country who would take part in “weekly governors energy and climate commitment conversation.”
The group includes Mr. Beshear, the Kentucky governor whose state is one of the nation’s largest coal producers. Publicly, he remains opposed to the EPA’s carbon emissions regulations and other pieces of Mr. Obama’s agenda.
“Throughout his time in office, Gov. Beshear has remained steadfast in his support for Kentucky’s important coal and manufacturing industries, and the affordable energy and good jobs they provide the commonwealth and the nation. That’s why he has strongly opposed federal regulations for Kentucky that are disastrous, both for our declining coal economy and for our very important manufacturing economy,” said Terry Sebastian, Mr. Beshear’s spokesman.
The office of Mr. McAuliffe, who also appears to have been a member of the core group and who benefited from Mr. Steyer’s financial support during his 2013 election campaign, did not respond to requests for comment.
The report says some questions about the true depth of the coordination remain unanswered because of stonewalling from governors’ offices.
“Further questions arise about why so many public officials are devoting so much of their time to working with ‘major environmental donors,’ and otherwise, on a scheme they recognize the voters would reject,” the study reads in part. “Similarly, how much taxpayer money is being dedicated to this campaign and what level of private underwriting is advancing the use of public offices this way. Ultimately, the questions are who is paying for, and who is benefiting from, all of this. The answer to the latter certainly isn’t the American people.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama continues his laserlike focus on climate change. The president vowed to make global warming a centerpiece of his second-term agenda, and his EPA over the past several years has rolled out a host of regulations limiting emissions from automobiles, power plants, airplanes, oil-and-gas drilling sites and even garbage dumps.
“The point is that climate change is no longer some far off problem. It is happening here. It is happening now,” Mr. Obama said Monday night at a climate-change conference in Anchorage.
“Climate change is already disrupting our agriculture and ecosystems, our water and food supplies, our energy, our infrastructure, human health, human safety, now, today. And climate change is a trend that affects all trends — economic trends, security trends. Everything will be impacted and it becomes more dramatic with each passing year. Already it’s changing the way Alaskans live … We know that human activity is changing the climate. That is beyond dispute. Everything else is politics, if people are denying the facts of climate change,” he said.
They were the first troops to hit the ground in Afghanistan while al Qaeda’s dirty work still smoldered back in the United States.
On foot, helicopter and horseback, ArmySpecial Forces showed that if the U.S. was to win a long counterinsurgency war against Islamic extremists, the special skills of Green Berets would be fundamental.
Nearly 14 years later, these soldiers, some of the military’s smartest and best trained, are still creating lots of headlines, but not necessarily for heroics.
In recent months, the Army has disciplined, admonished and ended the careers of a number of Green Berets for actions that the soldiers themselves believe were part of combating an evil enemy. Pristine standards for fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda are not achievable, some in the community say.
“There is certainly a belief that upper echelons of leadership have morphed into political positions, and leaders are a lot less willing to risk their own career to support their soldiers,” Danny Quinn, a former Green Beret team leader and West Point graduate, told The Washington Times.
Examples abound:
Army Secretary John McHugh stripped a Green Beret of his Silver Star for summarily killing a Taliban bomb maker.
A military investigation blamed two Green Berets for the worst U.S. friendly-fire incident in Afghanistan, when critical errors were made by the Air Force crew that dropped the bombs onto their soldiers.
The Army fired a Green Beret from his hostage rescue post at the Pentagon and put him under criminal investigation for whistlingblowing to Congress.
The Army is kicking out a Green Beret for pushing an Afghan police officer accused a raping a boy.
Maj. Matt Golsteyn, one of the Green Berets in the Army’s crosshairs, said the group’s motto, De Oppresso Liber (“To Free the Oppressed”), presents a “moral imperative for action against those who would use violence and injustice as means for repression.”
“It would seem the lives and careers of Green Berets who would dare to see the organization’s motto realized on foreign soil are sacrificed for politics and careerism,” the Afghanistan War veteran told The Times. “As we witness continual displays of failure after failure in military leadership, our collective failure to liberate the oppressed in Iraq and Afghanistan should confuse no longer.”
No one says the military is specifically targeting Green Berets, but there has been a rash of punishments for these soldiers for actions in warfare that they believed were justified.
Joe Kasper, chief of staff for Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, said the discipline is “causing a high sense of discomfort and concern with that small community.”
“What we hear consistently is what many of these soldiers can’t say publicly, and that is Army leadership has created an environment that has soldiers second-guessing themselves and hesitating constantly, and one misstep — whether intended or not — is a career killer,” Mr. Kasper said. “All of it has had an impact on morale and retention, and it should sound alarm bells for the Army.”
A snapshot of recent cases:
Mr. McHugh, the Army secretary, stripped Maj. Golsteyn of his Silver Star, one of the military’s highest awards for combat valor, after he acknowledged in a CIA job interview that he killed a Taliban bomb maker suspected of killing U.S. troops. The Army never charged Maj. Golsteyn after a lengthy investigation. Mr. Hunter wants Congress to strip service secretaries of such powers.
The Army opened a criminal investigation of Lt. Col. Jason Amerine, one of the first Green Berets to land in Afghanistan in 2001, after he complained to Mr. Hunter about what he considered a broken hostage rescue program. The FBI informed on Mr. Amerine to Army headquarters, suggesting that he might have relayed classified information. The Pentagon ruled that there were no secret data in his hotline complaint of whistleblower reprisal to the inspector general.
The military blamed two Green Berets, an A-Team commander and its top enlisted man, for friendly-fire deaths in Afghanistan. The root cause, however, was that the B-1B crew that dropped the bombs lacked basic knowledge of the targeting pod and thought it would be able to see “friendly” troops’ strobe lights when it could not. Not seeing any strobes, the crew dropped the ordnance onto the soldiers.
Earl Plumlee was on his way to being awarded the Medal of Honor for acts of extreme bravery in Afghanistan. He won endorsements up the chain of command. Then someone made the accusation that he tried to sell a rifle online. The Army conducted a criminal investigation but filed no charges. Still, the Medal of Honor never arrived. The Army awarded him the Silver Star, two notches below the nation’s highest honor.
‘An adverse effect’
The Army is kicking out Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, who was reprimanded for punching and shoving to the ground a commander in the Afghan Local Police. A mother and her 12-year-old son came to the sergeant’s forward operating base and accused the commander of raping the boy and assaulting her.
An Army general reprimanded Sgt. Martland, who nevertheless wants to remain a soldier. But he learned in April that a board had selected him for involuntary separation because of the discipline notation in his service record.
News of his doomed career leaked to the press, making the 11-year Army veteran the newest rallying point for pro-military bloggers and pundits. They say the Army is destroying the careers of Green Berets for doing the right thing.
As he has in other cases, Mr. Hunter, a former Marine Corps officer who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has gone to bat for Sgt. Martland. He wrote to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter last week, saying Sgt. Martland should be commended for what he did, not fired, because he had a “moral necessity” to intervene.
“You should expect each and every one of our warriors and military to intervene in such a situation — and especially when that ALP commander, supported by U.S. trainers and tax dollars, is raping a young child and then proceeds to beat the child’s mother, only to laugh off both incidents when confronted,” Mr. Hunter wrote.
Mr. Hunter’s office gained independent verification of the incident from a translator in Kunduz province at the time. In a signed statement, the witness, an Afghan now living in the U.S., said that an ALP chief had reached him by cellphone and asked what had happened.
He then interviewed the Green Beret A-Team’s linguist assistant, who verified that the mother brought her son to the base for medical treatment because he had been raped by the ALP commander.
The translator wrote that then-Capt. Danny Quinn, the Green Beret team commander, and his men “were well respected and admired by their Afghan colleagues. Those at the leadership level in Kunduz province respected and appreciated Captain Quinn and his team’s contributions to the stability and the rule of law in Kunduz province.”
The incident and Army discipline prompted Mr. Quinn to quit the Army, he said.
“Cases like these certainly have an adverse effect on a Special Forces soldier’s psyche,” he told The Times. “It creates a mentality of playing not to lose versus playing to win. Soldiers feel like their leadership, lieutenant colonel and above, won’t support them, regardless of what they’ve done in that career to that point and what situation they’re currently in.”
Wayne Hall, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said: “The Army takes allegations of wrongdoing seriously and looks into every incident and applies what ever actions are appropriate.”
Concerning Sgt. Martland, Mr. Hall said: “The Army is unable to confirm specifics of his separation due to the Privacy Act.”
Mr. McHugh has vigorously defended his stripping of Maj. Golsteyn’s Silver Star. A board of inquiry found that the officer did not violate the laws of armed conflict, yet determined that his conduct was unbecoming an officer.
Lt. Col. Stephen J. Platt, a spokesman for Mr. McHugh, issued a statement to The Times in July that said the Army secretary has no intention of changing his mind:
“As Mr. Hunter is well aware, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division found that there was probable cause to believe that Maj. Golsteyn committed the offenses of murder and conspiracy, and Maj. Golsteyn was reprimanded for violating the law of armed conflict. The fact that the Board of Inquiry did not specifically find that Maj. Golsteyn committed a law of armed conflict violation does not negate Maj. Golsteyn’s admission that he assassinated an unarmed Afghan and conspired to dispose of the body. We consider the matter closed.”
America’s voter rolls are so bloated that dozens of counties have more people registered than there are adults living there, according to two new studies released Thursday that the authors said could lead to lawsuits forcing states to clean things up.
True the Vote, a Texas group that works for clean elections, counted 136 counties with voter registration rates of more than 100 percent of their adult population. Meanwhile the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm based in Alexandria, used a slightly different methodology and counted 141 counties.
And an increasing number are mid- and large-sized ones — the kind that should have enough resources to police their voter rolls, but just aren’t getting to it, said Logan Churchwell, research director for True the Vote.
“At the end of the day you can point to the Justice Department for allowing this to go on,” Mr. Churchwell said, blaming the Obama administration for not pursuing easy cases that could have pressured jurisdictions to keep their voter rolls clean.
The National Voter Registration Act, better known as “Motor Voter” because it allows registering at motor vehicle bureaus, also requires states keep their voter rolls clean, in order to try to prevent fraudulent votes from being cast.
But easier registration and a more mobile public has also helped voter rolls grow, as people don’t cancel their registration in one locale, even as they do register in another. Having more registered voters than the total number of people who could possibly vote is a good indicator that something’s wrong, the studies said.
“Corrupted voter rolls provide the perfect environment for voter fraud,” said J. Christian Adams, president of the PILF. “Close elections tainted by voter fraud turned control of the United States Senate in 2009. Too much is at stake in 2016 to allow that to happen again.”
Franklin County, Illinois, tops the PILF list of offenders, with a registration rate of 190 percent. That means that for every 100 adult residents of the county, there are 190 names on the voter rolls.
Lisa Kay Muir with the county election office said they do try to keep their voting lists clean, and are actually in the middle of a new purge. In May and June, they sent out new voter registration cards to their entire list of about 29,000 voters, and she said thousands of them got returned.
“I’m still getting cards back every day,” she said.
Under federal law, after a card is returned, registrars must still wait through two more federal elections before erasing their names from the voter rolls.
Mr. Churchwell said bloated rolls are beginning to swamp some states.
His organization did similar checks after the 2010 and 2012 elections, and found that overall rates hovered in the low 70 percent range statewide, even if some counties were much higher. This time, however, several states have overall registration rates topping 90 percent, suggesting bigger problems.
Kentucky, Michigan and Indiana were all over 90 percent, his data showed.
“We’re seeing bad states, and they’re in varying sizes,” Mr. Churchwell said.
True the Vote sued both Ohio and Indiana after the last set of data, stemming from the 2012 election. Ohio entered into an agreement that has led to much cleaner rolls, with all three of the counties that were over the line then coming in below 100 percent this time. Indiana, meanwhile, passed new legislation to try to push for cleaner registration rolls.
Mr. Churchwell said the Obama administration has worked against states trying to clean up their rolls, including preventing some states from trying to match names against non-citizens in Homeland Security databases. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has ignored the explosion of names, he said.
The department didn’t return a message seeking comment.
StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer says that it isn’t easy keeping up with the demand for fetal organs procured from abortions — she could use “another 50 livers a week” — which is one reason she relies on Planned Parenthood.
“I mean, Planned Parenthood has volume, you know, because they’re a volume institution,” says Ms. Dyer in an undercover video released the same day Planned Parenthood upped the ante on its side of the issue by suing Louisiana for cutting off its funding.
Ms. Dyer’s comments appear in the latest footage released by the pro-life Center for Medical Progress, along with scenes of her assuring undercover investigators over lunch at a restaurant that she can meet their needs for fetal tissue, given that she contracts with nearly 100 abortion clinics.
“So it’s a lot on volume. And we still need more,” says Ms. Dyer, adding, “I don’t think you’re going to hit a capacity with us any time in the next 10 years.”
David Daleiden, the project lead for CMP’s Human Capital investigation, called Tuesday for Congress and law enforcement to “immediately seize all fetal tissue files from StemExpress and all communications and contracts with Planned Parenthood.”
StemExpress is a for-profit company whose brochures to abortion clinics, including those operated by Planned Parenthood, advertise the “fiscal rewards” and “financial profits” of fetal tissue transactions.
Federal law prohibits profiting from the sale of fetal tissue from abortions, although there is an exception for costs related to storage, transportation and other expenses.
“StemExpress is the ‘weakest link’ that unravels Planned Parenthood’s baby parts chain — they readily admit the profit motive that Planned Parenthood and their proxies have in supplying aborted baby parts,” said Mr. Daleiden in a statement.
Critics counter that the videos are designed to stir outrage without showing actual violations of federal and state law governing fetal tissue donations for research.
The company released a statement blasting the “heavily edited, highly-deceptive videos targeting StemExpress,” noting that it has filed a criminal complaint against the center alleging that the recordings were obtained illegally.
StemExpress also accused CMP of mischaracterizing Ms. Dyer’s comment about an “intact case.” The center says an “intact case” refers to an intact abortion with a whole fetus, but the company argued that Ms. Dyer was referring solely to “intact livers.”
“Consistent with the company’s prior public statements, StemExpress has never requested, received or provided to a researcher an ‘intact fetus,’” Ms. Dyer said in a statement.
“My use of the term ‘intact cases’ is a medical term of art that refers solely to ‘intact livers,’ as there was absolutely no mention of ‘intact fetuses’ at any point in over two hours of illegally recorded video,” she said.
Ms. Dyer added that “CMP’s and Daleiden’s continued lies reflect a sad attempt to malign StemExpress and me personally.”
The latest footage — the eighth full-length video since July 14 — shifts attention from officials at Planned Parenthood to the bioservice industry that acts as a middleman between the abortion clinics and the medical laboratories that purchase the tissue for research purposes.
Ms. Dyer, who heads the company based in Placerville, California, said in the video she’s seen doctors mistakenly provide blood clots rather than a liver. She also says that “yeast contamination” can be a problem at some clinics.
Over the lunch and wine, she laughs as she describes how those working in research labs that purchase fetal tissue are startled to receive fetal tissue that looks like body parts.
“Tell the lab it’s coming! So they don’t open the box and go, ‘Oh God!’” Ms. Dyer says jokingly. “So, yeah, whereas many of the academic labs cannot fly like that, they’re not capable.
“It’s almost like they don’t want to know where it comes from,” she says in the footage. “Where they’re like, ‘We need limbs, but no hands and feet need to be attached.’ And you’re like [t]hey want you to take it all off, like, make it so that we don’t know what it is.”
Ms. Dyer added that some of the lab techs “freak out and have meltdowns.”
“And I think, quite frankly, that’s why a lot of researchers ultimately, some of them, get into a lot of other things,” she said. “They want to look at bone marrow, they want to look at adipose — they want to look at, you know, adult human, kind of adult-based sampling. Because they want to get away from having to publish a paper that says they derived this from fetal tissue.”
The videos have prompted five states to take steps to defund Planned Parenthood affiliates, but the 99-year-old organization is fighting back.
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast and three clients asked a federal judge Tuesday to grant a preliminary injunction to halt the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals’ move to terminate the contract, which is expected to take effect Sept. 2, and which Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican presidential hopeful, has touted on the campaign trail.
The department announced Aug. 3 that it would cancel its nearly $300,000 contract, but Planned Parenthood argues that the cancellation violates federal Medicaid law by preventing its clients “from receiving services from the qualified, willing provider of their choice.”
“When Governor Jindal and other politicians try to cut Planned Parenthood’s funding to score political points, what they’re actually doing is ensuring that some women’s cancer will get worse before it’s caught and that HIV and other infections will spread,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood for America, in a statement.
Jindal spokesman Mike Reed said the state health department is well within its rights to cancel the contract.
“Planned Parenthood is flailing,” Mr. Reed said in an email. “This lawsuit is without merit, and the state will aggressively defend our right to cancel the contract.”
Other states have launched investigations into Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue donation program, but most have concluded quickly that the program does not operate in their states.
Planned Parenthood officials have said that the procuring of fetal tissue from donors at abortion clinics only occurs in a handful of states.
Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account used to conduct some IRS business, the tax agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday that further complicates the administration’s efforts to be transparent about Ms. Lerner’s actions during the tea party targeting scandal.
The admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.
IRS lawyer Geoffrey J. Klimas told the court that as the agency was putting together a set of documents to turn over to Judicial Watch, it realized Ms. Lerner had used yet another email account, in addition to her official one and another personal one already known to the agency.
“In addition to emails to or from an email account denominated ‘Lois G. Lerner‘ or ‘Lois Home,’ some emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s request may have been sent to or received from a personal email account denominated ‘Toby Miles,’” Mr. Klimas told Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who is hearing the case.
It is unclear who Toby Miles is, but Mr. Klimas said the IRS has concluded that was “a personal email account used by Lerner.”
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said it was stunning the agency was just now admitting the existence of the address.
“It is simply astonishing that years after this scandal erupted we are learning about an account Lois Lerner used that evidently hadn’t been searched,” he said, accusing the IRS of hiding Lerner-related information throughout — including the existence of the backup tapes of her official email account, which the agency’s inspector general easily found once it went looking for them.
Mr. Klimas didn’t respond to an email seeking comment Monday evening, and a spokeswoman for the tax agency didn’t respond to an email and phone call.
On Tuesday, the agency released a short statement saying the email address was known to Capitol Hill before this.
In his court filing, Mr. Klimas argued that the IRS had previously hinted there may be other personal email accounts, pointing back to a footnote in a letter attached to a June 27, 2014, brief that mentioned “documents located on her personal home computer and email on her personal email account.”
He altered that wording in his filing Monday, saying the database of Lerner emails turned over to Congress included messages from her “‘personal home computer and email on her personal email’ account(s).”
The use of secret or extra email accounts has bedeviled the Obama administration, which is has tried to fend off a slew of lawsuits involving former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her top aides, the White House’s top science adviser, top Environmental Protection Agency officials and the IRS.
Those cases have flooded the federal district court in Washington. Indeed, Judge Sullivan, who is handling the current IRS case, is also presiding over Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeking Mrs. Clinton’s emails.
Last week, Judge Sullivan ordered the State Department to talk to the FBI about trying to recover messages that Mrs. Clinton may have kept on the email server she ran out of her home in New York.
Mr. Fitton said just as Mrs. Clinton is facing questions over whether she kept classified information on her non-secure email account, Ms. Lerner should face questions about whether she exchanged protected taxpayer information from personal email accounts.
Ms. Lerner’s emails became an issue after she was singled out as a key figure in the IRS’s treatment of tea party and conservative groups who sought tax-exempt status. The IRS improperly delayed hundreds of applications and sent out intrusive questionnaires asking what the agency now says were inappropriate inquiries.
In the wake of the scandal Ms. Lerner retired from the agency. She declined to testify to Congress, citing her right against self-incrimination, but also said she did not break the law.
The Obama administration has declined to pursue the contempt of Congress case that the House brought against her.
The House Ways and Means Committee also approved a criminal referral asking the Justice Department to look into Ms. Lerner’s conduct, but its status is not clear.
Mr. Obama has said the problems at the IRS stemmed from bad laws and lack of funding, not from political bias, and a bipartisan report from the Senate Finance Committee could not reach any firm conclusions about the extent of targeting.
Curiously, the Ways and Means Committee criminal referral mentioned the Toby Miles email address, identified as tobomatic@msn.com. The address came to light because it was included on an email that also had Ms. Lerner’s official account on the chain of recipients.
An email sent to the msn.com address Monday night went unanswered.
At the time of the referral in April 2014, the committee linked the Toby Miles address to Ms. Lerner’s husband, Michael R. Miles, but said, “The source of the name ‘Toby‘ is not known.”
Last month I bought a house in Potomac, Md., a trade up on my current home, and was shocked to learn in the ensuing weeks that I couldn’t get a mortgage loan. First, I went to PNC bank. Then Wells Fargo. Then another. Denied. Denied. Denied.
No, I don’t feel entitled to a loan, and the banks have every right not to lend me money. But my tale of woe tells a broader tale of what is going on in the lending industry these days.
All the bankers told me the same thing: “Steve, if you’d walked in our bank eight years ago with this mortgage application, we would have rubber stamped it in five minutes and you would have walked out with a bag of money.” But those were the go-go days of the real estate frenzy when people who worked at McDonald’s could walk into a Countrywide and get a $600,000 mortgage. Back then underwriting standards were tossed out the window.
Now, thanks in part to new federal regulations like Dodd Frank with its anti-predatory lending rules, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme and underwriting standards (for those without federal insurance) are absurdly tight. Here we are with the lowest interest rates in 50 years, but many businesses and aspiring homeowners can’t qualify. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.
My situation was doubly frustrating because I’m making a 25 percent down payment on the house. Researchers have examined huge samples of the portfolio of defaulted loans during the 2007-09 housing crisis. Virtually all of the defaulted loans had a low down payment with many less than 5 percent down thanks to government “affordable housing” mandates. Almost no loans with 25 percent down payment went into default because it’s simple economics: If you’ve paid for 25 percent of the house and you suddenly can’t make your mortgage payment, you sell the house or refinance the loan. You don’t walk away from your equity stake. Duh.
The main reason I was denied a loan was because of a below-average credit score. This was infuriating on several levels. First, I have had two previous mortgages and in 25 years I’ve never missed a payment. How can I be a high-risk borrower? The answer is twice in 30 years I was 30 days late paying my credit card bill — and paid the hefty late fee. Even more ridiculous, I, Steve Moore, have $300 of unpaid parking tickets. The horror. How does that data point provide any useful information to a bank about whether I’m going to pay my mortgage?
This prompts another obvious question: Why in the world does any financial institution put any credence in credit rating agencies today? They were the most derelict institutions of all during the housing meltdown. These were the buffoons who were giving triple A credit ratings to mortgage-backed securities only weeks before the whole house of cards collapsed. They were the ones who ignored every warning of the subprime overload. They were the ones who gave Enron, Countrywide, Bear Stearns and others a clean bill of health right before these institutions famously crashed. And banks still listen to their advice on which homeowners are likely to pay off their loans?
But here is why I really want to pull my hair out. While I’m making a 25 percent down payment, the government insurance underwriters — the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are backing with taxpayer dollars hundreds of thousands of low down payment loans of as little as 3 percent. These are the loans that will likely default. And taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of billions of more loans.
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Uncle Sam is repeating every mistake it made just eight years ago. The accompanying chart shows that a record number of new mortgages are backed by the feds. Almost two-thirds have direct federal backing and about 90 percent have some form of federal insurance. This is the definition of insanity.
Edward Pinto, a housing expert at the American Enterprise Institute, notes in a new study that through Fannie, Freddie and the FHA, government is relying on “looser and looser mortgage lending standards in a misguided effort to promote broader homeownership and accomplish wealth accumulation, particularly for low-income households.” He shows that “low-income households (those in the 20th to 40th percentile of the income distribution) had a median net worth of only $22,400 in 2013.” These are the people the government is forcing banks to make loans to.
So while my tax dollars are backing thousands and thousands of loans likely to default, my loan with close to zero probability of default can’t get financed — because I’m upper-middle class. This is considered fairness. Only in America.
In an undercover video released Wednesday, a former technician for a tissue-harvesting company details how an aborted baby was kept alive so that its heart could be harvested at a California Planned Parenthood facility, raising more legal questions about the group’s practices.
Holly O'Donnell, a former blood and tissue procurement technician for the biotech startup StemExpress, also said she was asked to harvest an intact brain from the late-term, male fetus whose heart was still beating after the abortion.
A StemExpress supervisor “gave me the scissors and told me that I had to cut down the middle of the face. And I can’t even describe what that feels like,” said Ms. O’Donnell, who has been featured in earlier videos by the Center for Medical Progress, a pro-life group that previously had released six undercover clips involving Planned Parenthood personnel and practices.
David Daleiden, the video project leader, said the undercover footage and interviews show that fetuses are sometimes delivered “intact and alive” before their organs are harvested.
The federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 says that when a child is born alive, including having a beating heart, he or she is a legal person and has a right to lifesaving medical care.
California law also prohibits any kind of experimentation on a fetus with a discernible heartbeat, said the Center for Medical Progress, which is calling for the federal government to cease its $500 million a year support to Planned Parenthood and for it to be investigated.
“Today’s video is especially gruesome, and it shows, once again, the barbarity of what takes place at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country,” said Rep. Joseph R. Pitts, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health, one of several congressional panels investigating Planned Parenthood.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Wednesday that all the videos are “disturbing,” and his committee’s investigation will look into whether “any federal funding supported transactions involving fetal tissue.”
“Top-level employees of Planned Parenthood admit to changing their procedures to harvest intact bodies of unborn children for body-part trafficking,” said Rep. Trent Franks, Arizona Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution and civil justice.
Mr. Franks and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, also said Wednesday that they have written to 58 Planned Parenthood affiliates. They are seeking 10 years of data about all abortions, late-term abortions, “born-alive” infants, fetal tissue collections and any modifications of abortion techniques to “increase the odds of preserving intact fetal tissue and organs.”
Five states — Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Utah and New Hampshire — already have defunded Planned Parenthood.
A request for comment from Planned Parenthood Federation of America about the new video was not immediately available, but the nonprofit organization has denounced earlier undercover videos as fraudulent and misleading.
“These extremists show a total lack of compassion and dignity for women’s most personal medical decisions,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood, said earlier this month after a video release.
Meanwhile, pro-life groups are using the videos to step up their calls for investigations and defunding of Planned Parenthood.
Rallies and protests at nearly 300 Planned Parenthood clinics are planned for Saturday.
Mixed poll results
On Wednesday, Reuters/Ipsos released a rolling poll of hundreds of people that found stable support for federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Between Aug. 13 and Aug. 18, about 54 percent of Americans consistently said they support taxpayer funding for the reproductive health and abortion group. Federal funds are not permitted to be used for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or endangerment of the life of the mother.
But when pollsters changed their question and asked a smaller sample of people for their views on “current efforts” to defund Planned Parenthood, the rolling poll showed a shift: Those who agreed that Planned Parenthood should be defunded grew to 39 percent, while those opposing defunding shrank to 34 percent; another 27 percent said they didn’t know.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll further asked people if the undercover videos had affected their views on Planned Parenthood or abortion. The rolling poll found that 45 percent of people said the videos made them “more negative” about Planned Parenthood, while 33 percent said it hadn’t changed their views, 19 percent said it made them “more positive,” and 3 percent said they didn’t know.
As for abortion in general, 51 percent said the videos had not changed their views, while 31 percent said it made them “more negative” about abortion, 16 percent said it made them “more positive” about abortion, and 3 percent said they didn’t know.
In June, the Senate voted to defund Planned Parenthood and send the money to community health clinics, but it failed by seven votes.
Separately, StemExpress was in a California court Wednesday in its effort to block the release of a Center for Medical Progress video featuring a recorded conversation with three employees.
The biotech firm, based in Placerville, California, recently ended its relationship with two California Planned Parenthood affiliates to purchase their aborted fetus parts and resell them for scientific experimentation.
Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik lamented StemExpress‘ decision to “bail” on Planned Parenthood, and condemned the undercover videos as “pure harassment by antiabortion activists, conniving with opportunistic politicians.”
In Wednesday’s video — the seventh released this summer — the Center for Medical Progress said state and federal laws require that the same treatment be given to an infant born alive after an abortion as to a normally delivered baby.
Ms. O'Donnell said she observed a “beating heart” in a nearly intact, late-term male fetus at the Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose.
A StemExpress supervisor asked to show her something “kind of cool” and tapped the heart of the aborted fetus, “and it starts beating,” Ms. O'Donnell said.
“And I’m sitting here, and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think,” she said.
Then Ms. O'Donnell was asked to harvest the aborted child’s brain, which meant slicing open his face to get at the organ.
“Oh my God, this … just what am I doing?” she recalled thinking to herself after she had complied. “That was the moment when I knew I couldn’t work for the company anymore.”
The seventh video includes an interview with an official with another biotech company who says, “So, you know, there are times when after the [abortion] procedure is done that the heart actually is still beating.”
It also contains a brief interview with another biotech official who says that feticides, like digoxin, are not used when an aborted fetus is going to be dissected for parts because feticides taint the tissues.
Mr. Daleiden, the video project leader, said that not using drugs to kill the fetus before the abortion raises the risks that a child will be born alive.
Whether congressional Democrats accept or reject Barack Obama’s Iran deal has great importance and is rightly the focus of international attention. But there is another debate taking place over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that may be even more critical: the one in Iran. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the country’s decision-maker, just might reject the laboriously worked-out agreement that he helped negotiate.
On one level, that makes no sense. As a plethora of analyses have established, the Vienna deal is enormously favorable to the Islamic Republic of Iran, legitimizing its nuclear research, assuring its future nuclear weapons program, helping the economy, and boosting its aggressive international goals. These advantages would make it appear absurd for Ayatollah Khamenei not to accept the deal. Plus, most Iranians celebrate the accord.
But rejecting it makes sense if one focuses not on those immediate advantages and instead looks at its future dangers to the Iranian regime’s survival. Leaders of fanatical and brutal government such as Ayatollah Khamenei’s invariably make ideological purity and personal power their highest priorities, and he is no exception. From this point of view — its impact on the regime’s longevity — the deal contains two problems.
First, it betrays Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s vision of unyielding enmity to the United States, a core principle that has guided the Islamic republic since he founded it in 1979. A substantial portion of the leadership, including Ayatollah Khamenei himself, hold to a purist vision that sees any relations with the United States as unacceptable and bordering on treachery. For this reason, Tehran has long been the world’s only capital not seeking improved relations with Washington. These rejectionists disdain the benefits of the deal; they refuse it on grounds of principle.
Their position is hardly unique. Similarly, Palestinian rejectionists oppose treaties with Israel, regardless of their potential benefits, not wanting to truck with the enemy. (Think of the 1993 Oslo accords, which brought land, money, legitimacy and guns.) Principle trumps practicality.
Second, Iranian opponents of the nuclear deal worry about its eroding the Islamist values of Khomeini’s revolution. They fear that the businessmen, tourists, students, artists, et al., perched to descend soon on a newly opened Iran will further tempt the local population away from the difficult path of resistance and martyrdom in favor of consumerism, individualism, feminism and multiculturalism. They despise and dread American clothing, music, videos and education. Ayatollah Khamenei himself talks of the U.S. government seeking a way “to penetrate into the country.” From their point of view, isolation and poverty have their virtues as means to keep the Iranian revolution alive.
In short, the Iranian debate over the deal is a genuine one, pitting those who argue in favor of the deal’s short-term benefits against those fearful of its long-term dangers. Ayatollah Khamenei must make a difficult choice.
Back in the West, opponents of the deal will, of course, rejoice if Ayatollah Khamenei rejects the deal. But his doing so also presents them with a problem. After claiming that President Obama has given away the store, they must confront the awkward fact that the Iranian leadership turned down his offer. As Mr. Obama emerges as an apparent hard-liner who protected American interests and out-bargained the bazaar merchants, their argument collapses. His accusation about their “making common cause” with the Iranian rejectionists will look newly convincing and terribly damning. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, currently in Mr. Obama’s doghouse, is especially at risk of being dismissed as foolish.
To avoid this fate, the deal’s opponents must immediately prepare for the possibility of an Iranian “no.”
That means taking several steps: Pre-empt Ayatollah Khamenei by foreseeing and even predicting his rejection of the deal. Explain (as I have done here) that his reasons have nothing to do with its substance and everything with the purity of ideology and maintaining a revolutionary spirit. Develop a familiarity beyond the terms of the deal and learn the intricacies of Iran’s domestic scene. Hone anti-Obama arguments (such as: He deluded himself into thinking he had a negotiating partner when none existed). Devise a detailed policy toward Tehran that renews economic sanctions and enforces other penalties. Find allies internationally to help implement this renewed sanctions regime. Prepare the public for the possibility of destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Ayatollah Khamenei’s rejection of the Vienna deal would be great news for everyone and especially for the deal’s opponents — but the latter urgently need to prepare for this eventuality.
Scientists have finally figured out how the key gene tied to obesity makes people fat, a major discovery that could open the door to an entirely new approach to the problem beyond diet and exercise.
The work solves a big mystery: Since 2007, researchers have known that a gene called FTO was related to obesity, but they didn’t know how, and could not tie it to appetite or other known factors.
Now experiments reveal that a faulty version of the gene causes energy from food to be stored as fat rather than burned. Genetic tinkering in mice and on human cells in the lab suggests this can be reversed, giving hope that a drug or other treatment might be developed to do the same in people.
The work was led by scientists at MIT and Harvard University and published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.
The discovery challenges the notion that “when people get obese it was basically their own choice because they choose to eat too much or not exercise,” said study leader Melina Claussnitzer, a genetics specialist at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “For the first time, genetics has revealed a mechanism in obesity that was not really suspected before” and gives a third explanation or factor that’s involved.
Independent experts praised the discovery.
“It’s a big deal,” said Dr. Clifford Rosen, a scientist at Maine Medical Center Research Institute and an associate editor at the medical journal.
“A lot of people think the obesity epidemic is all about eating too much,” but our fat cells play a role in how food gets used, he said. With this discovery, “you now have a pathway for drugs that can make those fat cells work differently.”
Several obesity drugs are already on the market, but they are generally used for short-term weight loss and are aimed at the brain and appetite; they don’t directly target metabolism.
Researchers can’t guess how long it might take before a drug based on the new findings becomes available. But it’s unlikely it would be a magic pill that would enable people to eat anything they want without packing on the pounds. And targeting this fat pathway could affect other things, so a treatment would need rigorous testing to prove safe and effective.
The gene glitch doesn’t explain all obesity. It was found in 44 percent of Europeans but only 5 percent of blacks, so other genes clearly are at work, and food and exercise still matter.
Having the glitch doesn’t destine you to become obese but may predispose you to it. People with two faulty copies of the gene (one from Mom and one from Dad) weighed an average of 7 pounds more than those without them. But some were obviously a lot heavier than that, and even 7 pounds can be the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy weight, said Manolis Kellis, a professor at MIT.
He and Claussnitzer are seeking a patent related to the work. It was done on people in Europe, Sweden and Norway, and funded by the German Research Center for Environmental Health and others, including the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Obesity affects more than 500 million people worldwide and contributes to a host of diseases. In the U.S., about one-third of adults are obese and another one-third are more modestly overweight.
The FTO gene turns out to influence obesity indirectly, as a master switch that affects two other genes that control thermogenesis, or burning off energy. It’s long been known that brown or beige fatty tissue - the so-called “good fat” - burns calories, while the more common white fat stores them. The body constantly makes fat cells, and the two genes determine whether they become brown or white ones.
In one experiment described in the medical journal, researchers blocked the faulty gene’s effect in mice and found they became 50 percent leaner than other mice despite eating a high-fat diet, and burned more energy even when asleep.
In other tests on human cells, blocking the gene’s effect increased energy burning in fat cells. Editing out the problem gene in human cells in the lab also restored normal metabolic function.
Researchers don’t know the impact of having just one faulty copy of the gene but think it has less of an effect than having two copies.
Several companies are trying to develop treatments to stimulate brown fat, and the new research suggests a novel approach.
“It’s a potential target” for drug development, said Dr. Sam Klein, an obesity researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. He called the work “an amazing study” and “a scientific tour de force.”
Dr. Rudolph Leibel, an obesity expert at Columbia University in New York, used the same term - “tour de force.” Still, some earlier research suggests the FTO gene may influence other aspects of obesity such as behavior and appetite.
“It’s possible there are several mechanisms being affected,” and that fat-burning is not the whole story, he said.
The Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset, wrote: “One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted.”
For the best among us, hunting is a devotional activity. It is about complete immersion in our humanity; it is about the long trek of evolution; it is the heartbeat of our species; it is our souls, for lack of a better word. But not one of the best hunters among this tribe of sportsmen would continue if we were not also serving conservation and the very animals whom we hunt.
Cecil the Lion died during an illegal hunt in Zimbabwe, and that country is taking action to prosecute the wrongdoers and improve the implementation of its game laws. Why? It was the money that hunting brings into that trackless economy that funded the very park which kept Cecil safe for most of his life.
For my urban friends in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, trophy hunting is inconceivable and signing petitions to ban it seems like the very least they can do. It is the very least, and the very worst. Conservation does not advance anywhere without ensuring the well-being and support of the people closest to the resource.
Hunting is the necessary incentive that allows private landowners to expand territory for these animals beyond the limited acreage of national parks; it is the money that pays the salaries of the Africans on anti-poaching brigades; it is the money that compensates villagers for lost livestock in countries where rural hunger is a fact of life.
No species in modern times has been driven to extinction by sport hunting. With an unsustainable population growth rate in Africa for most species of 10 percent, hunting reduces that number by 2 percent.
Ecotourism does not replace hunting. Photo safaris are concentrated in national parks where there is a diversity of species; where there are lodges, roads or tracks, swimming pools, easier access, and most importantly, safety. Hunters support animal conservation where few others would venture.
Africans whom I know are incensed by the public outcry over Cecil, when there is no outcry about young children in Africa killed by lions, no outcry about the starvation still so prevalent, no outcry about the joblessness or hardship. It is for sovereign African nations to make and enforce their own game laws. Most do this voluntarily under the auspices of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, an international organization.
Furthermore, Africans are following the North American model here. Hunting — including trophy hunting — was the wellspring for our own conservation and continues to be an important source of revenue for it.
Hunters, such as President Theodore Roosevelt, led the conservation movement in the 19th century because they were astute stewards and recognized the market unsustainability of much that was happening in our country around natural resources. Today, hunting licenses and fees support conservation. Hunters personally support conservation to an extraordinary degree. Perhaps we have forgotten that many of our public lands were essentially put aside so that sportsmen would continue to have enough game — to hunt. And they were not subsistence hunters; they were the elite.
One of our country’s great conservation visionaries was Aldo Leopold. His daughter wrote this about her father: “To him, hunting was an expression of love for the natural world; you might even say it initiated a kind of bonding with the land. To Aldo Leopold, hunting was not an abomination nor an inconsistency, but a way for active participation in the drama of life.”
Aldo Leopold believed strongly that conservation must rely on those people who understand the resource: those who work the “back forty,” the farmers and ranchers, those who hunt and fish; those for whom nature is it not a photographic memory, but a necessity.
I am extremely disappointed that animal rights activists did not talk to Africans or to environmentalists. They did not talk to women like Susie Offord of Save the Rhinos International, who know that, but for hunting, white rhinos might be extinct now. Instead, their numbers have increased in South Africa from teetering on the brink to several thousand, thanks to hunting on private lands. She calls hunting a “conservation tool.” They did not talk to Catherine Spencer of Humanitarian Operation Protecting Elephants who reminds us that Kenya, after banning hunting, has lost 60 to 80 percent of its animals outside of national parks. She considers a ban on trophy hunting to be “catastrophic.”
The well-intentioned, but misinformed, outcry about hunting in Africa is as morally blinkered to the effects of its actions as we may presume the much-despised dentist was to his.
Congress must stop President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The most important reason — Iran can threaten the existence of the United States by making an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack using a single nuclear weapon.
It may obtain one, relatively easily, by cheating in the use of the nuclear infrastructure permitted them under the agreement.
U.S. intelligence cannot meet the impossibly high standard of assuring that Iran cannot acquire a single nuclear weapon and, given the regime’s existing nuclear infrastructure, cannot with absolute certainty guarantee that Iran does not already have one.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s assertions on June 16 that the United States has perfect intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program are not credible: “We know what they did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge … .”
No.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden is right to correct Mr. Kerry: “He’s pretending we have perfect knowledge about something that was an incredibly tough intelligence target while I was director, and I see nothing that has made it any easier.”
Mr. Kerry’s disregard of the limits of U.S. intelligence is reason enough to reject the deal — since just one nuclear warhead can threaten the existence of the United States.
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A single nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude over the United States would generate an EMP that could black out the electric grid and other life-sustaining, critical infrastructures, such as communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water. The Congressional EMP Commission estimated a nationwide blackout lasting one year could kill anywhere from two of every three Americans by a low estimate up to nine of 10 Americans by starvation and social disruption.
“Death to America” is more than merely an Iranian chant — Tehran’s military is planning to be able to make a nuclear EMP attack.
On July 21 at the annual meeting of the Electric Infrastructure Security Summit in Washington, Rep. Trent Franks quoted from an Iranian military textbook, recently translated by the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Intelligence University. The textbook, ironically titled “Passive Defense” (2010), describes nuclear EMP effects in detail. It advocates in more than 20 passages an EMP attack to defeat decisively an adversary.
The official Iranian military textbook advocates a revolutionary new way of warfare that combines coordinated attacks by nuclear and non-nuclear EMP weapons, physical and cyber-attacks against electric grids to black out and collapse entire nations. Iranian military doctrine makes no distinction between nuclear EMP weapons, non-nuclear radio-frequency weapons and cyber-operations — it regards nuclear EMP attack as the ultimate cyber-weapon. EMP is most effective at blacking-out critical infrastructures, while it also does not directly damage the environment or harm human life, according to Iran’s “Passive Defense”:
“As a result of not having the other destructive effects that nuclear weapons possess, among them the loss of human life, weapons derived from electromagnetic pulses have attracted attention with regard to their use in future wars … . The superficiality of secondary damage sustained, as well as the avoidance of human casualties, serves as a motivation to transform this technology into an advanced and useful weapon in modern warfare.”
Because EMP destroys electronics directly, but people indirectly, it is regarded by some as Shariah-compliant use of a nuclear weapon. “Passive Defense” and other Iranian military writings are well aware that nuclear EMP attack is the most efficient way of killing people, through secondary effects, over the long run. The rationale appears to be that people starve to death, not because of EMP, but because they live in materialistic societies dependent upon modern technology.
For example, an Iranian article on nuclear EMP attack, “Electronics To Determine Fate Of Future Wars” (1998), concludes hopefully (from the Iranian author’s perspective):
“If the world’s industrial countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against dangerous electronic assaults, then they will disintegrate within a few years … . American soldiers would not be able to find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a single shot.
Written 17 years ago, Iranian military doctrine has assessed nuclear EMP attack against the United States for now nearly two decades.
The Iranians have done more than just think about EMP attack.
The Congressional EMP Commission found that Iran has practiced launching missiles and fusing warheads for high-altitude EMP attack, including off a freighter. Iran has apparently practiced surprise EMP attacks, orbiting satellites on south polar trajectories to evade U.S. radars and missile defenses, at altitudes consistent with generating an EMP field covering all 48 contiguous United States. Iran launched its fourth satellite on such a trajectory as recently as February 2015.
A single nuclear weapon would complete the list of requirements.
Finally, because a nuclear EMP attack can be conducted by surprise and anonymously — deterrence may not work against EMP.
Deterrence depends upon knowing who attacked and being able to retaliate. Unlike a nuclear weapon used to blast a city, high-altitude EMP leaves no collectible bomb debris for forensic analysis to identify the aggressor.
EMP attack by missile or balloon launched off a freighter could be from many possible actors. Even Yemen’s Houthis have Scud missiles and know how to use them, having recently killed the chief of Saudi Arabia’s air force with a Scud strike on King Khalid Air Force Base.
Hundreds of satellites are in low earth orbit, unseen when approaching the United States from the south, that could help disguise the origins of an EMP attack. And the EMP could damage the means necessary to identify the attacker and U.S. retaliatory capabilities.
One Iranian nuclear weapon is one too many for an Iran ruled by theocratic totalitarian genocidal imperialists.
No deal.
A Fairfax County police officer was indicted by a grand jury Monday on second-degree murder charges two years after he fatally shot a Springfield man while responding to a domestic call at the man’s home.
Adam Torres, who has since been fired from the Fairfax County Police Department, was charged in the killing of 46-year-old John Geer. It is reportedly the first time in the police department’s history that criminal charges have been brought against an officer as a result of an on-duty shooting.
Officer Torres was among several officers who responded to Geer’s home on Aug. 29, 2013, after Geer’s longtime girlfriend called police to report a disturbance. Geer was standing in the doorway of his home talking to officers when Officer Torres fired a single shot that struck him in the chest.
Geer’s family, who was at the scene of the shooting, questioned the officer’s use of deadly force. They later filed a civil lawsuit against the department, which was settled in April for $2.95 million.
“Finally, justice is prevailing,” John Geer’s father Don Geer, told NBC4. “It took a lot longer than we expected. Every step forward in this brings us closer to healing.”
The department was heavily criticized for the near-silence officials maintained on the case for more than a year — including by Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican.
The indictment comes on the heels of a series of nationally-prominent cases concerning police use of deadly force, especially against minorities. However, the Geer shooting — which involved a Hispanic officer and a white civilian — happened before the Ferguson killing of Michael Brown that truly galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement.
Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. said in a brief statement issued Monday that he had “great respect” for the grand jury process.
“The loss of life is tragic for all,” Chief Roessler said. “We express our sympathy to the Geer family, support to our great community and the men and women of the Fairfax County Police Department.”
Chief Roessler said at a news conference Monday evening that Officer Torres was fired July 31 for violating the department’s policy on use of force.
“Use of force was not reasonable or necessary in this matter,” he said.
He said that Officer Torres was cooperating with officials Monday. Officer Torres turned himself into policy custody Monday evening and was jailed without bond.
The initial version of events as described by Fairfax County police, stated that officers were advised Geer owned multiple firearms and displayed a gun while talking with officers.
Police said that when Geer began lowering his hands while talking with officers that Officer Torres fired one shot. Geer spun around back inside the home and did not respond to officers after that. When police entered the home about an hour later, Geer was dead. Investigators found a loaded, holstered firearm on the landing of the stairs near where Geer had stood in the doorway.
Earlier this year, the police department released more than 11,000 documents related to the shooting. Among the documents released were transcripts of interviews with other officers on the scene that day who contradicted Officer Torres‘ version of events.
“When the shot happened, his hands were up,” said Officer Rodney Barnes, according to the transcripts.
It was not immediately clear when Officer Torres would have his first court hearing in the case.
Virginia lawmakers return Monday to Richmond for a special session to redraw the state’s congressional map, facing a Sept. 1 deadline after a federal court ruling they illegally packed black voters into Rep. Bobby Scott’s southeastern district.
Some Democrats are eyeing big changes, with state Sen. Chap Petersen planning to introduce a map that would shuffle several incumbents out of their current seats and others touting a plan they say is more representative of the state.
But Republicans, who control the legislature and hold an 8-to-3 majority in the congressional delegation, say it won’t be that easy.
“It’s going to take a month,” said Delegate Dave Albo, Fairfax Republican and chairman of the House Courts of Justice Committee. “This is really complicated it’s just the beginning of the process on Monday.”
At issue is Mr. Scott’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes parts of Richmond and meanders along the James River toward Hampton Roads, extending to Norfolk. Judges have said the current congressional map unconstitutionally dilutes the influence of black voters in the state by concentrating them in that district.
Mr. Scott’s district is bordered by four Republican-held congressional districts: Rep. Rob Wittman’s 1st District, which stretches from Yorktown up to Prince William County; Rep. Scott Rigell’s Virginia Beach-based 2nd District; Rep. Randy Forbes’ 4th District, which stretches from Chesapeake to north and west of Richmond; and Rep. Dave Brat’s 7th District, which stretches from Richmond north to Culpeper.
Quentin Kidd, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University who has served as an adviser to an independent redistricting commission in the state, speculated that Mr. Forbes’ district might be made more Democratic.
“If Democrats had their way, they would probably make both the 4th and the 2nd either Democratic-leaning or at least Democratically competitive,” he said. “But in the scenario where they’re going to end up having to negotiate with Republicans, I’d imagine they would take the 4th.”
Mr. Petersen, Fairfax Democrat, said he will introduce a plan that mirrors the winning “nonpartisan” map in a 2011 competition that, among other things, would shuffle several incumbents out of their districts.
“I was thinking democracy and good government is a good thing — that’s what I was thinking,” Mr. Petersen said, adding that he had no expectation of the plan moving forward in the Republican-controlled legislature.
Democratic leaders in the legislature have unveiled their own plan that would reduce the black voting-age population in the 3rd District from about 56 percent so that the African-American population is between 40 percent and 50 percent in both the 3rd and 4th districts, among other changes.
They said five districts in their plan are likely to vote Democratic and five likely to vote Republican, with GOP Rep. Robert Hurt’s 5th District ending up as a “swing” area.
“It is a purple plan,” said Senate Democratic Caucus Chairman Donald McEachin, Henrico Democrat. “It is not red; it is not blue.”
A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia recently denied Republican House and Senate leaders an extension past the Sept. 1 deadline, saying they failed to show they would be likely to win an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court or suffer “irreparable injury or prejudice” by adhering to the court’s order for a new map by Sept. 1.
In a dissent, Judge Robert E. Payne said he would have granted the extension. He pointed out that during the appeal process, the Supreme Court issued a high-profile ruling that directed a lower court to re-examine whether Republican lawmakers in Alabama relied too heavily on race in drawing that state’s congressional districts.
The judge wrote that it would be appropriate to get further guidance from the Supreme Court before requiring the General Assembly to redraw the maps.
Elsewhere, Florida lawmakers are also in the midst of redrawing congressional lines, and activists are trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s dismissal of a challenge to Maryland’s congressional map.
Behind legal challenges to redistricting in Virginia is Marc E. Elias, a lawyer with the firm Perkins Cole who has been involved with challenges to voting laws elsewhere. Mr. Elias is also the presidential campaign lawyer for former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has hammered Republicans on the issue of voting and ballot access issues on the campaign trail.
Virginia Democrats argue that in a state where they have won all statewide elections since 2009, they should logically have more than three of the 11 congressional seats.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, who called for the special session that starts Monday and has advocated for nonpartisan redistricting, applauded the Democratic leaders’ plan and said he fears Republicans will “attempt to tinker with the old map just enough to get it past federal judges. The three rulings from those judges suggest they are in no mood for half-measures.”
“As I stated in my letter on July 28 to General Assembly leaders, my door is open to anyone willing to work together on a serious plan that is responsive to the courts and to the demands of the citizens of Virginia,” he said. “That invitation still stands.”
Meanwhile, he is co-chairing a new fund run by the Democratic Governors Association that will aim to target gubernatorial races in battleground states with an eye on influencing new congressional maps after the next U.S. Census in 2020.
“Governors play a critical role in the redistricting process,” Mr. McAuliffe said in a recent DGA release. “The DGA’s ‘Unrig The Map’ effort is about ensuring more Democratic governors can be at the table in 2020 to prevent the kind of far-right gerrymandering we saw in 2010.”
Deborah Graham doesn’t know whom to trust or what to believe. But one thing is certain: She won’t drink the water coming out of her faucet.
Living 1,000 feet from a Duke Energy coal-ash pond in Salisbury, North Carolina, Ms. Graham had her well water tested in May 2014 for any toxins that may have leaked from the waste dump into her water supply. Her results came back clear.
“I was told I didn’t have anything to worry about, that my property is up on a hill from the pond and water runs downhill,” said Ms. Graham, whose well testing was paid for by Duke and certified by the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources. “I told them, ‘Thank you so much.’ I was so relieved and felt so good about the results I wasn’t concerned about it.”
For nearly a year afterward, Ms. Graham continued to use her water to drink, cook and bathe. On April 15, though, a letter from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services arrived and sent shock waves through her household. Her well’s water was highly polluted, and not even boiling it would eliminate all the toxins, the letter said.
“I was shocked. I wasn’t expecting it at all because just the previous year I was told everything was OK,” said Ms. Graham, who now uses only bottled water.
The day after the Health and Human Services warning, she received a letter from Duke Energy saying it wasn’t to blame for the pollution.
“I don’t know who to believe or what to do. I don’t think I can trust anybody,” Ms. Graham said in an interview with The Washington Times.
Ms. Graham is one of many residents living near the 32 coal-ash ponds spread throughout North Carolina that store waste from coal-fired power plants.
One of those ponds, operated by Duke, gave way in February 2014 and spilled 39,000 tons of the sludge into the Dan River. It was the third-largest such spill in the nation’s history.
The accident and subsequent response by regulators has created fear and confusion among customers of the Charlotte-based energy giant, the largest electric-power-holding company in the country.
First, the hundreds of residents living near the ponds are unsure whether their water is safe to drink.
That confusion stems from Duke’s admitted environmental mismanagement of its coal-ash waste and the state’s bureaucratic ineptitude in conducting water testing and changing its health standards in the middle of the process on what constitutes safe drinking water.
The second concern has wider repercussions: that uncertain and changing requirements regulators are imposing on Duke Energy may lead to costly electricity rate increases for millions of customers.
State lawmakers last year passed the North Carolina Coal Ash Management Act, requiring Duke to pay all the cleanup costs for the spill, which are estimated at $2 billion to $10 billion.
Paying the tab
If the utility is required to dig up the ash from every pond statewide and truck it to a lined landfill statewide — the most expensive option — the tab would approach $10 billion and the costs would have to be passed to consumers, company officials warn.
As part of the law, Duke has to test the well water of residents who live within 1,500 feet of its 14 coal-fired power plants to help the state decide which of Duke’s coal-ash ponds should be closed first and which wells are contaminated.
State regulators set the standards on what pollutants were to be included in the well-water testing and what levels are considered unsafe. Those elements and levels have been revised repeatedly and are set higher than federal standards for drinking water.
That means all customers who receive letters from the state Department of Health and Human Services saying their water is undrinkable by state standards could consume the water under federal standards. That fact — which Duke repeatedly highlights — confuses residents further.
When Ms. Graham’s well was tested in May 2014, the state didn’t require vanadium — a constituent of nearly all coal and petroleum crude oils — to be part of the test. The coal ash bill that passed in September included vanadium in the water testing, so state regulators in February returned to Ms. Graham’s home to perform another round of testing.
Two months later, Ms. Graham found out her water exceeded the state’s advised levels for vanadium, and officials advised her not to cook or drink with it.
North Carolina regulators also revised their health risk standards identifying which elements may cause health concerns.
Last year, Health and Human Services Department toxicologist Kenneth Rudo assessed a health risk for vanadium at 18 parts per billion. This year, he changed the assessment to 0.3 ppb. So a well that passed testing at 7 ppb for vanadium last year would have failed this year. There is no federal safety level for vanadium.
Health risk levels for hexavalent chromium — a carcinogen and industrial waste made famous by Erin Brockovich’s fight in Hinkley, California — also have been set high in the North Carolina water testing.
There is no federal level for hexavalent chromium, so state regulators use the level for total chromium, which is set at 10 ppb. Federal regulators have set the level for total chromium at 100 ppb.
The state Health and Human Services Department decided on a 0.07 ppb health assessment risk level for hexavalent chromium.
Average hexavalent chromium levels recorded in the town of Ms. Brockovich’s Hinkley, where cancer diagnoses were disproportionate for the population, were recorded as 1.19 ppb — 17 times higher than North Carolina’s limit — with an estimated peak of 3.09 ppb.
North Carolina’s 0.07 ppb level for hexavalent chromium is so trace that only two of its nine labs can detect it. Bureaucrats were unaware of that fact until the water testing began.
“We received a postcard in the mail that we could choose what lab we wanted to do our water testing,” said Amy Brown, who lives near a coal-ash pond in Belmont, North Carolina. “I just chose one, picked a name, sent it back in. A few weeks later, they arranged to come out and get samples of my water.”
Ms. Brown received her results: Her water tested high for vanadium and was therefore undrinkable, but there was another caveat. The state recommended that she have another sample tested in another month for hexavalent chromium. The independent lab she selected was unable to test for that element.
Now she is waiting to find out whether she and her family have been drinking traces of the cancer-linked toxin since they moved into their home nine years ago. She had her water resampled last month.
“We could check what company we wanted to come and do our water, but there was only one on our list that could measure correctly the levels of hexchrom and we didn’t know it,” Ms. Brown said. “I checked wrong. Now, whenever I turn on the faucet, I turn on fear.”
Of the 285 wells sampled in North Carolina so far, 265, or 93 percent, have failed to meet state groundwater standards. Duke is delivering bottled water to the affected homes.
Battle over standards
In a June 30 town hall meeting of Salisbury residents, state officials and Duke, utility executives said the state’s levels for hexavalent chromium and vanadium were too stringent.
“You have to make your own decisions, but from all the [state] data I have seen, I would have no problem with drinking your well water,” Duke toxicologist Lisa Bradley told the crowd, according to a report in The Charlotte Observer. She said adults consume many times the vanadium limit through the food they eat.
However, Mr. Rudo from the Health and Human Services Department defended the screening levels.
“There really is no safe level of exposure to a genetoxic carcinogen, and that’s what hex chrome is,” Mr. Rudo said.
The department declined to make Mr. Rudo available for comment to The Times.
The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources acknowledges confusion with the levels but said it is the job of the Health and Human Services Department to determine risk.
“We’re not saying anybody is wrong. There’s different levels of risk associated with the different levels,” said Tom Reeder, assistant secretary for the environment at the Environment and Natural Resources Department. “We’re not medical health professionals or use health risk determinations; we just turn the results over to DHHS for them to decide.”
Duke says there has been confusion with what element levels are safe to consume, but it is committed to working through the process. It also maintains that all the well water is drinkable by federal standards.
“This clearly has been complex and confusing for plant neighbors,” said Erin Culbert, a spokeswoman for Duke. “Our focus is on sharing clear and accurate information throughout this process.”
Still unclear is who or what is responsible for the contamination. Although Duke may be to blame for higher levels of boron and other sulfates directly linked to coal ash, vanadium is present naturally throughout North Carolina, and hexavalent chromium may be too.
To help clear up the confusion, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is sampling wells near Duke’s power plants and testing water in wells far from the coal-ash ponds to determine what minerals may be natural parts of North Carolina’s own bedrock — something that wasn’t done before state regulators determined what element levels to use.
Six of the seven wells tested so far show vanadium levels above the North Carolina standards, state hydrogeologist Bruce Parris said at the June 30 town hall gathering, and five of the seven had hexavalent chromium higher than the state level.
Duke continues to conduct groundwater assessments around its plants to help determine the source of potential contaminants.
State groundwater test results are expected later this summer. If Duke is found to be responsible for the pollution, the utility said, it will pay for a safe, permanent water source to the residents affected.
If the metals are found to be occurring naturally, the families affected by the contamination will be on their own.
That’s a prospect Ms. Graham hasn’t considered, although she has consulted a lawyer. When asked what she would do if Duke wasn’t responsible for the water pollution, her voice cracked.
“What are we going to do? None of us can sell our homes because we don’t have water. Our home values have gone down,” she said. “There’s a stigma with anybody who lives around a Duke plant because everybody knows you don’t have clean water. I’m speechless as to what we’re going to do if that’s the case.”
It’s doubtful that Americans — or Republicans in particular — will pause today to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of the 31st president, Herbert Clark Hoover (Aug. 10, 1874). Yet, given the turmoil that the nation has faced in recent years over the size, scope and, most of all, debt of the federal government, Hoover merits another review.
No doubt, Hoover's popular hallmark has been as the Republican president who contributed to the misery of the Great Depression times. “Hoovervilles,” the shantytowns of the early 1930s, were scarcely terms of endearment, although during World War I Hoover's leadership as the federal government’s food administrator gave another meaning to his name:
I can Hooverize on dinner,
And on lights and fuel, too,
But I’ll never learn to Hooverize
When it comes to loving you.
Few Americans hold as many enviable records as Hoover. First, his story is as American as apple pie. Born of modest means in West Branch, Iowa and orphaned, Hoover graduated with a degree in geology from Stanford University and became a successful mining engineer and owner of his own firm, traveling around the globe several times when a big trip for many Americans was one to the country store. As a Republican, he was a progressive, to the left of Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding. As secretary of Commerce, Hoover had few equals. He not only promoted U.S. business interests with tangible results but used methods that drew upon the efficiency expertise of an engineer.
And he held that post longer than any other secretary. Lest we forget, too, as the Iowa presidential primary looms large next year, Hoover was the only president born in Iowa.
Hoover's downfall as president was his sober-as-a-judge quality, a trait not inappropriate for earlier chief executives, but American society, by the third decade of the 20th century, began to demand emotive qualities heard on the radio or seen on the movie screen. As a Quaker, a religion without ministers, Hoover was not schooled in charisma, originally a theological term reserved for people with a divinely conferred, and outwardly visible, gift or power. As aviator Charles Lindbergh noted, Hoover “lacked a certain spark … that makes men willing to follow a great leader even to death itself.”
Second, and more importantly, when hard times befell the nation, Hoover drew a line in the sand in terms of the outer limits of the federal government. Limited and temporary government intervention in the economy was supported, but an unbalanced budget, federal debt and growing bureaucracy were not among his options. Not surprisingly, the campaign between Hoover and Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 illustrated Hoover's harsh critique of an expansionist federal government.
“The proposals of our opponents,” he said in a speech in New York in October, 1932, “will endanger or destroy our system … I especially emphasize the promise to promote ‘employment for all surplus labor at all times.’ At first I could not believe that anyone would be so cruel as to hold out a hope so absolutely impossible of realization to these 10,000,000 who are unemployed … If it were possible to give this employment to 10,000,000 people by the Government, it would cost upwards of $9,000,000,000 a year. It would pull down the employment of those who are still at work by the high taxes and the demoralization of credit upon which their employment is dependent … It would mean the growth of a fearful bureaucracy, which, once established, could never be dislodged.”
The parameters for contemporary America were set after the 1932 election. FDR, like President Obama to his predecessor George W. Bush, consistently blamed Hoover's policies for the nation’s economic woes he confronted on his watch, no matter that Roosevelt continued many of Hoover's policies and no matter that none really brought about an end to hard times until intervention in World War II.
To be sure, even philosopher-engineers had their heavenly city. Hoover's was described in 1922 in a 72-page book, “American Individualism,” touted by a reviewer in The New York Times as “among the few great formulations of American political theory. It bears much the same relation to the problems of the present and the future that the essays of Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and Noah Webster bore to the problems that occupied men’s minds when the Constitution was framed.”
“Every time the government is forced to act,” Hoover argued, “we lose something in self-reliance, character and initiative.”
Hoover died in 1964, just as another large expansion of the federal government was taking place, in the form of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.
It was 50 years ago this year that the current immigration system was born. The 1965 revision of immigration law completely transformed U.S. immigration policy.
So, 50 years later, it behooves us to ask if mass immigration has made sense. But we should first understand how that revised law came about.
Simply put, it was a product of the 1960s civil rights movement. Though immigration was not the focus of that movement, many American liberals used the momentum of the civil rights laws to transform immigration as well, forcing the country to abandon a proven policy and adopt one whose consequences nobody could anticipate. Until 1965, America had a sensible immigration policy. It was strict but not necessarily exclusionist, for it allowed people of all races to immigrate, but only in sensible numbers. The overhaul was triumphantly signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, the 1960s champion of liberal causes.
You need only a glance at the immigration statistics of the last 50 years to realize the upheaval induced by that law. In the decade of 1960s, with immigration occurring mostly under the previous system, 1.1 million European immigrants were admitted, along with 1.6 million from Mexico, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Asia, and Africa. In the next decade, the 1970s, when the new law was in full effect, the latter groups doubled to 3.2 million, while European immigration was suppressed to 826,000. Third World immigration has been avalanching ever since. In the last decade (2000s), 8.4 million non-European immigrants were admitted, while only 1.3 million Europeans were. Simply put, for every European immigrant, at least six non-European immigrants are admitted. If you include illegal aliens, then that ratio becomes even more lopsided.
Ideally, immigrants’ origins should not matter if they spoke English and assimilated. But the reality is far different — the proliferation of bilingual signs in public places is undeniable evidence that assimilation is in serious jeopardy.
I am a naturalized American myself (and a nonwhite immigrant, incidentally). As a staunch assimilationist, I find the widespread emphasis on cultural diversity a corrosive influence on America. Simply put, I believe if you come here, then you must learn English and assimilate — or else you should return to your native country. My logic is very simple: You came here because your native culture failed to provide opportunities, so what sense does it make to practice that culture here?
Naive immigration policy has directly affected national life in America. Take the issue of Islamic terrorism on American soil. It is large-scale Third World immigration that has enabled Islamic immigrants to come here, stay unassimilated and plot against Americans. (The Islamic gunman who killed the servicemen in Chattanooga is but the latest example.) Nevertheless, our immigration policy naively ignores the irreconcilable differences between the Islamic culture and the West and continues to hope for a utopia.
The next time you grumble at such-and-such rule of airport security, don’t blame Transportation Security Administration agents. Instead, the blame should go to our naive immigration system that allows anti-American foreigners to come here in the first place, whose presence leads to national nervousness about security.
The 1965 act is the culprit for another current crisis — illegal immigration. As noted above, that law deluged the country with millions of Third World immigrants. Eventually, they were given citizenship — even those who could not speak English. Subsequently, other laws were modified to accommodate this deluge; for instance, the outrageous practice of printing ballots in foreign languages for those who received citizenship without learning English. Such accommodations eventually sent the message that if you come here, you are entitled to various benefits. It doesn’t matter how you come here — legally or illegally — just come here.
So, you see, the 1965 law has brought far more trouble than it is worth. To be sure, it helped millions of Third Worlders escape poverty. But the purpose of immigration policy should not be to address poverty overseas — rather, it should be to address the skills needed in this country.
It is one thing to admit a highly skilled worker and his wife and children, but quite another to also admit his brothers, sisters and parents merely because they are related to him. Yet that is exactly how our current system operates — it brings in multiple unskilled immigrants for every skilled immigrant. Hence the deluge.
If America is to ever regain the cohesive culture it once had, then we must formulate a modern, strictly skills-based system where immigrants speak English and truly assimilate. Think about it — it is a matter of national security.
The Obama administration gave leading environmental activists unprecedented access and influence as the Environmental Protection Agency crafted rules limiting carbon emissions from power plants, a Senate committee charged Tuesday in a report that raises new questions about the president’s climate change agenda.
A report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee breaks down in detail off-the-books meetings and email conversations, sometimes through private, nongovernmental accounts, between top EPA officials and leaders with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations.
Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and committee chairman, is a leading critic of the president’s environmental agenda.
Charges of collusion between the EPA and the environmental movement, along with the fact that a host of former environmental activists have found their way into high-level positions in the Obama administration, are nothing new.
But the Senate study, relying on emails and other records obtained during an ongoing investigation, makes clear that the EPA and top environmental groups see themselves as deeply intertwined in the push to cut carbon emissions and pursue other pieces of President Obama’s broad, climate change agenda.
The report paints a picture of near-constant communication between the two sides, including coordination on public messaging strategies and in-depth discussions about the fine details of Mr. Obama’s climate policies.
The report also draws attention to the “sue and settle” practice, by which an environmental group sues the EPA and the EPA settles the lawsuit by agreeing to enact pieces of the environmental group’s policy agenda. The practice is seen as a shortcut through regulatory procedure.
The EPA and the NRDC vehemently denied the Senate committee’s claims of collusion, and the Sierra Club did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite those denials, it seems clear that the NRDC and other groups were given routine access to top EPA officials and helped craft policies such as the Clean Power Plan, which limits carbon emissions from existing power plants.
Other stakeholders, such as the energy industry, manufacturers and members of the public, were not granted the same access.
“The amount of time the public had to engage on these rules … is a fraction of the time that the NRDC had,” a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee aide told reporters. “One of the issues is that the Clean Air Act requires any information the agency relies on as part of rule-making needs to be included in the docket and publicly disclosed. I have questions about whether that’s been happening.”
The report was released one day after Mr. Obama and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy formally unveiled the Clean Power Plan, which requires a 32 percent reduction in carbon emissions from power plants by 2030.
The plan has touched off a firestorm across the country. Republicans in Congress are vowing to block the regulations any way they can, Republican governors are promising to ignore the rules entirely and a coalition of 15 state attorneys general is preparing lawsuits to challenge the plan in federal court.
The Clean Power Plan regulations follow EPA rules limiting emissions from new fossil-fuel-fired power plants. Those rules and others were heavily influenced by environmental groups, the Senate report says, and the environmental movement and the EPA see themselves as partners in the climate change fight.
In late 2010, shortly after the EPA settled a lawsuit by agreeing to limit emissions from new power plants, Ms. McCarthy — then the agency’s assistant administrator for air and radiation — had an email conversation with the director of the NRDC’s climate and clean air program, David Doniger.
“The announcement is a major achievement. … We’ll be with you at every step in the year ahead,” Mr. Doniger wrote to Ms. McCarthy, according to the report.
“I really appreciate your support and your patience. Enjoy the holiday. This success is yours as much as mine,” Ms. McCarthy replied.
The report lays out a large number of similar conversations.
The apparent collusion between environmental groups and the White House is, to some degree, reminiscent of the heated dispute over Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force during the early years of the Bush administration.
Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, and other organizations such as Judicial Watch, sued the Bush White House and argued that Mr. Cheney had violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires committees set up by the president to conduct business in public and reveal members. They also argued that the task force was exercising unprecedented influence over federal energy policy outside the public’s view.
The lawsuit ultimately reached the Supreme Court, though the justices sent the case back to a lower court. In 2005, a federal appeals court decided that Mr. Cheney’s task force did not have to comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
It’s not clear whether collusion between environmental groups and the EPA will result in legal action. Senate investigators say they are still examining whether any laws have been broken.
The NRDC, echoing the defenses the Bush administration made during the energy task force fight, claims such interactions with the government are not uncommon nor inappropriate in any way.
In a statement, NRDC communications director Edwin Chen dismissed the study based on Mr. Inhofe’s ideological stance and on his own group’s substantively good position.
“This is another attempt to stop us from standing up for clean air, safe water and healthy communities — and strong action to combat climate change. Sen. Inhofe and his allies are trying to protect the big polluters that bankroll their campaigns and are trying to intimidate those who would fight for the environment. We are doing nothing more than petitioning our government — a constitutionally protected right. That’s our job,” Mr. Chen said.
The EPA also disputed the committee’s report, saying critics merely want to undermine the Clean Power Plan.
“There is simply zero merit to the idea that one group had any undue influence on the proposal’s development. This is a flawed narrative driven by cherry-picked and isolated communications that in no way reflect the full breadth and depth of the unprecedented outreach EPA engaged in to formulate and develop the Clean Power Plan,” EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison said.
Love him or hate him, no one has been able to figure out Donald Trump. No one, that is, except Norma Foerderer.
For 26 years, Foerderer was Mr. Trump’s top aide, becoming his vice president. During her career with him, Foerderer oversaw almost every aspect of the presidential candidate’s business, including public relations, hiring and firing, and negotiating book deals and contracts. No one knew so well both the personal and business side of Mr. Trump.
Just before she retired in 2006. Foerderer, who has since died, gave me her only in-depth interview about Donald. Foerderer said there are two Donald Trumps: the “outrageous” one that utters brash comments on television and the real one that only she and other insiders know.
“I mean Donald can be totally outrageous, but outrageous in a wonderful way that gets him coverage,” Foerderer told me for a column that appeared on Newsmax.com. “That persona sells his licensed products and his condominiums. You know Donald’s never been shy, and justifiably so, in talking about how wonderful his buildings or his golf clubs are.”
The private Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is “the dearest, most thoughtful, most loyal, most caring man,” Foerderer said. That caring side inspires loyalty and is one of his secrets to his success.
Foerderer began with Mr. Trump in February 1981 as a secretary. She had been a junior State Department political officer in Africa and then worked for a nonprofit organization. After Donald’s then-wife Ivana interviewed her, Foerderer met with Mr. Trump one Saturday morning.
“There was Donald, in the office, perched on the reception desk … with his coat slung over his shoulder in a cape fashion and wearing a tie,” Foerderer recalled. “And so there he was, swinging his leg. I arrived on the stroke of 9. He said, ‘I’m glad to see you’re on time.’ Punctuality has always been a big thing with him. And I said, ‘Oh, my God.’ “
After interviewing Foerderer for two minutes, Donald hired her. She thought Ivana, who dubbed her husband The Donald, was more interested in his having a secretary than he was. At the time, he had only seven employees. Foerderer found that Donald had no files: He retained everything in his head, and his lawyer kept his contracts.
“Donald is such a man of vision,” Foerderer said. “He allows you to do whatever you want. Soon, I was doing all the purchasing. I did all the human resources. I screened his mail, I looked for special projects, did the preliminary research on them, and then would give him the results so other staff members could investigate further. I arranged special events and press conferences, I did his PR. It was the kind of job that just grew because I was there and available.”
Foerderer found that Mr. Trump “instills in you the desire to do more and more and more, and you want to please him. And yet he rarely criticizes. I mean he would, if you did something stupid. He allows you to expand, if you come in with an idea, he’ll say, ‘Fine, run with it, and see what you do.’ This motivates and challenges you even more, and you want to please him because you admire him so much.”
Barbara Res experienced the same freedom when Mr. Trump hired her in September 1980 to be in charge of building the 68-story Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Female executives in the construction business were almost non-existent, but Mr. Trump put his faith in her and told her he wanted her to “treat everything as if it were my project and my money and I would be his final word,” she says.
Mr. Trump taught Foerderer how to negotiate and would brag about her ability.
“Well, I learned from the master,” she said. “I got him really wonderful deals for commercials. What did I do? I would sit tight and say, ‘I want a million.’ They’d say, ‘Start lower.’ My response would be, ‘Look, you’re getting Donald Trump, and there’s only one of him. I can’t recommend a lower price for him. You’re getting a bargain.’ I’d just talk and talk and talk, and joke with them. And before you know it, bingo. I’d be just as surprised as anybody else that it happened. But I just knew that I had to persevere the way he does.”
As Trump’s right hand, the elegantly dressed Foerderer was the person celebrities like Jay Leno, Regis Philbin and Jack Nicholson had to go through to reach Donald. Foerderer may have been the gatekeeper, but Mr. Trump was his own PR person. Before agreeing to cooperate on my book “The Season: Inside Palm Beach and America’s Richest Society,” Donald chatted with me for 20 minutes on the phone to size me up. Then he was all in, taking me and my wife Pam on his Boeing 727-100 from New York to Palm Beach, where we spent the weekend with him at his Mar-a-Lago estate and club.
Mr. Trump is also his own lawyer and architect. He insists on high quality and personally oversees design, choosing, as one example, the color of rock for his golf course waterfalls.
“I’ve sat in on meetings with lawyers where he introduces ideas to them that have merit,” Foerderer said. “I’ve seen him work with architects where he does the very same thing. He’ll take that big magic marker and slash it here or there and change and create rooms. It works. Everybody stands around like dummies because they didn’t realize this could be done.”
Mr. Trump is the opposite of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who is so nasty to her Secret Service agents that being assigned to her detail is considered a form of punishment. When Mr. Trump bought Mar-a-Lago, he kept on 70-year-old gardeners who could barely pull weeds but had worked loyally for Marjorie Merriweather Post on the estate she built in 1927.
The Trump Organization has 22,450 employees, but when Donald’s Palm Beach butler Tony Senecal had heart problems, Mr. Trump visited him in the hospital and insisted that he stay at Mar-a-Lago — a paradise that spans both sides of the island — to recuperate. When Foerderer began having a problem with her eyes and had to stay at home, Mr. Trump called her every week and sent her baskets of gourmet food.
In contrast to some Palm Beach clubs that to this day do not admit blacks or Jews, Mr. Trump made it a point of admitting them, earning the ire of the town’s Old Guard. As I interviewed Mr. Trump on his plane, he imitated the constricted, nasal tones of blue bloods condemning his club because it does not discriminate.
Foerderer believed she clicked with Donald because she was completely honest with him.
“As I came to know him, I realized that Donald is a tremendous man, and I admire him enormously, but if I disagree on something, I would be the first to say to him, ‘Donald, I don’t think so,’” she said. In turn, people appreciate the multibillionaire’s candor, another key to his success, she said.
Asked what she would tell others who want to succeed, Foerderer said, “I would tell them to dream, and to have a vision and a goal. Think about what you want to do, love it, and if you love it enough, you’ll realize your dreams. That’s what Donald’s done.”
Hillary Clinton is not going to be the Democratic nominee for president.
Yes, the conventional wisdom is that she is still the prohibitive favorite, armed with big money, big connections, and the Big Dog, Bill.
But the so-called “wisdom” is “conventional” for a reason.
As a result of endless sordid scandals and predictably Clintonian evasions, her poll numbers on everything from favorability to trustworthiness are in a nosedive. A battery of new polls in key swing states such as Colorado and Iowa show her losing to a number of GOP challengers.
She’s also taking incoming from the left, particularly from Vermont senator and socialist Bernie Sanders, who is scoring major crowds and an increasing percentage of the Democratic vote, indicating that the leftist base sees him as a viable option and not merely a vehicle to register discontent with Mrs. Clinton.
Polls this early in the cycle can be unreliable. But they do indicate a significant downward trend for her that must have her campaign at DEFCON 3.
None of this, however, is her most serious problem. Instead, it’s something much closer to home, much more insidious, much more dangerous than anything else.
It’s President Obama. And he just made his move.
Here’s how it’s likely going down:
The Clintons and the Obamas have a long history of bad blood, dating to the 2008 primary race. After Mr. Obama creamed her, he offered her the plum gig of secretary of state. Friends close, enemies closer. She tried to get her dirty tricks consigliere, Sidney Blumenthal, a top position in the State Department, which Mr. Obama pointedly denied. So she hired him anyway through the Clinton Foundation.
Through Mr. Blumenthal, she was fed all kinds of intelligence on global hotpots such as Libya, much of it inaccurate, as she circumvented traditional government communication chains via her private email server. What was she hiding from Mr. Obama? And why? Perhaps because she trusted Mr. Obama about as much as she trusted Bill.
Mr. Obama didn’t trust her, either. In a recently disclosed email, Mrs. Clinton complained that she heard “on the radio” that there was a “Cabinet meeting” that morning and wondered if she could attend. The secretary of state — fourth in line to the presidency — was frozen out, so she set up her own fiefdom.
Mr. Obama needs a successor whom he can control to ensure that the “fundamental transformation of the nation” continues. He cannot control either of the Clintons. In a revealing “tell” this week, he said, “In 18 months, I’m turning over the keys. I want to make sure I’m turning over the keys to somebody who is serious about the serious problems that the country faces and the world faces.”
He will therefore back the one person he knows will do his bidding: his vice president, Joe Biden, whom he summons to his side for every critical photo op, including the announcement of the Iran deal. There’s more going on there than just symbolism.
So here’s the likely plan: Mr. Biden will announce that he is running for president (the reported dying wish of his late son, Beau). After a respectable amount of time, Mr. Obama will announce that while he admires all of the Democratic candidates, Mr. Biden has earned his particular loyalty.
Following his presidential endorsement, Mr. Obama will then support Mr. Biden with the full weight of the White House, including the sophisticated technical infrastructure his campaigns used to win in 2008 and 2012. For years, Mrs. Clinton has begged Mr. Obama to turn it over to her, and he refused. He’s been saving it for someone else.
Mr. Obama will also use his considerable influence with black and Latino voters to support Mr. Biden, which may be enough to help him significantly.
But Mrs. Clinton is a survivor, they will say. The media protects her. True. But it will be a much different situation if she’s under criminal investigation by the Justice Department or worse, crippled by a Special Prosecutor or even an indictment.
Don’t think Mr. Obama will go there? He already has. Last week, the New York Times reported that two inspectors general from his administration recommended that the Justice Department open a “criminal” inquiry into her handling of classified material. The leak to the Times came from a “senior administration official,” which some have speculated was Mr. Obama’s own consigliere, Valerie Jarrett. The Times walked back some of the details, but the damage was done. If Mr. Obama did not want a DOJ criminal investigation of Mrs. Clinton to go forward, he would not have let it go this far.
He wants the investigation, wants her nailed, wants her out. And he’s doing it, slowly, steadily.
The Clintons used to be champion Machiavellians. But in Mr. Obama, they look like they are being outmaneuvered — again — by the ultimate take-no-prisoners master.
Hillary is being given the Judas kiss by her former boss, a man loyal to no one but himself.
A third undercover video sparked new outrage Tuesday by following the money behind the fetal-organ supply chain, starting with Planned Parenthood, and prompting GOP presidential candidates to raise the pressure on the group’s federal and corporate funding.
The video, the latest and most graphic in the Center for Medical Progress’s Human Capital investigation, stoked the uproar in Congress and outraged protesters at national pro-life rallies demanding an end to public subsidies of Planned Parenthood.
The latest video goes behind the doors at a Planned Parenthood affiliate clinic in Denver, where fetal tissue obtained by abortions is then transferred to companies like Stem Express and Advanced Bioscience Resources before being sold to medical research facilities.
Planned Parenthood officials have insisted that their organization is only reimbursed for costs associated with the procurement, transfer and storage of fetal tissue, which is permitted under federal law, while the center’s David Daleiden has accused the organization of illegally profiting from the sale of “baby parts.”
The third video shows a Planned Parenthood official, Dr. Savita Ginde, voicing support for separating fetal organs from the body, saying, “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”
Dr. Ginde, the medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rockies, is also shown working over a dish of fetal parts and discussing their viability with a “buyer” in the clinic’s pathology laboratory.
Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, accused those behind the video of entering the lab under “false pretenses” and releasing the edited version for “shock value.”
“It is a profoundly offensive violation of privacy and dignity that anti-abortion extremists entered our laboratory under false pretenses and are now broadcasting video of a part of the process for a safe abortion,” she said in a statement.
Much of the 12-minute video is devoted to an interview with a former StemExpress “procurement technician,” Holly O’Donnell, who says she was hired to “draw blood and dissect dead fetuses and sell the parts to researchers.”
“For whatever we could procure, they would get a certain percentage,” Ms. O’Donnell says in the video. “The main nurse was always trying to make sure we got our specimens. No one else really cared, but the main nurse did because she knew that Planned Parenthood was getting compensated.”
StemExpress, based in Placerville, California, did not release a comment immediately Tuesday, but a receptionist referred news media to the company’s July 16 statement, which states that the firm “prides itself on complying with all laws.”
Meanwhile, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund blasted those behind the undercover videos as “militant anti-abortion extremists.”
“Planned Parenthood offers the opportunity for women to choose to donate fetal tissue for research purposes,” said the group’s clergy advisory board in a Tuesday statement. “Research using fetal tissue saves hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide every year.”
Ms. O’Donnell recalled that she fainted during her first day of training after seeing another technician separate newly aborted fetal tissue.
“I thought I was going to be just drawing blood, not procuring tissue from aborted fetuses,” Ms. O’Donnell says. “The harder and more valuable the tissue, the more money you get. So if you can somehow procure a brain or a heart, you’re going to get more money than just chorionic villi or umbilical cord. That’s basically what it is. So I guess that’s an incentive to try and get the hard stuff.”
An ABR fee schedule shown in the video shows that a “2nd trimester specimen” would cost $340 per specimen, while a “1st trimester specimen” lists for $550. A specimen “cleaning” runs $50. Based in Alameda, California, ABR is a nonprofit corporate entity.
The videos, released a week apart, have prompted House and Senate congressional investigations, along with legislative efforts, to defund Planned Parenthood, which receives roughly a half-billion dollars a year in federal funding.
The latest video drew a reaction from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said a working group chaired by Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, would meet in his office Tuesday afternoon to discuss legislation the chamber can take up before leaving for August recess.
“We’ll have a meeting of the minds on the best way to craft a measure to deal with these horrendous videos we’ve all been viewing,” Mr. McConnell said.
Later Tuesday, Ms. Ernst announced a bill had been introduced, and she was joined by about two dozen co-sponsors.
One co-sponsor is Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican and presidential candidate, who is pressing to defund Planned Parenthood. He called Tuesday on former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to return an estimated $10,000 in donations from Planned Parenthood employees and executives.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who previously launched an investigation into his state’s Planned Parenthood affiliate clinics, called Tuesday for companies to “cut all ties” to the nonprofit organization, the nation’s largest reproductive health care and abortion provider.
Planned Parenthood Action Fund swung back with the release of a poll conducted by Hart Research Associates on Planned Parenthood’s behalf showing that 64 percent of voters disagree with Republican efforts to defund the organization.
“Americans continue to support funding for Planned Parenthood despite the debate engendered by the release of these videos,” said Hart Research President Geoff Garin. “Voters respond favorably to Planned Parenthood’s core message about the videos and its policies with regard to fetal tissue donations.”
Critics argue that the questions asked by the Democratic polling firm were worded in such a way as to elicit a positive response on behalf of Planned Parenthood, such as by specifically and repeatedly mentioning the organization’s “cancer screenings and family planning” while saying nothing about the fetal organs trade.
In a statement Tuesday, Planned Parenthood officials said that defunding would jeopardize “basic preventive care,” not abortions, because the Hyde Amendment already bans the use of federal funding for abortion.
Planned Parenthood brought in $1.2 billion in revenue in 2013-14, about half of which came from federal and state funding, primarily through Medicaid reimbursements.
Eight states are investigating the allegations against Planned Parenthood, while California Attorney General Kamala Harris has turned her attention to the pro-life group, which has been accused of wrongdoing by filming doctors without their knowledge and registering a false company with the state.
Mr. Daleiden, project lead for the center, said the group’s work will continue to expose Planned Parenthood and called for a moratorium on the group’s taxpayer funding. He has previously said that the group could release a dozen videos. The American Life League called on its supporters to flood Congress with phone calls Friday in support of the center’s work.
“The right for David to tell the truth, to speak freely and to report and show the truth is imperiled by the self-interest of Planned Parenthood and its powerful political friends to protect the slaughter of children and the exorbitant amount of money it makes from its illicit practices,” said ALL board member Hugh Brown.
The IRS sent one of its intrusive scrutiny letters to a nonprofit group in order to throw up a smokescreen and prevent the group from complaining to Congress about poor treatment, according to one of Lois G. Lerner’s apparently lost emails, which were recovered by auditors and released by an interest group Tuesday.
Judicial Watch, which sued to force the production of the Lerner emails, said the emails confirm that Ms. Lerner, the central figure in the targeting probe, and her colleagues were aware of the sensitive nature of the cases but appeared to hide details of the massive backlog they were amassing as they held up hundreds of tea party and conservative group applications for nonprofit status.
The IRS turned over 906 pages of emails July 15 to Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm, ahead of a Wednesday court hearing. Judicial Watch concluded that the emails were part of the messages Ms. Lerner lost in a computer malfunction, and released them Tuesday.
“This material shows that the IRS‘ cover-up began years ago,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “We now have smoking-gun proof that top officials in the Obama IRS unlawfully harassed taxpayers just to keep them from complaining to Congress about IRS‘ targeting and abuse. No wonder the Obama IRS has had such little interest in preserving or finding Lois Lerner’s emails.”
The Lerner emails have become almost as big a scandal as the initial targeting. Ms. Lerner, who was head of the division that scrutinized the tea party applications until she retired while under investigation in 2013, suffered a computer hard drive crash that cost potentially thousands of emails that should have been part of the record.
The IRS took routine steps to try to recover the emails but reported that it was unable to do so.
But the agency’s independent inspector general said it was able to find the messages easily on backup tapes stored at remote locations — and that the IRS never bothered to look for those tapes, even as it was telling Congress that all possible routes for message recovery had been exhausted.
According to the new emails, Ms. Lerner and her colleagues were aware of the growing outcry among nonprofit groups that they were being delayed.
In one Nov. 3, 2011, exchange between Ms. Lerner and Cindy Thomas, a program manager in the Cincinnati office that was handling the cases and was involved in a back-and-forth with Washington, the IRS admitted to having hundreds of cases stacked up and awaiting action.
Afraid of congressional pressure, Ms. Thomas ordered one of the inquiry letters to be sent, just to prevent one of the organizations being held up from complaining.
“Just today, I instructed one of my managers to get an additional information letter out to one of these organizations — if nothing else to buy time so he didn’t contact his Congressional Office,” she wrote in the email released by Judicial Watch.
Ms. Thomas said she feared a judge would get involved soon and order the IRS to move the applications more quickly.
That email exchange did confirm that IRS employees in Washington were deeply involved in making decisions about the nonprofit groups’ cases.
The IRS initially blamed the Cincinnati office for the glitch.
President Obama last week blamed the targeting scandal not on poor management but on “crummy” legislation he said Congress passed that gave his employees confusing instructions, and on funding cuts. He said the IRS wasn’t able to do its best work as a result.
“Congress has passed a crummy law that didn’t give people guidance in terms of what they were trying to do. They did it poorly and stupidly,” Mr. Obama told “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart.
A number of the 906 pages of emails released to Judicial Watch are redacted, with the agency citing the “b5” exemption under the Freedom of Information Act, which allows the government to withhold information deemed to be part of the agency deliberative process.
The IRS claimed other pages that were withheld contained sensitive taxpayer information — including what appear to be published news articles.
On Monday, Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called Mr. Obama to oust Ms. Lerner’s successor, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, for obstructing the targeting investigation.
Chairman Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican, said Mr. Koskinen gave assurances that the IRS would save email that was key to the investigation at the same time the emails were being destroyed.
“The reality is what he said was false. He repeatedly made false statements,” Mr. Chaffetz said at a Capitol Hill press conference, where he was joined by more than a dozen fellow Republicans from the committee.
“Mr. Koskinen should no longer be the IRS commissioner,” said Mr. Chaffetz. “Mr. Koskinen failed in his duty to preserve and produce documentation to this committee.”
The IRS defended Mr. Koskinen.
“The record is clear that the IRS and Commissioner Koskinen have been cooperative and truthful with the numerous investigations underway. The agency has produced more than one million pages of documents in support of the investigations, provided 52 current and former employees for interviews and participated in more than 30 Congressional hearings on these issues,” the agency said in a statement.
The IRS inspector general has concluded that the agency did in fact target conservative and tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny, and the Justice Department is still conducting a criminal investigation into the targeting.
Mr. Chaffetz noted that 24,000 potential emails were destroyed after the materials were under subpoena and after the agency’s chief technology officer issued a preservation notice ordering employees not to destroy anything.
The chief technology officer later told the committee that he was “blown away” that backup tapes were destroyed 10 months after his preservation notice.
President Obama’s environmental agenda suffered another loss in court Tuesday when a federal appeals panel ordered the administration to rewrite rules limiting cross-state pollution.
In its ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed the Environmental Protection Agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, meant to stop upwind states from producing pollution that drifts into neighboring states and pushes them out of compliance with federal standards. But while the court upheld the plan itself, the judges said the EPA’s limits on 13 states, mostly in the South and Midwest, were far too strict and must be redone.
The ruling comes a month after the Supreme Court struck down the EPA’s mercury and air toxics standards, meant to limit pollution from power plants. The court found that the agency failed to consider the massive costs associated with complying with the rule.
Opponents of the administration also have vowed to file new legal challenges to the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which would establish unprecedented limits on carbon emissions from existing power plants, after the final version of the proposal is released next month.
In the cross-state case, the judges said the EPA’s mandate went beyond what was necessary to ensure states didn’t flood their neighbors with pollution, essentially finding that the administration had overstepped its bounds.
“The rule could lead to over-control of upwind states — that is, emissions reductions beyond those necessary to achieve attainment in downwind states,” Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote. “Second, the rule could require states to reduce even insignificant contributions to pollution in downwind states. Third, the rule did not purport to try to assess each upwind state’s relative contribution to nonattainment in downwind states.”
The rule itself already has been upheld by the Supreme Court, which last year said the EPA was within its rights to regulate cross-state pollution but sent questions about the specific limits back to the D.C. Circuit.
For states that have spent years battling Mr. Obama’s environmental agenda in court, Tuesday’s ruling represented a key victory.
“In Texas we create air quality improvements through science and facts. The EPA’s agenda-driven mandates would have increased energy costs for hard-working Texans and decreased reliability. I’m pleased the court has sent the EPA marching back to the drawing board,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “We will continue to fight the EPA’s overreach while ensuring Texas can keep our air clean without wreaking havoc on family budgets.”
The administration highlighted the fact that the underlying rule remains in place and said it will review the specifics of the decision.
“We are reviewing the decision and will determine any appropriate further course of action once our view is complete,” EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison said.
Environmentalists said that any lessening of the standards would make them nearly useless.
“The reality is we need more pollution control of power plants, not less,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. “The targets involved in this case are so outmoded that they are almost irrelevant.”
The states affected by Tuesday’s decision are: Texas, South Carolina, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
The Texas Supreme Court gave Friday the Houston city council 30 days either to repeal a civil-rights ordinance allowing opposite-sex bathroom use or place it before the voters on the November ballot.
The 12-page decision says that the council ran afoul of the city charter when it refused to act after the city secretary certified a year ago the signatures submitted by a pastor-led coalition, which had moved to force a vote on the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO).
Houston Mayor Annise Parker came under fire last year after the city moved to subpoena sermons and other documents from five pastors, known as the Houston Five, ultimately backing down and omitting sermons from the order in the face of a public outcry.
“Obviously, I am disappointed and believe the court is in error with this 11th-hour ruling in a case that had already been decided by a judge and jury of citizens,” said Ms. Parker, the city’s first openly lesbian mayor, in a Friday statement.
“Nonetheless, we will proceed with the steps necessary for City Council to consider the issue. At the same time, we are consulting with our outside counsel on any possible available legal actions,” she said.
The city has until Aug. 24 to act on the court’s order, which also suspended the equal-rights ordinance, raising the possibility of a ballot fight that could sway the outcome of the November mayor’s race. Ms. Parker is term-limited and cannot seek re-election.
The ordinance, approved by the city council in May 2014, added gender identity and sexual orientation to the city’s equal-rights law, touching off a backlash over transgender bathroom use.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott praised the court’s decision Friday, saying that, “Freedom of expression can only exist once government removes itself from stifling free speech, repressing religious liberty and interfering with the lives of its citizens.”
“Today’s decision by the Texas Supreme Court appropriately returns jurisdiction over this matter to voters while reassuring the people of Houston that their personal values remain beyond the reach of government,” said the Republican governor in a statement.
Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which defended the pastors, said Friday that the court “has rightly rectified this wrong.”
“Public officials should not be allowed to run roughshod over the right of the people to decide these types of issues, especially when the citizens of Houston clearly met all the qualifications for having their voice heard,” Mr. Stanley said in a statement.
“The subpoenas we successfully fought were only one element of this disgraceful abuse of power,” he said. “The scandal began when the city arbitrarily threw out the valid signatures of thousands of voters. The city did this all because it was bent on pushing through its deeply unpopular ordinance at any cost.”
The city secretary certified the signatures on July 3, 2014, saying that the petitioners had turned in 17,846 valid signatures, exceeding the required 17,269, the Houston city attorney stepped in and declared invalid more than 16,000 signatures.
The court ruled that the city attorney had no official role in the process, which by charter requires the city council to overturn the ordinance or place it on the ballot after the city secretary has certified the signatures.
“The Charter requires the City Secretary to ‘certify’ her findings, and the only findings she expressly certified were her own,” said the court decision. “The City Attorney may, no doubt, give legal advice to the City Secretary, but he cannot assume her duties.”
At that point, the council should have either repealed the ordinance or placed it on the ballot, “[y]et the City Council decided, of its own accord, not to act, disregarding the City Secretary’s certification that the petition had enough signatures,” the opinion states.
“The Charter, however, gives the City Council no discretion to reevaluate the petition; instead, it requires ‘immediate’ action by the City Council following the City Secretary’s certification,” said the court. “To give authority to the council to make the ultimate determination of sufficiency of the petition would commit the decision to a body that could not be considered impartial.”
In April, a trial court ruled in the city’s favor on the signature challenge in a case that is now pending before the Texas Court of Appeals, but that lawsuit “does not negate the city council’s duty to proceed with the political process unless that obligation is stayed by a court of competent jurisdiction,” said Friday’s ruling.
“…if we come to see ourselves as meat, then meat we shall become.” — Leon Kass, M.D., “Toward a More Natural Science”
What is most shocking about an undercover video of a conversation between Deborah Nucatola, a Planned Parenthood executive, and two antiabortion activists from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) posing as employees from a biotech firm is why anyone is shocked.
For those who haven’t been paying attention (ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN all ignored the story during their Sunday morning political talk shows, but not Fox), the discussion centered on the sale of donated tissue from aborted fetuses. Nucatola says in the video, “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver … so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, attempted to gain some moral high ground by explaining that in the sale of fetal tissue, “there is no financial benefit … for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood.” Instead, she says, “…actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed…”
On Tuesday CMP released a second undercover video showing Dr. Mary Gatter, president of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Director’s Council, “negotiating” a price for fetal body parts, an illegal act.
The response to the Nucatola video was immediate. Republican presidential candidates denounced the practice of “fetal organ harvesting” and GOP leaders in Congress have again threatened to “defund” Planned Parenthood. They won’t, because they haven’t before.
Since Roe vs. Wade, there have been more than 55 million (and counting) legal abortions performed in the U.S. There are a number of sociological, moral and political reasons why abortions continue, but the occasional outcry when something like the Planned Parenthood videos surface will not save the lives of unborn children. Because abortions are performed behind closed doors, is it simply a case of out of sight, out of mind?
Occasionally, though, something so horrible escapes the secret chamber that people are repulsed — for a moment at least — by what we have allowed to happen and the collective effect it has had on the growing disregard for human life some of us possess.
Kermit Gosnell comes to mind. The Philadelphia abortionist was convicted of murder for snipping the spines of three babies during abortions. We were aghast for a while. If our revulsion had been sustained it might have shocked our conscience into action, but we were too focused on pleasure and comfort and the pursuit of affluence and the moment passed. Pennsylvania subsequently passed a law that regulates abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical centers, subject to the same health and safety mandates, but the abortions continue.
The reason no one should be shocked by any of this is because it is the inevitable outcome when moral boundaries are removed. If we are living in an impersonal universe; if we are evolutionary accidents not endowed with certain rights by our Creator; if we are of no greater moral value than a hamburger; and if human value is to be assigned by the courts, then we are all potentially at risk of extermination should we become inconvenient or too expensive to sustain.
But once whatever remaining boundaries are erased, and the cost of medical care rises, government and insurance companies could very well increase the rationing of medical care (as happens now with unequal Medicare payments to medical groups vs. patients with private insurance and limits on what private insurance will cover). It will likely begin at the extremes, as most inhumanities do, but once the killing standard is expanded to the elderly and the sick, it will quickly threaten others.
How do you like what we have become, America? Maybe our loss of morality, not to mention our humanity, is one reason for the rise of ISIS. As we are reminded, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint.” (Proverbs 29:18)
Maryland, like Illinois, is famous as an integrity-free zone. Former governors, the heads of various school systems in the state, legislators, county executives and law enforcement officials have ended their careers in federal and state penal institutions for confusing serving the public with serving themselves at the public’s expense.
Prince George’s County just outside Washington and across the Wilson Bridge from Alexandria has probably had more former elected and appointed officials incarcerated than any other state jurisdiction, including Baltimore, in recent years. The county’s political culture is toxic to those who believe that elected officials should resist the temptation to steal from those who elect them, and it is a culture that seems eternally resistant to reform. It’s a shame, because the historic picturesque county should be a great place to live and raise a family.
Moreover, it is the wealthiest majority black county in the entire country and the 77th wealthiest of all counties regardless of where they are or who is in the majority. The median income in the county in 2008 was nearly $72,000 and yet, by any standard, it is also one of the most dysfunctional counties in the country. Its schools are among the worst in the D.C. metropolitan area, its police are among the least disciplined in the country, and its bureaucracy fails to deliver on almost all fronts to a public that seems used to being abused, overtaxed and taken for granted by arrogant “public servants.”
To say that Prince George’s is dominated by one party is an understatement. President Obama received 90 percent of the county vote in 2012, which was up from the mere 89 percent he got when he first ran in 2008. Republicans who live in the county tend to ignore politics altogether because no one is much interested in their views or their votes. The GOP doesn’t even bother to contest most county and local offices even though there are signs that Prince George’s voters are finally getting fed up with business as usual in their home county.
County voters didn’t turn out in great numbers in the 2014 gubernatorial race and partly as a result Republican Larry Hogan is now the state’s governor. Then when County Executive Rushern Baker proposed raising real estate taxes to throw more money into a well-financed but dysfunctional school system, voters revolted. The increase would have amounted to something like $300 on a $200,000 home and, as it turned out, would be spent not on teachers and schools, but to help fund pension obligations that the county had agreed to pay and couldn’t. The all-Democratic County Council rebelled and Mr. Baker had to scale the proposal way, way back.
Prince George’s is not a poor county by any measure, but audits of their school system have revealed that much of the money earmarked for education is wasted or stolen. Maybe that’s why at least one former head of the system went to prison for public corruption. Still, the county executive claims the county is broke and needs help either from the state or in the form of much higher taxes.
These pleas are falling on deaf ears these days because in big and small ways every citizen can point to wasteful spending that should be, but isn’t cut back. My wife and I came home the other evening to find white paint on our curb. On inquiring, we discovered that the mark and many others in the neighborhood were placed there by the county arborist, who informed us that the county would be along soon to plant some trees.
Anyone who has driven out Indian Head Highway knows that Prince George’s is not exactly lacking in trees. So we naturally wondered why the county is spending money on trees at a time the county executive is claiming kids aren’t able to read because the place is cash-starved. It seems a little like spending government money in Alaska to make ice.
The arborist, of course, assured us that everyone would benefit from the plantings and that besides, it’s her job to plant trees even if we all live in the middle of a veritable forest. There are no doubt countless other county bureaucrats running around “doing their jobs,” and not one of them is costing enough to break the county, but together they are a sign of a governmental inability to prioritize or budget effectively.
This is what’s happened nationally, and its why no matter how much money government raises at any level, it seems incapable for lack of funds of fulfilling its core mission. It’s why conservatives claim that governments are more likely to have a spending rather than a revenue problem.
Certainly that’s the case in one D.C.-area county.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are hurtling toward another possible taxpayer bailout, a development that could put an uncomfortable election light on the Clintons’ record of enabling the government-backed mortgage giants to engage in risky practices that led to the 2007 financial crisis.
There is growing consensus in financial circles that the seeds of the mortgage market collapse were sown during Bill Clinton’s presidency in the mid-1990s. That was when he helped push through changes that empowered Fannie and Freddie to give more mortgages to minorities and lower-income Americans, often at below-prime interest rates and with little down payments.
When the Federal Reserve and other respected voices began warning a decade ago that those changes were threatening the mortgage markets, Hillary Rodham Clinton joined fellow Democratic senators, including Barack Obama and John F. Kerry, in providing the votes to block Republican reforms designed to stave off a collapse.
The one-two punch could prove a political liability for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid, portraying her and her husband as facilitators for highly compensated mortgage brokers and undercutting her argument that she has been a longtime champion of the middle class.
“I certainly think we’re going down the path of another bailout of the mortgage market. If we keep on this path, it’s inevitable. It’s a concern people have,” said Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. “It’s going to be a tough needle for her to thread — people on the left still believe Fannie and Freddie was a good model and that the housing crisis was all about Wall Street greed. She’s got a tough road to walk on this.”
Complicating the picture, the Clintons were benefiting politically from Freddie and Fannie’s largesse. Mrs. Clinton was among the biggest recipients of donations from the mortgage giants in all of Congress, and Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received a sizable donation from Freddie Mac in the mid-2000s as the mortgage firm was teetering financially.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign did not respond to repeated requests seeking comment on Fannie and Freddie.
Homes for the poor
The Clintons’ mortgage policy saga began two decades ago during the booming early Internet era, when concern grew in Washington that minorities and the working poor weren’t reaping the benefits of an improving economy, especially in the housing market.
In a bid to create affordable housing for minorities and low-income residents, Mr. Clinton in 1995 ordered new bank regulations to encourage lending in poor neighborhoods. The Community Reinvestment Act gave banks higher ratings if they lent more in credit-deprived localities.
Maintaining a high CRA score was essential to the banks, pressuring them to give more loans to riskier clients, studies have shown. A lowered CRA rating would make it more difficult for a bank to become licensed to conduct business in other parts of the country, participate in other government lending programs, or complete mergers and acquisitions that needed the government’s approval.
The CRA was the channel through which “a U.S. Congress, worried about growing income inequality, towards expanding low income housing, joined with the flood of foreign capital inflows to remove any discipline on home loans,” Raghuram Rajan, a former chief economist and director of research at the International Monetary Fund, wrote in the Financial Times in 2010.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit organization, examined the impact of the CRA on risky mortgage lending. In a 2012 study, it found “that adherence to the act leads to riskier lending by banks: in the six quarters surrounding the CRA exams, lending is elevated on average by about 5 percent and these loans default about 15 percent more often.”
Three years before Mr. Clinton altered the CRA to encourage investment in lower-income communities, Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, pushed to impose an “affordable housing” requirement on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The thought was that minorities were being shut out of the housing market because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were underwriting loans only to banks that were issuing prime mortgages — 30-year fixed mortgages that required healthy down payments. Minorities and the working poor often didn’t have the cash or creditworthiness to qualify for such loans.
A 1992 affordable housing “mission” led by Mr. Frank allowed the government-sponsored enterprises to back riskier loans and make sure a quota of all loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going to this pool, which was defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development.
“At first, this quota was 30 percent; that is, of all the loans they bought, 30 percent had to be made to people at or below the median income in their communities,” Peter Wallison, who served on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in 2010, wrote in an article for The Atlantic. “HUD, however, was given authority to administer these quotas, and between 1992 and 2007, the quotas were raised from 30 percent to 50 percent under Clinton in 2000 and to 55 percent under [President George W.] Bush in 2007.”
“By 2000, Fannie was offering no-down-payment loans. By 2002, Fannie and Freddie had bought well over $1 trillion of subprime and other low quality loans,” Mr. Wallison wrote. “Fannie and Freddie were by far the largest part of this effort, but the [Federal Housing Administration], Federal Home Loan Banks, [the Department of Veterans Affairs] and other agencies — all under congressional and HUD pressure — followed suit.”
This was no accident. The Clinton administration made affordable housing a priority and appointed people in top positions to make it happen.
Mr. Clinton named Andrew Cuomo, now New York’s governor, as HUD secretary. Mr. Cuomo pushed to keep homeownership numbers rising under Mr. Clinton’s watch by increasing the quota of affordable housing loans to 50 percent of the government-sponsored enterprise business.
Under Mr. Cuomo, HUD commissioned a report that showed Fannie’s automated underwriting system disproportionately screened out minority borrowers — and urged the agency to correct the disparity.
Mr. Cuomo also refused to impose safeguards that would have prevented Fannie and Freddie from rushing into buying subprime mortgages, such as requiring lenders to provide details about these types of mortgages. In October 2000, Mr. Cuomo sided with the government-sponsored enterprises, arguing that this sort of transparency would impose an “undue additional burden” on the agencies.
Incentives for Fannie Mae
The Clinton administration also replaced many of Fannie Mae’s top executives, including its chief executive officer with Mr. Clinton’s former White House budget director Franklin Raines. It replaced Fannie’s No. 2 in charge and nearly half of the board of directors.
Fannie Mae then restructured its executives’ salary structures to give incentives to buy more mortgages.
“This was a clear case of the Clinton administration embarking on a massive folly,” said Norbert Michel, a research fellow in financial regulations at The Heritage Foundation. “Fannie and Freddie were relatively unimportant until [Mr. Clinton] blew it up. It was all in the goal of getting homeownership numbers up from 65 percent — where they had been holding stable for years — to somewhere around 75 percent. They made no bones about it — they wanted cheaper loans. To think you can increase homeownership rates with a flip of a switch with nothing to go wrong is completely insane. This is when it started — there’s no doubt.”
A 2002 HUD report says, “From 1993 to 1998, the number of subprime refinance increased tenfold.”
In 1999, Mr. Raines boasted to The New York Times: “Fannie Mae has expanded homeownership for millions of families in the 1990s by reducing down payment requirements.”
That same year, it began its pilot program to encourage banks to extend home mortgages to people whose credit wasn’t high enough to qualify for prime 30-year, fixed-rate loans. Fannie Mae officials told The New York Times that “the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income homeowners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.”
Of the 19.2 million subprime and low-quality loans on the books of government agencies in 2008, 12 million were held or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie, said Mr. Wallison, who now serves as a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
The riskiness and sustainability of these loans were highlighted in multiple warnings to Congress while Mrs. Clinton was a U.S. senator.
The Bush administration — although partly culpable for the housing crisis in that it raised the government-sponsored enterprises’ affordable housing goals to 55 percent — also called 17 times for reform of the agencies.
“We at the Federal Reserve remain concerned about the growth and magnitude of the mortgage portfolios of the government-sponsored enterprises, which concentrate interest rate risk and prepayment risk at these two institutions and makes our financial system dependent on their ability to manage these risks,” Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified at an April 2005 hearing. “To fend off possible future systemic difficulties, which we assess as likely if GSE expansion continues unabated, preventive actions are required sooner rather than later.”
From 1998 to 2004, Fannie executives improperly reported $10.6 billion in earnings. Executives such as Mr. Raines were raking in huge paychecks because of the rising number of mortgages they were issuing.
During the six-year period, Mr. Raines received $52.8 million in bonuses, according to a 2006 report of an investigation by regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.
Republican reforms rebuffed
Worried that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had grown too independent and bullish under Mr. Clinton’s watch, a Republican-controlled Congress under Mr. Bush tried to rein in the entities.
Yet Democrats including Mrs. Clinton — who were receiving huge campaign donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — filibustered reform.
By 2006, a bill to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had passed through the full House of Representatives and out of committee in the Senate, along party-line votes (all Republicans voting for it, all Democrats against).
The bill proposed the creation of a regulator for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks. The legislation would give the regulator the authority to shut down either Fannie or Freddie if they encountered a severe financial crisis, and would give it the power to regulate any new activities. The bill required an annual audit of the mortgage giants’ books and a provision that all directors be elected — not appointed by the president.
Five Senate Democrats needed to step forward and offer their support to end a filibuster and allow a vote.
None did, so the bill never even came to a vote on the Senate floor.
Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, then the ranking Democrat on the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and No. 1 recipient of government-sponsored enterprise lobbying funds, opposed the bill. When Barack Obama entered the Senate in 2005, he was among the people supporting the filibuster.
Mrs. Clinton joined with Mr. Dodd and Mr. Obama to oppose the measure. All the other Senate Democrats lined up behind them.
Clinton’s encouragement
That same year, Mrs. Clinton was actively promoting broader lending to lower-income Americans — along the same philosophical policy lines as her husband did when he was president.
She introduced legislation to strengthen the Federal Housing Administration, specifically proposing to raise the ceiling on loan amounts that could be insured by the government in high-cost areas, and for the entity to be able to offer loans requiring no down payment.
Mrs. Clinton met with credit union leaders across New York in 2006 to congratulate them for making more than $180 million worth of first mortgage loans in underserved areas, exceeding their goal of $150 million. Encouraged, the credit union leaders committed to another $180 million the following year.
During this same period, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s political action committee and individuals linked to the companies donated $75,500 to Mrs. Clinton’s senatorial campaign — making her the fourth-largest recipient in Congress of the mortgage firms’ total donations in the years 1989 to 2008 behind Mr. Obama, Mr. Kerry, now secretary of state, and Mr. Dodd, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that studies campaign finance and political influence in Washington.
Freddie Mac also gave the Clinton Foundation a $50,000 to $100,000 donation.
By mid-2006, the Senate Republican sponsors of the regulatory bill became frustrated and wrote an open letter pleading for action from Senate leaders in both parties.
“We are concerned that if effective regulatory legislation for the housing-finance government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) is not enacted this year, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole,” they wrote.
The risky lending escalated. Fannie acquired $135 billion in what was dubbed as Alt-A mortgages — that is subprime or other risky lending — in 2006 and 2007, more than double the sum in all years before 2005, according to its annual reports.
The proposed 2006 reform was never passed, and the market collapsed a year later — with American taxpayers on the hook for $187.5 billion in defaulted loans guaranteed by the two mortgage giants.
Although Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were put in conservatorship and have repaid American taxpayers for the bailout, they have not been reformed.
Blaming the banks
In her 2008 presidential run, Mrs. Clinton spun the reason for the financial crisis into predatory lending by commercial banks that unfairly targeted unsuspecting and oftentimes minority communities — the same communities her husband said he was trying to target with more affordable mortgages during his administration.
“If I were president, I would address abuses across the mortgage industry with a plan to curb unfair lending practices and hold brokers and lenders accountable, give families the support they need to avoid foreclosure and increase the supply of affordable housing,” Mrs. Clinton said in a campaign appearance in August 2007 in Derry, New Hampshire.
Mrs. Clinton outlined a commitment of $1 billion in federal money to help local governments build and renovate more affordable housing, reforms aimed at “cracking down on unscrupulous brokers who lure unsuspecting families into unfair mortgages,” and those aimed at helping homeowners in foreclosure. She never proposed reforming the two entities that many believe led to the mortgage crisis: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
With Mrs. Clinton on the campaign trail again, the housing crisis seems to be a distant memory. She hasn’t addressed it or what her plans would be for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
Those within the industry, however, say reforms need to be made.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may need another taxpayer bailout in the next few years because they have been undercapitalized by the Treasury Department as they stall out in conservatorship — where 100 percent of their profits has to go to the Treasury, William Isaac, a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., warned in a March op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
On an earnings call in February, Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos warned that the company’s lack of capital “increases the likelihood that Fannie Mae will need additional capital from Treasury at some point.”
As for the government’s role in affordable housing — it’s only expanding. This month, HUD introduced rules that allow the government to withhold money from communities that fail to address historical segregation. Communities will be required to submit data analysis of segregation within their borders, set goals on how to reduce it and then track the results.
For many conservatives, this represents — again — an overstep of the government into the private market.
“For whatever good HUD does, it clearly has not won the war on poverty,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Texas Republican and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in a June hearing. “Only economic growth and equal opportunity can do that. In other words, the greatest housing program in America remains a good career path in a growing economy, not a HUD program.”
One of America’s oldest, most respected environmental nonprofits has traded in one kind of green for another. Some of the Sierra Club’s board members and most important donors have put the almighty dollar before Mother Earth by encouraging the organization to engage in activities that bolster their bottom line.
In a new report, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute reveals that a number of environmental activists, including billionaires Nathaniel Simons, Roger Sant and Michael Bloomberg, benefit richly from their hefty donations to the Sierra Club.
Mr. Simons, a hedge fund baron worth an estimated $12 billion, has donated more than $14 million to the Sierra Club since 2009. Those contributions have largely been earmarked for campaigns to “educate the public about clean energy.” The donations have likely proven quite worthwhile to Mr. Simons. According to Fortune magazine, at the same time he was underwriting the Sierra Club’s efforts to promote renewables, Mr. Simons was quietly creating a clean-tech venture fund that invests in clean energy.
Mr. Sant, co-founder of Applied Energy Services, has donated as much as $4 million to the Sierra Club, according to IRS records. Mr. Sant, who still serves as chairman emeritus of the renewable energy company, is among the most outspoken advocates for a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, and it’s no wonder. Such a policy would mean millions of dollars for Mr. Sant and other Applied Energy Services investors. Few organizations have championed a carbon tax more fervently than the Sierra Club. Those efforts have undeniably been bolstered by Mr. Sant’s contributions.
Mr. Bloomberg, a former New York City mayor, has donated more than $105 million to the Sierra Club since 2011. Mr. Bloomberg, who is well-invested in the renewable energy industry, is able to fan the fire of Sierra Club’s unfounded fossil fuel hysterics. By using his Bloomberg L.P. media empire to give credibility to the organization’s war on fossil fuels, he is able to spur demand for renewables, padding his portfolio in the process.
This isn’t the first damning example of conflicts of interest between the Sierra Club and its directors uncovered by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute.
The Sierra Club’s well-known “Beyond Coal” campaign has been largely discredited because the campaign appears bought and paid for by board members and other donors who benefit financially from the organization’s anti-fossil fuel crusades.
Eight of the Sierra Club Foundation’s 18 directors are involved with organizations that profit from the Beyond Coal campaign, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute discovered.
Those directors are owners, founders and CEOs of renewable energy companies and investment firms that donated millions to the Sierra Club’s war on fossil fuels. These green energy tycoons knew lambasting coal, oil and natural gas would increase demand for renewables like solar and wind … and generate more money for their businesses.
Companies with top executives on the Sierra Club’s board of directors include solar firms such as SolarCity, Sun Run and the Solaria Corp., as well as the green energy investment funds at Barclays, Walden Capital and Boston Common Asset Management.
For those eight board members, earnings, not the environment, appear to motivate their involvement with the Sierra Club.
The organization’s largest donor – ultimately the funder behind much of the Beyond Coal campaign – may have the biggest investment of anyone in strangling America’s cheap and stable conventional energy market. That man, David Gelbaum, has spent $500 million starting, buying and investing in more than 40 green energy companies, from solar panel makers to electric car producers, all of which benefit from the Sierra Club’s attack on fossil fuels. For Mr. Gelbaum, the $100 million he has donated to the Sierra Club is a marketing expense; a way to vilify his competition and entice more people to buy into his expensive green energy schemes.
Obviously, today’s Sierra Club, which seems to operate first and foremost as a political lobbying firm focused on enriching its donors and board members, is a far cry from what celebrated naturalist John Muir had in mind when he created the organization in 1892. As Energy & Environment Legal Institute’s Legal Executive Director Craig Richardson points out, the Sierra Club’s war on fossil fuels is “an effort that clearly benefits the very same people who are donating the money – it’s clear the Sierra Club is now just a mercenary force beholden to the highest bidder.”
The egregious conflicts of interest created when Sierra Club donors and board members use contributions to entice the organization to engage in advocacy efforts that benefit the donors’ pocketbooks aren’t just unethical. They’re also illegal.
According to the IRS, if a nonprofit’s donors or board members intentionally financially benefit from the actions of the organization, it “would lose its tax exempt status for at least one year.”
Losing its tax-exempt status would be a devastating blow to the Sierra Club. But, by engaging in activities to make its donors and board members a quick buck, the organization has already lost something far more valuable: its credibility.
Arrogance is ugly wherever found, and it’s particularly ugly in a judge with the power to deprive a man of his freedom. Dinesh D'Souza is an author, filmmaker and onetime college president who was convicted of violating campaign finance law.
He pleaded guilty to recruiting straw donors who gave $10,000 each to an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2012, running against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, of New York. U.S. District Judge Richard Berman sentenced him to eight months in a “work release center,” five years probation, a fine of $30,000 and to perform “community service.” He was required to submit to “psychological counseling.”
He returned to court this month for a follow-up hearing. The psychiatrists told Judge Berman they found Mr. D'Souza of sound mind. This disappointed the judge, who said he took a psychology course in college, and ordered additional psychiatrists to look deeper into the D’Souza head. “I have a background in social work with a psychology major,” Judge Berman said. “I’m sensitive to mental health issues in the criminal cases I hear … I only insisted on psychological counseling as part of Mr. D'Souza’s sentence because I wanted to be helpful.”
Mr. D'Souza’s flaws, the judge said, remain unfixed. “Mr. D'Souza tends to deny problems, he lacks insight into his own behavior, he is arrogant and intolerant of the feelings of others, while projecting an overly positive image of himself.” Just like a certain judge of unrestrained liberal political beliefs, an unbiased observer might say.
Mr. D'Souza is a provocative critic of the American left, having written widely of politics in America. He has written 16 books and he produced a documentary movie last year about Barack Obama, “2016: Obama’s America” that was one of the most commercially successful documentaries of the year. Like many immigrants, he wears his heart on his sleeve for his new country. The recurrent theme of his books and articles is that America is “the exceptional nation.” Worst of all, in the view of many of his critics, he is a committed Christian.
How this influenced Judge Berman’s consideration of the legal case against Mr. D'Souza is something only the judge knows. “The idea of charging him with a felony for this doesn’t sound like a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” the eminent Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said of the case. “I can’t help but think that [D'Souza‘s] politics have something to do with it. It smacks of selective prosecution.” His punishment continues. Mr. D'Souza must now convince a new therapist that his contrition is sincere. Prisoners of conscience need only confess once, but Mr. D'Souza has not confessed loudly enough for a judge who yearns to be a social worker.
Additionally, the judge ordered Mr. D'Souza to teach English to Hispanic immigrants near his home in San Diego eight hours a week for five years. His lawyers argued, unsuccessfully, that this requirement is unfair because it impedes his ability to seek a full-time job.
Mr. D'Souza’s literary eminence entitles him to no special treatment when he runs afoul of the law, whether the law is wise or not, but neither are his politics a legitimate reason to impose cruel and unusual punishment. Judge Berman insists he isn’t “singling out Mr. D'Souza to pick on him. A requirement for psychological counseling often comes up in my hearings in cases where I find it hard to understand why someone did what they did.” The judge apparently can’t understand why everybody can’t be a liberal just like normal people.
California Gov. Jerry Brown drew headlines for his proposal to increase the state’s renewable energy standard to 50 percent by 2030, but elsewhere, the momentum on mandates is shifting in the opposite direction.
A half-dozen states have moved to scale back, freeze or eliminate their renewable energy standards in the past year, fueled by concerns over higher energy prices, the impact of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and the growing perception that it’s time to take the training wheels off the wind and solar industries.
“You’re seeing independent efforts across states [with] legislators just kind of getting tired of it and questioning these mandates,” said Donald Bryson, state director of Americans for Prosperity-North Carolina. “If these industries are already economic engines, then why do we have to force people to buy their product?”
About 29 states have approved some kind of renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, a policy that swept state legislatures eager to go green and attract federally subsidized wind-and-solar investment in the early 2000s.
Those state policies have been critical to the fast-growing industry’s success, says Jim Marston, the Environmental Defense Fund’s vice president for U.S. climate and energy, who supports keeping the standards in place.
“Absolutely, no doubt. The reason prices have gone down and quality has gone up is clearly because of these RPSs,” said Mr. Marston.
Rebecca Stanfield, Midwest deputy policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said: “Nationally, clean energy continues to thrive despite years of attempts by polluting industries to obstruct progress on renewable energy and energy efficiency for their own profits.”
But that growth also has weakened the argument for mandates, opening the door for free market groups like Americans for Prosperity to make the case that the day has come to lift the thumb off the scale in favor of renewable energy.
“In North Carolina, this mandate was set up in 2007, and so people have been forced to buy increasing amounts of renewable energy for the past seven or eight years,” Mr. Bryson said. “What you’re hearing is, ‘Hey, this is either a viable industry or it’s not. You’re not paying your share of taxes, plus you’re forcing people to buy your product, and you’re still not a viable industry?’ Something’s wrong with this picture.”
Both Michigan and North Carolina are considering legislation to roll back the renewable energy standard following the passage of a similar bill last year in Ohio. In March 2014, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence allowed a bill to become law — without his signature — that repealed the state’s energy-efficiency mandate.
In May, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed a bill making the state’s mandate of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020 voluntary and giving future renewable energy projects a 10-year break from property taxes instead of a lifetime exemption.
The Ohio freeze law
The newly Republican-led West Virginia Legislature set the tone in January by repealing, as its first act, the six-year-old law requiring utilities to generate 25 percent of their electricity from renewable or alternative sources by 2030.
West Virginia legislators were driven in large part by the renewable energy industry’s threat to coal. Republican state Delegate Josh Nelson said after the vote: “A vote against repealing West Virginia’s cap-and-trade act is the very same thing as handing another coal miner his or her pink slip.”
Even in states where coal isn’t king, the renewable requirement is falling out of favor. A year ago, Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a bill freezing the annually increasing mandate until 2017, along with efficiency standards requiring consumers to reduce their power use by 22 percent by 2025 — as measured by 2009 levels.
One reason is the cost to consumers, who pay more for power in states with renewable energy standards. The AFP cites data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showing that electricity costs, on average, 22.9 percent more in states with mandates.
The Ohio “freeze” law, which also orders a legislative study, was the inspiration for legislation in North Carolina to suspend the renewable energy standard at 6 percent instead of allowing it to hit 10 percent by 2018, and require the state legislature to undertake an examination of grid security and stability.
In many of these states, the renewable energy industry is firmly entrenched, such as in Kansas, where wind energy is expected to reach the 20 percent target by 2016, four years ahead of schedule. Wind production has nearly tripled since 2010, making the argument for mandates harder to swallow.
At a May press conference, Mr. Brownback praised the wind industry’s “fabulous growth,” adding that the agreement “further solidifies and stabilizes the policy environment so that investment can continue in Kansas.”
Even the EDF’s Mr. Marston said it would be hard to fault Kansas’ record on wind power. “If all the country had Kansas’ number, I’d be completely happy,” he said.
Michigan already has reached its 10 percent renewable energy standard. Rather than increase it, however, Republican state Sen. Mike Nofs, who heads the Senate Energy and Technology Committee, introduced legislation July 1 that would eliminate the mandate.
The proposal comes as part of a larger effort to rethink and overhaul the state’s energy grid in response to the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Lawmakers anticipate that as many as nine coal-fired plants will ultimately be shuttered to comply with the rule’s tighter emissions standards, resulting in a huge boon to renewable energy.
‘Renewable energy potential’
“The question is, do we need a separate standard to overlay with what the federal government’s going to require? And we just don’t think that’s necessary,” said Greg Moore, Mr. Nofs’ legislative policy director. “All these different rules and requirements that utilities have to follow seem to be overly burdensome. So we’re going to get rid of the mandates and just let the integrated resource plan process decide whatever makes the most economic and environmental sense win the day.”
Part of the idea is to replace the goal of renewable energy with that of clean, lower-emissions energy, no matter what its source.
“We shouldn’t care, frankly, as a legislature, what’s being used to generate it as long as the emissions are meeting the standard that we set,” Mr. Moore said. “That gives some people heartburn, those people [investing in] wind turbines and solar farms, but frankly, if it’s just as clean, why do we care? Why are we stepping in the middle of it and trying to make bad decisions in the marketplace?”
Supporters of the mandates argue that states that jettison their renewables requirements make themselves less attractive to wind and solar investment, while foes counter that lower energy prices encourage business and manufacturing development.
Advocates of renewable energy have also notched some victories, starting with the California proposal to increase the standard to a highest-in-the-nation 50 percent. Then there was the defeat in May of a Texas bill to retire the state’s RPS, which was approved in 1999 and stands as the oldest such policy in the nation.
Ultimately, retaining the mandates in top energy-producing and -consuming states like Texas and California matters more than keeping them in states with relatively low renewable energy footprints like Indiana and Ohio, said Mr. Marston.
“They’re relatively small states in terms of renewable energy potential,” Mr. Marston said. “As far as the effect on the industry, I think that, other than in their state, I think the effect was pretty small.”
Environmental groups have blamed the anti-mandate campaign on groups advocating on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, but Mr. Bryson says that’s not the case.
“We’re not anti-solar or anti-wind,” he said. “We’re just trying to be pro-consumer.”
Both chambers of Congress have now voted to scrap much of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind education plan, meaning the government will continue to ship billions of dollars to states, but will cut or loosen many of the strings attached to the funding.
But the Senate, which cleared legislation Thursday on a bipartisan 81-17 vote, and the House, which passed a different, more conservative version in a divided vote last week, also rolled back some of the key parts of President Obama’s education agenda, including the Common Core education standards and benchmarks for teachers themselves.
Gone are the yearly progress goals, which schools had been struggling to meet. The transparency measures, which require schools to report to the community, remain.
“We keep what works in No Child Left Behind, which is the report card, but we get rid of what doesn’t work,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Education Committee, who led the Senate’s rewrite. “This is the consensus that supports this bill — keeping the important measure of student achievement is essential to keeping that consensus.”
The federal financial footprint in education will remain big — and could even increase as the House and Senate head to a conference committee to hammer out a final deal, and as leaders need to splash money to win over reluctant lawmakers’ support.
That financial commitment scares some conservatives, who fear the government can still use its money to bully schools into complying with national mandates.
“No one should be fooled. The federal government will retain a massive footprint in elementary and secondary education,” said Dan Holler, spokesman for the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
He said particularly troubling was the blank check in the Senate bill, where Mr. Alexander and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the ranking Democrat on his committee, couldn’t figure a final total and left it to be filled in later — “never a fiscally responsible approach,” Mr. Holler said.
Three senators running for president — Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida — were among the 14 Republicans who voted ‘no,’ saying the bill didn’t do enough to nudge the federal government out of the classroom.
Three Democrats — Sens. Christopher Murphy of Connecticut, Cory A. Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — voted against the final package after failing to attach the type of intervention measures the White House demanded to lift up the lowest-performing schools.
Still, Mr. Alexander and Ms. Murray won overwhelming support for their approach, which saw Republicans concede on some conservative priorities such as vouchers in order to win a rollback of onerous federal intrusion.
“It sends a powerful message that equity really matters and that schooling must be more about teaching and learning than testing and measuring. More must be done to address the needs of historically disadvantaged children, but this bill offers a significant piece of the puzzle,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Mr. Alexander and Sen. Tim Scott, South Carolina Republican, tried to attach a voucher system later on, but their amendments didn’t muster the votes.
Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr., Pennsylvania Democrat, failed to win enough support for an amendment that would raise billions for pre-kindergarten programs by halting corporate inversions, in which U.S. companies lower their tax burden by reincorporating overseas.
Yet his Pennsylvanian counterpart, Republican Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, won unanimous approval for his amendment to keep schools from “passing the trash” by recommending known child abusers to other schools.
Both House and Senate bills scrap the yearly progress grades, which had been designed to try to force schools to show continual improvement. But schools were supposed to be at peak proficiency by last year, and none were close.
The bills also get rid of No Child Left Behind’s penalties that were meant to push ill-performing schools to shape up.
“This is giving the keys of the car back to the states when it comes to the biggest issues — especially in the design of their accountability systems and what they choose to do to schools that are not making the grade,” said Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
He called it a pro-reform bill that gives states the power to figure out what works. And while some might go the wrong way in their reforms, he said, it refocuses the debate back on children and learning.
While the law President George W. Bush championed was the chief target, Congress is also poised to roll back some of the Obama administration’s biggest education initiatives.
One of those is Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s push to evaluate teachers’ performance based on test scores — a move that ran into problems with teachers’ labor unions and Democratic lawmakers. Those evaluations are likely to be nixed in the final deal that emerges, analysts said.
Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, said the legislation reflected the mood among Democrats and Republicans that the federal role in shaping curriculums and testing is too big.
“Both bills would certainly roll back the fed footprint from what it was in No Child Left Behind, in particular by eliminating average yearly progress (AYP) and the punishments for school districts that didn’t meet that AYP goal. That is a really significant step back from where we were,” Mr. McCluskey said.
Still, he spotted a potential loophole he said could give the Education Department an avenue to continue to exert control. The House and Senate bills require states to submit their testing and evaluation plans to the department, and the secretary can reject those plans.
Even though there are restrictions on what criteria the secretary can look at, Mr. McCluskey said a determined secretary might be able to keep kiboshing plans until states kowtow to his priorities.
“This potential to use this kind of backdoor veto to ultimately get what the secretary wants is a huge, or potentially huge, problem,” he said.
Human nature is unchanging, predictable — and can be dangerous if ignored.
Five-time deportee and seven-time felon Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an unauthorized immigrant, recently was arrested in San Francisco for the murder of an innocent passerby, Kate Steinle.
The alleged killer told a local TV station that he came to San Francisco because it was a sanctuary city. San Francisco has long boasted that it would not turn over unauthorized immigrants to federal immigration authorities.
Can it be that announcing such exemptions actually draws in foreign citizens who have arrived in the United States illegally and committed crimes?
What is true compassion — deporting a repeat felon like Lopez-Sanchez back to his home country, or turning him loose on potential victims such as Kate Steinle?
Baltimore just fired its police commissioner, Anthony Batts, for his supposed inability to stop an epidemic of violent crime.
But not long ago, after the riots that followed suspect Freddie Gray’s death while in police custody, Mr. Batts and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had promised to rein in the police. They seemed to blame Baltimore’s police culture for Gray’s death even before the indictments and trials of the arresting officers involved.
Amid the rioting, Ms. Rawlings-Blake infamously assured Baltimore that “we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.”
The murder rate in Baltimore has nearly doubled since the May riots. Nonfatal shootings in Baltimore have also surged.
Is it possible that when offenders became convinced they would not necessarily be arrested or even questioned — and would be given space to burn, while police were blamed for being too proactive — these offenders became more visible, and police less visible?
Given human nature, people also like to blame their self-created dilemmas on cosmic forces not of their own making. Take Greece. The Greek government cooked its books to finagle streams of borrowed Northern European cash.
The Greeks spent what they could not earn faster even than it could be lent. Now, Greece is broke and cannot pay back what it owes.
But do not suggest to the Greeks that their own endemic tax avoidance, featherbedding and corruption caused their financial collapse. It is so much easier for human beings to blame “them”: in this case, German creditors who either loaned Greeks too much money, or made too much money on the loans, or who had Nazi grandparents who once occupied Greece 75 years ago.
Former Maryland Gov. and current presidential candidate Martin O’Malley deplores staggering student-loan debt. He himself has borrowed almost $340,000 to put his two daughters through college. Mr. O’Malley wants a new taxpayer-supported plan of subsidizing college students to ensure that they graduate debt-free and avoid the sort of mess he is in.
Mr. O’Malley and his wife, a district court judge, have together made more than $300,000 some years. How did they manage to borrow so much money? And why, well after their two children’s graduations, have they not paid these staggering sums back?
Again, it is someone else’s fault. But did the O’Malley’s have to send one child to $67,000-per-year Georgetown University rather than have her spend her first two years at a junior college? Could they have cut back on their vacations and other expenditures to pay down more on the loans?
Why should taxpayers — the overwhelming majority of whom make less than the O’Malleys and do not choose to send their children to tony schools like Georgetown — lament the family’s staggering debt?
In all these cases, progressivism assured us that human nature — self-centered and predictable — could be improved. Enlightened new theories and policies promised to change behavior by no longer ensuring hurtful punishments or consequences for bad behavior and unwise choices.
In truth, if humans do not face bridles on their often dangerous appetites and recklessness, they are emboldened to do a great deal of damage, not just to themselves but also to others.
Those who borrow sums that they cannot pay back usually blame those who lent them the money — not their own appetites. And elites never seem to pay firsthand for the consequences of their own naive — and selfish — theories about human nature.
The controversy over Harper Lee’s new “old” novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” might be the most bizarre controversy yet in a summer of bizarre and unlikely explosions of national piety.
Atticus Finch, the patriarchal figure of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” has been regarded as an unexpected hero in a region that many readers thought was unworthy of heroes — mothers named their children after him — and now many feel betrayed because he emerges in the new novel as a man with unexpected blemishes, an authentic representative of his time (the 1950s) and place (a small town in the South).
The Internet boils with indignation. Talk radio has checked in. The New York Times puts a story about a book at the top of Page One. Since both books offer polemics inside the fiction, neither fits into a Procrustean bed of personal pride and prejudice, but offers insights, for the thoughtful reader, into the differences in racial and sexual attitudes and how they have radically changed in the 55 years since “Mockingbird” was published.
Since he’s a fictional character in two novels, it’s important to judge Atticus Finch within the context of both the early book, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and the new one. Some readers are finding that hard to do. One benefit of the controversy is that the books can be read with fresh eyes, and “Mockingbird,” especially, doesn’t have to be stuck with the hand-me-down adoration. The adoration is as much for the movie with Gregory Peck as Atticus as the writing style of Harper Lee, which has limitations in spite of its innocent charm.
The young daughter Scout, the narrator of “Mockingbird,” was a tomboy who resisted learning the genteel manners expected of a young woman of the South. The girl in a coming-of-age story in “Mockingbird” becomes an arrived-at-woman in “Watchman.” She has learned to assert opinions independent of her Southern upbringing and she spurns a conventional marriage because the prospective husband doesn’t live up to the idealism she acquired living in New York.
Racial issues in both books become considerably more complicated in the hindsight of history. When “Mockingbird was originally published in 1960, liberal readers loved Atticus; he confronted racists who dominated the law and the courts, and regarded Negroes as inferior. If Atticus was a hero inside the novel, his kind of heroism was rapidly vanishing in the world outside the novel in the wake of the Brown decision mandating the end of segregation in the public schools. He shames the racists into silence but is unwilling to see the racism outside his comfortable island of Maycomb, Ala. He makes gestures that require courage, but it was courage that could not dent the fundamental structure of racism built into the culture.
Like politics, racism was local in “Mockingbird,” but the patronizing platitudes of Atticus sound today like simplistic feel-good banality lacking the complexity of authentic moral courage. His thematic voice, even after the verdict of “guilty” for the innocent black man he defended against rape of a white woman, expresses passive perception as much as outrage.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” he tells his daughter Scout, “until you climb into his skin and walk in it.” This is the bromide often quoted by examiners of the first Atticus, whose tolerance is open-ended for the racist as well as for his victim. He tells daughter Scout she shouldn’t hate Hitler because it’s not right to hate anyone. He even defends the leader of a lynch mob because he’s “basically a good man,” who “just has his blind spots along with the rest of us.”
When Scout asks her father if he’s a “nigger-lover,” as she heard him described in her little town, he answers without irony, “I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody.”
Readers of “Watchman” are shocked that this Atticus questions the inclusion of Negroes in the white schools, an issue that tore the South apart after the Brown decision, dividing families, permanently rupturing friendships and sometimes splitting church congregations. Hardly any white folks wanted integration; the arguments were over who would bear the disruption of desegregation. The North got its first taste of such racial anger with the arrival of busing in liberal Massachusetts. “Watchman” is the tougher, more realistic but less artful book. The third-person narration lacks the charm of the child’s voice in “Mockingbird,” but raises more complicated questions of character when the fist hits the nose that thought it was immune from fists.
It’s not so important how these two books came to be written, or the order in which the stories are told, but how they speak to us today. The questions of character and culture challenge all of us.
The U.S. and other world powers struck a historic deal with Iran on Tuesday to curb Iranian nuclear programs in exchange for relief from crushing international sanctions, an agreement that sparked dancing in the streets of Tehran, alarm in Israel and vows of a showdown in Congress with President Obama.
After 18 days of intense and often fractious talks, negotiators in Vienna announced that they had reached an agreement designed to avert the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and another U.S. military intervention in the Muslim world. The pact included late concessions by the Obama administration granting Tehran the right to object to international inspections of Iranian military sites and left unanswered questions about Iran’s past nuclear weapons activities.
Mr. Obama hailed the deal as a step toward a “more hopeful world,” and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said it marked “a new chapter” in his nation’s relations with the world. British Prime Minister David Cameron said it “will help to make our world a safer place.”
Israel said it would try to stop what it called a “historic surrender.”
In Congress, the announcement touched off objections from Republican lawmakers and some Democrats who said the deal doesn’t call for the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear facilities and doesn’t meet Mr. Obama’s stated goal of forcing Iran to submit to inspections “anytime, anywhere.”
Congress now has 60 days to review the agreement, and the president has said he would veto any effort to unravel the deal. Even some opponents of the agreement conceded that Republicans would be unlikely to muster enough votes to override a veto and stop the accord.
The agreement quickly became a test in the presidential race, with Republican candidates lining up against it and some, such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, calling on Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton to repudiate the deal. Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state under Mr. Obama, said as president she would be “absolutely devoted to assuring the agreement is followed.”
Critics pointed out that the negotiations failed to resolve the issue of three Americans who have become Iranian prisoners: Christian missionary Saeed Abedini, journalist Jason Rezaian of The Washington Post and former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the U.S. “will continue to work for their safe and their swift return.”
In Tehran, young Iranians danced in streets and motorists honked their horns upon hearing news of the accord. Some people blew South African-style vuvuzela horns like those heard at the World Cup.
The accord marked a dramatic break from decades of animosity between the United States and Iran, countries that have called each other the “leading state sponsor of terrorism” and “the Great Satan.” Mr. Obama has been pushing for the agreement for years as the capstone of his diplomatic legacy, after he rallied international partners to keep economic sanctions in place to force Iran back to the negotiating table.
“This deal offers an opportunity to move in a new direction,” Mr. Obama said in an early-morning address at the White House that was carried live on Iranian state television. “We should seize it.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the agreement a “bad mistake of historic proportion” that will give Iran a “sure path to nuclear weapons.” He said pointedly that Israel isn’t bound by the deal.
“Wide-ranging concessions were made in all of the areas which should have prevented Iran from getting the ability to arm itself with a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “The desire to sign an agreement was stronger than everything else.”
Mr. Kerry, who led the U.S. negotiating team, called Mr. Netanyahu’s criticisms “way over the top.”
“Israel is safer” as a result of the accord, Mr. Kerry said on MSNBC. “This is under attack by people who really don’t know the terms of the agreement.”
Mr. Obama tried to assure Mr. Netanyahu in a phone call that the agreement is verifiable and “will remove the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran,” the White House said.
The negotiating has been a major source of tension between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu for years, building up to the Israeli’s address to Congress in March that wasn’t sanctioned by the White House.
Several Jewish-American groups came out Tuesday in opposition to the deal. The Simon Wiesenthal Center likened it to the Munich agreement in 1938 that made concessions to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has depended on Iran’s support while waging a brutal civil war, praised the agreement and suggested that the lifting of sanctions against Tehran would result in more aid for his regime.
“We are confident that the Islamic Republic of Iran will support, with greater drive, just causes of nations and work for peace and stability in the region and the world,” Mr. Assad said in a congratulatory message to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, published by state news agency SANA.
Saudi Arabia’s state news agency said the kingdom warned Iran not to use money resulting from the lifting of sanctions to incite turmoil in the region. The Saudi Press Agency said Tehran must use the funds in the service of the Iranian people.
Mr. Obama dismissed skeptics who argued that Iran will cheat. He said the deal all but eliminates the possibility that Tehran could rebuild a covert nuclear weapons program.
“Every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off,” Mr. Obama said. “This deal is not built on trust. It is built on verification.”
Ensuring Iran’s compliance will be a far-reaching job. The agreement calls for Tehran to reduce its number of uranium-enriching centrifuges from about 19,000 to 6,000, cut its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98 percent and convert its heavy-water plutonium reactor at Arak to use for research instead of bomb-making.
Iran currently has enough nuclear material to build at least 10 bombs, if it is enriched further to weapons grade.
The limits on centrifuges will be in place for 10 years, then gradually relaxed over the next three. Iran also commits to using only its current models, rather than more advanced centrifuges it hoped to install.
Iran committed to convert its Fordo enrichment site — dug deep into a mountainside and thought impervious to air attack — into a research center. The site will still house centrifuges, but they will make medical isotopes instead of enriched uranium. There will be less than one-tenth as many of these centrifuges as there originally were.
The agreement also calls for Tehran to give more access to its nuclear program to the U.N. nuclear agency. If that agency identifies a suspicious site, an arbitration panel with a Western majority will decide whether Iran must give inspectors access within 24 days. All sites, including military ones, may be inspected if the agency has solid evidence of undeclared nuclear activity.
Mr. Kerry said the deal “will bring insight and accountability into Iran’s nuclear program.”
“This is the good deal that we have sought,” Mr. Kerry said, adding that the agreement “also gives us the greatest assurance that we have had that Iran will not pursue a weapon covertly.”
Under the deal, all U.S. and European Union nuclear-related sanctions will be suspended — likely beginning in a few months — after inspectors have verified that Iran is adhering to its commitments. If Iran fails to fulfill its obligations, those sanctions could “snap back” into place, although critics say such an effort to rebuild international consensus to reimpose economic penalties is unlikely.
An arms embargo against Iran will stand for five years, and restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programs for eight years.
Mr. Obama said the failure to reach an agreement would lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. He asked Congress to “consider what happens in a world without the deal.”
“We give nothing up by testing whether or not this problem can be solved peacefully,” Mr. Obama said. “No deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East. No deal means no lasting constraints on Iran’s nuclear program. The world would not support an effort to permanently sanction Iran into submission.”
House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, was among the lawmakers speaking out against the agreement, calling it “unacceptable.”
“If, in fact, it’s as bad a deal as I think it is at this moment, we’ll do everything we can to stop it,” Mr. Boehner said.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who led 47 Republican senators in writing to Iran’s leaders to warn against a deal, called the agreement “a terrible, dangerous mistake.”
Supporters of the pact included Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, who said it “offers a verifiable, diplomatic resolution to one of our most pressing national security challenges.”
Mr. Obama said he welcomed “robust debate” by lawmakers over the deal, but he vowed to veto any effort to kill it.
“I will remind Congress that you don’t make deals like this with your friends,” Mr. Obama said. “I am confident that this deal will meet the national security interests of the United States and our allies. So I will veto any legislation that prevents the successful implementation of this deal.”
The president cautioned lawmakers not to engage in a reckless escalation of rhetoric against Iran.
“We do not have to accept an inevitable spiral into conflict, and we certainly shouldn’t seek it,” Mr. Obama said. “Precisely because the stakes are so high, this is not the time for politics or posturing. Tough talk from Washington does not solve problems. Hard-nosed diplomacy, leadership that has united the world’s major powers, offers a more effective way to verify that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
A secretly videotaped business lunch released Tuesday shows a top Planned Parenthood official discussing the buying and selling of body parts of aborted fetuses, prompting national outrage among conservatives and pro-life activists.
Two adults, posing as buyers of fetal tissue, met with Dr. Deborah Nucatola, a senior official with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 2014.
Over wine and salads, they discussed Dr. Nucatola’s expertise in abortions, which included performing them in such a way as to obtain “intact” organs, such as livers, hearts, lungs and muscles, for research, according to the Center for Medical Progress, which released the video and a 60-page transcript Tuesday.
One topic — the in-utero turning of fetuses to deliver them feet first so the heads and brains can be delivered without excessive damage — strongly implied the use of the outlawed partial-birth abortion procedure.
The buying or selling of human tissue also is a federal offense, and members of Congress who learned of the video promised to act quickly. A Capitol Hill press conference could be held as early as Wednesday.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called the video “shocking and gruesome” for its discussions about “the systemic harvesting and trafficking of human body parts.”
Mr. Jindal, who is also a Republican presidential candidate, said he was directing the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to immediately investigate Planned Parenthood — which is seeking to open a clinic in New Orleans — in this “alleged evil and illegal activity.” He added that he also was seeking FBI assistance because of the broad nature of the potentially criminal activity.
“This latest news is tragic and outrageous,” Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said on her Facebook page. “This isn’t about ‘choice.’ It’s about profiting on the death of the unborn while telling women it’s about empowerment.”
“This video is beyond disturbing,” Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and a former prisoner of war, said on his Twitter feed.
According to the Center for Medical Progress, the two adults on the video were “actors posing as buyers from a human biologics company.”
They met with Dr. Nucatola because she trains their doctors, performs abortions up to 24 weeks, and is knowledgeable about biomedical research and its use of human tissues.
When the “buyers” asked Dr. Nucatola about obtaining specific organs, she replied, “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver. Because we know that, so I’m not going to crush that part, I’m going to crush below, I’m going to crush above, and I’m going to see if I can get it all intact.”
Costs to the buyers could be $30 to $100 per specimen, Dr. Nucatola said.
She said women are typically asked for their consent to have the aborted child used for research, and some agree because they think it will do “this extra bit of good,” Dr. Nucatola said.
‘No financial benefit’
The video also implies that Planned Parenthood’s national office wants to keep its distance from the trade in fetal parts — “it’s too touchy an issue for us to be the official middleman” — but affiliated groups are willing.
“At the national office, we have a Litigation and Law Department which just really doesn’t want us to be the middle people for this issue right now,” she said. “But I will tell you that behind closed doors these conversations are happening with the affiliates.”
A Planned Parenthood official responded to the “heavily edited” video, saying it helps its patients who want to donate tissue to scientific research, but with “no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood.”
The Center for Medical Progress posted the entire two-hour, 40-minute video Tuesday afternoon.
Actual costs, such as to transport tissue to leading research centers, are reimbursed, as is standard in the medical field, said Eric Ferrero, vice president of communications for Planned Parenthood.
Moreover, he said, tissue donations are performed like “every other high-quality health care provider does — with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards.”
“Similar false accusations” about abortion services have been made for decades, Mr. Ferrero said.
The groups making the claims “have been widely discredited, and their claims fall apart on closer examination, just as they do in this case,” he said.
Dr. Nucatola, whose office is in Los Angeles, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. She reportedly had a Twitter account earlier in the day, but it was taken down, said LifeNews, citing pro-life activist Jill Stanek.
Pro-life activists galvanized
“There has long been suspicion that Planned Parenthood is involved in the selling of body parts after an abortion. Now the proof has been caught on video in Planned Parenthood’s own words,” said Benjamin Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life.
Mr. Clapper applauded Mr. Jindal, saying, “If this is what Planned Parenthood intends to do at their abortion facility in New Orleans, Louisiana does not want any part of it.”
Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life, said it was “stomach-churning” to hear that “intact heads” of aborted fetuses could be put on order with Planned Parenthood facilities.
“Today is like the day we learned about Gosnell,” said Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, referring to Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who now is serving time in prison for murder.
Planned Parenthood not only receives $528 million in government funds each year, but it also “takes the lives” of over 320,000 unborn children, Ms. Mancini said. Now comes the news that Planned Parenthood also “exploits them even further,” by potentially harvesting their organs and putting a price tag on livers and hearts, she said.
“Congress must take immediate action to stop all taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and end the bankrolling of this horrific human rights abuser,” said Lila Rose, leader of Live Action, which is known for its many undercover investigations of abortion clinics.
Congressional action
The video “demands a response from Congress, and we will provide one,” said Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican and co-chairman of the Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus.
“Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, wounding women and profiting off of the death of children, first by dismembering unborn children and then by selling their organs piece by piece. This horrific abuse must stop,” Mr. Smith said.
Rep. Joseph R. Pitts, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce health subcommittee, and Rep. Tim Murphy, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce oversight and investigations subcommittee, said Congress should act to protect women and unborn children.
David Daleiden, project leader of the Center for Medical Progress‘ three-year investigation of Planned Parenthood and aborted fetal parts, welcomed the public outcry over the video.
“Planned Parenthood’s criminal conspiracy to make money off of aborted baby parts reaches to the very highest levels of their organization,” he said.
The abortion giant should “be held accountable to the law,” and its taxpayer funded should be stopped, he said.
Several pro-life groups said the video reopens an issue that they have long fought to have investigated.
Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics exposed the sale of baby body parts 15 years ago, said Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life.
“We have on our website, BabyBodyParts.com, the images of some of the order forms that were discovered back then — forms that ask that eyes, livers, brains, legs and other body parts be shipped on wet ice to the researchers who want them,” Father Pavone said.
“This activity violates state and federal laws that prohibit the sale of human body parts,” he said. In addition to investigating and defunding Planned Parenthood, he said, Congress should pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would “protect many of the babies whose bodies are being cut up and sold in this manner.”
The number of concealed carry handgun permits has skyrocketed since President Obama was first elected, while murder rates have fallen, according to a new report released Wednesday.
Since 2007, the number of concealed handgun permits has soared from 4.6 million to over 12.8 million, and murder rates have fallen from 5.6 killings per 100,000 people to just 4.2, about a 25 percent drop, according to the report from the Crime Prevention Research Center.
And the number of permits issued is increasing faster every year. Over 1.7 million new permits were issued last year — a 15.4 percent increase over 2013, the largest such single-year jump ever, according to the report from the center led by President John R. Lott and research director John E. Whitley.
The number of concealed carriers is likely even higher, since permits are not required in eight states.
Gun rights advocates say that the findings in the report fall in line with their personal experiences and research and directly refute the liberal argument that more guns lead to more violence.
“It puts the lie to the myth promulgated by anti-gun individuals that somehow more law-abiding citizens carrying guns will lead to more crime. In fact, quite the opposite is the case,” said Larry Keene, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “More law-abiding citizens own firearms for self-protection, and crime continues to decline.”
But gun control advocates denounced the report, pointing to other studies showing concealed handguns are more frequently used for non-self-defense killings.
“Concealed carry killers are a threat to public safety. The evidence is clear that all too often, private citizens use their concealed handguns to take lives, not to save them,” a statement from the Violence Policy Center’s Concealed Carry Killers page reads.
A spokesperson for the center did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
According to the center, there have been 561 incidents in 36 states and the District of Columbia involving concealed handguns that have resulted in 743 deaths. “Only a tiny fraction of these cases are ever ruled to be in self-defense,” the website states.
But according to the latest report, concealed carriers are among the most law-abiding citizens in the country, even more so than police officers.
In Florida and Texas permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors of felonies at one-sixth the rate that police officers are convicted, according to the report.
“The citizen concealed carrier I don’t think ever forgets the fact that he’s a citizen on display, and he knows that he’s representative of a group of people,” said Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America. “The last thing a concealed carrier wants to do is get into a situation where they have to use the gun. Even if it were a legitimate use, they know just what kind of horrible mess their life will become once they use that gun.”
Data on gun sales and recent opinion polls indicate that more people are warming up to the idea of gun ownership. A 2000 Gallup Poll found that 35 percent of Americans thought that owning a gun made their home safer. By 2014 that number soared to 63 percent.
A Dec. 2014 Pew Research poll found, for the first time in more than two decades, there was more support for gun rights than gun control, with 52 percent of respondents saying it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns, while 46 percent said it was more important to control gun ownership.
NCIS background checks increased from 11.2 million to 21 million between 2007 and 2014, according to the report, and the sale of guns has skyrocketed over the last two years. About 14 million guns were sold between 2008 and 2011, while over 20 million were sold between 2012 and 2013, and about a quarter were sold to first-time buyers, Mr. Keene said.
“The public increasingly understands that gun control is a failed social experiment, and it doesn’t work,” Mr. Keene said. “All gun control ever does is infringe upon the rights of the law-abiding citizens and does nothing to stop criminals from illegally acquiring firearms, and it doesn’t stop them from misusing them in crime.”
Researchers attributed the uptick in permits and gun sales to President Obama’s election.
Between 1999 and 2007 the number of permits increased by about 240,000 per year. But in the next four years, during Mr. Obama’s first term in the White House, the number of new permits issued jumped to 850,000 per year. From 2011 to 2013, the number increased by 1.5 million, rising to 1.7 million last year, according to the report.
Following the killings of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, last month, Mr. Obama called for more gun control, a move that Mr. Keene said prompts Americans to head to local gun retailers.
“Whenever we see calls by politicians to take away the ability to exercise a fundamental civil liberty protected by the Second Amendment, people react,” Mr. Keene said.
Mr. Pratt also speculated that the spike in permit and gun sales can be attributed to a reaction to riots and looting that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore during protests over police killings of unarmed black men.
“What this really is is a reaction to Ferguson and Baltimore. Every time the authorities demonstrate that things can happen that they can’t control, that your life could be in danger and your property could be taken away from you in an instant, people get it,” Mr. Pratt said.
The report found that women and minority populations are getting more permits than white men, the most commonly stereotyped gun owners.
Since 2007 permits for women have increased by 270 percent and for men by 156 percent.
Although white males are still the largest concealed carry permit-holding group, the number of permits obtained by blacks accelerated the most, with Asians and American Indians following in second.
Between 2012 and 2014 the number of black permit holders increased from 10,389 to 17,594, according to the report.
Black females were the fastest-growing concealed handgun permit group, increasing 3.44 times faster than white females.
“The stereotype of the gun owner being a middle-aged male white guy from the South is simply not correct anymore,” Mr. Keene said.
Gun rights advocates say that the uptick can be attributed to more minority populations and women in urban areas seeking to protect themselves from violent criminals.
Mr. Pratt called the findings very encouraging for conservatives, and said they indicated a shift from liberal ideologies among minority groups.
“That is probably one of the most encouraging findings in that whole survey,” he said of the data on black permit holders. “That ought to give liberals and anti-Second Amendment folks a lot of reason to cry.
“I would go and have a sign out for carry permits in the middle of as many black communities as I could. This is going to be a very worrisome finding for the liberals. They ain’t got nothing if they haven’t got the blacks. They lose. That’s the only margin of victory they reliably have,” he added.
We’ll remember this as the summer the nation went mad. Lynch mobs are usually brought to the boil by a heinous event, encouraged by heat, humidity and harangue. There was a heinous event, now all but forgotten, but this is hardly a long, hot summer. There’s a drought in Southern California but June and July have been moderate and pleasant, with considerable rain, nearly everywhere else. Nevertheless, a lynch mob with tar, feathers, rails and ropes has been on the scout for somebody to harass, hurt or hang.
Mobs are usually raised from the ranks of the poor, the wretched and the hangers-on from the refuse of the shore, as in Emma Lazarus‘ famous poem at the Statue of Liberty. But not this time. The usual masters of successful rabble-rousing, Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have taken a holiday. We can’t blame them. The usual shouters on all sides have been strangely quiet.
This time the leaders are the “respectables,” as the elites imagine themselves: know-it-all academics, the usual pundits looking for attention, rectors and reverends and other divines out to get a few lines in the public prints, governors, senators, mayors and assorted politicians in pursuit of voters with unrequited grievances.
So far the mob hasn’t employed the rope, so far as we know, perhaps because the respectables don’t know how to tie an effective noose, and have contented themselves with digging up old soldiers in the South, changing street names, razing ancient statuary, throwing out politically incorrect stained glass at the cathedral in Washington that purports to represent the nation, all to eliminate the last traces of good men and true honored by the men and women of their generation.
The New York Times even tried to make a scandal of a new novel — a novel! — that draws a literary hero as an accurate representative of his times and place, as if the reviewer and her editors could not discern the difference between art and reality, fact or fiction.
No one can tell exactly what set off the mob. Some put the spark at the Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine devout Christians of the African persuasion were mercilessly murdered by an apprentice barbarian with a gun. Photographs of him posing with Confederate and American flags, as if he understood any better than the respectables what those flags represent, put the mob in a frenzy of frothing-at-the-mouth anger. Suddenly there was breaking news from 1865, and the newspapers, television networks and everybody with a laptop were all over it. This was the revenge the Radical Republicans failed to exact at the end of a civil war that had morally and physically exhausted the people who fought it.
But the nine slain Christians have been all forgotten in the frenzy over Confederate relics and souvenirs. There are the inevitable demands that everything connected, even in demented minds, with the verboten past must be excised, expunged and forgotten. Memorials to founding fathers who owned slaves, including Washington, Madison and Jefferson among early presidents, are suddenly politically incorrect, and consideration must be given to doing “something” about them. A mob can always figure out “something.” Even the Stars and Stripes, which flew over undisturbed American slavery for nearly a century, might be altered to reflect “the real America,” perhaps with the rainbow which Barack Obama painted the White House.
The mob hysteria inevitably embraces the current presidential campaign, which has only 15 months to run. The current campaign must be concluded by November next year to make room for the beginning of the campaign of 2020, when Hillary is expected to make her third race as the inevitable president, perhaps with Chelsea as her running mate. The Clintons think big.
Donald Trump sets every respectable Republican’s hair on fire, makes his teeth itch and his hands reach for the smelling salts. Nearly all the 28 Republican presidential candidates, or whatever the current number is this morning, elbowing each other aside to get out of the old mob to get into the new one, are eager to throw a rock at the Donald. Buffoon or not, the Donald has got the number of the respectables, who come to Washington to do good and stay as long as they can do well.
The Republicans always talk a good game but rarely play one, satisfied after they get to Washington to follow the example of the Democrats they replace, to guard the inventory of their perks, surrounded by aides and go-fers to speak for them, listen for them and when necessary go to the toilet for them. All hat, as the Texans say, and no cattle.
Forget the familiar refrain “Washington is broken! We must fix the gridlock.” Past fixes to gridlock have broken Washington.
Congress does too much, not too little. Separation of powers, as Madison explained, should slow down the legislative process. It is important, he said, to block bad laws even though some good laws will not pass.
Congress only does too little of what it should do—like ensuring time to read and consider bills before Members vote.
Congress is very good at passing laws that avoid accountability. The budgetary process and investigative hearings allow committee chairmen often to get their way without legislation. That circumvention encourages Congress to enact broad, ambiguous statutes later filled with executive agency regulations.
The Administrative State is the progeny of the 17th Amendment, which stripped state legislatures of control over their U.S. senators, a control based on the former system of state legislatures electing senators.
Previously, a House-passed bill proposing to nationalize some issue could be blocked by state-protecting Senators.
Since the New Deal, however, Congress has continually enacted legislation extending federal control over matters previously regulated or not by the states. The Senate still does block House-passed bills, but more for ideological and national, economic-group-interest reasons.
From an inside-the-Beltway viewpoint, America appears chaotic regarding whatever happens to be the issue du jour.
Advocates for new federal regulations routinely decry “the patchwork of laws” in the states. Indeed, a “patchwork of laws” essentially defines federalism!
Politics is all about power. Those possessing power rarely care about the Constitution, unless that is, their own power is impinged by others possessing power. That reality explains why the framers architected the Constitution to limit the powers of both the state and the federal governments.
As Madison explained in The Federalist, the (pre-17th Amendment) Constitution provides a double protection for liberty, both separating powers within the federal government and pitting state and federal power against each other.
Progressives, since Woodrow Wilson, have criticized this constitutional structure for obstructing the democratic will. They have also, however, transferred governance to the “non-political” experts of the Administrative State. So in the name of democracy, the Administrative State has made our system much less democratic.
The legislative-lobbyist-bureaucrat iron triangle encourages regulatory expansion, largely through Congress’s commerce and spending powers. Virtually every new regulation takes some power from the states, often altogether pre-empting state law.
When politically necessary or convenient, Congress greases the power-grab through grants that buy state acquiescence. That worked effectively, for example, with Medicaid until many states rejected Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and prevailed in the Supreme Court.
The New Deal made states supplicants to Congress, with some states paying more and others paying less per capita in federal taxes than they received back in federal spending. The New Deal political coalition which made such redistribution possible has collapsed, but its subjugation of the states remains.
Those who justify subjugation of the states as a response to state racial discrimination ignore the fact that most of Congress’s consolidation of federal power has nothing to do with race.
Indeed, the solidly segregationist South was essential to the New Deal coalition which built the Administrative State. It was not Congress, but the Brown v. Board decision which started the process of compliance with the post-Civil War amendments.
Both proponents and opponents of adopting the Constitution agreed that consolidation of power in a national government would destroy liberty.
The Federalists defended the Constitution’s important limitations on state power as necessary to correct the many state abuses of power. The Constitution was certainly not viewed at the time as a “States’ Rights” document.
Rather than individual or states’ rights, the consolidation of federal power mostly concerns the centralization of money and power. Having subjugated the states, Congress concentrates increasingly on corporate America. Creating new regulations allows Members to extract contributions for exemptions from regulations and promises of deregulation.
Often portrayed as bribery of Congressional Members, the political-contribution process looks more like a shakedown by certain Members of Congress. Some Washington lobbyists do use contributions to foster crony capitalism and economic protectionism while others are primarily making protection payments in the extortion racket that increasingly dominates Washington.
Those who want to limit the influence of money on politics, often people who also want more power in Washington, seem oblivious to the reality that money that flows to congressional Members correlates with amassing of federal power. Real federalism limits the power of Congress and the Administrative State, thereby reducing the need for national lobbyists and their money.
ENVIRONMENTALISM GONE MAD: HOW A SIERRA CLUB ACTIVIST AND SENIOR EPA ANALYST DISCOVERED A RADICAL GREEN ENERGY FANTASY
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is apparently operating under the control of President Obama’s leftist ideology. There is little doubt about this as the president’s hand-picked Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Gina McCarthy, has basically told professional audiences that she is doing the bidding of her boss. What may surprise folks is that this is not inappropriate with respect to how the EPA was initially established by President Richard Nixon. Relative to the advancement of the country’s economic, environmental and public health, and the well-being of objective scientific practice itself, an ideology-driven EPA is quite inappropriate.
In his new book “Environmentalism Gone Mad: How a Sierra Club Activist and Senior EPA Analyst Discovered a Radical Green Energy Fantasy,” Alan Carlin explains that the EPA “reports directly to the president and thus has no independence from the executive branch like some regulatory agencies. This means that if an administration wants to use its power to determine regulations, it can impose exactly what it wishes to do subject only to the Congressional Review Act and Congress’ powers of appropriations, both of which have proved ineffective so far in preventing Obama from doing what he wants with regard to EPA.”
Mr. Carlin was at the EPA almost from its inception in 1970. He came from research work at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, Ca., to work with the EPA in Washington, D.C. from 1971 to 2010. In early 2009, after submitting serious negative comments on the EPA’s draft technical support document for the endangerment finding on the adverse effects of increasing levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, Mr. Carlin had been maligned by the EPA powers-that-be for challenging the Obama administration’s poor economics and science represented in these findings. Yet, as an EPA senior analyst with an undergraduate degree in physics from Caltech bolstered by a doctorate in economics from MIT, Mr. Carlin surely knows his stuff.
He asserts that even if EPA’s current effort to control carbon-dioxide emissions are successful, “it will not change the climate or extreme weather in any measurable way even though Obama has proclaimed it will. It will simply increase the rates paid for less reliable energy, with lower-income Americans bearing most of the burden along with the slow recovery of the U.S. economy.”
Throughout his lengthy personal recounting in “Environmentalism Gone Mad” of the rise and fall of EPA adherence to science over politics, Mr. Carlin engages the reader with essential details. These include not only an insider’s perspective on the operation of the EPA but also numerous, specific and sensible short-term and long-term recommendations on how to “get out of this mess” — a mess largely brought about by the current administration’s adherence to radical leftist environmentalism. The need to consider reasonable costs versus benefits in air quality rules, as exemplified in the recent Supreme Court decision in Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, is a move encouraged by Mr. Carlin.
Good economics and science require a broad perspective, yet when politics and financial control dominate the mix of viewpoints, the climate changes, and usually in an ominous way. Mr. Carlin expresses it in one of his long-term reform recommendations to reduce incentives for EPA managers to follow the administration: “Besides the normal bureaucratic controls, the pay of all EPA executives and senior analysts [is] directly determined by Congress and the president. This is unlikely to lead to independent action or thought by these crucial civil service employees. Yet independent analysis is desperately needed if EPA is to reflect good science and economics rather than science determined by their political masters.”
Without a doubt, “Environmentalism Gone Mad” is an important book that provides well-informed personal insight into the convoluted world of calamitous climate science promoted by what Mr. Carlin calls the “climate-industrial complex” or “CIC.” The CIC includes the science elites, mainstream media, environmental groups, leftist politicians and bureaucratic administrators, “green” energy and fuel producers and promoters, PR myth-makers (like those labeling knowledgeable skeptics as “deniers”), and others who profit financially, professionally and personally from foisting a future climate fantasy on a unwary public.
Mr. Carlin observes: “If governments simply stayed out of energy decisions not involving government-owned resources, urgent national security objectives, or actual proven pollution problems and let the markets decide how to meet energy needs, everyone except the CIC would be much better off, including the environment.”
Ratepayers and all taxpayers would do well to educate themselves on the inefficient, sometimes unscrupulous, and perhaps often counterproductive actions of those obstructing the goal of good, clean and affordable domestic energy. “Environmentalism Gone Mad” is a good first step in this essential education.
America’s military is being redefined but not by changes in strategy or evolutions of the threats we face. The redefinition is the unplanned result of budgetary constraints and bad choices of weapon systems we spend hundreds of billions of dollars to buy.
The two effects of this redefinition combine to make their sum greater than their parts. First, there are missions our forces are in the process of abandoning because their shrinking size doesn’t allow performance of them. Second, the ability to perform essential missions is being dangerously abandoned in the design of the most expensive weapons we are buying.
For example, the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (the LCS, known in defense circles as the “little crappy ship”) is supposed to operate in shallow coastal waters. But as the Defense Department’s Office of Operational Test and Evaluation said, it’s so lightly armed and armored it won’t survive in combat. Nevertheless, the little crappy ship is still being bought at a cost of about $475 million each.
The worst example is the F-35 joint strike fighter. Purchases of the F-35 fighter aircraft, the most expensive weapon system the Pentagon has ever bought, are being accelerated. It will cost more than $400 billion to buy about 2,500 of them and another $1 trillion to own and operate for the 50 years of their projected life. For that entire time, absorbing a huge chunk of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps budgets, the F-35 will be the fighter that ate the defense budget.
The F-35 is supposed to be all things to all services, replacing the F-15, F-16, A-10 and F/A-18. The Marines want it to provide close air support for troops on the ground. The Air Force and the Navy want it to be both an attack aircraft and an air superiority fighter. After nearly 14 years of development, it’s clear that it can’t perform either of those missions well.
The Air Force has always taken its responsibility for air supremacy seriously. (The last American ground troop to be killed by an enemy aircraft died in 1953). That track record is currently maintained by the F-22 Raptor, a highly-capable fifth-generation fighter that can engage and kill any other aircraft.
In the days the “fighter mafia” ran the Air Force, there was a mix of “high” and “low” fighters. The F-22 is the air dominance fighter and the F-35 was supposed to be the “low” fighter, responsible for strike missions and close air support. But the problem is obvious: With 2,500 F-35s and only 187 F-22s, the F-35 is going to have to defend itself most of the time. It can’t, because its designers — and the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps leadership — neglected to deal with the simple math to figure out that you can’t protect 2,400 F-35s with just 187 F-22s. That leaves our air forces unprepared to fight other nations’ best such as Russia’s Su-35 or China’s J-10. To build fighters that can’t makes no sense.
At that point, the Pentagon leaders’ responsibility required them to either redesign the F-35 to give it the ability to win air-to-air fights or resume production of F-22s. They did neither.
Last year, Gen. Michael Hostage, then commander of Air Combat Command, said that without the F-22 flying with it to provide defense, the F-35 “will be irrelevant.”
Proof of Gen. Hostage’s judgment came in a Lockheed Martin test pilot report published by the War is Boring blog. The report was of a flight in which the F-35 engaged an F-16 (which the Air Force has flown since 1980) in a mock dogfight to test the F-35’s computer “laws.”
Computer “laws” govern the performance of modern aircraft. Sometimes overriding the pilot’s controls, the computer’s programming governs what the aircraft does. In the F-35, everything — from the aircraft’s ability to turn to how much thrust the engine is producing — is a function of the 8-million-plus lines of code in the onboard computer.
The War is Boring blog reported that the test pilot determined that the F-35 couldn’t perform one of its most basic functions: winning a dogfight even against a 1980s vintage F-16.
The test pilot’s report confirms what Gen. Hostage said. It says, for example, that “Overall, the most noticeable characteristic of the F-35A in a visual engagement was its lack of energy maneuverability.” Energy maneuverability is a combination of the power of the engine to get an aircraft into (or out of) a “shooting solution” and the aircraft’s control surfaces — wings, rudders and such — to do the same. The single-engine F-35 is underpowered and its control surfaces too small to maneuver effectively and win a dogfight.
The test pilot’s report also says that the F-35 helmet — which has to be tailored for each pilot at the cost of about $400,000 — “was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft.” In a dogfight that too would be fatal.
Those design problems can’t be fixed by tinkering with the software. They represent enormous risks and not just for pilots in an aircraft that’s not capable of winning a dogfight. The danger of losing air dominance puts every American soldier on the ground at risk, and our nation at risk of losing battles or even wars.
The F-35 program is an example of how weapons shouldn’t be bought. It needs to be stopped in its tracks until all of its substantial design problems are solved in a manner that enables it to perform all of the missions required of it.
Finally! A great, unifying figure emerges in American politics to bring the endlessly bickering factions here in Washington back together again.
Not since 9/11 has everyone in Washington rallied in such unison as they do now — vehemently opposed to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. But unlike 9/11, the sophisticates and kleptocrats in both parties of Washington find themselves wildly out of step with actual American voters.
People in both parties and even those resolutely unaffiliated here in Washington twitch and tremble at the mere mention of the Trump name. Refer to him as “President Trump” or repeatedly reference “the Trump administration,” and these people go into a smoldering tailspin.
Eyes bug out of heads. Professional Republicans denounce him. Conservative commentators mock him and insist he is no part of the Grand Old Party. Professional Democrats abhor him and smear him as a racist boob. Liberal commentators predict that he will destroy the Republican Party.
Truth is, the fact that people here in Washington fear and loathe Mr. Trump so much is final proof that these people here in Washington fear and loathe you; the great unwashed voters of America.
People here in Washington despise voters and think you are stupid and not to be taken seriously. You are rude and vulgar and uneducated.
Take Mr. Trump’s comments about the illegals streaming across the border from Mexico who commit these heinous crimes.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said in announcing his campaign. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
This was not a polite thing to say. But it is absolutely, incontrovertibly true. Just ask the grieving family of Kathryn Steinle out in California. And polls show that American voters in both parties agree with Mr. Trump and desperately want the crisis to be fixed.
But in this ever-lying world of Washington politics, it is wrong to speak the truth if it is shocking or unpleasant. Which, of course, is how this country has gotten into the terrible fix we are in today.
So Mr. Trump is denounced from every corner, branded as a racist and excommunicated by proper politicos of every stripe.
Even the “severely conservative” Republican Mitt Romney got into the game, saying: “I think he made a severe error in saying what he did about Mexican-Americans.”
Whoaaaaah, Nelly! Who said anything about legal “Mexican-Americans?” Nobody is talking about people of Mexican extraction who are living and working legally in America. This is about illegal Mexicans illegally crossing the border and illegally committing atrocious crimes, in many cases even after they have been deported — repeatedly! It is about a broken border and a broken immigration system.
Americans are not anti-Hispanic or anti-Mexican. They are simply anti-insanity!
And shame on you, Mr. Romney, for insulting all the good *legal* Mexican-Americans who have been immigrating to this country legally for centuries and smearing them with the unspeakable illegal deeds of rotten outlaws who should be rounded up and booted from the country for good.
Yet, somehow, Mr. Trump is the racist and nobody says one word about Mr. Romney’s wicked calumny.
Another thing that Mr. Trump is proving is that American voters do not hate rich people, any more than they hate legal Hispanics.
They just dislike rich people who talk like robots, such as always misusing the word “severely.” They dislike rich people who talk gleefully about how much they enjoy firing people. They dislike rich people who think knowing the owners of racing car teams makes you a NASCAR fan.
In other words, they dislike Mitt Romney. (See: Election, 2012.)
Now comes Donald Trump; Republicans and voters love him. What are you going to do about it this time?
Almost every option facing debt-drenched Greece is bad, but there is only one that will end this Greek tragedy for good. Let Greece go bankrupt. Then let this once-rich nation, hit the restart button to rebuild its economy.
What I’m suggesting for Greece is what might be called the Detroit option. Put Greece under receivership and let these new authorities figure out how to manage the debt and decide who will take a haircut and how big. Pensioners, bondholders, welfare recipients, government workers, the International Monetary Fund, all will have to settle for less — maybe a lot less. It’s tough love, but it’s the only way out. More bailouts and debt extensions will only delay the crash of the socialist Greek economy.
I can already hear the heart palpitations of the Wall Street investors. This option puts them in the fetal position with the thumb in the mouth. They worry about the entire world economy collapsing as creditors flee the sovereign debt of one fiscally bloated nation after another — Spain, Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Portugal. All of them have the same defects: obese welfare states, leaky pension systems and tumbling tax collections.
But every option is worse. For six years the brainiacs at the International Monetary Fund and the European Union have devised one bailout and debt restructuring scheme after another. None of them have worked. They have only saddled the Greek citizens with even more long-term debt that can’t be paid back. Greece is now sitting on $350 billion of debt. It is unpayable and the international monetary experts are deluding themselves into believing that by some magic stroke, this nation of less than 11 million citizens will some time in the future come up with the funds to repay it.
The left-leaning Greek government is making things worse. One plan would raise the value-added tax and business taxes to come up with more revenues. But Greece is already overtaxed, and taxing the few businesses that are still functioning is only going to ensure their eventual demise, too. Economist Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute has found that the cascade of taxes in Greece can reach so high that the rates approach 100 percent. And so very few work. Meanwhile, the Greek citizens have come to the conclusion that fat pensions and cradle-to-grave welfare benefits are a human right that can never be taken away. Maybe the politicians never will. But a bankruptcy court could and probably would.
All of the conventional EU and IMF solutions sidestep the root cause of the Greek tragicomedy. The Greek citizens are simply living way, way beyond their means. This is a nation with an average retirement age of 60. This is a nation that has one in four adults unemployed and half of its young people out of work. With such countrywide levels of idleness, who is working to pay for these super-extravagent benefits? Are the hard-working German citizens going to pay more taxes to provide lavish benefits to Greek retirees? Probably not, and they are fools if they decide to do so.
A recent Investors Business Daily editorial put it well: “It is a near certainty that Greece will continue to drown in debt until this death spiral of rising government obligations paid for by a shrinking private sector workforce reverses course.”
This requires a technical default on Greece’s debt. (The nation is already in default on more than $1 billion in IMF loans.) This will force a debt restructuring. Creditors may get 50 cents on the dollar owed, depending on how bleak the finances really are in Athens. Welfare benefits will have to be slashed. Pensions for retirees will be cut based on the new reality of Greece’s finances. This may seem “unfair,” but how is it fair to require young Greek citizens to bear exorbitant taxes to pay for the sins of their fathers and grandfathers?
When Detroit filed for bankruptcy, it allowed the Motor City to, in effect, start over economically. The city is financially cut off from much borrowing. Government workers have been laid off. Benefits have finally been trimmed. And guess what? Detroit is making a comeback. Real estate values are rising. Construction is beginning again. In a decade, Detroit could be a financially sound and desirable place to live and do business.
Will this cause a global financial panic? Not if it is carried off in an orderly and open fashion. One implication of this solution is that investors may start to view sovereign debt as risky, not risk-free. They will charge nations — especially those that have massive unfunded liabilities — higher interest rates. Making it harder for bloated governments to borrow would be a positive development. More money would flow to private-sector borrowing and less to governments.
Another criticism is the charge of “austerity.” But there has been no austerity in Greece. This is a nation that in 2013 was spending up to 59 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on government benefits and programs. Even today the government accounts for half of all spending. How is that austerity? The problem is as the private economy shrinks, the government’s role keeps expanding. Greece’s debt was 120 percent of GDP a decade ago, and now its 175 percent. This is the opposite of austerity. It is a government-sponsored orgy.
Most importantly, Greek bankruptcy will serve as a teachable moment to the scores of overtaxed and over-debt-burdened nations of the world, that the jig is up on unaffordable government promises. Investors will also learn that governments that spend and tax their way to financial oblivion are not risk-free. This would also be a good time to shut down the feckless IMF and World Bank. These institutions haven’t averted financial crises. They have enabled them through their lending policies that are the equivalent of giving crack cocaine to drug addicts. That story never ends well. Greece has taught the rest of the world that socialism is dead. The tragedy is so few world leaders are learning that.
California keeps reminding us what has gone astray with America in recent years.
The state is in the midst of a crippling four-year-old drought. Yet California has built almost no major northern or central mountain reservoirs since the New Melones Dam of 1979. That added nearly 3 million acre-feet to the state’s storage reserves — a critical project that was almost canceled by endless environmental lawsuits and protests.
Although California has almost doubled in population since the dam’s construction, its politicians apparently decided that completing more northern and Sierra Nevada water projects was passe. So the parched state now prays for rain and snow rather than building reservoirs to ensure that the next drought won’t shut down the state.
Curiously, once infrastructure projects such as the New Melones Dam are finished, few seem to complain about the life-saving water they provide the public in times of existential drought. California has taught the nation its unique hypocrisy. We have stopped the Keystone pipeline for now, but if it gets built eventually, few consumers will complain that it transfers oil at a cheap cost and with greater safety.
California has also schooled the nation on mutually exclusively goals. Its lax immigration policies have made for a rapidly expanding population, and yet it expects a sophisticated infrastructure that ensures plentiful, clean water — and dreams of a pristine, green, 19th century paradise in a depopulated state.
California’s major north-south highway laterals — the 99, 101 and I-5 “freeways” — often descend into deadly traffic quagmires. They were designed for a state of less than 20 million people, not one of more than 40 million. Recent national surveys have rated the state’s road system as nearly last in the nation.
Most forget that California once all but invented the modern idea of a freeway. But instead of first ensuring motorists safe three-lane freeways, the state is embarking on a $68 billion high-speed rail project.
Californians excel at these postmodern solutions even as they ignore premodern problems. What advantage is providing free iPads for California students if their basic reading and analytical skills are declining to below pre-Internet levels? California is busy mandating transgendered restrooms but is lax in guaranteeing that there will be water in their sinks and toilets.
In good California style, Houston-based NASA talks grandly about its new 21st century space agendas, forgetting that it cannot even send its present astronauts into space on an American rocket. Just because a prior generation built the powerful and sophisticated Saturn rockets does not mean that its more sophisticated children can send Americans into space without Russian help.
Government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, Veterans Affairs, General Services Administration and the National Security Agency are bigger, richer and more self-promoting than ever before. But their huge budgets hardly ensure that they can fairly collect taxes, humanely tend to the needs of veterans, professionally monitor government property, or properly collect and distill intelligence.
The once-vaunted California State University system now struggles with incoming students who are ill-prepared for college courses. More than a third do not meet English or math test entry requirements for college work and need remedial courses, which in turn reduces the availability of advanced classes and resources from the traditional university curricula.
Much of the crisis originates from poor preparation in grade schools and high schools, combined with huge influxes of non-English-speaking immigrants. In the past, the melting pot of English emersion, assimilation, integration and intermarriage had best helped immigrants quickly reach parity with the native population, but that old model has since been rejected.
The United States likewise has all but ended enforcement of its immigration laws — as if the idea of open borders and cultural diversity are proper objectives without preplanning for the ensuing education, housing, transportation, health and legal challenges. Praising “diversity” in the abstract proves to be of little value unless in the concrete people are willing to open their neighborhoods and schools to mentor the millions of impoverished newcomers in their midst.
California taught the nation that taxes can skyrocket — the state has the highest basket of income, sales and gasoline taxes in the nation — even as infrastructure, government services and schools erode. It established the national precedent of opposing new infrastructure projects and then enjoying them once the planners and builders who were criticized finished them. California equated a Silicon Valley smartphone in the hand with knowledge in the head — and the nation at large soon produced the most electronically wired and least knowledgeable generation in memory.
We are all Californians now.
On this Independence Day weekend, let’s recall what made the United States exceptional from the start. It was designed as a nation of laws, not of men, built on the concepts of individual liberty and equal justice before the law, with freedoms ranging from speech to worship, and rights from gun ownership to assembly.
The Founding Fathers institutionalized these freedoms for the individual, so we would be safe from the suffocating burdens of a too-powerful state. Those freedoms would allow individuals to do as they pleased within the reasonable confines of the law and to achieve in ways big and small, the benefits of which would redound to America at large.
And yet, in several short years, President Obama and his leftist army have fundamentally shifted the balance away from the individual and toward government, and from the notion of self-reliance to an increasing reliance on government. It took Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and several other Founders a few months to draft the Declaration of Independence. It took Mr. Obama even less time to turn us into a nation of growing dependence.
In that famous founding document we celebrate this weekend, the Declaration of Independence, Mr. Jefferson cataloged a long list of abuses of the American people by the British sovereign.
Today, we could compile our own list of abuses suffered at the hands of Mr. Obama, his congressional toadies, his wingmen in the media, and his protectors at the Supreme Court. They include:
A lawless president who routinely lies with impunity.
An out-of-control Congress.
A politically corrupted Supreme Court.
An equally corrupt media.
A long-term jobs crisis.
The government takeover and destruction of the best health care system in the world.
A national debt speeding toward $20 trillion.
The political weaponization of the Internal Revenue Service.
The endless influx of illegal aliens into America and failure to secure our borders and our sovereignty.
A dangerous foreign policy that embraces, frees and empowers our enemies while abandoning and imperiling our friends.
A commander in chief who is deliberately weakening American power.
An arrogant, unresponsive elite class that is bankrupting the nation while empowering itself.
Americans will take a lot, but I always believed that they would not tolerate the abuse of their nation by the forces of a sick and discredited redistributionist ideology. I thought that they would reject it even more so if they believed their own leadership was hijacking American exceptionalism and diluting it in order to serve a global redistributionist scheme.
I now wonder if my assumptions are still correct.
The original tea party was a seminal pre-revolutionary event. It symbolized the colonists’ objections to being ruled and taxed from afar and their desire for the basic human dignity of having a voice in their own affairs. In a significant way, this was the beginning of American exceptionalism: What made these powerless subjects think they could confront the king of the most powerful empire on earth?
The courage of those early Americans came when they realized that they were not powerless at all. They discovered that their power came not from the barrel of a gun but from their unity around the idea that all men were created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We were born in revolt. Revolt against oppression. Revolt against tyranny.
The odds were stacked hugely against us. And yet, the early Americans knew that their demands were not radical. To King George, they constituted treason. But to the patriots, and later, for the whole of humanity, they were basic rights that came not from government but from God. They believed that they were on the right side of history.
They didn’t know how it would end, but they also knew they didn’t have a choice but to fight.
Several years after the Revolutionary War and the adoption of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “The important ends of civil government are the personal securities of life and liberty. I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country, and the least encroachment of those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil.”
Franklin went on to say: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters. But America is too enlightened to be enslaved.”
The question for us on this Independence Day: Are we still too enlightened to be enslaved?
You might think the gays, the liberals and the mellowed-out folks who groove on kittens and little living things would be content to lie in a patch of sunlight in the corner and purr together.
Chief Justice John Roberts told them it was OK to celebrate, though it’s not clear why a chief justice who said the Constitution had nothing to do with the gay marriage decision would urge anyone to celebrate setting the Constitution aside.
The gays, liberals, etc., spent the weekend reading Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion to each other, marveling at his skill in the law, his mastery of logic and reasoning, above all the poetry of his purple ode to love — it’s not quite the right shade of lavender, but it will do. But even that is not enough.
Some of the gays, liberals, etc., are angry at Chief Justice Roberts because he suggests that the ruling will “pave the way” for polygamy, not that there could be anything wrong with that. If nobody has a right to say who you can love, as President Obama reminds us, then no one can rightly say how many people a body can take on a honeymoon. Congress might even consider an apology to the Mormons for insisting that they had to disavow polygamy, once a key doctrine of their church, before Congress would admit Utah to the union.
Walter Dellinger, the director of the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel in the Clinton administration, is miffed because the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, was only 5 to 4. Switch one vote and an estrogen shortage would settle over the wedding chapel. Without that fifth vote there wouldn’t be room for two of those little men in tuxedos of spun sugar on the wedding cake (preferably baked by a reluctant baker under court order). “The four dissenting justices wrote four separate dissenting opinions,” Mr. Dellinger wrote in Slate, a magazine of the Web. “The judicial opponents of gay marriage were not content to go gently into that good night.”
He got in his licks at the Confederate battle flag, too, since that’s the nifty thing to do this week. He mocks the dissenters — Messrs Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — for their consideration of “tradition” and “heritage,” isolating the words in quotation marks as if they smell bad, like something on his shoe.
There’s four villains to boo and hiss in the gay bars of the land. Justice Scalia is a favorite villain, not only for his opinion of the law, but because he writes so well and laces his opinions with gall and bile, leaving the rosewater to Justice Kennedy. Mr. Scalia is particularly naughty for his remark that if he had put his name to a purple opinion as Mr. Kennedy might have written, “I would hide my head in a bag.” His head in a bag is exactly what a lot of the gay caballeros can’t wait to see.
Those who felt the love from Justice Kennedy and the merry ladies and merciful knights of the High Court seem particularly disappointed that the decision won’t put a stop to the controversy over gay marriage, and they’re concerned how the ruling might be used by other litigants in other causes (such as group marriage). Well they might be. Americans wrangled over the Brown decision, declaring legally enforced segregation in the public schools to be unconstitutional, for a half-century, a controversy extended by how Chief Justice Earl Warren picked a spavined Swedish horse to ride to the right place.
Wrangling over Roe v. Wade, where a divided court found a right to abortion in the Constitution, has hardly settled anything. Litigants and legislatures continue to find ways to restrict the boundaries of the decision.
Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissent, asks on what grounds a state might deny a marriage license to a foursome of two men and two women. Justice Scalia asks whether a state must recognize a polygamous marriage from a foreign country.
The question that might be asked is what about a group marriage including children? (At last, a little girl might get to marry her daddy.) Such a union sounds weird enough, but so does same-sex marriage to nearly everybody. It’s the “ick” factor of same-sex marriage that will keep the issue on the stove.
But next up is the wrangle to divide the land as it has not been divided since Appomattox. What must be done with the clergyman who won’t participate in the new orthodoxy? A town in Idaho has already enacted an ordinance to fine and jail stubborn parsons. The show has barely begun. We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
President Obama’s climate change agenda hit a roadblock at the Supreme Court on Monday, but the administration brushed aside the decision and declared victory anyway, saying most utilities already have made the pollution cuts that technically are no longer necessary in light of the high court’s ruling.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s mercury and air toxics standards, charging that the administration failed to adequately consider the estimated $10 billion it would cost utilities to dramatically cut power plant pollution to comply with the measure.
The high court’s decision does not necessarily stop the EPA from implementing the standards in the future, but it does establish something of a precedent, with the justices making clear the administration must consider the economic consequences of its climate change agenda.
“EPA’s decision to regulate power plants … allowed the agency to reduce power plants’ emissions of hazardous air pollutants and thus to improve public health and the environment. But the decision also ultimately cost power plants, according to the agency’s own estimate, nearly $10 billion a year,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion. “EPA refused to consider whether the costs of its decision outweighed the benefits. The agency gave cost no thought at all, because it considered cost irrelevant to its initial decision to regulate.”
While Republicans on Capitol Hill and other administration critics praised the decision, the EPA seemed unfazed and said mercury and air toxics standards are, for all intents and purposes, still in effect despite the court’s ruling.
“The ruling couldn’t mitigate all of the injustice wrought by the regulation. Utilities have to plan years in advance, and judicial review of [mercury and air toxics standards] took more than three years,” said William Yeatman, a fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “The unfortunate result is that the preponderance of regulated entities already complied with the rule. That an illegal rule was allowed to have such a consequence is an injustice.”
Utilities have spent years planning how they’ll comply with the standards. The upgrades and retrofits of power plants in order to meet mercury and air toxics standards cannot easily be undone, nor are utilities likely to completely ignore the rules given the fact that the EPA surely will revise and reintroduce them with a stronger cost-benefit analysis included, legal analysts say.
The EPA essentially has achieved its central goal even though its regulations have temporarily been tossed.
“EPA is disappointed that the court did not uphold the rule, but this rule was issued more than three years ago, investments have been made and most plants are already well on their way to making emissions reductions,” the agency said in a statement. “Since the decision was about how and when the agency considered costs in its decision that mercury and air toxic emissions from power plants threaten public health and the environment, and not EPA’s Clean Air Act authority to limit hazardous air pollutants, EPA remains committed to ensuring that appropriate standards are in place to protect the public from the significant amount of toxic emissions from coal and oil-fired electric utilities and continue reducing the toxic pollution from these facilities.”
Other pieces of Mr. Obama’s climate change agenda, such as the Clean Power Plan, which will restrict carbon emissions from power plants, also face an uncertain legal future.
But the effects of those regulations already are being felt. EPA’s climate change rules have led to the closure or conversion of at least 393 power-generation units — or about 62,000 megawatts of generating capacity, according to an analysis by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.
Mr. Obama has said the broad goal of his climate change programs is to ween the U.S. off of fossil fuels and promote the expansion of renewable energy such as wind and solar power.
Monday’s decision would seem to be a major hurdle for the president and his climate goals, but legal specialists say the EPA largely is correct in its assertion that the regulations remain in place despite the Supreme Court’s action.
Utilities “have decided to phase out coal plants. Those are on schedule, and the indications are nobody is planning to change that schedule. Some have started to … spend money to put updated pollution control equipment in,” said Charles Warren, chairman of the environmental group at the law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP. “I think this buys a little time, but I do think, in the end, it is going to be very difficult to forestall the regulations. Most utilities — since over 80 percent of them have already decided what they’re going to do vis a vis their coal-fired plants — are going to go forward.”
It’s unlikely utilities would be successful in legal attempts to recoup from the federal government money spent on the now-invalid MATS program, Mr. Warren added.
For utilities, similar problems could arise from the Clean Power Plan. Under the proposal — the final version of which is due out this summer — states are responsible for achieving carbon-reduction targets set by the EPA. Figuring out how to meet those goals takes years of planning, and the work largely will be done if and when the rules end up before federal courts.
Republicans have proposed legislation to halt EPA regulations until all legal challenges are settled, but Mr. Obama surely would veto such a measure.
Critics say the current system is fundamentally unfair to power generators.
Still, Republicans praised the ruling and said it represents a firm rebuke of Mr. Obama’s attempts to battle climate change through executive action rather than legislation.
“The mere fact that the EPA wished to ignore the costs of its rules demonstrates how little the agency is concerned about the effects it has on the American people [and] the EPA continued to burden the public with more and more costs even as so many are still struggling to get by and improve their lives in this economy,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, California Republican. “Today’s decision firmly rejects the Obama administration’s circumvention of the democratic process and restores a dose of accountability to the increasingly unaccountable executive branch.”
Prime Minister David Cameron is a brave man. He has undertaken to take control and oversight of the prestigious BBC, the government broadcasting system, away from the arrogant elites and put the oversight into the hands of the people who pay for it.
The noise from the dispossessed elites will be shrill and loud, but Mr. Cameron has the wind in his sails. Criticism has been rising, not only from the usual skeptical voices, but from within and from growing numbers of listeners and viewers who recognize bias and prejudice when they hear and see it.
Snark and bias is often aimed at Israel and on behalf of Israel’s enemies in the Middle East, too. But there’s more. The BBC has suffered tabloid scandals within. One of the prominent stars of its programming for children is dealing now with credible accusations of child molesting.
The criticisms of political and cultural bias by the BBC are much like those against National Public Radio in the United States. Critics of NPR point to the relatively new mid-afternoon program, “Here and Now,” a review of public events similar to the popular commuter favorite, “All Things Considered.” The programs drip with left-wing bias and contempt for those who disagree with the program’s point of view.
In Australia, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is dealing with similar accusations against the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Company, which presented a program not long ago moderated by a notorious pro-jihadi activist. The display of open propaganda for jihadi causes dismays even some of the network’s most devoted listeners.
Most journalists are liberals, which should be irrelevant to the discussion, and would be if these journalists could keep their personal views and instincts — we all have them — under control. But many journalists can’t do that. Reporting by NPR and the Public Broadcasting System has been openly slanted over the past few years to defend the Obama administration. The problem is not a conspiracy to cook the news, but a consensus of revealed truth that works to that end.
In the face of attempts to cut PBS and NPR loose from government funding, the networks argue that their government subsidy is only minimal. If that is so, they could easily manage without it. The fact is that with contributions of tax-free foundations, public radio and TV receive as much as 40 percent of their revenue from government — national, regional and local — and “non-governmental organizations. That’s taxpayer money. NPR is a solid and professional news-gathering organization, capable of sitting on its own ample bottom, supported by its adoring audience.
With a growing presence of “public-service announcements” (they’re called “commercials” on the other networks) and earnings from the sale of toys and other items, government-supported radio and television has grown fat and comfortable, paying enormous salaries to executives and administrators. The warp in the presentation of the news has grown steadily more evident.
If they continue to take government money, PBS and NPR should submit to monitoring by an independent and effective monitoring panel, as David Cameron has prescribed for the BBC. It’s the fair price of government subsidy.
Remember when Barney Frank insisted in 2003 that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not in a crisis,” and “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation toward subsidized housing?”
As chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, former Rep. Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, helped defeat Bush administration proposals to rein in the two federal loan giants. The housing market crashed in 2008 on thousands of bad subprime home loans, triggering the Great Recession, from which this nation still has not recovered.
Well, it’s time to roll the dice again. According to the 5-4 majority opinion at the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, housing lawsuits based on race no longer need proof of intentional discrimination.
In other words, even defendants with no racist intent can be sued for racist outcomes if a plaintiff can prove “disparate impact.” That’s when a race-neutral policy results in negative outcomes for an identifiable minority.
In a 2007 school districting case involving Seattle and Louisville, and in a 2009 case over merit testing of firefighters in New Haven, Conn., the court had chipped away at reverse-racial remedies, with Chief Justice John Roberts noting in the 2007 ruling that, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
The court’s Thursday ruling in the housing case, which no doubt prompted toasts in the White House along with Justice Roberts’ second major opinion upholding Obamacare, came courtesy of Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy.
The “swing” justice joined the court’s four liberals in blessing disparate impact in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project.
“It permits plaintiffs to counteract unconscious prejudices and disguised animus that escape easy classification,” Justice Kennedy wrote, handing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other liberal groups a new, loosely defined weapon to accuse someone of racism absent credible evidence.
Once again, nothing escapes Justice Kennedy’s infamous “animus” detector. (See Lawrence v. Texas and Romer v. Evans.)
A friend of the court brief in the Texas case filed by the American Civil Rights Union states: “The plain text of the Fair Housing Act prohibits only intentional discrimination, and cannot be construed to provide for disparate impact liability. Indeed, that plain text can only be read to unambiguously preclude disparate impact liability.”
Well, what do words mean anyway, to paraphrase Justice Antonin Scalia’s acidic comment in his Obamacare case dissent?
Combined with a renewed effort by liberals to once again loosen credit qualifications for federally backed housing loans to minorities, a perfect storm may again be brewing.
Housing Bubble 2.0, anyone?
If you want a case study in how liberals create catastrophic problems, blame others, and then offer the same lethal “cures,” check out a just-released study on housing and race. Commissioned by the ACLU, the 34-page “Impact of the U.S. Housing Crisis on the Racial Wealth Gap Across Generations” gets it backward.
“The financial crisis was sparked by a housing market collapse that had its roots in racial discrimination,” say Social Science Research Council authors Sarah Burd-Sharps and Rebeccah Rasch. “It resulted in mass foreclosures that impacted racial minorities with disproportionate ferocity.”
Well, yes, blacks constitute a greater percentage of the poor, and the poor are hurt more than anyone by economic downturns. It’s also true that more of black families’ wealth is tied up in housing equity, which is why they got hit harder by the housing market crash. The government has no business making them more vulnerable to unscrupulous lenders who saddle them with inflated interest, balloon payments and other conditions that often result in foreclosures.
Passed by Congress in 1977 and signed by President Jimmy Carter, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) put a gun to the head of bankers to offer home loans to people they knew could not afford to pay them back. It triggered lawsuits designed to weaken safeguards against bad loans.
The CRA got a retro-rocket boost during the Clinton administration, as related by former Fannie Mae chief credit officer Edward Pinto in a 2009 City Journal article: “During the first 15 years of the act’s existence, total announced commitments under the CRA totaled $9 billion. But starting in 1992, volume exploded. Over the next 16 years, from 1992 to 2008, announced CRA commitments totaled $6 trillion.”
As a community activist in Chicago, Barack Obama “was a pioneering contributor to the national subprime real estate bubble, and roughly half of the 186 African-American clients in his landmark 1995 mortgage discrimination lawsuit against Citibank have since gone bankrupt or received foreclosure notices,” the Daily Caller reported in 2012. “As few as 19 of those 186 clients still own homes with clean credit ratings.”
Nowhere in the ACLU’s report do the crucial roles played by the CRA, community activists and government regulators get a mention, other than a policy recommendation for regulators to once again loosen credit requirements.
Have we learned anything from all of this?
“I hope by next year we’ll have abolished Fannie and Freddie,” Barney Frank told an interviewer in August 2010. “It was a great mistake to push lower-income people into housing they couldn’t afford and couldn’t really handle once they had it.”
But they will probably do so again, since lenders may face a disparate impact lawsuit if they don’t do it.
If Mr. Frank finally got it, why can’t everyone else?
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision declaring same-sex marriage a constitutional right, the battleground is shifting to religious freedom and whether religious people and/or churches can be compelled to sanction behavior contrary to their religious beliefs.
The court’s 5-4 ruling on Friday directs states to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but doesn’t address the actions of churches or other private groups. Conservatives and religious leaders say the decision is certain to embolden liberal activists and accelerate legal clashes between supporters of gay marriage and religious groups who don’t accept same-sex marriage.
“We’re going to see pretty quickly what Pandora’s box is, because Christians are going to be told — are already being told — that they have no legal right to not participate,” said Gary Bauer, president of the nonprofit group American Values. “The early signs are not good.”
As a result of the ruling, some of the dissenting Supreme Court justices said they foresee new legal challenges related to religious liberty in three particular areas: the tax-exempt status of religious organizations, the unwillingness of some churches and individuals to perform same-sex marriages and gay adoption.
Justice Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. said he’s concerned that the ruling “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.”
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote of the looming legal battles: “In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well. It appears all but inevitable that the two will come into conflict, particularly as individuals and churches are confronted with demands to participate in and endorse civil marriages between same-sex couples.”
Others predict legal challenges over issues such as whether a Christian university that provides housing for traditional married couples could be required to provide it for same-sex couples as well.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the ruling a “tragic error” and vowed to continue preaching the church’s doctrine on marriage as the permanent union of a man and a woman to their parishes.
“Jesus Christ, with great love, taught unambiguously that from the beginning marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman. As Catholic bishops, we follow our Lord and will continue to teach and to act according to this truth,” Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement.
Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said the court has changed the legal definition of marriage, not the biblical truth about marriage.
“As we respect a legal ruling with which we do not agree, we ask others to respect our faith and practices even when they disagree with us,” he said.
Within hours of the court’s decision, some religious leaders were vowing they’ll never perform same-sex weddings.
“Those of us who believe that marriage was ordained by God and reserved for one man and one woman, will not abide by this ruling,” said Pastor Rick Scarborough, president of Vision America Action in Nacogdoches, Texas. “We will denounce this practice in our services, we will not teach it in our schools, we will refuse to officiate at this type of wedding, and we will not accept any encroachments on our First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court’s decision to redefine marriage from its biblical origins is offensive to millions.”
Rep. Joseph R. Pitts, Pennsylvania Republican, said the ruling “will lead to grave infringements of religious freedom across the United States.”
“Every American should be free to affirm the truth about marriage without being punished by the government,” Mr. Pitts said. “In the wake of this decision, we must ensure that no governmental entity is ever permitted to discriminate against Americans because they affirm the truth about marriage. No one should be forced to choose between their faith and their livelihood.”
Liberal Catholics praised the decision. Christopher J. Hale, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, called the ruling “a moment of great joy for many Catholics” and said the church should seek forgiveness for discriminating against gays.
Secularists agreed, calling the traditional religious definition of marriage irrelevant.
“Our country is finally moving beyond outdated, religious definitions of marriage,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. “This is a victory for all LGBTQ Americans and allies who fought vigorously against discrimination.”
Such anti-religious sentiments worry David Lane of the American Renewal Project, who is training pastors nationwide in how to run for office. He predicted legal attacks on churches and other groups who oppose same-sex marriage.
“They are going to say to churches, ‘If you are going to have a tax-exempt status, you are going to perform homosexual marriage wedding[s], and if you don’t, we are going to remove your tax-deductible status,’” Mr. Lane said. “They are going to say to Christian radio, ‘Homosexual marriage is the law of the land determined by the Supreme Court. If you don’t agree with that, then you are going to lose your FCC licenses.’ This is where it is headed — easily it is. I am convinced of it.”
Members of Congress, led by Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, and Rep. Raul R. Labrador, Idaho Republican, have introduced a First Amendment Defense Act, which would prevent the federal government from discriminating against anyone who believes marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
Congress and state governments should “move immediately” to enact First Amendment Defense Acts, said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage.
Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute, said states must also pass laws to require “the genetic parents” be named on “every birth certificate, for every child,” so vital information will not be hidden or falsified from any person.
The nation needs “the strongest possible religious freedom bills” and strong state-based family policy partners, said Tom Minnery, president of chief executive of CitizenLink.com.
Churches should “adopt a clear statement of faith regarding human sexuality and marriage,” clarify that church weddings “are Christian worship services” and adopt a policy restricting use of ministry facilities to the ministry’s religious purposes, said Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.
“Although the ongoing debate about marriage now enters a new phase, it is far from over,” said Jim Campbell, senior legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom.
Travis Weber, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council, said although the court’s ruling doesn’t “implicate” churches directly, it “will lend support to efforts to sideline and marginalize traditional religious beliefs.”
One pastor, Steve Smothermon of Legacy Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, even said he’d rather go to jail than preside at a same-sex wedding.
“We want to help people, but we are not going to be forced by the government and society or the politically correct to say we are going to believe in it,” he told CNN.com. “If they said, ‘Listen, pastor, we are going to put you in jail if you don’t honor this,’ I am going to say, ‘Then put me in jail.’”
President Obama, who praised the ruling, said supporters of same-sex marriage should recognize that many others don’t accept it.
“I know that Americans of good will continue to hold a wide range of views on this issue,” Mr. Obama said. “Opposition in some cases has been based on sincere and deeply held beliefs. All of us who welcome [the ruling] should be mindful of that fact, recognize different viewpoints [and] revere our deep commitment to religious freedom.”
Mr. Bauer said the president’s words amounted to “a great laugh line.”
“His administration has aggressively attacked religious liberty,” Mr. Bauer said. “He’s playing rhetorical games again. There is nothing his administration has done that should give anybody any sense of ease by that statement.”
Some religious leaders took similar heart in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s words that religious people “may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.”
But Andrea Lafferty, president of the Traditional Values Coalition, said those words meant people can “advocate” for traditional marriage but “cannot operate according to those beliefs.” Instead, she said, First Amendment religious freedoms will surely be pitted against the ruling’s newly established “right to dignity.”
The high court’s opinion “gives lip service to the rights of people of faith,” said Maureen Ferguson of The Catholic Association. Already Catholic Charities agencies have been forced out of adoption, and Christians who are bakers, florists or fire chiefs have suffered “merely for respectful expression of their views,” she said.
When Melisa Erwin called the Giffords about using their upstate New York property for a same-sex wedding ceremony, she apparently knew in advance that they would refuse. For one thing, she and her fiancee recorded the conversation.
Even so, an administrative judge with the New York State Division of Human Rights ordered the Giffords to pay $3,000 to Ms. Erwin and Jennifer McCarthy for “mental pain and suffering,” in addition to $10,000 for violating the state’s human rights ordinance.
In a brief filed Thursday, attorneys for Cynthia and Robert Gifford argue that the state’s ruling violates the First Amendment, but they also criticize the same-sex couple for what they describe as an “orchestrated set-up.”
“The evidence, however, indicates that Respondents were aware of the Giffords’ beliefs and chose specifically to call and record Mrs. Gifford for the purposes of documenting the Giffords’ policy,” said the brief filed by attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom.
“Such an orchestrated set-up can hardly form the basis for ‘mental anguish’ and suffering,” said the brief, which was submitted to the New York Supreme Court.
The argument illustrates a common complaint among Christian business owners: They are deliberately sought out by gay couples even though most photographers, bakers and florists would be happy to provide services for same-sex weddings.
“The gay community is constantly attacking the church as if the church were singling them out. However, it is the other way around; the gay community is singling out the church,” Patricia L. Dickson said in a Nov. 2 article in American Thinker. “How else do you explain gay couples running straight to Christian business owners as soon as their state lifts the ban on same-sex marriage?”
Gay couples differ on the matter. Some say they would avoid such businesses, and others appear to seek them out in an effort to combat discrimination.
An attorney for the Giffords said it’s clear that some cases are “driven by activism.”
“I think in many of these cases, they know or at least suspect that these are folks with religious objections,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Byron Babione. “We think that’s the case here, and we think that’s an uncontested fact.”
He argued that the decision of Ms. McCarthy and Ms. Erwin, who took the McCarthy name when they married, to contact and record the Giffords knowing they would object to hosting the ceremony is relevant because “it’s important for the court to understand the context.”
Attorneys with the New York Civil Liberties Union representing the McCarthys did not immediately return a call for comment, but Melisa McCarthy said during last year’s administrative hearing that she felt “shell-shocked” and “horrible” after speaking with Mrs. Gifford, according to the judge’s ruling.
Jennifer McCarthy said the rejection was “heartbreaking” and made her “very upset.” The ruling also said the women “were so upset that they stopped looking for wedding venues for several months.”
The order said that it took the women two to three months before they began looking for farm venues again. They married in August 2013 at the Olde Tater Barn in Central Bridge, New York.
“No one should have the happiest time of their life marred by discrimination,” Jennifer McCarthy said in an Aug. 14 statement after the judge’s order. “We hope this decision will protect all New Yorkers from having to go through the hurt that we experienced.”
The Giffords were found guilty of “sexual orientation discrimination” in July after they declined to “host and coordinate a same-sex ceremony” in 2012 on their Liberty Ridge Farm in Schaghticoke, New York, the brief said.
The administrative judge ruled that their property was a “public accommodation,” noting that the Giffords operate a farmer’s market, a fall festival, berry-picking and a fall corn maze in addition to a wedding venue.
The brief counters that the weddings take place in a fenced-off area adjacent to or on the first floor of their private home, and that “the wedding area is accessible only when the Giffords enter into a contract with someone who wants to hold their wedding ceremony there.”
Although the Giffords object to hosting a same-sex ceremony based on their Christian beliefs, gay couples are welcome to reserve the farm for post-vow receptions, birthday parties and any other events.
“The Giffords serve everyone, including individuals who identify as gay and lesbian,” the brief says. “In fact, the Giffords will gladly host myriad events, including wedding receptions, for same-sex couples. It is only same-sex wedding ceremonies that the Giffords cannot host or participate in. The State thus acts unreasonably in punishing the Giffords for declining to participate in this narrow category of events.”
In 2011, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law declaring same-sex couples eligible to marry.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Terry McAuliffe’s move from national Democratic political insider to Virginia governor has meant new opportunities for some of his longtime friends.
After McAuliffe took office in early 2014, some of his friends- who had never lobbied in Virginia before - started registering as lobbyists with several companies interested in contracting with the state.
Among the companies are technology and health care businesses, including some Medicaid-related firms. McAuliffe has made expanding Medicaid, a government funded health care program for the poor, a top priority for his administration. He’s so far been blocked by the GOP-controlled General Assembly.
The newly minted Virginia lobbyists include L. Chris Petersen, a law school friend of the governor who is also treasurer of McAuliffe’s political action committee, Common Good VA. McAuliffe’s PAC has been a major source of revenue for state Democrats.
Peterson lobbies for Maximus Inc., a health care company that helps enroll eligible Virginians in publically subsidized health insurance programs like Medicaid. Its contract, which is set to expire at the end of this year and was worth $2.4 million in fiscal 2014, was awarded before McAuliffe became governor.
The most recently filed lobbyist disclosure forms show Maximus paying Petersen $24,000 over a six-month filing period. A spokeswoman for Maximus said Petersen has contracted with the company for five years and recently registered to lobby in Virginia because the company “added on some other initiatives in Virginia.”
Petersen, an attorney based in Washington, said his lobbying in Virginia has been limited and has not been connected to any contracts between Maximus and the state.
“I have made Virginia officials aware of innovative workforce programs available under new federal rules,” Petersen said in an email. “I briefly introduced some Maximus officials to the governor at an out-of-town event, but we did not discuss substantive issues at that time.”
Republican Del. Todd Gilbert said Petersen’s dual roles as PAC treasurer and lobbyist is “reckless” and presents a clear conflict of interest.
“That just doesn’t pass the smell test,” Gilbert said. He added it reflects badly on the state’s image that McAuliffe’s Washington friends have started to lobby in Virginia.
But Bob Holsworth, a consultant and retired Virginia Commonwealth University political analyst, said it’s no surprise that businesses would be looking for lobbyists with connections to the governor and there’s nothing remarkable about McAuliffe’s friends landing lobbying work.
“The optics of lobbying never look particularly good,” he said.
The governor’s spokesman, Brian Coy, said in a statement that “McAuliffe does not spend his time dictating career or business decisions to private individuals or companies.”
McAuliffe is former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and is close friends with former President Bill Clinton and 2016 Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton. Before taking office McAuliffe made millions as a businessman, often in deals that took place at the intersection of business and politics.
Two longtime friends from his days in national Democratic politics are David W. Jones and Richard Sullivan, both Washington-based lobbyists who had never before registered to lobby in Virginia prior to McAuliffe taking office but have started landing Virginia-focused clients.
Jones helped raise money for the Clintons in presidential campaigns in which McAuliffe had leadership roles. Jones’ new Virginia clients include tech giant Hewlett-Packard, which has expressed interest in a major Virginia Medicaid information technology contract. In its lobbyist disclosure form, HP said it paid Jones $7,250 in the latest six-month reporting period to lobby on “all matters relating to information technology and procurement.” A spokesman for the company said Jones was one of “several counselors” HP has hired in Virginia.
Jones said his friendship with the governor has not led to any special treatment from state officials.
“I don’t ask for any preferential treatment, because I wouldn’t get it,” Jones said in an email. “The McAuliffe administration doesn’t play that game.”
Sullivan is the former finance director for the Democratic National Committee and both he and McAuliffe became embroiled in a late 1990s money laundering scheme involving the Teamsters union. Neither man was ever charged with a crime.
Centene, a Medicaid managed care organization that operates in several states but not in Virginia, has hired both Jones and Sullivan as Virginia lobbyists and paid Sullivan $40,000, according to lobbying records. The company said in lobbying records it hired Sullivan for help on “issues affecting the Virginia Medicaid program.”
Sullivan did not respond to a request for comment.
Jones and Sullivan work at Capitol Counsel, a D.C.-lobbying firm co-founded by John D. Raffaelli. McAuliffe and Raffaelli are former business partners, running a Washington lobbying decades ago called McAuliffe, Kelly & Raffaelli.
By a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court Friday struck down four state marriage laws, paving the way for gay marriage to be legal in all 50 states.
The ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges said the 14th Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between people of same-sex, and also recognize same-sex marriages from out of state.
The 14th Amendment, with its equal protection and due process clauses, prohibit the “unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry,” said the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
“No union is more profound than marriage,” Justice Kennedy added.
The stories of the people asking for the right to marry “reveal that they seek not to denigrate marriage but rather to live their lives, or honor their spouses’ memory, joined by its bond,” Kennedy continued.
Chief Justice John Roberts read his dissent from the bench — a first according to a legal veteran with SCOTUSblog — and said that while gay-rights victors should celebrate the ruling, “do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”
“This court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us,” the chief justice wrote in opposition.
Justice Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito also dissented.
Justice Scalia seethed in his dissent:
“Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact — and the furthest extension one can even imagine — of the Court’s claimed power to create ‘liberties’ that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention.
“This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves,” Scalia wrote.
According to UCLA’s Williams Institute, there are an estimated 390,000 married same-sex couples in the United States.
Gay and lesbian couples already could marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The court’s 5-4 ruling means the remaining 14 states, in the South and Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans on same-sex marriage.
Gay marriages are already underway in states where they were banned until the Supreme Court ruling Friday.
Several gay couples have received marriage licenses in Atlanta since the decision came out. One of those couples, Petrina Bloodworth and Emma Foulkes, were wed in a morning ceremony and are the first same-sex couple to be married in Georgia’s Fulton County. So says court clerk James Brock.
In Travis County, Texas, Gena Dawson and Charlotte Rutherford were the first same-sex couple in the state to receive a marriage license, within two hours of the ruling.
As well, a same-sex marriage license has been issued in Arkansas, another state that banned gay marriage until the Supreme Court weighed in. This was in Faulkner County, almost immediately after the ruling came out.
“Today I could not be prouder of my country, more grateful for the memory of my late husband John, and more indebted to the incredible lawyers, advocates and fellow plaintiffs who made this landmark day possible,” said lead plaintiff James Obergefell, who sought to have his marriage recognized in Ohio.
Today’s ruling makes perfectly clear that there is no legal or moral justification for standing in the path of marriage equality. Couples from Mississippi to North Dakota to Texas shouldn’t have to wait even a moment longer to be treated equally under the law,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign.
Ryan Anderson, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, lamented the ruling.
“Today is a significant setback for all Americans who believe in the Constitution, rule of law, democratic self-government, and marriage as a union of one man and one woman,” said Mr. Anderson. “The court got it wrong: it should have not mandated all 50 states to redefine marriage.”
Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage said he and his allies would do all they can to reverse the ruling.
“Though expected, today’s decision is completely illegitimate. We reject it and so will the American people,” he said.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has saved Obamacare for a second time, writing the majority opinion Thursday that upheld the health care law’s key provision of paying tax subsidies to customers in all states and saying the law otherwise would be a mess — something he doubted Congress intended.
The ruling reverberated immediately on Capitol Hill, but legal analysts said it has implications far beyond the Affordable Care Act because it opens an avenue for judges to substitute their own judgments for the intentions of Congress.
Democrats, who have repeatedly blasted the chief justice for his rulings, defended him Thursday by saying he restored Americans’ faith in the court’s ability to reach nonpartisan conclusions.
Critics — including, apparently, Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s senior jurist — said Chief Justice Roberts‘ decision made a mockery of legal reasoning.
One conservative legal observer said the chief justice has gone from being a fair-minded umpire calling balls and strikes to being a pinch hitter in favor of Obamacare.
Justice Scalia said his colleague engaged in “interpretive jiggery-pokery” and “somersaults of statutory interpretation” to find a way to defend the law.
“We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” Justice Scalia wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. “The cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorite.”
Josh Blackman, an associate professor at the South Texas College of Law and author of a book on constitutional challenges to the federal health care act, said Obamacare, under the chief justice’s interpretation, has become bigger than the law itself.
“Once you start with the premise that the goal of a judge is to enforce some nebulous purpose of the law, everything can be done and the law can always be saved,” he said.
At issue is a part of the law that says subsidies should be paid to customers of exchanges “established by the state.”
Critics said that would exclude the 34 states that refused to establish exchanges and relied instead on the federal HealthCare.gov portal. But the chief justice, writing in the 6-3 ruling, said even residents of states that don’t establish exchanges and rely instead on the federal marketplace can receive subsidies.
He said the intent of lawmakers couldn’t have been to pick and choose because that would destroy the fundamental economics of Obamacare, which couldn’t have been the intention of those who wrote the law.
“The combination of no tax credits and an ineffective coverage requirement could well push a state’s individual insurance market into a death spiral,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
Democrats praised the chief justice and quoted extensively from his opinion.
“I commend Justice Roberts for restoring the people’s faith in the Supreme Court as a nonpartisan institution,” said Rep. John B. Larson, Connecticut Democrat. “This ruling puts politics aside in favor of the health and well-being of the American people — exactly as the Supreme Court is meant to do.”
It was the second time the chief justice has ridden to the rescue of Obamacare. In 2012, he ruled that despite the Obama administration’s insistence to the contrary, the law was based on a tax and therefore was constitutional under congressional taxing powers.
Democrats widely accused the George W. Bush nominee of taking the court in a direction that was too conservative. Chief Justice Roberts‘ Obamacare rulings, however, have dented that narrative.
The New York Times this month ran an article arguing that this year’s court term, which concludes at the end of the month, has lurched back to the left.
Some court watchers speculated that the chief justice even reversed himself at the last minute in 2012 to support Obamacare, earning enmity from the law’s opponents. Some justices rejected the tax argument during oral arguments before reversing themselves and embracing it in their final opinion.
Carrie Severino, chief counsel to the Judicial Crisis Network, which pushes for conservative judges, said the chief justice has created a grim legacy that contradicts his vow during his 2005 confirmation hearings to be as impartial as a baseball umpire calling balls and strikes.
“If the chief justice is willing to join the court’s liberals in this linguistic farce, it’s time we admitted that our national ‘umpire’ is now playing for one of the teams,” she said in a statement.
The Washington region’s most business-friendly jurisdiction is finding it harder to make friends these days.
Optimism for Virginia was in short supply as a high-powered group of economists and business leaders gathered this week at George Mason University for an unusual summit on the state’s suddenly sluggish economy. With an undertone of concern for the commonwealth’s future, the panelists cited overbearing taxes, a shifting job base and strangling government regulations as the major problems holding back business development and overall economic growth.
In one sign of the times, Virginia’s growth in gross domestic product stalled completely in 2014, with neighboring states West Virginia (up 5.5 percent), North Carolina (up 1.4 percent) and Maryland (up 0.8 percent) in positive territory.
“We’re likely to grow, but it’s not going to be impressive growth,” economic forecaster Terry Clower, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, said at the Monday morning gathering. “Even though we’ve had good news coming out of the region, underlying we are still heavily dependent on the federal government.
“We’re no longer a leader among the major metro areas, so we’ve lost a little bit of those bragging rights,” he added.
The U.S. economy overall was staggered by the Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009, but Virginia’s sterling reputation as a business-friendly haven in the storm, anchored by its defense industry and federal jobs base, has taken an unexpected beating in the rebound. Particularly painful for Virginia were the federal government’s “sequester” budget limits, still biting into the state’s economic base.
“As the stimulus spending came down, we saw a dramatic change. Between sequester and this little thing called the government shutdown, 2013 and 2014 weren’t exactly stellar times,” Mr. Clower said. “This economy wound up in a position that it hasn’t really been used to seeing for a very long time, if ever.”
As Virginia was posting a 0.0 percent economic growth rate for 2014, the U.S. economy as a whole expanded by 2.2 percent. Analysts said the overall U.S. economy has achieved modest gains, but the commonwealth has failed to keep up with the rest of the country.
Virginia is heavily dependent on the federal government, which accounts for roughly 30 percent of the state’s economy.
Thirteen of Virginia’s top 20 employers are either public-sector companies or contractors that are highly dependent on the public sector, according to a report released last year by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. But fewer federal jobs and reduced government spending have forced political and entrepreneurial state leaders to rethink their business strategies.
“We’re the No. 1 recipient of Department of Defense dollars,” Mr. McAuliffe said during a discussion at the Brookings Institution in February. “That’s great when they are spending money, but when they’re cutting back through defense cuts and sequestration, we get hit harder than anyone else.
“Our whole emphasis is bringing in businesses and building businesses that are less reliant on the federal government,” he added.
More cuts to come?
The prospect of additional sequestration cuts has local business leaders clearly worried as Virginia aims to reach pre-recession economic levels. A 15.2 percent decline from 2011 to 2014 in federal spending and a significant payroll reduction of $1.16 billion also have worried local businesses.
“Are we going to have sequester in the next year? That’s one of the big questions facing this region,” Mr. Clower said.
Another big question is the quality of the workforce, which McLean investment adviser Stephen Cassaday said Monday is contributing to Virginia’s economic woes.
“There is no question that there has been job growth,” said Mr. Cassaday, president of Cassaday and Co. “Increases in hiring not only in Virginia but nationally have been pretty healthy, but on a microperspective, as a small-business man, we’re having trouble finding qualified workers, especially college graduates.”
Virginia’s traditionally high ranking among the most welcoming states for business investment also has taken a hit. What was once thought of as a perennial leader in U.S. business affairs is now failing to crack the top 10 in some surveys. Forbes and CNBC ranked Virginia as the fourth and ninth best state, respectively, for doing business in 2014, but even here there were warning signs: Forbes ranked the state 33rd in growth prospects for businesses, and CNBC put it in the bottom half among U.S. states for the overall strength of its economy and the cost of doing business.
The uneven pace of the overall U.S. recovery is also being felt in Virginia, the George Mason summit attendees were told.
“You have this sense of frustration around the United States,” said Martin Regalia, senior vice president for economic and tax policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “I wish I could tell you things are getting better, but they’re really not.”
A report released in May by the Washington-based National Federation of Independent Business said upticks in job creation and small business optimism are signs of an improving economy, but they are “nothing to write home about.”
“The survey results confirm that the economy is moving ahead, but at an uninspiring pace,” said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg.
The report indicates that businesses are growing frustrated with taxes, government regulations and red tape, naming them as the biggest problems facing their companies today.
Virginia ranks 27th among states with the best business tax climates, according to the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index.
“For most of our members, they haven’t seen any significant movement on tax reform at the federal level,” said Nicole Riley, state director of the NFIB in Virginia. “Tax reform at the state level is badly needed for our members.”
Maryland’s congressional districts have routinely been ranked as among the most disjointed and gerrymandered in the country — with a federal judge once describing one district’s shape as a “broken-winged pterodactyl, lying prostrate across the center of the state.”
Although lawmakers have spoken out against the partisan redistricting process, which has secured Democrats seven of eight congressional seats in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1, proposals aimed at amending the maps drawn up by Gov. Martin O’Malley and Democratic legislative leaders in 2011 have gone nowhere.
Now the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch is hoping to effect change by suing state officials on behalf of voters in each of the eight districts to require a redrawing of boundaries based on standards of compactness that the group has proposed.
“In Maryland, politicians pick their voters, which is unconstitutional,” Judicial Watch President Thomas Fitton said in announcing the filing of the lawsuit Wednesday. “The lawsuit asked the court to declare the Maryland maps unlawful and to require Maryland to redraw the maps.”
The lawsuit argues that because redistricting is a political process, its problems will never be solved by legislators.
“Because Maryland’s gerrymander is in the partisan interest of those who drew the district lines at issue, it will not be remedied without the intervention of the court,” states the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Maryland.
This wouldn’t be the first time the district boundary plans have been challenged — albeit with little success thus far.
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling upholding Maryland’s redistricting plan — which had been challenged on the basis of a change in a law that counted inmates as living at their last known addresses instead of in the district where their prison cells were located.
Another challenge was tossed out at the district court level after a judge found that the authority to address gerrymandering was “not with the judiciary but rather with the State of Maryland and the United States Congress.” However, the high court could breathe life back into the case as it agreed this month to hear an appeal, which argued that a judge was wrong to throw out the case without allowing it to be heard by a three-judge panel.
An attorney for Judicial Watch said he believes his group’s lawsuit will succeed where others have failed because it uses a different legal theory to argue against the current map.
“All the other claims have been partisan-based, in other words, based on classification, or the Equal Protection Clause that one group is being injured,” said attorney Robert Popper. “We claim that all Maryland voters are injured.”
A spokesman from Maryland’s attorney general’s office said officials had not been served with the lawsuit and as a result declined to comment.
Todd Eberly, a political science professor and coordinator of Public Policy Studies at St. Mary’s College, has a hard time seeing how the lawsuit can stand up in court.
“In the prior challenges, judges have pointed out the crazy district lines you have. They’ve said clearly they are partisan gerrymandering but they are not illegal,” Mr. Eberly said. “In Maryland, in regard to our congressional districts, there are no standards.”
Just because there is a lack of standards guiding the redistricting process doesn’t mean a judge can step in and create some, he said.
“In the absence of federal guidance, it falls to the states to do it,” said Mr. Eberly, noting that the only protections at play in Maryland are the “one person, one vote” principle and the Voting Rights Act. “It’s not for the court to say we are going to enforce this standard in absence of state or local guidelines.”
But standards are exactly what the Judicial Watch lawsuit proposes.
“Our lawsuit presents a way for the courts to approach this using an analysis that doesn’t require a certain outcome but gives you a sensible feeling for the district’s compactness,” Mr. Fitton said.
Mr. Popper puts forth a model of judging the compactness of a congressional district that he developed in the 1990s — the Polsby-Popper compactness scale. The formula works by comparing the area of the district with the perimeter length of the district. He said a judge could use the scale to send the state back to the drawing board.
Even without the lawsuit, the likelihood that politicians will address the borders is higher than ever under the leadership of Gov. Larry Hogan, who has criticized the state as having the most gerrymandered districts in the country and promised action.
“Later this year, the governor will issue an executive order that creates a bipartisan commission to examine Maryland’s redistricting process with the goal of fully reforming this process to give authority to an independent, bipartisan commission,” said Hogan spokesman Matt Clark.
Were Mr. Hogan, who just passed the five-month mark in office, to win re-election for a second term, he would be poised to do even more damage to the current boundary alignment because he would preside over the state’s next redistricting effort, Mr. Eberly said.
Behold the smeared, clownish face of politics in America today.
A self-absorbed loser whose weak mind has been twisted into a haunted house of pharmacological drugs and psychotic Internet fantasies commits unspeakable crimes against some of the very finest, most loving people you could possibly find in this corrupt world.
Nine people savagely killed in church during prayer group.
Citizens of South Carolina weep. Vengeance is demanded. An entire nation mourns.
Political antennas, meanwhile, twitch to life with all the bright lights and television cameras so near. Politicians sense opportunity.
A bipartisan throng of tragedy whores takes the stage to address the wicked travesty. They are going to DO something about this evil crime!
They are going to demand — that a flag be taken down?
Nine good people dead at the hands of a psychotic imbecile and the bipartisan response of politicians in South Carolina is to remove a flag flying 100 miles away from the scene of the crime.
This is precisely why people despise politicians. It is as if the more serious the situation, the more unserious their response.
Even people who have long fought to remove the Confederate flag from a monument outside the South Carolina Capitol must now marvel at the spinelessness of politicians who would capitalize on such a tragedy.
It raises the question: Does removing a flag from a flagpole a hundred miles away make these politicians feel better about nine good people being killed in a church? Or does it just make them feel better about themselves?
And what about Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Lindsey Graham, two politicians who have suddenly changed their positions about the flag in question?
Are they now saying that the flag flying over the historical marker at the S.C. Capitol is a symbol of hatred that could spark such a “hate crime?”
If so, then by their very own strange definitions and tangled principles, they themselves are partly to blame for arguing so long to keep the flag up in the first place. The blood of those nine good people gunned down in church on the hands of Gov. Haley and Sen. Graham — again, based on their own feeble logic.
The truth is, this awful crime is not the result of a flag. It is not about groups of white supremacists seething in the countryside.
This guy, he is such a loser that even white supremacists didn’t hang out with him. In all the pictures on his silly website, the little punk is all alone. He can’t even find somebody to take his picture posing with a handgun or a rebel flag. He has to rest his camera on a tree stump, stand back and mug. Threateningly.
In some, it appears he may have used a “selfie stick.”
Either way, despite the olympic efforts of the media to parrot and promote his nasty musings, the selfish little jerk was not part of any big movement.
Truly, he was a confederacy of one. And a dunce at that.
The wicked little fiend emerged from a fetid swamp of abuse, neglect and a broken family. He was on dangerous drugs designed to alter the mind. He got sucked into the only place he could find that reflected his own mangled thoughts, the Internet.
All these vastly complex forces we see time and again destroying shallow minds and turning weak people into ticking time bombs and taking innocents with them.
And all the politicians come up with is taking down a flag from a historical marker more than 100 miles away. No wonder everybody wants to see them all thrown out.
NEW YORK (AP) - Home efficiency measures such as installing new windows or replacing insulation deliver such a small fraction of their promised energy savings that they may not save any money over the long run, according to the surprising conclusion of a University of Chicago study.
The study, which used data from a random sample of 30,000 low-income Michigan households that were eligible for an Energy Department home weatherization program, found that the projected energy savings were 2.5 times greater than actual savings. As a result, energy bills didn’t decline nearly enough to eventually pay for the initial cost of the upgrades.
“The problem is that the real world is screwy,” said Michael Greenstone, an energy economist and head of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. “The models project much larger savings than are realized by homeowners.”
The study, conducted by Greenstone and University of California at Berkeley economists Meredith Fowlie and Catherine Wolfram, has not yet been reviewed by a panel of peers. And energy efficiency experts who were shown the study say the authors’ broad conclusions about energy efficiency in general aren’t justified after a study of a single program in a single state focused only on low-income households.
But Greenstone says he is finding similar results in a second study of middle-income homes in Wisconsin. If his findings are correct, they could undermine the rationale for billion-dollar federal and state efficiency programs and call into question a long-held understanding that making existing homes and businesses more energy-efficient are among the cheapest ways to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.
States are expected to expand efficiency programs like the federal weatherization program in the coming years to meet regulations now in development at the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce emissions from power generation.
“It’s urgent we find out which (programs) reduce carbon emissions at least cost,” Greenstone said.
The researchers found that while homeowners saw their energy use fall by 10 percent to 20 percent after the upgrades, that put them in position to save just $2,400 in energy expenses, far less than the $5,000 the upgrades in the study cost on average. The researchers calculated that it cost the federal program $329 for every ton of carbon dioxide it saved. The government estimates the cost to society of a ton of carbon dioxide is $38.
The Energy Department said in a statement that the program, which it says has upgraded more than 7 million homes and is saving families $300 million a year, has been shown to work by previous national studies. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is set to release its own study on the program this summer that “should show that families are still saving more money in energy bills than money spent updating their homes,” according to Energy Department spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder.
Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, said that weatherization programs for low-income households are typically among the least cost-effective energy efficiency measures. That’s partly because it is so difficult to get low-income homeowners to sign up that, once they do, workers are encouraged to do as much work as possible on the homes, even if it has only marginal energy benefits.
And the study, Nadel says, neglects to factor in other benefits these homeowners receive, including lower maintenance expenses, reducing the likelihood of missed utility payments, and a more comfortable home.
It is well-known among efficiency experts that weatherization programs that replace windows, boilers and other equipment while the equipment is still in working order are particularly expensive. But other fixes, such as patching leaks in ducts and replacing lightbulbs, have shown a clear benefit. And it is still almost certain that buying more efficient windows and appliances or lightbulbs when it’s time to replace them pays off in the long run.
“Paying for the more efficient appliance is still always the best decision, for your pocket book and the environment, regardless of what this study says,” says Noah Horowitz, an efficiency expert and senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council who reviewed the study. “Nothing in this study contradicts the well-documented fact that energy efficiency is the cheapest, fastest and cleanest way to reduce climate change emissions.”
Still, efficiency measures in general often promise more savings than they deliver. Greenstone set out to study if that is true and to find out why.
Many experts believe that homeowners use more energy once their home is improved because it costs less, something called the “rebound” effect. Greenstone, Fowlie and Wolfram compared the temperature and thermostat settings in homes that were improved with those that were not, and found no statistical difference, and no such “rebound effect.”
Instead, it seems the engineering models that predict how much energy is actually saved are wildly over-optimistic. “We are primarily relying on engineering estimates,” Greenstone says. “That’s a reasonable thing to do in the abstract but they need to be validated.”
Not so long ago the global-warming fanatics got their backs up if someone accused them of preaching religious doctrine disguised as science, even as they defended their scientific “evidence” as if it were Scripture. Global warming was “settled science,” they insisted, and the skeptics of the doctrine that the warming was the irresponsible work of man were dismissed as ignorant “deniers” of holy writ.
But now that Pope Francis is an eager recruit in the war on fossil fuels, it’s OK to embrace Roman Catholic fervor in the propagation of the green gospel. The fanatics are postulates of a religion after all. They’ve got the pope, if not necessarily God, on their side.
Francis even issued an encyclical, a papal letter to bishops on a point of theology meant to conclude debate. This encyclical is about the pope’s views on a “God-given responsibility” of man to act as steward of the divine gifts of the planet. The pope warns of “unprecedented destruction of the eco-system,” and in a not-so-subtle reference to “climate deniers,” he argues that “the attitudes that stand in the way of a solution, even among believers, range from negation of the problem, to indifference, to convenient resignation or blind faith in technical solutions.”
This is ironic, or “weird,” as one critic of the encyclical describes it, for a man — and he is only a man, though no doubt a good and decent man — who demands belief and blind faith from his followers in instruction in some of the most intimate corners of their lives. But he is not a scientist, and it’s perfectly appropriate to consider this in determining the correct weight of his opinion. He’s entitled to his opinion, but it’s only his opinion. He’s taking the word of climate scientists on belief and blind faith.
The Roman Catholic Church, as its critics point out, has not always rushed to the embrace of science. Not until 1992, only two decades ago, would the Vatican formally apologize for persecuting Galileo in the 17th century for proving that the Earth revolves around the sun, and not the sun spinning around the Earth. Pope Benedict XVI told Africans that condoms would not protect them from AIDS, despite scientific evidence otherwise, in 2009.
Could similar hubris feed the global-warming fanatics who insist that the cycle of warming is the work of man, on which there is wide agreement, and not the natural order that many believe was established by the Creator?
The church of Christ in its many divisions has a responsibility to guide the millions of believers in matters of faith and morals, and rightly resists when the state tries to muscle in and muscle the church out. The church, including the pope, is most persuasive when it speaks to matters moral and leaves matters temporal, such as science, to science.
The pope is certainly entitled to speak about anything he chooses, but on the politics of global warming — and politics is precisely what the debate over global warming is about — he is not likely to persuade. He dilutes his moral authority when he tries.
An African-American millionaire can buy a home in any expensive suburb. Color is no longer a barrier. Despite this progress, President Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development is accusing expensive towns of racism, simply because most minorities can’t afford to live there.
Westchester County, N.Y., has struggled under a federal monitor since 2009 to compel the county to comply with HUD’s demands for multi-unit affordable housing in expensive areas. Hillary Clinton claims to be a warrior against inequality. But her adopted hometown of Chappaqua, an upscale Westchester village that one resident describes as “a little piece of heaven,” is battling HUD’s demands.
The legal war in Hillary’s backyard is a preview. The Obama administration is pulling out all the stops to launch a legal and regulatory assault on suburbs nationwide. HUD’s soon-to-be-released regulation, in the works since 2013, will compel affluent suburbs to build more high-density, low-income housing, plus of course sewers, water lines, bus routes and other changes needed to support it. All in the name of housing “fairness.”
Mr. Obama’s social engineers will eliminate local zoning, such as one-acre minimum lots, to achieve what the HUD rule calls “inclusive communities.” Property values be damned.
If you’ve worked hard to afford a home in an affluent neighborhood of single-family houses, you have a lot to lose under this HUD plan.
The HUD rule twists the original and laudable intent of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which is to bar discrimination in renting, selling or financing housing. The new rule states that towns must “affirmatively further” diversity. If low-income minorities want to move to a town but can’t afford it, the town must “provide adequate support to make their choices viable.”
Whether the HUD plan goes forward will depend largely on how the Supreme Court rules in Texas Department of Housing v. The Inclusive Communities Project, a lawsuit brought to demand that public housing be located in wealthy Dallas suburbs. Before the end of June, the justices will decide whether Texas is guilty of racism simply for locating public housing in lower-income areas of Dallas, close to existing public transportation, rather than in costly areas. Activists claim that even without intent to discriminate the state is depriving poor minorities of the advantages of living in affluent neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are trying to halt HUD’s new plan by depriving it of funding. To do that, the House passed the Gosar Amendment, sponsored by Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, last Thursday but its success in the Senate is uncertain. Democratic members of Congress whose constituents live in some of the most expensive suburbs in the nation are nevertheless toeing the party line and supporting HUD.
HUD’s plan is frightening. Phase one will collect data on poverty, school testing scores, and public transit sites from every census division to spot towns that have too few poor residents. If your town is guilty, HUD regulators will charge racism and demand more public housing. Race is being cynically exploited here as a pretext to accomplish something different — economic integration.
The HUD plan is a power grab. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution empowers the federal government to do this. Zoning is a local government power.
HUD makes the silly argument that transplanting low-income minorities into suburbs will solve the causes of their poverty and “improve an individual or family’s life trajectory.” That ignores the factors stacked against poor kids. A family headed by a single mother is nearly five times as likely to live in poverty as a family headed by two parents, no matter where they live. Building wedding parlors on inner-city street corners and promoting two-parent families would do more to break the cycle of poverty than redesigning suburban America.
If the justices and Congress fail to stop HUD’s scheme, expect Hillary “Rodham Hood” Clinton to champion it (with a carve-out for Chappaqua, of course). HUD Secretary Julian Castro is even being mentioned as Clinton’s running mate. Short of taxing the rich to death, these inequality warriors would like nothing better than to prevent the rich from enjoying the suburbs, far from urban woes.
STATE OF THE AMERICAN MIND: SIXTEEN LEADING CRITICS ON THE NEW ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
The feminist academic Laura Kipnis recently experienced the contemporary American mind so well examined in this new volume. Ms. Kipnis wrote a critical piece about the way in which feminism has evolved on campus, and was then subjected to a series of protests and complaints, complete with Star Chamber-like quasi-judicial proceedings to condemn her crime-think, including accusations that her article made students feel “threatened” or unsafe.
The Kipnis episode, and numerous others like it in contemporary American life, perfectly represent the end result of what the editors call American anti-intellectualism. Since the publication of Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind” in 1987, the trends he identified have only gotten worse. An obsession with equality has crushed considerations of or preference for ideas or traditions of lasting value, concerns for sensitivity have become reason to silence dissent, and assertion of feelings has become a debate-ending substitute for reasoned argument based on propositions citizens understand and to which they can assent. Above all hovers the specter of nonjudgmentalism, which allows any opinion or “choice” free rein — unless such choices offend the reigning leftist orthodoxy; then in the name of tolerance, it is ruthlessly crushed by those very paragons of nonjudgmentalism.
Mr. Bellow and Mr. Bauerlein expertly collect contributors who collectively present a compelling case that the dominance of anti-intellectualism is not just a curmudgeonly nostalgia for the old days. The first section, tilted “States of Mind: Indicators of Intellectual and Cognitive Decline,” present sobering data that Americans actually know less now than they did just a generation ago despite astonishing amounts spent on education and technology that gives worlds of knowledge to everyone’s phone. For example, E.D. Hirsh argues for the teaching of specific facts and contexts, especially that of our own political and cultural traditions. The liberal fantasy that there are nonspecific “general skills” that can be applied to any range of situations or texts is an educational disaster. And Daniel Dreisbach issues a call for the importance of Biblical literacy. Without it, Americans simply cannot understand why their country is the kind that it is; moreover, such literacy matters because culture matters.
For a generation or more, Americans have been drenched in content-free education. Is it any wonder we don’t think historical events or intellectual tradition are important, or that they are worth the hard work to learn? The second section, “Personal and Cognitive Habits/Interests” should surprise no one. Americans have absorbed habits antithetical not only to learning but also to republican government. Here too, the authors, such as David Mindich and Jean Twenge, lay out data to support their conclusions. Ms. Twenge, in particular, is disturbing in an essay discussing the “rise of the self.” Ms. Twenge writes, “American culture has become more individualistic, imparting messages of self-esteem and personal fulfillment that overlook genuine accomplishment and disregard interests beyond immediate experience.” When Johnny is praised for what he is rather than for what he does or knows, it is increasingly unlikely he will know or do much of anything.
The final section, “National Consequences,” brings the two sections together. In a nation that has lost a common sense of its heritage and that is self-absorbed with a revulsion for critical thinking or facing arguments with which one disagrees, the result is nondemocratic rule by a self-selected elite whose values are defined by what R.R. Reno calls nonjudgmentalism. Mr. Reno defines this in “The New Antinomian Attitude” as “an Empire of Desire.”
“Ministered to by a therapeutic vocabulary of empowerment, the pedagogy of multiculturalism, and our dominant, paradoxical moral code of nonjudgmentalism, this empire has come to dominate the American Mind,” he writes. Construing personal desires as “a primal force to be obeyed rather than one to be contained” is a revolution, and one that overturns nothing less than civilization itself, since civilization is the discipline of desire for the common good and the protection of the weak. Within the empire of desire, self-government as we have known it, is impossible.
This is an important volume, which shapes the current state of our morals and our manners. A successor volume needs to take up where the Kipnis affair leaves us. For these anti-intellectual currents are not just the currency for ideological “social justice warriors,” but are increasingly being used as tools for legal enforcement. Those who disagree with the empire of desire are therefore not just wrong, but criminals in need of punishment, or at the very least, therapy. Should that happen, the American mind will finally close for good.
In interpreting the law, context is everything and it is nothing. Today is the 800th anniversary of the most famous law in the English-speaking world, known as Magna Carta (Latin for ‘Great Charter’). Over its life, Magna Carta has received many accolades as a foundation for our law and Constitution. William Pitt, Great Britain’s prime minister in the 1760s, said Magna Carta was ‘the Bible of the English Constitution.’ John Adams before the Revolution saw Magna Carta as proof that England and its colonies had ‘a government of laws, and not of men.’ Every century since is filled with praise for its strength as a bulwark against tyranny. Heady stuff for a one-page document made in 1215.
The early history of Magna Carta does not show many signs of its eventual stature. Although Americans see it as the ancestor of our Constitution, what it was at the time was in no way clear either to the king and barons assembled at Runnymede, nor to the rest of the kingdom. Few in England would have heard of it, since it was almost immediately declared null and void by the pope, and the war it had ended between the barons and King John heated up again. Soon after its publication, it was copied into lawbooks sometimes alongside forged law codes and at other times with authentic statutes. Within 10 years of 1215, so many different versions were circulating that learned contemporaries were confused about which king signed it, and what it actually said. Sorting out the confusion took another five centuries.
The field from which it grew appears an unlikely place to produce a statement of fundamental liberties. Medieval England was a strange place. The barons and king at Runnymede did not share our values. These “framers” of Magna Carta believed in elves and Camelot, burned heretics and witches, and murdered Jews with hardly a second thought. The “abstract” principles embedded in Magna Carta — like jury trial, due process, and habeas corpus — cannot be scrubbed of these beliefs. As is true for all people of the past and present, no simple motive drove the barons. Instead, they acted from a mix of lofty idealism and hardened self-interest. So although the barons believed they represented not just themselves, but also the notional “Community of the Realm” which included all the English, they imagined this “Community” with power confined to the already powerful.
Nevertheless, after 1215 Magna Carta appeared to mean something to the people who mattered, despite its annulment, repudiation by the king, hibernation during invasions by the French and civil wars, neglect by brutal and overweening Tudor sovereigns, and the fickle survival rate of documents written by hand on pages made of animal skin. Magna Carta survived all of these threats, but never as the same law from one reign to the next. One thing it was not during its first four centuries was a statement of fundamental liberties and rights held by everyone in England, rich or poor, male or female, Christian or Jew.
It was the brilliant and pugnacious parliamentarian, Edward Coke, who made it into the most famous of all charters of freedom. Coke was locked in battle with autocratic English kings, James I and Charles I, and used his position as Chief Justice from 1606 to 1616 to extend the interpretation of Magna Carta’s rights beyond what the rich nobles who framed it intended. What Coke did was quite simple. Where Magna Carta’s barons intended a narrow interpretation of liberties and rights, Coke ruled instead that these rights were meant for all men. And it was Coke’s interpretations the colonists in far-off America read. And these colonists, from New Hampshire to Georgia, had good reason to believe what Coke had written. They had proof that these rights were theirs by law. The royal charters for their colonies guaranteed them the enjoyment of all the rights of Englishmen. When colonists demanded these rights, they wanted Coke’s interpretations, not those of the Magna Carta barons.
Coke’s redirection of Magna Carta was a very good thing. Most of us would agree that respecting the original intention of any law is not necessarily the most sensible path to justice. Attempting to hold to that intention may keep laws predictable, but anyone who has worked in law knows that predictability has no necessary relationship with justice. And when notions of justice expanded in Coke’s day, so he ensured that the interpretation of laws kept pace.
The Magna Carta barons’ and Edward Coke’s achievements were milestones on the road toward protecting citizens against the state. The legacy of Magna Carta, nevertheless, is double-edged. It shows us how important justice is, but also how imperfect it is when administered. We have far to go before we can say that Magna Carta’s principles of justice are enjoyed by all of us. Now, after its first 800 years, Magna Carta still has work to do.
Virginia could supply virtually all of its future energy needs from nuclear power and even become a player in the global market to supply power from nuclear sources, according to a new think tank report released Wednesday.
The case for the Old Dominion’s potential nuclear future was outlined in a new analysis from the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, which argued that with the proper investments, Virginia could emerge as the newest contender in the international nuclear power market.
The study’s authors, technology business consultant Robert Hartwell and Donald Hoffman, chairman of the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority, argue that Virginia, one of the most energy-dependent states in the country, would benefit environmentally and economically from a transition to nuclear power.
Virginia is behind only California in its reliance on out-of-state power sources, importing over 50 percent of its current power needs. With a projected 4,000 megawatts of additional power needed by Virginia by 2021, the study suggests that just four new nuclear power plants would do the job better than any other alternatives.
“With continuing controversy surrounding oil, natural gas and coal production, nuclear power is an energy supply that should be, and could be, safely developed to meet much of Virginia’s future electrical power needs,” said Michael W. Thompson, chairman and president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute.
Despite its early promise as a nonpolluting, inexhaustible source of power, the nuclear industry has stalled in the United States and in much of the globe in light of concerns about nuclear waste storage and a series of spectacular safety breakdowns from Chernobyl to Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011. A proposed new nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, would be the first new U.S. nuclear power plant in decades, analysts say.
The Virginia study backs the idea that nuclear energy is a clean and safe resource that “lessens the impact on climate change due to its almost nonexistent emissions,” citing a 2012 report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The analysts project that 185,000 new jobs would be created and billions of dollars would flood into the economy if the U.S. could supply 25 percent of the world’s nuclear technology, which is estimated to be worth up to $750 billion over the next decade. About 20 percent of power in the U.S. comes from nuclear sources, according to the report.
In 2010 President Obama called on Congress to approve $54 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for nuclear energy production, but his plans were halted a year later after a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown in Japan at a power plant in Fukushima, casting doubts over the environmental impact and safety of nuclear energy.
The Jefferson Institute’s study argues that those tragedies were precipitated by cultural factors and regulatory failures, which would be prevented by America’s “strict oversight” of its own nuclear industry.
The report added that “close scrutiny by public advocates, the press and regulators provide us with the highest standard in the world” and one of the safest nuclear industries. And Virginia’s unique business mix would make it uniquely hospitable to a major investment in nuclear power, according to the study.
“In addition to Virginia’s favorable business climate and affirmation of its support for nuclear power via the establishment of the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium in 2013, the sheer number of nuclear operations and nuclear related facilities, engineering schools and federal facilities and critical infrastructure which could benefit from safe and secure nuclear power is breathtaking,” according to the report. “Altogether, nuclear power in Virginia today provides tens of thousands of jobs and over a billion dollars in revenues and economic activity.”
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The federal government says Virginia’s economy was flat last year.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau for Economic Analysis said Wednesday that Virginia’s real gross domestic product was $427.45 billion in 2014, compared with $427.35 billion in 2013.
Slight growth in retail trade, information, durable goods, and health care and social assistance were offset by small declines in construction, real estate and nondurable goods.
Virginia’s economy grew by rates of 0.4 percent in 2013, 0.7 percent in 2012 and 0.6 percent in 2011.
Forty-seven other states saw growth, led by North Dakota at 6.3 percent. Alaska and Mississippi were the only states whose GDP dropped in 2014. The nationwide growth was 2.2 percent.
Two days of congressional hearings demonstrated how the Obama White House shuts down the people’s right to know what their government is doing. Even the usually liberal media are upset that President Obama is keeping the bureaucracy’s inner workings concealed.
The process is intentional. Mr. Obama’s aggressive strategy to transform America depends on stealth. He conceals things until he is ready to roll; then political opponents cannot prepare. Compared to Mr. Obama’s planned extreme makeover of America and our values, the Bruce-to-Caitlyn Jenner transformation looks minor.
Mr. Obama controls matters through political operatives, akin to the “zampolit” political commissars used by the former Soviet Union. The zampolit watched and intimidated military officers and government bureaucrats to assure they always obeyed the will of the Communist Party. Mr. Obama’s operatives assure that nothing becomes public without White House approval. That policy was launched in 2009, although the written directive was concealed until 2014.
This system undercuts the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Mr. Obama’s White House is “the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered,” according to David Sanger, a 30-year veteran reporter who is chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times.
Withholding information is key to this president’s agenda, whose key points include:
Conceal major government plans and intentions until after re-election (when voters can no longer touch you);
Conceal advocacy for today’s sexual revolution, until you unleash your full-blown same-sex and transgender agenda;
Tell people they can keep their doctor and their health plan (plus save $2,500), until you are forced to stop, by overwhelming evidence to the contrary;
Claim toughness on illegal immigration, even as you block enforcement of laws and you set up offices to implement amnesty;
Claim to run the “most transparent administration in history”, even while suppressing FOIA requests and trying to put whistleblowers behind bars.
The Associated Press revealed that Mr. Obama’s team has set a new record for denying, delaying or censoring FOIA requests. Unanswered requests now exceed 200,000, up 55 percent from January, 2014.
During last week’s FOIA hearings, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said that 550,000 FOIA requests have been outright rejected during his three terms in Congress.
“The heart of the backlog,” said the Utah Republican, is a long-concealed White House policy that “the yahoos at the White House have to review every document that falls under FOIA.” He referred to an April 2009 memo from White House Counsel Gregory Craig, requiring agencies to consult with the president’s people before releasing any information involving “White House equities.”
(You can read the infamous memo at: http://causeofaction.org/assets/uploads/2013/06/White-House-memo-equities.pdf?92f52c.)
Only in 2014 did the memo become public, thanks to work by the watchdog group Cause of Action.
At the oversight hearing, Mr. Chaffetz described the results: “No, no, no, don’t fulfill the FOIA request! Send it here to the White House. We have equities! The White House equities!”
Other evidence describes how Mr. Obama’s political appointees and public relations people have injected themselves into the process of reviewing FOIA requests, creating immense delays and lengthy consultations between agencies and White House appointees. Anything that did not cast Mr. Obama in a glowing light was treated as sensitive information. Excuses were devised to deny releasing that information, or agencies just sit on requests — a practice which continues.
The president of watchdog group Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton, said agencies have become “black holes” and his group has been forced to file 225 lawsuits to enforce FOIA. Mr. Fitton labels it a “transparency and corruption crisis.”
The public service FOIA Project counts 517 current lawsuits aimed at shaking records loose, out of 2,878 cases filed since Mr. Obama took office. The biggest portion involve lawsuits against the Department of Justice, with 184 currently active cases.
Defending in court is expensive. A request for a cost calculation was just issued by Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, and ranking Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Their letter to the comptroller general observes, “Withholding information from the public unless sued undermines the very spirit of FOIA and wastes significant taxpayer money in the process.”
The White House and supportive Democrats are pushing back. They claim that unprecedented numbers of pages have been released — as though the issue were quantity instead of quality. Full-page redaction blackouts are one common ploy.
The claim is also made that funding is insufficient to handle the workload. So why don’t they eliminate those extra layers of political review that make FOIA slower and expensive?
Unfortunately, President Obama will be long gone from the White House before all his sensitive “White House equities” are revealed to the public. Meantime, if he controls what people know, he can control what they think. And that gives him power to control what people do.
Bill Clinton’s foundation set up a fundraising arm in Sweden that collected $26 million in donations at the same time that country was lobbying Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department to forgo sanctions that threatened its thriving business with Iran, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times.
The Swedish entity, called the William J. Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse, was never disclosed to or cleared by State Department ethics officials, even though one of its largest sources of donations was a Swedish government-sanctioned lottery.
As the money flowed to the foundation from Sweden, Mrs. Clinton’s team in Washington declined to blacklist any Swedish firms despite warnings from career officials at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm that Sweden was growing its economic ties with Iran and potentially undercutting Western efforts to end Tehran’s rogue nuclear program, diplomatic cables show.
“Sweden does not support implementing tighter financial sanctions on Iran” and believes “more stringent financial standards could hurt Swedish exports,” one such cable from 2009 alerted Mrs. Clinton’s office in Washington.
Separately, U.S. intelligence was reporting that Sweden’s second-largest employer, telecommunications giant Ericsson AB, was pitching cellphone tracking technology to Iran that could be used by the country’s security services, officials told The Times.
By the time Mrs. Clinton left office in 2013, the Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse had collected millions of dollars inside Sweden for his global charitable efforts and Mr. Clinton personally pocketed a record $750,000 speech fee from Ericsson, one of the firms at the center of the sanctions debate.
Mr. Clinton’s Swedish fundraising shell escaped public notice, both because its incorporation papers were filed in Stockholm — some 4,200 miles from America’s shores — and the identities of its donors were lumped by Mr. Clinton’s team into the disclosure reports of his U.S.-based charity, blurring the lines between what were two separate organizations incorporated under two different countries’ laws.
The foundation told The Times through a spokesman that the Swedish entity was set up primarily to collect donations from popular lotteries in that country, that the money went to charitable causes like fighting climate change, AIDS in Africa and cholera in Haiti, and that all of the Swedish donors were accounted for on the rolls publicly released by the U.S. charity.
The foundation, however, declined repeated requests to identify the names of the specific donors that passed through the Swedish arm.
A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign declined comment.
When Mrs. Clinton became President Obama’s secretary of state in 2009, she vowed to set up a transparent review system that would ensure any of her husband’s fundraising or lucrative speaking activities were reviewed for possible ties to foreign countries doing business with her agency, insisting she wanted to eliminate even the “appearance” of conflicts of interests.
But there is growing evidence that the Clintons did not run certain financial activities involving foreign entities by the State Department, such as the Swedish fundraising arm and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative based in Canada, or disclose on her annual ethics form the existence of a limited liability corporation that Mr. Clinton set up for his personal consulting work.
The ethics agreement the Clintons signed in 2009 with the State Department stated that if a foreign government chose to “elect to increase materially its commitment, or should a new contributor country elect to support” Mr. Clinton’s charitable causes, “the Foundation will share such countries and the circumstances of the anticipated contribution with the State Department designated agency ethics official for review.”
The foundation spokesman said Mr. Clinton’s team had nothing to hide about the Swedish entity and set it up solely to take advantage of changes in Swedish law in 2011 that allowed some of the country’s lucrative lotteries to direct their charitable giving to the American-based Clinton Foundation.
The spokesman said Mr. Clinton’s team believed the Nationale Postcode Loterij and the Swedish Postcode Lottery, two of the biggest contributors to the Swedish fundraising arm, were privately owned and unrelated to the Swedish government.
Both lotteries are owned by the private firm Novamedia, but they are closely regulated by the Swedish government, and the Postcode Lottery’s top manager is approved and regulated by the Swedish government, according to interviews and documents.
According to Novamedia’s 2014 annual report, the Swedish Postcode Lottery’s managing director “is also the Lottery Manager appointed by the Swedish Gambling Authority. The Swedish Gambling Authority, which grants the lottery license, collaborates closely with the Lottery Manager and supervises the lottery.”
About half the funds collected by the foundation’s Swedish arm in 2011 and 2012 came from lottery enterprises tied to Novamedia.
“The Clinton Foundation is a philanthropy, period,” foundation spokesman Craig Minassian told the Times. “We’ve voluntarily disclosed our more than 300,000 donors on our website, including those from Sweden. In fact, support from the Swedish Postcode Lottery has helped give millions of people access to HIV/AIDS treatment, lifted tens of thousands of rural farmers out of poverty, helped rebuild Haiti after the devastating earthquake and made it possible for cities and countries to reduce their carbon output by millions of tons. The truth is, when organizations like this support the Clinton Foundation, they do want something in return: they want to see lives improved through our work.”
Familiar patterns and storylines?
Those who have followed or investigated the Clintons over their three decades of power in Washington say the Swedish episode uncovered by The Times fits a familiar pattern of ambiguous transparency promises and fundraising carried out through cutouts that targeted foreigners with business interests before the U.S. government.
“They were very effective in being able to obfuscate what they were doing through cutouts and how they were raising their money,” said retired Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican who chaired the main House investigative committee in the late 1990s that probed many of the Clintons’ activities ranging from travel office firings and Whitewater investments to Asian fundraising.
The latter investigation disclosed an extensive 1996 Clinton fundraising operation that rewarded donors with White House coffees, access to top officials and nights in the Lincoln Bedroom despite the Clintons’ promise to run the most ethical administration in history. It also proved that illegal foreign money went to the Democratic Party from the likes of Johnny Chung, a fundraiser who admitted taking $300,000 from a Chinese military officer and giving it to Democrats, and James Riady, who pleaded guilty to routing foreign funds through a network of “straw donors” who enriched the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party while collecting political favors for his companies.
“[The Clintons] understood it’s easy to raise money when you solicit people who had business pending before the government,” Mr. Burton said. “The information that established this pattern was substantial, coming from both friends and adversaries around the world who knew they could gain access to the president and his administration and they could get things done if they were willing to pony up the money.”
Fundraising in Sweden as sanctions debate raged in U.S.
At the time of Mr. Clinton’s foray into Swedish fundraising, the Swedish government was pressing Mrs. Clinton’s State Department not to impose new sanctions on firms doing business with Iran, including hometown companies Ericsson and Volvo.
Mrs. Clinton’s State Department issued two orders identifying lists of companies newly sanctioned in 2011 and 2012 for doing business with Iran, but neither listed any Swedish entities.
Behind the scenes, however, the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm was clearly warning the State Department in Washington that Sweden’s trade was growing with Iran — despite Swedish government claims to the contrary.
“Although our Swedish interlocutors continue to tell us that Europe’s overall trade with Iran is falling, the statements and information found on Swedish and English language websites shows that Sweden’s trade with Iran is growing,” the U.S. Embassy wrote in a Dec. 22, 2009, cable to the State Department that was released by WikiLeaks. The cable indicates it was sent to Mrs. Clinton’s office.
At the time of the warning, Mrs. Clinton was about a year into her tenure as Mr. Obama’s secretary of state and the two were leading efforts in Washington to tighten sanctions on Iran.
The Swedes were resistant to new sanctions, telling State Department officials repeatedly and unequivocally that they were worried new penalties would stifle the business between its country’s firms and Tehran. At the time, Iran was Sweden’s second-largest export market in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia.
“Behind the Swedish government’s reluctance to support further sanctions in Iran, especially unilateral European measures, is a dynamic (though still fairly small) trade involving some of Sweden’s largest and most politically well-connected companies: Volvo, Ericsson and ABB to name three,” the U.S. Embassy wrote in one cable to Washington.
Several top Swedish officials made the case against proposed U.S. sanctions in successive meetings in 2009 and 2010, according to classified cables released by WikiLeaks.
“[Swedish] Sanctions coordinator [Per] Saland told us that Sweden does not support implementing tighter financial sanctions on Iran and that more stringent financial standards could hurt Swedish exports,” one cable reported. Other cables quoted Swedish officials as saying they were powerless to order banks in their country to stop doing business with Tehran.
Sweden’s foreign trade minister, Ewa Bjroling, met with State officials and said even though her government was obeying all existing United Nations and European Union sanctions, “Iran is a major problem for the GOS (Government of Sweden) because Swedish businesses have a long-standing commercial relationship in the trucks and telecom industries.”
Eventually, Swedish Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Bildt — Mrs. Clinton’s equal on the diplomatic stage — delivered the message personally to top State Department officials, who described him as “skeptical” about expanded Iran sanctions.
“Overall, I’m not a fan of sanctions because they are more a demonstration of our inability than our ability,” Mr. Bildt was quoted as telling State officials in a cable marked “secret.”
When Mr. Obama planned to meet with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in late 2009, the State Department described Sweden as having been a behind-the-scenes obstructionist to new Iran sanctions. “Sweden has hampered EU efforts to impose additional sanctions,” a State Department memo to the president warned.
Swedish government officials declined to address their back-channel overtures to Mrs. Clinton’s department. “Discussions leading to decisions on sanctions are internal and should remain so,” said Mats Samuelsson, a spokesman with the Swedish Embassy in Washington. “Sweden fully implements all U.N. and EU sanctions by which Sweden is bound.”
A pass to telecommunications companies?
The U.S. is allowed to penalize foreign firms — even if they are incorporated in countries that are U.S. allies — under the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA). Beginning in 2010, the Obama administration stepped up U.S. efforts to use ISA authorities to discourage investment in Iran and to impose sanctions on companies that insisted on continuing their business with Iran, according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.
The State Department is required to report to Congress on ISA matters, which should be done every six months. The State report typically covers U.S. diplomatic concerns over which companies and countries may be interfering with U.S. policy by continuing their investments in Iran — much like the concerns that were coming out of Stockholm.
However, the State Department was slow in delivering its reports to Congress and placing them in the Federal Register as required by Section 5e of the ISA, which drew the concern of lawmakers that State wasn’t moving fast enough on making its sanction recommendations prior to the 2011-2012 formal announcements.
In February 2010, Mrs. Clinton testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the State Department’s ISA preliminary review was completed in early February and that some of the cases reviewed “deserve more consideration” and were undergoing additional scrutiny. The preliminary review, according to the testimony, was conducted, in part, through State Department officials’ contacts with their counterpart officials abroad and corporation officials.
That preliminary review hasn’t been made public, and the first like-report was posted to the Federal Registrar in 2012 with no company names specifically mentioned.
Current State Department officials and outside experts who advised the department on Iran sanctions told The Times that Sweden, and more specifically Ericsson, was a matter of internal discussion from 2009 to 2011 before new sanctions were finally issued. “The Ericsson concerns were well-known, but in the end many of the sanction decisions were arbitrary and often involved issues beyond the actual business transactions,” one adviser directly involved in the talks told The Times, speaking only on the condition of anonymity because he was describing private deliberations.
U.S. intelligence officials told The Times that they kept the Obama administration apprised of Ericsson’s activities inside Iran, including the fact that the Swedish firm had provided Iran’s second-largest cellular provider with location-based technology to track customers for billing purposes. The technology transfer occurred in late 2009, shortly after Tehran brutally suppressed a pro-democracy movement in that country, the officials said.
U.S. intelligence further learned that Ericsson in 2010 discussed with Iran’s largest cellular firm providing tracking technology that could be used directly by Iranian security authorities but never formally pursued the contract, officials said.
State officials declined to say whether Ericsson ever appeared on any preliminary sanctions lists, but they described a process for each sanction decision that involved input from the Treasury Department, the CIA, the Commerce Department and State. During those deliberations, there was a propensity to give extra consideration to companies promoting telecommunications technology inside Iran, the officials explained.
The reason, one official said, was that these companies were seen to be providing something that might help average Iranians stay in contact with the rest of the world. More specifically, the official said, such technology might help them circumvent the draconian censorship measures being taken by Tehran’s government.
Swedish trade with Iran continued undeterred.
Swedish-based Ericsson and Volvo continued their business in Iran during this heightened period of scrutiny — even as other international companies started ending their relationships.
Ericsson has sold telecommunications infrastructure and related products to three Iranian firms: MCCI, MTN IranCell and Rightel. Volvo is the leading heavy truck company in Iran. U.S. senators have specifically raised concerns about the technology Ericsson was providing to Iran.
The company told The Times that it did, in fact, provide a location-based customer-tracking hub to MTN IranCell in 2009 but that it did not believe the system could be misused by Iranian security authorities to track dissidents because its location tracking wasn’t real-time and instead was aimed at facilitating billing.
“We have sold a location-based charging (LBC) to MTN IranCell,” Ericsson spokeswoman Karin Hallstan said. “LBC is used by operators all over the world as a market segmentation tool in order to charge customers differently depending on where they are located. Ericsson is unaware of authorities in any country using LBC as an active monitoring tool, not least as typically this is not open to real-time analysis.”
The company said it also pitched a tracking system specifically for Iran’s security agencies to mobile operator MCCI to determine the scope of their requirements. But it never bid or won such a deal, company officials said.
Ericsson, for its part, believes the sale of telecommunications equipment in Iran may foster a democratic state — and help human rights issues.
“Ericsson strongly believes telecommunication contributes to a more open and democratic society, and we believe that the people of Iran have gained from having access to this technology,” Ms. Hallstan said.
The telecommunications giant didn’t make any contributions to the Swedish fundraising entity set up by Mr. Clinton, but it did pay the former president a record $750,000 for a speech in Hong Kong in November 2011, just weeks after Mrs. Clinton released the first sanctions list that excluded Ericsson and other Swedish firms.
“The investment was significant but should be seen in light of [Mr. Clinton‘s] perceived crowd pull, the location (far to travel to Hong Kong) and an engagement that spanned two days,” Ms. Hallstan said. “The conversation regarding Iran that you refer to had no impact on this decision and was not considered by the event team.”
Ms. Hallstan said Ericsson started paying an annual membership fee to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2010 and is supporting a joint effort with Refugees United to help missing families reconnect with loved ones.
The company says it intends to continue pursuing opportunities with Tehran.
“Ericsson intends to continue to engage with existing customers and explore opportunities with new customers in Iran while continuously monitoring international developments as they relate to Iran and its government,” Ms. Hallstan said. “As a company present in 180 countries, we are sometimes asked to provide factual input regarding countries we operate in.”
After the U.S. announced its sanctions list in 2011 and 2012 — which included no Swedish companies — the Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse saw an uptick in its fundraising, from about $3 million in 2011 to $9 million in 2012 to $14 million in 2013, according to data released by the Swedish Svensk Insamlings Kontroll.
Two months after the second sanctions list was released, Mrs. Clinton made her first trip to Sweden as secretary of state to attend a Climate & Clean Air Coalition forum.
Setting up the Insamlingsstiftelse
When Mr. Clinton set up his Swedish fundraising arm in 2011, he turned to one of the former first family’s longtime confidants: Mrs. Clinton’s former Arkansas law partner Bruce Lindsey.
The entity was essentially a fundraising shell, having no employees or contractors in Sweden, and it was governed by a board with six directors: Mr. Clinton’s two close aides in retirement, Doug Band and Mr. Lindsey; the foundation’s chief financial officer, Andrew Kessell; Swedish lawyer Jan Lombach; German media mogul Karl-Heinz Kogel; and British financier Barry Townsley.
Mr. Townsley was a public figure in the 2006-2007 “pay for peerage” scandal that rocked the British government and tarnished the reputation of Tony Blair months before he left office as prime minister.
A House of Commons report concluded that Mr. Townsley, a successful stockbroker and generous philanthropist, provided a 1 million pound loan in 2005 to the ruling Labor Party and received a peerage nomination from Mr. Blair’s government. Mr. Townsley eventually declined the peerage appointment, saying the publicity had intruded on his privacy. He and other businessmen who made similar loans and were nominated for peerages were never charged with any wrongdoing, but the controversy tarnished Mr. Blair’s tenure.
Mr. Townsley told The Times that Mr. Clinton called him personally to ask him to serve on the Swedish entity’s board, and there were never any issues raised with him about the British patronage scandal.
He described himself as “a non-exec director,” saying he never got paid, never raised any money, never attended any functions for the Swedish entity and didn’t even get financial reports about the group’s activities.
He said he did not believe the past controversy in Britain should have any bearing on his relationship with the Clintons, which began in 1999. “There was nothing to it, and the investigation went away. Nothing to be investigated,” Mr. Townsley said.
The incorporation documents for Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse say “fundraising is the Swedish foundation’s only purpose,” and its annual reports show a total of $26 million raised since 2011. The Swedish documents disclose only a few sources of incoming donations, with the largest being the Nationale Postcode Loterij with about $5 million donated in 2012 and 2013 and the Swedish Postcode Lottery with about $4 million donated in that same time frame.
Mr. Clinton set up the Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse to become a direct recipient of the funds from the Swedish Postcode Lottery, rather than having to go through an intermediary organization to get the contributions, according to a Clinton Foundation official.
“Under Swedish lottery legislation, an organization must be registered in Sweden to receive funds directly from the Swedish Postcode Lottery,” said Roger Magergard, a spokesman for the lottery.
He added: “The partnership with Clinton Foundation Sweden is ongoing. The Swedish Postcode Lottery has 53 beneficiaries, and the cooperation with all organizations continues until either the beneficiary or the lottery decides to end the cooperation.”
In 2011, Sweden changed its giving laws to allow “little-brother” foundations, such as the Clinton Foundation Sweden, to operate in the country and broadened the issues those foundations could collect money for, explained Filip Wijkstrom, a director at the Stockholm School of Economics, who has studied Swedish foundations and nonprofits.
That same year, Sweden changed its tax laws so that individuals could get small tax breaks on their charitable contributions and companies could deduct some donations as business expenditures.
The Washington Times on Wednesday announced a new email marketing partnership with Viguerie Political Lists that includes the introduction of a brand new email list into the political marketplace in time for the 2016 election.
The Washington Times Engaged Patriots email list is composed of more than 500,000 conservative leaning political activists who regularly read Times content, and is being exclusively managed by Viguerie Political Lists.
The new Patriots file brings to a dozen the total number of email lists the Times offers in the marketplace. The lists span the gamut from gun rights enthusiasts and Hispanics to Christian voters and engaged activists.
“We are thrilled to be working with Viguerie Political Lists in bringing this new list to the marketplace in time for the 2016 election,” Times President and CEO Larry Beasley said. “We couldn’t think of a better partner to help us launch this new opportunity.”
Viguerie Political Lists, a division of American Mailing Lists Corporation, is an industry leader in political donor and activist list management. Founded by Richard Viguerie, VPL has been America’s best source for lists used by right-of-center campaigns, advocacy organizations, and charitable institutions for over 50 years.
David M. Keene, Managing Director of VPL said, “We at Viguerie Political Lists are incredibly excited at the opportunity to work hand-in-hand with an organization as venerable as The Washington Times. We look forward to adding this powerful new list to our online offerings.”
Richard Viguerie, Chairman and Founder of VPL, expressed his enthusiasm for the all-new list.
“For over 50 years I’ve been doing my best to keep up in a changing world, and managing such an exceptional list for The Washington Times keeps us at the forefront of the direct-response marketing world.”
Mr. Viguerie continued, “E-mail and other online targeting methods are increasingly important in the dynamic world of direct-response advertising; working with The Washington Times will ensure that we have the very best lists and data available to meet our clients’ needs.”
For rental inquiries, or for additional information, please contact Chris Matzke, List Manager, Viguerie Political Lists via email chris@politicaldonorlists.com or by phone at 571.292.5806 ext. 2121.
The legacy media and the federal bureaucracy are really, really, hoping you’ll be distracted by the arrests of soccer executives. And if that’s not your speed, they have the drama of federal charges against former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, sparking questions about blackmail, “bad acts” and Mr. Hastert’s time as a teacher and wrestling coach in his hometown.
But there is something much more ominous facing the United States, which is not just being pushed by President Obama. Rather, it is facilitated by Senate Republicans — the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Recently passed in the GOP-controlled Senate, the Trans-Pacific Partnership has less to do with trade than it does with ushering in a globalist agenda that usurps American sovereignty. Dick Morris notes: “The TPP is nothing but an effort by the globalists to circumvent American sovereignty, transferring a host of issues from the control of the U.S. Congress and the various state legislatures to international trade courts … . Start with the fact that nobody knows what is in the TPP. President Obama will not let anyone see it. Indeed, many of the provisions are said to be aspirational, setting policy goals and leaving it to the trade courts to sort out.”
I know — it sounds dramatic. While I’m not a conspiracy theorist and certainly never thought I’d reference Mr. Morris, in this case he is absolutely on target.
The keeping of the details of this agreement from Congress is stunning, but makes sense, as Mr. Obama is doing an end-run around the Constitution. Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio writes in The Hill: “For six years the U.S. trade representative has kept the TPP buried under a top secret classification. Even members of Congress can only read it in a secure room under the watchful eye of a security monitor. I visited that room last week to review several sections of the deal and was not allowed to make copies, keep notes, take pictures, or share anything I learned with anyone unless they have Top Secret security clearance, all under threat of prosecution.”
This absurd secrecy alone should have made the TPP a non-starter. Yet GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell is one of TPP’s biggest boosters and helped it pass that chamber. He did this all without knowing the details, giving Mr. Obama unprecedented power. Now the fight moves to the House.
Mr. McConnell had hoped to jam it through during the Memorial Day weekend (ironically) because he knows if you have time to notice what lawmakers up to, you just may stop them. And you certainly can’t be trusted with what’s in the agreement. Fortunately, we are learning the details from none other than a man the Obama regime remains fixated on: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
In the Ecuadorian embassy in London sits Mr. Assange, out of reach from Swedish authorizes who want him for “questioning” about a crime for which no charges have been filed. Mr. Assange says the Swedish accusations against him are false and, as Foreign Policy magazine reports he asserts, are “part of a plot to extradite him to the United States, where a secret grand jury has reportedly been impaneled to consider unspecified charges against him.”
WikiLeaks has published four chapters of the TPP online allowing you and your member of Congress to read it, and even take notes and pictures if you so choose. What a concept. In an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracynow.org, Mr. Assange shares what they’ve found in the TPP, making it clear why Mr. Obama is trying so desperately to keep it secret:
“First of all, it is the largest ever international economic treaty that has ever been negotiated, very considerably larger than NAFTA. It is mostly not about trade, only five of the 29 chapters are about traditional trade,” said Mr. Assange.
“The others are about regulating the Internet, and what information Internet service providers have to collect, they have to hand it over to companies under certain circumstances, the regulation of labor conditions, regulating the way you can favor local industry, regulating the hospital, health care system, privatization of hospitals, so essentially every aspect of a modern economy, even banking services are in the TPP,” he concluded.
Surprise! Part of this 1,000-page monstrosity perpetuates the regulation of the Internet, on a global scale. The method of using a treaty to accomplish this means the United States would be bound by it, and Congress would be unable to change it — just bureaucratic managers of the monster. How convenient for both parties to ultimately claim that they are as upset as we are, but alas, their hands are tied.
While critics of the deal, such as Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, believe the agreement will usher in more outsourcing of jobs and lower labor standards, it is clear that is only the tip of the iceberg.
The outsourcing of American regulation effectively sets the precedent for so-called “international treaties” to determine American law. If this passes and we subjugate this nation to international courts and bureaucratic regulations, we will essentially be handing over the Constitution in favor of rule by the United Nations.
This sort of debacle is exactly why the Founders created the best system in the world to stop tyrants. We now must rely on their genius and make sure our representatives in the House do not acquiesce to this madness.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe wants to fight climate change but not by divesting.
At a recent forum on climate change, Mr. McAuliffe, a Democrat with close and long-standing ties to Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, said he would not support having Virginia divest its retirement fund and other accounts from fossil fuel companies, despite his commitment to combatting global warming.
“I think they have to make the decision, what is in the best interest of whatever they’re making their investments,” Mr. McAuliffe said at the New Republic forum last month titled “The Next Frontier of Climate Change.”
“They have a fiduciary duty to make those investments, and clearly as governor, I am not going to sit here and tell the people who manage these funds what to do. It’s not my role,” Mr. McAuliffe said. “And I clearly understand my role.”
The governor’s comments were little noticed at the time, but a video of them was posted Wednesday on DivestmentFacts.org, a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
The remarks come amid the climate change movement’s campaign urging institutional investors, including universities, governments and nonprofits, to divest from oil, natural gas and coal.
The Fossil Free campaign launched a petition drive earlier this year calling on the Virginia state legislature to divest the Virginia Retirement System’s holdings from the “top 200 fossil-fuel companies” as identified by Carbon Tracker.
“Their business model is in conflict with life on Earth,” says the petition, which has gathered 117 signatures. “It is unconscionable for the VRS to invest in corporations that threaten the health and welfare of VA’s public employees and all VA residents.”
A strong advocate of green energy, Mr. McAuliffe re-established the state’s Climate Change and Resiliency Update Commission in July. The panel includes former University of Virginia professor Michael Mann, a climate scientist known for the controversial “hockey stick” theory of global warming.
No state has divested its holdings from fossil fuels, although about 30 U.S. cities have “committed to pursue divestment,” according to a list on the Fossil Free website.
At the forum, Mr. McAuliffe described himself as “one of the leaders in the country pushing for clean energy,” but that “it is not my job to come in and tell our businesses what to do.”
“I’m a fiscally conservative, pro-business Democrat. I’m socially very progressive,” Mr. McAuliffe added.
President Obama is doing for the Internet what he did for health care: making things worse. His slogan should be “Change you can deceive in.”
His Internet overhaul includes extortion and shakedowns. Businesses and individuals must buy multiple websites in self-defense against domains like .sucks, which debuts in June. Mr. Obama is adding cost, confusion and cronyism to the Internet, just as Obamacare did for the nation’s health care system. Mr. Obama’s giving away U.S. control of the Internet is a mistake on par with Jimmy Carter’s giving away America’s control of the Panama Canal.
Thanks to the administration’s shift, finding websites will become more complicated. Instead of remembering whether a site ends with .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov or some other “top-level domain,” users will face over 1,000 extensions.
Many of these are confusing.
Was the ending .fish? Or .fishing? Did you want .florist? Or .flowers? Can’t remember whether the ending is .gift, .gifts or .gives? Was it .market, .markets or .marketing? Is the law office at .lawyer or .attorney? Is the broker at .trade or .trading? And then there are .sex, .sexy, .porn and .xxx.
Plenty more domain names are on the way. The floodgates have been opened by the group Mr. Obama put in charge, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Wall Street Journal tech editor Gordon Crovitz writes, “President Obama’s plan to give up protection of the open Internet is wreaking havoc.” Mr. Crovitz calls ICANN an “abusive monopolist,” an example of more “bungling” by this president.
Mr. Obama gave ICANN the keys to unlock fabulous wealth by creating unlimited extensions. ICANN charges each applicant $185,000. With over 2,000 applicants so far, that provides guaranteed revenue of over $370 million.
Those enormous fees make the new Internet extortion racket seem cheap. The early-bird going rate for each .sucks domain is $2,500 each, for now. Existing trademark holders must act before June 1 lest the names fall into unfriendly hands. Those acting already reportedly include Wal-Mart, Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Fortune 500 companies would pay over $1.2 million in registration fees if each purchased only a single domain name in self-defense of its trademark, reputation and good will. But multiply the expense by the number of brand names they utilize. Procter & Gamble has scores of consumer brands. Coca-Cola claims over 500 brands for its beverages. General Motors uses 13 auto brands; Ford Motor Co. uses dozens.
An unlimited number of national and local businesses will need to fork over $2,500 per name and per brand to protect themselves from having “.sucks” fall into hostile hands. The alternative is litigation or a costly process of trying to block those websites.
Celebrities must defend not only by purchasing .sucks but also URLs that follow the person’s name with .xxx, .porn or anything similar. Taylor Swift and Kevin Spacey are two among the thousands of celebrities who reportedly have done so. And so have many universities and other groups.
Is there a legitimate need for this government-created chaos? Even before ICANN opened Pandora’s box by adding 1,000 top-level domains, the Internet had over 600 million websites and seemed to be doing pretty well on its own.
The company that runs .sucks, Vox Populi, claims it is simply providing a public service for legitimate protests. That sounds suspiciously like what we heard from the Occupy movement as it trashed parks and committed public indecencies. The Internet already has popular sites devoted to lodging complaints, public as well as private, including Ripoffreport.com and Consumerist.com. Their business models now are upended by the opportunism of Vox Populi’s .sucks.
At a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, called the domain .sucks “legalized extortion.” Mr. Obama approved ICANN, then ICANN approved the domain, but now is asking the Federal Trade Commission and others to shut it down. That’s like Dr. Frankenstein asking the villagers to stop the monster he created.
Robert S. Wistrich, who died suddenly last week, was considered the foremost scholar of anti-Semitism, which he called “the longest hatred,” one that appears to be metastasizing in the current era.
Writing about Nazi anti-Semitism ruffles no feathers within academia and other elite circles. Mr. Wistrich, however, had been warning that “anti-Semitism has undergone a process of growing ‘Islamicization,’ linked to the terrorist holy war against Jews and other non-Muslims with its truly lethal consequences.” This “new” anti-Semitism,” he added, targets Israel, the only state with a Jewish majority: “the collective Jew.”
“New” is a relative term: It was 40 years ago that the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution condemning Zionism, a charged word that actually implies nothing more than support for the right of the Jewish people, like other peoples, to self-determination in part of their ancestral homeland — territories that for centuries had been ruled by foreign empires. Within these lands there has never been a Palestinian nation-state, but a majority of Israelis would help establish such a polity — if Palestinian leaders would only commit to peaceful coexistence with their neighbors across an agreed-upon border.
While most Muslims do not support terrorism, Mr. Wistrich noted, “levels of anti-Semitism among Muslims clearly remain the highest in the world,” and Islamists — most succinctly defined as those committed to the imperative of Muslim dominance over all others — “are the spearhead of current anti-Semitism.”
Aided and abetted by anti-Semites of the radical left (who view Israel as an outpost of American empire) they have created what Mr. Wistrich called a “culture of hatred” that is “sufficiently radical in tone and content to constitute a new warrant for genocide.”
Such ethno-religious antipathy takes many forms. Three examples: Last week, Greek officials demanded that the Star of David be removed from a new Holocaust museum in a Greek city where some 1,500 Jews were murdered by Nazis. Though Israeli hospitals have opened their doors to casualties of the civil war in Syria, the U.N. has just labeled Israel the world’s top violator of “health rights.” And last month Mohammad Neza Naghdi, commander of Iran’s Basij paramilitary force, said, “The destruction of Israel is non-negotiable.”
Another manifestation of anti-Semitism is the so-called “boycott, divest and sanction” (BDS) campaign. Though it aims to damage Israel economically, it has so far made little progress. More perniciously perhaps, it means to demonize and delegitimize Israel, particularly in the eyes of young people on college campuses — an investment in the future of Jew-hatred.
BDS propagandists are patently Orwellian. Hamas fires missiles at Israeli villages and digs tunnels under Israeli farms to facilitate hostage-taking and mass murder; they call that “resistance.” Israelis attempt to defend themselves; they call that “genocide.”
Close to 20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Arab and Muslim. They enjoy freedom of worship and speech, cast votes, hold seats in the Knesset and sit on the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, BDS advocates slander Israel as “apartheid.” Some, utilizing a tactic Mr. Wistrich termed “Holocaust inversion,” call Israelis Nazis.
BDS advocates shed no tears for victims of jihadi head-choppers, for young girls enslaved by “mujahedeen,” or young men hanged for “sodomy” under strict readings of Islamic law. All that pales next to Israel’s refusal to make additional concessions to Palestinian leaders who rule out compromise.
BDS advocates sometimes claim they are only attempting to pressure Israelis to soften their policies in regard to the West Bank and Gaza. But leaders of the campaign have acknowledged that the “occupation” is a pretext.
“The real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel,” California State University professor As’ad AbuKhalil has said. “There should not be any equivocation on the subject. Justice and freedom for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the state of Israel.” Pro-BDS author John Spritzler has written: “I think the BDS movement will gain strength from forthrightly explaining why Israel has no right to exist.”
Despite such threats, boycott, divest and sanction has faced few serious challenges — until now. Rep. Peter Roskam, an Illinois Republican, Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, and Rep. Juan Vargas, a California Democrat, have authored bipartisan measures — amendments to the major trade act currently being considered by Congress — that would discourage America’s trading partners from discriminating against Israelis.
At the same time, Illinois is poised to become the first state in the nation to defend Israelis against economic warfare. Last week, an anti-BDS bill supported by newly elected Gov. Bruce Rauner passed the state House and Senate — with bipartisan unanimity.
“The significance of the bill cannot be underestimated,” wrote Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at Northwestern University. “BDS is not like the civil rights protests, as its supporters love to claim but rather more like the anti-Jewish boycotts so common in Europe in the 20th century and in the Arab world until this day.” European financial institutions that have become concerned about the risks — legal, economic and reputational — of doing business with Israelis will now need to consider the risks of refusing to do business with Israelis.
Other states are considering similar actions. In Congress, additional measures are being proposed. For example, Rep. Doug Lamborn, A Colorado Republican, has introduced the Boycott Our Enemies, Not Israel Act, which would require government contractors to certify that they are not shunning America’s most reliable ally.
Mr. Wistrich devoted his life to understanding anti-Semitism which, in the 20th century, pursued the goal of a Europe without Jews. He also recognized the goal of this century’s anti-Semites: a Middle East without a Jewish state.
Those who mourn his passing may take some consolation in knowing that there are now a few American statesmen doing more than averting their eyes and wringing their hands.
Opposition to the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) is now at the point where the bank’s reauthorization is genuinely in doubt. Spurred by accusations of corporate welfare, crony capitalism and outright corruption, opponents believe the Ex-Im Bank’s palpable violation of free-market principles fully warrants its early demise.
The Ex-Im Bank’s critics have their economics entirely correct, but they have their geopolitics wrong. Their solution — simply terminating the bank — is appealing but counterproductive. What America should do, under a president with the wit to do it, is negotiate the global elimination of “export credits” (as these subsidies are generically known). This approach would eliminate the Ex-Im Bank’s market-distorting effects without harming U.S. political and economic interests in the wider world.
Whatever the bank’s flaws, and they are many, U.S. businesses do not operate in a free-market world. Outside our borders, mercantilism is rife, among both friends and adversaries. Undeterred by arguments that they are playing domestic favorites, redistributing wealth inequitably, or distorting job creation and capital investment, foreign governments use agencies like the Ex-Im Bank to make their own exports more attractive to international customers.
Their objective is plain: undercut the competition to gain market share and then squeeze out competitors going forward by garnering favorable political treatment. These tactics work because many sales in international markets involve foreign governments as purchasers, state-owned enterprises (where state equity or debt control comes in a wide variety of shapes and sizes) or other “business” decisions susceptible to purchasing-country governmental “persuasion.” Foreign regimes don’t worry whether export credits make good economic sense, but are instead driven by strategic thinking internationally (like China or France) or powerful domestic pressures, such as protecting favored jobs or political allies (like the European Union generally).
Export credits come in many forms (loan guarantees, below-market interest rates, and more), and they have expanded dramatically in recent years. In key respects, export credits represent the flip side of tariffs and other import barriers. The intent of all these government interventions is to tip the balance in favor of domestic businesses: tariffs to resist competition in the home market from foreign sellers, and export credits to give domestic businesses a leg up in foreign markets.
Bluntly stated, the Ex-Im Bank is, therefore, also a political weapon. Whether in sales of big-ticket items that have military as well as civilian applications (such as airplanes and high-tech components), or in American exports into particularly sensitive countries and regions (such as Latin America, where China is vigorously expanding its “commercial” presence), the Ex-Im Bank has been an arm of U.S. national-security policy.
While the case for eliminating tariffs is acknowledged by economists of all political stripes, powerful protectionist forces in America and elsewhere have essentially required that tariffs and non-tariff barriers be eliminated through hard-bargained international agreements. The process is imperfect, messy and frustrating, but succeeding rounds of multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral negotiations have reduced tariffs dramatically since World War II, with corresponding boosts to economic prosperity worldwide.
The same path beckons for the permanent elimination of export credits. The utility of a sustained politico-diplomatic campaign to achieve this objective is clear. No one should think for a moment that eliminating the Ex-Im Bank will mean its business beneficiaries will fade quietly away. They will return with alternatives to achieve the same objectives as the bank, albeit in a less transparent, more piecemeal fashion. Far better to deal with the problem comprehensively, thereby also eliminating the foreign anti-competitive behavior motivating so much of American business’s support for the bank.
I first encountered export credits while serving at the U.S. Agency for International Development in the early Reagan administration. There, the issue was “mixed credits,” the blending of export credits with foreign assistance for projects in developing countries that also benefited U.S. businesses. In September 1982, we issued a joint State Department-AID policy determination stating: “We are opposed in principle to the use of mixed credits for export financing. We recognize, however, that other donors are actively using mixed credits to promote their own exports and that this can put U.S. exporters at a serious competitive disadvantage.” Our solution was to approve mixed credits only in very limited circumstances, and to carefully monitor “international efforts to increase the transparency and reduce the use of mixed credits.”
This Reaganite approach is still valid today, especially given that more and more countries have begun using export credits in the intervening years. The Ex-Im Bank’s critics will say that a multilateral negotiation, perhaps through the World Trade Organization, would be too time-consuming and difficult. But that proves precisely the opposite of the point they think they are making. Foreign resistance to eliminating export credits evidences just how important and pervasive the practice has become for our trade competitors and geostrategic adversaries.
The last thing we need in an increasingly threatening world is to disadvantage ourselves while other nations enhance their own export-credit programs. Far better economically and politically that all stand down together, rather than U.S. interests alone suffer.
Memorial Day in America has traditionally been a time when we pay our respects to those who gave their lives, over a century ago, in a tragic civil war. In a broader sense, it has come to stand not only for the sacrifice of those who served in the War Between the States, but for all of those who have given their lives in arms since the birth of our nation.
This Memorial Day should remind us of the greatness that past generations of Americans achieved, from Valley Forge to Vietnam, and it should inspire us with the determination to keep America great and free by keeping America safe and strong in our own time, a time of unique destiny and opportunity for our nation.
In looking back on the past, we must not forget the present. More than 100 years after the last shot was fired at Gettysburg, and nearly 200 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the cause of liberty and human dignity still depends on America.
Americans were called away to war under trying and sometimes bitter circumstances, four times in this century — World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Only today, for the first time in this century do we live in a time when, thanks to past sacrifices, a real chance exists for lasting peace — peace built not on vain hopes and good intentions, but on solid, realistic foundations.
We have ended America’s longest and most difficult war in Vietnam. In the Middle East, a part of the world where conflict has become almost a way of life, we have begun the long, hard work of reconciliation — of bringing people together at the peace table who formerly met only on the battlefield. We are normalizing relations with the nation whose people make up one-fourth of the world’s population — the People’s Republic of China. We have developed a new relationship with the leaders of the Soviet Union after a long and costly period of confrontation that began more than a quarter of a century ago.
Taken together, all of this means that in 1974 our hopes for a lasting peace are brighter than at any time in living memory, because we now have a structure of peace, and we are carefully working to strengthen it. A momentum has been created that makes it easier for the leaders of the major powers to settle differences peacefully, in negotiation instead of in armed confrontation.
That is something worth bearing in mind on this Memorial Day. It is something worthy of our thanks. But it is not something we can take for granted. Just as a planted seed requires the right balance of sun, water, soil, and care to grow to its full potential, so, too, does a lasting peace.
The minute that peace is taken for granted — and we have seen this happen again and again in the course of modern and ancient history — its survival is in jeopardy. Lasting peace can be achieved only through lasting awareness, lasting preparedness, and lasting strength, both physical and moral. As America and other nations have learned only too well through experience, weakness invites aggression, and aggression triggers war.
On this Memorial Day, then, let us bear in mind what Winston Churchill once called the “sinews of peace” — the ways and means through which we can keep America a credible and strong force for peace and order in the world. There are some people here in America who would like to turn inward and turn away from the world’s problems. We have enough problems of our own, they say, without getting involved in anyone else’s.
And up to a point, they are right. We are, and must continue to be, a nation dedicated to building the best possible life for our people, to overcoming injustice, to expanding opportunity to embrace every American, regardless of race or creed. But like it or not, we are also a part of a larger world. We may seek to ignore the world, but the world will not ignore us. And in a day when atomic weapons are spreading, when famine stalks large parts of the Earth, and when the tinder that could ignite another massive conflagration exists in many parts of the world, to turn our backs on our responsibilities for world leadership would, in the long run, be disastrous not only for us in America, but also for all people in the world who seek peace.
There was a time when we could look across the oceans, protected by time and distance, and let other peoples, such as the British and the French, carry the burden of free-world security. They had the power and the will to do it, and America could afford in those long-gone days to live in what used to be called “splendid isolation.” But those days are no more. Today, America’s isolation can lead only to the world’s destruction.
It is for this reason that the Atlantic Alliance is today the cornerstone of this nation’s foreign policy. Together with our NATO allies, we are united in the common effort of defense and in the common quest for a more peaceful, more stable world. We can and we have, under the Nixon Doctrine, placed wise limits on future commitments of American manpower, not only in Asia, but in other parts of the world as well. At the same time, we have recognized our broad responsibilities of U.S. leadership, the leadership required, for example, to help keep the peace where it exists and to act as peacemaker in explosive areas like the Mideast.
Diplomatically, we fulfill this role by using the best possible men and ideas in our dealings with other nations. And the records show that we have been successful in doing this in the past five years. But no matter how talented our diplomats are, the policies they pursue must be backed up by credible strength — the “sinews of peace.” And in the final analysis, this means military strength.
As long as the peace of the world depends on it — and it does — America must never become the second-strongest nation in the world. If successful negotiations for weapons limitation and reductions are to continue, America must remain strong.
Only a strong America, in concert with its allies, can be a strong force for peace.
A bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives stood firmly for a strong national defense. In so doing, that majority earned the thanks of all Americans who recognize that a strong America is indispensable if we are to succeed in building lasting peace in the world.
On the issue of a strong America, the Congress should not be separated by party labels, but united as patriotic Americans. The same should be true of all of us as citizens, and especially so on a day like this. Today, on this Memorial Day 1974, we can all be thankful that for the first time in 12 years, there are no Americans fighting anywhere in the world.
What we do with this peace — whether we preserve it and defend it, or whether we lose it and let it slip away — will be the measure of our worthiness of the spirit and sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands who gave their lives in two World Wars, Korea, and in Vietnam.
I believe that we can be worthy of that challenge, because I believe that for the first time in this century, thanks to the sacrifices of the past and because of our determination to stay strong now and in the future, we can keep the peace they gave their lives to win for us.
Peace is the real and right memorial for those who have died in war. They wanted and they deserve a world in which their brothers and sisters and their children and grandchildren will never have to be called upon, as they were, to fight for peace. Let that be the memorial we seek to build for them, and let us work together — the president, the people, the Congress — to build it in the months and years ahead.
The Boy Scouts of America, an organization with semi-military origins, has put out approved activities for its members, and water gun fights are strictly prohibited.
A blog for the organization’s leaders said May 6 that pointing simulated firearms at people is not allowed.
“Why the rule? A Scouter once told me this explanation I liked quite a bit: A Scout is kind. What part of pointing a firearm [simulated or otherwise] at someone is kind?” said Bryan Wendell on the scouting website.
The rule is clarified in the Boy Scouts of America National Shooting Manual, which says “For water balloons, use small, biodegradable balloons, and fill them no larger than a ping pong ball. […] Water guns and rubber band guns must only be used to shoot at targets, and eye protection must be worn.”
The manual includes a lengthy list of other prohibited items — boomerangs, crossbows, potato guns, spear guns and throwing stars. Scouts also may not use “marshmallow shooters that require placing a straw or similar device in the mouth.”
The Scouting movement began in the early 20th century Britain under the tutelage of Lt. Gen. Robert Baden-Powell, who wrote the first “Scouting for Boys” manual.
Baden-Powell learned from his military experiences in India and southern Africa that young soldiers often lacked outdoor-survival skills. He also cited the Mafeking Cadet Corps, a group of adolescent and pre-adolescent boys that he used to great success during the Second Boer War siege of that town. The boys eagerly took on such essential military duties as couriers and intelligence, freeing older soldiers for more-demanding tasks.
Numerous critical journalists and bloggers noted that Scouting when they were boys included such activities as bottle rockets, wooden sword fights and Midnight Football, which a Gawker author described as “a sort of combat rugby played in blackout conditions on a hard tile floor.”
Negative feedback flowed into the comments section of the blog, complaining of political correctness, of “turning boys into a bunch of wusses,” and of an out-of-touch national leadership.
“This makes BSA look ridiculous and has little if any impact on safety,” said Gary Holeiwnski.
“Sometimes I just have to laugh out loud at how idiotic some things in our society have become. We can’t squirt each other with water guns because it is a ‘simulated’ gun. I can’t believe BSA is so worried about the PC police that it has a policy like this,” added commenter Gary USMC.
“Yes, let’s carry every policy to the absurd extreme. That will certainly help scouts shed that geeky image,” added another commenter.
The Boy Scouts of America National Shooting Manual guidelines are to be followed by anyone involved with Cub Scouting, Boy Scouting, Venturing, Sea Scouting, or shooting sports committees, the document adds.
At the very time President Obama, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top leaders were blaming spontaneous protests for the deadly Benghazi attack, the Defense Department broadly circulated a detailed intelligence report that said an al Qaeda-linked group planned the assault 10 days beforehand.
Its goal was to kill as many Americans as possible.
The Defense Intelligence Agency report is contained in a trove of previously classified documents that the government watchdog group Judicial Watch forced the Obama administration to release under court order.
On another terrorism development that has wide implications today, one DIA report in August 2012 predicted the rise of the Islamic State, which was then emerging in Syria. It now controls wide sections of eastern Syria and northern and western Iraq, and is committing mass slaughter of Christians, Kurds and Muslims of rival sects or clans.
Mr. Obama downplayed the Islamic State as the “JV” in January 2014 when the terrorist army made its first incursions into western Iraq.
Judicial Watch said in a statement that the Benghazi documents are clear evidence that Mr. Obama and his aides lied to the American public two months before the November elections. Amid poor security, the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and an aide. Terrorists later attacked a nearby CIA base, killing two former Navy SEALs serving as a security detail.
Judicial Watch previously forced the administration to release a chain of emails that revealed the tortured process by which White House and State Department political appointees took the CIA’s draft report on the attack and changed it to say the carnage was caused by spontaneous demonstrations over an American-made anti-Islam video.
On Sept. 16, the same date as the DIA report, Susan E. Rice, who then was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and now is national security adviser, went on Sunday political talk shows and blamed the attack on protesters angered by the video.
The administration could argue this point: The final CIA “talking points” paper was approved Sept. 15. The DIA report saying an al Qaeda-linked group carried out the attack was dated Sept. 16.
But Judicial Watch argues that the information contained in the DIA report was obtained as of Sept. 12, the day after the attack.
The president and Mrs. Clinton took days more to concede that the attack was terrorism and not a protest gone violent. Mr. Obama cited the video later that month in a speech to the U.N.
Matt Olsen, who was serving as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, became the first administration official to publicly call the attacks terrorism, on Sept. 19. Mrs. Clinton followed suit the next day. But Mr. Obama, on that same day, was asked at a town hall meeting about the attack and declined to label it terrorism.
The White House on Tuesday did not respond to a query about the Judicial Watch findings.
Subsequent congressional hearings showed the Benghazi post was on a hit list compiled by terrorists who wanted to rid the city of all Western organizations. The hearings showed that Mr. Stevens repeatedly asked for more security but was rebuffed by Washington.
The Washington Times first reported in October 2012 that a defense intelligence report existed and that it blamed al Qaeda for the Benghazi attack shortly afterward.
The DIA papers obtained by Judicial Watch say the al Qaeda-linked group, Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman, claimed responsibility. Rahman is known as the “blind sheikh,” and was convicted and imprisoned for his role in the first World Trade Center attack. The organization is linked to Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan terrorist group that also took part in the attack on the diplomatic outpost.
“The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012,” the defense report said. “The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for the U.S. killing of [an al Qaeda commander] in Pakistan and in memorial of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings.”
Even more revealing is that the DIA concluded that al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri was involved. He sent Abdul Baset Azuz, the brigades leader, to Libya to set up an al Qaeda terrorist cell.
“It was stated that Azuz was not a charismatic leader but rather just a violent radical,” the DIA said.
Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president, called the DIA documents “jaw dropping.” His group sued the administration under the Freedom of Information Act.
“No wonder we had to file more FOIA lawsuits and wait over two years for them,” he said. “If the American people had known the truth — that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go — and yet lied and covered this fact up — Mitt Romney might very well be president.”
Mr. Fitton said the documents “show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits. The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”
The DIA report said Azuz quickly established an al Qaeda headquarters in eastern Libya and obtained Russian-designed shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.
Another document states that the Muslim Brotherhood was allied with al Qaeda in trying to bring down the Bashar Assad regime in Syria. At the time, Mr. Obama supported the elected Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, which was later deposed by the military.
“Why would the Obama administration continue to support the Muslim Brotherhood even after it knew it was tied to the Benghazi terrorist attack and to al Qaeda?” Mr. Fitton said.
The Judicial Watch documents also show that the administration was aware of a major arms trafficking network in Libya that took government missiles and guns and shipped them to Islamists in Syria.
There is no indication that the CIA was involved, as some observers asserted.
On the Islamic State, the DIA said in August 2012 that the terrorist army “could also declare an Islamic State throughout its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.”
Congress is prodding the armed forces to come up with a special line of women’s combat boots, in different styles, as studies show that military women are more susceptible to stress fractures from marching and training.
Female troops in Afghanistan have complained to a member of the House Armed Services Committee that they have limited options for acquiring combat boots designed for them.
The congressional move comes as selected women have undergone direct land combat training to determine if they can meet tough physical standards to become an infantryman or a commando. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter predicts that he will open most, if not all, such units to women by Jan. 1.
On the eve of such momentous social and battlefield change, Army women lack boots specially designed for generally smaller and narrower feet, say 10 congressional sources. The Army buys different boot styles for hot and cold weather, mountain and desert warfare and the rain.
Prompted by the Obama administration’s 2013 decision to strike down a ban on women in direct land combat units, a new report by the Armed Services Committee on fiscal 2016 spending says it’s time to feminize the combat boot to increase performance in marches, long hikes and combat.
A spokesman for Rep. Niki Tsongas, Massachusetts Democrat and sponsor of the footwear provision, said the Army does not provide “a female option for combat boots.”
“The congresswoman’s provision, however, encompasses all the branches by requiring the DOD to examine its ability to provide women-specific combat boots across all branches and devise a strategy to ensure that women are outfitted with the best combat footwear possible,” said spokesman Michael Hartigan. “A major part of that strategy will be an analysis of the adequacy of any female-specific combat boots that may already be available.”
Army public affairs did not respond to queries.
The congresswoman heard about the boot gap from female soldiers while on a visit to Afghanistan.
“The committee believes it is important the Department of Defense ensure that female service members have equipment and clothing tailored to the physical requirements of women in order to operate effectively and not be hampered by equipment that is ill-fitting, uncomfortable, and potentially harmful during operations in the field,” says the committee report.
Stress fractures
The report said the armed forces should plan to provide “a greater range of boot sizes and types for women service members as well as the advisability and feasibility of developing combat boots specifically designed for female service members.”
Robert Maginnis, a retired Army infantry officer and author of “Deadly Consequences,” which argues against women in ground combat, said it is possible that women’s boots could cut down on injuries overall.
“Specialized boots may help with stress fractures,” he said. “There are numerous studies indicating women are far more likely than men to [experience] exercise-related stress fractures.”
Mr. Maginnis said he doubts new boots will help stem injuries from a basic military requirement: long marches.
“Men and women walk with different stride lengths and frequency,” he said. “As I explain in ‘Deadly Consequences,’ when a mixed platoon of recruits marches at the male stride of 45 centimeters rather than the shorter female stride of 38 centimeters, there is an increased incidence of stress fractures of the pubic ramus [a part of the pelvis] among women. That finding was reported in the sports medicine literature in [the] early 1990s. Bottom line is new boots won’t do anything about stride-length issues.”
Last winter, Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness, analyzed a new public report by the British military on women in experimental training for close ground combat. Great Britain currently bans women from such units, as the U.S. did until 2013.
The report offered a rare glimpse into the physical toll combat training can take on women. The U.S. military closely guards the release of such data, forcing outside researchers to file Freedom of Information Act requests.
The British report states: “The high and unaccustomed physical demands of initial training are associated with increased risk of Musculoskeletal injury (MSK) injury in recruits. The overall risk of MSK injury is higher for women, reaching seven-fold in some studies of British Army training.”
The report also said “the rate of trauma and overuse lower limb MSK remains two-fold higher in women and the rate of hip and pelvic stress fractures is ten-fold higher in women (2.8 per 1000 vs. 28.1 per 1000 trainees).”
‘Best combat footwear possible’
The British press widely reported in 2013 that three young female recruits were awarded $162,000 each on their claims that being forced to march like men resulted in spinal injuries and pelvic fractures. The Daily Mail said other women have filed similar claims with the Ministry of Defense.
Former Defense Minister Gerald Howarth told The Mail, “This case is completely and utterly ridiculous — it belongs in the land of the absurd.” Mr. Howarth said the women were awarded more money than soldiers who suffered serious wounds in Afghanistan.
A 2011 study by three researchers at Florida State University found that military and athletic women in both populations experienced higher numbers of stress fractures than did men. For the military, men had a 3 percent rate and women a 9 percent rate.
The House committee’s report on boots, Ms. Tsongas said, “requires DOD to examine its ability to provide women-specific combat boots and devise a strategy to ensure that women are outfitted with the best combat footwear possible.”
An advocate for military women, Ms. Tsongas also sponsored bill provisions ordering the Army to create a policy for workplace breastfeeding and requiring a Pentagon briefing on “its ability to provide the best prosthetics for female amputees while meeting their physical and mental health needs.”
The Army boasts an extensive boot inventory. None is listed on its Program Executive Office Soldier website as being specifically for women.
The site does list an “Army combat uniform-alternate for female and smaller-statured soldiers.”
There is also a “female improved outer tactical vest” to go along with body armor.
“The vest incorporates design changes that are more form fitting to female soldiers while maintaining fall ballistic properties,” the website says.
The Fairfax County Public Schools System is preparing to add “gender identity” to its family life curriculum for grades 7 through 12, less than a week after the school board voted to include gender identity in its nondiscrimination policy over parental objections.
The school board on Monday made public a new Family Life Education Committee report recommending the addition of gender identity to its curriculum agenda, starting for seventh-graders.
Students “will be provided definitions for sexual orientation terms heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality; and the gender identity term transgender,” according to the proposed agenda for grade 7.
The new eighth-grade agenda states that students “will identify … that development of individual identity occurs over a lifetime and includes the component of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Individual identity will be described as having four parts — biological gender, gender identity (including transgender), gender role and sexual orientation (including heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual). The concept that sexuality is a broader spectrum also will be introduced.
Last week, many county residents voiced outrage over the board’s policy change without first consulting parents. The amended policy could require mixed-gender bathrooms and locker rooms in schools.
At a heated school board meeting last Thursday, board members assured parents that the gender identity policy would simply provide language to protect transgender students and faculty from harassment and that the school district’s day-to-day operations would not change because of the new policy.
“There seems to be confusion in the audience. This is not about change. Misinformation and fear about [changing] bathroom or locker room policy is simply not true. It is just an update,” board member Megan McLaughlin said during the meeting.
Andrea Lafferty, a mother of a former school district student and president of the Traditional Values Coalition, said she and other parents feel that the school board has lied to them.
“This is exactly what we warned would happen. The Fairfax County School Board claimed nothing would change. Parents teach their children this type of deception is called lying,” Ms. Lafferty said.
School board spokesman John Torre said that last week’s vote was unrelated to the proposed curriculum changes, but he did not say if the board had knowledge of the committee’s plans.
“They have been working on the curriculum recommendations for over a year and, following extensive discussion and debate, the committee approved unanimously all of their recommended changes, with one exception,” Mr. Torre said. “Parents have been able to opt their students out of [family life] designated lessons in the past and will continue to have that ability under the committee’s recommendations — including the sexual orientation and gender identity lessons.”
However, most of the new agenda items will be moved from the family life curriculum into the health curriculum, which means that parents will not be able to opt their children out of the lessons.
(Corrected paragraph:) Elizabeth Schultz, the only board member who voted against the policy change, said no explanation was given as to why the committee could not keep all of its curriculum under family life to allow parents to opt their children out.
“I asked if we could leave all of this material in the family life education component of children’s education, and the answer is ‘we can.’ And if we can then why wouldn’t we? It would appear to me, the only reason to do something like that is to limit a parent’s voice,” Ms. Schultz said, adding that the board and the committee were engaging in opaque leadership.
The board will introduce the changes at its next business meeting on May 21. Parents can sign up May 18 for slots to voice concerns at the meeting. The agenda changes will be up for public comment from May 21 until June 19, and the board will vote on the changes on June 25.
Fairfax County is the largest school district in Virginia and the 10th largest in the nation, with more than 185,000 students.
U.S. Christians shrink
The American people have become slightly less Christian and more “unaffiliated” in the last few years, says a new study that seeks to track even the smallest trends in this major cultural issue.
Some 70 percent of Americans were part of a Christian church in 2014, down from 78 percent in 2007, said the Pew Research Center study, released Tuesday.
Overall, the number of Christians fell from 178 million in 2007 to 173 million in 2014, said the study, which is based on a telephone survey of more than 35,000 adults.
Protestants made up about 46 percent of the U.S. population, followed by Catholics (21 percent), Mormon (under 2 percent), and Jehovah’s Witnesses, Orthodoxy, and “other” Christian groups, which are all under 1 percent. Non-Christian religions such as Judaism, Islam and Hinduism rose from 4.7 percent of the population in 2007 to 5.9 percent in 2014.
Pew’s “really large sample gives us the ability to talk about those groups that are 1 or 2 percent of the population,” noted Jessica Martinez, a research associate at Pew who worked on “America’s Changing Religious Landscape” report.
The bulk of the erosion in Christian identification was in mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, with each falling by 3 percentage points, the study said. Evangelical Protestant identification dipped by around 1 percentage point, while historically black churches stayed stable.
“Unaffiliated” people, however, grew in number from about 36.6 million in 2007 to 55.8 million in 2014.
Among this group, the numbers of atheists and agnostics each grew by around 1 percentage point, to comprise 3 percent and 4 percent of the population, respectively.
The largest growth was the number of adults who said they were “nothing in particular.”
This group — which contained a lot of millennial-age adults — rose from 12 percent in 2007 to about 16 percent in 2014,
Within that group, though, there are some who say religious practices and beliefs are important, but they “do not identify with any particular organized religion,” said Ms. Martinez.
The Pew study showed strong generation gaps: Of people born in the “silent generation” (1928-1945), 85 percent said they were Christian and 11 percent were unaffiliated.
Of both millennial groups — those born in 1981-1989 and 1990-1996 — more than half (around 56 percent) said they were Christian, while a solid third (around 35 percent) said they were unaffiliated.
Countless articles and books have been written about America’s slow detachment from weekly worship and other religious activities. Explanations include boredom with the Sunday morning sing-a-longs and sermons, especially when the modern interactive technologies — which are second nature to youth — are not widely used.
Other factors are people having “more choices” for weekend activities — including sports activities for children — paired with much less guilt and shame about not going to worship services.
“Self-directed spirituality” is becoming more common, as is the desire to see “a direct benefit” from taking time to go to church, wrote Pastor Carey Nieuwhof, who leads the Connexus Church near Toronto, Canada, and frequently blogs about church growth and the “massive cultural shift” affecting church membership.
In their 2013 book, “Why Nobody Wants to Go to Church Anymore: And How 4 Acts of Love Will Make Your Church Irresistible,” Thom and Joani Schultz urged church bodies to focus on building relationships within the faith community. Their “four simple acts of love” are “radical hospitality,” “fearless conversation,” “genuine humility,” and “divine anticipation.”
Still other factors are the delay of marriage and often parenthood in younger generations.
“Marriage and the baby carriage tend to increase Americans’ interest in being actively involved in church,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, associate sociology professor at University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project.
“Another reason,” he added, “is that many young adults see religion as force for reaction — against gay rights, abortion, etc. — and don’t wish to affiliate with a religious tradition they see as out of touch.”
but Evangelicals increase
The continuing popularity of evangelical Protestantism has emerged as the exception in an otherwise sobering new report this week about Christianity in America.
There were 62 million evangelical Protestants in 2014, about 2 million more than a parallel survey found in 2007, the Pew Research Center said in its Tuesday report, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.”
Those numbers stood in contrast with an overall shrinking population of Americans who identify as Christians.
The U.S. remains strongly Christian, the Pew study said, noting that in 2014 there were 173 million Christians, or around 70 percent of people in a population of 245 million adults. But that is down by an estimated 5 million Christians and an 8-percentage-point population share since 2007, when Pew reported some 178 million Christians or 78 percent of the smaller 227 million-adult populace.
Evangelical Protestants include the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God, the Churches of Christ, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Presbyterian Church in America, and many nondenominational congregations, including megachurches.
Christianity Today captured the angle with its headline: “Evangelicals Stay Strong as Christianity Crumbles in America.”
One “striking” reason evangelical churches are holding their own in population surveys is they win new members faster than they lose old ones, said Jeff Walton, director of communications at the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
The massive Pew report — which used data from some 35,000 adults — asked people whether they had joined or left a religious body.
The answers suggested that for every person who joined the Roman Catholic Church, six others were departing. In contrast, for every person who left an evangelical church, an average of 1.2 people joined, said Mr. Walton.
Nondenominational churches — which would include many megachurches that loosely affiliate with established evangelical denominations — have significantly grown, the Pew study found.
In 2014, 13 percent of Protestants said they were in a nondenominational church family; in 2007, only 9 percent said the same.
During the same time period, the share of Protestants who said they were “Methodist” dropped from 12 percent to 10 percent, while those who said they were “Lutheran” dropped from 9 percent to 8 percent.
The largest discrete Protestant denominations in 2014 were the Southern Baptist Convention (representing 11 percent of Protestants) and United Methodist Church (representing 8 percent), the new report said.
The study further found that most adults still identified with their childhood religion.
The highest retention rate was among adults raised as Hindus (80 percent retention), followed by Muslims (77 percent retention) and Jews (75 percent retention). People in several other religions also saw a majority of their adult children continued the faith: historically black Protestant, evangelical Protestant, Mormon, Catholic and Orthodox Christian.
However, less than half of children raised in mainline Protestant churches, Buddhist temples or as a Jehovah’s Witness maintained that faith as adults, according to Pew.
Tough job, but somebody has to do it. For the 44th year in a row, the American Conservative Union has released its annual Congressional ratings for lawmakers who either uphold conservative values - or find them akin to kryptonite. The ratings have become a kind of gold standard, the organization says, in holding every member of Congress accountable for their voting record - and their support of limited government, prosperity, individual freedom and traditional values.
“There are several takeaways from ACU’s 2014 Rating of Congress,” says Matt Schlapp, chairman of the group. “First, the liberals in Congress tend to vote together as a block. The Left does a great job of enforcing lockstep orthodoxy, to the detriment of the constituents they represent. When it comes to passing real conservative reforms, the Left collectively obstructs implementation of commonsense economic, national security, and cultural reforms.”
On a 100-point ratings system for their conservative voting records, there are essentially no Democrats in House or Senate who breeched the 40th percentile. Over 30 Democrats had a score of 0 percent this year, including Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
“We can only conclude that the former Democratic National Committee Chairman plans to serve one-term representing the Commonwealth of Virginia before he returns to lead the fringe portion of the liberal activist base,” Mr. Schlapp observes.
A slim few Republicans were rated between 40 and 49 percent on the scale, with the majority of them scoring 60 percent and above. Sixteen earned a 100 percent rating this year, including Sen. Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and Rep. Ron De Santis.
Mr. Schlapp and his research team also compared the cumulative records from other lawmakers, in other years. “Another interesting fact in our analysis is the stark reminder that Hillary Clinton is no moderate,” he says. “While many in the media portray her as more centrist than self-described Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders or fringe activist Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Clinton’s lifetime rating of 8.13 percent is within two percentage points from those extremists.”
He also finds it shocking that all three of these presidential hopefuls are even more liberal than President Obama’s cumulative rating of 10 percent, based on his time as a U.S. Senator.
“If America wants a third Obama term, three candidates will not disappoint,” Mr. Schlapp adds. Find the ratings system and results here.
There’s much talk about free speech, and the right to it. Now comes a new book explaining who and what is eroding this most basic tenet. Now on book shelves: “The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech” by Kirsten Powers, a lifelong liberal and daughter of a feminist who converted to Christianity as an adult and is now a frequent contributor to Fox News.
She points out that leftist methodology is to simply shut down public debate with the help of a compliant liberal news media and a secular culture — while squawking about tolerance and values.
“It’s easier for the illiberal left to demonize their opponents and sanctify themselves as higher moral beings that treat differences of opinions respectfully,” Ms. Powers says, noting that the left reserves a “special strain of strident wrath” for Christians.
“Illiberal feminists can’t seem to fathom that some people actually believe an unborn human matters or that abortion is harmful to women. Sometimes the mask comes off and what we see is that illiberal feminism is often driven by a base hatred of Christianity,” the author explains.
She also says the left has become Orwellian indeed, policing the speech and opinions of public officials, conservatives and everyday folk in an effort to delegitimize their views. And they are very specific with their maneuvers.
“Non-white conservatives are called sellouts and race traitors. Conservative women are treated like dim-witted, self-loathing puppets of the patriarchy, or nefarious gender traitors. Men who express the wrong political or ideological view are demonized as hostile interlopers into the public debate,” Ms. Powers says. “The illiberal left sees the bullying and squelching of free speech as a righteous act.”
And that is a disturbing phenomenon. The book from Regnery Publishing has been deemed “a searing and courageous indictment of the growing intolerance of the American left” by commentator Charles Krauthammer.
Concerned parents are trying to block a vote by the Fairfax County Public School Board — which oversees the largest public school system in Virginia — to include “gender identity” in its nondiscrimination policy.
Under the new provision, transgender students and faculty would be considered a protected class, meaning that male students who identify as female could use female bathrooms, and parents would not be able to opt their children out of classes taught by transgender teachers.
Parents are outraged that the school board hasn’t given them the opportunity to ask questions about the implications of the new provision, and say the board is sneaking a policy amendment through without collaborating with the community.
Jeanette Hough, a mother of two FCPS students and with one more about to enter the system, said that the school board has flooded her inbox with emails about changes to school start times and holding all-day Monday classes for preschoolers. Those emails even included studies on the effects of those changes and surveys for parents to take.
But this time, the board has had little communication with parents or PTAs.
“It seems to me, if this is an honest concern, there should be an honest discussion and an honest debate. It seems very sneaky and political and not looking after the best interests of our community and children,” Ms. Hough said. “I would like time to ask questions. For example, why is this addition necessary? How did this come to the table?”
The issue of transgenderism has been raised in the national debate in recent months over such celebrities as “Orange Is the New Black” star Laverne Cox and former Olympic gold medalist and reality TV star Bruce Jenner.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, ruled in March that local school boards have the authority under state law to include sexual orientation and gender identity in anti-discrimination policies. Under previous administrations only the state assembly could authorize such a change.
“Every Virginian has the right to live, learn, and work without fear of discrimination,” Mr. Herring said in a written statement on the decision. “That’s a Virginia value, and one that we must guard even more carefully when it comes to our children.”
John Torre, a spokesman for the school board, said that parents were able to raise concerns about the policy change when it was introduced at the last public meeting on April 23.
If approved, the policy would read: “No student, employee, or applicant for employment in the Fairfax County Public Schools shall, on the basis of [among other things] gender identity be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity, as required by law.”
The board will meet at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Luther Jackson Middle School in Falls Church to vote on the gender identity policy.
Mr. Torre said the board hadn’t decided anything yet regarding accommodations that will be provided under the new policy and said that FCPS will hire a consultant to assist in developing appropriate regulations that protect the rights of all students and to comply with state and federal law.
But Andrea Lafferty, president of the Traditional Values Coalition and an FCPS mother, said that the way the meetings are set up does not give parents ample opportunity to discuss their concerns. At the April 23 meeting there were ten slots allotted for parents and community members to sign up to speak about any issue. Each speaker was allowed just three minutes to talk.
Ms. Lafferty said this week a group of parents got up at 6 a.m. to sign up to speak at the Thursday board meeting, but demand for the slots was so high that the system crashed.
“They want to push this through,” she said. “The board took years to discuss sleep deprivation and if they should change start times for school kids, and now they are giving one hour max conversation time about this?”
The majority of the board members support the change, but board member Elizabeth Schultz, who represents Springfield, is working to postpone the change until parents have had time to have their questions answered.
Ms. Schultz told The Washington Times that she submitted an amendment to the proposal on Tuesday that, if approved, would postpone a final vote until October so the board can be presented with draft resolutions and presentations on the impact of the change.
“We don’t have an understanding of what this policy means and how it’s going to affect our buildings and our schools,” Ms. Schultz said, adding that taxpayers would bear the cost of building new gender-neutral bathrooms for some schools.
“There is a lack of understanding here that we are a pubic school system funded with public taxpayer money for the public benefit. This is not a political playground that is an opportunity to do social or political experimenting. Anything else is less than transparent and certainly less than accountable to the stakeholders,” Ms. Schultz said. “I think to call this premature is a profound understatement.”
Robert Rigby, a Latin teacher and the sponsor of the Gay-Straight Alliance at West Potomac High School, said that while harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation have decreased in recent years, transgender persons continue to experience a great deal of harassment.
“Our whole community, our staff and our students, need to be conscious of the concerns of students who are different in this way. The school board has the authority and the opportunity to make a crucial difference in the lives of our students to take the first steps, and only the first steps, toward making school a tolerable place for transgender students,” Mr. Rigby said during the April 23 meeting.
But opponents say the sweeping policy will hurt the majority of students, and that schools can accommodate a small number of transgender students without encroaching on the rights of other students.
“What we are seeing over and over is that the biologically female is being told, ‘If you don’t want to be in a bathroom with a person with gender identity issues, then you need to wait or you need to go somewhere else,’” Ms. Lafferty said, pointing out that most schools have gender-neutral restrooms in the nurse’s office. “The majority is being hurt by a very small minority, and there are ways to provide and protect for the minority. “
According to Ms. Lafferty, the new policy could domino into private schools and community sports teams as well, and it is likely that other school districts will follow suit.
Ms. Hough argued that discussions about gender identity should be left to parents, not the school board.
“I certainly think that this should be in the home, and I certainly don’t think we should be making broad policy changes before we even understand the implications. Bruce Jenner is an adult, and he can certainly do what he wants to do,” Ms. Hough said. “Where’s the protection for children who are following their sexual identity? A boy who now says he identifies as a girl is now encroaching on my daughter’s privacy.”
We all know that children think magically, and naturally inhabit a world of fantasy and imagination. It’s the perfect place to be when you’re a kid. The problem is, adults on the left seem to have decided they deserve to live in that same magical world, where facts and logic and reason just don’t exist.
Last week I appeared on “Fox and Friends,” the Fox News Channel powerhouse morning program, to discuss an elementary school in Maine reading a book about a “transgendered child” to its students in all classes, including kindergarten. Parents were not informed beforehand, and many were furious. I appeared with a psychologist, not to discuss transgenderism, but whether presenting this sort of information to small children, who are without the capacity for conceptual thinking, was appropriate.
The psychologist and I agreed: This sort of information has no business being taught to small children in the school system, and certainly not without the express approval of their parents.
I expect people to disagree with me on certain issues, including about how adults handle issues of sex and identity, but dignity demands that we leave the 5-year-olds out of it.
During the “Fox and Friends” segment, host Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked, “Are kids ready to be talking about any relationship in terms of sexuality or gender at the age of five?” The psychologist was adamantly against it on the grounds of the psychological conceptual limitations of children.
In light of that, I referred to my own childhood to highlight the magical thinking of children:
“This is really about our projection of our issues as adults onto children, and we have to consider that. Look, when I was a child, I thought I was a cocker spaniel, and there’s a point where we have these fantasies, we think we are Superman, we can fly, we’re the cat. This is childhood … .”
Reverting to their own magical thinking, various gay-establishment bloggers and activists, likely adorned in their “NOH8” gear, apparently appalled at my argument that kids are, well, kids, posted desperate stories with headlines like “Tammy Bruce compares transgendered people to dogs!” and “Fox News pundit compares being transgender to thinking that you’re a cocker spaniel.”
Uh, no. But welcome to the adult world of magical thinking. I was referring to children and how they think. Yet, for the malignant narcissists on the left, everything has to be about them. It’s also a headline that shamelessly misleads their own base into acting like fools.
Never able to address issues like adults, the immediate effort was to absurdly misrepresent what I said, including omitting that we were discussing children, trusting that their gang of NOH8 bullies wouldn’t even bother to watch the actual segment.
It was easier, and perhaps more dramatic, to condemn a gay woman for something she never said because she committed the crime of challenging an establishment narrative.
I have a tiny feeling none of the liberal and gay and lesbian activists grasped the irony of what they were doing.
The magical thinking problem on the left isn’t confined to the activist base. We’re seeing the fact of this with the surprising chaos within the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
Only magical thinking could compel someone to create her own email server and think it wouldn’t matter to the American people. Only fantasy and disconnection from the real world would make the Clintons believe that questionable financial transactions with foreign governments, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, wouldn’t be scrutinized and generate questions of bribery and quid-pro-quo activity.
Only magical thinking would make you believe that the American people would accept lies about a terrorist attack which resulted in the deaths of an American ambassador and three other heroes.
The human condition itself reminds us all the time that it is, per se, fragile. Our problem is those who are behaving the most like children, relying exclusively on feelings, emotions and fantasy, are in positions of power and influence.
While this behavior does not bode well for the Democratic Party or left-wing special-interest groups, conservatives shouldn’t necessarily celebrate. The strength of our system relies on competition and challenge. If half of our political and social structure is melting down because of disconnected magical thinking, our entire system will be the worse off.
Liberals who still understand the value of logic, reason and critical thinking need to step up to save not just their political apparatus, but they must begin to challenge the so-called leadership of their various special constituencies. Without intervention, they will make a mockery of the important social gains of gays and lesbians, all in the name of punishing those who don’t conform and dare to challenge any of their carefully constructed narratives.
Sometimes, what appears to be complex is actually rather simple.
On a host of electoral integrity issues, the liberal position can be summarized in two words: enable cheating. You think that’s too harsh?
How else to explain the race-baiting rhetoric from President Obama on down against something as common-sense as voter photo ID laws, which the public supports by wide margins? Or the intense drive for Election Day registration, mail-in voting and earlier and earlier balloting, all of which make it harder to detect and prevent vote fraud? Or the opposition to any law ensuring that only citizens can vote?
A case in point of the latter is the Obama administration’s stiff-arming of two states that want to require proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote. Kansas and Arizona, which already require proof of citizenship on state election forms, asked the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to include a requirement for proof of citizenship on the federal form.
Backed by the Obama Justice Department, the EAC declined. The two states sued, won in U.S. District Court, but saw the verdict overturned in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Now, the case is heading for the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a brief submitted this past week asking the court to take the case, the American Civil Rights Union provided key evidence — federal voter registration forms — exposing the shocking ease with which noncitizens can register to vote without any proof of citizenship.
Of the 13 forms gathered from Harris County, Texas, by the voter integrity group True the Vote, “Four of the individuals actually checked ‘no’ on the citizenship question, six checked ‘no’ and ‘yes,’ and the remaining three left the checkbox blank entirely.” Nevertheless, they were all registered to vote. What’s wrong with this picture?
The brief notes that the Constitution “grants the States the power to control who may vote in federal elections [t]he EAC’s determination constitutes a usurpation of a power guaranteed to the States by the Constitution of the United States.”
If this were happening in normal times, it might not be so alarming. However, Mr. Obama is literally trying to replace the current electorate, which annoys him, with millions of new voters who can be bribed with federal welfare.
The White House Task Force on New Americans held a briefing last week at the George Soros-backed Migration Policy Institute to push its new “Strategic Action Plan on Immigrant and Refugee Integration,” according to the Daily Caller.
The Task Force is chaired by White House Domestic Policy Adviser Cecilia Munoz, former vice president of the radical racialist National Council for La Raza (“the Race”).
With tens of thousands of illegal aliens, many of them children, still pouring over the Texas border, the Obama administration recently assigned Social Security numbers to more than 500,000 illegals who qualified for Mr. Obama’s unilateral “Dreamer” amnesty in 2012. This does not go unnoticed where millions would like to enter the United States legally or illegally.
How would you like to be an election official in Texas or Arizona, faced with hundreds of thousands of possible new voters who are not citizens but who hold Social Security cards — a prime ID for registering to vote?
Another way the left is gaming elections is to use government power to silence conservatives during election cycles. The most glaring example is the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal harassment of tea parties and other conservative groups before the 2012 election, for which nobody has been held accountable — not even former IRS nonprofit official Lois “I’ll take the Fifth” Lerner. She has retired with a full pension.
In Wisconsin, left-wing prosecutors have been waging a war on conservative groups whose views align with those of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who survived a union-led recall election in 2012 and then was re-elected in 2014. As The Wall Street Journal noted, several prosecutors “blanketed conservatives with subpoenas, raided their homes and put the targets under a gag order” so they couldn’t even alert the public to the jackboot tactics. Meanwhile, the prosecutors leaked one-sided details to the press while their victims could not respond. This is the left’s idea of securing fair elections.
Eric O’Keefe, director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, filed a civil rights lawsuit against Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm and other prosecutors, and in May 2014, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa agreed that the law enforcers had overreached by seeking criminal charges against the groups “for exercising issue advocacy speech rights that on their face are not subject to the regulations or statutes the defendants seek to enforce.”
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case, and the Club for Growth’s appeal has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court. If they follow the logic of their 2010 Citizens United ruling allowing corporations and unions the freedom to donate to campaigns, the justices should side with the Wisconsin groups being persecuted for their views.
Each of the attacks on electoral integrity in isolation would be disturbing. As a whole, they send the unmistakable message that the left will do anything — anything — to cheat and prevent another populist uprising like the national elections in 2010 and 2014.
The Army is asking the gun industry to build new components for its soldiers’ primary weapon — the M4 carbine — a move that experts say is a tacit admission that the service has been supplying a flawed rifle that lacks the precision of commercially available guns.
At a recent Capitol Hill hearing, an Army general acknowledged that the M4’s magazine has been responsible for the gun jamming during firefights.
On the federal government’s FedBizOpps.gov website, the Army announced a “market survey” for gunmakers to produce a set of enhancements to essentially create a new model — the “M4A1+.” It would include a modular trigger, a new type of rail fitted around a “free floating” barrel and other parts. The upgrade is supposed to improve the rifle’s accuracy and reliability.
The Army last year took the significant step of beginning to convert the basic M4 into the special operations version, the M4A1, with a heavier barrel designed to better withstand the heat of rapid fire.
The Washington Times reported in 2014 on confidential prewar tests that showed the barrel was prone to overheating. The Times also quoted active-duty soldiers who said the M4 is inferior based on their experience in battle. A Green Beret said he takes the extraordinary step of rebuilding his M4A1 on the battlefield by using components from other gunmakers — technically a violation of Army regulations.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, an artillery officer and decorated Vietnam combatant, is one of the M4’s most vocal critics. He also believes the 5.56 mm M855A1 ammunition — an environmentally sensitive, or “green,” round — is wrong for the gun.
Gen. Scales said the Army’s new solicitation is further proof of the carbine’s shortfalls.
“It’s another attempt by the Army to make the M4 look good,” he said. “If the Army wants to improve the M4, fine. But it’s not a weapon suitable for high-intensity, close combat in extremes against an enemy who is basically matching us in weapons performance in a close fight. Everybody knows the weapon has flaws.”
Mr. Scales said the M4’s basic shortfall is that it uses gas, or direct, impingement to extract and expel its shells as opposed to a piston system. A piston firing mechanism is in the prolific AK-47, which runs cleaner and cooler but is considered slightly less accurate.
One consistent complaint about the M4, even from users who love the gun, is that it requires frequent cleaning. Another frequent gripe is that the 30-round magazine is prone to jamming.
“It’s what everyone has known for 50 years,” Mr. Scales said. “There is no mystery here. Every report, every study, every anecdotal piece of evidence has long ago proven that the gas-impingement system of that rifle is imperfect because there’s not a firm connection for the operating system to move in one piece. The technology cannot be improved unless you remove gas impingement. And the Army knows that.”
Old gun, new parts
Direct impingement versus a piston system has been a lively debate among gun enthusiasts. Proponents of gas impingement argue that the gun is more accurate, and its parts are less expensive and easier to find.
The Army’s industry solicitation states: “The M4A1+ components shall provide a synergistic effect to enhance soldier and weapon system lethality, survivability, and operational effectiveness.”
Max Slowik, a firearms expert at Guns.com, wrote a column on the M4A1+ package that notes that these features are already commercially available on rifles under the grouping AR-15s (named for its first manufacturer, ArmaLite). His article implies the Army M4 is behind the times.
“While it will be some time before we see how any of this materializes, this is great news for soldiers everywhere,” Mr. Slowik wrote. “We can’t know for certain what the M4A1+ is going to look like, but we do know that it’ll have more than a little resemblance to the more tricked-out AR-15s on the commercial market.”
Mr. Slowik said in an email the M4 has had a list of shortfalls.
“The M4 carbine, and, to a lesser degree, the M4A1 have shortcomings, but they can be ameliorated with modern free-floating hand guards, lighter triggers, heavier barrels and improved magazines,” he said, noting some of the items in the desired new package.
Asked why the M4 lags behind commercial models, he said: “Compared to the commercial market, the military market is small and slow. The commercial and law enforcement markets are more interested in the next big thing and are willing to experiment with newer technologies. While a lot of it doesn’t directly apply to military rifles, there are many newer features, materials, finishes and accessories — including the upgrades that the M4A1+ program is asking for — that are well-established with commercial users.”
For example, Mr. Slowik says the Army wants to add a “low profile” gas block and free-floating hand guards, changes that should improve accuracy because they “don’t touch or deflect the barrel like fixed hand guards.”
“This is a major part of why commercial rifles achieve better, more predictable accuracy over current M4s,” he said, underscoring the point that the Army is behind the private gun world.
A congressional military staffer who tracks small-arms acquisition said the solicitation for the M1A1+ means the “Army is starting to finally worry about what we warned a decade ago. There’s better stuff out there, and our guys don’t have it.”
The bad news, the staffer said, is that the way the Army wrote the solicitation allows the service to maintain complete control and “kick out anything that doesn’t fit with the M4 50-year-old technology. The best solution will not rise to the top.”
Said Mr. Scales: “They’ll go off on their merry way to try to improve on a system that is terribly flawed while contesting the fact it is terribly flawed to the media.”
‘A capable weapon’
The Army on Monday released a statement to The Times that said, in part: “The M4A1+ modifications and training are intended to provide for improved mounting flexibility for enablers [such as] lights, lasers, optics, slings, grips, bipods, ancillary weapons. They are part of the continuous evolution of a weapon as technology becomes available. This enhanced flexibility in system configuration in conjunction with appropriate training techniques provides for improved Soldier performance under a wide variety of mission scenarios.”
Army officials last month delivered a defense of the M4 at a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing.
Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California, senior Democrat on the tactical air and land forces subcommittee, said soldiers have told her that they don’t like the gun.
“I continue to hear inside and outside the military that the individual soldier or Marine wants a replacement for the M4 and the M4A1,” Ms. Sanchez said during the hearing.
Lt. Gen. Anthony Ierardi, deputy chief of staff for equipment integration, said the Army has made more than 90 improvements to the M4.
“That weapon continues to move it forward,” Gen. Ierardi testified. “And it is a capable weapon.”
Concerning soldier complaints, Gen. Ierardi, who was assigned to the Pentagon after having commanded a division, said: “In my service [with] in 1st Cavalry Division, I did not hear one complaint from my soldiers about the M4 carbine. As a matter of fact, soldiers wanted the M4 for what it brings, which is a compact, easy-to-maintain and capable weapon.”
Ms. Sanchez: “So you never had a reliability issue with respect to that with the men that served with you, the men and women?”
Gen. Ierardi: “There have been a number of improvements in this weapon system. And our strategy right now is to continue to improve what we have while we look to procure new M4A1s.”
Ms. Sanchez: “OK. Well, I would beg to differ with what I hear. So I will continue down this warpath of trying to get the individual soldier and Marine a better weapon, especially with some of the studies that I’ve seen.”
The congresswoman added: “When I get calls, it’s always about [that] these things are jamming.”
Lt. Gen. Michael Williamson, an Army acquisition deputy, acknowledged the problem, but said recent upgrades to the M4 have eliminated jamming by changing the magazine.
Soldiers told The Times the M4’s magazine often jams. One combatant said soldiers frequently changed to a German-made magazine once in Afghanistan.
“As you know,” Gen. Williamson said, “when we looked at the upgrade for the M4, one of the things we looked at was the feed mechanism to understand if it was caused by the round or the mechanics of the weapon. We think that we’ve addressed that. To be honest with you, we’ve addressed that in the magazine, where we were having some problems with the feed mechanism.”
In 2013 the Army choose FN Manufacturing, owned by a Belgium conglomerate and the operator of a plant in Columbia, South Carolina, to produce the M4, replacing longtime maker Colt Defense.
A calculated corruptor of justice, by Sidney Powell
The first attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress has demonstrated shocking contempt for the law, and the ability to abuse and corrupt it for the political and social agenda of this president. He has assaulted freedom of speech and press at every turn, stonewalled all investigations into widespread corruption within the administration, undermined and obstructed the work of the agencies’ own inspectors general, and targeted individuals who dared challenge any of it. He has tirelessly protected and promoted corrupt prosecutors and scattered ticking time bombs.
Ironically, it was April 1, 2009, when newly sworn Attorney General Eric Holder proclaimed he was dismissing the indictment against former United States Sen. Ted Stevens. He claimed that he did so “in the interest of justice,” and that he would “clean up” the Department of Justice, whose wrongful prosecution of the senator was corrupted by the misconduct of the prosecutors themselves.
Judge Emmet Sullivan, who had presided over the senator’s trial, dismissed the indictment. The prosecutors had engaged in “the most egregious misconduct” he had seen in 25 years on the bench. Judge Sullivan appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the department and its ironically named Public Integrity Section. That investigation uncovered “systematic and intentional concealment of evidence” by the prosecutors.
Of course, Eric Holder immediately fired the prosecutors who had fabricated evidence, suborned perjury, hidden evidence that proved Stevens’ defense, and cost him his seat in the United States Senate. And of course, Mr. Holder confessed error in the cases of other Alaskans whose convictions the same team of prosecutors had corrupted by using the same witnesses and hiding the same evidence.
Well … actually, no.
Mr. Holder’s prosecutors claimed that the government’s misconduct, deceit and likely obstruction of justice didn’t matter — it wasn’t “material” in the cases of Alaskans Pete Kott and Vic Kohring. That produced two reversals by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and two scathing separate opinions by Judge Betty Fletcher, who would have dismissed the indictments because of “the reprehensible nature of [the department‘s] acts and omissions.”
As for the Stevens prosecutors who were found to have committed intentional misconduct (tantamount to obstruction of justice or subornation of perjury), one served a one-day suspension before the paltry sanctions were reversed on a technical failure of the department itself. Three still work in the department; four moved on to lucrative positions elsewhere.
Eric Holder leaves the department littered with corrupted prosecutions and prosecutors, his own contempt of Congress, numerous Supreme Court reversals and scathing rebukes from federal judges.
The Project on Government Oversight has identified hundreds of instances of intentional or reckless prosecutorial misconduct in the last decade, and Mr. Holder refused to release so much as the names of the prosecutors. Mr. Holder has politicized the department beyond recognition and weaponized every federal agency under it. “Instead of enforcing the rule of law and following legal precedent, he has ignored and twisted the law to suit his president.”
Forty-seven inspectors general of the various agencies wrote an unprecedented letter to Congress to reveal this administration’s obstruction of their investigations.
Of course, there is the Fast and Furious cover-up, in which Mr. Holder asserts executive privilege for emails purportedly to his wife and his mother. Let’s not forget the Internal Revenue Service scandal and the absence of any real investigation of likely criminal conduct by Lois Lerner, others and perhaps the White House. Then there’s the fact that he’s prosecuted more reporters under the Espionage Act than all prior attorneys general put together.
To carry on his legacy of the calculated corruption of justice, he recently installed former Enron Task Force “terror” of a prosecutor Leslie Caldwell as head of the “world’s largest criminal conviction machine.” They have ensconced Andrew Weissmann as head of the powerful fraud section. Ms. Caldwell and Mr. Weissmann sharpened their fangs long ago prosecuting gangsters with none other than incoming Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the notorious Eastern District of New York, where the rules don’t apply to the prosecutors. Ms. Caldwell and Mr. Weissmann destroyed Arthur Andersen LLP and 85,000 jobs only to be reversed by a unanimous Supreme Court.
Mr. Holder leaves a tragic and hideous scar on the face of justice and a corrupt cabal of comrades in his place to perpetuate his Department of (Obstructing and Corrupting) Justice.
Eric Holder’s legacy, by J. Christian Adams
Alas, the Eric Holder era is over. But critics who think his departure means normalcy will return haven’t been paying attention. Mr. Holder was President Obama’s point man for fundamentally transforming the country, and he did his job well.
At the center of Mr. Holder’s transformative agenda was race. Race has always occupied Mr. Holder’s attention; he once said, “There’s a common cause that bonds the black United States attorney with the black criminal.”
In what could have been a presidency where race faded into America’s rear-view mirror, Mr. Holder turned race into the road map.
It all started in 2009 when I was at the Department of Justice. I witnessed a new way of looking at the law. To Mr. Holder and his newly empowered progressive lawyers, the law was a mere suggestion, not a constraining force.
When the Justice Department dismissed my voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party, it was the first inkling this was no ordinary attorney general. Worse yet, after the dismissal, Mr. Holder presided in meetings of Civil Rights Division managers cooking up plans to oust managers who dared to enforce civil rights laws against black defendants.
But the New Black Panther mess was just the beginning.
The Justice Department Civil Rights Division — something Mr. Holder explicitly said would be the focus of his tenure — became an engine of fundamental transformation. It became the taxpayer-fueled command center for the progressive left.
Radical policies, laughable just a decade ago, began to appear in the form of a federal fist.
When a New York high school prohibited boys from dressing like drag queens — wearing pink wigs and stiletto heels — Mr. Holder’s Justice Department forced the Mohawk Central School District to capitulate. Mr. Holder imposed $75,000 annual transvestite sensitivity training on the school for good measure.
Mr. Holder’s Civil Rights Division turned the Americans with Disabilities Act into a federal mandate forcing restaurants, hotels and other public accommodations into allowing miniature horses, pigs and ferrets in as emotional support animals.
When South Carolina and other states enacted photo voter identification laws, Mr. Holder sprang into action and turned the Justice Department into a base-mobilization organization for the president’s re-election in 2012.
Mr. Holder’s opposition to election integrity demonstrates the confluence of race and politics. He conjured all of the morally sacred language of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and employed it recklessly against voter ID.
He compared voter ID to a poll tax, even though courts had specifically rejected such a false comparison.
Just before Christmas in 2011, black voters were unexcited about Mr. Obama. So Mr. Holder launched a government-driven campaign against voter ID in South Carolina and activated a moribund political base for the president’s re-election. Without a racially polarized and activated base, Mr. Obama could not have won in 2012.
Mr. Holder was an attorney general not beyond using scare tactics against minorities to win re-election.
His scare tactics and bullying showed up again in places like Sanford, Florida, and Ferguson, Missouri.
In both places, Mr. Holder’s hasty rhetoric gave comfort to mobs, first against George Zimmerman and then against Officer Darren Wilson. Contrary to tradition at the Justice Department, Mr. Holder brazenly took sides before any investigation was commenced. He went to Ferguson to announce what everybody knew — “I am a black man,” he told the protesters.
Once again, Mr. Holder’s job was to scare and mobilize minorities.
Of course, we now know Mr. Holder’s appearance in Ferguson was just racial theater. The “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative was a lie. But that didn’t matter at the time. Short memories mean the mob grew agitated, and forgot.
What doesn’t have a short life is Mr. Holder’s transformation of the Department of Justice. He has allowed an ideological hiring campaign to take place to fill the rank-and-file with leftist lawyers. When the Justice Department inspector general urged the administration to abandon the use of any perceived ideological litmus tests — such as only hiring lawyers from left-wing civil rights groups — Mr. Holder rejected the request.
Give the devil his due. Holder was a fighter for the left. Department of Justice misbehavior, which would shame previous attorneys general, only seemed to embolden this man. His departure might relieve many, but his legacy should frighten us all.
Eric Holder’s legacy, by Hans von Spakovsky and John Fund
As Attorney General Eric Holder finally departs, he leaves behind a demoralized Justice Department that has been politicized to an unprecedented degree.
Attorneys general are obligated to enforce the law in an objective, unbiased and nonpolitical manner. They must demonstrate the highest regard for the best interests of the public and their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States. Prior attorneys general of both political parties, such as Benjamin Civiletti, Griffin Bell, Ed Meese and Michael Mukasey, have fulfilled that duty to the highest ethical and professional standards.
But not Eric Holder. He put the interests of his political boss first, and the interests of the administration of justice a very distant second. When President Obama bent, broke, changed or rewrote the law, the person at his side advising him how to do it was Eric Holder. All the while, he maintained a facade of respect for the rule of law, something for which he and the president have, at times, shown utter contempt.
Mr. Holder’s failure to enforce federal laws such as our immigration statutes on a wholesale basis is a particularly acute betrayal of the most basic standard that applies to the attorney general. Instead of acting as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Mr. Holder instead has acted as the political lawyer of an overly partisan president. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Holder has one of the lowest approval ratings of any public official.
The recent cases in which judges have found Justice Department prosecutors to have engaged in prosecutorial abuse during Mr. Holder’s tenure show how much this high-level corruption has also seeped into the lower levels of the department.
In a failed prosecution of a peaceful abortion protester, for example, a federal judge remarked on the nearly total lack of evidence of any violation of the law. The protester had been targeted to chill the political speech of pro-life advocates. In another case involving police officers in New Orleans, a federal judge found the Justice Department had committed “grotesque prosecutorial abuse” and complained about the “skullduggery” and “perfidy” of Justice prosecutors.
The politically motivated hiring in the civil service ranks that has gone on in parts of the Justice Department, such as the Civil Rights Division, guarantees that radical ideologues will continue to permeate the department for years to come. As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has said, under Eric Holder the Justice Department has become a “full employment program for progressive activists, race-obsessed bean counters (redundant, I know), and lawyers who volunteered their services during the Bush years to help al Qaeda operatives file lawsuits against the United States.”
The legal theories advanced by the administration have been so far outside of the mainstream that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against Mr. Holder’s Justice Department unanimously almost two-dozen times. Those cases have ranged from the Hosanna-Tabor decision, where the Justice Department claimed the religious freedom clause of the First Amendment did not protect the hiring decisions of a church, to the Sackett case, where the Justice Department tried to prevent a family from defending itself in court and contesting a ludicrous administrative order from Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats that would subject them to a fine of up to $75,000 a day.
Many of those cases have a common theme: a frightening view of unlimited federal power, one untempered by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Eric Holder has aggressively used the enormous power of the Justice Department to abuse the liberty and economic rights of Americans, to manipulate racial politics and drive a wedge of hostility deep into our society, and to exploit the administration of justice as a political tool to benefit his president and his political party.
There is no way to know how long it will take to repair the damage he has done. One thing we do know — it will take a new attorney general with the political willpower and steadfastness of a kind that is rarely seen in Washington.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely Loretta Lynch will clean up Mr. Holder’s misbegotten legacy. She made it clear in her confirmation hearings that she did not disagree with a single act of Mr. Holder or Mr. Obama. Accordingly, her tenure will probably just be Holder 2.0.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, we won’t be invited to attend Eric Holder’s going-away festivities at the Justice Department, but we certainly approve of those festivities, since they mean that one of the worst attorneys general in recent memory is finally leaving the department.
In agreement with America’s enemies, by Joseph F. Connor
Only days before President Obama’s inauguration in Jan., 2009, I was invited to testify at Eric Holder’s confirmation hearing regarding his engineering, as deputy attorney general, the infamous 1999 Clinton clemency grants to 16 unrepentant members of the Puerto Rican terror group, Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN).
From 1974 to 1983, the Marxist FALN waged a bloody war against the United States that included more than 130 bombings, leaving five murdered and scores wounded. On Jan. 24, 1975, the FALN’s most deadly attack, the infamous lunchtime bombing of Fraunces Tavern, a New York City landmark, killed my father, Frank Connor, 33, and three other innocent men. It was the day we were to celebrate my brother’s 11th birthday, and my ninth.
An FALN communique took credit for the attack, calling it a blow against “reactionary corporate executives.” In fact, my dad was born to immigrants and raised in working-class Washington Heights, not far from many of the FALN terrorists and just across the river from the Bronx where Eric Holder was reared.
The FALN continued its reign of terror until the early 1980s, when 11 of its members were convicted of (among other serious felonies) weapons possession and seditious conspiracy. Their prison sentences ranged from 55 to 70 years. Our shattered family felt safer and that a semblance of justice for our father had been reached as these terrorists were essentially put away for life.
That is until 1999, when Eric Holder masterminded President Clinton’s clemency grants that were almost certainly intended to ingratiate carpetbagger and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton with New York’s Hispanic community for her planned 2000 senate campaign.
These terrorists did not apply for clemency but had freedom thrust upon them by Mr. Holder and an administration that met with terror supporters a reported nine times, yet ignored victims and their families in violation of the Victims Rights and Restitutions Act.
Clemency was vehemently opposed by the FBI, police unions and the Bureau of Prisons, among others. The terrorists weren’t required to provide evidence for unsolved crimes as a condition for their freedom. The terrorists actually refused the nominal conditions of clemency and for 30 days were allowed to discuss the individual grants on conference calls between prisons. They ultimately left prison on Sept. 10, 1999.
Only days after his release, FALN member Ricardo Jimenez showed his astounding lack of contrition, telling Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” that my father died at Fraunces Tavern because “measures were not taken that were necessary by the people who owned those establishments.”
One of the FALN, Oscar Lopez Rivera was so unrepentant that he refused clemency and remains in prison today.
These are the people Mr. Holder and the Clintons unleashed on the American public.
Despite our warnings at congressional hearings about how releasing terrorists would only encourage more terrorism, two years later, our father’s godson, Steve Schlag, was murdered with 3,000 others in the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. I witnessed the explosions from my nearby office, having just commuted through the WTC.
At Mr. Holder’s 2009 Senate confirmation hearing, I wrote, “Holder clearly does not have the judgment, character or values to be attorney general.” By releasing terrorists, Mr. Holder played Russian roulette with the American people he was sworn to protect. He should have been disqualified from being attorney general for this act alone.
Anyone paying attention then would have drawn the same conclusion. Unfortunately, 19 of the 39 Republican and all of the Democratic senators were either too blind to see or unwilling to listen. Mr. Holder was overwhelmingly confirmed as attorney general.
Equally unfortunate is that my predictions came true. As attorney general, Mr. Holder played Russian roulette again; this time by arming narco-terrorists during Fast and Furious. Brave U.S. Special Agents Jaime Zapata and Brian Terry, and countless Mexican civilians lost his deadly game, paying with their lives.
Mr. Holder’s abysmal record as attorney general can be traced to his days under Mr. Clinton. His role in releasing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, his reckless approval of the trade of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for the Taliban Five, his treatment of terrorists as ordinary criminals, and his lack of a demand for the return of terrorist fugitives, including FALN bombmaker William Morales from Cuba during the normalization process were all predictable when viewed through the lens of the FALN clemencies.
During his own Senate testimony, Mr. Holder set the tone for this administration’s lack of transparency and excuse of ignorance against the accusation of malfeasance by claiming he didn’t know the FALN terrorists were filmed building bombs by the FBI. He foreshadowed his coming arrogance by casually deeming the release of unrepentant terrorists as “reasonable.”
Sean Hannity asked me back in 2008 why Mr. Holder pushed for terror clemency even before Mrs. Clinton announced her Senate run.
I replied, “Maybe he just agreed with them.”
Some things never change.
The administration has granted about 541,000 Social Security numbers to illegal immigrants under President Obama’s original 2012 deportation amnesty for Dreamers, officials told Congress in a letter made public Wednesday.
That means almost all of the illegal immigrants approved for the amnesty are being granted work permits and Social Security numbers, opening the door to government benefits ranging from tax credits to driver’s licenses.
Social Security officials, in the April 10 letter to Republican Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Ben Sasse of Nebraska, said they don’t keep track of how many illegal immigrants have been denied numbers, and defended their process for granting the ones they have doled out.
“We will not issue an SSN if an individual has insufficient or unacceptable documentation,” Social Security Commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin said in the letter. “In addition, we will not issue an SSN if [Homeland Security] is unable to verify the individual’s immigration/work authorization status.”
Social Security numbers are considered one of the gatekeepers for being able to live and work in the U.S., and some experts have said granting them to illegal immigrants makes it easier for them to access rights reserved only for citizens, such as voting.
But the Obama administration has ruled that the illegal immigrants it has approved for its temporary deportation amnesty, known as “deferred action,” are here legally for as long as the program exists, and so they are entitled to work permits and Social Security numbers.
The IRS has acknowledged that getting a Social Security number entitles illegal immigrants to go back and claim refunds under the Earned Income Tax Credit for time they worked illegally — even if they didn’t file returns or pay taxes for those years.
Republican critics of the president’s immigration policy say he’s helping illegal immigrants at the expense of American workers, whose taxes pay for Social Security and other government benefits.
“This grant transfers jobs, wealth and benefits from marginalized U.S. workers directly to illegal workers,” said Stephen Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Sessions. “One of the most dramatic costs of amnesty — whether legislative or imposed through executive diktat — is the opening of our federal Trust Funds to large numbers of lower-income illegal immigrants.”
Mr. Obama’s latest amnesty, announced in November 2014, has been halted by a federal court, so no Social Security numbers have been granted under that policy.
But the first amnesty, announced in June 2012 and covering young adult illegal immigrants known as Dreamers, remains in effect, and had approved nearly 639,000 persons as of the end of 2014.
All those applying for the amnesty are required to apply for a work permit as well, and almost all are approved for that document, which they can then use to obtain a Social Security number.
About 541,000 numbers had been granted as of the end of 2014, meaning about 85 percent of all Dreamers had been given the coveted numbers. Still others could be in the pipeline, making the actual approval rate somewhat higher.
A federal appeals court earlier this month tossed a challenge to the 2012 amnesty, ruling that neither immigration agents nor Mississippi, who had both sued to stop the policy, had standing to bring a lawsuit.
That appeals court will hold an initial oral argument session Friday on the 2014 amnesty, which could grant tentative legal status, work permits and Social Security numbers to as many as 5 million illegal immigrants.
In the beginning there were good parents and bad parents. Then came “deadbeat dads,” who didn’t support their children. “Soccer moms” were (mostly suburban) mothers who spent a good part of their day getting their children to the playing fields on time. Then “helicopter parents” arrived, hovering over everything their kids did.
Now come “free-range parents,” who believe that children should be able to roam free and explore their world without oppressive supervision. That’s hardly a novel concept of child-raising, but this week Danielle and Alexander Meitiv, two self-described free-range parents in Silver Spring, Maryland, stepped into a nanny-state nightmare. Or, rather, their two children, Rafi, 10, and Dvora, 8, did, and were taken into police custody after a neighbor saw them walking on their own to a park two-and-a-half blocks from their home, and ratted them out to the cops. The cops said the kids were “taken into custody” at 5 p.m., turned over to Child Protective Services, and released to their parents at 10:30 p.m. The cops, having halted this crime wave, say the case remains “under investigation.”
“The police coerced our children into the back of a patrol car and kept them trapped there for three hours,” Mrs. Meitiv says, “without notifying us, before bringing them to the Crisis Center, and holding them there without dinner for another two-and-a-half hours. We finally got home at 11 p.m. and the kids slept in our room because we were all exhausted and terrified.”
The Meitivs are hardened “criminals.” They were cited in December for being “responsible for unsubstantiated child neglect” by state Child Protective Services when they allowed the kids to walk home alone from a park about a mile from their home. The only offense here was by the authorities, an offense against good sense.
The Meitivs are unrepentant, as they should be. “We fully intend to appeal,” Danielle Meitiv told ABC’s “Nightline” and “we have no intention of changing our parenting approach. Frankly, I think that raising independent children and responsible children and giving them the freedom that I enjoyed, is a risk worth taking. In the end, it’s our decision as parents.”
The Meitivs were not charged with a crime. Most states don’t have laws setting out how old a child must be to be left alone, although a mother in Florida was arrested for allowing her 7-year-old to walk to the park. Maryland law states that children under 8 years old may not be left unattended in a house or car, but there’s nothing in the law about kids being alone outdoors.
The Meitivs have their children back only after signing a “safety plan.” They were warned that further “infraction” means another seizure of the kids, who would then be turned over to the custody of Child Protective Services. These children are not abused by anyone but the nannies of the state of Maryland. These parents only wanted to give them a chance, to go a-roaming. That’s what nature intended.
The administration is deporting fewer criminal aliens than it did last year, according to new statistics released Tuesday that undercut President Obama’s justification for his new amnesty, which he said was intended to free agents to focus on the most dangerous of criminals by focusing on “felons not families.”
Instead, both arrests and deportations of criminal aliens are down about 30 percent through the first six months of fiscal year 2015, signaling that agents, who have been told to stop focusing on rank-and-file illegal immigrants, have not been able to refocus on criminal illegal immigrants instead.
The data, released by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte at the beginning of a hearing with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana, also showed that the 30,558 criminal aliens ICE knowingly released back into the community in 2014 had amassed nearly 80,000 convictions, including 250 homicides, 186 kidnappings and 373 sexual assaults.
“The nonsensical actions of this administration demonstrate its lack of desire to enforce the law even against unlawful aliens convicted of serious crimes,” Mr. Goodlatte said.
Ms. Saldana said she’s required under the laws passed by Congress to grant due process to everyone, and said both court decisions and federal law require her to make judgments about whom to hold.
“Even the Congress contemplated some people would be released,” Ms. Saldana said.
But she said she’s also taken steps to require senior managers to review the releases in the future, which she said should being consistency and a more thorough review to the process.
“I myself have a concern — are we making the proper decisions?” she said.
According to the statistics, the aliens released by ICE had amassed 13,636 convictions for driving under the influence, 1,589 weapons offenses, 994 aggravated assaults, 56 arsons and 31 smuggling offenses.
The Obama administration has claimed that many of those releases are required by court order stemming from a years-old Supreme Court ruling, Zadvydas v. Davis, that says immigrants can’t be held indefinitely and if their home countries won’t take them back, they must eventually be released.
But the new numbers suggest those released are a small fraction. Of the nearly more than 30,000 criminal aliens released, only 2,457 were cut loose because of considerations stemming from the Zadvydas ruling, the House committee said. And for the serious crimes, only about half the homicide convictions and a third of the kidnapping convictions were Zadvydas-related releases.
Ms. Saldana said federal law instructs her agents to take account of how old the crimes are when deciding whether to continue detaining someone.
ICE also says that even when people are released from detention, they are still being monitored and are supposed to check in, and to return for their court hearings.
Even as she took fire from Republicans for lax enforcement, Ms. Saldana faced criticism from Democrats who said her agents are still doing too much to go after rank-and-file illegal immigrants.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren appeared on one of the late night talk shows last week, beating the class warfare drum and arguing for billions of dollars in new social programs paid for with higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires. In recent years, though, blue states such as California, Illinois, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland and Minnesota adopted this very strategy, and they raised taxes on their wealthy residents. How did it work out? Almost all of these states lag behind the national average in growth of jobs and incomes.
So, if income redistribution policies are the solution to shrinking the gap between rich and poor, why do they fail so miserably in the states?
The blue states that try to lift up the poor with high taxes, high welfare benefits, high minimum wages and other Robin Hood policies tend to be the places where the rich end up the richest and the poor the poorest.
California is the prototypical example. It has the highest tax rates of any state. It has very generous welfare benefits. Many of its cities have a high minimum wage. But day after day, the middle class keeps leaving. The wealthy areas such as San Francisco and the Silicon Valley boom. Yet the state has nearly the highest poverty rate in the nation. The Golden State, alas, has become the inequality state.
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In a new report called “Rich States, Poor States” that I write each year for the American Legislative Exchange Council with Arthur Laffer and Jonathan Williams, we find that five of the highest-tax blue states in the nation — California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois — lost some 4 million more U.S. residents than entered these states over the last decade (see chart). Meanwhile, the big low-tax red states — Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia — gained about this many new residents.
So much for liberal policies creating a workers paradise.
One liberal economic think tank — the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy — recently issued a report on the states with the most and least “regressive” tax systems. The conclusion was that states should raise their income taxes on the rich to be more “fair.” Except it turns out that people are leaving the states that the think tank ranks as fair, and they are moving to the states the think tank ranks as economically backward.
The least “regressive” tax states had average population growth from 2003 to 2013 that lagged below the national trend. The 10 most highly “regressive” tax states, including nine with no state income tax, had population growth on average 4 percent above the U.S. average. Why was that? Because states without income taxes have twice the job growth of states with high tax rates. Unlike the experts at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, most Americans think that fairness means having a job.
Ohio University economist Richard Vedder and I compared the income gap in states with higher tax rates, higher minimum wages and more welfare benefits with states on the other side of the policy spectrum. There was no evidence that states with these liberal policies had helped the poor much and, in many cases, these states recorded more income inequality than other states as measured by the left’s favorite statistic called the Gini Coefficient.
The 19 states with minimum wages above the $7.25 per hour federal minimum do not have lower income inequality. States with a super minimum wage — such as Connecticut ($9.15), California ($9.00), New York ($8.75), and Vermont ($9.15) — have significantly wider gaps between rich and poor than states without a super minimum wage.
States are supposed to be laboratories of democracy, right? These laboratories are providing us with concrete evidence that Robin Hood policies don’t help make the poor richer, they make most people poorer. In other words, the blue states have tried the Elizabeth Warren “progressive” agenda and people are voting with their feet by fleeing in droves. The kinds of income redistribution policies that Ms. Warren and others endorse can only work by building a Berlin Wall so no one can leave — though I hope I’m not giving them any ideas.
Businesses are increasingly making use of a little-known program that lets them hire high-skilled foreign workers for internships, without having to pay their payroll taxes — creating what critics say is yet another perverse incentive to pick would-be immigrants over American workers.
Employers don’t have to pay the taxes on workers here under the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which allows former students to stay and work for up to 29 months after they graduate from a U.S. college or university, and nearly 500,000 applications have been approved over the last five years, according to a report being released Monday by the Center for Immigration Studies.
“You can be out of your university for more than two years and kindly old Uncle Sam still regards you as a student, allows you to still work legally in this country and worse, pays your employer a bonus instead of hiring a comparably qualified citizen or green card holder,” said David North, the researcher who wrote the report.
OPT was designed so new graduates could gain experience in their field. The program was supposed to be a 12-month grace period, but President George W. Bush created a program that allows foreign former students who got degrees in certain math, science or technology fields to remain an additional 17 months.
President Obama expanded the definitions to allow more foreigners to qualify for the program, and late last year, as part of his deportation amnesty, announced he would expand the program even further — though no details have been released yet.
Mr. North said the government has missed out on $4 billion in Social Security and Medicare taxes that would have been paid by workers who are subject to the payroll tax.
Use of the 12-month program has risen 34 percent from 2009 to 2013, when there were 93,143 applications approved. But the 17-month tech program has grown much faster, more than tripling from fewer than 6,000 applications granted in 2009 to 19,115 approved in 2013.
The program is run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which polices the schools, who in turn are supposed to make sure their tech graduates are only working in the fields they studied.
But Mr. North, who pried records loose from the Homeland Security Department through open-records requests, said he found little evidence of schools being monitored, and he said counting on schools to police their graduates on their own is a tall order.
“Can you imagine, after finding a violation, that a college official would call ICE saying ‘deport these alumni’?” he said. “Can you imagine ICE doing anything with that information if it received it in the first place?”
The University of Southern California was the heaviest user of both the 12-month OPT program and the 17-month extension program for science and technology workers, according to the report.
USC didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.
ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said while the agency hasn’t seen the report, its system does try to enforce the rules on record keeping and ensuring a student’s work is associated with his degree.
She said the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which oversees OPT, has made improvements such as asking for more information for non-tech participants, and calculating the risk factor for students to break the rules, such as working too many hours.
Ms. Christensen said more enhancements are coming, including better guidance to schools about how to handle the program, and new reporting requirements for the schools to meet.
The OPT program is just one part of the intersection of immigration and tax laws that has gained attention recently.
Mr. Obama’s deportation amnesty, announced last year, creates a $3,000-per-worker incentive for some businesses to hire the illegal immigrants approved for that program. Those granted the amnesty are allowed to work in the U.S., but are ineligible for Obamacare, meaning that some companies who hires them but choose not to provide insurance for them won’t have to pay the $3,000 per-worker penalty under Obamacare’s employer mandate.
Guest-worker programs, which is what the OPT program is closest to, are also coming under scrutiny after some tech workers at Southern California Edison, a tech firm, told Congress last month that they were laid off, then forced to train their replacements, who were foreigners brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa for high-skilled workers.
Mr. North said employers often use the OPT programs as a test-run before turning fully to H-1B guest-workers.
For California Gov. Jerry Brown to crack down on shower-taking and toilet-flushing to save precious quarts of water as millions of gallons flow into the Pacific Ocean doesn’t make a lot of sense to Travis Allen.
The Republican Assembly member from Orange County is among those decrying the specter of dead lawns, dirty cars and neighborhood water watches as California braces for its first mandatory water reductions on urban consumption, which accounts for about 10 percent of the state’s usage.
“For the governor to come out and say, ‘Look, we all have to now take shorter showers and kill our front lawns and stop washing our cars,’ that is not the answer,” Mr. Allen said. “Forty percent of our water is going into the Pacific Ocean. The answer is, let’s stop sending that water into the Pacific, and let’s send it into our cities, into our homes.”
With everyday Californians now on the hook for drastic conservation measures, Republicans say the time has come to focus on the real culprit: a state and federal regulatory framework, fueled by environmental litigation, that requires a certain aquatic environment for at-risk fish while making it nearly impossible to build dams and other water-storage projects.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy described Mr. Brown’s April 1 executive order as the “culmination of failed federal and state policies that have exacerbated the current drought into a man-made water crisis.”
“Sacramento and Washington have chosen to put the well-being of fish above the well-being of people by refusing to capture millions of acre-feet of water during wet years for use during dry years,” the Bakersfield Republican said in a statement. “These policies imposed on us now, and during wet seasons of the past, are leaving our families, businesses, communities and state high and dry.”
Environmentalists have long blamed agriculture for absorbing more than its share of water, but figures from the California Department of Water Resources show that farming accounts for about 41 percent of applied water usage. Fully 48 percent is reserved for environmental purposes, which includes improving the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and its most famous inhabitant, the delta smelt.
So far Republicans, farmers and business interests have been unable to drum up much outrage over the situation, but that may change with the Democratic governor’s historic restrictions, prompted by a record low snowpack and fourth year of drought.
The order calls for urban water agencies to achieve a 25 percent reduction through methods such as increased rates, reductions in kitchen and bathroom faucet flow rates and converting 50 million square feet of lawn into “drought-tolerant landscaping.”
Environmentalists laud the stricter conservation order.
“The days of casual waste and inattentive consumption are over in California,” Steve Fleischli, water program director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “Now everyone will be expected to do his or her part to help save water.”
California Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins called the governor’s move “the right step at the right time. Now it’s up to all of us to do our part.”
But Mr. Allen says he already is getting calls from his constituents, who see such measures as a drop in the bucket.
“I think the biggest backlash is actually coming from just normal people, who are taking a look and saying, ‘Look, urban consumption of water in California is 10 percent or less. And so how does not watering my lawn or taking a shorter shower, how is that going to improve the overall water situation in California?’ And the answer is, it’s not,” Mr. Allen said.
Watering the delta
U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, California Republican, said voters may have a tough time swallowing higher water bills and stiff fines — the State Water Resources Control Board allows fines of up to $500 per day for infractions — even as the federal Bureau of Reclamation empties water into the delta to improve conditions for the fish.
“It’s going to be very hard for him [Mr. Brown] to summon any kind of moral authority to fine people $500 if they waste a gallon of water on their lawns or sidewalks and yet have no problems wasting millions of gallons of water in the pursuit of making the fish perfectly happy,” Mr. McClintock said Saturday in an interview with WND/Radio America.
Not that House Republicans haven’t sounded this alarm before. The House approved legislation most recently in 2014 to restore some of the water now washing into the delta — and, ultimately, the ocean — for agricultural users. That bill died in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
This year Mr. McClintock has sponsored H.R. 1668, the Save Our Water Act, which he describes as “this radical idea that maybe when an area is suffering a severe drought, they shouldn’t continue to release water in order to adjust river water temperatures.”
Steve Martarano, spokesman for the FWS’s Bay-Delta Office, told ThinkProgress that allowing water to flow uncaptured from the Sierra Nevada mountain range to San Francisco Bay may appear wasteful, but it provides a host of environmental benefits.
“You frequently hear the criticism that delta outflow is just being wasted in the ocean,” said Mr. Martarano, “but it provides many other ecosystem functions: It dilutes pollutants, provides habitat for waterfowl and provides water-freshening benefits to the delta.”
The delta smelt, regarded as an “indicator species” for the health of the delta, is listed as threatened by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Last month, however, fish biologist Peter Moyle of the University of California, Davis said the species is “approaching the point of no return” in the wild, with only six caught in last month’s state survey, the lowest in 47 years.
“Prepare for extinction of Delta smelt,” he said in his March 18 post on the California WaterBlog, adding that the fish won’t disappear altogether because it’s being bred in two hatcheries.
Other delta fish in danger include two salmon species, the longfin smelt and the green sturgeon, leading critics to ask whether keeping water in the delta at the expense of crops and consumers has actually done any good.
“[T]he frustration we have is the agencies that oversee the delta have used the solution of eliminating more and more water from agriculture and providing that to environmental purposes,” said Gayle Holman, spokeswoman for the Westlands Water District, the state’s largest agricultural supplier. “But there’s been no identifiable benefit showing that fish species are rebounding or that the health of the delta is rebounding.”
Mr. Brown came under criticism from the left for exempting agriculture from his order, but he argues that farmers have borne the brunt of past restrictions. The current federal Central Valley Project water allocation is zero — for the second year in a row — while the California State Water Project has a 20 percent allocation, Ms. Holman said.
‘We need more water’
Dry spells are nothing new in California, but critics say the situation took a turn for the worse with a 2007 ruling by a federal judge that resulted in less water being pumped out of the delta in order to improve its health as well as the survival chances of the delta smelt.
Hardest hit by the ruling have been San Joaquin Valley farmers who depend on water from the delta to irrigate their crops. A half-million acres now lie fallow — plowed but not planted — in California’s Central Valley, the agricultural powerhouse known for its rich soil and plentiful fruit and nut crops, and where double-digit unemployment is now commonplace.
“You drive up and down the state on the [Interstate] 5 freeway, and you see the signs: ‘We need more water.’ It’s a common thing,” Mr. Allen said. “Farmers aren’t getting the water, they’re losing crops, trees are dying, and long-term there’s an economic impact and an impact on communities. It’s not good for our state.”
Ms. Holman points out that other factors have been cited for the decline of the fish, such as invasive species like the largemouth bass, striped bass and Asian clam, as well as ammonia and wastewater discharges from a local sanitation district.
“We’re not saying we don’t care about fish or we don’t care about the health of the delta, but thus far the solution has been to eliminate agricultural water deliveries and divert that water for environmental purposes,” she said. “And so there hasn’t been a balanced approach.”
Another issue is water storage. The massive State Water Project, launched in 1960, remains unfinished for a host of reasons, including opposition over the environmental impact. Mr. McClintock notes the state hasn’t built a major dam since 1979.
As the water crisis spills into the backyards of urban residents, Mr. McClintock says he hopes the result will be a “major reevaluation of the many leftist laws that have built up in our system.”
“A year ago, I was beating the drum to sound warnings on these policies, and nobody paid any attention,” Mr. McClintock said. “The reason they’re not paying attention is they don’t believe me. They don’t believe our policy could be so breathtakingly stupid as to dump millions of gallons of precious water in the middle of a drought to adjust river water temperatures.
“It’s such a bizarre notion, it doesn’t pass the smell test,” he said. “But those are the policies, they are being carried out, and, as our reservoirs [are] near empty, people are beginning to focus on that finally.”
Iran has placed an “explosive emphasis” in putting military surveillance and attack drones into the sky, including “suicide” aircraft that increase risks for Israel and for U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf, according to a new U.S. Army analysis.
The Iranian army is spearheading the drive for a fleet of explosive-mounted killer drones. It tested them in December against ship targets near the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint for maritime traffic in and out of the Gulf.
The implication is clear: The hard-line Shiite-dominated regime has long threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil is transported daily. The live-fire test/exercise shows that kamikaze drones are in the Iranian war plan.
Iran also is sharing new drone technologies with allies Hamas on Israel’s south and Hezbollah on its north, the Army study says. Both are U.S.-designated terrorist groups that pledge the destruction of Israel.
The assessment is contained in a new publication from the Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The document, which contains assessments by several in-house national security analysts, is devoted to the topic of the growing use of military drones worldwide.
And Iran is no exception.
“While it is easy to dismiss the idea of a suicide drone as more symbolic than real in an age of cruise missiles and precise Predators, utilizing suicide drones is an asymmetric strategy which both allows Iran to compete on an uneven playing field and poses a risk by allowing operators to pick and choose targets of opportunity over a drone’s multi-hour flight duration,” said the Army assessment.
In all, it says, “Perhaps no aspect of Iran’s overt military program has seen as much development over the past decade as Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles Iran’s explosive emphasis on drone development promises to make American operations in both the Persian Gulf and Gulf Aden [at the Red Sea] more complicated and can also pose a proliferation concern should Iran export suicide drones to groups like Hezbollah or Bashar al-Assad loyalists in Syria.”
Iran’s drone technology is showing up with two of its proxies. In February, Hamas launched three Ababil-3 reconnaissance drones into Israeli airspace and then pulled them back once Israeli air defense fighters were launched. The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were produced in Gaza and can be equipped with miniature rockets.
Iranian-designed drones also have penetrated Israel in the north from Lebanon, Hezbollah’s base of operations.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney said the Iranian air force is no match for U.S. air power. But drones in sufficient numbers could still inflict damage similar to Japanese kamikazes in World War II.
“The results will be the same, but you only need a few to get through, so a significant potential threat,” Mr. McInerney said.
According to Iran’s semi-official FARS News Agency, Brig. Gen. Kioumars Heidari posed for a photograph, with a map of the Persian Gulf in the background, and said: “We tested three models of suicide unmanned aerial vehicles, which were a type of cruise missiles and have been fully manufactured by Iranian experts.”
Some of the Army Foreign Military Study Office’s assessments of drone expansion have been written by Michael Rubin, a contract analyst to the office and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Mr. Rubin told The Washington Times that suicide drones could be especially effective in the narrow Gulf waters, where it is more difficult for aircraft carriers to maneuver and where naval helicopters are frequently in the air.
“This makes the Iranian development of drones specifically to interfere with helicopter operations extraordinarily dangerous,” Mr. Rubin said. “The Iranians have long probed American ships’ defenses in international waters, but you can communicate with an Iranian boat. You can’t communicate with an Iranian drone, and so the slippery slope to a real military engagement has just gotten closer.”
He added that Iran has announced that it plans to ship drones to Hezbollah, whose fighters are in Syria defending the Assad regime. This means other clients, such as Houthi Shiites in Yemen and Iraqi Shiite militias in Iraq, also could receive suicide drones.
“That means not only will passenger aircraft be in danger in Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean, but the Bab al-Mandab [strait] off the Yemen coast just got inordinately more dangerous for anyone that comes through without guns blazing,” he said.
Such vehicles do not require the precision of launching a Hellfire missile from a U.S. Predator drone. An Iranian operator simply has to find a target on the video screen and drive the aircraft to it.
“Even absent explosives, an Iranian willingness to collide drones with helicopters and jet fighters could hamper routine naval and army aviation along the borders of Iran,” Mr. Rubin wrote in the Army publication.
The American firearms industry is as healthy as ever, seeing an unprecedented surge that has sent production of guns soaring to more than 10.8 million manufactured in 2013 alone — double the total of just three years earlier.
The 2013 surge — the latest for which the government has figures — came in the first full year after the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, signaling that the push for stricter gun controls, strongly backed by President Obama, did little to chill the industry despite the passage of stricter laws in states such as New York, Maryland, Connecticut and California.
Indeed, interest in guns appears to be at an all-time high in California, which shattered its previous record for gun-purchase background checks last month, with nearly 200,000 processed, suggesting a vibrant firearms market in the country’s most populous state.
Industry backers say they aren’t surprised firearms buyers and manufacturers alike have responded to the national gun control debate by making and purchasing more.
“The surge in firearms sales in 2013 reflects both a long-term upward trend in shooting sports participation and [a] particular concern that year that law-abiding gun owners and those interested in purchasing a firearm for the first time could face tougher restrictions affecting access to and selection of firearms,” said Mike Bazinet, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry group.
Little more than two years after the Sandy Hook shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 schoolchildren and six faculty at the school, the staying power of the industry is striking.
Despite Mr. Obama’s personal appeal for stricter laws, efforts to impose new background checks and to ban military-style rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines failed at the federal level in 2013. The Democratic-led Senate blocked those changes in a filibuster, and the GOP-controlled House never even took up any legislation.
Mr. Obama was left to move ahead on his own, signing more than two dozen executive orders and memos tweaking federal enforcement priorities, urging safe gun ownership and boosting the focus on mental health. He also nominated B. Todd Jones to be director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) — but two years later, Mr. Jones has quit the agency after a bungled effort to ban a popular type of rifle ammunition.
Some states did move forward in the wake of Newtown, including Connecticut, where Sandy Hook was located. Colorado, Maryland, New York and California also enacted restrictions.
Still to be seen is what effect those tougher state laws will have on manufacturers. Several companies signaled they would flee states where they no longer felt welcome and shift production to states that are seen as more gun-friendly, but those moves came too late to be reflected in the 2013 data, which is the most recent available. ATF releases data after a one-year gap.
Beretta, which produced nearly 350,000 firearms at its Accokeek, Maryland, plant in 2013, said last year it is moving to Tennessee.
A spokeswoman for the company didn’t return a call seeking comment.
Several gun control groups also didn’t respond to messages seeking comment on the manufacturing statistics and what they mean for the state of the debate.
Surging under Obama
The biggest change in production has come under President Obama. From 2001 to 2007, gun production held steady at between 3 million and 4 million units a year. It topped 4 million in 2008 but shot to 5.6 million in 2009, held steady in 2010 and then spiked to 8.6 million guns in 2012 and a record 10.8 million in 2013, according to ATF data.
John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, said Americans interested in owning firearms are reacting to the gun control debate by buying more of them. But he also said polling shows a fundamental shift in attitudes, with Americans increasingly believing that the right to bear arms must be protected and increasingly seeing guns as a way to make homes safer, rather than as a potential danger in and of themselves.
Indeed, in 2000, 51 percent of Americans said guns made homes more dangerous, according to Gallup, the polling firm. By last year, that had dropped to 30 percent, and a full 63 percent now said guns made a home “safer.”
“My own personal belief is that change in the beliefs about guns and safety has served as the basis for why you see increasing opposition to gun control during that same period of time,” Mr. Lott said.
Mr. Lott said firearm sales, even more than manufacturing statistics, are a measure of the health of the movement, and those are also on the rise, with adjusted background checks — a good proxy for sales — growing from 8.9 million a year in 2008 to nearly 15 million in 2013.
“That’s a pretty hefty change you saw over that period of time,” he said.
California’s background checks hit 199,833 in March — 20 percent more than the previous monthly high and about twice as much as the average for March over the last decade.
The spike stumped California gun rights advocates.
“There’s no big gun bills, there’s no big scare,” said Brandon Combs, who heads a number of California advocacy groups.
He said March and April are often big months for gun checks in his state, and he speculated it could be because residents are getting their tax returns, recovering from holiday spending and have cash to spend. But he said the spike could also be another reflection of California’s growing embrace of guns.
One other measure of that affinity comes in the number of “concealed carry” permits, which Mr. Combs said have tripled over the last few years. At the end of 2014 there were about 70,000 people licensed in California, and officials said another 15,000 to 20,000 applications were pending at that time.
“California is working its way toward its first 100,000-license year ever,” Mr. Combs said.
Nationally, concealed carry permits have grown from 4.6 million in 2007 to more than 12 million now, Mr. Lott said.
Rolling Stone finally admitted that its recent story about a vicious rape on the University of Virginia campus was a lie. Adding journalistic insult to injury, the magazine announced that the “reporter” who made it up will face no disciplinary action. In fact, she gets to keep her job at the magazine.
Many in the journalistic community are “outraged.” NBC’s Brian Williams lost his gig, at least temporarily, for fabricating details about his own life. But this “reporter” fabricated a violent criminal assault that ruined some young men’s lives and smeared an entire university, and she’s still picking up her Starbucks and heading to the office every day? Unacceptable.
Before we think that these “journalists” have finally discovered standards, a reality check is in order.
The same folks who are expressing outrage that Rolling Stone has blown off its journalistic responsibility have blown off their own. For seven years, they have been supine as President Obama and his policies have ravaged the Constitution and jeopardized the nation’s security. Worse, they have often made excuses for the unconstitutional and dishonest behavior, and have buried or ignored stories when reporters and even an entire network — Fox News — have attempted to uncover the truth.
While they’re whining about Rolling Stone’s journalistic crimes, this same group of “journalists” has been perfectly fine with:
Mr. Obama’s multiple lies about Obamacare, from “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” to “it will help reduce the deficit.”
The Obama administration’s sanctioned and institutionalized targeting of conservatives and religious groups through the Internal Revenue Service. They also bought Mr. Obama’s claim that he learned about the systematic abuse by watching news reports about it on television (even though he has insisted repeatedly that he doesn’t watch the news.)
Mr. Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s assertions that they had no idea their administration was running a gun operation across an international border.
Not showing any journalistic curiosity into what really happened during and after the terror attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. They did not feel compelled to look into key questions, such as the whereabouts on the night of the attack of the president and then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who came up with the fiction about an obscure YouTube video as the source of the violence, and why the administration failed to respond to those under fire.
Not investigating what the United States was really doing in Benghazi, and whether or to what extent Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton had authorized an illegal transfer of weapons to Syrian rebels and others who would later become known as the Islamic State.
Being uninterested in whether Mrs. Clinton was running her own rogue intelligence operation via her old political hitman, Sidney Blumenthal, despite Mr. Obama’s explicit prohibition on his hiring.
Pushing the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie of Ferguson, Missouri.
Promoting Sen. Harry Reid’s lie that former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney hadn’t paid his taxes in years without looking into its demonstrable falsity; letting Mr. Reid’s recent unapologetic admission that it was false go largely unreported.
Not questioning Mr. Obama’s claims that “al Qaeda is on the run” and “being decimated,” that Yemen was a “success” of his counterterrorism approach and that the Islamic State was “jayvee.”
Not examining the impact of Mr. Obama’s selling out of allies such as Israel, Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic and the fawning support of dangerous enemies such as Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood while accommodating other adversaries such as Russia and Cuba.
Leaving unquestioned Mr. Obama’s gutting of the military and his retreat of U.S. power and their connection to the current violent upheaval across the Middle East.
Not exploring the political reasons why the administration is allowing a porous southern border and the surge of tens of thousands of illegal aliens into the country.
Not questioning his constant, misleading use of straw men, such as this Iran deal or war, a $1 trillion stimulus or an imploding economy, and Obamacare or a collapsing health care system.
Not probing his false promise about hosting the “most transparent administration in history.”
Refusing to investigate the Department of Justice’s selective prosecutions of politically inconvenient folks such as Sen. Robert Menendez while declining to prosecute allies such as the New Black Panther Party and the Internal Revenue Service’s Lois Lerner.
Pushing the lie that Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act legalized discrimination.
Being wholly uninterested in exploring Mr. Obama’s murky background and shadowy associations with communists, domestic terrorists and professional anti-Semites.
Shrugging off the White House’s deliberate targeting of fellow journalists such as Sharyl Attkisson and James Rosen, and spying on news organizations such as The Associated Press.
The only difference between the Rolling Stone “reporter” and these “journalists” is that the magazine writer got caught. The Rolling Stone debacle is one more example of journalists being more interested in creating a narrative that supports their agenda than reporting objectively.
Their faux outrage over Rolling Stone is really about the exposure of their craft as the lie-generating partisan advocacy enterprise it is. And that reality is the greatest true outrage of all.
The Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell, the case challenging the Obama administration’s decision to award tax credits for health insurance sold through federally established exchanges, could turn on the question of whether a ruling that ends the tax credits on federal exchanges might cause something known as a “death spiral” in health insurance markets.
The good news is the answer is probably no, but the bad news is that’s only because the death spiral has probably already started.
A death spiral generally occurs when insurers are forced to raise premiums sharply to pay promised benefits. Higher premiums cause many of the healthiest policyholders, who already pay far more in premiums than they receive in benefits, to drop coverage.
When healthy policyholders drop coverage, it leaves the insurer with little choice but to raise premiums again because they now have a risk pool that is less healthy than before. But another premium increase means many of the healthy people who remained now drop their policies, too, and this continues until the only people willing to pay the now-very-high premiums are those with serious medical conditions.
The death spiral isn’t just a theory. Eight states learned this the hard way in the 1990s when they enacted two policies known as “community rating” and “guaranteed issue,” requiring health insurers to sell coverage to anyone who wanted it at the same price.
This quickly set off a death spiral because people knew they could wait until they were sick or injured to buy insurance, and premiums rose sky-high as healthy people exited the individual insurance market while the sick remained.
New Jersey enacted both community rating and guaranteed issue in 1992. By 2003, the lowest monthly premium for a family policy in the state was $3,810 and nearly 40 percent of the people in the individual market had dropped their coverage.
Obamacare includes both community rating and guaranteed issue. The hope of the politicians who passed Obamacare was the individual mandate would keep the relatively healthy from dropping insurance coverage, thereby avoiding a death spiral.
During oral arguments in King, Justices Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed concerns that not allowing subsidies in the 37 states using the federally established exchange would set off a death spiral in those states. Their fear was that while subsidies would no longer be available, and there would effectively be no individual mandate, community rating and guaranteed issue would remain.
Many commentators saw Justice Kennedy’s comments as a signal he isn’t willing to stop subsidies on federal exchanges, either because of the serious consequences of doing so or because surely Congress could not have intended to put states in the position of choosing between creating an Obamacare exchange or seeing health insurance markets destroyed.
What Justice Kennedy and many others may not understand, however, is the death spiral is probably already underway in all 50 states, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules in this case.
According to the Manhattan Institute, premiums climbed by 41 percent on average from 2013 to 2014, and premiums are likely to rise sharply again after two insurance company bailout programs included in Obamacare expire in 2017.
The other sign health insurance markets are in the early stages of a death spiral is the age mix of those buying policies through Obamacare. Originally it was estimated that around 40 percent of enrollees had to be in the relatively healthy 18 to 34-year-old age segment, so their premiums could be used to pay for the health expenses of older, less-healthy enrollees. So far it appears only some 28 percent of enrollees are in that coveted age group, which also comprises around half of the uninsured.
All of this means insurers are getting a risk pool that is less healthy than expected, and more premium hikes are around the corner. While subsidies hide some from the full impact, others in the middle class will not be shielded.
It will undoubtedly take a few years to know for sure, but for anybody concerned about setting off a death spiral or thinking Congress surely didn’t intend to do so, don’t worry. It looks like it’s already here, whether Congress intended it or not.
Allison Deguisne, the owner of a small chain of Westshore Cash and Loan, says she will stop running the two-shop operation by the end of the month, and she blames federal government regulators.
Ms. Deguisne can’t find creditors to help keep her California-based payday loan business afloat.
The struggling entrepreneur tried to maintain her flailing company after Wells Fargo choked off her line of credit. She said she approached numerous bankers in search of financial support who told her on more than one occasion: “We don’t do business with people like you.”
Now, she is giving up on her small-business venture.
“My retirement is gone. I have nothing to sell of the business,” she said. “My retirement and my child’s education fund.”
Ms. Deguisne was one of several victims of a government-run program dubbed Operation Choke Point who went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to describe how they have lost their livelihoods because their industry was placed on a high risk-list by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Banks interpreted that listing as a warning not to do business with such enterprises, lest they be charged with racketeering, joint liability and other accessory offenses.
Some of Tuesday’s witnesses were gun shop owners, other payday lenders and one person who sold tobacco. All of them now are struggling to make it to their next paychecks.
Operation Choke Point, a multiagency task force run out of the Department of Justice, initially was designed to combat corruption by investigating the connections that banks maintain with companies considered to be at high risk for money laundering.
Business owners, who say they are victims of government overreach, have dark tales about how they were forced to eat through their savings to salvage their companies or, in worst-case scenarios, sell their shops.
Rep. Sean P. Duffy, Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the Financial Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations, convened the meeting of victims to demonstrate the personal effects of what he calls “the greatest government overreach that no one is talking about” and to question the FDIC chairman about the program.
Mr. Duffy described the program as “clever” but “un-American.”
After Choke Point was exposed last year, the FDIC retracted the high-risk list.
FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said during the Tuesday hearing on Choke Point that some banks appear to have misinterpreted regulatory guidance. That misinterpretation led them to bar entire categories of businesses from using bank services.
In January, the FDIC issued a letter saying all banks should examine their customer relationships on a case-by-case basis and not by industry operational risk.
The government agency followed the action with a memorandum to its supervisory staff requiring that examiners put into writing their recommendation to terminate an account, which the financial institution must review before the account is ended.
Still, that’s not enough to satisfy some lawmakers and business owners who have been affected by the program.
Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, Missouri Republican, is moving forward with a bill he introduced in the last legislative session aimed at cementing the FDIC’s rule into law and to ensure that other financial institutions such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Reserve, which were also part of Operation Choke Point, commit to similar steps.
Mike Shuetz, owner of Hawkins Guns, said he was livid after federal regulators swooped in and told his primary bank that they had to close his account because he dealt in guns. Clamping down on small-business owners who sell guns endangers the right of a man or woman to buy a weapon to learn to hunt or shoot for sport or defend his home, Mr. Shuetz said.
“It’s a sad day in America when our administration doesn’t respect the rights of Americans,” he said.
U.S. Consumer Coalition, an organization that protects the rights of consumers to purchase goods and services, is spearheading a public campaign against Operation Choke Point.
“We’re going to push back,” he said during a Capitol Hill press conference before the panel’s hearing. “We’re going to ask questions.”
Brennan Appel, owner of Global Hookah, said the program has had a significant impact on his business. The businessman said he was blindsided when Bank of America gave him two weeks to find a new home for his business and personal accounts. He said he was able to find a safe haven with Wells Fargo but remained concerned about the credibility of the banking system.
“Basically, you can’t believe the banking system anymore. You have to have accounts in multiple banks,” he said. “You have to have a backup plan. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket. You have to separate your payroll processing. So everything has to be separated, and you have to have a plan B.”
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Jennifer Langan told The Washington Times that the bank “can’t comment on a specific customer due to customer privacy reasons.”
Bank of America did not return requests for comment.
Dawn Loyd, vice president of Advance Cash in Tennessee, said one of her eight cash and loan stores was hurt by the operation when the Bank of Tennessee demanded that the store’s accounts be closed.
Ms. Loyd said she is trying to open accounts with banks in other cities but has had no luck, so her chain is down to seven stores.
Ms. Desguisne expressed regret over not having a backup plan.
“If I had known, I probably would have gone out and tried to get bank accounts other than the one,” she said.
Now, the disgruntled small-business owners are, at the very least, hoping to find some middle ground. Small businesses should have access to secondary creditors should their primary banks cancel their accounts in keeping with the federal program, they said.
“If we’re high-risk, put us under a microscope,” Ms. Desguisne said. “But give us the ability to stay in business.”
Mr. Shuetz said he disagreed with the potential of finding any middle ground if the program’s anti-corruption tactics continue to prevent a small-business owner from making a living.
“It’s all or nothing,” he said of the program. “You’re violating the Constitution, so stop that immediately. There’s already laws in place to regulate businesses and the banking industry. We don’t need to create new things in order to do that.”
Ronald Reagan, an eloquent proponent of federalism, called the several states the laboratories of democracy. The Gipper was on to something. State governments have a unique freedom to innovate, to experiment, to move “outside the box” to search for solutions to thorny public policy problems. The institutional bureaucracies, creatures of Congress, and special interest groups that pepper Washington policymakers with their demands can’t do it half as well. The states not only have rights the federal government doesn’t, but they have unique talents as well.
The governors of Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana are pushing labor law reforms, taking power away from the labor bosses and putting it back where it belongs — in the hands of the working men and women. They’re taking the lead on tax policy, on regulatory reform, on parental choice in education and other issues near and dear to the hearts of conservatives, and indeed all Americans.
Unfortunately, conservatives have not been so attentive to an issue that ought to be at the top of their agenda. The criminal and civil justice system begs for reform. Many states have adopted policies that mirror those embraced by the federal government, infringing constitutional liberties and worse, creating perverse incentives to drive law enforcement to act in ways that run counter to justice.
There’s evidence that changes are necessary, and there’s further evidence that the changes won’t come from Washington. One bright spot that both the left and the right can cheer is in New Mexico, where the legislature passed legislation over the weekend to abolish civil-asset forfeiture, which is nothing less than government crime, enabling police to seize private property and keep it without even having to charge someone with a crime.
This is an unconstitutional taking in anyone’s reading of the law, but the courts — an arm of the government, after all — have found otherwise, on the theory that seized property is theoretically recoverable if the victim of this government theft has the resources to go through the expensive process of getting it back, which is not often.
Not so long ago, when civil-asset forfeitures were first used to take cigarette boats and luxury sports cars from drug dealers, with the proceeds going to police departments, many thought the seizures were, if not just, at least tolerable. Who cares what happens to drug dealers? But since then the practice has spread, ensnaring innocents as well as the guilty, and people are starting to take a second and third look.
The governor of New Mexico, Susana Martinez, is expected to sign the measure, making it the law, and it could catapult her to consideration for a place on the Republican ticket next year. Under the law, a conviction for a specific crime must occur and it must be established that the seized property was used in the commission of that crime. The proceeds of the sale of seized property must go into the state’s general fund, not to a police department, removing the police incentive to finance their departments with creative law enforcement.
The landmark reform of the nation’s welfare system in 1996, one of the most successful social reforms of the second half of the 20th century, started in Michigan and Wisconsin. Eventually the Congress and President Bill Clinton followed their lead. Congress should look to the example in New Mexico to prevent this grievous wrong from further spread.
I recently debated Fox News commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano on the National Security Agency’s 215 program, the massive metadata trove of American calling records used to quickly detect if suspected terrorists have contacted anyone inside this country.
The debate was at CPAC — the Conservative Political Action Conference — which is a hotbed of libertarian energy. For me, representing the “national security state,” it felt like an away game. That Lou Dobbs, Fox News’ resident “independent populist,” was the moderator suggested that even the officiating crew was going to be against me.
Actually, Lou was even-handed, and the Judge and I have a friendship that goes back several years. Still, the event raised some sharp issues.
I surfaced a key one in my opening: “Judge Napolitano is an unrelenting libertarian,” I began, to loud cheers from the audience.
As the cheering subsided, I continued, “And so am I.” I waited a decent interval for the groans and boos to fade and then added, “But for nearly 40 years I had to pay attention to another part of that document, too, the part that says ‘provide for the common defense.’”
The point was that this was not, as the Judge and much of the audience would have it, a battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. Rather, it was a continuation of a struggle that began with the excesses of George III, followed by a government under the Articles of Confederation that was too weak to govern, followed by a Constitutional Convention to create a stronger central authority, followed by a Bill of Rights to limit that authority.
In short, this is nothing new.
I had a similar discussion at a recent Washington and Lee University School of Law symposium on privacy and security, and my observations there also invited some unkind commentary. Most homed in on my belief that defining reasonableness in implementing the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable search and seizure was dependent on the totality of circumstances in which we find ourselves. I thought that would have been intuitively obvious to anyone who has boarded a commercial airliner in the last 13 years. Apparently it’s not.
Anyone actually responsible for security and privacy has had a working appreciation of reasonableness drilled in to him. I got mine from the legal staff at NSA. Early in my time there they gave me this example: Suppose that we had a legitimate collection point against an important foreign intelligence target. Given the commingled nature of modern communications, a small number of protected (U.S. person) communications occasionally appears, but we have technology that filters out say 90 percent of these so that they are never even recorded. Of course, any inadvertent collection that does occur is destroyed upon recognition.
Important target. Limited inadvertent collection. High technology filter. Reasonable.
But now, my lawyers would tell me in their theoretical example, that we have developed technology that filters out 98 percent. The old system was no longer reasonable. We could do better. The circumstances had changed. Not the Constitution or its ultimate meaning. The circumstances!
At Washington and Lee I admitted that I started to do things differently after 9/11, things that were within my charter and perfectly within my authority, but certainly affected by the death of 3,000 countrymen and the threat of more deaths to follow.
That drew harsh incoming fire.
In The Atlantic: “But if there is a terrorist attack tomorrow, a bureaucrat within the national security state may decide, without asking permission from any elected official, that the people are actually owed less (sic) protections than before.”
Or TechDirt: “To him, the Constitution is a document that he can rewrite based on his personal beliefs at any particular time Specifically, he admits that after September 11th, 2001, he was able to totally reinterpret the 4th Amendment to mean something entirely different.”
Or this elegant blog: “You’re full of xxxx.”
Since Judge Napolitano joined the trashing (not crudely, mind you) I rolled out for him what had actually happened, but not before I warned that accusations fit on a bumper sticker while the truth takes a little longer.
What I actually did had to do with something called minimization. In collecting foreign intelligence, NSA often encounters information to, from or about a U.S. person. It’s inevitable. What the agency does with that is governed by a set of rules approved by the attorney general. In general, when an analyst reports on an intercept with such information, the U.S. identity is suppressed: “In a conversation with named U.S. person number one,” or ” were discussing the policies of named U.S. company number one.”
It makes for clumsy prose, but it protects U.S. privacy. And it’s how it is done UNLESS the U.S. identity is critical to understanding the intelligence in the report. As in, “An individual at a known al Qaeda safe house was discussing attack planning with “
“Named U.S. person number one” doesn’t quite suffice in that one. The name is unmasked in the report.
It’s rarely that easy or clear cut, but NSA analysts and lawyers make that kind of judgment daily. Let me repeat that. Folks at NSA decide if it is reasonable or not to include the U.S. identity. They are usually very conservative, forcing intelligence consumers to formally request unmasking, a process that can be time-consuming. It was an approach that, if continued in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, would certainly protect NSA from future bloggers, but would be less effective in protecting America.
So, acting within my charter and my authority, based on the totality of circumstances, I directed NSA analysts to lean forward in unmasking U.S. identities in their original reporting on communications entering or leaving Afghanistan. I then told the White House and the Congress what I had done.
So that’s it. No bonfires of “The Federalist Papers” or of the Constitution. At CPAC I admitted that some in the audience would still find what I did objectionable, but added, “It ain’t exactly the British army grabbing Boston Common.”
People can disagree with choices. This is hard stuff. The facts are complicated and the law is contentious. Even with my best effort, I admit I am capable of getting either or both wrong. But that doesn’t mean folks like me should be casually dismissed.
Defaulting to slogans and ad hominem attacks protects neither our liberty nor our security.
Santiago, Chile — Why have Chile, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Estonia and the Cayman Islands all become relatively prosperous in recent decades while other countries have lagged? The answer is not a mystery, but is often ignored or even suppressed by the political and media classes in many places throughout the world because many of them believe the truth will diminish their own political power. Countries that have the rule of law (including honest and competent judges), protect private property, have free markets and free trade, have relatively low tax rates and government spending, avoid destructive economic regulation, and have sound money tend to grow at much faster rates than those countries that don’t.
For years, many economists, including yours truly, have been doing studies that prove the above assertions and have been writing about these basic factors of success. Yet most Americans, Europeans and many of those in other parts of the world have little understanding of which policies result in successful economies. Given that we are now in an age in which people receive more of their information from videos, including movies and TV programs, than they do from reading, we thought it might be valuable to produce an informative and entertaining series of one-hour programs for TV networks, which show a number of success stories from around the world.
We began our filming in Chile this week. You may be asking: Why Chile? Chile was ranked as a poor country 35 years ago, and now the World Bank ranks it as a “developed country.” Argentina had the highest per capita income in South America until 1983, with almost twice the per capita income of Chile at that time. Yet by 2002 Chile had overtaken Argentina on a per-income basis, and Chile continues to grow faster than Argentina. Venezuela also was wealthy because of its enormous oil production and reserves, but the socialist governments of recent years have squandered and destroyed the wealth, and incomes are now falling rapidly.
But it gets worse. The corrupt leaders of Venezuela and Argentina have long been suspected of serving as conduits for Iranian interests and agents. Several years ago, Venezuela bought Argentine government bonds when others refused to after Argentina had defaulted on an earlier bond issuance, and still owed foreign investors billions. It has just been uncovered that the reason an Argentine federal prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, may have been murdered in January is that he apparently was about to reveal that the Iranians funded the Venezuelan Argentine bond purchase, in exchange for Argentina providing the Iranians with information of how heavy water nuclear reactors (in which Argentina has considerable experience) could be used to create plutonium for nuclear bombs.
It is easy to understand why countries and individuals are poor, and why the destructive behaviors of Venezuela and Argentina make them or keep them poor. What is harder to understand is how countries and individuals become wealthy (without stealing from others). Good policies and practices are often hard to see. The actions of corrupt government officials fill our news programs, movies and books, and it is understood how the corrupt hurt individuals and businesses. However, the overall effect of corruption on economic growth and job creation is less well understood.
One major reason for Chile’s success in recent decades is that it has the least amount of corruption in Latin America. Thus, unlike Argentina and Venezuela, foreign investors are not fearful of having their investments stolen by corrupt judges or government officials. Hence, Chile has received considerable foreign investment and its resulting job creation.
The climate in much of Chile is like that of California, but being in the Southern hemisphere, the growing seasons are reversed. Chile has had a free-trade agreement with the United States since 2004, and that, coupled with low-cost, high-speed transportation (air freighters and fast ships), enables Americans to have fresh berries and grapes during our winters. Chile has one of the freest trade regimes in the world and continues to negotiate free-trade agreements.
Chile has also been a stable democracy since 1990 with governments shifting back and forth between the moderate right and left. None of these governments, to date, have undone the basic economic reforms put in place three decades ago, including the world’s first privatized and most successful social security system, now adopted by 30 other countries. Chile still benefits from a low level of debt and relatively low levels of taxes, regulations and government spending. One simple thing that Chile could do to further enhance its economic image is to knock several decimal points off its currency so that the peso is worth more than one dollar.
Chile, being a 2,000-mile long, but only a 100-mile wide ribbon along the South Pacific, with many Andean snow-capped peaks rising over 20,000 feet, provides tourists with some of the best scenery on the planet and endless opportunities for adventure along with all the conveniences of a very modern, prosperous economy. Chile is likely to continue its success as the shining star of Latin America.
The government paid out $124.7 billion in potentially bogus payments last year, the government’s chief watchdog said Monday, blaming a controversial tax credit for the poor as well as increased bad payments in Medicare and Medicaid.
One major problem is tracking when Americans die — the Social Security Administration admitted last week that its rolls are filled with names of more than 6 million folks who are listed as 112 years of age or older.
The Government Accountability Office said Social Security has trouble maintaining the Death Master File, and other agencies have difficulties in getting the information to update their own files and halt payments to those no longer alive to collect benefits.
At the same time, being improperly listed on the Death Master File can cause nightmares, said Judy C. Rivers, a woman who has twice been erroneously listed, leaving her denied for jobs, rejected for apartments and forced to live in her car.
At one point she spent an hour haggling with a bank that was refusing to open an account for her but wouldn’t tell her why. Eventually the manager told Ms. Rivers her Social Security number had been listed by the federal agency as deactivated “due to death.”
“The Death Master File has been like a propagating hydra underlying all my problems,” she told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
It took her four years to clear up enough of the problems that she was able to be approved for a credit card again.
Social Security’s inspector general said a 2008 investigation found more than 20,000 people who were wrongly listed in the death file.
The agency says its hands are tied and it must release some information about those in its death file in response to open-records requests, leaving those erroneously listed open to even more fraud if an unscrupulous actor gets their number and realizes they are still alive.
Social Security insists it hasn’t found an instance where someone’s identity was compromised solely because of being wrongly listed.
Sean Brune, senior adviser to the deputy Social Security commissioner, said less than half a percent of the 2.8 million new death reports they get each year are inaccurate.
The agency gets its information from banks, post offices, and federal and state agencies that pay out benefits, such as the Veterans Affairs Department or Medicare.
Social Security paid out a little more than $8 billion in improper payments last year, according to GAO investigators. The supplemental security income program had a 9.2 percent error rate, while the retirement benefits program had a much smaller error rate of four-tenths of a percent.
The biggest problems, however, came at Medicare, whose basic fee-for-service program paid out $45.8 billion in improper payments, or nearly 13 percent of its outlays, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, which botched 27.2 percent of its payments, for a total of $17.7 billion, the GAO said.
Medicaid, Medicare Advantage and unemployment insurance rounded out the top five worst programs in terms of dollars spent on potentially bogus payments.
“With outlays for major programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, expected to increase over the next few years, it is critical that actions are taken to reduce improper payments,” the GAO told the Senate committee.
The nearly $125 billion in improper payments amounts to a rate of slightly more than 4 percent. That’s down from 5.42 percent in 2009, when President Obama took office, but is up substantially from last year’s 3.53 percent, the White House budget office acknowledged.
“While progress has been made over the years, the time has come for a more aggressive strategy to reduce the levels of improper payments we currently are seeing,” Controller David Mader said.
It’s national Sunshine Week across America. During this week, good-government groups advocate for open government and transparency. One area that remains hidden is federal pensions.
Imagine if you could review your congressman’s pension, including amount contributed, years to break even and total payout to life expectancy. Or what if taxpayers could view the pensions of former Internal Revenue Service chief Lois Lerner or former Secret Service boss Julia Pierson? But we don’t know because we can’t see them. The data is not merely opaque, but literally housed and hidden in a Cold War-era underground complex in Pennsylvania.
Recently, our organization, American Transparency, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to reveal individual federal pensions. The Office of Personnel Management rejected it as “a clear unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Still, our request for the active salaries of the 2.5 million federal employees was fulfilled, with seven-year histories. We post these salaries on our website, OpenTheBooks.com.
But if active salaries (by name) can be transparent, why would posting federal retiree pension amounts, service credits and contributions be an invasion of privacy? The same privacy law underlies both records. The Obama administration’s legal argument against revealing pension data is arbitrary.
Taxpayer groups should not have to file special requests to see this data. Last year, former IRS executive and now federal retiree Lois Lerner was held in contempt of Congress after pleading the Fifth Amendment to forgo answering the questions from the House Oversight Committee. Citizens deserve to know Ms. Lerner’s annual pension. Estimates by two Washington think tanks vary by more than $52,000 annually, or nearly $2 million in lifetime payout.
Granted, there is a mix of public and private dollars contributed to the pension. But taxpayers are guaranteeing the entire formula. The American people deserve to see the granular details of who’s receiving what, when and after how long. It’s the only fair way to debate taxpayer-guaranteed job benefits. In fact, each year, taxpayers spend almost as much on federal pensions as on the national debt interest payments — a staggering $233 billion.
At the state level, we’ve demonstrated the public interest benefit of revealing pension data. Starting in 2011, we posted Illinois pensions online and found nearly 5,000 educators received $100,000-plus pensions. The former Moraine Valley Community College president received a pension of $330,000 annually, which exceeds all his active years except his final salary spike to $673,000. A bus manager in Champaign, Ill., quadrupled his final salary from $90,000 to $356,000, then retired on a six-figure pension.
The biggest outrage included a pair of union lobbyists who served as substitute teachers in a public school for one day and now stand to reap a $1 million each in lifetime pension largesse. We discovered this pair received their pensions even after an Illinois state law was passed to stop them.
Without transparency, the “error” — payments seven times higher than proper — to the former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Pat Quinn would not have been corrected. Instead of a $20,000 pension, the retired deputy cashed checks totaling $137,000 per year. It was three years and $374,000 in overpayment before a good-government pension hawk exposed the mistake.
In Vernon, California (population 102), the manager for a small town retired on a pension of $545,000 per year. Public outrage was a catalyst for legal action, new state laws and a reduction in the retirement pension to $115,000 per year.
The public policy implications for federal taxpayers are obvious. Serious budget reformers on both sides often argue that everything has to be on the table. Pensions deserve their place at the table as well. After all, you can’t reform what you can’t see. The only way to stop corruption — legal or illegal — is to expose the payments.
A century ago, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who is best known for saying, “Sunlight is the best of disinfectants,” recognized the duty of citizen oversight. Today, Brandeis would recoil at the federal opacity.
Not only is privacy inappropriately invoked in order to conceal these payouts, the federal pension system has yet to enter the electronic age. The process is still manual. It’s a torturous system of physical paperwork, forms and cabinet filing systems that, again, is literally housed inside of a Pennsylvania mountain. The system is without oversight, technology or sunshine.
During national Sunshine Week, we issue the clarion call to open the books on federal pensions. When the books are open, we can all make better policy decisions.
WASHINGTON (AP) - In a far corner of North Dakota, just a few hundred miles from the proposed path of the Keystone XL pipeline, 84,000 barrels of crude oil per day recently began flowing through a new line that connects the state’s sprawling oilfields to an oil hub in Wyoming.
In West Texas, engineers activated a new pipeline that cuts diagonally across the state to deliver crude from the oil-rich Permian Basin to refineries near Houston. And in a string of towns in Kansas, Iowa and South Dakota, local government officials are scrutinizing the path of pipeline extensions that would pass nearby.
While the Keystone project awaits a final decision, scenes like these are unfolding almost every week in lesser-known developments that have quietly added more than 11,600 miles of pipeline to the nation’s domestic oil network.
Overall, the network has increased by almost a quarter in the last decade. And the work dwarfs Keystone. About 3.3 million barrels per day of capacity have been added since 2012 alone - five times more oil than the Canada-to-Texas Keystone line could carry if it’s ever built.
The pipeline build-out provides a little noticed counterpoint to the fierce political battle being waged over the 1,179-mile TransCanada project, which is still in limbo seven years after it was proposed. During the long wait for Keystone, the petroleum industry has pushed relentlessly everywhere else to get oil to market more efficiently, and its adversaries have been unable to stop other major pipelines.
“There’s been a lot of growth - we’re really positive on it in general,” said Rob DeSai, an equity analyst with Edward Jones who focuses on the energy industry. “The oil that’s being produced in the U.S., in many cases, it’s basically in the middle of nowhere. You need new infrastructure to get that oil to market.”
Environmental groups have fought Keystone by citing the risk of leaks and the climate-change consequences of fossil fuels. They hope to make cleaner energy options more appealing. Their success has inspired local protest groups to challenge more projects.
But those efforts, while slowing a few pipelines, have not stopped any because the regulatory path is smoother when a pipeline does not cross an international border, as Keystone would.
In Minnesota, local opponents succeeded last year in getting state regulators to consider rerouting a 616-mile pipeline proposed by Toronto-based Enbridge around pristine lakes and forests, delaying it for at least a year.
More typical, though, was an Enbridge project to double the capacity of a 285-mile stretch of pipeline in Michigan. Groups like the Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands fought the proposal, citing a spill in 2010 that caused serious environmental damage. But the Michigan Public Service Commission ruled the project acceptable, and the expansion went ahead.
In Texas, Magellan’s BridgeTex Pipeline, designed to take up to 300,000 barrels of crude per day from Colorado City to refineries in Houston, was recently completed over landowners’ protests about its path. Local officials cleared the way for the company to use the state’s eminent-domain law to condemn land for the pipeline. It came online last year.
Some environmentalists acknowledge that changing a pipeline’s route often may be the best they can hope for.
“I’m telling people I don’t think it’s going to stop,” said Paul Stolen, a retired state biologist who has been working with groups opposing the Enbridge project in Minnesota. “I think it’s going to escalate and get bigger.”
In most states, opponents have to prove a project does not serve the public interest or poses a clear environmental threat.
In states that depend on energy jobs, regulators tend to be receptive to the industry. Supporters also argue that transporting oil by pipeline is safer than by train, noting recent accidents and spills.
Since 2012, more than 50 pipeline projects have been approved, completed or are under development, including the just finished 600-mile Enbridge Flanagan South line, which runs through four states.
The recent surge in oil production, from roughly 5 million barrels a day in 2008 to 8.9 million barrels in 2014, has pushed new webs of pipe across regions that until recently had few. Dozens of new lines ranging up to 700 miles connect drill sites in the Upper Midwest to refineries in the region or to hubs in Oklahoma and along the Gulf Coast.
Even TransCanada has been busy. The company unveiled a 200-mile, $600 million proposal late last month that would carry oil from North Dakota’s Bakken field north to Canada and connect to other lines that can take it to the East Coast.
“When Keystone was first announced, I think that was something like a third of (TransCanada’s) expected budget,” said DeSai, the Edward Jones analyst. “TransCanada now has had so many projects that now Keystone’s a much smaller percentage.”
President Barack Obama has said his decision on Keystone, which would take Canadian tar sands oil to Gulf Coast refineries, would depend in part on its possible contribution to global warming. He is awaiting a State Department report on its environmental impact.
But the State Department does not review pipelines that are entirely inside the United States, which is the vast majority of them.
Pipeline companies also soften resistance by paying landowners for access and by assuming all liability for leaks. But some opponents say they believe that the new resistance inspired by Keystone will eventually raise more public concern about oil shipments.
In Iowa, a former state lawmaker, Ed Fallon, is walking the 400-mile route of a proposed pipeline and blogging about his trip to build support for environmentalists’ protests.
“They want people to just roll over and take what’s coming,” he said of oil companies. “We know that’s wrong. We know this pipeline can be stopped” because of the Keystone stalemate.
The much-anticipated streetcar project in the nation’s capital has been derailed.
Figuratively speaking, that is.
It is necessary to make that distinction because streetcars do roll along their rails. Departing from their junction hard by the western side of the Anacostia River, the streetcars slowly run along Benning Road, curl onto H Street and the far edge of Capitol Hill and then head east to the Benning Road junction.
Back and forth, and back and forth — just as the streetcars are supposed to do.
Except no passengers get on, and no passengers get off.
The cars go back and forth, sometimes feigning to stop for passengers. But nobody gets on, and nobody gets off.
It is political insanity.
It reminds of the scenes of people who used to sally forth from the city’s mental hospital, St. Elizabeths Hospital. Most patients used to stand, sit and squat just outside the hospital gates, or go goodness knows where. But many would pace back and forth, back and forth. If you were a child or a teen witnessing such a sight, you knew to be aware and walk as swiftly as possible, whether you were walking to or from church or the Boys and Girls Club, which was across the street from the hospital.
We kids hadn’t a clue of the depths or types of illnesses those people had. The streetcar project is an entirely different matter.
In the beginning, then-Mayor Anthony Williams proposed the Anacostia streetcar line, which in the short term would link the U.S. Naval Annex-Bolling Air Force area to the Anacostia Metro Station, and later roll toward the 11th Street Bridge. In other words, boost mass transit for federal and city workers, as well as residents who want to access the shopping, cultural and dining opportunities.
But the proposal got muddied by the Adrian Fenty administration and became painstakingly exhaustive during the Gray administration, which proposed laying tracks around the city and across town. By the time Muriel Bowser became mayor in January, the city switched gears and started touting an 11th Street Bridge Park (foot traffic only), and she put the brakes on the 2.4-mile H Street line for a study.
The study began Monday and is being conducted by the American Public Transportation Association, whose community activism arm can be viewed at PublicTransportation.org. Andrea Noble of The Washington Times reported: “This [streetcar] project over 10 years was developed in an unprofessional and haphazard, contradictory and inconsistent manner,” D.C. transportation chief Leif Dormsjo said March 6 during a D.C. Council hearing.
She also quoted Mr. Dormsjo as saying the outside analysis should help determine whether and how the project can move forward and whether the system has “fatal flaws” that could hinder its rollout altogether — but that killing the project is not his goal.
“It is my intent to responsibly advance the segment that we have. I wasn’t brought in to kill a transit project. I was brought in to fix a transit project,” said Mr. Dormsjo, a former transportation official in Maryland.
So, we wait for the study. We wait for government discourse on the study. We wait for media coverage of the release of the study. We wait for general-public discourse on the study. We wait for more government discourse, sprinkled with more general-public discourse. We wait for a great show-and-tell and voila!
After already spending more than $160 million (and millions more for the study and yakkety-yak) to design and construct a street line that runs a mere 2.4 miles, city leaders could scrap the project.
And that might not be a bad idea. Buses are cheaper, Metro is in need of vision and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is seemingly the only regional CEO willing to tell tax-and-spenders to take 10 breaths before obligating public dollars to transportation projects.
More than likely, the neighborhoods first in line to get streetcars will get bumped to the back of the bus, and what’s truly worrisome is that the city tore up (is in the process of tearing up) wonderful neighborhoods for a streetcar line on the fast track to nowhere.
Except the streetcars go back and forth, back and forth, with nary a passenger.
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: WHAT REALLY CAUSED THE WORLD’S WORST FINANCIAL CRISIS AND WHY IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN
Peter Wallison’s important, engaging and alarming “Hidden in Plain Sight” is the definitive work on the financial crisis and a must-read for policymakers, the commentariat and citizens wanting to pierce the populist anti-Wall-Street, anti-bank fog. Mr. Wallison makes a cogent case that “the 2008 financial crisis would not have occurred but for the housing policies of the U.S. government between 1992 and 2008.”
Washington’s “affordable-housing” mandates ratcheted up over the prior decade forced government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy and backstop ever-riskier mortgages, fueling unprecedented subprime-mortgage and housing bubbles. Affordable housing was and remains a euphemism and rallying cry for government gutting mortgage credit standards. Many affordable-housing activists dislike credit standards because the less creditworthy fall below cut-offs. As the Federal Housing Finance Agency pressured the GSEs to do more high-risk mortgages, few realized the magnitude or peril of the debt bomb tied to inflated housing. Analysts and regulators wrongly assumed the GSEs’ exposure to risky nontraditional mortgages was modest because the GSEs grossly underreported them.
The time-proven tripod of prudent mortgages are prime credit scores, debt-to-income ratios less than 38 percent and loan-to-value ratios not greater than 80 or 90 percent. Congress’ and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s affordable housing goals undercut all three.
By June 2008, 57 percent of the mortgages in the United States — a whopping 31 million — were sketchy subprime and Alternative A-paper, 76 percent of which were owned or guaranteed by the GSEs and government. Alternative A-paper loans included those with no income verification, no or negative amortization, high loan-to-value ratios or other risky characteristics.
GSE mortgages, unless identified as subprime, were assumed prime and the only loans so identified were those originated by subprime specialists. Astonishingly, in its 2007 annual report Fannie estimated 0.3 percent of its single-family mortgage credit book of business was subprime, compared with 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent in 2006 and 2005, respectively. Fraudulent statements like that lulled investors and regulators into grossly underestimating the risk. In August 2008, Fed economists estimated there were 6.7 million subprime mortgages — one-fourth total high-risk nontraditional mortgages.
Regulators were inept, and, ironically and tragically through Dodd-Frank, were rewarded with vastly expanded powers.
Notwithstanding most nontraditional mortgages being held by government, frozen markets and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s mark-to-market accounting forcing reckless and unjustified PMBS write-downs, reduced private-sector capital caused a massive common shock.
While Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson didn’t create the subprime-mortgage tsunami and housing bubble, their blundering helped precipitate the crisis. Rescuing Bear Stearns created moral hazard. Once it had been rescued, not saving Lehman, which was 50 percent larger, was hard to fathom and caused panic. Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson subsequently falsely asserted they didn’t have the authority to rescue Lehman. Mr. Paulson’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) did little good. Forced on solid banks like Wells Fargo and BB&T, which didn’t need or want it, it created the impression that banks were bailed out, making it politically impossible for Congress to reform Dodd-Frank. Acting like Vito Corleone, Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke threatened to declare the only AAA-rated bank Wells Fargo “capital deficient” coercing it to accept $25 billion in TARP funds, signaling markets the system must be on the brink.
In 2009, Congress established a Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to investigate the crisis. A rigorous, open and public-spirited inquiry would have explored all plausible causes. The Democrat-led commission, however, saw its role as confirming the narrative that a greedy private sector and insufficient regulation were the culprits. Mr. Wallison rightly excoriates the commission majority for failing “in their obligation to the public by suppressing information that contradicted the predetermined conclusions of their report.” Though at the time, the full extent of the GSEs’ nontraditional-mortgage exposure wasn’t known, the American Enterprise Institute’s Edward Pinto presented exhaustively documented estimates just before the crisis that 49 percent of all mortgages were unsound nontraditional mortgages. It should have set off alarm bells. Brass-collar Democrats, however, ignored Mr. Pinto’s report because it contradicted the narrative that rapacious bankers and insufficient regulation were culpable.
Not everyone kept their ideological blinders on.
No less an affordable-housing cheerleader than former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank in 2010 said, “I hope by next year we’ll have abolished Fannie and Freddie it was a great mistake to push lower-income people into housing they couldn’t afford … .”
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling is under no illusions, saying the crisis’ cause “was not deregulation but dumb regulation,” mandating the GSEs and other financial institutions to make improvident loans. But Mr. Hensarling’s sober-minded assessment and desire for reform are not enough.
Democrats and many Republicans oppose curbing government’s role in housing finance and Democrats have circled the wagons around Dodd-Frank. For genuine reform we can’t rely only on good men with conviction. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, conditions must be created where even bad men are compelled to support good policy. Mr. Wallison’s work is part of creating those conditions.
Ominously, in December Fannie and Freddie relaunched 30-year fixed, 97 percent loan-to-value mortgages.
Unless the public understands government politicizing and weakening mortgage credit standards caused the crisis, it will be impossible to fix Dodd-Frank and eliminate government’s outsized and dangerous role in housing finance.
M. Stanton Evans, arguably the funniest serious man in America for much of his 80 years on the planet, died Tuesday after a long bout with pancreatic cancer.
For most of his life, as Mr. Evans watched fellow conservatives come and go, he lamented — always with humor, not bitterness — their tendency to catch “Potomac fever” as soon as they came to power.
“When our people get to the point where they can do us some good, they stop being our people,” he said, uttering what became known as “Evans’ Law of Politics.”
He said that — as he said other things that were wildly insightful or wildly funny, or both — with eyes exaggeratedly wide and lips pushed forward and open in a mock-surprise oval, awaiting the listeners’ laughs that always followed.
His partisanship stopped at the edge of his lips.
“We have two parties here, and only two — one is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party,” he said. “I’m very proud to be a member of the stupid party. Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship.”
Through good times and bad, Mr. Evans used his syndicated columns, his books and his whiskey-wry humor to steady the spirits of fellow conservatives for 50 years.
To say Mr. Evans never followed the pack, any pack, whether it was fellow right-wingers or middle-of-the-roaders or leftists, is to understate his marvelous essence.
“I was never for Richard Nixon until Watergate,” he once told a press conference at which others on the right joined liberals in demanding that the scandal-scarred Republican president step down.
When people had to weigh which of two or more simultaneous events to attend, they tended to pick the one at which Mr. Evans was a scheduled speaker.
That way, they might hear him say, “Tax cuts are like sex: When they are good, they are very, very good. And when they are bad, they are still pretty good.”
Mr. Evans, a traditionalist who long resisted touching a computer or a cellphone, was at the center of that slowly building force called modern conservatism in America, a position he occupied for more than a half-century.
“I entered Yale in the fall of 1951, and about November of that year Bill Buckley published ‘God and Man at Yale,’” Mr. Evans said in a 2006 interview with The Washington Times. We were at a Union Station restaurant he favored because he could smoke there without hassle, at least back then.
“The Buckley book caused a huge furor at Yale,” he says of the elite campus that Mr. Buckley accused of promoting collectivism. “Everybody was attacking him. I got the book, read it and thought: This is a very accurate description of what’s going on here.”
Graduating in 1955, he turned down a job in advertising and took instead a series of jobs at conservative publications. In 1959 he joined the staff of the Indianapolis News, serving as editorial page editor until 1974.
Mr. Evans made his bones as a conservative in September 1960, when he and other young leaders assembled at the Buckley home in Sharon, Connecticut.
Inspired by Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater’s rallying cry to conservatives at the 1960 Republican National Convention, Mr. Buckley gathered a group of activists — the founders of Young Americans for Freedom — who aimed to “institutionalize the youth” on the right.
“And the people organizing it asked me to draft a statement of what we believe,” Mr. Evans recalled. “So I did, and it was given to a committee that made a few changes, and Bill Buckley made a few changes. But other than those changes, it was my draft.”
It became known as “The Sharon Statement,” a widely quoted declaration of principles of the modern conservative movement in America, enunciating a doctrine of limited government and ordered liberty.
In 1977 Mr. Evans founded the National Journalism Center, which, to his great delight, liberals tagged as a “right-wing ideology factory.” Dedicated to training people for jobs in news and punditry, his factory has produced as alumni such scourges of liberalism as Ann Coulter, Michael Fumento, Maggie Gallagher and a host of others.
Mr. Evans did long stints as a syndicated columnist and as broadcast commentator, working at National Public Radio, Voice of America and CBS. He wrote seven books, most recently “The Theme Is Freedom.”
In 1976, with Mr. Evans as chairman, the American Conservative Union ran an independent expenditure campaign in support of Ronald Reagan’s first try for the Republican presidential nomination. That primary campaign established Reagan as the conservative alternative to the Ford-Rockefeller wing of the GOP and laid the foundation for the Republican victory in 1980.
Defending McCarthy
Mr. Evans’ mission in his later years was to undo what he regarded as the damage that the left had done to the image of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, finally delivering to his publisher the long-awaited manuscript of his biography of the anti-communist senator and conductor of what the left long characterized as the grossest “witch hunt” in American history.
Some years ago, when transcripts of the famous McCarthy committee hearings of the 1950s were released, most of the American press repeated old claims that the Wisconsin Republican had destroyed the reputations and lives of innocents by naming them as communists.
Mr. Evans said news organizations could not name a single innocent victim of Mr. McCarthy’s investigations.
“I’ve spent the last two or three years burrowing in the archives researching my book on Joe McCarthy … and if people ask me about what’s happening now, I say, ‘If it happened after 1954, I don’t know anything about it,’” he quipped, eyes wide, lips in that exaggerated pushed-forward oval.
Mr. Evans was skeptical about complaints made by some fellow conservatives that the USA Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism initiatives encroach on Americans’ civil liberties.
“I have no problem with wiretapping al Qaeda,” he said. “I’m much more worried about this generic growth of the state intruding into everything. We have a move now in some states to prevent people from smoking in their own homes on the basis that it’s not good for their children.
“I worry that I won’t be able to smoke in my own car,” he said. “In a few years it will have a device so that when I light up, it will automatically drive me to the police station.”
As Mr. Evans saw it, “You’ve got diabetes police, obesity police and the nanny state growing at an exponential rate.”
Congressional complaint
Mr. Evans was fed up with a Congress that he had struggled for years to populate with Republicans.
“The Republican Party in Congress basically has given up on stopping the growth of big government,” he said. “They’re adding to the problem almost daily with their earmarks and their pork.”
He lost patience with the GOP-dominated House two years ago, when Republican leaders coerced lawmakers to approve a prescription drug plan for Medicare.
“I call it the ‘House of Reprehensibles,’” he said, adding: “We don’t have any real political resistance to this growth of the domestic state across the board. So I’m much more focused on that than on the Patriot Act, which is a real effort, however inept, to deal with a real problem.”
Mr. Evans, in his later years a visiting professor of journalism at Troy University in Alabama, recalled that today’s era of Republican dominance began in a now-forgotten time of ideological crisis. It was in the late 1950s, the final years of the Eisenhower administration, when Nelson Rockefeller was being touted as the next leader of the GOP.
“Rockefeller represented something called ‘modern Republicanism’ that supposedly was going to become the party,” Mr. Evans said. “It became clear to some of us that had to be stopped and reversed, because if the Republican Party was co-opted by the liberal ethos, then you had no place to stand to oppose the growth of [government].”
The conservative “game plan,” he said, “was first to get the Republican Party back to its conservative principles, then go on to win political victories in the national arena and in the states. And that’s basically what happened.”
Gains and regrets
From the Goldwater presidential campaign of 1964 to the “Reagan Revolution” in 1980 to the 1994 GOP sweep of both houses of Congress, he said, “The things that we hoped to achieve politically were largely achieved.”
When the movement began, he said, “We had two ultimate goals. … First was the communist problem. The liberal Democrats seemed incapable of resisting. America was caving in everywhere — Yalta, China, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Angola — one capitulation after another.”
In turn, the “modern Republicans” seemed incapable of resisting the Democrats. “So we had to turn all that around and have the Republicans stand up for something, then get some national influence on policy, and then whip the Soviets. That happened. Ronald Reagan did that. He resolved a lot of things.”
But Mr. Evans’ chief regret was one shared by fellow members of conservatism’s old guard.
“We lost on the other goal, which was to control the growth of the domestic state,” he lamented, but said, “I was part of something that was much bigger, and I have no regrets. The most important thing in my life was that I was a part of that, just one of many people, but a part of that.”
Members of the FBI surveillance teams that secretly track terrorists, spies and mobsters on U.S. soil are increasingly frustrated their mission is being hampered by internal politics and nepotism, according to interviews and documents.
FBI memos reviewed by The Washington Times show at least three younger relatives of high-ranking bureau supervisors have landed jobs on the elite surveillance teams in recent years, with two fast-tracked to full special agent status.
In addition, some FBI local offices that ranked high on a threat and needs matrix for surveillance were passed over for new teams last year in favor of more politically connected offices that ranked lower, the records show.
The worries have grown so widespread that one longtime decorated surveillance team member has sought whistleblower protection, taking his colleagues’ concerns to both the Justice Department’s inspector general and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
The whistleblower told The Times he initially went to supervisors, who dismissed the problems and then gave him a poor personnel review. So he then went to Congress because he fears current practices are jeopardizing the war on terror and the bureau’s counterintelligence operations.
“Who gets what surveillance teams — it’s now all about bias and favoritism and the good ol’ boy system,” the whistleblower said in an interview with The Times, speaking only on condition of anonymity because his identity is supposed to remain secret during surveillance. “My division — although we had the statistics to prove we needed more personnel — got skipped over because executive management had an ax to grind.”
FBI officials readily acknowledge a handful of top managers’ children or relatives landed jobs on the surveillance teams, but they insist the hirings were governed by the bureau’s strongly worded policy that outlaws favoritism in hiring.
“All applicants go through a rigorous selection process, including structured interviews and security background investigations,” the bureau said. “Personnel matters that have the potential of being viewed as an act of nepotism are subject to appropriate administrative action.”
The FBI also confirmed that some offices that scored high for surveillance needs were skipped over in favor of lower-ranked offices.
Officials said that while the matrix evaluation was carefully conducted, it also allowed for some discretion by managers to change rankings.
“Due to limited resources, not all field offices that qualified for an additional surveillance team were provided one. Both the selection process and the final determinations were subjected to an extensive review process and approved by executive management,” the bureau said in its statement to The Times.
The whistleblower disclosures come at a sensitive time for the bureau, which still faces questions as to why it had not more aggressively tracked the Tsarnaev brothers, who are suspected in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, after Russian authorities had tipped the agency about the pair.
Congress concerned
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, said his office is examining the whistleblower’s concerns, particularly on how the FBI initially handled the accusations and their employee when he came forward.
“Whenever an employee comes forward like this with concerns about waste and mismanagement, the Bureau should be grateful that it has someone willing to step up and point out problems,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement to The Washington Times. “But too often, the whistleblower gets punished for doing the right thing.”
The whistleblower’s personnel file shows that, for most of the last two decades, he received high ratings and frequent praise for his surveillance work, including numerous awards and commendations as well as personal letters of gratitude directly from FBI directors when he worked in the Washington, D.C., area. He received a rating of “excellent” in 2013 in his new division.
But after he questioned management in 2014 as to why his division was passed over for a new surveillance team it had earned in the rankings, the whistleblower was given a first-ever negative evaluation.
“I’ve been retaliated against just for asking a fair question,” he told The Times.
The surveillance units — often known as “G-teams” — consist of covert tracking specialists who do not have the rank of special agents, and they are funded through the black budget since they work on counterterrorism and counterintelligence.
Their exact whereabouts and numbers are generally kept secret from the public — as are the identities of the team members. But a nonclassified memo obtained by The Times indicated there are 54 field offices spread across the country, with about eight people on an average team, and many cities qualify for multiple teams.
Data accuracy questions
Congress gets regular reports on the program because of its sensitive work and the possibility that surveillance of Americans could violate privacy rights. Reports of activities are prepared about every six months, but Congress at any time can request the information, and has been doing so more as terrorist jihad groups grow overseas.
But some team members, including the whistleblower, expressed concerns that Congress was being kept in the dark about surveillance staffing decisions and hirings that aren’t being made on merits.
One email shows a supervisor directly dismissed the whistleblower’s concerns that Congress should be notified.
“The Senate has much more important work to do than worry about which offices received assets,” Scott Brunner, a former FBI assistant special agent in charge, wrote in an April 2014 email to the whistleblower.
Mr. Brunner has since left the division, becoming the legal attache for the FBI’s Bogota, Colombia, office. He did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The whistleblower related a story about how his division superiors wanted to promote an older FBI employee to the surveillance team because his appearance and skills matched the job, but they were turned down by Washington. They also were rejected for an additional team after scoring high on the list of offices in need of surveillance expansion.
The whistleblower said he was told the reason for both rejections was office politics, essentially bad blood between a supervisor in his division and the surveillance brass in Washington.
Politics at play in terror war?
The whistleblower’s account is echoed in an email from a senior official in Washington who handled the surveillance program scoring system.
The email says his effort to alert his bosses that resources may not be properly delegated was altered by Washington bureaucrats. “They changed my white paper, the degree to which I don’t know,” the Washington supervisor wrote in 2014.
He noted that the unit leadership held “disdain” for the whistleblower’s office that affected decisions. And some surveillance team members across the country were disturbed that the unit boss “has so much power” and “exercises most of it with little oversight, if any, from superiors,” he wrote in the email.
Other “G-team” leaders voiced similar frustrations in interviews or contemporaneous documents. FBI offices with just one team would like to either have a staff member added to handle their administrative work or be paid more to do the extra workload themselves.
After voicing these complaints, another team member in a Midwestern division was told by Washington brass that an additional team may happen if the complaints stopped. He responded he couldn’t be bought. Statistically, that division didn’t qualify for another team on a needs basis, but it did want an added coordinator, according to interviews.
The FBI now investigates an average of more than six new terrorist threats per day, according to the most recent statistics, which were compiled back in 2004, and the G-teams often find themselves as part of some of the FBI’s biggest cases. The teams started operations in the 1970s in New York City as a pilot program using their spycraft to help track and monitor potential Soviet threats.
One of their greatest successes was helping to discover Robert Hanssen, a former FBI official who spied for the Soviet Union for 20 years, all the while working for U.S. intelligence.
Shortly after their pilot program, the G-teams went national. The organization has grown from a few employees into a sprawling bureaucracy.
Nepotism concerns surface
Growth of those units has created an opportunity, however, for some of the FBI’s top management to place adult children into the surveillance teams as a way of getting them on a fast track to becoming an agent.
According to documents and interviews, there have been at least three paternal hirings in recent years within the FBI’s special surveillance group. Two of those operatives advanced to become FBI special agents, and the third remains on a G-team.
In addition, a fourth nepotism case has been alleged involving a resident agency that, alongside the local G-team, reports to the Little Rock, Arkansas, FBI office. That person later landed a plum job in the Washington office of FBI Director James B. Comey.
G-team members told The Times they did not oppose hiring agents’ relatives if they were qualified and willing to learn the craft of surveillance, but many seemed to just be passing through as ticket punchers, and one had serious skill deficiencies.
For example, a G-team member hired in the late-‘90s was the son of a well-known FBI legal attache and special agent in charge in Europe.
The son was retained by the FBI even though he failed his map-reading test six times before being placed on a surveillance team, according to a source inside the bureau who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. Usually one failure would be enough to remove an operative from the elite program, insiders say, because map reading is a necessary skill within the espionage world.
Eventually, the agent’s son was promoted to a supervisory special agent in New York City, records show.
In another case, a G-team operative hired last year was the child of an assistant unit chief in the surveillance program. The candidate got to choose which office he wanted to work in — a rarity in the surveillance unit, which sends personnel where surveillance is most needed. He chose an office where his father had good friends and therefore would receive good treatment, according to interviews.
A third G-team member, hired a few years ago, was the daughter of a high-ranking and decorated FBI official key to the bureau’s languages program, and was a highly decorated agent. The woman has now risen to become an agent herself in the Washington, D.C., area.
Separately from the G-teams, in a resident agency that reports to Little Rock, Arkansas, a position within the FBI was held for the offspring of an agency supervisor until the child graduated from college. The woman ended up graduating from school a semester late, but the division held the position open until she could graduate.
The student’s job was to report directly to her father, so the FBI, not wanting to set off alarm bells, hired another supervisor so she could report to a nonrelative.
Later, when the father was transferred to a legal attache office overseas, the daughter was given a plum position in Washington, D.C., working in the FBI director’s office — just a year after graduating from college.
The Times chose not to name any of the three G-team operatives or the FBI hire to avoid compromising their current or past undercover surveillance work or alerting terrorists to their identity.
Watchdogs worry
Government watchdogs say the surveillance team members and the public have reason to be concerned about the hiring pattern.
“When hiring decisions are based on who you know rather than what you know, the federal government isn’t operating to its fullest potential,” said Scott Amey, the general counsel at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight. “We don’t like cozy relationships and sweetheart deals when it comes to contractors or grantees, and the same holds true for pulling strings to benefit family and friends.”
Concerns about possible nepotism stretch far beyond the FBI.
The Justice Department, which oversees the bureau, has been plagued with nepotism charges over the past decade.
A DOJ inspector general report released last month found the head of the International Crime Police Organization, another law enforcement agency, used his position to secure a job for his son and other relatives.
And a November investigation discovered certain offices in the DOJ had a “pervasive culture of nepotism and favoritism,” making it at least the fifth inspector general report since 2004 to find hiring problems at the agency.
In response to the repeated nepotism charges, Justice said it would strengthen its hiring training for employees, especially regarding the agency’s nepotism rules.
Lawmakers remain unhappy.
“There is no room for nepotism in the federal government’s hiring practices,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican and House Judiciary Committee chairman, said recently. “Those hired to serve taxpayers must earn — not be given — the job.”
FBI email warns whistleblower of retaliation -- Separate story
The FBI bluntly told a potential whistleblower that he could face retaliation by coming forward with concerns about political meddling inside a secret terrorism and counterintelligence surveillance program.
The warning came in an email from a bureau attorney that raises questions in Congress about the bureau’s ability to properly handle accusations of wrongdoing and protect those who come forward.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is planning to take testimony Wednesday about the FBI’s whistleblower protections, and an ongoing review of the bureau’s surveillance program has raised concerns for the panel’s chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican.
“The main question would turn on the reasonableness of your belief; that is, would a reasonable person, in your situation, believe that the conduct at issue demonstrated mismanagement or abuse of authority?” the FBI attorney, within the Office of Integrity and Compliance, wrote in an email responding to the whistleblower’s inquiry. “In my opinion, yes.”
Then came the kicker: “I’m sure you know, though, this does not guarantee that you will not be retaliated against, even though retaliation/reprisal for making protected disclosures is illegal,” the attorney concluded in the August email to the whistleblower.
The email, which was obtained and validated by The Washington Times, demonstrates what lawmakers and whistleblower activists have long suspected: The FBI repeatedly mishandles whistleblower cases, retaliating against employees who report waste, fraud and abuse, and fails to adequately investigate charges of misbehavior.
This whistleblower works in one of the FBI’s “G-teams,” which investigate counterterrorism cases, a topic on which the FBI is notoriously resistant to whistleblower complaints.
“The FBI has placed its bureaucratic culture ahead of protecting Americans from terrorism,” said Stephen Kohn, a lawyer and executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center. “They have allowed retaliatory animus and their cultural hostility toward whistleblowers to compromise the counterterrorism program. What these employees are reporting is shocking but not new.”
Last month, the Government Accountability Office found the FBI did little to offer its whistleblowers immunity and recommended the law enforcement agency issue guidance for those who wished to file complaints.
The GAO report found nearly 90 percent of FBI whistleblower claims were dismissed, and in only three cases from 2009 to 2013 did the Department of Justice side with the complainant.
It also took the bureaucracy as long as 10 years to resolve the complaints, even if verified, the report found.
“The FBI’s whistleblower process is broken,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement to The Times.
His committee will dig into such accusations Wednesday, demanding better protections and oversight for those brave enough to come forward.
“I am going to take a very serious look at the reforms proposed by GAO and the Justice Department at Wednesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing,” Mr. Grassley said.
The FBI is continually trying to improve its whistleblower protection process, but not all lawyers within the FBI are qualified to answer whistleblower protection questions or grant whistleblower status, according to those within the agency.
Only nine officials have been formally designated within the bureau to receive whistleblower complaints, the GAO report found. Any FBI employee who reports wrongdoing to a boss not anointed by the FBI to handle such complaints “is not protected, and the person does not have a right to recourse if the individual should experience retaliation as a result,” according to the GAO assessment.
“The FBI recognizes the important role played by whistleblowers in our law enforcement efforts, and we take very seriously our responsibilities with regard to FBI employees who make protected disclosures under the regulations,” FBI spokesman Christopher Allen said in response to the whistleblower’s accusations and emails.
“The FBI will not tolerate reprisals or intimidation by any FBI employee against those who make protected disclosures, nor tolerate attempts to prevent employees from making such disclosures,” the spokesman said.
Last year, the FBI proposed revamping its whistleblower rules to make it easier for those to come forward. It expanded the list of FBI officials to whom a whistleblower can report concerns, and it allows whistleblowers to call witnesses if their cases are heard and make them eligible for compensation if their case proves true.
Still, those revisions proved little solace for the member on the surveillance squad wanting to report misbehavior.
The whistleblower’s personnel file shows that for most of the last two decades he received high ratings and frequent praise for his surveillance work, including numerous awards and commendations as well as personal letters of gratitude directly from FBI directors when he worked in the Washington area. He received a rating of “excellent” in 2013 in his new division.
But after he questioned management in 2014 as to why his division was passed over for a new surveillance team it had earned in the rankings, the whistleblower was given a first-ever negative evaluation. “I’ve been retaliated against just for asking a fair question,” he told The Times.
His performance review, dated September 2014 — a month after he went to the FBI’s legal team seeking whistleblower advice — was downgraded to “minimally successful,” with the primary justification being he was spending too much time trying to call out mismanagement rather than concentrating on the job at hand.
“[Name of whistleblower] advised he had consulted with a law firm and was going to pursue legal action,” his superior wrote in his September review, obtained by The Times. “I advised him he was free to do so, but all research and related activity must be on his own time, and his time was to be spent leading the team.”
Just a year earlier, however, the whistleblower received an “excellent” performance review, even notching off a few “outstanding” marks — the highest rank — in some categories.
“[Name of whistleblower] demonstrated excellent skill in establishing priorities, schedules, and plans when given a new assignment or task, [he] quickly evaluated the priority and addressed appropriately,” the 2013 review said.
After the performance downgrade, and being told by an FBI lawyer his efforts to report agency waste, fraud and abuse may led to retaliation, the whistleblower sought whistleblower protection status and took his concerns to both the Justice Department’s inspector general and the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“FBI culture discourages any kind of official complaint,” said Michael German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program and a former FBI agent. “You can whine and stomp your feet, and nobody is going to get too angry with you. But if you make an official complaint — if it has to go on paper, it exists, it’s real, and somebody has to deal with it.”
Mr. German left the FBI in 2004 after reporting deficiencies in the FBI’s counterterrorism operations to Congress — complaints of which he said ended his career at the bureau.
“You’d think the FBI would be interested in knowing how to do its job better, but they seemed more concerned about suppressing complaints, especially regarding terrorism cases,” he said.
The fact there’s so few people qualified to grant whistleblower protection has a chilling effect on those in the bureau who may want to report misdeeds but can’t go through their traditional chain of command, Mr. German said.
Forty-two percent of FBI agents surveyed by the inspector general in 2009 said they did not report all the employee misconduct they found on the job, and 18 percent said they never reported misconduct at all, which is troubling for a law enforcement agency, said Mr. German.
The reasons cited for not reporting included fears of retaliation, management not being supportive or worries no discipline action would be sought.
The counterterrorism units in which the threatened whistleblower works are known as G-teams, and are made up of covert tracking specialists who do not have the rank of special agents. With the possibility of 1,000 terrorist sleeper cells embedded within the U.S., the G-teams work with FBI agents to track down potential threats to the U.S. homeland.
“I just know what our team was and what it could be — I want to think the oath I took means something,” the whistleblower told The Times. “I consider some [of] our team’s actions an abuse of power and potentially a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.”
A federal judge warned the EPA on Monday not to discriminate against conservative groups in how it responds to open-records requests, issuing a legal spanking to the agency that he said may have lied to the court and showed “apathy and carelessness” in carrying out the law.
Judge Royce C. Lamberth said he couldn’t prove that officials intentionally destroyed documents, but he described as “absurdity” the way the Environmental Protection Agency handled a Freedom of Information Act request from the Landmark Legal Foundation and then the court case stemming from it — including late last week admitting that it misled the court about how it went about searching for documents.
In a scorching 25-page opinion, the judge accused the agency of insulting him by first claiming it had conducted a full search for records, then years later retracted that claim in a footnote to another document without giving any explanation for how it erred.
“The recurrent instances of disregard that EPA employees display for FOIA obligations should not be tolerated by the agency,” the judge said. “This court would implore the executive branch to take greater responsibility in ensuring that all EPA FOIA requests — regardless of the political affiliation of the requester — are treated with equal respect and conscientiousness.”
The ruling could be seen as a rebuke to President Obama, who took office vowing to run the most transparent administration in history but has faced increasing challenges over how he has lived up to that claim. The EPA in particular has been in a yearslong battle with conservative groups that argue the agency has ignored them while playing favorites with liberal groups.
Judge Lamberth pointedly noted that the EPA delayed some of its follow-through on the request by Landmark until after the 2012 elections and said explanations by several EPA officials for why they failed to live up to the law defied reason.
Agency spokeswoman Liz Purchia said the EPA was happy that Judge Lamberth didn’t punish it further. She also vowed that her agency would try to do better on open-records requests.
“EPA is focused on creating more efficient work processes to ensure FOIAs responses are done more effectively and at a lower cost,” she said, adding that the agency would look into cloud computing and mobile technology to help.
Mark Levin, president of Landmark, said the EPA is lucky the judge didn’t go further. He said it is now up to the administration to decide how to punish the agency, though he isn’t holding much hope for that prospect.
“What the administration should do, when a federal judge issues an opinion like this, is fire people,” said Mr. Levin, who hosts a popular radio show. “What this admin will no doubt do is throw a party.”
Judge Lamberth singled out the actions of two employees.
One, Nena Shaw, he said, either showed “utter indifference” to the law or lied to the court about the efforts she made to provide records to Landmark.
The other, Eric W. Wachter, a key EPA official identified as overseeing the open-records search, told the court several years ago that he had conducted a thorough search for records Landmark requested. On Friday, however, the Justice Department quietly retracted those assertions.
Ronald C. Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said Mr. Wachter was acting in good faith throughout and that the EPA never claimed it had conducted the search correctly, so Mr. Wachter didn’t lie to the court.
Mr. Wachter didn’t respond to an email Monday seeking comment.
Landmark was trying to get a peek at EPA communications with outsiders as the agency was writing rules and regulations in 2012. The EPA slow-walked the request, forcing Landmark to sue.
Mr. Levin said it was apparent from the beginning that the EPA was trying to obstruct, rather than cooperate with, the request for documents.
Judge Lamberth said the EPA was either lying or incompetent at several turns in how it handled the situation in terms of the search and its response to the court case.
“Either EPA intentionally sought to evade Landmark’s lawful FOIA request so the agency could destroy responsive documents, or EPA demonstrated apathy and carelessness toward Landmark’s request,” Judge Lamberth said. “Either scenario reflects poorly upon EPA and surely serves to diminish the public’s trust in the agency.”
Because Landmark couldn’t prove intentional bad faith, the judge said, it wasn’t entitled to “spoliation sanctions.” Neither could he find a reason to impose criminal sanctions against the agency.
Judge Lamberth also refused to appoint an independent monitor to oversee the EPA’s open-records requests. He said that was an “extreme and legally uncertain” alternative, but his frustration with the situation showed repeatedly.
“The court is left wondering whether EPA has learned from its mistakes, or if it will merely continue to address FOIA requests in the clumsy manner that has seemingly become its custom,” the judge wrote. “Given the offensively unapologetic nature of EPA’s recent withdrawal notice … the court is not optimistic that the agency has learned anything.”
Judge Lamberth’s admonition against discriminating against conservative groups comes in the middle of a heated debate between the agency and those groups.
Conservatives produced a 2013 study finding that their requests for fee waivers under open-records requests were denied about 90 percent of the time, while liberal interest groups’ fee-waiver requests were approved 90 percent of the time.
Christopher Horner, a researcher who regularly battles the EPA over open-records requests and who helped craft that 2013 study, said Judge Lamberth’s ruling was a vindication and should undercut the EPA’s inspector general, who last year conducted an investigation that cleared the EPA of bias in its fee-waiver process.
The IRS’s inspector general confirmed Thursday it is conducting a criminal investigation into how Lois G. Lerner’s emails disappeared, saying it took only two weeks for investigators to find hundreds of tapes the agency’s chief had told Congress were irretrievably destroyed.
Investigators have already scoured 744 backup tapes and gleaned 32,774 unique emails, but just two weeks ago they found an additional 424 tapes that could contain even more Lerner emails, Deputy Inspector General Timothy P. Camus told the House Oversight Committee in a rare late-night hearing meant to look into the status of the investigation.
“There is potential criminal activity,” Mr. Camus said.
He said they have also discovered the hard drives from the IRS’s email servers, but said because the drives are out of synch it’s not clear whether they will be able to recover anything from them.
“To date we have found 32,744 unique emails that were backed up from Lois Lerner’s email box. We are in the process of comparing these emails to what the IRS has already produced to Congress to determine if we did in fact recover any new emails,” Mr. Camus said.
Democrats questioned the independence of Inspector General J. Russell George, who is overseeing the investigation, saying he’s injected politics into his work.
Rep. Gerald Connolly, Virginia Democrat, said Mr. George is refusing to turn documents over to him, prompting a heated reply.
“You’re not entitled to certain documents,” Mr. George said.
“Oh really? We’ll see about that, won’t we,” Mr. Connolly replied, saying that he questioned whether Mr. George could be trusted if he’s refusing to provide documents, yet is in charge of an investigation into whether the IRS stonewalled document requests.
The hearing was the latest chapter in the complex investigation into the IRS’s targeting of tea party groups for special scrutiny.
Several congressional committees are still probing the matter, and both the inspector general and the Justice Department are conducting criminal investigations.
In a 2013 report, the inspector general said the IRS had improperly targeted conservative and tea party groups’ applications for nonprofit status, asking repeated intrusive questions and delaying their applications well beyond a reasonable time. Some of those groups are still waiting, with their applications now pending for years.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican and Oversight Committee chairman, said the ongoing investigations undercut President Obama’s assertion last year that there was no evidence of corruption in the IRS’s targeting.
“I have no idea how the president came to such a definitive conclusion without all the facts,” he said.
The IRS belatedly told Congress it may have lost some of Ms. Lerner’s emails after her computer crashed, and asserted that the backup tapes didn’t exist.
But under questioning from Mr. Chaffetz, Mr. Camus said it took him only two weeks to track down the backup tapes, and when he asked the IRS depository for them, the workers there said they’d never been contacted by the agency itself.
Republicans said that was stunning because IRS Commissioner John Koskinen repeatedly assured Congress the emails were irretrievably lost.
“I think they have misled or lied to the committee,” said Rep. John L. Mica, Florida Republican.
Mr. Camus said they were clued in to the 424 new tapes they just found a couple of weeks ago after realizing the IRS hadn’t given over a key document. They demanded that document, and realized it showed hundreds of other tapes existed.
Democrats said the investigation has dragged on too long and been too expensive, pointing to the IRS’s estimate that it has spent $20 million on staff and equipment to try to comply with the committee’s request.
Ms. Lerner, who oversaw the unit of the IRS that scrutinized nonprofit groups’ applications, is a central figure in the investigations.
After belatedly discovering that some of her emails weren’t being recovered, the IRS did try to reconstitute them by asking other employees to dig through their emails to see if they were the recipients of any messages that involved her. That did produce some of the missing emails.
Democrats said the GOP seemed to be insinuating Ms. Lerner had purposely crashed her hard drive to hide emails — though she herself pushed to try to get messages recovered.
Democrats also questioned why the hearing was happening now, given that Mr. Camus and Mr. George both stressed that their findings are preliminary and could change as they learn more.
“It seems that the best course of action would be to have the inspector general come back when his report is complete,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the panel.
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2011 campaign to drive Moammar Gadhafi from power did significant damage to U.S. intelligence, according to a top Libyan aide and U.S. intelligence officials.
The Libyan dictator provided regular reports to the CIA that helped capture or kill key al Qaeda figures and thwart terrorist attacks against American targets overseas, those sources said.
The Libyan regime, for instance, helped U.S. forces kill a key al Qaeda operative of a suicide attack on a U.S. air field in Afghanistan in 2007 when Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting.
It also helped foil a plan to attack the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria in 2005, according to U.S. intelligence sources who spoke to The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
“The Gadhafi regime was a productive source for counterterrorism intelligence,” said a former senior intelligence official who was personally familiar with the information-sharing arrangement the U.S. had with Libya. “The relationship was healthy enough that even Mousa Koussa [the head of Libyan intelligence from 1994 to 2009] visited the CIA during the [George W.] Bush administration years.”
The American officials’ accounts were corroborated by former Gadhafi aide Mohammed Ismael, who told The Times that his former boss authorized significant intelligence-sharing with the U.S. during the war on terrorism, especially relating to al Qaeda’s expansion into North Africa.
Mr. Ismael said the former Libyan regime was instrumental in the targeting of Abu Laith al-Libi, then the No. 3 leader of al Qaeda and the suspected mastermind of a 2007 Bagram Air Field bombing in Afghanistan that killed 23 people and injured 20. In that incident, a suicide bomber reached the outer gate of the U.S. installation while the vice president was visiting.
Mr. Ismael described the attack as an “assassination attempt” against Mr. Cheney, a theory that was debated in U.S. military circles. He said that when al-Libi was killed several months later in Pakistan by a CIA Predator drone, it was Libyan intelligence that helped U.S. forces find him.
“Libya was the first country in the world to issue an international arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden in March 1988,” Mr. Ismael told The Times in a series of email exchanges.
“Intelligence sharing and information provided to U.S. intelligence agencies led the U.S. to their first arrest of [al-Libi], and Libyan intelligence services provided their U.S. counterpart with valuable information on Libyan terrorists in Iraq and hard-core fighters from Derna, Libya, in Iraq,” he said.
Mr. Ismael broke his silence to the press last month for the first time since the fall of the Gadhafi regime when he spoke to The Times about Mrs. Clinton’s role in pushing the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya that ousted Gadhafi from power.
The Times reported that the Pentagon opposed military intervention so much that it sent an emissary to negotiate with Libya, bypassing Mrs. Clinton, in conversations that were captured on tape. U.S. intelligence couldn’t corroborate Mrs. Clinton’s primary argument for war, that Libya was in imminent danger of a humanitarian crisis, the paper reported.
In September 2011, The New York Times reported that documents found in an abandoned Libyan spymaster’s office “provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the [Gadhafi] Libyan intelligence services.”
It said the U.S. apparently sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning to Libya.
Mr. Ismael told The Times that his former bosses helped lead the CIA to Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun — commonly known as “Spin Ghul” — a battle-hardened al Qaeda veteran who was extradited to New York from Italy in 2013 and held on six federal charges including conspiracy to kill American military personnel and conspiracy to bomb diplomatic buildings.
One of those buildings, Mr. Ismael said, was the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria targeted in 2005. While Gadhafi tried to help the U.S. thwart terrorist attacks, he said, the rebels unleashed by the removal of the Libyan leader led to an attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stephens and three other Americans at Benghazi in September 2012.
“So you have the [Gadhafi] regime, which helped stop an attack on the U.S. Embassy, and you have the Libyan supported rebels that planned an attack on the U.S. Embassy. It’s ironic,” he wrote to The Times.
Mr. Ismael also expressed frustration that after years of helping U.S. intelligence halt al Qaeda operations against its overseas military installations and embassies, the U.S. agency armed al-Qaeda-linked rebels in his own country, leading to the death of Gadhafi and the collapse of his regime.
“You can see that al Qaeda was specifically linked to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which [NATO] backed in the war against the regime,” Mr. Ismael noted by email.
The Times this month revealed a classified weapons list compiled by Gadhafi intelligence agents that detailed armaments supplied to rebel forces by NATO member states.
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was one of the most powerful anti-Gadhafi rebel forces that allied itself with NATO in 2011. Shortly before the intervention started in March, the Islamic organization adopted a secular, pro-democracy sounding name, calling itself the “Libyan Fighting Group for Change.”
Mr. Ismael said the former Libyan regime also helped shield Western nationals from terrorist dangers.
“Libyan intelligence services played a major role with U.S. assistance in the arrest of Abd Razzaq al-Bara, a top al Qaeda leader in the Sahel region who was responsible for the abduction of more than 30 Western tourists in the Sahara desert,” he wrote.
“He was arrested with assistance of Libyans by a Chadian rebel group. The Libyans then stepped in and convinced the group to hand him over to Libya, which in turn turned him over to Algeria,” Mr. Ismael said.
“Al-Bara had plans to target U.S. interests in the region,” he said.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials corroborated most of Mr. Ismael’s claims, confirming that Libya was a key cooperator from 2004 through 2011 with the CIA and that intelligence-gathering in the country became more difficult in the chaos that ensued with Gadhafi’s ouster.
“My understanding and belief is that they were helpful after they dismantled their WMD program,” said another U.S. intelligence source. “They became pretty helpful to us because there were so many Libyans in al Qaeda and they had a unique window into that.”
If you are sailing miles from shore and come upon the rusted prows of sunken ships, you can be sure that water is not that deep and it would be a good idea to change course. Australia is just the latest ship’s prow to warn us away from the treacherous path of green-energy mandates, taxes, and subsidies. Among the others have been Germany, Spain, and Italy.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported the collapse of the wind-power market in Australia. The Liberal government there is pulling the plug on state subsidies for the renewable energy industry. Without those subsidies, investor interest evaporates. So much for the claims (also here and here) that wind and solar technologies are already competitive.
In the U.S., we had a sneak preview of what happens to wind power when it goes, cold turkey, off subsidies. An expected end to the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) on Dec. 31, 2012, dried up the investment pipeline so thoroughly that even though the PTC was retroactively reinstated just weeks after its expiration, only one wind turbine was installed in the U.S. in the first six months of 2013.
Grid parity? That’s not what we saw in the U.S. in 2013, and it’s not what wind-energy companies in Australia are telling us with their actions right now.
What happened in Australia to get to this point? In 2011, the Labor government of Kevin Rudd pushed through a scheme to restrict CO2 emissions. When introduced, the approach resembled a cap-and-trade program, which effectively hides costs to consumers. But over time, the program morphed into a more explicit carbon tax.
As is almost always the case, the costs of these restrictions were downplayed while the proposal was being considered. However, the laws of science and economics cannot be legislated out of existence, and the inevitable costs soon became apparent. The program led to significant increases in the price of electricity, and the voters in Australia were not pleased with having been duped.
In fact, the carbon taxes were so unpopular that the Labor party ousted Mr. Rudd from its leadership and campaigned, in part, on getting rid of its own tax. The election’s outcome, however, forced an alliance with the Green party, whose demand was to keep the tax in place.
The voters didn’t forget the hoodwinking. In a subsequent election, they put a Liberal-National Alliance coalition in power in a campaign that was dominated by promises to remove the carbon tax. This time the politicians kept their word and jettisoned the tax.
Australians, like most people throughout the world, are more concerned with increasing economic growth, jobs, and affordable energy than they are with adopting costly yet ineffective schemes meant to address a problem that is low on their priority list. Certainly, that’s how it is in the U.S.
Survey after survey shows that Americans rank climate concerns at the bottom of virtually every list, even when the lists are restricted to environmental problems. The hysterical predictions of imminent doom, unfulfilled as the various dates pass by, have created a global-warming fatigue. People once spooked by scary predictions of ever-more-frequent hurricanes and other extreme weather events have seen those visions fail to materialize. Small wonder they are now not so unnerved by warnings of sea-levels rising by an inch or two or afternoons warming by a fraction of a degree 100 years from now. And none of the proposed “climate-saving” policies can offer any impact beyond inches and fractional degrees.
Add Australia to the list of countries that are facing reality after seeing their green-energy fantasy collapse. Germany is cutting green subsidies and building new coal-fired power plants to help halt the skyrocketing cost of electricity (three times the cost in the U.S.) that threatens its industrial base. Spain and Italy have also cut back on the renewable-energy policies that helped tip them into financial crisis.
Let’s hope American lawmakers can learn from the green-energy mistakes of their foreign colleagues.
This week Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat, leaves office, having resigned under the cloud of a cronyism and corruption scandal. A U.S. attorney has subpoenaed “records that are a catalog of Kitzhaber’s climate and economy-related initiatives,” centering on money given to Mr. Kitzhaber’s fiancee Cylvia Hayes. Ms. Hayes served a curious triple role of “first lady,” adviser to the governor on energy policy and well-compensated consultant for the “clean energy” industry.
Any such investigation must not stop at Oregon’s borders. This is not because the “clean energy” industry seems unique for its associated scandals in recent years, or the prevalence of wealthy Democratic donors getting even richer from it. Of course, some of those same supporters, such as Tom Steyer, provided Democrats a financial surge on a par with a longtime force, the teachers’ unions, in 2014, expressly for the purpose of advancing the “climate” agenda, transferring taxpayer money to uneconomic “clean energy” schemes.
Instead, a broader look into the depth of this ingrained collusion reveals that Mr. Kitzhaber’s office enlisted others to use their governors’ offices to “spread climate coordination and collaboration to a larger group of governors across the U.S.” underwritten by Mr. Steyer and others.
On behalf of the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, I obtained an 11-page email thread under Washington State’s freedom of information law. In it, we see how Mr. Kitzhaber’s office organized a campaign to promote the industry’s agenda, beginning with the California and Washington governors’ offices, a private environmentalist law firm and the White House.
The scheme was to recruit other governors to use their offices the same way. Mr. Kitzhaber’s aide originating the email discussion is Dan Carol, identified as central to the unfolding scandal by the Portland Oregonian: “How did Hayes end up with a fellowship funded by an organization with an interest in clean-energy policy in Oregon? A Kitzhaber campaign adviser, Dan Carol, helped arrange the funding following Kitzhaber’s election in 2010 … Carol subsequently landed a position within the Kitzhaber administration. That position, Willamette Week has reported, pays more than $165,000, making Carol Kitzhaber’s highest-paid aide.”
According to the emails, the parties discuss “Dan’s concept.” Deploying the governors’ offices in a coordinated push for the “climate” agenda would require paying outside parties as well, which would be funded by “major environmental donors” including Michael Bloomberg and Mr. Steyer. This would “serve as a standard setting left flank.”
Specifically, the plan includes “a nationally-coordinated, multi-year ‘states strategy’ focused on driving outcomes contemplated by the president’s climate action plan, [EPA’s Clean Air Act section 111d], resilient infrastructure and international treaty objectives at scale.”
Using green-group slang, the emails refer to President Obama’s push for windmills and solar panels to supplant our existing network of electricity generation and distribution, and to the Kyoto II treaty expected to be reached in December.
The parties sought to arrange a private White House dinner “to create buy-in” among the same crowd, to “signal where funders should support filling holes in missing capacity we need to pull off the Multi-state strategy to keep outcomes and momentum moving on top of the public approach,” wrote Mr. Carol.
According to the emails, Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Dan Utech liked the idea. Sam Ricketts, director of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s Washington, D.C. office, also assured his colleagues that “[Council on Environmental Quality ] staff were interested and felt [White House’s David] Agnew, [then-Counselor to the President John] Podesta et al.” would be interested as well.
About the planned White House meeting, they suggested “select Governors, senior White House officials, Tom Steyer, [Michael] Bloomberg, and a couple of other major environmental donors”: “The Ask to Funders at that Meeting: Support right now the hiring of a ‘grown-up’ in each state, trusted and recommended by each engaged Governor who is capable and committed to developing and managing an integrated and multi-issue climate outcomes campaign through Paris 2015.”
This would “be independent of any specific in-state or national [nongovernmental organization], yet would work closely with [green] NGOs .”
A major objective was creating “broad interstate [climate] agreement.” Most intriguing about this was the plan to use electric utilities to flip Republican governors. “[B]ecause there are key utilities whose service territories cross red and blue states Governors in these states could quietly engineer a breakthrough strategy that compels utilities in key red states to lead the charge to win over a key Governor, rather than rely on a standard NGO-shaming strategy that might not deliver.”
Taken together, the Kitzhaber scandal and these emails leave no doubt that credible investigation into the use of public offices to advance the “clean energy” industry, beyond the Oregon governor’s office, is required. Any investigation must also extend to the White House, whose occupant serially invoked the objective of “finally” making renewable energy “the profitable kind of energy.
That is not a legitimate purpose of government. Yet it plainly was an objective of many government officials. We now see both how and why. It is time to investigate what is behind this “fundamental transformation” of government.
We knew this was coming. Within the last couple of weeks, both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission declared their intention to regulate the Internet. Fascists always explain their actions as efforts to either make something more efficient, “fair,” or to supposedly “protect” their target. Sometimes they simply lie, like saying they’re nationalizing health insurance to make it more affordable and to increase access to health care.
Now, with the feds’ latest effort, their new slogan might as well be, “If you like your Internet, you can keep your Internet.” Make no mistake: The Internet is under assault and saving it is up to us.
Democrats and their liberal sycophants have been contemplating for years how best to smash the Internet. Open discussion among the great unwashed masses poses a threat to the superiorly educated and groomed establishment. First, it was the magnificence of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which made free speech on the radio impossible. President Reagan’s reversal of that Orwellian control mechanism made talk radio possible (to say nothing of the likely increase of gastrointestinal disorders among liberals).
Even prior to that massive win for the First Amendment, the left had succeeded at co-opting the legacy media by swamping the staff and reporters with ideological true believers, making newspapers and the broadcast networks nothing more than PR agencies for the leftist agenda.
Think about it: The sheeple emerging from the liberal academies around the country in the 1960s and ‘70s didn’t move to the countryside to smoke pot and raise puppies. No, they went into media. They became writers, reporters and television news anchors.
Never mind that by the 21st century, their blind partisan allegiance was destroying their industry. I’m sure they feel getting Barack Obama elected to two terms as president made it all worthwhile.
But now they want more. The left’s relevance relies on controlling the public discussion. Bill Clinton learned of the Internet’s importance when the legacy media, via Newsweek, “held the [Monica Lewinsky] story” according to Michael Isikoff, their reporter at the time, in comments reported by the Weekly Standard.
Then some guy with a website called “Drudge” made sure the American people were informed about the reckless actions of a self-obsessed president.
Newsweek? Now defunct. Drudge? More powerful than ever. And that’s the problem the feds want to fix. The Internet must be killed because it dares to keep turning on the light in a room the left prefers remain dark.
The past two weeks reveal the government’s frantic, and determined, effort to take control of the Internet. Using the pretext of “net neutrality,” that is regulating Internet service providers and the speed rate at which they provide Internet service, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced the FCC was claiming the power to regulate the Internet like a utility service.
This would be done to make the Internet more “fair,” of course. But the truth of the matter is it’s an excuse to essentially nationalize the Internet. The moment that’s accepted, all bets are off, and the Internet becomes, well, Newsweek.
Reinforcing the suspicion that every American should have about this unprecedented action is the fact that Mr. Wheeler is keeping the 332-page document outlining his plan secret from the American public. He released a four-page summary with major points, but refuses to release the full document to the public.
That’s right, they’re not allowing us to see it. Verge.com reports on the concern of Ajit Pai, a fellow FCC commissioner:
“The American people are being misled about President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet,” he said in a statement, suggesting that Mr. Obama had pressured Mr. Wheeler into reclassification. “Last week’s carefully managed rollout was designed to downplay the plans of a massive intrusion in the Internet economy … . I have now read the 332-page plan. It is worse than I had imagined,” said Mr. Pai. In particular, he warned that reclassifying broadband would open the door to taxes and onerous regulations, and give the FCC “broad and unprecedented discretion to micromanage the Internet.”
This was the first shot across the bow. Within a week of Mr. Wheeler’s remarkable effort to pull an “Obamacare” on the Internet, the Federal Election Commission came through with the second volley.
“Democrats on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) signaled Wednesday that they are prepared to forge ahead with new regulations on bloggers and others using the Internet to support candidates and influence public policy, the Washington Examiner reports. Supporters of Internet regulation urged the FEC to put together new rules to require even third-party Internet-based groups to reveal donors, a move that would reverse a 2006 decision to keep the agency’s hands off the Internet,” according to Newsmax.com.
FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel has said publicly she wants to control political information on the Internet. Of course they do. There’s another election coming up and they must act quickly to do everything possible to eliminate the ability of those who do not pledge allegiance to the liberal cause to be heard.
I don’t have much faith in the Republicans stopping this Democrat power grab, so this once again leaves the average person as the last line of defense against more federal overreach meant to silence and control the increasingly pesky, conservative and vocal citizen.
Carly Fiorina, who rose to power in corporate America to become Hewlett-Packard’s first female chairman and CEO, is aiming to smash two more glass ceilings, but this time in politics.
One is the 159-year history of total male dominance of Republican presidential nominations. The other is the 225-year period when a “For Men Only” sign has hung over the door to the Oval Office.
Mrs. Fiorina has no problem breaking glass to do it, candidly discussing what she sees as the foreign policy failures of George W. Bush, her opposition to amnesty and her disdain for crony capitalism that marries government interests to Wall Street.
She also doesn’t mince words when it comes to problems she sees with big-government liberals. She cited the example of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber, who was captured on video boasting that Americans were too stupid to understand the law.
“I don’t doubt that they care about helping people, but I also don’t doubt that in their heart of hearts a lot of them think they are smarter than you are, better than you are, and that’s why they’re going to decide for you,” Mrs. Fiorina said in a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Times.
In that respect, she said, they are a lot like some CEOs who decide for other people rather than listen to their customers.
“I don’t think President Obama spends an awful lot of time consulting with other people,” she said. “He’s pretty sure he’s smarter than everyone else. He’s pretty much said so.”
At age 60, Mrs. Fiorina doesn’t need another career. She is a comfortable millionaire who proved she could run a tech giant effectively in a once male-dominated Silicon Valley. She has tested politics by running in 2010 for the Senate against Barbara Boxer in California and losing by 10 points. She is chairwoman of the influential American Conservative Union Foundation, a perch that lends her plenty of opportunity to shape policy and rub elbows in Washington.
But she aspires to do more to countervail the liberal forces of the Warrens, Obamas, Clintons and Grubers of the world. So she is boning up on policy and preparing for a possible run for president against a slate of all-male Republican rivals. If she dives into the race, she plans to stand out against the rest of the field.
Since the days of Ronald Reagan, Republican presidential aspirants have claimed fealty to conservatism’s holy trinity of free markets, traditional values and a strong military.
Mrs. Fiorina agrees with those principles but adds one of her own.
“The philosophy of conservatism is that no one of us is any better than any other one of us,” she said. “Everyone has gifts, everyone wants to live a life of dignity and purpose and meaning, and everyone can do that.
“Liberals don’t believe that, and that is the core difference between liberals and conservatives, because liberals think some are smarter than others,” she said.
She doesn’t shrink from answering the question of why a technology executive who ran a company of 180,000 workers with little political experience thinks she is qualified to run a nation of more than 300 million.
“A large part of our problem is that we have so many people in elective office, including the president, who have done nothing but government and politics all their lives,” she said. “So maybe they know government, but so far government isn’t working real well.”
Mrs. Fiorina said the next president needs to have “real experience in making tough decisions in tough circumstances and will need to know how bureaucracies work and know technology.”
Why technology?
“Because it is a transformative tool that is never used to its full extent here in Washington,” she said.
Besides, she asks, “when did we come up with this idea that only a professional politician could run for office? It’s a modern and not particularly good invention. And it’s not the way our republic ran for 150-plus years.”
‘Warren is right’
After every question, she pauses for a second or two before responding with a cascade of complete, clear, grammatically correct sentences, not interrupted by even a single thought-collecting “um” or “ah” or “you know.”
At first, Mrs. Fiorina sounds almost like a comrade-in-arms with the more liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, noting that both women want to find ways to end what they regard as an unholy alliance between Wall Street and its cronies in the executive branch of the federal government.
It’s been going on under Republican and Democratic presidents, she said.
“Elizabeth Warren is right. We have crony capitalism in this country,” Mrs. Fiorina said of the woman who was a Harvard law professor and is the No. 1 liberal heartthrob in the Senate.
Many liberals say they would give their eye teeth to see Mrs. Warren contest former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Some on the left see Mrs. Clinton as having no degrees of separation from the economic ravagers of Wall Street.
“We don’t have a free market in this country today. We have crony capitalism, which is why small businesses are folding up and going away,” Mrs. Fiorina said. “It’s why more of them are being destroyed than being created.”
Mrs. Fiorina’s apparent consonance with Mrs. Warren vanishes quickly.
“Warren’s wrong about the answer to crony capitalism. It’s not more big government, which only creates more crony capitalism,” she said. “The answer is less government, radical simplification, real government reform — not just enough to lower tax rates. You have to simplify the tax codes.”
Mrs. Fiorina’s worldview was shaped by her winding journey from receptionist with a Stanford University degree in medieval history and philosophy and law school dropout to division chairman of Lucent Technologies, and then head of everything at Hewlett-Packard.
“I was raised conservative, but I wasn’t politically active for a very long time,” she said. “So while I grew up listening to my father rail against the evening news and The New York Times, I would say, ‘Daddy, why do you read it? It makes you so upset.’ But he liked a good fight, right? But I wasn’t active — didn’t think about how to apply those principles particularly.
“The way I became a conservative was actually through business,” she said. “I figured out that when I had a tough problem, the person in my organization I least expected turned out to be the person who could help me solve it. In other words, I figured out that everyone around me has potential. Everyone has gifts.”
Despite her five-star work resume, she said skill and experience in managing a large bureaucracy takes second place to qualifications for president.
“If I could only pick one, I would say a coherent worldview” because it takes that to understand why and how “government now has to be fundamentally reformed, not tinkered with,” she said.
“An understanding of how bureaucracies work and how they can be changed is also very important,” she said. “It wasn’t important 100 years ago, but it is now.”
Though Mrs. Fiorina hasn’t formally announced her candidacy, she is formulating policy positions.
She said she won’t even consider giving the millions of people who entered the United States illegally an opportunity to gain citizenship status. Once the U.S. border is fully secured, she said, only then would she consider granting legal work status.
That raises the related question of why she thinks the federal government can afford to spend billions more dollars attempting to create an impermeable border wall when it is already spending hundreds of billions of dollars fighting wars abroad.
“You should ask President Obama,” she retorted.
But the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were begun by President George W. Bush and not by Mr. Obama.
“That’s right,” she said. “We mismanaged going into Iraq and getting out.
“It was totally realistic for us to go into Afghanistan to deny al Qaeda a safe haven,” she said. “What was foolish was to say we’re going to build a central government where none has existed for 2,000 years. That’s called nation-building. That doesn’t work.”
But don’t mistake Mrs. Fiorina as a pacifist, even if she finds fault in both of the past presidents’ approaches to fighting terrorism.
“There are times when we must protect our interests and those of our allies,” she said. “So it’s unrealistic to say we’re never going to get into wars.”
President Obama’s temporary deportation amnesty will make it easier for illegal immigrants to improperly register and vote in elections, state elections officials testified to Congress on Thursday, saying that the driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers they will be granted create a major voting loophole.
While stressing that it remains illegal for noncitizens to vote, secretaries of state from Ohio and Kansas said they won’t have the tools to sniff out illegal immigrants who register anyway, ignoring stiff penalties to fill out the registration forms that are easily available at shopping malls, motor vehicle bureaus and in curbside registration drives.
Anyone registering to vote attests that he or she is a citizen, but Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said mass registration drives often aren’t able to give due attention to that part, and so illegal immigrants will still get through.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach said even some motor vehicle bureau workers automatically ask customers if they want to register to vote, which some noncitizens in the past have cited as their reason for breaking the law to register.
“It’s a guarantee it will happen,” Mr. Kobach said.
Democrats disputed that it was an issue at all, saying Mr. Obama’s new policy, which could apply to more than 4 million illegal immigrants, doesn’t change anything in state or federal law.
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting member of Congress, accused Republicans of an effort at voter suppression.
“The president’s executive order gives immigrants the right to stay — immigrants who have been here for years, immigrants who have been working hard and whose labor we have needed,” Ms. Norton said. “The Republicans may want to go down in history as the party who tried once again 100 years later to nullify the right to vote. Well, I am here to say they shall not succeed.”
Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Democrat, said he doubted illegal immigrants would risk running afoul of the law — which could get them deported — just to be an insignificant part of an election.
The hearing was the latest GOP effort to dent Mr. Obama’s executive action, announced in November, which grants tentative legal status and work permits to as many as 4 million illegal immigrant parents whose children are either U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. The president also expanded a 2012 policy for so-called Dreamers, or illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, granting them tentative legal status and work permits as well.
Republicans say there are a host of unintended consequences, including the chances of illegal voting, a perverse incentive created by Obamacare that would make newly legalized workers more attractive to some businesses than American workers and complications with the tax code.
The newly legalized workers can apply for back refunds from the IRS even for years when they didn’t file their taxes, agency Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress on Wednesday.
Mr. Koskinen said the White House never spoke with him about potential consequences before Mr. Obama announced his policy changes. The secretaries of state who testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday said they too never heard from Mr. Obama ahead of time.
Mr. Husted has written the Obama administration asking for help in identifying the name and date of birth of all noncitizens who get Social Security numbers, which he said would allow states to go back and clear illegally registered voters from their rolls.
He said the administration hasn’t responded.
“Why I wrote the letter is I want to comply with federal law,” he said.
Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s secretary of state, said he believed the laws already on the books are good enough to stop any voting mischief in his state, and he doubted illegal immigrants had incentive or intent to try to interfere with U.S. elections.
“My experience is they don’t come here to vote, and they don’t come here to drive. They come here for a better life,” he said.
Mr. Kobach countered with a story about a legal permanent resident who had not yet become a citizen but who registered and voted nonetheless, and who said she wanted to support candidates who would help her earn citizenship faster.
Only four states require proof of citizenship before someone registers to vote, Mr. Kobach said. And even in those states, the federal government offers voter registration cards that don’t require proof of citizenship, giving determined illegal immigrants a way to circumvent checks.
A federal district court in Texas overturned a 1968 gun law prohibiting the sale of handguns to out-of-state residents, granting those who live in Washington, D.C., the ability to travel to an out-of-state gun store, buy a handgun and bring it home without a middleman.
The ruling takes aim at the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which prohibited handgun sales to out-of-state residents and was defended by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who argued that the law doesn’t violate the Second Amendment.
Proponents of lifting the ban said the 1968 law had become dated given technological advances in instant background checks, which are performed every time a gun is purchased from a federally licensed firearm dealer. It also prohibited a robust national handgun market from developing, as rifles and shotguns can be purchased regardless of state residency, but handguns are not.
Judge Reed O’Connor said the law had to survive the highest level of scrutiny and ruled that it plainly did not. He granted the gun vendors’ request for a summary judgment striking down the law.
“Based on the foregoing, the Court concludes that Defendants have not shown that the federal interstate handgun transfer ban is narrowly tailored to be the least restrictive means of achieving the Government’s goals under current law. The federal interstate handgun transfer ban is therefore unconstitutional on its face,” he wrote.
The decision can be appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, and Justice may ask for a stay.
But if it stands, the Texas court’s ruling would allow a pistol to be purchased from an out-of-state buyer if that handgun is legal in the buyer’s state of residency.
For D.C. residents, the ruling has particular importance because for the first time they will be able to make handgun purchases in neighboring Virginia or Maryland and bring the guns home.
Before the ruling, because the District has no gun stores, D.C. residents had to go through middlemen who purchased the firearms on their behalf, then resold them with a surcharge.
“This is a tremendous victory for the civil rights of Washington, D.C., residents and Americans in general — the court recognized there’s no need to destroy the national market for handguns,” said Alan Gura, who argued the case for the plaintiffs and is a founding partner at Gura & Possessky Pllc, in the District. “District residents are free to purchase handguns so long as they comply with D.C. law and have those handguns properly registered.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We are reviewing the opinion and considering next steps,” said Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman for the civil division at the U.S. Department of Justice, who declined further comment.
Mr. Gura expects the Justice Department to appeal the decision and perhaps get the ruling stayed, keeping previous law in place until appeals are heard.
“For us, it’s a highly disappointing decision, the court made a number of errors in regard to other Second Amendment case law that’s out there — it overestimated the burden on the plaintiffs and underestimated the evidence the government provided about how this law protects public safety,” said Michael McLively, a staff attorney with the San Francisco-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates for stronger gun regulations nationwide.
Though his group doesn’t list the District’s gun laws in its state rankings because it isn’t a state, Mr. McLively said, it has some of the country’s most restrictive laws, which Wednesday’s decision would undermine.
“We’re hopeful the government will appeal it,” he said, arguing that restrictions are interstate sales are merely a regulation, and not a denial, of the right to keep and bear arms.
“The 1968 law doesn’t take away your access to firearms. You’re still able to purchase them,” he said.
Amanda Welling, a handgun owner in the District of Columbia, said that because the District has been historically tough on gun owners, she fears the ruling may change the already restrictive handgun registration and training requirements within the District.
“Everything’s a bit wonky in D.C. I’m skeptical because certainly it’s now law [to buy a handgun out of state], but how long is it going to last?” said Mrs. Welling, who had a Second Amendment case considered by the Supreme Court last year. “But any small victory is a victory in the way of being able to have more freedom — to exercise our constitutional rights — and that’s a good thing.
In the federal case, Mance v. Holder, federally licensed firearms dealer Frederic Russell Mance Jr. of Texas and gun buyers Tracey and Andrew Hanson sued Mr. Holder and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director B. Todd Jones claiming the federal ban on the sale of handguns outside of one’s state stops the formation of a national handgun market.
The Hansons, who live in the District, visited Mr. Mance’s Texas store in June and were unable to buy handguns because of the ban.
The ban effectively “reduces competition, raises prices and limits consumer choices,” said their joint lawsuit, which was filed in July.
Alan Gottlieb, the founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, a pro-Second Amendment advocacy organization based in Bellevue, Washington, which helped fund the lawsuit, said he was “on cloud nine.”
“This case shows, if you can’t buy a handgun, you can’t exercise your Second Amendment right, because you can’t acquire it,” he said.
The Texas court applied “strict scrutiny” when evaluating the case, something other courts have been reluctant to do when dealing with the Second Amendment, he said.
For example, if the federal government wanted to prohibit bookstores from selling books to out-of-state residents, those residents could sue, citing a violation of their First Amendment rights, and they would have standing. The same standard historically hasn’t been given to Second Amendment cases, Mr. Gottlieb said.
“You’re allowed to buy a book and now you’re allowed to buy your gun. With this case, we’re able to create that analogy and have it stand,” said Mr. Gottlieb. “It greatly helps those arguing on behalf of the Second Amendment, but really it helps any lawyer defend the whole Bill of Rights.”
The court’s decision is “huge,” Matthew Bergstrom, a managing lawyer at Arsenal Attorneys, a Second Amendment law firm, said in an email. “So a Texan could now walk into a Virginia gun dealer and buy a pistol. Huge decision.”
President Obama wants millions of new recruiters for Obamacare, so he is drafting federal workers — including soldiers — to ask their friends and family to sign up for coverage at HealthCare.gov.
Each worker is being asked to recruit at least one enrollee.
The Office of Personnel Management, which the White House uses to oversee the millions of federal employees, has provided pro-Obamacare fliers and postcards for workers to distribute before the enrollment deadline Sunday.
With 2.7 million civilian federal employees plus 1.5 million in the military, that’s over 4 million potential recruiters drafted to boost the so-called Affordable Care Act. Their efforts are in addition to estimated annual marketing costs of $674 million, according to The Associated Press. Critics claim promotion costs are closer to $1 billion a year to sell the law to the American public.
For example, civilian and military personnel at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, were asked to boost Obamacare, via a Feb. 4 email sent by the Department of Defense’s human resource director, Ronna Garrett. Attached were PDF files of fliers, postcards and bulletin board material. Citing a request by OPM to multiple federal agencies and departments, the email states: “OPM’s desired outcome is to encourage every federal employee to talk to just one person about the [Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges], thereby informing millions of people about the affordable, quality health insurance options available on HealthCare.gov.”
The email went on: “These [attached] materials are intended to encourage federal employees to talk to their uninsured friends and family members about HealthCare.gov and the Health Insurance Marketplace.”
The distribution list for Ms. Garrett’s email indicates that it was sent to civilians working for the Army. However, it also was received by some uniformed personnel.
The Department of Defense is not alone in shilling for Obamacare. The Department of the Interior has an item on its website, dated Jan. 30, that provides the OPM handout and tells workers, “Do you have friends or family members who need health insurance? If so, you may want to encourage them to go to healthcare.gov.”
OPM’s website features a PDF file of the flier, which repeats the core message to federal workers: “Do you have friends, family members or neighbors who need health insurance? Help spread the word. Tell people you care about to go to healthcare.gov.”
The material also reminds government workers that they don’t need to go to the Obamacare website themselves, because they already get insurance through the federal government.
The White House claims 7.1 million Americans had signed up for the federally subsidized Obamacare exchanges by the end of 2014, rising to over 9 million in January. Critics say most of the enrollees were insured before the law was enacted but were forced to enter the federal program because their policies were effectively canceled by the law itself.
Other reports indicate that most previously uninsured individuals were placed on Medicaid rolls or otherwise have had their insurance costs mostly subsidized by taxpayers, instead of having to pay their own premiums.
These millions of workers are being asked to pitch a faulty product. They actually make the worst kinds of salesmen — namely people who don’t use the product that they’re promoting. As federal workers, they are exempt from Obamacare. For that, they should be grateful.
Virginia’s GOP-led Senate passed a bill Monday that would require candidates for statewide election and for the U.S. Senate to win the outright majority of votes on Election Day or else face a runoff with the second-highest vote-getter.
Describing an election system similar to that of Louisiana, the legislation faces an uncertain future in the state’s Republican-controlled House, where a similar bill died in committee earlier this session. It also would have to be signed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who was elected in 2013 after receiving less than 50 percent of the vote.
The bill’s Senate patron said the measure would ensure that elected officials receive majority support, and comes after elections in 2013 and 2014 in which several Democratic candidates, including Sen. Mark Warner, were elected to office with less than the majority of the vote.
It passed on a 22-16 vote, with one Democrat joining all 21 Republicans in support. Two Democrats did not vote.
“This will allow us to have the [majority’s] opinion of who it is that they want to lead them,” said Sen. Charles W. Carrico Sr., Grayson Republican.
Sen. Adam Ebbin, Alexandria Democrat, asked why the bill was limited to statewide offices and did not include congressional representatives and members of the General Assembly.
“The statewide objective that we have in this bill would be one of the starting points for us to understand how well this would work, and this would include a larger amount of work to do it for congressional or House and Senate members,” Mr. Carrico said.
Such a measure would have most immediately affected the governor’s and attorney general’s races in 2013 and the U.S. Senate election in 2014.
Mr. McAuliffe defeated then-state Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II with less than 48 percent of the vote, and Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis took about 6.5 percent of the vote.
Indeed, Republicans have cited that figure as proof that Mr. McAuliffe does not have a clear mandate from the voters to try to shepherd through his agenda.
In the 2013 attorney general race, Democrat Mark Herring defeated Republican Mark Obenshain by a razor-thin margin below the 50 percent threshold.
In the 2014 U.S. Senate contest, Mr. Warner defeated Republican Ed Gillespie with about 49 percent of the vote by a margin that would have entitled Mr. Gillespie to seek a recount. But Mr. Gillespie chose not to ask for one, saying he didn’t want to put Virginia voters through a process that in his heart and his head he knew he couldn’t win.
Mr. Sarvis, running on the Libertarian ticket, acquired about more than 2.4 percent of the vote. His vote totals in the gubernatorial and Senate races were more than the margins between the first and second-place finishers, meaning that his presence in the contests could have swung the outcomes.
In debate Monday, Mr. Ebbin also pointed out that former President George H.W. Bush and presidential candidate Bob Dole won Virginia’s Electoral College votes in 1992 and 1996, respectively, without winning the majority of votes.
The measure would need approval from the House of Delegates — and Mr. McAuliffe himself — before becoming law.
It seemingly would turn Virginia toward a system akin to that of Louisiana, where former Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu actually won a three-way contest over GOP state Sen. Bill Cassidy and Republican Rob Maness on Election Day.
But under state law, a candidate needs more than 50 percent of the vote in the “jungle primary” to win.
Though the race ultimately didn’t end up deciding control of the Senate — Republicans had clinched a majority on election night — Mr. Cassidy ended up winning the December runoff contest with Ms. Landrieu by double digits.
What do you think was the primary cause of the Great Recession — too little government regulation or dictates by the government to banks and other mortgage lenders, requiring them to lend to the unqualified?
Peter J. Wallison, former general counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department and White House counsel to President Reagan, who was also a member of the congressionally authorized Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, has just published a book, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” in which he clearly documents what caused the financial crisis and why it is likely to happen again. For this act of detailed scholarship and truth-telling, he has come under fierce attack by many of those who were, in part, responsible for the crisis.
The Wallison narrative is straightforward. Traditionally, community banks made mortgage loans to customers and then kept and serviced the loans. The banks obviously wished to be repaid, so they only lent to those they considered good credit risks and who were able to make a reasonable down payment on the house, around 20 percent.
Expanded homeownership has been considered a social good, and measures to increase homeownership have been strongly encouraged by homebuilders, realtors, bankers and the political class. In order to increase the pool of lendable funds, many decades ago Congress set up Fannie Mae, and subsequently Freddie Mac, to buy mortgages from banks, thus enabling the banks to make more mortgage loans. For many years, Fannie and Freddie would only buy high-quality mortgages.
All seemed to be going well, but then “community activists” started complaining that low-income and minority consumers had much lower rates of homeownership and this was “unfair.” As a result, in 1992 Congress started passing “affordable housing goals” and over the years continued to increase those goals. The banks were told to make an increasing percentage of their loans to buyers who would not normally qualify, and Fannie and Freddie were in turn pressured or required to buy more and more of these nontraditional or subprime mortgages. Down payment requirements became easier and easier, and finally, in many cases, zero. Credit and employment history requirements became less and less strict, finally leading to the “no-doc” loan.
The Federal Reserve provided the necessary money expansion to accommodate all of the new mortgages. The community banks liked it because of the fat fees and the fact they could dump the bad paper on Freddie and Fannie, which in turn put many of these bad loans into mortgage-backed securities that they and the big banks sold on the world financial markets. The buyers believed there was little risk because U.S. housing prices “only went up” and the U.S. government would stand behind all of the new debt.
All of this money fueled the great housing bubble from the late 1990s to 2008 when everything came crashing down. Too many people had bought more house than they could afford, and when prices started to drop, millions owed more than their houses were worth (i.e., they were underwater). Fannie and Freddie, the big banks and many financial institutions around the world were stuck with trillions of dollars of bad mortgages, which impaired their credit ratings and caused them to pull back lending or go into bankruptcy.
This narrative is accurate, but because it implicitly indicts all of those politicians and others, notably the executives at Fannie and Freddie who built the house of cards, Mr. Wallison has been attacked. Most Democrats could not admit that their scheme to give poor people more housing than they could afford was a fraud and failure — and needed to find a nongovernment scapegoat. The Republicans who went along, failed to do proper oversight and put their heads in the sand needed other explanations. The scapegoats became the greedy Wall Street bankers and “the perfect storm.” There may be much to dislike about Wall Street bankers, but they did not suddenly become more greedy or corrupt — evidenced by none of them having gone to jail.
Mr. Wallison is a problem for the political class, much like the boy who said the emperor had no clothes. He cannot be dismissed as a know-nothing lightweight. So his character must be impugned since the facts are on his side. The reviews on Amazon.com are amazing. As of this writing, 63 gave Mr. Wallison a “1”, 43 gave him a “5,” and there were no “3s.” Many in the organized attack called him a “liar” with no supporting evidence. Mr. Wallison, on the other hand, has hundreds of references in his book, many to official documents and memos to support his arguments.
Peter Wallison has endured many fights and knew what he was getting himself into when he took on the task of demolishing the false narrative being spun by the president and many in Congress about what caused the financial crisis. Buy this book — because it clearly documents not only what caused the crisis, but the lengths to which many of our leaders will go to cover up their policy misdeeds — and it is a good read.
SHENANDOAH: A STORY OF CONSERVATION AND BETRAYAL
Few things vanish from public memory more quickly than government atrocities. When I was growing up on a mountainside across from the Shenandoah National Park in the 1960s, no one spoke of the injustices committed against the mountaineers brutally expelled from their homes in the 1930s to create that park. Instead, all that mattered in Front Royal, Virginia, my nearby hometown and the northern entrance of the park, was that the tourists the park attracted were good for local business.
Now, almost 80 years after the park was opened, more attention is finally being paid to the redneck ethnic cleansing committed by both the state and federal government. “Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal,” by Sue Eisenfeld, a Johns Hopkins University writing instructor, beautifully captures the mountain people and the official vendetta that made them refugees from their own land.
The Shenandoah National Park was erected on a pyramid of lies. The original advocates claimed that the parkland was practically uninhabited — ignoring the 15,000 people residing within the originally proposed park boundaries. They claimed the land was undeveloped, near-virgin turf — despite its long history of timber harvesting, mining and beef cattle production. They also claimed the land was worth only a trifle of its actual value and thus would be cheap to acquire.
But the biggest deceits involved vilifying the mountaineers who inhabited what was then known as Virginia’s “Great Mountains.” Families had lived and worked on those ridges and hollows since the 1700s and flourishing communities dotted the landscape. But when they refused to vacate their land to satisfy a grand political vision, they were quickly tarred as know-nothing sociopaths.
Miriam Sizer, a social worker who reported to the state of Virginia, bemoaned that children in one hollow were “uncouth” and “tobacco-chewing.” National Park Service director Arno Cammerer derided some of the mountain residents as “scum.” Shenandoah National Park superintendent J.R. Lassiter denounced people living in the targeted area for suffering from a lack of “independence and resourcefulness.” But most of the mountaineers were doing just fine until they were plundered.
Families were paid as little as a dollar an acre for land worth ten times that much. Virginia’s ruling political machine was confident the new park would be a magnet for tourists, so it engineered a blanket condemnation. The land grab was spearheaded by William Carson, a wealthy businessman who orated that “there is no higher conception of duty than to feel we are of service to the State.” The government could have easily bought from willing sellers most of the land along the ridges and mountain crests where the Skyline Drive, the crown jewel of the park, was built. But politicians wanted vastly more land on both sides of the mountain range.
Shortly after taking office in 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt visited a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the future Shenandoah National Park. While a CCC bugler played “Happy Days Are Here Again,” CCC torchbearers ignited a large effigy labeled “fear” and “Old Man Depression.” FDR cheered: “That’s right, burn him up.”
A few years later, CCC members were sent to burn down the homes of mountaineers who refused to vacate their land — a chilling example of how FDR’s “freedom from fear” required giving federal agents unlimited power. The Hoover administration had promised that the vast majority of residents would not be required to vacate, but the Roosevelt administration reneged. When I often hiked the park’s trails and back areas as a Boy Scout, I did not realize that some of the standalone chimneys I saw were lonely reminders of the CCC vendetta.
In one case, an unsubmissive homeowner and filling station owner was ambushed by four plainclothes sheriffs and deputy sheriffs and dragged off. Ms. Eisenfeld relates how the victim, 62-year-old Melanchton Cliser, “stood proudly in handcuffs and delivered a ‘quavering rendition of the entire Star Spangled banner,’ then delivered a speech about defending his rights, guaranteed by the Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution” before being wrestled into a sheriff’s car.
The Archdeaconry of the Blue Ridge complained of the inhumane “wholesale depopulation of the park area.” Many of the displaced people were relocated into what Ms. Eisenfeld calls “an internment camp of sorts.” “Resettlement” communities were set up with boxy white houses, many of which did not include running water or electricity. And the one certainty was that the new homes lacked the million-dollar views that their tenants previously relished.
The commandeering of 176,000 acres for the park provoked court battles that helped establish politicians’ right to seize private property for any purpose they proclaimed. In the subsequent decades, the same legal doctrines sanctified expelling more than a million urban residents from their homes. The dictatorial creation of the Shenandoah National Park is a warning that government cannot ravage property rights without ruining lives far and wide.
Virginia is one of the latest states involved in a new push for a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution in a bid to rein in the federal government — part of a nascent campaign on an issue states have been grappling with since at least the 18th century.
National and state GOP leaders are supportive of the idea, saying that a convention of the states is needed to stop an out-of-control federal government, but some conservatives say such a gathering could end up as a free-for-all and risk radically altering the founding document.
Resolutions calling for a convention to limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government and impose term limits on members of Congress recently advanced out of committees in Virginia’s House and Senate, along with separate resolutions calling specifically for a balanced budget amendment.
Michael Farris, a former GOP nominee for Virginia lieutenant governor, is helping spearhead the push for a convention of the states, a project of the group Citizens for Self-Governance.
The movement is nothing new, but Mr. Farris said he got the idea for a renewed effort after the 2012 election. He said it made sense legally and politically to start fresh rather than try to build on prior disparate efforts that have seen mixed results.
At least 34 states, or two-thirds, must pass applications for a convention and ultimately would need a sign-off from Congress.
Language for the convention call must be consistent, if not uniform, among the applications. But the state legislatures have created a hodgepodge of resolutions that have been approved and often rescinded — which could put Congress on murky legal ground when weighing the applications.
“The [balanced budget amendments] have been written in so many different ways,” Mr. Farris said.
Article V of the U.S. Constitution allows Congress to propose amendments, but it states that “on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, [Congress] shall call a convention for proposing amendments.”
Rather than calling for a specific amendment, this particular movement is calling for a convention of the states to reduce the power and scope of the federal government. The language in Virginia’s proposals specifically call for a convention to pass amendments “that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress.”
The Republican-controlled House of Delegates voted down a similar resolution during last year’s session, and the fate of this year’s effort is still very much up in the air.
Three states — Alaska, Georgia and Florida — passed the group’s convention of states application last year, and lawmakers in a dozen states are considering them this year.
Virginia’s movement has received support from leading conservative voices like former Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former state Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II. Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich also recently visited a handful of states as part of a barnstorming effort to pass convention resolutions for a balanced budget amendment.
But the push also has run headlong into opposition among some conservative circles, with opponents warning that an open-ended convention of the states could give way to a free-for-all of competing interest groups.
“Imagine what harm a Constitutional Convention, packed with left-leaning delegates, could do to the Constitution?” state Sen. Richard H. Black, Loudoun Republican, wrote in a recent email to supporters. “If the left were able to amend the Constitution of the United States, they could change Freedom of Religion to say certain teachings from the Bible are hate speech, they could take away our right to own a gun, etc.”
Opponents also cite the example of the 1787 convention, which was called to amend and improve the Articles of Confederation but ended up scrapping them and sending to the states what is now the U.S. Constitution.
Others dismiss those fears, saying a convention can be limited and that states will have the opportunity to vote for or against anything that comes out of a convention.
By some counts, Michigan became the 34th state last year to call for a convention specifically for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Some scholars, though, believe that states that have rescinded their applications, which applies to about a dozen of them, should not count toward the 34 necessary to call a convention.
It would be up to Congress to decide whether the states have crossed the threshold. It’s been nearly half a century since the proposal for the last successful constitutional amendment — the 26th, which granted 18-year-olds the right to vote. (The 27th Amendment was enshrined into the Constitution in 1992, but it was actually one of the original ones submitted to the states in 1789.)
It would take approval from three-quarters, or 38, of the states to amend the Constitution. It took nearly 203 years to ratify the 27th Amendment, which says any law that changes lawmakers’ salaries cannot take effect until the next session of Congress.
Congressional Republicans held a vote several years ago to send another version of a balanced budget to state legislatures, but it fell well short.
Which country has the biggest interest in stopping the expansion of the oil and gas industry in Europe and North America? Answer: the Russian Federation is highly dependent — to the tune of several hundred billion dollars — on the export of these commodities, particularly to Europe.
It is rational for the Russians to spend upward of a few hundred million dollars to influence politicians to stop gas and oil projects in those countries, with the goal of limiting supply, and thus protecting the Russian revenue stream. It has been well documented and well reported over the past year (The New York Times has published in-depth articles) that Russian interests have used bribes, coercion and disinformation to get European politicians to prohibit or severely restrict gas and oil fracking in Europe.
There have been allegations and suspicions that the Russians were also putting major money into American environmental organizations to assist them in their efforts to stop the expansion of U.S. gas and oil production, but not much hard evidence — until now. Researchers at the Environmental Policy Alliance, however, have just produced a very solid, well-documented report, which shows how tens of millions of dollars from Russian interests apparently flowed from a dark company in Bermuda through opaque environmental bundlers, including the Sea Change Foundation, into major environmental lobbying organizations, including the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the League of Conservation Voters. There have been a number of press stories during the past week on Russian support of American environmental groups, including a very detailed description of the money flows, by Lachlan Markay of the Washington Free Beacon.
Both the House and Senate have now passed a bill to allow the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, which is largely designed to transport heavy crude from the Canadian oil sands to U.S. refineries (specifically designed to process heavy crude) along the Gulf coast — in part to substitute for the Venezuelan heavy crude they now refine. The White House said it will veto the pipeline bill, even though its construction can only have a positive jobs, safety and environmental impact (even according to the administration’s own studies). Pipeline or no pipeline, the heavy crude will still be produced by the Canadians and shipped by rail or truck to the United States, China or both — albeit at higher cost. So the real question is who benefits from a veto of the pipeline? Answer: the Marxist government of Venezuela and its Cuban, Iranian and Russian allies.
Recall in March 2012, President Obama was overheard promising the Russian president that he would be “more flexible” after his re-election. That could be viewed as a request for help getting re-elected, which the Russians apparently did by facilitating the flow of money to Mr. Obama’s environmental allies, who apparently used it, in part, to attack Republicans.
Don’t expect investigators to find a check written on a Kremlin bank account to the Sierra Club — that is not how it is done. Before Russian FSB (formerly the KGB) defector Alexander Litvinenko was murdered, he testified that “the FSB is being used by certain officials solely for their private purposes. It’s being used for settling scores and carrying out private and criminal orders for payment.”
John Podesta, who just left the Obama White House as counselor to the president to go to work for Hillary Clinton, had headed the Center for American Progress when it took millions from the Sea Change Foundation (apparently receiving Russian directed monies). Mr. Podesta has a close and lucrative financial relationship with a foreign billionaire, Hansjorg Wyss, who has a fetish for locking up U.S. lands, including Alaskan, to prevent oil and gas development on them. Russian President Vladimir Putin has a fixation with Alaska, perhaps because it used to be part of the Russian Empire, which he would like to recreate.
The Russians have been making many claims to the Arctic oil and gas reserves, including putting markers close to the Alaskan shore. Locking up Alaskan oil and gas reserves until they can gain control of some of them has been one of Russia’s goals — no matter how implausible that it may seem to most Americans. President Obama again last week played to Russian aspirations by announcing he wants to permanently stop oil and gas development on much of Alaska’s North Slope, even though the development over the last few decades has proved to be economically beneficial, environmentally safe and animal friendly.
The above merely scratches the surface of what is now known about how the Russians help environmental groups and officials of the Obama administration undermine oil and gas exploration and development, economic growth and job creation in the United States. There are many apparent violations of U.S. laws by the direct and indirect recipients of the Russian-guided monies. Several U.S. government agencies have the information but — surprise, surprise — the Holder Justice Department has failed to act and, reportedly impeded investigations into the matter. It is now time for the appropriate committees of Congress to exercise oversight and hold hearings.
The incidence and severity of brain injury is one of the hottest topics in sports media today, and it is creating a storm of near-panic in youth sports — especially football. We worry that the public’s misunderstanding of the available medical research is the gravest threat facing organized contact sport at the youth and high school levels.
As neurosurgeons and early researchers of concussions and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), we are often asked if parents should permit their kids to play football, ice hockey, lacrosse and other contact sports. Our answer is an unqualified yes. The benefits of organized contact sports on childhood and adolescent development far outweigh the risks, given the available medical data.
We are surgeons and researchers who have dedicated much of our lives to pursuing the safer play of contact sports. We are also fathers and former collegiate athletes with a passion for the traditions and lessons learned from participating organized contact sports. These sports make invaluable contributions to character development and future success of children by teaching them teamwork, discipline, self-control and triumph over adversity. These years also provide some of the most precious and long-lasting memories parents make with their children.
Organized sports are a bulwark against the very real health risks associated with childhood obesity such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiac disease. These benefits are critical to the health and development of our youth and they serve to show the need for a more balanced approach to how we address the safety of our kids playing contact sports. Unfortunately, participation in youth football nationally and high school football in many regions of the country have substantially fallen in recent years.
Why the near-hysteria about concussions? Perhaps it’s the heartbreak effects of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy on beloved athletes, such as our friend and NFL Hall of Famer, the late Mike Webster. People wonder how kids are safe if the professionals are not. It is a fair point, at first glance, but the data tell us otherwise.
Each year, more than 3 million kids play youth football; a million more play in high school; about 70,000 play at the college level; and about 2,500 are professional football players. The medical literature on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy reveals that in the past 10 years, a total of 63 football players were diagnosed with CTE, almost all professional athletes, out of approximately 44 million players. Research has not quantified the almost-certain risk factors, aside from concussions such as genetics, pharmacological and toxicological factors. So, is there a CTE epidemic and is withdrawing participation in organized contact sports the remedy? Our answers are no and no.
Fear has created a market for concussion information and products, and the media is overreacting to sensational but unsubstantiated pronouncements and factoids. The anti-football hype is so prevalent that even Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, George Will, asserted, “For all players who play five or more years, life expectancy is less than 60; for linemen it is much less,” without as much as a footnote. It’s a shocking statistic but it’s not an accurate one. Research shows that retired NFL players are living as least as long as their peers and have lower rates of cancer and heart disease.
On the other hand, parental concern has instigated refinements in practice styles, rule changes, training and protective equipment such as limits on checking in hockey and improved tackling technique in football. Equipment innovations in energy-dispersing pads, telemedicine and technology to reduce brain cavitation inside the skull — known as “brain slosh” — will enhance the safety for young athletes. Schools and youth leagues are adopting baseline neurocognitive tests, such as Immediate Post Athletic Concussion Testing, to help physicians evaluate possible concussions for athletes. Telemedicine solutions will soon be able to link any sideline in America with concussion-certified medical professionals using helmet sensors and a tablet.
We believe in medical technology advancements, thoughtful rule changes and safety protocols to protect players of all ages. Increased levels of public and private investment in concussion prevention and management research should be a national priority. Finally, the media and the public have an opportunity to refocus their attention away from fear and toward a more balanced approach, preserving the physical and character development benefits of sports.
Over the past four years, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a Democrat, has handed out roughly $1 million in pay raises to exempt, nonunion employees who don’t fall under state wage laws, as Illinois faces bankruptcy.
From 2011 to 2012, Ms. Madigan gave 57 exempt employees $460,000 in raises, and in 2013 and last year, 52 employees received wage hikes totaling $507,356 in extra payouts, according to data from American Transparency and the transparency website OpenTheBooks.com.
Ms. Madigan has boosted her friends’ salaries as her state teeters on bankruptcy. The state faces roughly $111 billion in pension debt and an additional $6 billion in unpaid bills, according to data from Illinois Policy, a nonprofit research group. Illinois bonds are rated worst in the nation, and if lawmakers don’t reform pensions soon, the state could spiral into default.
But that doesn’t seem to worry Ms. Madigan, according to fiscal watchdogs.
“Attorney General Lisa Madigan is out of touch with the seniors, taxpayers and families in Illinois,” said Adam Andrzejewski, chairman of American Transparency and OpenTheBooks.com.
“While families are doing more with less, Lisa Madigan handed out big pay spikes to political appointees. It’s another example of why taxpayers are angry,” he said.
Natalie Bauer, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said the salary spikes highlighted by OpenTheBooks are well-deserved raises for hardworking employees.
“Those reflect employees advancing in the office and taking on greater responsibilities,” Ms. Bauer told The Washington Times. “In any given year, due to significant turnover based on the office’s low salaries in comparison to other government lawyer salaries, we have many openings that come with greater case responsibility and/or supervisory responsibility and employees who have clearly demonstrated the skill to take on those new responsibilities are promoted.”
But taxpayer advocates are outraged that Illinois’ precious dollars are being used to fund raises for favored employees instead of paying down the debt.
“No one in Illinois who works for the state government should be getting a pay increase right now,” said Kristina Rasmussen, executive vice president of Illinois Policy. “It doesn’t matter if they are union or nonunion. We are broke; there is no money.”
One attorney general’s office employee whom Ms. Madigan rewarded was Cecilia Abundis, who received a 16 percent pay increase and promotion to assistant attorney general. However, records obtained by OpenTheBooks.com in a freedom of information act request show that Ms. Abundis has moved to Dearborn, Michigan.
Ms. Abundis works from home a majority of the year and does not have access to the Illinois attorney general computer system and is therefore unable to access information in the database including case files, briefs, etc., according to her time card and computer log-in records.
The Times was unable to reach Ms. Abundis for comment.
Ms. Bauer defended the pay raise, saying Ms. Abundis was a valuable asset to the attorney general’s office — no matter where she lives or what sort of state database access she has.
“Her salary is based on her experience and is consistent with other AAGs with similar experience,” said Ms. Bauer. “Based on her extensive experience working on specific consumer fraud matters, the office has allowed her to work part time from home and come into the office approximately one week per month and as needed for meetings and court appearances. She handles a number of consumer fraud investigations and is part of a team of attorneys working on several cases.”
Mr. Andrzejewski questioned the increased salary to an out-of-state worker.
“Every dollar that went to these questionable promotions was a dollar not available to serve some of the most vulnerable citizens of our state,” he said.
The Illinois attorney general’s office has been one of the most profitable government agencies in the state, and the money dedicated to the raises is offset by the savings they bring in, Ms. Bauer said. The attorney general’s office is also lessening its reliance on state funding in order to operate, she said.
“Since Attorney General Madigan took office, the office has generated over $10 billion for the State of Illinois, including $384 million for the state’s pension systems,” Ms. Bauer said. She also noted that public attorneys are paid less than those in the private sector.
Ms. Madigan has backed pension reform and pushed a proposal to lowers the annual increases in the cost of living allowances and to raise the retirement age.
However, watchdogs say more needs to be done and her proposal is insufficient to solve the state’s massive debt crisis.
“They just kind of tinker at the edges and it’s not going to be what Illinois needs to turn us around,” Ms. Rasmussen said of Ms. Madigan’s plan.
“When heads of state become gangsters, something has to be done.” Winston Churchill said that. It’s a proposition not many people nowadays endorse. Fewer still take it upon themselves to stand up to the thugs-cum-statesmen.
Alberto Nisman was an exception — right up until last week when he was found dead, a .22-caliber bullet in his brain. Shocking? Yes. Surprising? Hardly. He and those who knew him (myself included) were always keenly aware that this was possible — perhaps likely. To say he was courageous would be a gross understatement.
A little background: Mr. Nisman, 51, was an Argentine federal prosecutor, chief investigator of the 1994 bombing of AMIA, a Jewish cultural center, in Buenos Aires. Eighty-five people were killed in that terrorist attack.
In 2006, Mr. Nisman formally accused the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran of directing the bombing, and of deploying Hezbollah, Tehran’s terrorist foreign legion, to carry it out.
Argentine courts demanded the extradition of seven Iranians, including former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi and Iran’s former cultural attache in Buenos Aires, Mohsen Rabbani. Iranian authorities ignored the demand. One year later, Interpol entered the names of five Iranians on its Red Notice list — the closest thing to an international arrest warrant. For the Iranians, it was an irritation and an inconvenience.
Over the years that followed, Mr. Nisman doggedly continued his investigation. Then, in January 2013, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner signed an agreement with Tehran setting up a “truth commission” to investigate who was “really” responsible for the bombing. To call that Orwellian would be another gross understatement.
In July, the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security invited Mr. Nisman to come to the United States to present testimony. Mrs. Kirchner’s government denied him permission to travel. The hearing took place anyway. An empty chair was reserved for the South American prosecutor.
Finally, this month, Mr. Nisman filed a 300-page criminal complaint with the Argentine Supreme Court accusing Mrs. Kirchner and her foreign minister, Hector Timerman, of conspiring to cover up Iranian involvement in the 1994 terrorist bombing, agreeing to negotiate immunity for Iranian suspects, and helping to get their names removed from the Interpol list. Iranian oil was to flow to Argentina in exchange, and Iran was to purchase large quantities of Argentine grain. Mr. Nisman asked a federal judge to freeze millions of dollars of assets belonging to the president and others named in the complaint.
His evidence reportedly included wiretaps of phone calls “between people close to Mrs. Kirchner” and a number of Iranians, including Mr. Rabbani, the Iranian diplomat. It’s worth noting that one of Mr. Rabbani’s agents, Abdul Kadir, is currently serving a life sentence in an American prison for his role in a foiled plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
According to an Argentine newspaper, La Nacion, opposition lawmaker Patricia Bullrich said Mr. Nisman told her he also had wiretaps of phone calls in which an Argentine intelligence agent revealed details about his family to one of the Iranians charged in connection with the AMIA bombing. “He told me that it was an arrow to his heart,” Ms. Bullrich recalled.
On Sunday, Jan. 18, the night before Mr. Nisman was scheduled to testify before a closed-door Argentine congressional hearing, he was found dead in the bathroom of his 13th floor apartment, a revolver on the floor next to his body.
Mrs. Kirchner was quick to suggest he had taken his own life. “What drives a person to commit such a terrible act?” she posted on her Facebook page. When the evidence appeared to contradict that theory (for example, there was no gunpowder residue on his hands) she asserted that Mr. Nisman had indeed been murdered — but as part of a plot directed at her.
“Prosecutor Nisman’s charges were never in themselves the true operation against the government,” she posted. “They collapsed early on.” On Jan. 22, on a personal webpage, she wrote: “Today I have no proof but I also have no doubts. Nisman didn’t know and probably never would. They used him while he was alive and later needed him dead. It’s that sad and terrible.”
According to Agence France Presse, some of her aides have now “pointed to former intelligence officials who were recently fired, including the former chief of operations of the Intelligence Secretariate, Antonio Stiusso, who worked closely with Nisman.” In a TV address on Monday, she announced a plan “to dissolve the Intelligence Secretariat and create a Federal Intelligence Agency.”
In other words, the waters are being methodically muddied. Over the weekend, it was reported that Damian Pachter, the journalist who first reported Mr. Nisman’s death, had fled Argentina “because my life is in danger.”
The Organization of American States, which claims to be dedicated to the promotion of democracy and the defense of human rights in this hemisphere, has said not a word about the death of Mr. Nisman.
President Obama, deeply enmeshed in negotiations with Iran’s rulers over their ongoing nuclear weapons program, has so far not commented. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki has called for a “complete and impartial investigation” into Mr. Nisman’s death, adding that the pursuit of those responsible for the 1994 terrorist attack “must not stop.” Excuse me, Ms. Psaki but can you elaborate? What is this administration prepared to do to ensure that international terrorists and gangsters do not get away with the 85 murders committed in 1994 and the elimination of the prosecutor who attempted to hold them to account in 2015? Anything? Anything at all?
In 2011, as the Charlie Hebdo killers were learning their jihadi trade, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told his country that it had suffered a major societal defeat.
Multiculturalism, Europe’s grand experiment in expanded immigration, had failed in France — or, as Mr. Sarkozy put it, “It’s a defeat.”
Today, in the aftermath of the Jan. 7 slaughter of 17 people by Muslim jihadis, the socialist government of President Francois Hollande has turned an even starker phrase: ethnic apartheid.
The Hollande government last week announced steps to increase counterterrorism surveillance and to intervene in the classroom to blunt the message of radical Islam. Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned of a “territorial, social and ethnic apartheid that has developed in our country.”
Some three years ago, Mr. Sarkozy hinted at growing segregation, singling out as the problem segments of a Muslim population that is the largest in Europe, estimated at about 10 percent of France’s 66 million people. He criticized some Muslims for pushing a cultural clash with France by insisting on veiled women and by praying “in an ostentatious way in the street.”
“We do not want on the territory of the French Republic the proliferation of aggressive religion,” he said. “We do not want, for example, that imams can preach violence.”
That same year, one of France’s leading think tanks, Institut Montaigne, issued a 2,000-page report on the “banlieues,” the low-income, high-unemployment suburbs where so many French Muslims live around Paris, Lyon, Marseilles and other cities. Led by Gilles Kepel, a leading Arabic authority, the study focused on the Seine-Saint Denis district north of Paris, home to 600,000 Muslims.
The study wrote of “separate Islamic societies” parallel to France‘s. To describe the district and its residents, it used words such as “isolation,” “wasteland of the deindustrialization,” “radical rejection of France” and “Islamic values of community closure.”
Those warnings took on new urgency this month when three homegrown Muslims extremists, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly, committed mass slayings at a satiric magazine and a kosher Jewish grocery store. The Kouachis had bonded with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Coulibaly had ties to the Islamic State, a particularly violent Sunni Muslim army.
How did France arrive at a time in history when the word “apartheid” is invoked to describe the republic?
Some blame a balky economy that cannot kept up with immigration from France’s former colonies. Some blame French indifference.
Among the post-massacre debate topics is, to what degree did France, in practice, cede control of poor, majority Muslim neighborhoods — what some call “no-go zones” — to a nexus of criminal gangs and hard-line imams.
Some American TV analysts inaccurately stated that all of France’s 700-plus “sensitive urban zones” were totally isolated and ruled by harsh Muslim Shariah law, with government consent. That prompted liberal media, on the lookout for “Islamophobia,” to respond that France has no “no go” neighborhoods.
The problem may be one of definition: Scholars who have studied France’s Islamization say that if “no go” means a neighborhood generally isolated from the rest of France, where police will not always go and where criminal gangs and Islamists wield considerable control, then France indeed has no-go areas.
When Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, gave a speech about the dangers of Muslim extremists and warning against no-go zones cropping up in the U.S., liberal media ridiculed him. Some demanded he name the zones in France.
Multiple studies
But multiple scholars and reporters, on both sides of the Atlantic, have written in detail about the phenomenon.
Andrew Hussey, a British scholar who lives in Paris, last year published “The French Intifada.” The book chronicles France’s long wars against Arabs in the Middle East, former North African colonies and, now, inside France itself. He calls France a front line in “The Fourth World War.”
Bagneux, one of the notorious banlieues south of Paris and home to Coulibaly, who killed a police woman and four Jewish Frenchmen before he was killed, qualifies as one such zone, Mr. Hussey said.
“The Tribu Ka are regarded as the real masters of Bagneux,” Mr. Hussey wrote, referring to a black Muslim supremacist gang that now goes by its leader’s name, Generation Kemi Seba.
As Mr. Hussey and a guide explore the area, he wrote, “we soon entered a dark labyrinth of grey, crumbling concrete. This was ‘Darfour City,’ a series of rectangular blocks of mostly boarded-up flats where the local drug dealers gathered. The police call it a ‘quartier orange,’ largely a no-go area for the police themselves as well as for ordinary citizens.”
After riots in 2012 rocked the northern city of Amiens in its largely Muslim northern quarter, Mayor Gilles Demailly, a socialist, said, “You’ve got gangs of youths playing at being gangsters who have turned the area into a no-go zone. You can no longer order a pizza or get a doctor to come to the house.”
Fabrice Balanche, a professor at the University of Lyon, told Swiss TV in September that “mini-Islamic states” coexist in France. He specifically mentioned Marseilles, France’s second-largest city, with a Muslim population estimated at 25 percent.
“The authority of state is completely absent and therefore mini-Islamic states were formed,” he said.
A Muslim-dominated neighborhood in the southern city of Toulouse also seems to fit the definition of a no-go area.
The newspaper Le Figaro in May 2012 depicted the neighborhood as one dominated by drugs and guns, home to one of France’s most deadly jihadis, Mohamed Merah. Residents complain that police withdraw at night, foreigners are warned to stay away and municipal offices are vacated “because agents have exercised their right of withdrawal.” The mayor called this neighborhood “an area of lawlessness.”
The previous March, Merah, who had traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, armed himself with pistols, got on a scooter and went on a killing spree. His last victims were three children at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish day school. He grabbed one girl by the hair and shot her in the temple.
He told a TV channel that he killed to “uphold the honor of Islam,” according to press reports. Police killed him after a standoff at his Toulouse apartment.
Soeren Kern is a French-speaking analyst at the Gatestone Institute, a think tank led by former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John R. Bolton. Mr. Kern writes an annual report on the “Islamization of France,” paying particular attention to French press reports, government and think tank research, and official statements.
What differentiates France’s Muslim-dominated banlieues from being just “bad neighborhoods,” he said, is the degree of anti-France sentiment as well as the injection of radical Islam ideology, with some pushing Shariah law on the young.
Lack of understanding
Press ridicule of Mr. Jindal, he said in a post this month, shows a lack of understanding of what is happening.
“The problem of no-go zones is well documented, but multiculturalists and their politically correct supporters vehemently deny that they exist,” he wrote. “Some are now engaged in a concerted campaign to discredit and even silence those who draw attention to the issue.”
Mr. Kern told The Washington Times that bringing up the Muslim problem in France can result in countercharges that one is an “Islamophobe,” or racist, or the far right.
“The problem is there is a permanent underclass and these kids grow up in these banlieues and they can’t get out. There’s just no hope.”
Mr. Kern and other researchers say there is evidence that Muslim extremism is preached inside the banlieues. The fact that an estimated 1,000 French Muslims left the country for the Islamic State is one indication. Just last week, the French government said it would now surveil around 3,000 residents tied to terrorism.
Then there were the open, defiant mass prayers, shutting down intersections and blocking traffic, to which Mr. Sarkozy alluded. They were outlawed in 2012. France also barred the wearing of women’s face-covering niqabs and full-body burkas.
France works to keep its public school system rigorously secular. That stance, too, is being tested by Muslims.
In October, Le Figaro reported on a secret intelligence report under the headline “The Muslim communalism defies school.”
Mr. Kern said “communalism” refers to the “practice of Muslim allegiance to their own ethnic, religious groups rather than to the society at large.”
“Insidiously, the Muslim communalism [is] seeking to gain ground in the French education system” in Muslim-dominated areas, said Le Figaro.
The intelligence report tells of “chronic absenteeism” of 90 percent during Muslim holidays not recognized by the state, “clandestine prayer in gyms and hallways,” and “young guardians of orthodoxy” exerting pressure on Muslim girls.
As criminal gangs came to dominate neighborhoods in some banlieues, the French government made decisions that, some analysts believe, paved the way for mini-Islamic states within France.
Municipal officials turned to various Islamic associations to guide rebellious youths and, in return, granted them official recognition, said Clara Beyler, who authored a 2006 Hudson Institute report titled “The Jihadist Threat in France.”
She quotes a French Christian preacher as saying the Muslim Youth Association, for example, triggered “hardening of religious identities.”
“Other associations held to be non-profit … were nothing more than terrorist fronts,” Ms. Beyler wrote.
A 2004 book on Islam in France quotes Tokia Saifi, who was secretary of state for durable development, as saying the “fundamental mistake made by the officials” was handing “the keys of the neighborhood to Islamists” in exchange for peace, such as an end to setting cars on fire.
Paris press reports say the government estimates that 30,000 cars were set on fire in 2013 alone as acts of defiance.
In September 2005, a former French intelligence analyst released his study, “Development of Islam Fundamentalist in France.”
“The rise of radical Islam is largely concentrated in the most sensitive French suburbs,” wrote Eric Denece, who founded the French Center for Intelligence Research. “Over the past three decades, France let its inner cities become real powder kegs. In lawless areas, the fundamentalism has used the failure of the state because it thrives wherever there is frustration.”
He said Islamists boast that they one day will begin to win local elections and “they will be free to impose Shariah law in the municipalities under their control.”
He told of some women giving birth in burqas. Husbands not letting male medical staff touch their wives. Muslim workers demanding increasingly strict religious accommodations.
In one year alone, the author wrote, France deported seven radical Islamic preachers.
Mr. Denece interviewed Muslims and law enforcement authorities. He concluded in 2005 that about 500,000 Muslims in France adhere to hard-line Islam. Perhaps 5,000 are jihadis.
‘Explosion in the suburbs’
Predicting an “explosion in the suburbs,” Mr. Denece proved prescient. A month later, Greater Paris erupted into full-scale riots by mostly Arab and black youths in the banlieues, triggered by a fatal encounter between Muslim youths and French police in Paris.
Angel Rabasa, an analyst at the Rand Corp. who co-authored the book “Eurojihad,” said the root cause of Muslim segregation in France is a lack of jobs. France’s economy, he said, is simply not structured to promote large, sustained growth that would create more opportunity for idle immigrant youths.
France’s Muslim population is projected to keep growing. The Pew Research Center estimated the count at 4.7 million at the end of 2010, or 7.5 percent. Mr. Kern said that based on Pew’s projections, there are likely over 6 million Muslims in France today, approaching 10 percent of the population.
Unlike the U.S., the French government does not take a census based on ethnic origin or race.
The lack of jobs leaves young French Arabs of North African origin open to lives of crime and radicalization.
“Prisons are the breeding ground even more so than the neighborhoods,” Mr. Rabasa said. “That is the relationship because individuals marginalized in the banlieues are the ones who turn to petty crime and then they get arrested and then they get sent to prison and then in prison they get radicalized.”
Mr. Hussey, author of “The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and Its Arabs,” said the government has been blind to the radicalization movement in prisons, whose inmate population he estimates at 70 percent Muslim.
Even from outside the walls, radical Islam can exert control inside.
“Islam in prison has a strange status in France; everybody knows that it is a significant force, but everyone denies it,” Mr. Hussey wrote. “It is hard to find imams who will work in prisons, for fear of recrimination in their own communities.”
Mr. Hussey concludes: “Until this ceases to be the case, the unacknowledged civil war between France and its disturbed suburbs — one of the most complex and fragile front lines in the Fourth World War — will go on. The positions and tactics of the immigrants of the banlieues — their identification with Palestine, their hatred of France — reveal the struggle to be part of the ‘long war,’ just like those caught up in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The IRS has seen a “devastating erosion” of its ability to do its job, and the worst is yet to come after budget cuts have trimmed staff and the tea party targeting scandal has damaged the agency’s reputation, the government’s official National Taxpayer Advocate said in a report Wednesday, delivering the latest grim assessment of the agency.
Nina E. Olson, the advocate, said the IRS will hit “new lows” of service to taxpayers and will have to ignore a majority of the calls it receives from frustrated taxpayers. Those who do get through will wait an average of 30 minutes before they get help, and employees often will be unable to answer more complicated questions, she said.
Ms. Olson said blame lies with President Obama and Congress, who have cut budgets but haven’t kept pressure on the agency to keep up with its workload, and with leaders at the IRS, who haven’t set the right goals and priorities for their employees. She called it a “perfect storm” of problems that demands a major cleanup.
“Taxpayers who need help are not getting it, and tax compliance is likely to suffer over the longer term if these problems are not quickly and decisively addressed,” she wrote in the extensive report, which her office releases every year.
The chief problem is that the agency is handling more business, and its job is about to get even tougher with the first major round of Obamacare tax filings, yet the IRS budget has been cut 17 percent since 2010.
Squeezed resources meant the IRS ignored 36 percent of phone calls last year and virtually ended the ability of a taxpayer to walk into an office and get assistance with forms, the advocate said.
An even bigger problem is the “erosion of taxpayer trust” in the agency, which the advocate blamed in part on the tea party targeting scandal, in which the agency singled out conservative groups’ nonprofit status applications for special scrutiny. The advocate said funding problems can be reversed with more money, but squandered trust is not so easy to repair.
“Once lost, trust takes a very long time to be regained. For a taxpayer whose trust has been shaken, each IRS failure to meet basic expectations (e.g., answer the phone …) confirms the belief that the IRS is not to be trusted,” the advocate said.
She called for Congress to pass a taxpayers’ bill of rights as a first step to restoring confidence.
The IRS promised to give the report due consideration.
“The Taxpayer Advocate Service plays an important role in our nation’s tax system. We look forward to reviewing the report and discussing its recommendations with the Taxpayer Advocate,” the agency said in a statement. “The recommendations we have been able to implement in the past have helped improve taxpayer service and compliance.”
While IRS leaders come in for criticism, the taxpayer advocate lays an even greater share of the blame on Congress, which has trimmed the agency’s budget to the extent that it is struggling to meet growing demand.
At the same time, lawmakers aren’t doing the kind of oversight the IRS needs, the advocate said.
Ms. Olson said Congress needs to hold “nuts and bolts” hearings so lawmakers can understand the basic challenges the IRS faces, and to foster a sense of shared responsibility for the agency, whose success in collecting taxes will determine how much money the government has to spend.
She also criticized lawmakers who depict “the entire agency and all its employees as an out-of-control agency.” That is a wrong signal to send and erodes public trust, making the agency’s job even tougher, she said.
Bashing the IRS has been political fodder for both sides of the political aisle, but Republicans have intensified their criticism in the wake of the tea party targeting scandal.
Some conservative groups have been waiting years for approval of their nonprofit status applications, even though the IRS claims its targeting ended years ago.
Speaking at The Heritage Foundation this week, Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, said the Obama administration has engaged in “weaponization of the IRS.”
“In my view, there is a powerful populist instinct to take the 110,000 employees at the IRS, to padlock the building and to put all 110,000 of them down on our southern border,” Mr. Cruz said, though he added that was “somewhat tongue-in-cheek.”
He went on to call for abolishing the IRS and imposing a flat tax.
The taxpayer advocate, while not calling for a flat tax, did say Congress could help matters by simplifying the tax code.
That will be a major issue this week when House and Senate Republicans meet for a policy retreat in Pennsylvania.
There’s a solitary man at the financial center of the Ferguson protest movement. No, it’s not victim Michael Brown or Officer Darren Wilson. It’s not even the Rev. Al Sharpton, despite his ubiquitous campaign on TV and the streets.
Rather, it’s liberal billionaire George Soros, who has built a business empire that dominates across the ocean in Europe while forging a political machine powered by nonprofit foundations that impacts American politics and policy, not unlike what he did with MoveOn.org.
Mr. Soros spurred the Ferguson protest movement through years of funding and mobilizing groups across the U.S., according to interviews with key players and financial records reviewed by The Washington Times.
In all, Mr. Soros gave at least $33 million in one year to support already-established groups that emboldened the grass-roots, on-the-ground activists in Ferguson, according to the most recent tax filings of his nonprofit Open Society Foundations.
The financial tether from Mr. Soros to the activist groups gave rise to a combustible protest movement that transformed a one-day criminal event in Missouri into a 24-hour-a-day national cause celebre.
“Our DNA includes a belief that having people participate in government is indispensable to living in a more just, inclusive, democratic society,” said Kenneth Zimmerman, director of Mr. Soros‘ Open Society Foundations’ U.S. programs, in an interview with The Washington Times. “Helping groups combine policy, research [and] data collection with community organizing feels very much the way our society becomes more accountable.”
No strings attached
Mr. Zimmerman said OSF has been giving to these types of groups since its inception in the early ‘90s, and that, although groups involved in the protests have been recipients of Mr. Soros‘ grants, they were in no way directed to protest at the behest of Open Society.
“The incidents, whether in Staten Island, Cleveland or Ferguson, were spontaneous protests — we don’t have the ability to control or dictate what others say or choose to say,” Mr. Zimmerman said. “But these circumstances focused people’s attention — and it became increasingly evident to the social justice groups involved that what a particular incident like Ferguson represents is a lack of accountability and a lack of democratic participation.”
Soros-sponsored organizations helped mobilize protests in Ferguson, building grass-roots coalitions on the ground backed by a nationwide online and social media campaign.
Other Soros-funded groups made it their job to remotely monitor and exploit anything related to the incident that they could portray as a conservative misstep, and to develop academic research and editorials to disseminate to the news media to keep the story alive.
The plethora of organizations involved not only shared Mr. Soros‘ funding, but they also fed off each other, using content and buzzwords developed by one organization on another’s website, referencing each other’s news columns and by creating a social media echo chamber of Facebook “likes” and Twitter hashtags that dominated the mainstream media and personal online newsfeeds.
Buses of activists from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference in Chicago; from the Drug Policy Alliance, Make the Road New York and Equal Justice USA from New York; from Sojourners, the Advancement Project and Center for Community Change in Washington; and networks from the Gamaliel Foundation — all funded in part by Mr. Soros — descended on Ferguson starting in August and later organized protests and gatherings in the city until late last month.
Broaden issue focus
All were aimed at keeping the media’s attention on the city and to widen the scope of the incident to focus on interrelated causes — not just the overpolicing and racial discrimination narratives that were highlighted by the news media in August.
“I went to Ferguson in a quest to be in solidarity and stand with the young organizers and affirm their leadership,” said Kassandra Frederique, policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, which was founded by Mr. Soros, and which receives $4 million annually from his foundation. She traveled to Ferguson in October.
“We recognized this movement is similar to the work we’re doing at DPA,” said Ms. Frederique. “The war on drugs has always been to operationalize, institutionalize and criminalize people of color. Protecting personal sovereignty is a cornerstone of the work we do and what this movement is all about.”
Ms. Frederique works with Opal Tometi, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter — a hashtag that was developed after the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida — and helped promote it on DPA’s news feeds. Ms. Tometi runs the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a group to which Mr. Soros gave $100,000 in 2011, according to the most recent of his foundation’s tax filings.
“I think #BlackLivesMatter’s success is because of organizing. This was created after Trayvon Martin, and there has been sustained organizing and conversations about police violence since then,” said Ms. Frederique. “Its explosion into the mainstream recently is because it connects all the dots at a time when everyone was lost for words. ‘Black Lives Matter’ is liberating, unapologetic and leaves no room for confusion.”
#BlackLivesMatter
With the backing of national civil rights organizations and Mr. Soros‘ funding, “Black Lives Matter” grew from a hashtag into a social media phenomenon, including a #BlackLivesMatter bus tour and march in September.
“More than 500 of us have traveled from Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, Portland, Tucson, Washington, D.C., Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and other cities to support the people of Ferguson and help turn a local moment into a national movement,” wrote Akiba Solomon, a journalist at Colorlines, describing the event.
Colorlines is an online news site that focuses on race issues and is published by Race Forward, a group that received $200,000 from Mr. Soros’s foundation in 2011. Colorlines has published tirelessly on the activities in Ferguson and heavily promoted the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag and activities.
At the end of the #BlackLivesMatter march, organizers met with civil rights groups like the Organization for Black Struggle and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment to strategize their operations moving forward, Ms. Solomon wrote. OBS and MORE are also funded by Mr. Soros.
Mr. Soros gave $5.4 million to Ferguson and Staten Island grass-roots efforts last year to help “further police reform, accountability and public transparency,” the Open Society Foundations said in a blog post in December. About half of those funds were earmarked to Ferguson, with the money primarily going to OBS and MORE, the foundation said.
OBS and MORE, along with the Dream Defenders, established the “Hands Up Coalition” — another so-called “grass-roots” organization in Missouri, whose name was based on now-known-to-be-false claims that Brown had his hands up before being shot. The Defenders were built to rally support and awareness for the Trayvon Martin case and were funded by the Tides Foundation, another recipient of Soros cash.
Hands Up Coalition has made it its mission to recruit and organize youth nationwide to start local events in their communities — trying to take Ferguson nationwide.
Years and weekends of ‘resistance’
Hands Up Coalition has dubbed 2015 as “The Year of Resistance,” and its outreach program strongly resembles how President Obama’s political action committee — Organizing for Action — rallies youth for its causes, complete with a similarly designed Web page and call to action.
Mr. Soros, who made his fortune betting against the British pound during the currency crisis in the early ‘90s, is a well-known supporter of progressive-liberal causes and is a political donor to Mr. Obama’s campaigns. He committed $1 million to Mr. Obama’s super PAC in 2012.
Mr. Soros‘ two largest foundations manage almost $3 billion in assets per year, according to their most recent respective tax returns. The Foundation to Promote Open Society managed $2.2 billion in assets in 2011, and his Open Society Institute managed $685.9 million in 2012.
In comparison, David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers whom liberals often call a threat to democracy — and worse — for their conservative influence, had $308 million tied up in their foundation and institute in 2011.
One of the organizations that Mr. Soros funds, and which fueled the demonstrations in Ferguson, is the Gamaliel Foundation, a network of grass-roots, interreligious and interracial organizations. Mr. Obama started his career as a community organizer at a Gamaliel affiliate in Chicago.
The Rev. Traci Blackmon of Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Missouri, which is part of the Gamaliel network, said in one of the group’s webinars that clergy involved with Gamaliel must be “protectors of the narrative” of what happened in Ferguson.
The Gamaliel affiliate in St. Louis — Metropolitan Congregations United — organized the “Weekend of Resistance” in October, in which clergy members from around the nation were called to come to Ferguson to protest.
Clergy involvement
Representatives of Sojourners, a national evangelical Christian organization committed “to faith in action for social justice,” attended the weekend. The group received $150,000 from Mr. Soros in 2011.
Clergy representatives from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference, where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright serves as a trustee, also showed up. Mr. Wright was Mr. Obama’s pastor in Chicago before some of his racially charged sermons, including the phrase “God damn America,” forced Mr. Obama to distance himself. SDPC received $250,000 from Mr. Soros in 2011.
During Gamaliel’s weekend protest event, Sunday was deemed “Hands Up Sabbath,” where clergy were asked to speak out about racial issues, using packets and talking points prepared for them by another religion-based community organizing group, PICO.
PICO is also supported by the Open Society Foundations, according to its website.
The weekend concluded Monday, when clergy members were asked to lead in acts of civil disobedience, prompting many of them to go to jail in the hopes of gaining media attention.
It worked, as imagery of clergy members down on their hands and knees in front of police dominated the mainstream news cycle that day — two months after Brown’s shooting.
“After the initial shooting, we were all hit in the face with how blatant racism really is,” said the Rev. Susan Sneed, a Gamaliel organizer who helped stage the October weekend event. “We began quickly hearing from our other affiliates offering support.”
At the end of August, Gamaliel had a large organizational meeting to discuss its Ferguson strategy, Ms. Sneed said.
It had its affiliates in New York and California handling the St. Louis Twitter feed and Facebook page, helped in correcting any inaccurate stories in the press and promoted their events, she said.
“When we started marching down the street, saying, ‘hands up, don’t shoot,’ those images reached all over the world,” said Ms. Sneed, referring to the moment she realized Ferguson was going to become a movement. “The Twitter images, Facebook posts of burning buildings — it’s everywhere, and the imagery is powerful. And the youth — the youth is so engaged. They’ve found a voice in Ferguson.”
National activists descend
Larry Fellows III, 29, a Missouri native, did find his voice in the chaos of Ferguson with the help of outside assistance backed by Mr. Soros.
Mr. Fellows is co-founder of the Millennial Activists United, a key source of video and stories developed in Ferguson by youth activists used to inspire other groups nationally.
Mr. Fellows explained how he started his organization in an interview with the American Civil Liberties Union (another Soros-backed entity that sent national representatives to Missouri) in November.
“Initially, it would just be that we would show up for protests, and the next day we’d clean up the streets. A lot of the same people were out at the protests and going out to lunch and talking about what was happening. That became a cycle until a lot of us figured out we needed to have a strategy,” Mr. Fellows explained to the ACLU, which posted the interview in its blog.
“Then a lot of organizers from across the country started to come in to help us do the planning and do the strategizing. That helped us start doing it on our own and planning out actions and what our narratives were going to be,” he said.
MAU has listed on its website that it has partnered with Gamaliel network churches. They’ve also received training on civil disobedience from the Advancement Project — which was given a $500,000 grant from Mr. Soros in 2013 “to build a fair and just, multi-racial democracy in America through litigation, community organizing support, public policy reform, and strategic communications,” according to the Foundation’s website.
The Advancement Project, based in Washington, also arranged the meeting between community organizers in Ferguson and Mr. Obama last month to brief him on the situation in Ferguson and to set up a task force that examines trust between police and minority communities.
In addition, the Advancement Project has also dedicated some of its staff to lead organizations in Ferguson, like the Don’t Shoot Coalition, another grass-roots group that preaches the same message, links to the same Facebook posts and “likes” the same articles as DPA, ACLU, Hands Up Coalition, OBS, MORE and others.
How long will this sort of thing keep going on? While the Islamic State busily beheads Iraqi children who refuse to renounce their Christian faith, their Islamist brethren in Paris pursue their own jihadi offensive. Twelve people were massacred Wednesday in an attack targeting a weekly humor magazine famous for publishing satirical images of the Prophet Muhammad. Their battle cry: “The prophet has been avenged!”
Meanwhile, Americans obsess about our racial, ethnic and political divisions, preferring that the Islamic State be confronted by Persian rather than American boots on the ground, content to leave the larger questions about the future of civilization to be asked elsewhere.
Because our media faithfully reflects those reigning obsessions, you may have missed the startling New Year’s Day speech delivered in a most unlikely place. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi stood before a clerical audience at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, long regarded as the world’s leading center of Islamic thought. His purpose: to directly challenge those reigning orthodoxies. According to the translation published by Middle East Forum, Mr. el-Sissi told his audience that current Islamic thinking was antagonizing the entire world:
“I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You imams are responsible before Allah . I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move because this [Islamic world] is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost — and it is being lost by our own hands.”
The videotapes show his clerical audience appearing shocked and uncomfortable, but Mr. el-Sissi fearlessly plunged forward:
“I am not saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’ — that corpus of texts and ideas that we have [enshrined] over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world! I am saying these words here at Al-Azhar, before this assembly of scholars … . Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.”
If you have ever wondered when a prominent Muslim leader might stand forthrightly against the rising tide of Islamic terror, then wonder no longer. Mr. el-Sissi just did precisely that. Even better, he put his finger squarely on the root problem: Sedimentary layers of religious dogma that have transformed the supposed “religion of peace” into a well-honed weapon of war. What kind of God, for example, requires routine butchery from the Gaza Strip to the streets of Paris in ways that might have embarrassed the Nazis’ Waffen SS? Can the imams of Al-Azhar be wise and courageous enough to answer this challenge by engaging in a serious rethinking of their own doctrines? Wouldn’t the whole world benefit if they did?
Mr. el-Sissi well understands those potential stakes because recent history has given him an unforgettable object lesson about what happens when religious fanatics seize unlimited secular power. As Egypt’s top general, he witnessed at firsthand the Islamist excesses of Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government. Its fatal error: Thinking that Mr. el-Sissi and the other generals would simply go along to get along. And so they did, but only for awhile. With the Egyptian economy tanking and civil war looming, Mr. el-Sissi led the revolt which removed Mr. Morsi from power, promptly followed by a constitutional referendum and, most recently, by the elections that elevated Mr. el-Sissi from general to president.
Those bold moves brought the new Egyptian government into direct conflict with the reigning U.S. establishment: President Obama, his State Department and the tony Georgetown salons where the diplomatic elites gather for white wine and brie. The Egyptian street believes to this day that Mr. Obama was a sympathizer of either the Muslim Brotherhood or Mr. Morsi. Their convictions grew stronger when the White House embargoed weapons transfers even while the Muslim Brotherhood fought back harder than ever. Facing a persistent insurgency, today many Egyptians consider the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood as indistinguishable enemies. And their view of Mr. Obama? Don’t even ask.
Despite the official cold shoulder from the American government, Egypt played a key go-between role during the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas (while frisking Secretary of State John Kerry). But Americans should also be encouraged by two aspects of the former general’s recent Al-Azhar speech. For one thing, Mr. el-Sissi is a product of American war colleges, having been shaped not only by their democratic ideals but also by the lifelong military-to-military partnerships, which they invariably foster. But the el-Sissi speech also suggests the enduring legacy of Anwar Sadat, who gave his life to secure a lasting peace with Israel. Egyptians and Americans well remember President Sadat’s pointed reminders to his fellow Muslims, as well as to Jews and Christians, that all of us are “people of the book.”
A backdrop to the massacre in Paris on Wednesday by self-professed al Qaeda terrorists is that city officials have increasingly ceded control of heavily Muslim neighborhoods to Islamists, block by block.
France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, some of whom talk openly of ruling the country one day and casting aside Western legal systems for harsh, Islam-based Shariah law.
“The situation is out of control, and it is not reversible,” said Soeren Kern, an analyst at the Gatestone Institute and author of annual reports on the “Islamization of France.”
“Islam is a permanent part of France now. It is not going away,” Mr. Kern said. “I think the future looks very bleak. The problem is a lot of these younger-generation Muslims are not integrating into French society. Although they are French citizens, they don’t really have a future in French society. They feel very alienated from France. This is why radical Islam is so attractive because it gives them a sense of meaning in their life.”
While not a complete safe-haven for al Qaeda-type operatives, Paris and other French cities have become more fertile places for Muslim extremists in the past decade. City leaders have allowed virtual Islamic mini-states to thrive as Muslims gain power to govern in their own way.
“There are no-go areas not just in Paris, but all over France, where they are effectively in control,” said Robert Spencer, who directs JihadWatch.org, a nonprofit that monitors Muslim extremists.
“They’re operating with impunity, apparently secure in the knowledge that authorities cannot or will not act decisively to stop them,” he said. “And with the universal denial and obfuscation of the clear motive for the Charlie Hebdo attack, they have good reason to think that.”
The attackers who killed 12 people at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo claimed to be members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. Witnesses said they spoke perfect French, a strong indication that they are homegrown terrorists who received help from AQAP or another group.
Mr. Kern said the connection between the attack and the Islamization movement is that French jihadis are becoming bolder in trying to stamp out any criticism of Islam.
“What they are trying to do is shut down any sort of criticism of Islam, any sort of speech, cartoons, discussion, anything,” he said. “Essentially, the French government and the other European governments have lost control over the situation. It’s a snowball that is growing bigger and bigger, in particular over the past 10 years.”
Last year, AQAP put Charlie Hebdo editor and cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier on a “Most Wanted” poster for lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. He was among the 12 killed by hooded assailants firing assault rifles Wednesday morning at a weekly staff gathering.
The Middle East Media Research Institute reported that French jihadis on Twitter were openly chattering about how to retaliate against Charlie Hebdo for its comic book biography of Muhammad. One idea was to immediately start killing French nationals.
While French jihadis were plotting a wave of violence, Mr. Kern and the Gatestone Institute issued a report on the Islamization of France in 2013, and a follow-up in December.
The think tank, led by John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the country’s Muslim population last year reached 6.5 million, or 10 percent of its 66 million people. That makes France the European country with the largest Muslim minority.
Some Muslim activists gleefully predict that France will be a Muslim-majority country in the not-too-distant future.
“Who has the right to say that France in 30 or 40 years will not be a Muslim country? Who has the right in this country to deprive us of it?” said Marwan Muhammed, a spokesman for Collective Against Islamophobia in France.
Gatestone reports that an intelligence document leaked to Le Figaro said Muslims are creating a separate public school society “completely cut off from non-Muslim students.”
Over 1,000 French supermarkets are selling Islamic books that call for jihad and the killing of non-Muslims. A poll commissioned by the newspaper Le Monde last year found that 74 percent of French citizens view Islam as intolerant and as incompatible with French values.
Some French politicians are speaking out.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last year, “We are fighting terrorism outside of France, but we are also fighting an internal enemy since there are those French who fit into this process of radicalization. This enemy must be fought with the greatest determination.”
Said Mr. Kern, “Europe is very committed to multiculturalism. So any speech critical of Islam is immediately branded as being Islamophobic or racist or something like that. There’s not really an honest debate about what’s going on in Europe because the European elite have so much invested in this multicultural society that they’re trying to build.”
Leaders of the Islamic State movement in Syria and Iraq are infatuated with apocalyptic Muslim prophecies foretelling a titanic final battle of good and evil that even involves the re-emergence of Jesus Christ to join their cause at the end of time in the Middle East.
Analysts say the Sunni extremist group is consumed by such fantasies in a way Osama bin Laden’s original al Qaeda never was, and its propaganda is so saturated with them that intelligence officials are working to determine how much of the group’s operational strategy is actually being shaped by the obscure predictions.
From the Islamic State’s circulation on social media of photos depicting a so-called “cyclops baby” to its fixation on a Syrian town where the prophecies say the final battle will occur, analysts say the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is tapping the mythology to convince his followers that the apocalypse has already begun.
“Since its inception, the leaders of the Islamic State have been obsessed with Islamic prophecies of the ‘End Times,’ ” said William McCants, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy. “Even the establishment of the Islamic State itself is based on their interpretation of when those End Times would occur.”
“The group’s ideological and organizational DNA is simply different from al Qaeda in how it approaches these prophecies,” said Mr. McCants, a fluent Arabic speaker currently writing a book on the group’s obsession with such prophecies.
Mr. McCants explained that the apocalyptic predictions come not from the Koran but from a body of literature known as the Hadith, a compilation of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad by his followers more than a hundred years after his death.
The formation of a caliphate in modern-day Syria and Iraq is just one of several key developments that the Hadith says will usher in the end of the world. It also says the apocalypse will be heralded by the emergence in Damascus of a one-eyed anti-Christ figure known as ad-Dajjal.
The prophecies contend that ad-Dajjal will arrive at a time when homosexuality and hedonism have become prevalent in the world, and that he will divide Muslims into a great war until he is confronted by the emergence of a true messiah figure known as the “Madhi.”
The Madhi is predicted to appear in Saudi Arabia, in the Islamic holy city of Mecca, where he will gather his army and eventually be joined by Jesus Christ, whom the Hadith predicts will also appear “at some point during this end-of-days drama,” according to Mr. McCants.
Muslims who side with the Madhi are predicted to win the fantastic war against those who have been deceived by ad-Dajjal and will ultimately rule the world until a great day of judgment, predicted to arrive after a final, massive battle in the northern Syrian city of Dabiq.
But, similar to Judeo-Christian prophecies of the apocalypse, the claims in the Hadith are not exactly black and white. While Mr. McCants notes that the predictions are being followed feverishly by the extremist Sunni Muslim Islamic State, they also carry immense philosophical weight with radical Shiite Muslim militants, who are presently at war with al-Baghdadi’s group in Syria and Iraq.
“The big disagreement,” he said, “is who is fighting on the good side and who is fighting on the side of the bad guy.”
Recruiting tool
According to Jean-Pierre Filiu, a leading French scholar on Islam’s apocalyptic predictions, a deeper question may revolve around how the Islamic State’s leaders use the prophecies to “foster recruitment and propaganda.”
“It is obvious that the apocalyptic momentum is key to attract volunteers ready to fight the ‘Last Battle,’ ” said Mr. Filiu, who noted how the Islamic State perpetuates an idea that joining the current war in Syria and Iraq will be “much more important and rewarding than all the other struggles waged during Islamic history.”
It’s an effort that also appears to lean heavily on optics and subversion, one of the more bizarre manifestations of which occurred on social media last summer when the Islamic State began circulating photos it claimed were of one-eyed babies born in the Middle East.
Saying the babies were a sure sign of the Antichrist’s imminent arrival, the group reportedly used images of actual children born in South America and Asia with a rare defect caused by an experimental anti-cancer drug.
On a separate front, the Islamic State makes regular reference to the Syrian city of Dabiq, which the Hadith predicts will play center stage in the great battle that begins with an attack by outside forces — the actual prophecy calls them “Byzantines” — and ensues with a bitter fight among Muslim armies divided between ad-Dajjal and the Mahdi.
Not only has the Islamic State named its official online propaganda magazine after Dabiq, the group appears bent on trying to goad the current U.S.-led coalition of international forces, which could be read as a modern-day incarnation of the Byzantines, into a confrontation in the city.
Dabiq played a role in a recent grisly video featuring the severed head of a murdered American aid worker.
“Here we are burying the first American Crusader in Dabiq, eagerly waiting for the remainder of your armies to arrive,” proclaimed a black-masked militant, who had a view of the city behind him in the video.
A Sunni-Shiite clash
The use of beheadings to shock the world was certainly something bin Laden’s al Qaeda succeeded at years ago. But under al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State is attempting to elevate the tactic to apocalyptic heights.
Where the beheading of Americans such as journalist Daniel Pearl after 9/11 sent a message that bin Laden’s group would kill U.S. citizens anywhere, the Islamic State has sought to tailor such executions into its end-of-times narrative.
Unlike the Islamic State, bin Laden “never used the apocalyptic discourse,” Mr. Filiu wrote in an email.
But that’s not to say al Qaeda’s original leaders were not interested in apocalyptic prophecy.
“Obviously they believed it, but they just weren’t trying to pursue it, so to speak,” said Aaron Y. Zelin, a Washington-based analyst whose “Jihadology” website examines global jihadi groups.
“It was viewed as more fringe — or they just weren’t able to use it because they were a lot weaker than the Islamic State is today,” said Mr. Zelin, who contends that bin Laden alternatively pursued a “sort of proxy fight against the West so that the West would stop supporting the Arab regimes, and they would be able to take them over.”
Al Qaeda’s position was that it was “in a state of weakness, and this would be a continual fight for decades,” he said.
Mr. Filiu, meanwhile, maintains that the calculus behind such thinking has evolved over the past decade. In his 2008 book “Apocalypse in Islam,” the French scholar argued that the apocalyptic discourse became irresistible to many Sunni jihadis after two major developments during the early 2000s, the first of which was the 2003 U.S. military invasion of Iraq. The second development was the awakening of a new Shiite Muslim fanaticism toward the apocalypse in both Iran and Iraq — the latter of which became a hotbed during the mid-2000s of Shiite jihadism under the so-called “Mahdi Army” banner of firebrand Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Both developments served to “provoke a reaction among those Sunni Jihadists who were most devoted to combating America and its heretical allies,” Mr. Filiu wrote, adding that the “Iraqi branch of al Qaeda” — from which al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State later emerged — sought to “nullify the messianic pretensions of the Mahdi Army by accusing Muqtada al-Sadr’s soldiers of belonging to the ‘Army of the Antichrist.’ “
‘No one wants to miss the show’
Presently, it’s hard to find a Sunni or Shiite jihadi not obsessed with the apocalyptic backdrop.
Even the Nusra Front, which U.S. intelligence officials describe as aligned more with bin Laden’s original al Qaeda movement than with the Islamic State, has invoked the prophecies. The group named its own propaganda arm the “White Minaret” in reference to a Hadith prediction that Jesus will descend from the white minaret on the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus to fight on the side of the Mahdi.
Indeed, militants from both Sunni and Shiite sects claim to be fighting beneath the gaze of an apocalyptic messiah figure.
“Even if I am martyred now, when he appears I will be reborn to fight among his army,” a 27-year-old Lebanese Shiite militant active in Syria told Reuters.
On the Sunni side, a fighter told the news agency that jihadis were streaming in from as far away as Russia, China and America because “this [is] what the Prophet said and promised: The Grand Battle is happening.”
Mr. McCants pointed to such comments in a recent blog on the Brookings Institution’s website, claiming that “the heady reenactment of the End Times drama” is drawing “an unprecedented number of Sunni and Shi’a foreign fighters to the theater.”
“In the sectarian apocalypse, everyone has a role to play,” he wrote. “No one wants to miss the show.”
Put it all on black
The doomsday dimension of the Islamic State may well be underrepresented in most mainstream media characterizations of the group’s rise onto the world stage.
But U.S. intelligence officials say they are keenly aware of it and that there is debate in national security circles over how deeply the apocalyptic fever is truly affecting the Islamic State’s strategic operations — such as its troop movements and territorial goals.
One U.S. official said al-Baghdadi may simply be leaning on end-of-times propaganda because he knows how intoxicating it is to young recruits thirsting for meaning in their lives. At the same time, the official said, there’s “nothing to suggest that he and a circle of others around him don’t actually believe this stuff.”
Mr. Zelin said the Islamic State’s leaders are “creating a new reality or perception on the ground” in Syria and Iraq.
“With this caliphate, it is possible they are trying to bring about the times of these End Times,” he said, adding that the Islamic State today “holds more territory and is a lot stronger” than bin Laden’s al Qaeda was a decade ago.
Where al Qaeda’s fight was once about the “here and now,” Mr. Zelin said, “the Islamic State uses apocalyptic prophecy as if it’s about power for Islam, not just here and now, but forever over the entire world.”
“They’re going for broke,” he said. “They’re putting all the chips on the table, and they think they’re going to win.”
It follows that al-Baghdadi is engaging in a high-stakes gamble by leaning so heavily on apocalyptic references.
“Perhaps most interesting,” said another official who spoke with The Times “is the question of what ultimately happens if all these prophecies don’t actually materialize.”
“What would be the implications?” the official said. “Right now it seems like a perfect storm for them, but if and when it doesn’t materialize, they could be exposed as a farce to potential recruits around the world.”
For outrageous government scam of the year, it’s hard to compete with the news of the supersized public-employee pensions in California. If you haven’t already heard: In 2013, an assistant fire chief in Southern California collected a $983,319 pension last year. A police captain in Los Angeles received nearly $753,861. Talk about a golden parachute. The report on Golden State government pensions contains a list that runs pages and pages of hundreds of “public servants” who have hit the pension jackpot with annual pensions of a half-million a year. It’s like they’re playing the game “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” With taxpayer money.
By some estimates, the unfunded pension liabilities in California have eclipsed $750 billion, which means that in a few years, residents will be paying their already-highest in the nation income and sales taxes not for roads, bridges, schools and public safety but for retired employees living like Daddy Warbucks.
This same scandal — only on a slightly smaller scale — is happening in most states. The crisis dates back 20 to 30 years ago when public-employee unions negotiated fat pension deals with state and local politicians that were like ticking time bombs in municipal budgets. The fat and happy politicians who bought union votes didn’t care much. They’d be long gone when these grenades detonated and the fiscal carnage began.
Americans know instinctively that this is no way to run a city or state, and that the enormous pensions border on larceny from public treasuries. This will eventually cause rip-roaring problems for state and local budgets. Now we have a story from middle America of what happens when the crisis hits a financial boiling point. Look no further than Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Scranton is a middle-class, blue-collar town of 76,000 with severe financial problems. The city recently raised its property taxes for 2014 by more than 50 percent and those taxes are expected to rise by another 20 percent in 2015. The city had to also raise various fees, such as the charge for garbage collection, by two-thirds. It’s becoming a tax hell.
These taxpayer costs are skyrocketing because the city’s auditors calculate that the police and fire pension funds will be completely depleted of funds in three to five years. The local Times-Tribune newspaper reported this week that “pensions increased by as much as 80 percent” after a court order in 2011 awarded millions of dollars in added pensions to firefighters and police officers.
This is a town that has already been struggling for years to pay its bills. The Times-Tribune reports: “The increased pensions come at a time when Scranton, in distressed status since 1992, is struggling to survive [and faces] a $20 million deficit.” City officials admit that paying these lucrative pensions will mean less money for schoolchildren, public safety and infrastructure needs.
Finances are so tight in this town that late last year the city auditor put out an advisory memo to city agencies that “Only in the event of an extreme emergency can a purchase be made . This is a serious matter and your cooperation is expected.” Now homeowners are getting squeezed on basic city services as they pay ever-escalating property taxes. What a deal. Don’t be surprised as more leave Scranton, further depleting the tax base. And who would want to move there now?
When the mayor requested that the unions help keep the city afloat by renegotiating the soaring pension costs, the answer from these militant “public service” union leaders was heck no.
One option is for Scranton to take the Detroit route and declare bankruptcy. This is also what several California cities, such Vallejo, have had to do.
The California Policy Center notes that this option has the virtue of “forcing the unions to renegotiate and take a hair cut.” If that doesn’t happen, cities like Scranton, and many more working-class towns, will continue to raise taxes at a time when families are already walking a financial tight rope.
The left loves to talk about “fairness” and “inequality,” but where the inequities really exist is in towns like Scranton. Middle-class private-sector workers pay higher and higher taxes to fund public-sector pensions that, as the Manhattan Institute has shown, are often twice as generous as what most workers will receive themselves. The money for supersized pensions isn’t going to come from millionaires and billionaires like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. It is coming right out of the paychecks of working-class Americans.
The crisis isn’t going away. Nationwide, public-employee pensions are running between $1 trillion and $5 trillion in the red, depending on the rate of return expected on stocks and bonds. This could be the next housing bubble to burst. Some states such as Utah have smartly moved quickly to head off this crisis by closing down open-ended pensions and putting public-sector union members in 401(k) plans that won’t bankrupt the state or municipalities. The unions are fighting this reform everywhere.
If something isn’t done quickly, the crisis in Scranton will soon be coming to a town near you.
If you like your health care plan, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has a Christmas surprise for you! When will this new present arrive? December 25th.
In an ongoing effort to keep Obamacare numbers elevated, CMS has embarked on the next step of its government takeover of healthcare.
It seems CMS is taking a page from Jonathan Gruber’s book; rather than allowing the “stupid” masses to make a decision on their own health plan, CMS has proposed a new rule that includes an overly reaching provision allowing CMS to re-enroll anyone who has not made the annual trek back to healthcare.gov in a cheaper plan of CMS’ choosing.
That’s right, the government will choose your plan, perhaps limit access to your doctor, and ultimately make the decision on what is “best” for you.
Not to worry, just like Lady Justice, who wears a blindfold when determining guilt or innocence, CMS will use a blindfold to pick your plan. The agency will select your plan without knowing your medical history. They will do so without knowing if you are currently undergoing treatment or working with a specific doctor. They will do so without knowing your financial status. Despite the fact that the millions of people who already enrolled chose the plan that they believed was best for them.
CMS has laid the perfect trap: Sign up at healthcare.gov one time in your life and we will never let you go. If you don’t continually re-enroll each and every year, CMS will keep you on the plan that it chooses because, after all, CMS knows what’s best and they always make the best decision. Oh, and if you don’t believe that, please go to the 600 million dollar website that will give you all kinds of testimonials handcrafted by MIT professors.
To be clear, a citizen will sign up once for a private plan with a healthcare provider, only to have that plan changed by the federal government. Moreover, CMS will change your plan after the open enrollment period ends, leaving you and your family stuck with a potentially unwanted plan for the year.
The only people that will be happier than the MIT economics professors and “government-knows-best” elitists will be the lawyers who will have the chance to litigate this bureaucratic fiasco. I actually just advised my son to change his studies to healthcare law.
The basic Constitutional question argued at the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was; Can the government force American citizens to purchase a product? Now the question has become; can the government change an individual’s private healthcare provider-without consent-just because that individual is silent and doesn’t opt-in to a new policy? The sound of silence is deafening and frightening.
Speaking of silence, CMS quietly opened a comment period on the new rule that extends until next week—ending on Christmas day.
With all due respect to the Jonathan Grubers of the world, the American people are smarter than this-they know this isn’t right. I sent a letter to CMS demanding they immediately strip this provision from the pending rule and abandon any future attempts to single-handedly choose Americans’ healthcare plans.
If not, the Republican House and Senate stands ready to take the action necessary to ensure CMS doesn’t further erode consumer choice in healthcare - as if the ACA already didn’t go far enough in doing so.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Arkansas became the first Southern state to expand its Medicaid program in a way that many Republicans found acceptable. The state bought private insurance for low-income people instead of adding them to the rolls of the Medicaid system, which GOP lawmakers considered bloated and inefficient.
Now Arkansas could be on the brink of another distinction: becoming the first to abandon its Medicaid expansion after giving coverage to thousands of people.
A wave of newly elected Republican lawmakers who ran on vows to fight so-called “Obamacare” - including the state’s “private option” Medicaid expansion - has raised doubts about the future of a leading model for conservative states to gradually adapt to the federal health care law. Arkansas’ incoming Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, is remaining mum on the plan’s fate.
“I think there’s one thing that’s clear and that’s the private option is not going to exist in its current form,” said Senate President Jonathan Dismang, one of several Republicans who helped craft the program and is pushing for its continuation.
What happens when the Legislature meets next month could show whether there’s a way forward for anti-Obama states to adopt parts of the health care law.
The prospect of losing their new insurance is already causing anxiety among some of the 213,000 people in Arkansas who got coverage.
“It’s a big concern,” said Arwen Dover, who works at a Little Rock store that sells flags and has been seeing a doctor for high blood pressure. “Right now, I’m dependent on the medicine I am taking. To lose it completely would be like starting all over again.”
Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia, most of them dominated by Democrats, agreed to expand their Medicaid programs to cover more low-income people under the health overhaul. The states that rejected the expansion, and the federal funds that came with it, were mostly Republican-leaning. A few GOP-led states looked for compromises. This week, Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Haslam announced plans for an alternative model to expand coverage.
Arkansas’ hybrid approach was worked out by outgoing Democratic governor Mike Beebe and the Republican-controlled Legislature. The program uses money that would otherwise go to expanding Medicaid to purchase the private insurance for the newly eligible.
Subsequently, Arkansas, which has a high poverty rate, experienced the largest drop in uninsured in the country - from 22.5 percent in 2013, to 12.4 percent, according to a Gallup survey released in August.
But the Republican Party made major gains nationally in the midterm election by running hard against the federal health care law. Democrats in Arkansas, who have been unanimous in their support for the expansion, were routed. Beebe is leaving office in January because of term limits.
Hutchinson has acknowledged the expansion’s benefit to hospitals, which wound up caring for fewer uninsured patients, but said he’s worried about Arkansas’ eventual share of the costs, which begins at 5 percent in 2017 and rises to 10 percent by 2020.
“There’s a cost aspect to it which I’ve said throughout the campaign needs to be measured,” said Hutchinson, who said he won’t reach a decision before late January.
Continuing the program will also require a three-fourths vote in the House and Senate. Supporters barely cleared that threshold in the last session, and that was before the arrival of the newly committed anti-Obamacare candidates.
“I don’t believe we can afford it,” said Republican David Wallace, one of the new House members.
Supporters say the program will at least need to change, but offer little details on what they’re considering.
Executives of hospitals are pushing hard for the program’s continuation.
“I think the private option is working exactly as intended,” said Bo Ryall, president of the Arkansas Hospital Association.
The fight in Arkansas mirrors the larger fight within the GOP over whether to focus on changing the health law or just repealing it.
“Arkansas is going to be ground zero for which side of the argument wins,” said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.
Yvonne Rosebud, a housekeeper who lost her job at a West Memphis hospital that closed earlier this year, said she’s uncertain what she would do if she loses the coverage she’s receiving under the private option. Rosebud makes $255 a week in unemployment payments, and said she wouldn’t be able to afford insurance on her own.
“I wouldn’t have been able to go to the doctor like I should without this,” said Rosebud, 61, who has high blood pressure and diabetes. “With this insurance, it’s really helping.”
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when several unexpected visitors showed up at the North Pole.
The first one wore what had to be a $3,000 suit. “I’m Elf Sharpton,” he began, “here to tell you: No union, no peace, no Christmas!”
Elf Sharpton handed Santa Claus a legal-looking document. “We went to the National Labor Relations Board,” the elf said, “and they’ve ordered an election before midnight, to unionize everyone in your workshop.”
Santa was puzzled. Nobody had told him that President Obama’s appointees had authorized snap elections with scant notice to employers. Walking to the window that overlooked the floor of his workshop, Santa saw a line of people already voting.
Most of the voters were elves, with a few reindeer mixed in. But others clearly were not from the North Pole. They wore shorts, sunglasses, and purple T-shirts. Santa told his visitor, “They should not be voting.”
“No discrimination,” Elf Sharpton boomed. “You must have same-day registration. And no voter ID!”
As Santa watched, a banner was strung up on the factory floor. It read: “ELF: Elven Labor Force Local No. 1.” A second line said, “Short people shouldn’t be short-changed.”
Still shaking in shock, Santa greeted his next visitor, a woman.
“I’m from OSHA,” she said. She looked curiously like Betty Friedan but said her name was Clarencia. She rang a bell in Santa’s face. “Naughty, naughty,” she said. “Your workers deserve a wonderful life, but we’ve had reports of dangerous working conditions here.”
Santa assured her that he scrupulously followed every safety regulation. But she would hear none of it.
“Those reindeer,” she began, “have been spotted working at great heights with neither scaffolding nor a safety net to catch them if they fall. Plus there’s the radiation hazard. They’re being exposed to a red nose that obviously is radioactive. Either you fix it immediately or we shut you down right now.”
Clarencia had brought a consent decree which Santa felt compelled to sign, lest children all over the world would miss Christmas the next day.
St. Nick immediately logged onto Amazon and ordered a special delivery. Within 30 minutes, a drone came over the horizon and delivered his order. Santa rushed the package to his stables, providing parachutes to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, plus Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen.
Santa also gave Rudolph a pink slip. Immediately, all the other reindeer began laughing and calling him names. They refused to let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games. Santa sighed, but knew that the forecast called for a non-foggy Christmas Eve.
Back at his office, Santa was interrupted again. This third visitor introduced himself as the Bureaucrat of Christmas Presents and handed Santa a thick bundle.
“These are notices of multiple violations,” he intoned.
There was a summons from the EPA for failure to submit an environmental impact statement before locating his workshop at the North Pole. The Army Corps of Engineers declared the entire area a wetland, because any day the snow would be melted by global warming.
The EEOC was suing because some children received coal in their stockings. First, it was illegal to discriminate between who’s naughty and who’s nice. Second, it was racially offensive to use black coal as a symbol of punishment.
The IRS gave notice that Santa’s tax-exempt status was being revoked. Some of his gifts had gone to tea party folks; the IRS said these were illegal campaign donations.
Before Santa could absorb it all, a microphone was shoved in his face. It bore the NPR logo. “How do you feel, Santa?” asked the female reporter from North Pole Radio. “Are you ready to quit being an extremist and compromise? Will you share your wealth with people who don’t believe in Santa Claus? Or will you quit your job?”
“No, Virginia,” he replied. “So long as there is hope in the world, there will always be a Santa Claus.”
He laughed in spite of himself. Nothing was going to stop Santa Claus. He would conquer any challenge on Earth. Santa felt he could even conquer the Martians.
Santa summoned up his strength. His eyes began to twinkle. His dimples were merry. His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his sleigh, ready to dash away from it all!
But out on the lawn there arose such a clatter that he sprang from his sleigh to see what was the matter.
And what to his wondering eyes did appear, but a horde of people headed to the North Pole. By the thousands and tens of thousands they were swarming toward him.
Suddenly, Santa did not feel so lively and quick. Nothing else done by the U.S. government could get him down. But now he was being invaded by illegal immigrants from south of the border.
“Oh, no!” Santa screamed. “Canadians!”
In a very real sense, the modern conservative political movement began with Barry Goldwater. Had it not been for the Arizona senator it might have taken years or even decades for conservative ideas to break into the political mainstream, Ronald Reagan would be remembered today not as one of our greatest presidents, but as a “B” movie star and television host, and many of those who since the 1960s shaped our nation’s politics would not have had an opportunity to do so.
Goldwater seemed to young conservatives in the early 1960s like a sort of real life John Wayne, riding in from the West to do battle with the liberals and Democrats who dominated everything. The growing conservative movement had Bill Buckley, of course, but was largely composed of writers, intellectuals and students. There were a few old Taft conservatives around as well, but the new conservative movement linking believers in free-market economics with Cold Warriors and those who are today called social conservatives was in its infancy and could count few elected officials within its ranks.
Goldwater was something else. He said what he thought and had the courage to stand up for his beliefs. He had been elected by upsetting the Senate’s majority leader and could often be found standing and voting alone on the Senate floor regardless of the odds or orders from his party’s leaders. He seemed to embody Buckley’s definition of the conservative as one who “stands athwart history yelling stop.”
Columnist Robert Novak, then a moderate and critic of Goldwater, wrote that “he was a conservative who smiled, who laughed, who was young and dynamic.” He came to Washington to change things, gave hundreds or perhaps thousands of speeches around the country as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, authored a book that students and others devoured and became an instant hero to conservatives young and old.
In 1960, a reluctant Goldwater was nominated for vice president at the Republican National Convention and in withdrawing gave a speech that ignited his followers and led almost directly to his nomination four years later. He stood before the assembled delegates who had just nominated Richard M. Nixon and challenged his fellow conservatives. “Let’s grow up conservatives,” he said, “If we want to take this party back — and I think we can someday — let’s get to work.”
They did just that, building the political infrastructure that would vanquish those who had dominated the party for most of their lives and hand their hero the nomination. The sign that the conservative movement had arrived took place at Madison Square Garden two years later, The Young Americans for Freedom audaciously decided to put together a conservative rally and invite the Arizona senator, among others, to speak in what they called “the belly of the beast.” Eighteen thousand people showed up, and when Goldwater took the stage, they welcomed him in a way that told the world he was their man. Richard Viguerie, who was there and helped organize the rally, remembers it as the moment when the political conservative movement really began.
Goldwater himself had always been reluctant about running for president, but was a close friend of the incumbent Democrat, John F. Kennedy, and the two had discussed and looked forward to a campaign unlike any other in modern American history. They even talked about touring the country together on the same plane and engaging in a series of Lincoln-Douglas style debates that would give voters a chance to choose between Kennedy’s liberalism and Goldwater’s conservatism. It would have been quite a campaign, but it was not to be.
Kennedy’s death put Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House and Goldwater was not very interested in running against him and was convinced it would be almost impossible to prevail in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. But his followers literally forced his hand, so the reluctant candidate stepped forward, vanquished the GOP establishment and seized control of the party in a raucous San Francisco convention.
The ensuing campaign was one of the most vicious and negative in history, and that is saying something today. Goldwater was pictured as a foaming-at-the-mouth madman who would destroy the world, who had secret ties to German neo-Nazis, would end Social Security and plunge America into depression. He lost, of course, by a huge margin. And the establishment thought the conservative movement he led had been destroyed once and for all.
Things would return to normal with Democrats and “respectable” Republicans differing on the margins, but agreeing on major issues. The intellectual elite that had so hated Goldwater and his advisers (like the eccentric Milton Friedman) who they felt gave the senator crazy economic advice would vanish and the world would go on as it had.
They were wrong, of course, because Barry Goldwater in losing had changed their world and ours in ways they couldn’t imagine. They saw his defeat as the end, but were soon to discover that it was only the beginning.
Whether your metric is the use of the executive branch’s awesome investigative and prosecutorial powers to punish the administration critics, the stonewalling and misleading of congressional investigations, or the racially discriminatory enforcement of civil rights laws in violation of the Constitution’s equal-protection principles, the Obama Justice Department is the most politicized in the nation’s history.
But the conversion of the rule of law from a foundation of ordered liberty to a political weapon may have at least one silver lining. Growing public alarm over the abuse of executive power spotlights some wayward prosecutorial practices that have been building for decades. Among them is civil forfeiture. It has devolved from a useful tool for defunding major criminal enterprises to a dangerous gutting of due process for ordinary Americans.
Like many government initiatives that grow harmful owing to inevitable mission creep, forfeiture seemed like a fine idea at the start. That was the early 1970s, when the nation faced a record crime wave driven by organized crime and narcotics-trafficking gangs. These enterprises can be very difficult to prosecute: Key leaders are insulated, witnesses are afraid to come forward and lavish profits enable mobsters and kingpins to hire top-flight lawyers and corrupt judicial processes.
Civil forfeiture was one clever way of attacking the problem. Rather than targeting the thugs through criminal prosecution, the civil approach targeted the instrumentalities that facilitated crime and the assets that were its proceeds — either cash or the things that money can buy. Although government prosecutors brought the cases, they were civil in nature, not criminal. That meant the “defendant” was the asset itself (e.g., a car, a bank account, a trove of jewelry), not the person whose suspected criminal activity generated these assets.
This was a coup for prosecutors because the burden of proof in civil cases is significantly lower: The case if proved by a “preponderance of the evidence” (basically, prosecutors must show merely that guilt is more likely than not), rather than the daunting “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard applicable for criminal conviction. Moreover, there was great risk for the owner of ill-gotten gains subject to criminal forfeiture: By challenging the seizure of his property, he could end up providing investigators with valuable information about himself that could help build a criminal case.
Civil forfeiture thus became a powerful staple of the government’s arsenal against predatory criminal enterprises. In the ensuing decades, however, Congress vastly expanded it. Nearly half a century later, it has so metastasized that asset forfeiture is now available for virtually every offense of the federal criminal law.
It was understandable that the dismantling of criminal syndicates that were tough to prosecute was a high priority in an era of high crime. But the dragnet that civil forfeiture has become has had the unintended consequence of depriving ordinary citizens of due-process rights. In effect, though their property is targeted because of suspected criminal activity, they are compelled either to abandon the property without challenge or litigate government seizures without such protections as the presumption of innocence, the right to counsel and the right to have the government prove every element of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Perhaps just as worrisome, asset forfeiture now warps government incentives. It is one thing if assets that investigators seize in civil litigation are simply turned over to the public treasury for general public purposes — such as, say, paying down government debt (stop snickering). Yet, with no small prompting from the Justice Department, asset forfeiture has become something of a bounty for investigative agencies, used as prosecutors and agencies see fit to buy equipment, pay sources, underwrite investigative initiatives, and generally make more cases.
When I was a prosecutor, federal agencies had to clean up analogous compensation structures that, for example, made payments to drug informants on the basis of how many cases they made or kilograms of cocaine their information helped recover. The payment system incentivized the informants to exaggerate criminal activity — and even when they didn’t overhype their allegations, good defense lawyers were able to suggest they had, damaging the effect of their trial testimony.
Concerns are thus growing that asset forfeiture, even in the criminal context, has gone too far. Last month, the Supreme Court heard the Kaley case, involving a couple charged with an obscure medical-device fraud. On the basis of the allegation, the government froze their assets; meaning, they are unable to retain the counsel of their choice even though prosecutors have yet to prove that they’ve done anything wrong. Such cases are increasingly common.
Proposals are also moving through Congress that would heighten the government’s burden of proof in civil-forfeiture cases and more tightly regulate its use of forfeiture proceeds.
It is high time for such reform. We are no longer in an era of runaway crime. Now, the problem is a rogue executive branch, from which Americans need all the protection they can get.
Washington Times recommends Suzanne Scholte (R) for Virginia's 11th
Four years ago, President Obama urged Hispanics to vote to “punish our enemies.” The strategy didn’t work, and the Democrats lost 63 House seats. Rep. Gerald “Gerry” Connolly of Virginia, a Democrat, nearly became No. 64.
Mr. Connolly clung to his 11th District seat by a mere 981 votes of 226,951 cast. Instead of reaching out to the other half of his constituency, Mr. Connolly has taken to heart the president’s admonition to punish enemies.
He demonstrated this at a session of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in February, when Mr. Connolly went after Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of the Texas-based King Street Patriots group of Tea Party activists. Mrs. Engelbrecht told how she has taken abuse for her politics. As soon as she filed for tax-exempt status, her family business was subjected to IRS audits and scrutiny from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the FBI. She could hardly open the door without bumping into a federal agent.
“After nearly 20 years of being in business and no agency coming to visit with us,” Mrs. Engelbrecht testified, “the succession of agencies that have now come to us … begs the question. The statistical probabilities of what happened to me, without motivation, is staggering.”
Hearing this, Mr. Connolly, 64, coldly told her that “it’s a huge leap … to conclude that someone’s out to get you.” Innuendo and “drawing conclusions and paranoia do not substitute for fact-based, empirical oversight,” he said, muttering something about “McCarthyism,” demonstrating that he hardly knew what “McCarthyism” might be. Mr. Connolly demonstrated that he can’t be bothered to look beyond taking care of Democratic partisans.
Voters in his district, which comprises most of Fairfax County and precincts in eastern Prince William County, would clearly be better served by Mr. Connolly’s Republican challenger, Suzanne Scholte, whose work with a nonprofit human rights and pro-democracy organization has won national accolades and international recognition. These include the President’s Volunteer Service Award, presented to her this year by Mr. Obama.
“I’ve been fighting against [abuse] for the last 20 years of my life,” Mrs. Scholte says. “I’m very concerned that the work that I’ve done promoting freedom, democracy and human rights abroad is being eroded here at home.”
She cites the IRS hearings as evidence of abuse inflicted by the Obama administration, which gets only a wink and a nudge from Mr. Connolly. “The fact that the congressman who represents this area would mock those Americans who came to be heard is terrifying to me,” says Mrs. Scholte. Mr. Connolly’s abuse of a woman crying out for help was among the reasons she is running for his seat in Congress.
Taking on a four-term incumbent in a district that leans Democratic is an uphill battle, but this promises to be a good year for Republicans. Voters in Northern Virginia are as fed up as anyone with the tax, spend and regulate record of Messrs. Connolly and Obama. We recommend that residents of the 11th District do something about it on Tuesday by casting a vote for Mrs. Scholte.
Sun Gazette recommends Gerry Connolly (D) for Virginia's 11th
There are two Gerald Connollys out there, contained in the same mustachioed man.
There’s the policy wonk who rose from civic leader to Fairfax County district supervisor to chair of the Board of Supervisors. When Republican Tom Davis bowed to changing demographics of the district and called it a career, Democrat Connolly stepped into the void to represent the 11th Congressional District in Congress.
Connolly is right on many issues, and is a fierce defender of the too-often-maligned federal workforce.
But Connolly also manages to rub a lot of people the wrong way. His manner sometimes has all the charm of a piranha attack, and, early in his congressional tenure, he often was unable to ratchet down his partisanship even though, as a member of the minority party in the U.S. House of Representatives, he and the district would be best served by making friends across the aisle.
Republicans had a couple of chances to knock off Connolly in the earliest part of his congressional career, but managed (as Republicans these days tend to do) to toss away the opportunity in an effort to retain political purity. Today, the district appears his for life, unless – as some have speculated and we find rather bemusing – he opts to run for governor in 2017.
Sharing ballot space with Connolly Nov. 4 are Republican Suzanne Scholte, Joe Galdo of the Green Party and Libertarian Marc Harrold.
The latter two may raise interesting issues, but will not be factors in this race. As for Scholte, she took an unusual route to becoming a GOP nominee, as her work has focused on human rights around the globe, and we think she says the right things on government spending and debt. But we also believe she does not have enough of a well-rounded grasp of the district and its residents to be ready – yet – to unseat the incumbent.
When Connolly was challenged by the largely unknown Republican Chris Perkins in the 2012 race, we summed up the Democrat this way: “As we predicted, two years in the minority actually served to benefit Connolly and his constituents. It has given him time to build alliances, calm his demeanor and focus less on partisanship and more on serving all those in the 11th.”
That statement remains true today, 24 months after it was written. For that reason, we endorse Connolly’s bid for re-election.
CHARLOTTE — They spoke one after another at a tea party meeting at an upscale pub — conservative voters and activists vowing to derail Republican Thom Tillis‘ run for U.S. Senate because, as state House speaker, he muscled through a toll road project.
“Since the creation of the automobile until this point, there [haven’t] been toll roads [in North Carolina],” conservative activist Chuck Suter said at the meeting, which is an offshoot of the Charlotte Tea Party. “We would expect this to come from Democrats.”
“I don’t want to send him to D.C,” fumed Mary Amstrong, a businesswoman and Republican voter who regularly attends the weekly meeting at the Dilworth Neighborhood Grille. “Based on what [Mr. Tillis] is doing to us in North Carolina, I don’t want to give him any more power.”
The anti-toll road uprising that is frustrating Mr. Tillis‘ run reflects a national movement against tolls, which conservatives decry as the latest big government intrusion. Unfortunately for Mr. Tillis, the uprising in North Carolina is centered in bedroom communities in the Lake Norman region north of Charlotte that includes Mr. Tillis‘ base of support in his state House district.
Mr. Tillis has largely ignored the toll road issue and the tea party activists that oppose him. His campaign strategy has consisted of adopting moderate positions and flooding the radio and TV airwaves with ads that tie incumbent Democrat Kay R. Hagan to President Obama, who is extremely unpopular in the Tar Heel State.
But the backlash highlights Mr. Tillis‘ weakness with the Republican base and helps explain why he consistently trails in the polls behind Mrs. Hagan, who was supposed to be one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats this year.
With two weeks until the election, Mrs. Hagan led Mr. Tills 47 percent to 44 percent in a Public Policy Polling survey this week. The 3-point lead was within the poll’s margin of error, but nearly every poll for the last two months has put Mrs. Hagan in front. Mrs. Hagan leads Mr. Tillis by the same 3-point margin with or without Libertarian Sean Haugh in the matchup, a sign that his role as a potential spoiler is diminishing.
The consensus at the meeting was that they didn’t care if defeating Mr. Tillis sent Mrs. Hagan back to Washington and foiled Senate Republicans’ quest for a net gain of six seats to seize majority control of the upper chamber this year.
“He doesn’t think he needs us,” said Catherine Oxford, treasurer for the tea party group.
The North Carolina toll road project is a public-private partnership — sometimes called a P3 — to build and operate a mix of tolls and high-occupancy lanes on a 26-mile stretch of I-77 from Charlotte north to Mooresville in the Lake Norman region.
The state has signed a contract with Cintra, a Spanish company that will operate the lanes for profit. Road construction could begin by spring.
The same type of road projects that would add tolls or “hot lanes” to existing highways are being promoted by President Obama as an alternative to tapping limited federal highway funds. Those plans are greeted with skepticism in Congress and from governors across the country, including Democratic governors in Virginia, Vermont and West Virginia.
The activists said the toll roads were not only a government power grab and money-making scheme — critics predict tolls as high as $20 for a roundtrip commute — but also an example of Mr. Tillis‘ bullying leadership style. They complained that opponents of the toll roads were shut out of the debate in the state capital of Raleigh, as he forced through the project by strong-arming and intimidating fellow lawmakers and citizens.
“He doesn’t deserve to win,” said Mary Lou Richardson, a longtime Republican Party activist in the Lake Norman area who once campaigned for Mr. Tillis and was his guest at his swearing in as speaker in 2011.
“He was our friend. That’s the hardest part of it,” she told The Washington Times. “It’s very disappointing to work for someone for six years and find out he’s not who we thought he was.”
The irony wasn’t lost on the tea party crowd in Charlotte that Mr. Tillis, who has made opposition to Mr. Obama the centerpiece of his campaign, is on the same page as the president when it comes to toll roads.
Ms. Armstrong said that if Mr. Tillis is elected, he will join other pro-toll lawmakers in Washington and then “we are doomed, because the P3 toll lanes are an Obama agenda.”
The toll road issue and conservative opposition to Mr. Tillis have prompted a write-in campaign by former state Rep. John Rhodes, which will bleed some support from Mr. Tillis.
Mr. Tillis ousted Mr. Rhodes from his state House seat in 2006 to begin his rise to power in Raleigh.
Mr. Rhodes insisted that he isn’t running for revenge.
“It’s not about a personal beef [as much as it is] I hate to see an elected official use their power to hurt citizens and to abuse their power and to intimidate folks,” he said.
Before his write-in campaign, Mr. Rhodes had filed four ethics complaints against Mr. Tillis alleging campaign finance irregularities, cronyism and abuse of power.
“They say who’s going to save us from Kay Hagan and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid. I say, ‘Who’s going to save us from Thom Tillis?’” said Mr. Rhodes.
The Tillis campaign did not respond to questions about the toll roads.
Washington Times recommends Ed Gillespie (R) for U.S. Senate from Va.
Virginians aren’t rightly represented in the U.S. Senate. Despite their proximity to the seat of federal government, Virginians cultivate a fundamentally conservative character. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, the Democratic incumbents, work hard to appear pro-gun, pro-business, pro-military or pro-whatever else needed to distract attention from their liberal voting records. Virginia has an opportunity to redress that Nov. 4.
Mr. Warner doesn’t make waves. He has a low-key style that gives voters back home no reason to think he’s not related to John Warner, the Republican ex-senator and one of Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands. But name recognition, however convenient for incumbents, is not a qualification.
Now scandal pursues this incumbent. The FBI is investigating attempts by Virginia Democrats to keep Phillip P. Puckett from resigning his seat in the Virginia General Assembly, which gave Republicans a majority and doomed Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s plan to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, a top White House priority. Mr. Warner concedes that he encouraged Mr. Puckett to stay in the state Senate.
“When I heard Phillip was considering resigning from the Senate,” Mr. Warner said last week, “I reached out to his son, Joseph, to find out what was going on. During that conversation, we brainstormed about possible opportunities for his sister.”
Mr. Warner’s “brainstorm” included the potential, if not necessarily the promise, of sponsoring Mr. Puckett’s daughter for a federal judgeship. This would have been a lifetime appointment, not because of her qualifications, but because doing so would advance Obamacare in Virginia. A U.S. senator’s recommendation is no mere suggestion. Senate tradition gives senators a powerful “blue slip” veto over the president’s choice for judgeships in their home states. A federal judgeship is the “something of value” that shouldn’t be exchanged for a vote.
The incident adds to Mr. Warner’s record of blind partisanship. In his final debate with Ed Gillespie, his Republican opponent, last week, Mr. Warner twisted Mr. Gillespie’s stance on the Americans for Tax Reform pledge to hold candidates to account if they promise not to raise taxes and then, after being safely elected, raise taxes, anyway. “The Grover Norquist pledge says,” said Mr. Warner, “in effect, it’s better to cut education, it’s better to cut our military, it’s better to cut support for seniors, than to close a single tax loophole.”
The pledge, taken by hundreds of candidates, says no such thing. Mr. Warner’s argument might be persuasive if, in the $3 trillion budget, there were no extravagances — no fat Amtrak appropriation, no goodies for the National Endowment for the Arts and no money for IRS agents to throw themselves a “Star Trek” theme party on the taxpayer’s dime. This is just the kind of waste that Mr. Gillespie will fight in the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Gillespie, the son of Irish immigrants, has had a successful career in politics. He was the chairman of the Republican National Committee and a top aide of President George W. Bush. He was a prime drafter of the Contract with America, the bold statement of conservative principles that helped Republicans win control of Congress in 1994.
Mr. Gillespie stands for those values today. He understands that runaway taxes and red tape stifle Virginia as well as the 49 sister states, and he would fix it by lowering taxes, providing relief from burdensome regulation, encouraging more domestic oil drilling and cutting wasteful spending. He says voters must hold him to account, and they should throw him out of office if he breaks his promises.
Virginians don’t want another rubber stamp for President Obama. They do want and deserve a senator who represents Virginia. We enthusiastically endorse Ed Gillespie for the U.S. Senate.
Washington Post recommends Mark Warner (D) for U.S. Senate from Va.
EVERYONE ON Capitol Hill talks about the difficulty of getting big things done, and no wonder — there’s a pitifully short list of lawmakers who have made serious and sustained attempts at genuinely bipartisan solutions. Yet on any such list, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia figures prominently. In taking on a range of key domestic challenges, he deserves reelection to a second term in the Senate.
As a freshman senator, Mr. Warner showed guts by defying large chunks of his Democratic base to support trimming entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare in order to forge a deal. By contrast, his Republican challenger, Ed Gillespie, a smart and savvy Washington insider, has promised never to compromise by backing new revenue in order to tackle the nation’s fiscal problems in a balanced way.
We understand that Mr. Gillespie, who faced a competitive GOP primary, is loath to alienate Republican hard-liners. Yet his opposition to any new taxes — read: any compromise — is exactly the sort of promise that produces congressional paralysis and would defeat a bargain to cure the nation’s fiscal ills.
Before he ran for the Senate in 2008, Mr. Warner was a highly successful governor whose signature success — a tax overhaul that preserved Virginia’s gold-plated credit rating and shored up its public schools — depended largely on his ability to cross partisan lines and attract substantial Republican support. In Washington, he has followed the same playbook.
His resolve to right America’s fiscal imbalance is based on pure pragmatism. As he has often noted, the urgency to ensure Social Security’s long-term viability by trimming benefits has nothing to do with ideology — just math. Or as Mr. Warner has put it: “Sixteen workers for every one retiree 50 years ago; three workers for every retiree now.”
Mr. Warner’s methods owe much to his attention to detail, a nearly obsessive search for creative solutions and real flexibility in long negotiating sessions, often over meals at his home. That, plus his Herculean drive, has earned him the respect of key Republican senators — and annoyed some of his party’s leaders.
Mr. Warner has distinguished himself in other ways — as a senator determined to crack big policy problems through bipartisan alchemy. He and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) co-authored legislation that would reform the housing finance system by encouraging new firms to enter the mortgage securitization market; shield taxpayers from bailouts after big market dips; and shift more risks and rewards where they belong: with private investors.
Mr. Gillespie, a former lobbyist, national and state GOP chairman and top adviser to President George W. Bush, has deep political and policy experience. Unlike many Republicans who have been content to attack Obamacare, he proposed an alternative — albeit one that would offer far less protection to vulnerable patients.
Mr. Gillespie has the skills to be a bipartisan player in the Senate, as Mr. Warner has been. Yet by promising never to compromise on taxes, he has taken himself out of the hunt for an exit from America’s fiscal impasse. Virginians deserve better; in Mr. Warner, they have it.
The Pentagon’s “2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap,” published last week, demonstrates how thoroughly and deeply liberal “climate change” ideology is being embedded in our military establishment. To undo the damage will require a determined effort by our next president.
We’ve already seen how the climate change ideology has wasted scarce defense dollars, such as Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus’ decision to spend $26 a gallon for 450,000 gallons of biofuel — about $11.7 million — when $5 a gallon diesel fuel would have met the same need. That, of course, came at a time when the Navy fleet was shrinking to the smallest size since the end of World War I.
The new roadmap implements two of President Obama’s executive orders, which direct all federal agencies to integrate climate change considerations in all their operations, planning and mission objectives. On the first page, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel writes that the Pentagon is very busy determining things such as the effect of climate change on Mr. Obama’s military “shift” to the Pacific and how it should be included in war games. He adds, “Politics or ideology must not get in the way of sound planning,” but that’s exactly what the mandates he describes will accomplish.
The report accepts as fact all the hyperbole of climate change and on that basis mandates that every aspect of Pentagon operations and planning should be adapted to consider those “facts.” It claims that climate change is a “force multiplier,” so great a national security risk that it may cause disease, trigger instability in and among nations and foster terrorism.
To deal with these supposed national security threats, Mr. Hagel’s report sets out how the Defense Department has created an overlay on the department’s activities that makes global warming an element to be considered in everything it does.
“Climate change adaptation” comes in the form of required studies and planning. It requires guidance be given to combatant commanders so that they will include climate concerns in “Theater Campaign Plans, Operations Plans, Contingency Plans and Theater Security Cooperation Plans.” That means climate change concerns have to be injected into battlefield planning and military training. It mandates assessments of how defense activities may affect “unique landscapes, ecosystems and habitats.” Accordingly, the Marines may have to choose which beach to storm not on the basis of taking their objective with the least casualties but by measuring which beach will suffer less erosion owing to their landing.
These are only a few of the dozens of plans, studies and military operations the “roadmap” requires in order to bow to the ideology of climate change. Every time that ideology has to be considered, it will cost money and rob planning time from real defense concerns.
The roadmap institutionalizes climate change thinking as part of the bureaucracy’s normal functions, making it an ever-present thought in the minds of the Pentagon’s denizens. I know from my service in the Pentagon that the bureaucracy will ensure that climate change concerns are included in all defense planning year after year until someone reverses Mr. Hagel’s mandates.
Perhaps the most predictable requirement the Defense Department has decided on says that the Pentagon will “collaborate” with the private sector to “leverage best practices and acquisition strategies” to include climate change concerns.
The defense industries will bend to the desires of their only customer because they must. Every major contractor and subcontractor will hire climate consultants to advise them and write studies on how they’re improving and using “best environmental practices” in things such as bending metal to manufacture an aircraft’s skin. The cost will be what the consultant market will bear and it will increase by millions of dollars the price of every ship, aircraft, rifle and Humvee contract the military signs. It will also add months to every manufacturing schedule.
Given the scarcity of defense dollars, we shouldn’t be adding these costs in time and money to everything the Pentagon does.
We need to cancel this sort of wasteful spending owing to the growing mountain of evidence that disproves the supposed problem. Just how much time do we want to take from combatant commanders and their staffs to deal with these issues?
None at all, but that’s the power of the liberals’ climate change ideology. Because it dominates the thinking of people such as Mr. Obama and Mr. Hagel, they can — and are — embedding it in the thinking of the federal bureaucracy. It will take a concerted effort from the White House and the defense secretary’s office to relieve our defense establishment of this pointless burden. Repealing the president’s climate change executive orders would be a very good start.
There is every reason to doubt that climate change should be a concern at all. It clearly isn’t a national security threat that should pervade the Defense Department’s every activity. Our combatant commanders and their staffs have more important things to worry about, such as winning our wars. They — and the rest of America’s defenders — should not have to waste time thinking about anything else.
The billionaire Russian oil tycoon who lost his assets and freedom after defying Vladimir Putin says the Kremlin has co-opted the country’s legal system and hijacked its armed forces to benefit a plutocratic regime that is destined for collapse.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the wealthiest man in Russia, and who later became the country’s most famous political prisoner, recently spoke at the annual Freedom House awards ceremony in Washington. In his keynote speech, he said Russia’s corruption problems can be traced back to the Soviet Union’s darkest days, when communism collapsed and Russian leaders had the opportunity to successfully transition the country to capitalism but failed to do so.
“A return to social justice in Russia is impossible without repairing the damage that came from an unfair privatization,” he told a small audience. “Privatization was a painful task in which Russia’s further development would not have been possible. But the way it was accomplished led to the emergence of extreme side effects.”
The result, he said, was a system based on power, not equal opportunity.
“Modern Russian society is structured unfairly,” he said. “Whoever has the bigger fists in it has the bigger rights as well. In Russia today, might is right, but it should be the other way around: What is right should have the might.”
According to David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent who was exiled by the Kremlin last year, the Putin regime has effectively hijacked the Russian legal system and uses its courts to target its opponents. He said the Khodorkovsky prosecution was a milestone case that allowed corruption to seep from the Russian federal judiciary to lower-level courts.
“Once the wave from the Khodorkovsky case spread, it spread from the highest federal level to the local level,” he said during a recent lecture to the Washington-based Institute of World Politics. “The result was that thousands of businesses were taken over, and those who resisted ended up with long jail sentences or in pretrial detention waiting for their fate for months and even years.”
Mr. Satter said the Kremlin uses the courts to engage in selective prosecution against its enemies while seizing property for its allies, and that it is common practice to “get a false court decision” in an outside jurisdiction and then bribe local law enforcement to seize desired property.
Russian authorities arrested Mr. Khodorkovsky in 2003, convicted him of tax evasion in 2005, and kept him imprisoned for 10 years. His trials and sentence received widespread criticism from human rights groups including Amnesty International, which said his prosecution was politically motivated.
Mr. Putin has long defended his country’s human rights record, claiming that Russia has no political prisoners and resisting characterizations of Mr. Khodorkovsky as such. Russian opposition leaders say his release was spurred by the Kremlin’s desire to avoid criticism during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
Since his release, the Russian oil tycoon has revived his foundation, Open Russia, which his shareholders founded in 2001. The foundation was suspended in 2006 after the Russian government seized his oil company’s assets and imprisoned other corporate officers.
Mr. Khodorkovsky said that despite widespread speculation he is preparing to run against Mr. Putin, his efforts will have to come from outside the country.
“It is impossible to run for election in Russia, because there are no real elections in Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” he said.
Navy sailors harbor “widespread mistrust” in the admirals who command them, complaining of poor leadership and a disciplinary environment that tolerates absolutely no mistakes, says a survey of the fleet.
The disgruntlement runs deepest in the officer corps, where scores of commanders have been relieved of duty in recent years.
“Senior leadership should stop proactively highlighting the reliefs for cause of commanding officers, command master chiefs, and other senior enlisted advisors,” said the report “2014 Navy Retention Study.” “What was originally intended to demonstrate accountability to the public has, instead, resulted in a significant breach of trust with our sailors and resulting in an almost ‘reality TV’ mentality.”
The independent survey was released amid complaints by some aviators about excessive political correctness as the military seeks to stamp out sexual harassment and misconduct in an increasingly gender-integrated Navy.
“Most troubling is the perception sailors hold of senior leadership,” the report says under the heading “Widespread Distrust of Senior Leadership.”
“Sailors feel strongly about their distrust of senior leadership, and believe the Navy has a significant risk-averse culture and zero-defect mentality,” the report says. “Officers in particular hold an incredibly negative view of the current state of affairs, with vast majorities decrying the overwhelming perception of a risk averse and zero-defect mentality culture.”
When asked whether they agreed that the Navy operates a risk-averse culture, nearly 90 percent of officers answered “yes.”
Sailors also do not like wartime at sea deployments that stretch from six months up to nine months.
The report, based on an Internet survey that garnered responses from more than 5,000 sailors, was compiled by a group of active-duty Navy sailors and civilian researchers, with the Navy’s support.
It was led by Cmdr. Guy Snodgrass, a “Top Gun” F-18 Hornet pilot who was a speechwriter for the Navy’s top admiral and now is executive officer of a carrier strike fighter squadron. Cmdr. Snodgrass has argued that the work climate will lead to a retention crisis if not addressed.
Cmdr. Christopher Servello, a spokesman for the chief of naval personnel, said: “Not sure we agree with all of the conclusions that were drawn, but we are grateful for the effort done by this group. … Much of the raw data collected matches what we have seen in our own surveys.”
Cmdr. Servello said actions being taken include “pushing decision-making down to the lowest levels of command and empowering units’ leaders to train and focus on war fighting first.”
He said retention is above average for officers and enlisted, but there are “pockets that have leadership’s attention.” These include the nuclear Navy, junior flight officers and special warfare, which includes the SEALs.
Cmdr. Snodgrass‘ report language is tamer than an article he wrote last winter on the U.S. Naval Institute website.
“Unfortunately,” Cmdr. Snodgrass wrote, “the fact that a growing number of quality officers have already left the service or are planning to head for the doors seems to be going undetected by senior leadership.”
He wrote of “a recent shift within the Navy to eradicate behavior that is, by its very nature, ineradicable.”
“Put simply, there is no dollar amount that can be spent, or amount of training that can be conducted, that will completely eradicate complex issues such as suicide, sexual assault, or commanding officer reliefs for cause — yet we continue to expend immense resources in this pursuit,” he said. “Sailors are bombarded with annual online training, general military training, and safety stand-downs — all in an effort to combat problems that will never be defeated.”
The EPA and environmental groups are exceptionally close for a government agency and lobby groups, with a revolving door and pressure from the groups often shaping EPA’s policies, according to a new report from a conservative watchdog group based on emails obtained in a yearslong battle with the agency.
The report, which details what the Energy & Environment Legal Institute terms “collusion” between the Environmental Protection Agency and eco-friendly groups, is also a study in the way E&E used open records laws to force transparency on a secretive agency.
Chris Horner, the report’s author, said the emails show EPA officials aren’t acting as impartial regulators but as committed environmentalists whose minds are already made up on a number of the big issues that come before the agency. Mr. Horner said it was the equivalent of the EPA collaborating with oil companies.
“These emails reveal the realities of how the Obama EPA operates, and candid admissions among themselves and pressure group allies about their shared agenda and its impacts,” Mr. Horner said. “The emails’ content also explains why the administration so furiously opposes efforts to obtain the oft-promised transparency: These realities wouldn’t possibly sit well with the broader public.”
The EPA didn’t respond to a request for comment, and neither did the Sierra Club, which takes the lion’s share of criticism from the report.
Mr. Horner’s report lists numerous times that EPA officials didn’t recuse themselves despite handling decisions where their former colleagues at environmental groups were lobbying them for a specific outcome.
He also details collaboration between the EPA and the Sierra Club to try to shape press coverage, the EPA letting Sierra Club officials submit comments for the public record even before the official comment periods had begun, and EPA officials soliciting legal opinions from the Sierra Club on how the agency might go around Congress and take action on its own.
The relationships went both ways: Sometimes Sierra Club officials would offer up their work in personal messages to senior EPA officials, and other times those senior officials would specifically ask for Sierra Club input ahead of big decisions.
In one example in the report, Duke Energy was about to get North Carolina’s approval for a permit for a power plant when Sierra Club officials raised it with the EPA. A top EPA official then sent a letter to North Carolina raising those exact same concerns on behalf of the Obama administration, the report says.
Mr. Horner, in the report, said the emails detailing the exchange were released to him twice — once with the collusion with the Sierra Club redacted, and once with that included but with the EPA’s plans to object to North Carolina redacted.
“These emails inarguably present impermissible conflicts of interest and a clear pattern of improper collusion, improper influence and a lack of real opportunity for others to have input into, or equal opportunity to comment on, EPA’s rule-making processes,” the report says. “The minds of senior Obama EPA appointees, implementing a costly and admittedly (among themselves, in email) ideological agenda, were closed.”
The report, which runs to more than 300 pages and includes copies of the key emails showing collaboration, is the result of several years of open records requests and repeated court challenges.
Mr. Horner, who in 2012 revealed former EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s use of the secret Richard Windsor email address, said his open records requests were pulled out of the normal process at EPA and given to the agency’s top Freedom of Information Act staffer, who sat on the request for months, in violation of the law.
In an earlier report, E&E had accused the EPA of bias in handling open records requests. When someone submits a request, he can also ask for a fee waiver, arguing the information is in the public interest. The EPA generally approved environmental groups’ fee waivers while denying requests from E&E and other conservative groups.
The EPA’s inspector general, however, disputed that. In a July report, the inspector general said it had reviewed a sample of hundreds of fee waiver requests and found almost all of them were properly decided.
E&E said its own calculations showed 58 percent of environmental groups’ waivers were approved, but E&E and another conservative group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, only had 25 percent of their requests granted.
If the Illinois Teachers Retirement Service (TRS) had to pay out all of its pensions today, it could only afford to give its members 40 cents on the dollar.
Yet the number of six-figure pensions TRS has been doling out has increased 24 percent this year compared to last, with about 6,000 retired educators collecting more than $100,000 annually, according to records obtained by Open the Books, an online aggregator of local spending that tracks educator salaries, pensions and vendor spending.
The group’s Labor Day report found more than 100,000 retired Illinois educators had been paid back what they invested into the system just 20 months after leaving work, a financial burden linked to union collective bargaining, which can cost taxpayers $2 million or more per teacher over the course of retirement.
“For most school districts pension payments are one of the top five annual expenses,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of Open the Books. “Are we going to educate children or provide lavish lifetime benefits for administrators and teachers? There’s not enough taxpayer money to do both.”
Without reform, TRS’s pension plan could go bust by 2029, the fund’s executive director Dick Ingram told The State Journal-Register back in 2012.
Even though Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and the state legislature pushed through legislation aimed at overhauling the pension fund last year, a court challenge brought by organized labor threatens to stymie that progress. In May the court decided to issue a temporary injunction against the new law — leaving the fund’s solvency in limbo.
Meanwhile, the Illinois financial situation is only worsening. Creditors have found the state and its largest city, Chicago, to be on the same path as Detroit. In March Moody’s cut Chicago’s credit rating to Baa1 from A3, giving it the lowest credit rating of any major U.S. city other than Detroit. Illinois has the worst credit rating of any state in the nation.
TRS is Illinois’s biggest retirement reserve, making up half the state’s pension funds. For years the state legislature allowed the pension to go underfunded so it could spend money on other things. State educators and union executives used the borrowed cash to hire more teachers, boost salaries and improve local facilities.
As a result, the pension is about $54 billion underfunded, according to Ted Dabrowski, vice president of policy at the Illinois Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank. Compare that number to the state’s annual budget of $35 billion and the situation looks even more desperate.
“You’d have to close down the entire state government for more than a year to just pay TRS out,” Mr. Dabrowski said. “This situation is obviously extremely unhealthy.”
More than half of Illinois state educators retire at age 59 or younger and receive $2 million in benefits after their career ends, the institute estimates. Because of a guaranteed cost of living adjustment of 3 percent annually after 25 years in retirement, many of these individuals are earning more than double what they were making at the height of their career, the institute found.
Unions unapologetically defend the system and its pay increases.
“It should be remembered that Illinois TRS members are not in Social Security,” said Charlie McBarron, a spokesman for the Illinois Education Association, a union representing more than 130,000 Illinois education professionals. “Their pensions are, for most, their life savings.”
After the court issued its injunction on pension reform — which was led by the unions because it included modifying benefits for current retirees — the Chicago Teachers Union exclaimed, “The law in Illinois is now crystal clear: Politicians cannot break the promises made to Chicago teachers and other city employees. Recently passed laws to cut promised retirement benefits are clearly unconstitutional.”
Whatever the outcome of the case, pension benefits for Illinois teachers trump what they would receive in the private sector, experts say.
The teacher pension’s 3 percent annual increases aren’t tied to inflation — meaning they cannot fluctuate up or down depending on the economy or budget pressures. Also, while Social Security cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) are capped at $456 annually, there’s no such limit on TRS’s plan.
Illinois public sector workers will receive, on average, a $1,906 annual cost of living adjustment this year — nine times more than the average Social Security beneficiary, according to calculations done by the Illinois Policy Institute.
“The 3 percent compounded increase is far more generous than any Social Security benefit would provide. It’s very expensive and needs to be paid out regardless of inflation and regardless of the state’s ability to pay,” said Laurence Msall, president of The Civic Federation, a nonpartisan research organization. “It’s one of the biggest drivers of the pension cost.”
Illinois union officials deferred all questions on the pension’s solvency and potential reforms to TRS.
If the state continues to make its legal contribution to the fund on time, it will never go broke, said David Urbanek, a spokesman for TRS. Part of the reform passed last December included a strict payment plan.
“If the state cannot sustain the legally required payments, then an estimate can be made for insolvency,” wrote Mr. Urbanek in an email to The Washington Times. He declined to speculate when that would be and deferred all calls for pension reform to the Illinois General Assembly.
“Reforms are the responsibility of the General Assembly, not TRS,” Mr. Urbanek said. “As the fiduciary entity that is legally responsible for administering teacher pensions in Illinois outside of the city of Chicago, TRS cannot propose or enact reforms or solutions to the financial problems faced by the system.”
Along with the annual cost-of-living adjustment, teacher salary spikes are also putting pressure on the pension system, watchdog groups warn.
In the final four years of her career as Butler School District Superintendent, Sandra Renner saw her salary spike 31 percent to $288,240 — giving her a starting pension of $210,480, upon retirement, according to Open the Books data.
Because of that spike, Ms. Renner’s pension is higher than her salary for all but five of the years she spent working as a professional, the group reported.
Ms. Renner didn’t respond to calls for comment.
Two years ago school administrator Mohsin Dada also received a nice pay boost. His income jumped 137 percent from $156,160 to $358,750 in his final year before retirement — giving him a pension of $254,700.
However, Mr. Dada decided retirement wasn’t for him, because that same year he was appointed as chief financial officer of the North Shore School System — collecting a $239,895.95 salary, according to Open the Books. Between his pension and salary, Mr. Dada is clearing near a half-million dollars annually.
North Shore Superintendent Michael Bregy didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“Under state law, it is legal for Mr. Dada to collect his TRS pension and be employed in a school district in a position that is not covered by TRS,” said Mr. Urbanek. “Since this situation is legal, TRS has no authority to investigate Mr. Dada’s situation or to seek changes in his pension.”
Salary increases haven’t gone unnoticed in the Hinsdale school district. The school board put a “stop pension spiking” referendum on this year’s November ballot. On average, its teachers were receiving a 24 percent salary lift in the final four years of their careers, according to Open the Books data.
In addition to salary spiking, Hinsdale teachers are also nicely paid. Although their union has been threatening a strike if they don’t get a salary boost, the teacher income in that district has outpaced inflation by 76 percent since 2001, according to Open the Books.
With an average salary of $111,000, the teachers at Hinsdale out-earn the average professor at the University of Illinois by more than $10,000, according to Open the Books.
Because local school systems are only on the hook to pay an increased salary for a few years, there’s a big disconnect when it comes to who really is footing the bill and the impact it is having on the pension system, Mr. Dabrowski said.
Many unions try to make these spikes part of the teachers’ salary negotiations, and the school systems oblige, knowing they will only be responsible for four years of higher salary. Then the burden shifts to the state pension system, where it will be responsible for footing the higher salary for the entirety of the retirees’ lifetime — plus the 3 percent annual increase.
Many times, school districts agree to pay these higher wages because it actually costs local taxpayers less than what it would if the teacher opted to take an early retirement, said Ben Schwarm, deputy executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards.
When the Illinois General Assembly allowed teachers the option of an early retirement, it required local school districts to put 20 percent of the teacher’s salary into the retirement fund for each of the next five years if the teacher took that option.
Often, the board found it cheaper to get the teachers to stay longer and then give them 20 percent raises in the final two years of their term, Mr. Schwarm explained.
All pension reforms, enhancements and modifications need to go through the state legislature. Local schools and districts need to deal with the hand they’re dealt and haven’t been able to exert much influence over the process, he said.
“Local school boards didn’t create this — in most part we’ve opposed all pension enhancements. But we get rolled over in the general assembly because they’re trying to make the teachers and the unions happy,” Mr. Schwarm said.
As a way to solve the pension crisis, the Illinois Association of School Boards’ main concern is that the state legislature will try to shift the pension costs from the state to the local level, which “would be devastating to the local school districts,” because the districts have no revenue streams to pay for the additional costs, Mr. Schwarm said.
Two-thirds of local school funding is being paid through property taxes, and those rates have been consistently climbing in recent years. Right now everyone is crossing their fingers that pension reform will be declared constitutional by the courts, Mr. Schwarm said. The reforms include salary capping, an increased retirement age and a COLA tied to inflation.
Yet higher taxes will be the answer if the court rules against the bill and compromises can’t be made politically, Mr. Dabrowski said.
“The stage has been set for a big political battle between the unions, government workers, taxpayers and the poor and disadvantaged, who will see some of their benefits cut as pension costs climb,” he said.
“The state is on the verge of economic collapse, and the alternatives are massive tax increases or massive cuts in services that the state can’t support,” Mr. Dabrowski said. “It’s unfair to ask taxpayers to pay more if you still have workers who can retire in their 50s on $2 million pensions without trying to reform those things first.”
America’s newest federal agency, charged with regulating financial institutions to prevent another hostile economic downturn, is having troubles regulating hostilities and discrimination among its own employees.
Evidence gathered by congressional investigators, internal agency documents and Washington Times interviews with workers discloses scores of cases of U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employees seeking protection from racially offensive, sexist or discriminatory behavior, including that:
• A naturalized U.S. citizen, with more than a decade of service with the U.S. government, was called an “f’ing foreigner” by management.
A department was internally dubbed “the Plantation” because of the number of blacks working in it — all supervised by white managers — without any obvious promotional track or way to get transferred.
White employees were twice as likely to get the most favorable personnel ratings in employee reviews, as were minorities.
Managers intimidated and retaliated against employees for voicing complaints or offering an alternative point of view — from denying vacation requests to hiring unqualified friends to supervise jobs and then asking subordinates to train them.
Evidence of discriminatory pay practices in the agency’s own statistics have even resulted in promises by management of emergency pay raises for minority workers to create more parity, the documents show.
It’s not the storyline that America’s newest federal agency wanted at its inception.
CFPB, the brainchild of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, was created by then-Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and then-Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts.
The latter two Democrats pushed through legislation in Congress named after them that created the agency to protect consumers from predatory banks and lending institutions blamed for the 2007-2009 financial crisis. And Ms. Warren, now considered by some as a potential presidential candidate in 2016, became its first leader.
Since then, the agency has been a political football, roundly opposed by Republicans as an excessive regulatory power play and embraced by liberals who saw it as a necessary fix to a financial system gone awry.
Manager fiefdoms
Away from the political fray on Capitol Hill, dozens of workers at the CFPB say the bureau’s lack of accountability is enabling managers to create their own minifiefdoms, stock the ranks with inexperienced and unqualified friends and retaliate against anybody who disagrees with their agenda.
The House Committee on Financial Services began airing some of the problems at hearings earlier this spring, bringing to light a situation that has simmered for months out of public view.
CFPB acknowledges its employees’ complaints about a hostile working environment and says it is working with the National Treasury Employees Union — which represents CFPB employees — to settle worker protests and iron out new performance reviews, which are at the heart of many of the protests.
The agency’s director, Richard Cordray, testified last month it has been challenging to create an agency from the ground up over the last three years, and working conditions for some have been “especially difficult.”
“I am committed to ensuring that all Bureau employees are treated fairly and that they receive the respect and dignity they deserve,” Mr. Cordray told the House Financial Services’ Oversight and Investigations subcommittee on July 30.
Still, current CFBP employees say more work needs to be done and that some thought Mr. Cordray’s testimony to be both impenitent and out of touch with what’s actually happening at the bureau.
“Anybody who asks questions or doesn’t just take orders gets discriminated against,” Ali Naraghi, a bank examiner in the CFPB’s southeast region, told The Washington Times in an interview. “What CFPB does internally to its staff is contrary to all of their objectives and the mission of the agency.”
The Naraghi case
Mr. Naraghi, a naturalized citizen of Persian descent, alleges he was called a “f’ing foreigner” by his superiors because he vocalized discrepancies in the way the CFPB was conducting its bank examinations compared with the way it was done at the Federal Reserve, where Mr. Naraghi served for 14 years.
As a bank examiner, Mr. Naraghi holds a top government position, drawing in a salary of more than $100,000. He and other examiners essentially audit private banks for compliance with federal law.
At the Federal Reserve, Mr. Naraghi earned top performance marks and promotions — winning an excellence award for mortgage servicing. At the CFPB he’s been graded at the lowest level in his performance reviews and has remained stagnant in his position since he started at the agency in 2011.
Newly in his position, Mr. Naraghi raised concerns to management that the CFPB wasn’t using a risk model — a uniform institutionalized measuring stick — to evaluate banks’ performance against one another. Because of this, he felt many examinations were skewed either in favor of what the institution dictated or to the examiner’s own preconceived notions.
What the examinations weren’t — he pointed out both to his manager and later to Congress in testimony — were objective.
“The only thing consistent within the CFPB is that it’s inconsistent,” said Mr. Naraghi, who still holds his position as he works out his complaint with the agency. “They want us to be like a private that salutes the major and does whatever they say — but everybody has something to add.”
He said he wasn’t trying to criticize the way CFPB was conducting its investigations, only voicing ways to make them better. His manager didn’t view it that way.
After being subpoenaed by the congressional committee to testify in June, the agency tried to silence Mr. Naraghi by demanding lawmakers strike or bar his opening statement. The effort failed.
In his opening testimony, Mr. Naraghi said the very employee relations office that is supposed to help aggrieved employees was “broken and is more harmful than helpful to employees who suffer discrimination or retaliation.”
Satisfaction survey higher
In response, CFPB spokeswoman Jen Howard said, on average, CFPB employees are more satisfied with their management compared with other government agencies.
According to a survey taken by CFPB and released to The Times, 72 percent of CFPB employees say they have a “high level of respect for my organization’s senior leaders,” compared to 54 percent governmentwide.
Seventy-five percent of CFPB employees either agree or strongly agree that “My supervisor/team leader is committed to a workforce representative of all segments of society,” compared with 64 percent governmentwide, the agency said.
Despite his discrimination complaint, Mr. Naraghi doesn’t question CFPB’s mission — he very much stands up for the agency and the work it is doing. He sought employment at the CFPB after listening to Ms. Warren, the agency’s first head and now a U.S. senator, describe the agency’s goals of protecting consumers when she was pushing for it as a university professor.
“My in-laws in Mississippi had been taken advantage of by a fly-by-night mortgage company,” said Mr. Naraghi. “I believe in our mission. That’s why I came. We can do a lot of good, but breaking the law to enforce the law isn’t cool in my opinion.”
Racial gaps
Part of the concern is CFPB’s treatment of minorities, women and workers over the age of 40, Mr. Naraghi and other unnamed employees said. Also, the divide between management and the bargaining unit is vast, leaving those outside the higher ranks feeling helpless and without recourse.
Last year, within the CFPB, white employees were twice as likely to receive the highest rating at the bureau as compared to black or Hispanic employees, according to the CFPB’s own performance management reviews, which were requested and made public by the union NTEU.
The odds were similarly stacked against workers over the age of 40, said Ben Konop, executive vice president at the NTEU in his May testimony to the committee.
“And ratings continued to be badly skewed in favor of management when compared with the ratings of the bargaining unit, who do the bulk of the work at the bureau,” Mr. Konop said.
In 2013 CFPB employees filed 115 official grievances through the union — a particularly high amount for an agency with only 1,300 employees.
Complaints range from managers denying vacation requests in retaliation for comments they don’t like to dismissing internal requests for promotions and hiring unqualified friends instead who then needed training and supervision from those in lesser positions, according to current employees.
Some of these complaints were addressed by management at CFPB’s “All Hands” spring meeting — an agencywide conference that is used for training and team building.
In a presentation obtained from the conference by The Times, internal management laid bare the discrepancies in pay and performance between minorities and their white counterparts and committed to compensate employees for the difference.
“In the absence of a definitive root cause, we have decided to compensate employees to remediate statistical disparities caused by our prior performance management system and to bargain with NTEU to change it going forward,” the presentation said.
Union involvement
The NTEU, for its part, will continue its effort to uncover and eliminate any unfair treatment at the bureau, NTEU National President Colleen M. Kelley said in a statement to The Times.
“Since NTEU began representing CFPB employees, we raised and pressed management on addressing employee concerns about disparate treatment and other workplace issues through collective bargaining and the grievance process,” Ms. Kelley said.
Last month, improvements were made in the agency’s telework policy, employee relocation policy and career ladder positions, Ms. Kelley said. The agency has also agreed to move away from its current performance system and form a task force that will focus on redesigning it, she said.
Agency employees say the pay increases are just restitution, but because almost everyone got bonuses and promotions, it just raised the playing field instead of equalizing it.
In addition, high-level employees — such as examiners with pay grades above a certain threshold — were exempt from the pay increases. In terms of the redesigned performance reviews, the true test will be in the coming months and years, employees said.
What angers them the most, however, is the fact that many managers who have a history of employee complaints and discrimination are still holding their jobs and, in some cases, intimidating others not to come forward, according to multiple employees, some of whom only spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Authoritarian style
Angela Martin, a senior CFPB enforcement attorney, accused a supervisor of retaliating against her after she filed a workers complaint with human resources.
Mrs. Martin alleges her supervisor threatened to bring counterclaims against her if she went forward with her complaint, then isolated her, diminished her job duties and held her accountable for work while preventing her from being involved in the preparation of that work.
Mrs. Martin — who solidly believes in the agency’s mission — was a former private practice attorney and Army veteran who specialized in representing military families in consumer fraud cases.
“Employees have told me of alarming stories of maltreatment that resulted when they opposed the mismanagement and when they asserted their individual rights,” Mrs. Martin, a mother of five, told Congress in April. “Certain managers have adopted an authoritarian, untouchable, unaccountable and unanswerable management style.”
An external audit done at the request of the bureau agreed with Mrs. Martin’s claims, and the CFPB settled with her this summer. She currently holds a new position at the agency and no longer interacts with her former supervisor.
However, CFPB launched a new investigation into Mrs. Martin’s claims — hiring yet another independent third-party examiner last month — to re-examine her case. The new probe has had a chilling effect on those thinking about coming forward with their own grievances, employees said.
‘The Plantation’
It was Mrs. Martin who first made the claims of the department’s so-called “Plantation” where black employees were sent with no clear course of promotions or career track. Formally, the department is called the Office of Consumer Response Intake Section.
“There is an entire section in Consumer Response Intake that is 100 percent African-American, even the contractors, and it is called ‘The Plantation,’” Mrs. Martin testified. “And people tell me it’s very hard to leave The Plantation. You must be extremely savvy, or you must [have] somebody else [help you] to get out. And I will note, you cannot say education is a factor, because there are licensed attorneys and [people with] advanced master’s degrees working there.”
Jen Howard, a spokeswoman at CFPB, says Mrs. Martin’s claims contained inaccurate information.
“There have been over 50 promotions within the Intake Section, and over 90 percent of the employees in the section who have received at least one promotion are minorities,” said Ms. Howard in a written response.
“Three employees in the section have been promoted to supervisory roles outside of the section but within Consumer Response, all of whom are African-American. Four employees in the section have been promoted from ‘Intake Specialist’ to ‘Intake Team Lead,’ all of whom are African-American,” she said.
Nonetheless, the accusations are so serious and widespread that the Government Accountability Office announced this month that it will begin an investigation into CFPB’s organizational culture and management practices.
The investigation was requested by Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican and chairman of the House Financial Services Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee, which held the hearings; by Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, Texas Republican; and Consumer Subcommittee Chairwoman Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia Republican.
Since hearings began in April, Mr. McHenry said his office has heard from more than 32 employees complaining about maltreatment at the agency.
“The treatment of women and minorities at the CFPB is deplorable,” Mr. McHenry said in a statement to The Times. “Unfortunately, due to the unique structure of the bureau — leaving it free from both congressional and executive branch oversight — there is little that can be done to stop these rogue agency leaders.
“While my subcommittee will continue its oversight efforts, ultimately it is Director Cordray’s responsibility to realize the depth of these issues and finally address the suffering of so many CFPB employees,” he said.
For now, Mr. Naraghi, and the many more like him who came forward anonymously, are both negotiating their cases with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and trying to navigate the tricky management system to steer clear of retaliation.
Some employees interviewed by The Times have since left the agency, giving up hope of any major institutional change in the near future.
CFPB management “tried to sully my record — they wanted me to sign a settlement with them and clear them of any wrongdoing. I’m not going to do that,” said Mr. Naraghi, who is waiting on a hearing date for his grievance case. “What’s right is right. I don’t want to bring down the CFPB, but I do have a serious problem with its management.”
A competing rifle outperformed the Army’s favored M4A1 carbine in key firings during a competition last year before the service abruptly called off the tests and stuck with its gun, according to a new confidential report.
The report also says the Army changed the ammunition midstream to a round “tailored” for the M4A1 rifle. It quoted competing companies as saying the switch was unfair because they did not have enough time to fire the new ammo and redesign their rifles before the tests began.
Exactly how the eight challengers — and the M4 — performed in a shootout to replace the M4, a soldier’s most important personal defense, has been shrouded in secrecy.
But an “official use only report” by the Center for Naval Analyses shows that one of the eight unidentified weapons outperformed the M4 on reliability and on the number of rounds fired before the most common type of failures, or stoppages, occurred, according to data obtained by The Washington Times.
The Army did not respond to The Times. At the time, the Army explained the cancellation by saying none of the eight showed a huge improvement over the M4. In the past, the Army, with an inventory of 500,000 M4s, has defended the carbine as reliable, accurate and popular among the large majority of soldiers. It has been upgraded throughout the war on terror to improve its magazine, barrel and sights.
Congress pressed the Army to hold the shootout in the face of mounting criticism from soldiers that the M4 is unreliable. The M4 is perhaps the most deployed weapon system in the war on terror — essential firepower in combating the Taliban, al Qaeda and other insurgents at close range during raids and firefights.
The Times earlier this year published a two-part series on the M4 revealing that, as the war on terror began, the carbine flunked several reliability tests when subjected to rapid fire. The Times spoke with soldiers who had used the M4 in intense combat. They said the magazine is tinny and subject to jamming. The gun itself requires constant cleaning. One Green Beret said he and his colleagues, once in theater, rebuild the gun with better parts.
The CNA report shows that one competing gun outperformed all other competitors, including the M4, on some key tests. The results show there was a potentially better gun for soldiers.
“It was misleading for the Army to say none of the weapons passed the test,” said a U.S. official critical of how the Army buys small arms. “It was true, but it was extremely misleading. They set the requirements for the mean round between failure at around 3,000 rounds. That’s extremely high.”
He added: “You had one weapon beat the pants off your incumbent, and the result of this was not to do more testing. You had the opportunity to keep working and pursuing a better weapon, and you chose not to.”
The data is contained in a broader Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) report on the military’s procurement of small arms, such as the M4, and small-caliber ammunition.
Like the carbine competition, this study was demanded by Congress, where some members believe the Army is wedded to inferior guns and ammo.
The CNA report does not name the eight guns and producers, apparently to protect proprietary information.
The U.S. official knowledgeable about the report said gun “A” was the Army’s M4A1, an enhanced model of the basic M4.
The CNA report contains three significant graphics. In one, reliability was measured against the M4 as the baseline. Gun “C” scored 25 percent more reliable than the M4A1 and better than all others.
A second graphic shows test results for “mean rounds between failures.” This is perhaps the most important test because it shows how many shots the rifle can fire before stoppage.
Again gun “C” was by far the best, achieving more than 2,500 rounds. The M4A1 failed after 500 — a gap that can make a significant difference in battle.
This test was a measurement of Class 1 and Class 2 magazine stoppages, in which one soldier can clear the gun himself within 10 seconds or more than 10 seconds, respectively. The U.S. official said classes 1 and 2 are the most common stoppages in battle.
A third graphic shows the M4A1 performed best for Class 3 stoppages, which are more significant failures that require a specialist, or armorer, to clear.
It achieved 6,000 mean rounds between failure. Gun “C” achieved about 4,500 rounds.
The guns competing to replace the M4 were at a disadvantage, the makers said, because the Army changed the ammo at the last minute to a new cartridge, the M855A1, being sent to war.
To adjust, the vendors were given 10,000 rounds to fire. But some told CNA “they did not have enough time to evaluate the results and make changes to their weapons before the competition,” the report said.
Still, the competition results “suggest that changing the weapon itself may not produce the effects the Army was looking for,” the CNA report said.
Last summer, after over two years of evaluation, the Army called off its competition.
The M4 was not considered a competitor, but it was fired during the competition, meaning it also failed to reach the Army’s exacting goals.
The Army’s statement in June 2013 justifying the cancellation said: “No competitor demonstrated a significant improvement in weapon reliability — measured by mean rounds fired between weapon stoppage. Consistent with the program’s search for superior capability, the test for weapon reliability was exceptionally rigorous and exceeded performance experienced in a typical operational environment.”
The Army also cited a report by the Department of Defense Inspector General, who said the competition was unneeded because of improvements to the M4.
Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, fought a long battle with the Army to persuade it to look at other carbines. He said Army National Guardsmen back from the wars told him the gun was unreliable and jammed frequently. All of Mr. Coburn’s work crumbled last year when the inspector general essentially sided with the Army by giving it a justification to cancel the Improved Carbine competition.
Mr. Coburn expressed outrage in an October letter to Inspector General Jon T. Rymer, a copy of which was obtained by The Times.
He said the IG ignored the fact that the Army has not held a competition for a new rifle in more than 30 years. He said it failed to take into account test results that showed the M4 finished last in firing in extreme dust, such as that found in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I am afraid the quality of this audit is not consistent with the standards I have seen” in other IG audits, Mr. Coburn said.
The Army has begun converting basic M4 rifles into the heavier-barreled M4A1, a gun used in the competition and originally developed for special operations troops who need continuous fire. Critics say the need for a transition proves that the conventional M4 fails too often in battle.
The Army also changed manufacturers last year. FN Manufacturing in South Carolina won a competition with Remington Arms Co. and Colt Defense, the longtime M4 maker, to make the M4A1.
The world is down on America these days. Allies like Israel are sick and tired of our whirlybird foreign policies. There are even haters inside America who have lost the faith.
America’s best days are behind her, they say. The American dream has become a living nightmare. She is no longer a force for good in this world of evil. The world burns as Uncle Sam runs away and hides under the bed in his hospice facility.
But there is a way to bring back that shining city on a hill. Reawaken the American dream. Rejuvenate that American spirit of generosity and ingenuity and optimism. Reaffirm our Judeo-Christian faith in freedom.
America must go to Africa and round up every single person afflicted with the Ebola virus and bring them all here to America.
I call on Congress to write and immediately pass the Begin Loving Ebola Emigres, Dude! Act. And I call on President Obama to sign the BLEED Act, though that is merely a formality he doesn’t really have to do if he doesn’t feel like it. He can just write the law himself and pass it without Congress.
The BLEED Act would bring thousands of Ebola victims to America, where they would have access to the world’s most cutting-edge treatment at hospitals across the country. Atlanta, New York, Minneapolis.
Already, we have brought two American victims to Atlanta for treatment. Why should we value the lives of these two Americans over the lives of all the other Ebola patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea?
Americans, are you racist? Of course not!
American exceptionalism means America is made of special constitutional ingredients that make it the greatest country on earth, a beacon of hope and freedom to the world. It does not mean that Americans who get sick abroad should get special treatment.
Once here in the bosom of liberty, BLEEDers will become naturalized citizens. They will be allowed to take the oath of citizenship from the comfort of their hospital beds.
Of course, BLEEDers will enjoy the full benefits of Obamacare as well as a new program devised to deal with the growing crisis, Ebolacare. President Obama just needs to pencil that into the law he has already rewritten 17 times.
BLEEDers will be registered to vote. Their voices will be heard! Their demands will be met! And even before they are cleared as healthy, BLEEDers will be encouraged to stage protest marches on Washington and at state capitols all across America!
Now, I realize there might be some of you out there who think this is not a good idea. Most of you are probably racist, so just shut up! But if you happen to be a person who really is not racist but still thinks this is somehow a “bad” or “risky” idea, then you just need to calm down.
The BLEED Act is not in any way a departure from our current immigration policies.
Here in the utopia of pot-smoking America, we are already a country without borders. Well, actually, there are borders. It is where foreigners go when they wish to cross into America.
When you get here, walk up to the nearest law “enforcement” official and you will be taken in, no matter your age, status of health or criminal background. Just come as you are.
In fact, the more nightmarish the baggage you bring along, the better!
Raped along the way? Contracted scabies? Fleeing drug warlords? All the better! And what could be more catastrophic than bleeding out of your eyes and ears and nose with Ebola!
Here in America, we don’t have the selfish immigration policies that every other country on the planet has. We don’t craft our immigration policies to make America a better place for Americans. No, it is our policy to make America better for everybody else — so long as they are not currently American citizens. America stands for solving all the world’s problems, mainly by bringing all those problems here.
As the Statue of Liberty calls to the world: “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Imagine if Democrats could point to one state that survived the economic recession better than the rest because of liberal policies. Imagine if that state created more jobs, attracted more new businesses and cut the cost of living significantly. Democrats would sing the praises of that state to every voter in the 2014 and 2016 elections.
That state doesn’t exist for liberals, but it does for conservatives — and it’s time for the GOP to adjust its message accordingly.
While the economy has struggled to show some middling signs of life, there is an example of a large slice of America that has not just survived, but thrived, in these punishing times, by employing conservative policies.
It’s Texas.
As ideas are bandied about for the best route forward, those making the case for fiscal responsibility, constitutional fidelity and limited government do not have to rely on promises and conjecture. They have Texas’ results.
There’s a reason Gov. Rick Perry can spread himself across every cable network and op-ed page he can find, scoring points on matters from immigration to states’ rights and foreign policy. It’s because in the nearly three years since he brain-cramped on a presidential debate stage, he has returned to the job that made him a big deal in the first place — piloting our second-most-populous state through the roiling waters of the Obama presidency.
Mr. Perry has not done this by himself. The state’s resilience is crafted by a conservative legislature and the combined instincts of communities filled with citizens who like their government small and localized, their liberties unmolested and their values left intact.
Throw those tastes into a mixing bowl and you get a state that creates jobs, attracts new businesses and protects religious liberties. Isn’t that what every Republican candidate should be promising to do on a national level?
I do not reach these conclusions by chance. I have spent most of my adult life in my native Texas, returning in 1994 after a childhood in a liberal state (Maryland) and previous stops in then-fairly blue Tennessee, purple Florida, and liberalism’s worst experiment, Washington, D.C.
There is a reason why Texas can save our country. It does not involve Texans spreading out to other states to wave magic wands to replicate our success. It involves leadership by example.
Not so long ago, the so-called “Golden State” of California was a land of promise, attracting millions with the promise of great opportunity and improved lives. California’s magnetic poles have reversed. Its confiscatory taxes and suffocating regulation now repel people and businesses, many of which are relocating to states such as Texas that do not impede their success or rob them blind if they achieve it.
New York makes a huge deal out of a carrot designed to attract new businesses with a decade of tax abatement, but its rules are so narrow that a long line of takers seems unlikely.
Struggling states face the same fork in the road that lies before the nation in general: more expansionist, collectivist, overreaching government, or a bold shift toward letting people keep more of their money as government slims down to only the functions it is supposed to undertake.
Events and headlines have set a stage for conservatives to win back hearts and minds lost during a presidency that has disheartened even some voters who helped bring it about.
It is often said that candidates offering alternatives will have to do more than come out against the status quo. They will have to be for things, not just opposed to things, making clear arguments for rolling back taxes, spending and regulation.
Washington Democrats will howl that this will dry up government’s ability to improve our lives. They will warn that leaving so much money in taxpayer hands and so much freedom of choice in their lives can only lead to peril.
When that argument arises, the best rebuttal is Texas, where a red state has thrived under 20 years of delicious one-party rule. The value of the example extends beyond economics.
We push back against the zealotry of the Environmental Protection Agency, and our air still gets cleaner. We stand up for gun rights, and our communities are safer. We believe in strong borders, and Hispanic voters are not repelled.
These ideas can lead to a renaissance in any state adopting them and in a nation too long in decline. The “Texas miracle” has not been a miracle at all. It has been the product of voters demanding government closer to the style envisioned by our Founders.
In the early days of the American Republic, Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the staunchest advocate of public education. Jefferson authored a plan for public primary and secondary schools and is father of the University of Virginia. He would be appalled at the state of public education today.
Jefferson loved reading and knowledge for its own sake, of course, but believed the success of the American experiment depended on an educational system that would instill a knowledge of history and values in the citizenry. He was not alone among the Founders in this belief, but few expressed themselves better. Jefferson was eloquent on the study of history as especially important because, as he put it, “apprising [students] of the past will enable them to judge of the future.”
Enemies of free government have always recognized this simple truth and have tried to recast history to lead the next generations to believe as they do. Kings and emperors, Soviets and Nazis of the past, and extremist Muslims today employ court historians, forever mingling history and politics. They know they can shape the policies of today and tomorrow by creating a past of their own.
Howard Zinn, perhaps this country’s most successful radical or progressive historian, put it best when he said he wrote history “to change the world.” He understood history as indoctrination and felt it vital that the next generation be indoctrinated, or educated by learning his version of history. Like Jefferson, Zinn knew that the values passed on to future generations through the educational system shape the future by dictating political choices. There the similarities end — Jefferson and his contemporaries were products of the Enlightenment, assuming education to be a search for truth rather than a means of dictating the future. Zinn intended — and today’s liberal progressives seek — to replace the traditional view of American history with a dark view of a nation built on aggressive racist imperialism, theft and genocide. They would drive those who do not agree from the public square, or at least from the classroom.
David Horowitz and others have sounded the alarm about our college campuses for decades, but the bubbling controversy is now focused on the College Board. Headed by David Coleman, who most consider the architect of Common Core, the College Board is a private, nonprofit that for more than a century has set standards for college admissions. It essentially dictates what high schools need to teach their best students in disciplines from math to history to English in preparing them for college. Teachers who used to teach from a five-page framework, now receive a 98-page, detailed set of instructions on what history should be taught.
Zinn might have written the framework. Gone are most of the Founders and their ideas, as is their vision of a country dedicated to freedom. Major historical figures such as James Madison and Benjamin Franklin are ignored. As Jane Robbins and Larry Krieger of the American Principles Project put it, the framework distorts history and advances a consistently negative view of America.
They claim with justification that the College Board in advancing an ideological framework is operating as a “de facto legislature for the nation’s public and private high schools” with the power to essentially dictate what will be taught to students studying American history. Ms. Robbins and Mr. Krieger call it a “coup.” The National Association of Scholars essentially agrees with them, calling the framework a “dispiriting document.”
The Association study points out that while defenders of the new framework argue that high schools can go beyond the framework and teach students about Madison and others or expose them to different perspectives on the nation’s history, few will. They will “teach to the test” to make sure their students do well on college admissions tests without realizing that in the process, they will be indoctrinating generations of college-bound students.
Local control of primary and secondary education has been steadily wrested from the hands of parents and local authorities in the name of standards and quality by a federal government susceptible to pressure from ideological special interests. Those same interests dominate supposedly private groups more focused on indoctrination than educational excellence.
The Founders’ grand experiment is being put at risk by liberal progressive educational ideologues intent upon creating a citizenry ignorant of its real history, but indoctrinated to hate its country, its history and those who founded it.
Without surprise, Ahmed Abu Khattala, the Libyan jihadi who was snatched by U.S. special forces two weeks ago on allegations he participated in the Benghazi attacks, pleaded not guilty last weekend at his first court appearance in the United States.
Libyan government officials and Western media outlets have long accused Mr. Abu Khattala of having played an instrumental role in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2012, that cost the lives of four Americans in Benghazi.
However, Mr. Abu Khattala likely was little more than a patsy. Yes, he was captured on video-surveillance footage at the scene of the burning diplomatic compound, but my sources say he was just part of a large “pickup team” of local jihadis that the attack’s real organizers successfully manipulated.
The real mastermind of the attacks was Qassem Suleymani, the “Wizard of Oz of Iranian terror.” According to two former Iranian intelligence officers, who have a track record of providing information to Western intelligence agencies, Mr. Suleymani sent three top deputies to Benghazi to conduct reconnaissance against the U.S. facilities there, craft an attack plan and recruit locals to carry it out.
One of those men was a top Lebanese Hezbollah operative named Khalil Harb, who was placed on the U.S. Treasury Department’s blacklist of international terrorists with little fanfare after the attacks.
As an Arab, Mr. Harb blended in more readily with the local jihadis than did his Iranian bosses. He became the frontman for Mr. Suleymani’s operations in Libya, which went well beyond the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks.
I first learned of the Iranian and Hezbollah presence in Benghazi in March 2011 from an American security contractor then in Libya. From the very beginning, the Iranians used local Arabs as well as Lebanese, Syrians and Sudanese recruits for their purposes.
As the uprising against then-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi progressed, their goal shifted from helping the rebels get rid of Gadhafi to preventing weapons from reaching jihadi groups in Syria battling a longtime Iranian ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad.
That’s what made them focus on the CIA Annex in Benghazi, which they thought had become the hub for arms-smuggling operations to the Syrian rebels.
Mr. Suleymani’s men included signals intelligence experts who attempted to penetrate the communications systems used by the CIA and National Security Agency operatives working out of the annex in Benghazi.
John Maguire went head-to-head against Mr. Suleymani when he was deputy chief of station in Baghdad after the 2003 war. The Iranians “were into our coms,” he told me. “They were into our operational planning. That’s how they were able to kill so many Americans. The Iranians are a determined, global [intelligence] service.”
When Mr. Maguire starting taking a closer look at the way the Benghazi attacks were carried out, with meticulous planning, long-term surveillance and a lightning mortar strike that killed former U.S. Navy SEALs Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, he saw the handiwork of his nemesis.
“The team in operational command in Benghazi were Qasem Suleymani’s people,” the former Baghdad chief of station told me. “They were a mature, experienced, operational element from Iran. These guys are the first-string varsity squad.”
The U.S. intelligence teams working in Benghazi picked up on the Quds Force operators, and placed them under surveillance.
According to my sources, who include current and former U.S. special forces officers who were directly involved in Libya during this period, some 50 to 60 intelligence reports were produced on the Iranian presence in Benghazi in 2011 and 2012.
Some of these reports detailed the flow of money and men from Iran and Syria to Ansar al-Shariah, the group that ultimately claimed responsibility for the attacks.
On June 22, 2012, U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens convoked the embassy’s security team in Tripoli, following the failed assassination attempt on the British ambassador in Benghazi and several smaller attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound there.
In cables partially released to Congress, Stevens referred to the security team as his Emergency Action Committee. The head of the Site Security Team of 18 U.S. special forces operators then assigned to the embassy in Tripoli, Lt. Col. Andy Wood, had just returned from a mission to Benghazi and warned the ambassador that Ansar al-Shariah was planning to escalate its operations.
“We’ve got to abandon Benghazi, or seriously beef it up,” Col. Wood said. “We are going to be hit.”
The CIA was waiting for the Iranians to make a move. On July 31, 2012, they thought they saw them coming when an eight-man Iranian medical team arrived in Benghazi, ostensibly to help the local Red Crescent (the Muslim version of the Red Cross).
The Iranians knew that they were being watched, though, and according to my sources, staged the kidnapping of the Red Crescent team, taking them beyond CIA surveillance. Ostensibly in the hands of a radical jihadi militia somewhere in Benghazi, the Iranians were still in play.
Members of that Red Crescent team — in reality, senior operatives of Mr. Suleymani’s Quds Force — handled all the details for the attacks that cost the lives of four Americans that night. This is one of the many dark secrets of Benghazi that the U.S. government does not want you to know.
I hear skeptics wonder why Iran would get involved in Libya at all, and why would Tehran take the risk of angering the United States, especially at a time when they were hoping to craft a global diplomatic settlement over its nuclear program?
The answer is simple; namely, because the Iranians knew the United States would not strike back. They have been attacking us nonstop in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade, with little or no response.
Benghazi was a state-sponsored terrorist attack by the Islamic republic of Iran using local cut-outs but also Iranian officers sent to Benghazi to carry out the mortar attack on the CIA annex.
Next question: What are we going to do about it?
The Tea Party, the popular political movement that grew from widespread public concern over the growth of government, died on Tuesday, June 24, in Mississippi.
During its short life, the Tea Party grew from a passionate patchwork quilt of grass-roots efforts to become an important and effective political force capable of altering elections and influencing national, state and local policies. It died a fractured, ineffective confederacy of discordant coteries that bore little resemblance to its original incarnation.
The modern Tea Party was born on Feb. 19, 2009, when CNBC business news editor Rick Santelli made an on-air plea for a modern-day version of the Boston Tea Party. Mr. Santelli claimed “government [was] promoting bad behavior” by passing out taxpayer-funded bailouts. He was concerned — correctly, as it turned out — that working Americans would end up on the hook for bad decisions and irresponsible policies.
Mr. Santelli’s rant quickly went viral, prompting millions of Americans to participate in Tea Party rallies and join Tea Party groups in all 50 states to protest bailouts and the growth of the federal government.
In its early stages, the Tea Party’s message of limited government, reduced federal spending and lower taxes proved to be broadly appealing. That should have come as little surprise, since polls indicate that upward of 75 percent of Americans think government is too big, too powerful and spends too much.
As a result, the Tea Party struck a chord. Since the movement’s founding philosophy highlighted concerns shared by the majority of Americans, regardless of age, race, religion, income, education or sexual orientation, turnouts at early Tea Party rallies often reached into the tens, and even hundreds, of thousands, representing a broad cross-section of America.
For a time, it appeared possible that the Tea Party would redefine, or perhaps even replace, the Republican Party. Until, that is, the Tea Party contracted a series of illnesses and ailments, which ultimately led to its death.
First, a number of national Tea Party outfits sprouted in hopes of seizing on the movement’s brand, supporters and lucrative fundraising potential for their own purposes. Several established national grass-roots activism and lobbying groups also began leeching onto the Tea Party, as well.
Ultimately, these organizations did more harm than good, creating fractures within the movement, using the Tea Party name to engage in policy battles unrelated to reducing the size of government and squandering millions of dollars that could have been used to elect candidates committed to the Tea Party’s original mission.
The Tea Party was then hijacked and distorted by a number of self-interested politicians, perhaps most notably Sarah Palin, who tried in vain to marshal the movement’s momentum to create a de facto fan club for herself.
With competing national organizations and marauding political figures hoping to capitalize on the might of the Tea Party to advance other causes dear to them, Tea Party activists became political pawns.
Before long, the Christian Right began to co-opt the Tea Party in order to advance its policy objectives. Injecting religion into the Tea Party was like allowing a stripper to pole dance in the middle of a dog show. Some people loved it. Some people were disgusted by it. It was distracting to everyone and, before long, people lost focus on the main event.
Soon afterwards, the Tea Party movement unraveled. Instead of remaining committed to their common ambition of reducing government spending and lowering taxes, the local groups that formed the core of the movement began to disperse their energy on a range of unrelated topics, ranging from protecting gun rights and traditional marriage to encouraging border protection and military involvement in Iran. The movement transformed from being one thing for all people to being all things for no one.
Rather than uniting an overwhelming majority of Americans based on the single principle of limiting the power of government, the Tea Party ultimately began dividing Americans by some activists’ embrace of ludicrous conspiracy theories and beliefs that most Americans view as downright bigoted.
As a result, a movement that defended principles held by the overwhelming majority of Americans and that accurately boasted tens of millions of activists shrunk in size until its ranks could fit comfortably inside a 1974 Dodge Dart. The reduction in the size of the Tea Party was nothing compared to its loss of influence.
By the end, the movement was so impotent it was powerless to defeat big-government Republicans such as Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania. A surprise defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor appeared to stave of the Tea Party’s death. Mr. Cantor’s loss, however, turned out to be tied more strongly to voters thinking he had become out-of-touch with his district than any success of the Tea Party.
The Tea Party breathed its last breath last Tuesday after becoming so weak it could not defeat widely despised six-term incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran, a big-spending Republican, in a GOP runoff. When it died, the Tea Party had lost its vision, become weakened by parasites and was plagued with various cancers that sapped its will to fight.
While the Tea Party may be dead, the fight for limited, responsible government lives on. After all, the Tea Party didn’t die because Americans changed. It was the Tea Party that changed. More Americans today think that government is too big, too powerful and spends too much than in 2009.
It’s for the best for those who loved and supported the Tea Party that it is no more. The splintered, unfocused movement it had become no longer effectively served to advance its original goals of reducing the size and scope of government. It is now time for another movement, a truer effort, to lead that important struggle.
The Tea Party is dead; long live the fight for limited government.
Liberal progressives have in recent years all but abandoned the American belief in free speech and the First Amendment in favor of shutting down those with whom they disagree. The president pointedly announces that critics of Obamacare or his climate-change policies ought to shut up because “the debate is over.” His supporters in Congress are actually proposing amending the Constitution to eliminate First Amendment protection of political speech and the Internal Revenue Service not only to harass those with whom they and their president disagree, but urges the Justice Department to prosecute those who voice a different view.
Last week Hillary Clinton, a prospective candidate for the presidency, told an interviewer who asked about gun control that “we cannot let a minority of people hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.” This is a dangerous, but unexceptional statement coming from a 21st century liberal progressive. She, like the president she hopes to succeed, begins by describing the facts as she wishes they were and then attempts to dehumanize and demonize those with whom she disagrees as terrorists whose ability to express views contrary to her own shouldn’t be tolerated lest they mislead others.
Mrs. Clinton in this interview was talking about those who support the Second Amendment, but others on the left have suggested that “global warming deniers” should be silenced and even jailed as enemies of the planet. In their view, those with whom they disagree need not and should not be tolerated — nor should they be allowed to teach, run private corporations or speak at high school and college commencement ceremonies. Those who hold views other than their own are never simply wrong, badly informed or misguided, but evil, dangerous and corrupt.
This hostility toward the free-speech guarantees written into our Constitution and the Founders’ concern for the rights of minorities as well as majorities may be traceable to the fact that they are the philosophical sons and daughters of the French rather than American Revolution and the belief that minorities should be allowed only to the extent that majorities decide not to send them to the guillotine.
Where possible, liberal progressives have attempted to use the state to silence their critics or to criminalize political speech and activity with which they disagree. Last week, the U.S. Justice Department ordered an FBI investigation into the decision of Virginia Democratic Sen. Phillip P. Puckett to resign his seat because his resignation gave control of the state Senate to Republicans and thwarted the Commonwealth’s new liberal progressive governor’s plans. Even Virginia Democrats expressed amazement at the federal government’s overreach as Mr. Puckett has been forced to hire a team of attorneys, and his name is being dragged through the mud by an ideologically driven federal law enforcement agency.
In Wisconsin, the state’s liberal progressives regurgitated allegations against Gov. Scott Walker that had already been laughed out of both state and federal courts, with the partisan media reporting the charges as if they have been made as part of a serious ongoing investigation. The New York Times inferred in a Page One report that the governor is believed to be the mastermind behind a criminal conspiracy rather than the victim of baseless partisan allegations that had been debunked and dismissed by the two courts.
The allegations were included in materials released along with hundreds of pages of other documents that were a part of a partisan “John Doe” investigation launched by Democratic prosecutors following the unsuccessful 2012 recall campaign against Mr. Walker, a Republican. The allegations were included in a motion made by one of these prosecutors in December of 2013 and thrown out on Jan. 4 by the judge in the case who said in his decision that the prosecutor had “failed to show probable cause that a crime had been committed.”
What’s more, the documents on which The New York Times and other stories were based were released at the request of Walker supporters to put the silliness of what the prosecutors were trying to do to the governor on the public record. None of this stopped the newspaper and other progressive publications from twisting the story into something it wasn’t in an attempt to damage a possible 2016 Walker run for the White House.
It should be no surprise that Wisconsin progressives are at the forefront of the most overt drive to criminalize the activities of their opponents as Badger state leftists have always been more blatantly transparent about their motives and desires than others. A reporter recently asked Madison’s leftist mayor about Republican charges that he is demanding the reporting of all political activities and contributions of individuals and corporations seeking city contracts for the sole purpose of punishing his opponents and rewarding his friends. Obama administration officials proposed imposing similar requirements on federal contractors, then vehemently denied they would use the information thus gathered to punish those critical of the president. Madison Mayor Paul Soglin bragged that this is exactly what he intends.
Such intolerance is hardly new, but it has never found such acceptance among so many supposedly mainstream politicians. In the late 1960s as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, I debated the Vietnam War with a leftist member of the Madison City Council. When I finished my opening remarks my opponent stepped to the microphone to announce that while he wouldn’t dignify anything I had just said with a response, he could promise that “come the revolution” I would be among the first executed as an enemy of the people.
Conservatives were able to laugh at such rhetoric then because the left didn’t control the police, prosecutors or the FBI, and besides, the jealous guardians of free speech in the media and among our elected officials of both parties would never allow their fantasies out of the fever swamps.
But that was then.
The Virginia county that ignited a national debate by using local police to round up illegal immigrants is planning a new legal maneuver to force the U.S. government to divulge what it did with the more than 7,000 people turned over to deportation authorities.
Corey Stewart, the chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, told The Washington Times that about 10 percent of those it originally turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the last seven years have been re-arrested by county police for new crimes after they were released.
“We know that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Stewart said, citing examples such as a man who was convicted of killing a Roman Catholic nun in a drunken driving accident while he was awaiting action on possible deportation.
Mr. Stewart plans to take the first step toward possible litigation against federal officials on Tuesday by asking his colleagues on the county board to authorize a Freedom of Information Act request to demand that the Department of Homeland Security divulge how many of the suspected illegal immigrants that county police arrested since 2007 were deported, released or kept in detention.
Mr. Stewart said he expected the FOIA would lead to new litigation given the struggles the county has faced in getting information from the federal government in the past. “It’s been an ongoing struggle with them,” Mr. Stewart said, noting that an earlier lawsuit in 2011 did not result in the release of information.
ICE and Homeland officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday about Mr. Stewart’s plans.
Prince William County, located about 25 miles south of the nation’s capital, is an affluent, fast-growing Washington, D.C., suburb popular with current and retired military personnel and federal workers. Dotted with large suburban homes, shopping malls and successful schools, the community of about 430,000 residents has boasted a significant construction industry over the years that attracted migrant workers. The influx taxed the county’s housing and social services.
The county also has become a key battleground in national and state elections, a sort of bellwether about Virginia’s transition from a politically red to purple state in recent years.
The county made national headlines in 2007 when Mr. Stewart led the effort to enact a new county law authorizing local law enforcement to ask people their immigration status, even if they were not suspected of wrongdoing. The legislation sparked similar efforts around the county, including a controversial 2010 law in Arizona.
County police jumped into action, rounding up hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants in a sweep that troubled advocates for looser immigration laws and drove thousands of immigrants to flee the county. In 2008 the county amended the law so that police could only ask about citizenship status after a person was first arrested for an unrelated criminal offense.
Despite the change, the county has still rounded up more than 7,000 suspected illegals and turned them over to ICE for possible deportation.
The county’s Adult Detention Center also entered into a 287 (G) agreement with ICE, meaning officials from the center are trained by federal immigration authorities, according to County Attorney Angela Lemmon Horan. Detention center officials may put a “detainer” on any inmate, meaning the person is referred to ICE to determine their eligibility to stay in the country.
“A person with a detainer is, in the moment, determined to be there without authorization,” Ms. Lemmon Horan explained. This does not mean the person will ultimately be deported, she added.
ICE has repeatedly declined to give the county specific information on the citizenship status or disposition of any of those detained by county police, Mr. Stewart said.
Mr. Stewart said he worries that released individuals could re-offend, putting citizens in the county at risk.
For instance, prosecutors alleged Carlos Martinelly Montano, a man in Prince William who was awaiting a deportation hearing from ICE, killed a 66-year-old nun and injured two other nuns in a drunken driving incident in Bristow, Virginia.
Mr. Martinelly Montano was only required to check in with ICE once a month as he waited for his hearing. He had a history of reckless driving arrests and citations, including two previous drunken driving offenses, prosecutors alleged.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2012 for the fatal crash.
Another issue, according to Mr. Stewart, is that if an individual turned over to ICE by the county appears on the streets again, local law enforcement don’t know what ICE’s ultimate ruling was or if the person has even received a decision yet.
“We would expect there’s a certain percentage of those individuals who were allowed to stay in the United States,” Mr. Stewart said.
As a result, police who encounter someone previously sent to ICE face the dilemma of wrongfully harassing someone who was allowed to stay or potentially letting someone reside in the country illegally after already being deported.
Some, like members of the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition, saw the 2007 law, billed as helping strengthen the community, as disruptive.
“It was an oversimplified understanding of community safety,” CAIR Coalition Legal Director Heidi Altman said. “Behind every ICE detainer and every deportation is a family and a community that’s broken apart.”
Ms. Altman also rejected the idea the county might be concerned with whether ICE has detained enough people, saying that the worry enforcement was not harsh enough was “not founded.”
“The immigration enforcement that we have seen in the intervening years has been unprecedented in scope,” she said.
This is the second time the county has sought to pressure DHS for information on people turned over to ICE. In 2011 the county went to federal court with a similar request, but the judge ruled that the county and ICE had not exhausted other options to release the information.
The county has maintained requests for information for years since the initial ruling, demonstrating its efforts to get information without court intervention.
Mr. Stewart said litigation may be the only option left for the county and that he hoped a new suit would end with a different conclusion than the 2011 effort.
“This time we’ve learned from our past mistakes,” Mr. Stewart said.
Employment rates for college graduates are dismal. Aggregate student debt is staggering. At the same time, university administrative salaries are soaring. The campus climate of tolerance has utterly disappeared. Only the hard sciences and graduate schools have salvaged American universities’ international reputations.
For more than two centuries, our superb system of American public and private higher education kept pace with radically changing times and so ensured our prosperity and reinforced democratic pluralism.
However, a funny thing has happened on the way to the 21st century. Colleges that were once our most enlightened and tolerant institutions became America’s dinosaurs.
Start with ossified institutions. Tenure may have been a good idea in the last century to ensure faculty members free expression. Such a spoils system now encourages the opposite result of protecting monotonies of thought.
In a globalized world where jobs disappear in the blink of an eye and professionals must be attuned to the slightest changes in the global marketplace, academics insist that after six years, they still deserve lifetime guarantees of employment.
In the age of the Internet and global readerships, faculty promotion is still based largely on narrow publication in little-read, peer-reviewed journals. Many are often incestuous and have no bearing on enhancing faculty teaching skills.
Post-tenure review and peer evaluations have become pro forma quid pro quos among guild members. The result is a calcified professoriate that demands it alone can still live in the protected world of the 1950s.
Part-time teachers and graduate students are not so lucky. They are often paid less than half for the same work done by full-time faculty, in illiberal fashion that would be unacceptable at Wal-Mart or Target.
Universities are the least transparent of U.S. institutions, defending protocols more secretive than those of the Swiss banking system. Few colleges publish the profile of those students who were favored in the admission process through legacies, athletic prowess, or race and gender preferences. The result is that almost no one knows why one student gets into Yale or Stanford and another with a far more impressive academic record does not.
Universities claim they are committed to creating a student body that looks like America. In fact, they deliberately ignore the most important diversity of all — thought. About half the country is fairly conservative. Yet by any measure — faculty profiles, campus speakers, student organizations — colleges discriminate against those not deemed sufficiently liberal.
Conservative speakers are now routinely disinvited from commencement addresses. Students or faculty members who offer public skepticism about homosexual marriage or unfettered abortion, voice pro-Israel sentiments or express doubts about man-caused global warming can easily earn campus pariah status.
The liberal arts curricula are likewise fossils of the 1960s era of their professors’ race, class and gender activism. Such therapeutic courses short the very skills — written and oral proficiency, historical knowledge, and math and science mastery — that alone prepare graduates for a chance at a successful career trajectory.
Most disturbing is the inability of the modern university to adjust to the 21st-century workplace. Students are not graduating in four years. They are piling up crippling debt. They cannot figure out the Byzantine nature of their high-interest student-loan packages. They are hardy assured of jobs commensurate with their unsustainable investment in education.
The university’s reactionary response is to keep jacking tuition higher than the rate of inflation, to count on still more open-ended federally guaranteed student loans, and to keep its budgetary figures mostly hidden.
How odd, then, that the campus is more reactionary than the objects of its frequent vituperation, from the corporation to the military. Academics resist the sort of long-needed reforms that they always seem to demand of others in American society.
We cannot expect the current self-interested establishment in charge of the university to reform it. Its failure to educate students for well-paying jobs while charging them excessive fees may alone force a reckoning.
The Internet, tech schools and correspondence courses are already eroding the monopolies of the campus. Whether the academic establishment likes it or not, a new generation of leadership will have to ensure equal pay for equal work, an end to lifetime sinecures, a new way of assessing university achievement, transparency in budgeting and admissions, political balance and tolerance, and a complete overhaul of the liberal arts curriculum.
Either higher education will give up its medieval privileges, begin to be accountable and live in the modern world, or it will be reduced to a costly relic for a tiny elite.
An aging campus generation that has nearly wrecked the university should bow out and let more open-minded and innovative minds repair the damage that the old generation has wrought.
Retired military officers deeply involved in the climate change movement — and some in companies positioned to profit from it — spearheaded an alarmist global warming report this month that calls on the Defense Department to ramp up spending on what it calls a man-made problem.
The report, which the Obama administration immediately hailed as a call to action, was issued not by a private advocacy group but by a Pentagon-financed think tank that trumpets “absolute objectivity.” The research was funded by a climate change group that is also one of the think tank’s main customers.
The May 13 report came from the military advisory board within CNA Corp., a nonprofit based in Alexandria, Virginia, that includes the Center for Naval Analyses, a Navy-financed group that also gets contracts from other Pentagon units. CNA also operates the Institute for Public Research.
CNA’s webpage states that it is not an advocacy group. It says it maintains “absolute objectivity. In our investigations, analyses and findings we test hypotheses, carefully guard against personal biases and preconceptions, challenge our own findings and are uninfluenced by what a client would like to hear.”
The Center for Naval Analyses’ motto is “high quality, impartial information.”
One of the CNA panel’s vice chairmen, retired Navy Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, is president of a private think tank, the American Security Project, whose prime issue is warning about climate change.
The other vice chairman, retired Army Brig. Gen. Gerald E. Galloway Jr., is a prominent adviser to the Center for Climate and Security, a climate change group.
In all, four CNA board members sit on the panel of advisers to the Center for Climate and Security, whose statements on climate change are similar to those found in the CNA report.
Other board members work in the climate change world of consulting and technology.
The CNA advisory panel is headed by retired four-star Army Gen. Paul Kern, who sits on the board of directors of a company that sells climate-detection products to the Pentagon and other government agencies. At least two other board members are employed in businesses that sell climate change expertise and products.
The greatest influence on CNA reports seems to come from the Center for Climate and Security, whose position is that the debate on climate change, or man-made global warming, is over.
“This is a world which recognizes that climate change risks are unprecedented in human history and does not wait for absolute certainty before acting to mitigate and adapt to those risks,” the center says.
The CNA report, titled “National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change,” says: “Some in the political realm continue to debate the cause of a warming planet and demand more data.” It then quotes a board member as saying, “Speaking as a soldier, we never have 100 percent certainty. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield.”
The Center for Climate and Security has taken donations from the Tides Foundation, which gets money from Democratic Party financier and liberal billionaire George Soros.
The CNA credits the Center for Climate and Security for helping release the report, and the center issued a press release lauding the report the day it was released.
The CNA report was celebrated by other global warming foreboders, particularly The New York Times, which gave it home page prominence on its website. The Times quoted Secretary of State John F. Kerry as saying the report would ignite a larger administration effort to combat climate change.
Business concerns
The military board’s 16-member roster is filled with former commanders and strategists, such as retired Gen. James T. Conway, a former Marine Corps commandant, and retired Air Force Gen. Charles F. Wald, who rose to the No. 2 position at NATO.
The CNA report prominently displays the opinions of three retired officers who sit on the advisory board at the Center for Climate and Security: Gen. Galloway; Adm. Frank L. “Skip” Bowman, the Navy’s former director of nuclear propulsion and who now runs a consulting business; and retired Rear Adm. David W. Titley, a former Oceanographer of the Navy.
A fourth board member tied to the center is Gen. Ronald E. Keys, a former chief of Air Force Combat Command.
Climate change has become big business. The U.S. government alone increased spending by more than $100 billion from 2003 to 2010, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Nations around the world are buying sensors, imaging technologies and airborne monitors.
That means huge contracts for consulting, studies and technologies to analyze the Earth and its environment.
Gen. Kern, the CNA advisory board chairman, is on the board of directors of Exelis Inc. (formerly ITT), a broad-based defense contractor that is also in the climate change business. It sells climate-detection systems to the Pentagon as well as to private industries.
This month, SpaceNews.com reported that Exelis Geospatial Systems won two climate-related contracts worth a potential $200 million — one for a NASA monitoring system, the other for Japan’s Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.
Gen. Wald, another advisory board member, heads the largest single business entity within Deloitte, the giant international accounting and consulting firm. Gen. Wald runs its defense unit, and one of his portfolios is energy consulting. Deloitte itself has set up a consulting business that it says helps clients with “climate change and carbon management.”
Gen. Kern and Gen. Wald did not return phone requests for comment.
Gen. Keys, who joined the Center for Climate and Security in March, owns RK Solutions, a consulting firm that advises the Pentagon on climate change, according to the center’s biography for him.
One of the CNA report’s main recommendations: “In addition to DOD’s conducting comprehensive assessments of the impacts of climate change on mission and operational resilience, the Department should develop, fund and implement plans to adapt, including developing metrics for measuring climate impacts and resilience. The Department should place a greater emphasis on the projected impacts of climate change on both DOD facilities and associated community infrastructures.”
‘Self-fulfilling prophecy’
CNA Corp. itself is in the climate change business, a check of its client lists shows.
One of its major foundation customers is the Energy Foundation, the same group that financed the CNA military advisory board climate study. It is a global warming activist and is pushing a tax on carbon emissions.
CNA also lists as clients the liberal Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The fund states: “Human activity is causing global warming, rapid loss of biodiversity and accelerating degradation of Earth’s life-support systems. With the recognition that the impact of unchecked climate change threatens all other conservation efforts, the program focuses its grant-making on advancing solutions to climate change.”
CNA spokeswoman Constance Custer defended the way the study was conducted in response to questions from The Washington Times about board members’ climate change activism and business ties.
“Just as news organizations are confident in the abilities of their journalists to maintain objectivity and guard against personal bias, the MAB is confident in the objectivity and lack of bias of its members, whose careers have been based on honest, objective assessments of situations affecting military planning to ensure national security,” Ms. Custer said.
The CNA report is 100 percent climate change advocacy, stating as fact that global warming has caused flooding and wildfires. It uses phrases such as “more intense storms” and “more frequent and severe storms.”
“Globally, we have seen recent prolonged drought act as a displacement of populations, each contributing to instability and eventual conflict,” the CNA said.
Yet a number of scientists — and the United Nations — have looked at the history of storms and concluded that they cannot be blamed on climate change.
Roger Pielke, an environmental scientist at the University of Colorado who has studied decades of U.S. storm data, told a Senate committee last year: “It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate time scales either in the United States or globally. It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”
Jeff Kueter, president of the George C. Marshall Institute, a nonprofit that assesses scientific issues that affect public policy, said the report does not adhere to CNA’s creed of “absolute objectivity.”
“The report is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Mr. Kueter, who believes climate change impact on national security is tenuous. “The authors begin with the belief that the impacts of climate change are negative, and from that only bad consequences can flow. The report is not an objective treatment of the validity of the scientific claims or the veracity of the connections between environmental issues and security concerns.”
Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global warming advocate, said in its latest report that there is “low confidence” in any long-term increase in cyclone and hurricane activity. It also said there is “low confidence” in increased tornadoes and hailstorms.
David Kreutzer, an energy economics and climate change researcher at the Heritage Foundation, said the CNA report is based on some projections that have proved way off base.
“The report paints a picture of a future pocked with climate disasters, which is likely to be true because we have always had climate disasters,” Mr. Kreutzer said. “Even with no increase in floods, droughts, hurricanes or tornadoes — no increase is what the IPCC says we have observed so far — the future will have plenty. The military should be ready for them but should not blame them on climate change.”
He said the CNA relied on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change models that “have proven embarrassingly inaccurate. In fact, instead of providing narrower and more certain projections, the projections have been getting further and further from the actual observed temperatures.”
“While climate change has not led to security problems, climate policies have diverted huge chunks of the food supply to biofuels, driving up basic food prices and likely aggravating political instability in poor countries,” Mr. Kreutzer said.
College commencement season used to be the time for young men and women to step confidently into the world on their own. A new survey by the employment website AfterCollege finds that 83 percent of this season’s new graduates have no jobs lined up, despite their expensive diplomas in hand.
The ailing economy is partly to blame, but colleges and universities are failing to do little more than saddle their graduates with crippling debt. Many academic institutions no longer teach the skills, like writing a coherent sentence or correctly adding fractions, to prepare the young to be effective members of society. The traditional liberal arts education that once provided a bedrock of knowledge has been discarded for academic fads, many of them as useless as a Ph.D. in gender studies.
The graduates have learned to be in touch with their feelings, to show superior sensitivity and to be masters of appreciation of diversity, but none of these attributes, learned at such great expense, does much to build a successful society. This came through in a 2012 poll of young Americans that found that just 52 percent of respondents could identify the freedoms protected by the First Amendment, fewer than half knew that George Washington commanded troops at Yorktown, barely a third knew the length of congressional terms and fewer than 20 percent could correctly name James Madison as the father of the Constitution. However, for whatever consolation this may be to Mom and Dad, who paid for it, more than 96 percent of respondents correctly identified Lady Gaga.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Washington-based organization focused on encouraging high academic standards in higher education, researched whether major colleges and universities across America require students to take core courses in seven key subjects: English composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics and science.
Among the more than 1,000 colleges and universities included in the council’s study, only 22 schools earned an “A” grade for requiring students to complete each of the core subjects. Only one of these schools, the University of Georgia, is a flagship public university. Most of the top performing colleges are either military service academies, such as the Air Force Academy and the Coast Guard Academy, or religiously affiliated schools, such as Baylor and Pepperdine.
The most prestigious (and expensive) colleges in America fared the worst at equipping their students with broad knowledge needed to succeed. Harvard and Yale earned a D. Brown scored an F, requiring classes in none of the seven core liberal arts subjects to graduate.
Well-regarded state schools such as the University of California at Berkeley, the state universities of Michigan, Virginia and Wisconsin, scored on the bottom rung. At Berkeley, for example, a student can graduate without cracking open a great novel, speaking even a few words of a foreign language, understanding statistics or knowing anything that happened more than a week ago.
Unless something unexpected changes, America will be populated by college graduates who can’t handle a family budget, express themselves clearly or understand what American democracy is about. Good citizenship requires more than the ability to hold a job. It means being informed and well-rounded as a person. American universities have become big businesses turning out graduates who are neither.
Gun retailers say the Obama administration is trying to put them out of business with regulations and investigations that bypass Congress and choke off their lines of credit, freeze their assets and prohibit online sales.
Since 2011, regulators have increased scrutiny on banks’ customers. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 2011 urged banks to better manage the risks of their merchant customers who employ payment processors, such as PayPal, for credit card transactions. The FDIC listed gun retailers as “high risk” along with porn stores and drug paraphernalia shops.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has launched Operation Choke Point, a credit card fraud probe focusing on banks and payment processors. The threat of enforcement has prompted some banks to cut ties with online gun retailers, even if those companies have valid licenses and good credit histories.
“This administration has very clearly told the banking industry which customers they feel represent ‘reputational risk’ to do business with,” said Peter Weinstock, a lawyer at Hunton & Williams LLP. “So financial institutions are reacting to this extraordinary enforcement arsenal by being ultra-conservative in who they do business with: Any companies that engage in any margin of risk as defined by this administration are being dropped.”
A Justice Department representative said the agency is conducting several investigations that aim to hold accountable banks “who are knowingly assisting fraudulent merchants who harm consumers.”
“We’re committed to ensuring that our efforts to combat fraud do not discourage or inhibit the lawful conduct of these honest merchants,” the Justice Department said in a May 7 blog post.
But gun retailers say their businesses are being targeted in the executive branch’s efforts:
T.R. Liberti, owner and operator of Top Gun Firearms Training & Supply in Miami, has felt the sting firsthand. Last month, his local bank, BankUnited N.A., dumped his online business from its service.
An explanatory email from the bank said: “This letter in no way reflects any derogatory reasons for such action on your behalf. But rather one of industry. Unfortunately your company’s line of business is not commensurate with the industries we work with.”
Black Rifle Armory in Henderson, Nevada, had its bank accounts frozen this month as the bank tried to determine whether any of Black Rifle’s online transactions were suspicious.
In 2012, Bank of America suddenly dropped the 12-year account of McMillan Group International, a gun manufacturer in Phoenix, even though the company had a good credit history, the owner said. Gun parts maker American Spirit Arms in Scottsdale, Arizona, received similar treatment by Bank of America, the country’s largest banking institution.
“This seems to be happening with greater frequency and to many more dealers,” said Joe Sirochman, owner of American Spirit Arms. “At first, it was the bigger guys — gun parts manufacturers or high-profile retailers. Now the smaller mom-and-pop shops are being choked out, and they need their cash to buy inventory. Freezing their assets will put them out of business.”
Choking off access to banks
After McMillan Group owner Kelly McMillan publicized Bank of America’s action on his Facebook account, he found that thousands of small gun-shop owners across the country were in the same situation. Banks were either dropping them, freezing their accounts or refusing to process their online sales, so he opened a credit card processing company for the gun industry called McMillan Merchant Solutions.
“Four generations of my family have been in this industry. This is my way to give back,” said Mr. McMillan, adding that many of his customers were denied banking access because of the nature of their business. “This is an attempt by the federal government to keep people from buying guns and a way for them to combat the Second Amendment rights we have. It’s a covert way for them to control our right to manufacture guns and individuals to buy guns.”
BankUnited N.A., which dropped Top Gun Firearms Training & Supply in Miami from its customer list, declined to comment.
In a statement to The Washington Times, Bank of America said: “We would not deny banking services to an organization solely on the basis of its industry.”
The banking giant blamed a misunderstanding with the Arizona gun manufacturers McMillan Group International and American Spirit Arms.
However, the American Banking Association, the industry’s advocacy group in Washington, said businesses deemed “risky” will be frozen out of the financial system if the Justice Department continues Operation Choke Point because the regulatory burden and risk of investigation will be too great for less-specialized banks to bear.
“We’re being threatened with a regulatory regime that attempts to foist on us the obligation to monitor all types of transactions,” Richard Riese, a senior vice president at the American Bankers Association, said in the April 28 issue of American Banker. “All of this is predicated on a notion that the banks are a choke point for all businesses.”
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Riese said the cost of doing business with gun retailers outweighs the benefits for some banks, given that regulators deem the industry as “risky,” state laws vary on the sale of guns and ammunition, and the Justice Department’s enforcement.
The Independent Community Bankers of America, an association for small banks, said enforcement actions from the Justice Department are too broad and overly aggressive.
“While preventing fraud is a top concern for community banks, it needs to be balanced with ensuring that businesses and consumers that operate in accordance with applicable laws can still access payment systems,” bankers association President Camden Fine told the Justice Department in an April 7 letter. “ICBA requests that the DOJ suspend Operation Choke Point immediately and focus its resources directly on businesses that may be violating the law, rather than targeting banks providing payment services.”
Justice’s operation threatens to “close access to the financial system to law-abiding businesses, because the mere prospect of an enforcement action is sufficient to cause financial institutions to restrict access to their payment systems to only established companies that present low risks,” the organization said.
‘No statutory authority’
Regulations on the financial industry have increased over the past few years, said Thomas P. Vartanian, chairman of Dechert LLP, a global law firm specializing in regulatory and financial matters.
He noted the chilling effect of overregulation by the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, an interagency behemoth that includes the departments of Commerce, Justice, Labor, Education, Homeland Security and Justice along with the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Secret Service, the FBI, the Social Security Administration and the Federal Trade Commission.
“The key to effective regulation is the balancing between too little and too much regulation,” Mr. Vartanian said. “The problem here is that there are now so many regulators, including the Department of Justice, with their fingers on the scales on that balancing act.”
Congressional Republicans say the Obama administration is using its regulatory powers to shutter industries it doesn’t like. Last year, 31 Republicans accused the Justice Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. of intimidating banks and payment processors to “terminate business relationships with lawful lenders.”
In a March hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs subcommittee on consumer protection, Sen. David Vitter, Louisiana Republican, complained that several payday lenders — another industry labeled “risky” by the administration — were being dropped by their banks in his home state.
“There is a determined effort from [the Justice Department] to the regulators to cut off credit and use other tactics to force [payday lenders] out of business,” Mr. Vitter said. “I find that deeply troubling because it has no statutory basis, no statutory authority.”
In a House hearing in April, FDIC acting General Counsel Richard Osterman defended his agency’s definition of what constitutes a “risky” business — subject to money laundering or other criminal behavior — but made it clear that no bank is outright prohibited from serving any such companies.
“We have actually put out a policy statement on this issue to make it very clear from the very top that as long as financial institutions are properly managing their relationships and the risks, they’re neither prohibited nor discouraged from providing these services,” Mr. Osterman said.
“Basically, what we’re saying is, these types of programs can be, can involve high-risk activities that could create litigation risk and reputation risk for financial institutions,” he said. “So, they need to do due diligence to ensure that the folks who they’re banking are acting in a safe and sound manner.”
But the cost of that due diligence, coupled with the threat of a lawsuit for doing business with a customer in an industry the government has defined as risky, is having a chilling effect on legitimate companies such as gun dealers, said Mr. Weinstock, the Hunton & Williams lawyer.
“We are one of the most heavily regulated industries in America,” said Mr. Sirochman of American Spirit Arms. “We have to ship our guns to another federal licensed dealers for pickup. The people that are picking up the rifles have to go through a background check to make sure they don’t have any felonies. You can’t own a gun or pass the background check if you do.
“All this is, is an assault on our Second Amendment rights.”
American corporations seem to be doing just about everything with their record $1.53 trillion in cash holdings except using it to invest and hire in the United States, even though the sluggish economy could use the boost.
Three-quarters of that corporate cash pile was earned overseas and is being held outside the country to avoid the top U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent, according to a study by Standard & Poor’s Corp. It remains the highest rate in the developed world despite tax reform pledges by leaders of both major U.S. political parties.
Those guarding the mountains of overseas cash include some of the best-known names in American business, including General Motors Co., General Electric Co., Apple Inc. and Google Inc.
While many companies are simply reinvesting the cash in their operations in China and other overseas markets that have been growing faster than their U.S. operations, others are using it to acquire foreign companies. A majority appear to be using the cash as collateral to borrow funds in the U.S. to finance generous stock buyback and dividend programs for their shareholders. Only a small fraction of the money is being used to increase hiring, wages and business expansion in the U.S.
Factors contributing to the unprecedented overseas cash balances include tax avoidance, easy credit conditions and booming overseas sales.
Several deals recently highlighted the extreme measures companies are prepared to take to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Drug giant Pfizer this month announced that it would deploy some of its $39 billion overseas cash hoard in a $200 billion bid to purchase Britain’s AstraZeneca PLC, with the goal of eventually relocating its headquarters to London so it no longer has to worry about paying U.S. taxes on its earnings.
Apple, which has the largest overseas cash trove by far at $132 billion, is one of the many corporations that, rather than dip into its cash and take a tax hit, took out debt instead to fund a big stock buyback and dividend program. The move was spurred by Carl C. Icahn and other activist investors frustrated at their inability to get their hands on some of the company’s far-flung cash.
Borrowing to buy stock
Among the 80 percent of blue chip companies listed in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index that conducted major stock buyback programs last year — often after borrowing the money as Apple did — were Ford Motor Co., Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., 3M Co., Microsoft Corp., Safeway Inc., and Travelers Cos.
“Shareholders are pushing for the return of this cash,” S&P analyst Andrew Chang said.
Apple and other corporations are unwilling to repatriate the money and pay high U.S. taxes on it, so they are borrowing money instead to satisfy investors, Mr. Chang said. He predicted that the trend would accelerate this year.
Corporations get a double tax advantage if they borrow money to pay stockholders rather than dip into their cash. They can avoid giving a third of their earnings to the federal government, and the interest on their debt becomes a tax-deductible business “expense.”
Moreover, interest rates on the debt are some of the lowest on record, thanks to the Federal Reserve, which for the past five years has been trying to boost U.S. economic growth by purchasing more than $3 trillion of the most conservative bond investments: U.S. Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities. The Fed’s dominance of those traditional markets has driven private investors into corporate debt and riskier markets as they seek higher returns than the rock-bottom yields on Treasury bonds.
Investors’ thirst for higher-yielding corporate debt has resulted in a borrowing binge. Corporations are taking out nearly $4 in loans for every $1 in cash they earned in recent years, according to S&P.
Some say the borrowing spree borders on a credit market bubble that is feeding stocks because much of the debt is used to repurchase the companies’ own shares.
Few take the tax hit
In a survey last month of corporations with large cash holdings overseas, researchers at the British bank Barclays PLC found that only a small number of companies were repatriating their cash earnings for use in the U.S.
EBay reported recently that it is bringing home $9 billion in cash to pursue “growing opportunities in the U.S.” The online auction giant also said it is making provisions for higher taxes on foreign earnings in the future as it transfers a higher proportion of its cash back to the U.S.
Barclays found that companies like eBay, whose competitors are mainly in the U.S., are more likely to bring home their cash than companies like Apple and Pfizer, whose competitors reside mainly in other countries. Companies with mainly foreign competitors are more likely to spend their cash expanding and acquiring assets overseas, the survey found.
Of all the companies with large overseas cash hoards, Xilinx Inc., NetApp Inc., Western Union Co. and EMC Corp. are the most likely to repatriate their money and pay taxes so they can use the funds in the American market, Barclays said.
S&P’s Mr. Chang said that, despite all the corporate machinations aimed at minimizing taxes and maximizing profits, the pileup of so much cash overseas seems to have been inadvertent for most corporations.
“We believe most of these [corporations] did not intend to have such a large cash pile sitting on the sidelines. If given the choice, most would prefer to repatriate the cash and limit debt issuance,” he said.
Although Congress and the Obama administration have failed to reach an agreement on lowering tax rates, Mr. Chang pins as much blame for the borrowing binge on the Federal Reserve.
“In our view, the availability of cheap debt has been most responsible for the record cash balances,” as it has simply made more economic sense for companies to borrow rather than spend down their cash, he said.
“Without access to the accommodating credit markets, companies would likely not have provided the returns that shareholders have become accustomed to in recent years,” Mr. Chang said, voicing the widespread view that investors in stocks and bonds — rather than workers and Main Street businesses — have been the main beneficiaries of the cash-backed borrowing binge.
Hiring drought continues
Whatever the reasons driving the trend, economists and business leaders from Wall Street to Main Street have been decrying the drought of investment by U.S. businesses in expanding plants, upgrading equipment, and hiring and giving raises to workers, even though many of these corporations are flush with cash and increasingly burdened with debt.
Historically, businesses have devoted larger shares of their profits to improving their businesses. Even some prominent investors who have benefited from the stock-buying trend have raised alarm about corporations no longer making investments that produce long-term growth in their companies, not just short-term fillips in their stocks.
“Too many companies have cut capital expenditures and even increased debt to boost dividends and increase share buybacks,” Larry Fink, chairman of BlackRock, which manages $4.3 trillion in investments, said in a letter to the chief executives of the world’s 600 largest corporations. He said this practice can “jeopardize a company’s ability to generate sustainable long-term returns.”
With corporate profits at the end of last year hitting a record high 11 percent of economic output even as middle-class wages stagnate, Jerry Jasinowski, former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said corporate America is starting to look like Disney’s stingy character Scrooge McDuck.
“Our biggest corporations have been sitting on a lot of money for many years, and it is not a transitory phenomenon. That fabled money bin just keeps growing,” while companies listed in the S&P 500 index have been increasing investment in their businesses by only 0.8 percent a year, he said.
“Instead of launching new products and identifying new markets, they have become obsessed with controlling costs and financial transactions,” he said. “Companies have become notoriously reluctant to hire and slow to raise compensation for those not in the front office. This is causing hardship for many people — inflation has outpaced wage gains for the past five years — and is undermining the economy that these businesses depend upon for their big profits.”
Frustration in Congress
Frustration over the persistent tax avoidance and business’ hoarding practices is growing in Washington. For several years, President Obama and Republican leaders have advocated reforming the tax code to reduce the top corporate rate to 25 percent to 30 percent, eliminating or paring back loopholes such as business depreciation and expense deductions.
Mr. Obama has proposed tackling the corporate tax code as part of a broader campaign to curb the budget deficit, while Republicans want broader tax reforms that encompass both corporate and individual taxes.
The stalemate blocked most reform efforts this year, although new Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, recently outlined his ideas about tax reform for the first time.
Short of overhauling the tax code, a growing number of legislators advocate another tax “holiday” like one enacted in 2004 that would temporarily lower the rates paid on repatriated cash as an inducement to get corporations to bring money back home. In his highway reauthorization bill submitted last month, Mr. Obama proposed using such a tax holiday as one way of paying for roads and bridges.
The holiday likely would provoke a “mad rush of repatriation,” and no doubt would be successful at temporarily filling federal coffers with a gusher of one-time tax payments, said Mr. Chang, but the money more likely would continue to be spent enriching shareholders rather than increasing hiring and business expansion in the U.S.
If Congress’ goal is to induce businesses to create jobs, a tax holiday will not do the trick, said Curtis S. Dubay, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation. The 2004 holiday prompted businesses to bring $362 billion back home, but most of them spent the money on dividends, share buybacks and acquisitions.
The 2004 holiday had a “negligible” impact on jobs, he said. To the extent the funds were used for corporate acquisitions, in fact, they may have helped cut jobs as merging companies eliminated overlapping functions.
President Obama began 2014 with a hard left turn, from which he will never depart. Many are now wondering what course he will take after the November election. In doing so, they are ignoring the reality he faces. The president will maintain his current course to the left for the rest of his presidency, for the simple reason that he has nowhere else to go.
Mr. Obama made his leftward lurch because this is a crucial election year, and he needs to motivate his base of supporters. He signaled the move in this year’s State of the Union speech, where income inequality was the theme. He followed up rhetoric with arithmetic, submitting a budget that translated his move to the left into numbers. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Mr. Obama’s budget would increase spending and taxes prodigiously.
The president’s budget would have increased spending by $338 billion over the CBO’s baseline over the next decade. This increase was proposed, despite federal spending never retrenched from its 29 percent jump from 2007 to 2009. If anything, his spending increases were masked by official estimating rules that hide hundreds of billions more in real costs from the ledger.
On taxes, his budget would have increased federal revenues $1.39 trillion over the CBO’s current policy estimates. This is despite the fact the increase would come on the heels of 2013’s massive revenue hike of $324 billion and CBO estimates that federal revenues are projected to have increased by 3 percent of gross domestic product from 2012 to 2015 — the largest increase in decades.
Mr. Obama’s reasons for worry about November are two-fold — both present and past. His popularity is falling now and his supporters’ participation fell in the midterm elections four years ago. The president and Democrats cannot afford another sharp drop in their base supporters’ participation, especially if it might be even greater as his popularity declines.
Up to this point, the administration’s political calculus is very clear: Do whatever it takes to maximize the electoral impact this November in order to minimize the political damage that is likely to occur.
It is the next juncture of the journey that has many confused: Where will Mr. Obama go once November’s elections are over? Will he moderate, or even turn toward Republicans to work on bipartisan initiatives that could produce real accomplishments during his remaining time in office? The answer to both is “no.”
Mr. Obama will stay on his sharply partisan course because he no longer has meaningful support anywhere else along the political spectrum worth pursuing by changing course.
It has long been evident that the president has no support among the right. In 2012, he received just 6 percent of the vote of those self-identifying as Republicans.
What has been overlooked is that Mr. Obama has no effective base of support in the center, either. He won just 45 percent of independents in 2012. According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, his job-approval rating among independents is just 33 percent positive to 59 percent negative. Essentially, independents are now so far gone that there is no point in trying to appeal to them.
As a result, Mr. Obama is increasingly dependent on the left. This dependence will only increase after November’s election. Currently, it is impossible to see how Republicans will not be in a stronger congressional position next year. Even if they do not take the Senate, which currently must be at least a 50-50 proposition, they will increase their numbers from today’s 45 seats.
Republicans’ greater legislative leverage will allow them increased ability to choose unfavorable political terrain for Mr. Obama. Therefore, he will need the left’s help — and unity — just to maintain his current position in a rearguard action as he exits the political battlefield. Were the left to fail to hold steady around the president, his political position would quickly become untenable. The risk of this is far greater than any reward independents could realistically offer.
Republicans are unlikely to accept Mr. Obama on issues, except on their terms — especially in the wake of a big November win. Conversely, the left will not abandon him unless Mr. Obama chooses to accept such a Republican offer.
The president is stuck. He must maintain his leftward tilt, simply to attempt to maintain his current political position, which is one of increasing isolation from all but the left.
Similarly, Democrats are stuck with Mr. Obama. They cannot abandon him for fear of alienating his loyal constituencies without whom they have no prospect of winning on a national level. Even if Mr. Obama is leading them in a direction they feel they should not go, they have little choice but to follow him.
Ordinary Americans have more reason to fear the U.S. government than do our foreign enemies.
In April 2014, 200 U.S. government agents with armored cars descended on a Nevada rancher who had not paid his cattle-grazing fees, shot his herd bull and tazed his wife. The U.S. Senate’s majority leader called the rancher and his supporters “terrorists.”
Meanwhile, President Obama’s economic counter to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of pieces of Ukraine consisted of banning a baker’s dozen of his cronies from doing business in the United States. Russia’s stock market rose. Mr. Obama also arranged for international monitors to visit the area. Mr. Putin’s thugs took them hostage. On the other side of the globe, the U.S. Navy worked out rules for chance encounters with Chinese ships in international waters. However, the Chinese warned that they would not observe mutual respect in the vast areas that they claim. The Palestinian Authority set about uniting with the Hamas terrorist group and declaring itself a state, U.S. objections and longtime U.S. government financing notwithstanding.
In short, unfriendly governments show contempt for America, as allies from the South Pacific to the North Atlantic fend for themselves, and polls show that a majority of Americans now consider the U.S. government a threat to our liberties. Only 22 percent look upon it as our protector, and 37 percent fear it outright.
This systemic failure of statesmanship is rooted in our ruling class’s habit of making foreign commitments it has no intention of keeping, and of taking military actions without reasonable plans for achieving peace. The result, a permanent war footing, is unsustainable internationally because making threats unseriously signals to serious people that they can act against us safely. It is unsustainable domestically because it spawns a domestic security apparatus so big, pervasive and lethal as to pose an irresistible temptation for partisan abuse. Failure to win peace with foreigners is leading to strife among ourselves.
Lincoln had pointed to “peace among ourselves and with all nations” as statesmanship’s natural objective. Earning it requires the jealous reckoning of ends and means. However, Woodrow Wilson and the bipartisan Progressive movement adopted the unnatural objective of remaking foreign nations while superintending global order. That objective’s logical conclusion — President George W. Bush’s statement that America cannot be free unless and until the whole world is free — locks America into a never-ending war footing. Because the Progressive objective is to manage peoples rather than to eliminate enemies, our statesmen don’t even think of waging wars with plans for ending them. Nor can the managers be at peace with those they are trying to manage. The end being ephemeral, no rational means are possible.
When Muslim jihadists began attacking Americans a generation ago, our progressive ruling class did not ask, “What is the obstacle to peace?” In the absence of a good answer to that question, no military operations make sense. Supposing that the problem lay in a few “rogues” labeled “al Qaeda,” persons extraneous to the Muslim world’s cultural and power structures, made the problem manageable by falsifying it. Our ruling class missed that an entire civilization was being mobilized against us and that this is a big, multidimensional problem. Given that problem, what might be required to restore our peace? This question is the touchstone of seriousness.
Instead of addressing such questions, our ruling class empowered an apparatus of “homeland security” that supposes any American may be a terrorist, but which rejects focusing it on Muslims as “Islamophobic.” Thus, our ruling class made the designation “dangerous extremist” a matter of subjective likes and dislikes. It is impossible for officials who make up standards implicitly and unaccountably to do so apolitically. Barring explicit political decisions from the front door ensures that implicit ones come flooding in through the windows. When the line between peace and war is erased, when the definition of enemies is anybody’s guess, the sociopolitical opponents of the ruling class end up getting fingered as the “enemies of the people.”
No surprise then that America’s burgeoning domestic paramilitary forces are focusing on the ruling class’s domestic political opponents as another set of persons whose backward ways must be guarded against and reformed. Who in America embodies extremism? Who is pegged as responsible for the litany of racism, sexism, religious obscurantism and gun violence — the very social ills that U.S. forces confront in foreign lands? The conservative side of American life. Twenty-six percent of self-identified Democrats tell pollsters that Tea Party people pose the greatest danger of terrorism.
Today, computer searches find that the term “extremist” correlates in the major newspapers with “conservative” or “right wing” at 12 times the rate it does with “liberal” or “left wing.” It does not yet correlate at all with the latter’s euphemism, “progressive.” Why shouldn’t officials all across the U.S. government — from the Internal Revenue Service to the Environmental Protection Agency, even to the Bureau of Land Management, act on what they hear from the best people, read in the best media — especially if it fits with their own sentiments?
Protracted international war’s transmutation into domestic strife is one of history’s most insistent and least-heeded lessons. Using war-swollen government power to hurt sociopolitical opponents draws all into a spiral destructive of all. Our bipartisan ruling class’s decision to institute a nominally indiscriminate “homeland security” regime is proving to be an error that gave civil strife’s deadly spiral its first deadly turns among us.
Causing that spiral to turn in the direction of peace is a task worthy of prayer.
Inspectors general are the taxpayers’ policemen. Their beat is the corridors of the bureaucracy, which they patrol for waste, fraud, abuse and even crime. This often puts them at odds with a president, his administration and his congressional allies.
Not long after settling into the White House, President Obama fired Gerald Walpin, the inspector general for AmeriCorps, because he had exposed a scam involving a close presidential friend. Mr. Walpin filed a report about the misuse of $847,000 in grant money by Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, Calif. Mr. Johnson, a former NBA star, was accused of using government cash to pay “volunteers” to keep his car sparkling clean and to run personal errands. The firing of Mr. Walpin sent a clear signal to his colleagues: Investigate a friend of the president, and you’ll be looking for a new job. Many got the message.
Other inspectors general are like the Treasury Department’s J. Russell George, whose job is in jeopardy because he uncovered facts that some prefer to keep quiet. Mr. George testified about the IRS scheme to undermine Tea Party groups, drawing the ire of two Democratic congressmen, Reps. Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia and Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania. They filed a formal complaint with a special watchdog council that oversees the inspectors general. The congressmen questioned Mr. George’s “independence, ethics, competence and quality control” in the hopes that the council would impose sanctions.
On Wednesday, Patrick Sullivan, an assistant inspector general at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), revealed a coordinated scheme by political appointees inside the agency to interfere with investigations. Testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Mr. Sullivan said that the appointees have operated as a “rogue law enforcement agency,” blocking oversight by the EPA’s inspector general for years.
Staff members at the EPA kept investigators away from critical documents relating to the “work” of John Beale, the EPA employee who fancied himself James Bond on a secret mission for the CIA. His supervisors fell for an implausible story enabling him to steal nearly $1 million in undeserved pay and bonuses over a decade. He even scored a handicap parking spot.
Rather than try to find other John Beales, the EPA continued the cover-up and let employees get away with whatever they pleased. One senior EPA manager sold jewelry and weight-loss products out of her office. She was not only not fired, but received a presidential rank award and a bonus check for $35,000. Another bonus went to an employee who performed no work at all.
An employee making six figures received checks for two years after he retired to a nursing home. His supervisor put him on “sick leave” to keep the money flowing. Whenever Mr. Sullivan got close to exposing an inconvenient truth, the EPA played the “national security” card to deny him access to necessary material.
Inspectors general are not generally denied access to such material, and Mr. Sullivan’s resume includes stints at the FBI and Secret Service, evidence that he’s capable of handling sensitive material. “This is truly a broken agency… ,” says Rep. Darrell E. Issa, chairman of the oversight committee. “The EPA has a long history that has now become intolerable to the American people.”
Only draining the swamp of corruption, incompetence and waste will restore public confidence in the IRS, the EPA and the rest of the federal bureaucracy. Then the inspectors general can operate with full independence, unrestrained by the fear of who they might offend.
Recent articles have reported on an unearthed video from 1947 of Margaret Sanger demanding “no more babies” for 10 years in developing countries. A couple of years ago, Margaret Sanger was named one of Time magazine’s “20 Most Influential Americans of All Time.” Given her enduring influence, it’s worth considering what the woman who founded Planned Parenthood contributed to the eugenics movement.
Sanger shaped the eugenics movement in America and beyond in the 1930s and 1940s. Her views and those of her peers in the movement contributed to compulsory sterilization laws in 30 U.S. states that resulted in more than 60,000 sterilizations of vulnerable people, including people she considered “feeble-minded,” “idiots” and “morons.”
She even presented at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1926 in Silver Lake, N.J. She recounted this event in her autobiography: “I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan … I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses … I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak … In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered” (Margaret Sanger, “An Autobiography,” Page 366). That she generated enthusiasm among some of America’s leading racists says something about the content and tone of her remarks.
In a letter to Clarence Gable in 1939, Sanger wrote: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members” (Margaret Sanger commenting on the ‘Negro Project’ in a letter to Gamble, Dec. 10, 1939).
Her own words and television appearances leave no room for parsing. For example, she wrote many articles about eugenics in the journal she founded in 1917, the Birth Control Review. Her articles included “Some Moral Aspects of Eugenics” (June 1920), “The Eugenic Conscience” (February 1921), “The Purpose of Eugenics” (December 1924), “Birth Control and Positive Eugenics” (July 1925) and “Birth Control: The True Eugenics” (August 1928), to name a few.
The following are some of her more telling quotes:
“While I personally believe in the sterilization of the feeble-minded, the insane and syphilitic, I have not been able to discover that these measures are more than superficial deterrents when applied to the constantly growing stream of the unfit. They are excellent means of meeting a certain phase of the situation, but I believe in regard to these, as in regard to other eugenic means, that they do not go to the bottom of the matter.” (“Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” Feb. 1919, The Birth Control Review).
“Eugenics without birth control seems to us a house builded upon the sands. It is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit” (“Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” Feb. 1919, The Birth Control Review).
“Stop our national habit of human waste.” (“Woman and the New Race,” 1920, Chapter 6).
“By all means, there should be no children when either mother or father suffers from such diseases as tuberculosis, gonorrhea, syphilis, cancer, epilepsy, insanity, drunkenness and mental disorders. In the case of the mother, heart disease, kidney trouble and pelvic deformities are also a serious bar to childbearing No more children should be born when the parents, though healthy themselves, find that their children are physically or mentally defective.” (“Woman and the New Race,” 1920, Chapter 7).
“The main objects of the Population Congress would be to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring[;] to give certain dysgenic groups in our population their choice of segregation or sterilization.” (“A Plan for Peace,” 1932).
In a 1957 interview with Mike Wallace, Sanger revealed: “I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world — that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they’re born. That to me is the greatest sin — that people can — can commit.”
This line of thinking from its founder has left lasting marks on the legacy of Planned Parenthood. For example, 79 percent of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of black or Hispanic communities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Abortion Surveillance report revealed that between 2007 and 2010, nearly 36 percent of all abortions in the United States were performed on black children, even though black Americans make up only 13 percent of our population. A further 21 percent of abortions were performed on Hispanics, and 7 percent more on other minority groups, for a total of 64 percent of U.S. abortions tragically performed on minority groups. Margaret Sanger would have been proud of the effects of her legacy.
Fans of Kathleen Sebelius, the lady who made Obamacare so wildly popular, say her greatest accomplishment was persuading red states to accept the Medicaid expansion. Alas, these states have been lured with false promises of flexibility and free money.
Since it was adopted last year, the Arkansas “private option” has been the model for red states eager to expand Medicaid, which was originally meant to help the down and out, to a new class of able-bodied, working-age, childless adults. The scheme is dressed up like a private-sector solution, to use federal dollars to enable the poor to buy private health insurance. The Medicaid money gives taxpayer-funded Medicaid services to the newly eligible recipients through Obamacare exchange plans.
It’s window dressing on an Obamacare Medicaid expansion to flamboozle Republicans into thinking it’s a free-market deal with enhanced flexibility. It’s definitely not. The Arkansas version of Obamacare expansion comes with the same federal strings attached, dictating who must be covered, what must be covered, how much can be charged, and so on.
The Arkansas Medicaid private option is already over budget by nearly 15 percent. Costs exceed federal caps and, absent a reversal, Arkansas taxpayers will be charged tens of millions more dollars in cost overruns.
Arkansas officials are coming soon to Washington to seek a federal bailout. This shifts the burden to U.S. taxpayers to pay for the empty promise of the fiscally unstable private option expansion.
Taxpayers in all the states will have to pick up the costs of the program in just a few years. That means stretched family budgets, and slashed funding for other priorities, including education, infrastructure and public safety.
With the empty promises of Arkansas’ Medicaid expansion now coming to light, one question looms — why are Republican leaders in other states trying to replicate it? Versions of the private option have been put through the Republican-controlled New Hampshire state Senate and ordered by Republican Gov. Terry Branstad in Iowa. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett pursues a private option Medicaid expansion, and so does Utah Gov. Gary Herbert. The allure of “free” money is too much to resist. It’s a bad deal for taxpayers.
The Arkansas private option does not represent flexibility from the federal government, does not represent a market-based alternative to Medicaid expansion, and does not represent affordable, patient-centered health care reform. The taxpayers who are likely to pay the consequences include everybody. Arkansas is learning there’s still no such thing as a free lunch, and certainly not the hickory-smoked barbecue the state is famous for. Other states should take due diligence.
Quoting Winston Churchill’s opinions on Islam contributed to a U.K. politician’s arrest — and possible imprisonment of up to two years.
Paul Weston, chairman of the party Liberty GB, was making a speech Saturday outside the Winchester Guildhall in Hampshire, when he quoting the famous prime minister, the Independent reported.
After a member of the public complained, Mr. Weston was subsequently arrested for religious harassment when he did not comply with officers’ orders to leave the area.
The text that contributed to Mr. Weston’s arrest came from Churchill’s book “The River of War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan,” written by the former prime minister in 1899 during his time as an Army officer in Sudan.
Mr. Weston read the following passage, among others, by Mr. Churchill, the Blaze reported:
“The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.”
The standoff over Medicaid funding in the Virginia Statehouse isn’t likely to be resolved soon. Gov. Terry McAuliffe and his Democrats who control the state Senate won’t let a budget pass unless the Republicans in the House of Delegates relent and allow an enormous expansion of Medicaid eligibility.
As important as it is to hold the line on this fight, it diverts all eyes from the other budgetary problem: The state’s spending is out of control.
Tipping the scales at $96 billion, the proposed budget sets a record. Once adopted, it would go into effect when the new fiscal year begins on July 1 and cover state operations for the next two years. Only four years ago, sensible taxpayers were outraged that the tab for the state’s biennial budget had grown to $78.6 billion. Two years later, the budget was up to $86 billion for fiscal years 2013 and 2014. Mr. McAuliffe and Virginia’s profligate lawmakers, Republican and Democrat alike, now think the state should add $10 billion to the irresponsible and bloated budget.
That’s a growth of 11 percent for the state government in just two years, even though the rate of inflation was 2.9 percent and personal-income growth topped 4.5 percent over this same period, as estimated by the Department of Commerce. Thus, Mr. McAuliffe calculates that the government should grow 244 percent faster than taxpayers’ income.
His scheme guarantees that taxes will be raised (again) to cover the never-ending rise in the cost of government. Higher taxes will discourage businesses and families from relocating to Virginia. Some existing businesses will flee to low-tax states, leaving a smaller tax base and kicking off a vicious cycle in which the legislature will authorize more tax increases to generate more revenue to fund the wasteful ways. Pretty soon the Old Dominion will look no better than Maryland and California.
The deadlock in Richmond over whether to expand Medicaid could be a blessing in disguise. Responsible legislators have time on their hands and should spend it to study the budget and look for places to dice, splice, shave and slice.
The governor, for example, requests an increase in corporate-welfare handouts from $110 million to $136 million over the next two years. Mr. McAuliffe further wants to subsidize technology companies by $22 million through the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Investment Authority. State giveaways to lure the movie industry to Virginia are scheduled to increase from about $2.5 million annually to $12.5 million a year.
There are plenty of ways to economize with the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which is to receive a 56 percent increase for its operating budget. Taxpayers will annually spend $4 million to subsidize art and another $4 million to build bathrooms in the homes of Virginia residents, often in vacation cabins at fishing spots near the shore. The General Assembly managed to tuck in a $5.9 million budget increase for itself over the next two years.
While the Medicaid standoff continues, the legislature must go line-by-line through the governor’s spending requests to delete the millions promised to wasteful and crony schemes. It’s called doing the right thing.
Following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., more than a year ago, while President Obama and congressional Democrats were blaming the violence on guns, Republicans sought out and asked the only clinical psychologist in the House to look into the connection between the sorts of mass shootings that have plagued the country in recent years and the state of the nation’s mental health care system.
Rep. Tim Murphy, Pennsylvania Republican, was elected to Congress in 2002 after a stint in the Pennsylvania state Senate but was a practicing clinical psychologist for 30 years and authored two books on the child psychology. He was the obvious choice for the assignment and took it very seriously, spending a full year researching and interviewing experts on how the current system is failing and developing reforms to improve the way the nation deals with the mentally ill.
The resulting Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act would overhaul a failing and incredibly expensive mental health care system that focuses on making folks who’ve had a bad day happy while ignoring the severely and potentially dangerous mentally ill.
What Mr. Murphy discovered is that while we spend $203 billion annually, including $125 billion in federal money, on what he found can only loosely be described as mental health care, much of what we are doing is wasteful, misdirected or even counterproductive. The perhaps 11 million men and women with truly severe mental problems who too often lead to violence, arrest, prison and suicide are often ignored in favor of minor mental health issues.
Therefore, some 300,000 of those diagnosed as severely mentally ill aren’t in treatment facilities, but in our jails and prisons. In fact, in every single state there are more people diagnosed as severely mentally ill in penal institutions than in all the state’s public and private treatment centers. An additional 250,000 live on the streets, and about 38,000 of them a year commit suicide.
These are the paranoid schizophrenics, the seriously bipolar and others who often can’t cope with life in the real world and who too often become a real threat to themselves and to others. Our country provides them little help or treatment until it is too late.
Many would have been hospitalized before the “reforms” instituted beginning in the 1960s closed down many of the nation’s treatment centers and refocused mental health care spending on problems that seemed more tractable.
Jails and prisons aren’t set up to deal with mental health issues and many unfortunates come out in even worse shape than they were when they were sentenced. Take 62-year-old William Spengler, who had spent 17 years in prison for murdering his grandmother. He found life on the outside difficult and couldn’t stand his sister. On Christmas Eve 2012, Spengler ambushed and fatally shot two firefighters called to a burning house, where police later found the charred remains of his murdered sister. Cornered by police, Spengler killed himself, but left a letter in which he wrote, “I still have to get ready to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down, and do what I like doing best, killing people.”
Spengler had spent a good deal of time in prison, but he was not a criminal in the standard sense of the term. Rather, like Adam Lanza in Connecticut; James Holmes, charged in the killing of 12 theatergoers in Aurora, Colo.; and Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 at the Washington Navy Yard, Spengler was very, very sick, but was wandering free without treatment.
Mr. Murphy’s reforms include much more, but would essentially refocus mental health care spending on those who truly need intervention, allow the institutionalization of the severely mentally ill, and encourage assisted outpatient treatment, which would require the severely mentally ill who can nevertheless cope if they take prescribed medications to take them or face institutionalization.
Assisted outpatient treatment works. The severely mentally ill receiving treatment in states with such programs in place fare very well, with a 55 percent drop in suicides, a 47 percent decrease in attacks on others, a 74 percent reduction in homelessness, 83 percent fewer arrests and an 87 percent decline in incarceration.
In spite of the evidence, patients rights advocates are opposed to such programs, and many continue to insist that there is no such thing as a mental illness anyway. After Sandy Hook, a major mental health organization called the National Rifle Association to protest calling Lanza “crazy” in describing his killing of 26 people. Mr. Murphy even discovered that the federal government is using taxpayer money to subsidize these groups. His bill would cut that funding off.
Mental health laws can be abused and have been in the past, but that is not a reason to deny treatment to those who need it, especially when they might pose a threat to themselves and others. We shouldn’t demonize the mentally ill, but as 38,000 suicides a year demonstrate and the fact that tens of thousands end up as victims rather than perpetrators of violence, denying them treatment or arguing that they aren’t really ill does little to either help them or protect the rest of society. Mr. Murphy’s bill is designed to fix a system that has failed them, as well as society as a whole.
Mr. Murphy wants to fix the problem, and in Congress these days, anyone who actually examines a problem and tries to solve it is someone worth some attention. His Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act may not be perfect, but it’s more than just a step in the right direction, and deserves serious consideration.
In years past, the fact that Senate and House GOP leaders meandered their way to the Republican Main Street Partnership gathering this weekend in Florida’s picturesque Amelia Island would hardly raise an eyebrow.
After all, the group is run by one of their own, retired Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio, a close ally of Speaker John A. Boehner, and the retreat is the classic junket staged during a congressional recess. Republicans usually would be looking to stage a show of unity in a midterm election year that is trending their way.
But 2014 has proved to be different, as a long-simmering anger on the right side of the Republican Party has fomented a larger coalition of conservative ideologues, tea party crusaders and grass-roots activists determined to put a stop to what they see as a decadelong liberal drift to their party.
The result is that this year’s Main Street meeting has become a flashpoint for battle-ready conservatives looking to make examples of lawmakers who attend a group with moderate views and funded by Democrat-leaning labor unions.
“It’s basically the big-business, cheap-labor wing of the Republican Party — not the mom-and-pop store owners, the startups, the entrepreneurs, the small-business people,” said independent Ron Maxwell, a motion picture director and writer who lives in House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s home state of Virginia.
Mr. Maxwell can barely suppress his ire toward what he regards as the pragmatic liberal and centrist GOP lawmakers who are heading to the meeting Saturday at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Amelia Island, Fla.
To the rank-and-file conservatives, the biggest sin of Main Streeters’ like Mr. Cantor, Sen. John McCain, Mr. Boehner, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy and others is that the group they are endorsing with their presence over the years gangs up on the likes of Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike Lee and tries to isolate them as extremist obstructionists.
The Main Streeters jump on the brash new conservative icons of the Senate for opposing compromises viewed as giving Democrats approval to expand spending, national indebtedness to other nations and increased dependency on government by businesses, the middle class, blue-collar workers and legal and illegal immigrants.
Whether they use the words or not, the rank and file see the GOP leadership in Congress and the former GOP governors, party chairmen, corporate elite and top-echelon consultant class as co-conspirators in the Democrats’ socialization of the American economy and culture.
“The Main Street Republicans have become an echo chamber for the left,” said Mr. Maxwell, uttering a battle cry spoken privately by many others. “They correctly see grass-roots conservatives and the tea party as the authentic base of the GOP and therefore a threat to the levers of power that the party’s behind-the-scenes leaders — the Bushes, Karl Roves and Haley Barbours — control.
“They’re terrorists in their own party. They label Republicans who don’t agree with them as extremists,” said Mr. Maxwell, who is helping Mr. Cantor’s challenger in the June 20 state GOP primary election.
Larry Nordvig, executive director of the Richmond Tea Party, which claims an email list of 5,000 and has 6,700 “likes” on Facebook and 4,000 Twitter followers, is part of the grass-roots movement attempting to oust Mr. Cantor.
Grass-roots activists joke that attempting to beat Mr. Cantor in the primary is like a novice hiking club taking on Mount Everest: It’s doable but not easy.
Mr. Cantor has the name recognition and ability to outraise his challenger, university professor Dave Brat, many times over from donations by big business and the GOP establishment that signals where contributions should go.
The Republican Main Street partnership, which has gone by a number of names over the years, including the Main Street Coalition, is led by Mr. LaTourette, a Washington lobbyist who is not at all defensive but rather proud of the cooperative role that GOP lawmakers in his group play with Democrats in Congress.
Mr. LaTourette and the Main Streeters grew up with textbooks that said the purpose of federal lawmakers is to get things accomplished by enacting legislation.
As a sign of the group’s bipartisan aim, Mr. LaTourette crows that a significant Main Street Partnership funding source is labor unions that often lean left in elections.
Trade unions contribute a combined total of $1.3 million to the $4 million budget of the Main Street organization, he said.
These unions include the National Education Association (the superpower of unions in America, along with the public employees unions), the operating engineers, the Teamsters, the air traffic controllers, transport workers and other building and trades unions.
Mr. LaTourette cited two main reasons why powerful unions that, cycle after cycle, send their members to help Democrats on Election Day nonetheless donate some of their union members’ dues to the GOP Main Streeters.
“They think of our members as helping them with legislation in Congress on airports, highways, water projects to help get their members back to work,” Mr. LaTourette said.
Second, some Republicans belong to the building and trades unions and to the NEA, so the unions can say their members’ compulsory dues don’t go just to Democrats.
Big business for many decades has bought peace with labor unions, so that detente is not new. But the NEA is a different matter. Conservatives cite what they call its stranglehold on public education as the main reason the quality of U.S. education lags well behind that of other advanced democracies.
Mr. LaTourette says the Amelia Island meeting “isn’t something we thought up this year.” He noted that the Main Street Partnership claims as members about 50 of the 233 House Republicans.
Mr. LaTourette said the reason Mr. Boehner has attended virtually every annual meeting of the group except this year’s is that he felt he had to be part of policy discussions with that many members. Mr. Boehner canceled his Saturday attendance because of what he said is a scheduling conflict.
As to why Mr. Cantor and Mr. McCarthy attend the annual meetings, Mr. LaTourette said it has less to do with ideology than with positioning themselves to compete for the speakership when Mr. Boehner retires from Congress. The contenders for speaker and majority leader will split the votes of the other 190 conservative members, and will need a good portion of the Main Street members to win.
“Many members of our partnership support the Davis-Bacon Act, which is the bread and butter of the building trades unions,” he said.
Illustrating that the idea of compromise is deeply ingrained in American politics, the law was named after two Republicans and was signed into law by President Reagan just before John Hinckley Jr. shot him. The law requires that all federal contracts pay the national union-set wage in all localities — even those without unions — rather than the prevailing wage. It is a benefit to unions that costs U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Main Street Partnership is an umbrella organization that covers two nonprofit groups: the Main Street Advocacy Fund and the Defending Main Street SuperPAC. Some of that money goes to help GOP incumbents who compromise with Democrats in the name of pragmatic governance fend off challenges from uncompromising conservative candidates supported by groups such as the Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity and the multitude of groups bearing the name “tea party.”
Critics’ favorite slam against Main Street is that billionaire leftist George Soros, a superdonor to Democrats, once gave $50,000 to Main Street. The critics say that shows how much of a traitor Main Street is to the GOP.
“Soros — he started out as a Republican — sent a $50,000 check to the Republican Main Street Coalition about 10 years ago and Main Street returned it to him immediately,” Mr. LaTourette said.
Critics say the check was returned only after its reception was made public.
“It was handled in a ham-handed way,” Mr. LaTourette said. Main Street could have kept the check and said it was thus denying $50,000 Democrats otherwise would have to spend against Republicans.
Most Republican Main Street Partnership members are considered liberal within the GOP.
Mr. LaTourette had a 67 percent lifetime American Conservative Union rating and scored an even more dismal — from the right’s viewpoint — 50 percent in 2012, his last year in Congress.
Rep. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia scored a Heritage Action rating of only 47 percent and a Club for Growth lifetime rating of 50 percent.
Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan has a Club of Growth conservative rating of only 66 percent.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of three SenateGOP Main Streeters, has an American Conservative Union lifetime rating of 83 percent.
The ACU rates 80 and above as conservative.
Scorecards, of course, don’t tell the whole story. Conservative Republicans generally hold Mr. McCain in low regard for his support of the bank and automaker bailouts and for pushing through Congress what the right and many Democrats regarded as unconstitutional and stifling campaign finance regulations.
Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor, through their press offices, declined requests for responses or interviews for this article.
Meanwhile in New Hampshire
The timing is impeccable: A dozen famed conservatives with liberty, tradition and smaller government on their minds gather a mere 72 hours before Tax Day dawns. That would be the Freedom Summit on Saturday, a daylong showcase organized by Americans for Prosperity Foundation and Citizens United, staged in Manchester, the most bustling town in New Hampshire. The free grass-roots event has drawn live coverage on C-SPAN and the intense interest of Fox News, CNN, NBC and multiple national news organizations.
And no wonder. The starring line-up includes Republicans Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, plus Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, Laura Ingraham and Reps. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Louis Gohmert of Texas and Steve King of Iowa.
“The minute the news got out who would be on stage, and the interest was instantaneous. Our 700 tickets were gone in a moment, and 800 people rushed onto the waiting list. It’s that kind of event,” Greg Moore, state director for Americans for Prosperity, tells Inside the Beltway.
The summit will focus on how to return the nation to “conservative bedrock principles the Granite State has been known for,” Mr. Moore advises.
Those who prefer a little Midwestern fix are in luck on Friday, in the meantime.
The ever-present C-SPAN will also offer live coverage of Rep. Paul Ryan’s appearance at the Republican Party of Iowa’s annual Lincoln Dinner, which incidentally features a fresh farm salad, filet of chicken with thyme, potatoes au gratin and a julienne of fresh vegetables for all the hungry heartland GOPers.
Mr. Ryan — still jaunty following U.S. House approval of his 102-page federal budget proposal — goes before the cameras at 8 p.m. His audience will be enthusiastic, no doubt. But polling suggests the Wisconsin lawmaker is not the reigning star here. A new Suffolk University survey of likely Iowa voters finds that their favorite was the aforementioned Mr. Huckabee, followed by Mr. Paul, Jeb Bush. Mr. Cruz, Ben Carson and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Mr. Ryan is tied in seventh place with Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sarah Palin, Condoleezza Rice and Rick Santorum.
AN ANXIOUS AGE: THE POST-PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA
Recent surveys suggest that people who are “spiritual, but not religious” now constitute perhaps 20 percent of the American adult population.
“An Anxious Age” is a provocative and profound look at how America is both religious and a country where some elites are convinced that religion is fading. We may have lost faith in God and the devil, but believe tenaciously in other unseen forces such as globalization, racism and “prejudice” of various kinds. Not only in such forces, but behind many an Occupy Wall Street radical or fading hippie leftist is a belief in the healing power of crystals or some mysterious “flow” that determines the universe.
It is a strange age, indeed.
With his exquisite, precise descriptions of what he calls the “swallows” and the “poster children,” Joseph Bottum has changed the way we will look at American religion in this increasingly post-Christian era. Mr. Bottum wants to answer a couple of important questions of American religious sociology: Where has the Protestant mainline gone, and why hasn’t Catholicism, which is the largest denomination in America and comes ready-made with a long tradition of intellectual, moral and political engagement, taken its place as a defining cultural force?
The poster children are the heirs of the ‘60s cultural revolution. They reject organized religion, but still cling fiercely to moral absolutes. Now drained of theological substance, “America’s metaphysical realm has been gradually repopulated with social and political ideas elevated to the status of strange divinities,” Mr. Bottum writes.
He traces this to the early 20th-century Social Gospel movement and the Protestant writer Walter Rauschenbusch. This movement has created a post-Protestant class: “Christian in the righteous timbre of its moral judgments, without any actual Christianity; middle class in social flavor, while ostensibly despising middle-class norms; American in cultural setting, even as [they believe] American history is a tale of tyranny.”
More interestingly, he finds that contrary to many commentators, the Protestant elite is still in charge, but they simply are no longer Protestant. Their values, their sense of entitlement, their conviction that they have the most complete, progressive worldview, however, remain the preserve of the heirs of the WASP establishment, even in its dissipation.
The swallows, too, reflect the ‘60s conflagration, but in a different way. The term denotes the famous swallows of the San Juan Capistrano mission in California, to which the birds return every spring after a winter’s migration.
These swallows are Catholics, mostly, who grew up with the Church of John Paul II and his rock-star papacy. The swallows returned, in Mr. Bottum’s striking phrase, to the ruined chapels of Catholicism in the 1980s and 1990s. However, these Catholics were not, or not only, what Mr. Bottum calls tribal Catholics, holding their faith by ethnicity or neighborhood.
That era of Catholic life in America had passed away. Along with it went the rich cultural traditions and practices that Mr. Bottum evokes here with deep sympathy, even as he recognizes that their permanence was impossible in this new nation.
These younger Catholics were primarily focused on the faith’s intellectual attractions, finding in Catholicism a system of thought and reflection that can cure the world of its modern ills. The swallows thought with the collapse of the mainline Protestant denominations, the Church would take their place as a form of intellectual and moral ballast for a wayward America.
This continued the project started by thinkers such as John Courtney Murray and the now-deceased Richard John Neuhaus, who sought to reconcile Catholicism with American democracy. However, this was not to be. For a variety of reasons, “nearly every political position for which the public vocabulary of Catholic thought was thus used has ended up losing.”
Loss of the rich Catholic parish culture, the clerical abuse scandals and the still-strong reflex of American anti-Catholicism all contributed to this loss. The swallows perhaps underestimated the importance of culture to their project. They have produced many philosophers and theologians, and many essayists, but not many filmmakers, poets or novelists.
Although unintentionally, they neglected to observe Catholicism’s core cultural insight that mores and practices for the average person in the pew (or in the voting booth) are more important than pure logic.
So there is a hole in the center of American culture. Once filled by the mainline and not replaced by Catholicism, that space has been filled by a kind of extreme individualism; religion is what you make of it, or you can make nothing of it. However, a common civil religion, of a sort, has always defined the American polity, even within its broad wash of tolerance for people going their own way.
As Tocqueville and others have recognized, American religion and American exceptionalism have proceeded together. Now that they have been sundered, other choices present themselves. “An Anxious Age” explains how we can make the best of what confronts us.
Cows, like Rodney Dangerfield, don’t get no respect.
Methane is a useful and plentiful gas, like butane and propane, and it’s a natural resource, expelled from the digestive tracts of nearly every animal on the planet. Horses do it. So do faithful dogs and arrogant cats, mules, sheep, goats and bison. Even the noble pig does it. Impolite men do it. (Women never would.) But nobody does it like a cow.
It can be a powerful explosive. A barn in Germany exploded the other day when a cloud of methane was set off by a charge of static electricity, after 90 ill-mannered cows, doing what comes naturally, produced enough methane by burping and emitting in a rude and uncultured way.
The Associated Press reported that the methane explosion blew the roof off the barn, and one cow, perhaps a guilty party, suffered burns and bruises.
Methane explosions can be funny — little boys are particularly apt to be methane entertainers — but the White House wants to cut methane emissions from the dairy industry by 20 percent by the year 2020. The Environmental Protection Agency isn’t sure how to do it, but we can be sure a new tax will come with the solution.
It’s about global warming, naturally. Everything is, if you listen to the gasbag politicians, scientists and academics on the make. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday released a 32-volume, 2,600-page summary of its latest hysteria, warning of killer heat waves, deadly droughts and flooding.
The panelists said if earlier warnings deserved to be labeled “blazing red,” the new one is “deep purple.” They even invoked the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — War, Conquest, Famine and Death — from the Bible’s Book of Revelation, famously reprised by Grantland Rice as the Notre Dame backfield of 1922.
The panelists — no doubt, Bible scholars all — did not say whether they were Bible scholars or sports fans.
They nevertheless concluded that if we are all not already dead, we must expect the worst. “We’re not in an era where climate change isn’t some kind of future hypothetical,” says the lead author of the report. “Nobody is immune,” said another panelist. “We’re all sitting ducks,” said another. One connoisseur of pain went through the entire 32 volumes, and found the word “risk” on average 5 times per page.
The White House says it’s taking this tall tale as a “call for action” and Secretary of State John F. Kerry says that to pay it no mind would be “catastrophic.”
Blaming cows in a crisis of such magnitude reveals stunted vision, like punishing Vladimir Putin by taking away his parking place at the U.N. But cows are an easy target.
“Cows emit a massive amount of methane through belching, with a lesser amount through flatulence,” explains How Stuff Works, an Internet website. “Statistics vary regarding how much methane the average cow expels. Some experts say 100 liters to 200 liters a day … while others say it’s up to 500 liters a day.”
That’s a lot of liters, and comparable to the pollution pumped into the atmosphere by an automobile in a single day.
There’s no call to hurt a cow’s feelings about it, since cows are designed to “eructate” (the polite scientific word), though a good talking-to might not hurt.
President Obama has a very high opinion of his speechmaking, and he could make a personal appeal to the cows. High priests in Thailand preach an annual sermon to the assembled royal elephants, so why not a presidential sermon to the cows?
Cows have an excuse for rude behavior. They have an extra stomach, where microbes break down food and cause natural fermentation. Methane is a by-product.
This White House is particularly addicted to fantastical solutions to problems we never knew we had, so here’s a modest solution to the methane crisis. It solves two crises at once, eliminating excessive methane and creating jobs.
A large bureaucracy could be built to deal with the impolite cows, the bureau of Bovine Unified Rancid Proclivities, or BURP, in the bureaucratic lexicon.
Hundreds of thousands of environmentalists, layabouts avoiding useful work, would be tasked as counselors to the cows, to persuade them to mind their manners. Bossy and Elsie and the other contented cows in the barn might never be entirely housebroken.
Congressmen, climate scientists and academics pump more methane into the air than any cow ever could, and like cows, have never learned to mind their manners. But we would get another large bureaucracy, and isn’t BURP what Washington is all about?
Britain seeks to conduct an interesting surgical procedure. Extremely difficult to perform, it is the equivalent of separating Siamese twins.
Success or failure rests on where the twins are connected. Britain is the surgeon; the patient is a major religion. While the proposed surgical approach seeks to eliminate one twin suffering from an affliction of violence, the surgeon seems unaware the surviving twin suffers from the same affliction.
In May 2013, British soldier Lee Rigby was brutally attacked and slain in public view by two Islamic extremists on a London street during daylight hours.
Armed with knives, a cleaver and gun, they nearly decapitated Rigby, informing bystanders the killing was vengeance for Muslims killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by British soldiers.
Born in Britain, the killers were of Nigerian descent, raised as Christians but later converting to Islam as a result of radicalization by domestic anti-West Muslim clerics.
In the attack’s aftermath, British Prime Minister David Cameron created an antiterrorism task force to make recommendations on how to stop such radicalization of Britons by Muslim “hate preachers.”
Mr. Cameron told the House of Commons that lessons must be learned from the Rigby attack, adding, “When young men born and bred in this country are radicalized and turned into killers, we have to ask some tough questions about what is happening.
It is as if that for some young people there is a conveyor belt to radicalization that has poisoned their minds with sick and perverted ideas. We need to dismantle this process at every stage — in schools, colleges, universities, on the Internet, in our prisons, wherever it is taking place.”
One task force recommendation, while encouraging, provides only a partial solution to a religion suffering from a diagnosis of violence toward all nonbelievers.
The task force advises, and Mr. Cameron agrees, that Islam basically needs to be separated into “Islam, the ideology” and “Islam, the religion.” He reports it is the ideology that gives rise to “Islamist extremism.”
Mr. Cameron suggests that recognizing the dichotomy is important so as to create separation between the religion’s nonviolent and violent extremist sides — the latter to be criminalized and no longer allowed to disguise itself as a religion.
If the recommendation is implemented, it will give the government more authority to stop Islamic hate preachers, ban groups encouraging violence and disrupt Islamic extremist recruiting efforts. The approach mirrors one Britain used in 1998 to effectively disrupt antisocial behavior by hooligans and youth gangs.
While the hooligans’ commitment to antisocial behavior was a passing fancy, making dissuasion easier, the Islamic extremists’ commitment is a lifelong religious commitment not lending itself to the same.
Britain thinks its 2.7 million strong Muslim community to be mostly moderates — but these moderates will take the policy as a crusade against them.
A Jan. 8 opinion article in The Washington Times documents how deeply entrenched Islam already is within British society: Muslim gangs known as “Muslim London Patrols” can be seen abusing non-Muslim pedestrians entering a Muslim area shouting, “This is a Muslim area Islam is here, whether you like it or not. What we need is Shariah.”
Dozens of Shariah law courts freely operate within Britain, issuing domestic- and marital-law decisions complying with Shariah — but not British — laws, the former being very abusive toward women. Supposedly not legally binding, Muslims press for victims’ obedience.
Reaching tidal wave proportions, sex crimes against women by predatory Muslim taxi drivers have caused a British judge to issue a public warning that no woman should expect to be safe in cabs.
At least 2,500 children are confirmed victims of Muslim “child-grooming” gangs torturing, sexually abusing and trafficking girls as young as 11 — with this thought to just be the tip of the iceberg.
Additionally, hundreds of Britons fighting in Syria are being trained to return home to wreak violence.
Questions remain as to how far a government program aimed at silencing Muslim hate preachers will go. Will it criminalize the publication or distribution of materials that encourage Muslims to commit violence? If so, it will have a much bigger problem on its hands.
As indicated, the recommendation endeavors to separate one group — Muslims — into two: moderates favoring Islam’s peaceful support and extremists who do not. Yet both groups take their guidance from the same source, the Koran.
Reading the Koran, one better understands the basis for the Islamist’s extremist interpretation. The Koran is an indoctrination tool for extremism, calling on all Muslims to take violent action against non-Muslims. More than 100 such violent references appear in the holy book.
Regardless of one’s personal interpretation, the Koran’s mandate for all Muslims is clear: convert non-Muslims to Islam or slay them. Even moderate preachers teach this mandate to their flock. Will implementation still allow such teachings simply because the violence is being taught by so-called “moderates”?
Is there a peaceful component to the Koran? There is, but unfortunately, it conflicts with its violent one. Where such conflict exists, confused followers are taught to obey the latter (violent) interpretation.
In time, Britain will discover its surgical procedure for separating Islam’s Siamese twins — one violent, one supposedly not — cannot succeed.
Surgery may eliminate the violent twin by removing its religious cover. However, the procedure fails to recognize these twins are conjoined at the head and thus, share a genetic mindset committed to violence.
A flawed weapon -- Part 1
Army Senior Warrant Officer Russton B. Kramer, a 20-year Green Beret, has learned that if you want to improve your chances to survive, it’s best to personally make modifications to the Army’s primary rifle — the M4 carbine.
Warrant Officer Kramer has been dropped into some of the most ferocious battles in the war on terrorism, from hunting Islamists in the mountains of northern Iraq to disrupting Taliban opium dealers in dusty southern Afghanistan. He was awarded the Silver Star for his bravery in Operation Viking Hammer to crush the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam in Iraq.
The warrant officer said he and fellow Special Forces soldiers have a trick to maintain the M4A1 — the commando version: They break the rules and buy off-the-shelf triggers and other components and overhaul the weapon themselves.
“The reliability is not there,” Warrant Officer Kramer said of the standard-issue model. “I would prefer to use something else. If I could grab something else, I would.”
Documents obtained by The Washington Times show the Pentagon was warned before the Afghanistan and Iraq wars that the iterations of the M4 carbine were flawed and might jam or fail, especially in the harsh desert conditions that both wars inflicted.
U.S. Special Operations Command in 2001 issued a damning private report that said the M4A1 was fundamentally flawed because the gun failed when called on to unleash rapid firing.
In 2002, an internal report from the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey said the M4A1 was prone to overheating and “catastrophic barrel failure,” according to a copy obtained by The Times.
The test findings also carried ramifications for the regular Army. By 2002, soldiers were carrying thousands of the conventional, light-barrel M4, of which the service ultimately would buy nearly 500,000 and send them into long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The M4, at times, has been called upon to perform the same kind of rapid fire as the M4A1.
Colt Defense LLC of Hartford, Conn., which lost exclusive M4 design rights in 2009, has steadfastly defended the rifle through years of controversy. The Army contract went to another manufacturer last year.
Colt did not respond to requests for comment.
The gun manufacturer’s website states that “throughout the world today, the Colt’s M4 reliability, performance and accuracy provide joint coalition forces with the confidence required to accomplish any mission. Designed specifically for lightweight mobility, speed of target acquisition, and potent firepower capability, the M4 delivers. Proven in military combat operations all over the world, it is in a class by itself as a first rate combat weapon system.”
Colt’s monopoly on the Army’s weapon ended in February 2013, when the service awarded the M4 contract to FN Herstal, a global firearms manufacturer owned by Belgium’s regional Walloon government and the operator of a plant in South Carolina.
Colt had a good run. Since the mid-1990s, the Army has spent $600 million to buy more than a half-million carbines.
Critics say the SoCom and Army reports should have prompted the Army to pursue a better design in the early 2000s. The Army periodically improved the rifle, but did not conduct a comprehensive upgrade until a senator pressured the top brass years later.
In 2011, a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Army announced that it was converting M4s to the commando version with a heavier barrel and automatic trigger firing.
Some of the problems uncovered in 2001 and 2002, such as stoppages or jamming, became evident in the conventional firearm, most infamously in the 2008 Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan in which nine U.S. troops lost their lives.
“Realistically speaking, there’s been loss of life that is unneeded because there was a dumbing-down of the weapon system,” said Scott Traudt, who advised the Army on how to improve the M4 a decade ago.
Today, he is a special adviser at Green Mountain Defense Industries of Strafford, Vt., a Colt competitor that is manufacturing a new rifle that it hopes to sell to special operations.
Replaced by SCAR
In an independent overall survey of soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan, 20 percent reported that the M4 jammed during battle, and one-fifth of those said the stoppages made a “large impact.”
Faced with inaction by the Pentagon, soldiers such as Warrant Officer Kramer have taken matters into their own hands, even at the risk of discipline.
“There are enhancements you can do to your weapon to bring that reliability level up. While we’re not authorized to change our weapon or modify them in any manner, obviously there are some guys out there, including myself, we’ll add some things to our guns to bring that reliability level up,” he told The Times. “I’d rather face six of my peers in a court martial versus being 6 feet down.”
The M4 has brought consistent complaints about at least three shortfalls: At a 250-yard effective-kill distance, it lacks range; its 5.56 mm round lacks killing power; and the gun requires constant maintenance — cleaning and lubricating — in sandy conditions or is prone to jamming. Soldiers also complain that the magazine dents easily and the springs break.
The short-barreled weapon was suited for house-to-house fighting in Iraq. But in Afghanistan, its lack of range meant that the Taliban could operate at a safe distance.
Mr. Traudt said there are M4 failures in battle that do not get publicized. The fact that M4s broke down at Wanat was not known publicly until Army historians chronicled the battle and released their narrative in 2010. Even the general in charge of buying the gun said he had not heard of the problems until the press reported on the Army history.
There does not appear to be a comprehensive assessment of the M4 by any oversight agency — even though the weapon is the ground warrior’s most critical asset. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ auditor, has not assessed the M4 since it entered service in the mid-1990s. Likewise, the Pentagon’s top operational tester has not conducted live-fire tests of the M4 or the commando M4A1.
Alarmed after the 2001 test, SoCom developed its own gun, the Special Operations Forces Assault Rifle (SCAR), and handed it out to Army Rangers, Green Berets and Navy SEALs. Delta Force, the Army’s elite counterterrorism unit, bought a German-designed rifle. Sources say SoCom is not entirely happy with either gun and still relies on the M4A1.
“The 5.56 [caliber] SCAR was a failure from the viewpoint of the men,” said Ryan Zinke, a former member of SEAL Team 6, the elite terrorist-hunting unit.
A questionable standard
The M4 carbine’s Iraq-Afghanistan history is replete with spotty tests and performance, but also with praise from a devoted cadre who took it to war. The M4, a lighter, shorter-range version of the M16 rifle, is generally popular among the majority of combat-savvy soldiers who completed questionnaires, Army surveys show.
The Times interviewed two active-duty special operations troops who noted flaws but expressed love for the Colt-developed gun.
“The reality for all armies is that governments cannot afford to purchase a perfect assault rifle. It is simply cost-prohibitive,” said an Army Green Beret who is not authorized to speak on the record. “For its cost, I consider the M4 to be an amazing assault rifle. Between the M16 and M4, I’ve carried weapons from that family for nearly 30 years and would not trade them for any other fielded families of assault rifles.”
A Marine commando who served in Afghanistan praised the firearm but noted that it requires constant cleaning or becomes vulnerable to jamming. “The first thing you do back at camp is clean the gun,” he said.
Mr. Zinke, the former SEAL, said the M4A1 improved as its flaws were worked out.
“The M4 has become the standard special forces weapon system,” said Mr. Zinke. “The rail system has greatly improved over time and can easily accommodate advances in optics, illumination and targeting. The 5.56 mm M4 provides an appropriate trade-off between range and firepower. Improvements and diversity in ammunition types has also improved its versatility.”
Mr. Traudt, of Green Mountain Defense, said the military paid his company a decade ago for ideas for fixing the M4. He produced his company’s product, a 2001 technical report titled “Carbine extended life barrel and selected reliability improvement components identification.”
“The M4s were substandard,” he said. “The Army paid us to find a way to improve them, improve them cheaply with a little bit of extra engineering and metallurgical changes to make a gun that was markedly more reliable than the Colt weapon. The Army took our advice and did nothing with it.”
‘It’s virtually useless’
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, an artillery officer who earned the Silver Star in Vietnam, is a prominent M4 critic.
He said its 5.56-caliber bullet is too small and the gas-piston firing system is prone to stoppage. He said better weapons — the German Heckler-Koch G36 and Russian AK-74 (a version of the venerable AK-47) — use superior firing systems.
“Frankly, this whole thing is scandalous,” Gen. Scales said. “We send soldiers into close combat with lousy weapons and we’ve done it since World War II and nobody complains. It’s a national outrage.
“It has no penetrating power,” he said of the M4. “It’s ineffective against vehicles, against bunkers. It’s ineffective against virtually anything except a man in the open. Put a flak jacket on the enemy and it’s virtually useless.”
The Army believes it is answering critics such as Gen. Scales with a 5.56 mm round — the “green” lead-free M885A1 introduced in 2010. The ammunition, the Army contends, has more penetration power and longer effective range to kill the enemy.
Gen. Scales also asks why the Army issues only one model of conventional carbine.
“More soldiers are killed because of small-arms engagement than air-sea battle, air-to-air combat,” he said. “There is a difference between breaking down doors in Baghdad and fighting in the open, flat terrain of Afghanistan. One deserves a heavy bullet with longer range. One deserves to be light and nimble and maneuverable inside of buildings.”
In 2009, eight years into the war, an Army officer wrote a study making that point.
“Open source reports from Afghanistan since 2001 reveal that soldiers are engaging the enemy at ranges from contact distance to beyond the maximum effective range of the M4 carbine,” wrote Maj. Thomas P. Ehrhart, who at that time was attending the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. “Many comments focus on the ability of the soldier to hit his intended target or a failure of the bullet to achieve the desired effect.”
He summed up his findings by concluding that the M4 is not the best weapon for America’s longest war: “Operations in Afghanistan frequently require United States ground forces to engage and destroy the enemy at ranges beyond 300 meters. While the infantryman is ideally suited for combat in Afghanistan, his current weapons, doctrine, and marksmanship training do not provide a precise, lethal fire capability to 500 meters and are therefore inappropriate.”
Troublesome test reports
The first second-guessing on the M4 occurred inside the military in 2000, when U.S. Special Operations Command, in conjunction with gun specialists at Naval Sea Systems Command, conducted an exhaustive evaluation of its version — the heavier-barrel M4A1. At the time, SoCom had no idea it was testing a critical weapon on the eve of two major land wars that would thrust commandos into constant combat.
With SEALs and Green Berets in mind, testers subjected the carbine to the kind of constant barrel-burning fire in harsh conditions that would erupt in Iraq and Afghanistan.
SoCom’s private study called the M4A1 carbine “fundamentally flawed.” Upon firing, the bolt opened and attempted to extract a cartridge case that was stuck to the chamber because of pressure from the fired round. The gun can be kept at “reasonable levels of reliability” if subjected to “intense maintenance,” the report said.
The study also mentioned “alarming failures of the M4A1 in operations under harsh conditions and heavy firing.” It blamed six factors, including spare parts shortages and a “decline in quality control along with mass production.”
The report said that at a conference of joint special operations forces — SEALs, Rangers and Delta Force — the warriors “identified multiple operational deficiencies inherent to the M4A1” including reliability, safety and accuracy.”
Barrels can become loose and “become inaccurate.”
Still, the SoCom report said, the M4A1 “essentially meets the needs of conventional Army users.”
Months later, the Army’s Armament Technology Facility, part of the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, conducted its own study of the M4A1.
The 2002 report sent by the facility’s chief to Special Operations Command told of “reliability problems related to the failure to extract and eject casings, broken bolts, failure to function in arctic and over-the-beach (surf zone, surface and subsurface swimmer) environments,” according to a copy obtained by The Times.
“The M4A1 has also experienced cook-off [premature ammunition explosion] after a relatively few numbers of rounds have been fired at a high rate of fire,” it said. “Catastrophic barrel failure has also been experienced after a relatively low number of rounds have been fired.”
Preventing jamming
The Times asked Special Operations Command why it continued to distribute the M4A1.
“The M4A1 and M4 Carbines have served our forces well during more than a decade of sustained combat,” said Navy Capt. Kevin Aandahl. “The Army has improved the M4A1/M4 significantly over the past 12 years. The Army developed a heavy barrel and placed it in production in 2002. In addition, the M4 and M4A1 have received improvements to the trigger assembly, extractor spring, recoil buffer, barrel chamber, magazine and bolt. These upgrades addressed the issues raised in the 2002 report.”
Capt. Aandahl said the command on its own has fielded new gun parts to “improve the M4A1 capability to meet USSOCOM requirements for close-in, urban operations and room-clearing types of engagements that require this type of weapon.”
The same year Picatinny weighed in, the Marine Corps conducted its own testing of the conventional M4. The Corps infantryman’s main rifle was then, and is today, the longer-range, heavier-barrel M16.
The Army Times, an independent Gannett newspaper, later reported that the “M4 malfunctioned three times more often than the M16A4.”
To Mr. Traudt and other M4 critics, the testing should have prompted the Army to rethink the design as thousands of the carbines were about to be shipped overseas.
Mr. Traudt said he thinks the jamming problems encountered by a significant segment of troops over the past decade could have been avoided if special operations continued developing Green Mountain’s Reliability Product Improvement Kit.
The kit was tested at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Ind., in 2001 and at Picatinny in 2002. It included replacing the extractor spring, ejector spring, gas tube and gas plug with more heat-resistant ones, and moving to a one-piece, four-coil system that was engineered from more thermally durable materials to make the gun function better.
“An M4A1, when equipped with those parts, will fire continuously on full-automatic magazine after magazine until its barrel disintegrates,” Mr. Traudt said. “In our tests, M4A1 barrel failure occurred at 1,375 rounds. A normal Army M4A1 is out of action at 840 shots fired when equipped with its standard, metallurgically and technologically antiquated parts — and this isn’t even barrel failure. It’s gas system or bolt failure.”
At the time of the tests, internal reports by SoCom and Picatinny said the M4A1 was terribly flawed and not suited for commando missions.
One person on Capitol Hill eventually took notice. By 2007, enough anecdotal evidence had poured in from the wars to prompt Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, to launch a campaign for the Army to find a new rifle.
“Considering the longstanding reliability and lethality problems with the M16 design, of which the M4 is based, I am afraid that our troops in combat might not have the best weapon,” Mr. Coburn wrote to the Army in April 2007. “A number of manufacturers have researched, tested and fielded weapons which, by all accounts, appear to provide significantly improved reliability.”
The senator fought a lonely battle the next five years. No other lawmaker joined his campaign for a better basic rifle, but in the end, he forced the Army to change.
Army cover-up? -- Part 2
A former Army historian who chronicled the infamous Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan, where nine U.S. soldiers died after their M4 carbines jammed, tells The Washington Times that his official account was altered by higher-ups to absolve the weapons and senior officers.
M4 critics have long pointed to the Afghanistan battle on July 13, 2008, as evidence that the rifle’s design was flawed. They cite reports from soldiers on the ground that their guns overheated and jammed that day.
But the gun’s supporters have pointed to a single sentence in the official Wanat history issued in 2010 by the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. It blamed the gun’s sustained rapid fire that day, not its design, for the malfunctions.
“This, not weapons maintenance deficiencies or inherent weaknesses in weapons design, was the reason a number of weapons jammed during the battle,” the sentence read.
Higher-ups inside Army command edited that sentence into the history, the report’s author says.
“That was not my conclusion,” said Douglas R. Cubbison, a former Army artillery officer and principal Wanat history author. “That was the Combat Studies Institute management that was driven from the chief of staff’s office to modify findings of that report to basically CYA [cover your ass] for the Army. You know how that works.
“Other soldiers have informally told me of similar problems they had with the M4 at high rates of fire,” said Mr. Cubbison, who is now curator of the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum.
Higher-ups made other changes, such as removing much of the historian’s criticism of senior officers for not better preparing the outpost for an attack.
“The Army tried to manipulate that study after it was basically done. They significantly changed things to a classic CYA,” Mr. Cubbison said.
Lt. Col. James Lowe, a spokesman at Fort Leavenworth, said the Army sticks by the changes it has made.
“The way that our studies are done, it’s a staff process,” he said. “And they disagreed with some of his conclusions about the weapons, and they firmly believe that the analysis supports what’s actually in the report.”
M4 critics say exonerating the M4 at Wanat follows a pattern: The Army vigorously defends its front-line rifle in public; behind the scenes, it works to correct its flaws.
The Times reported Thursday that documents it obtained show the Pentagon was warned as early as 2001 and 2002 that the M4A1 carbine — the commando version — had flaws that made it more likely to jam in desert conditions.
The editing to absolve the M4 was important because Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, was waging a campaign to convince the Army that the gun was faulty and needed replacing.
Critics said Mr. Cubbison’s history showed the gun was not designed for America’s longest war, in which triggers, magazines and pistons must withstand sand and be called on to unleash rapid fire.
An interesting footnote is that, until the history was first leaked in 2009 and published a year later, no one had reported publicly that multiple M4s failed soldiers that day. A lengthy TV documentary on Wanat never broached the subject.
Mr. Cubbison said the history spoke for itself and did not need changes by managers.
“It was also not the assessment of numerous soldiers at Wanat,” he said.
Unlike Desert Storm, a war fought mostly with planes and armor, counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan put rifles to the ultimate test in a series of fire fights, year in, year out, making the M4 the soldier’s most important weapon.
Failure in the heat of battle
The history recounts in detail the day a Taliban force assaulted a combat outpost in Wanat in the Nuristan province of northeastern Afghanistan. Manned by 49 U.S. soldiers, including 40 paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, the outpost sat in a bowl surrounded by mountains from which the soldiers predicted in homemade videos that they would be attacked one day like sitting ducks.
Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips, a seasoned combatant who had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, burned out three M4s trying to defend a mortar position.
“In particular, the M4s experienced difficulty maintaining such a rate after the barrels got excessively hot. When that occurred, the weapons would jam, as happened to Phillips,” the history said.
These soldiers were experiencing the types of weapon failures found by testers in 2001 and 2002.
“Six years later, we can’t fix a known problem in the middle of a war,” Mr. Cubbison told The Times.
Spc. Chris McKaig told of firing from a crow’s nest as a comrade, its only other inhabitant, was gunned down.
“My weapon was overheating,” he said. “I had shot about 12 magazines by this point already and it had only been about a half-hour or so into the fight. I couldn’t charge my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot, so I got mad and threw my weapon down.”
The historians wrote that “most of the weapons that jammed at Wanat were M4 carbines.”
Still, they concluded it was not the M4’s fault.
In the official Army history, the full management edit — not performed by the authors — reads: “The M4 was the basic individual weapon carried by U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan and was not designed to fire at the maximum or cyclic rate for extended periods. Enemy action and weapons dispositions forced the defenders to use their M4s in uncharacteristic roles. This, not weapons maintenance deficiencies or inherent weaknesses in weapons design, was the reason a number of weapons jammed during the battle.”
Rescinded punishments
Scott Traudt, a small-arms specialist whose company, Green Mountain Defense Industries, is manufacturing its own assault rifle, called the finding a whitewash.
“Fielding a battle rifle whose barrel blows up in sustained fire after only 490 rounds is criminal negligence,” he said. “[The] weapons failed because they were designed around some arbitrary, ‘average’ combat situation by somebody oblivious to the present and future high consumptive, mobile, asymmetric wars and insurgencies we face.”
Mr. Cubbison said there was talk inside and outside the Army that the soldiers were to blame for not maintaining their M4s.
“I can tell you, I guarantee you, weapons were cleaned in that platoon,” he said. “I’ve talked to just about every guy who was there. They knew it was a bad location. They expected to get hit and get hit hard. Nobody was going to neglect weapons maintenance when they’re expecting to be in the soup at any moment. Weapons cleaning wasn’t an issue.”
Mr. Cubbison said he has a contact inside a small-arms unit of Program Executive Office Soldier, the Army command that equips warriors.
“I know that those guys have done a lot of work on reviewing and evaluating the weapon and trying to figure out what the problem is with it,” he said.
Retired Army Col. David Brostrom lost his son, 1st Lt. Jonathan Brostrom, that day in Wanat village. After reading early post-action reports, he became convinced those soldiers were let down by superiors who failed to take basic steps to protect the outpost and heed intelligence reports. He pushed for further investigation, which led to an extensive U.S. Central Command report in June 2010.
It found that the company, battalion and brigade commanders were derelict in their duties. A four-star general disciplined three officers but withdrew the punishment after they provided additional information.
Col. Brostrom says today he should have pushed the inquiry to focus more attention on performance of the M4.
“Maybe it was my mistake. I didn’t focus on the jamming,” he said. “I knew about the gun, and I knew it wasn’t great. It took a lot of fire discipline among your soldiers to keep the gun working.
“Because they were so close to the enemy, some were just sticking their weapons above the sandbags and spraying and praying. Putting the weapons on automatic and letting it go.
“A little bit of dirt in that thing, it won’t sustain that high rate of fire at all. The barrel gets hot and everything melts in the dang thing. They were firing their weapons trying to save their lives and just about everything jammed.”
Magazine malfunctions
Col. Brostrom said he does not know whether some M4s jammed after limited fire while others quit after rapid automatic rounds. He does know that by the time his son made his way to the outpost under intense fire, virtually all the weapons had shut down. A corporal had no working gun when Lt. Brostrom arrived.
The corporal “jumped down to the lower step and tried to go after them with his bare hands. They shot him point-blank in the chest,” he said.
The Taliban shot his son multiple times.
“I know now if the weapons were better and they would not have jammed, there would be more soldiers alive, maybe even my son,” Col. Brostrom said.
Chief Warrant Officer Tyler Stafford knew the M4 had drawbacks months before a wave of rocket-propelled grenades hit the Wanat outpost that day.
Then-Spc. Stafford had experienced two gunbattles during which his M4 jammed because of what he considers a substandard 30-round magazine.
He contends that, while Army higher-ups say soldiers pushed the carbines beyond their firing capacity that day and burned out the barrels, faulty magazines could be the culprit in some of the stoppages.
“The Army never looked at the type of magazines that were used,” he said. “That’s what we found would cause a lot of failures. If you used the standard old Army tin magazines that had been used in a couple of deployments, they really wore down and would cause a lot of jams just because of failure to feed and the springs were worn out in them.
“They just don’t get replaced readily, and when they do, they still get replaced by a standard-issue magazine that just isn’t a very good magazine at all.”
To improve the M4 on the run, Chief Warrant Officer Stafford said, “A lot of us went out and bought our own magazines. They worked far better.”
Defending the carbine
Chief Warrant Officer Stafford has left the gritty job of infantryman for the world of Army aviation, flying AH-64 Apache helicopters.
Since the 2008 battle, he took the time to research the M4’s history — the spotty tests, the soldier surveys, the attempts to improve it — and compared the data with his own experiences.
His assessment: “It is my personal belief that the M4 is a substandard front-line weapon and lacks the reliability and firepower that many infantrymen are in need of.
“Everybody’s biggest problem with the M4 is that it’s such a high-maintenance weapon, that continually you have to keep it very, very clean, very well-oiled,” he said. “In the infantry world, that’s tough to do, especially when you’re living in the dirt and fighting every other day.”
Whatever the internal discussions, the Army has defended the rifle in public for more than a decade.
Lt. Col. Donald Peters, a spokesman at the Pentagon, said the service has made 41 improvements since 2001 that were among 90 engineering changes to the M4 and commando M4A1 since the gun was in development in the early 1990s.
The plan now is to revamp M4s into higher-performance M4A1s beginning this winter.
“The M4A1 the Army is currently producing has a slightly heavier barrel than the M4, which increases the weapons system’s ability to withstand heat and therefore gives it a greater sustained rate of fire,” Col. Peters said. “The M4A1 also has full auto capability and more consistent trigger pull, along with ambidextrous fire control.”
The Army often cites surveys to defend the M4. It questions every unit that returns from combat and finds that eight out of 10 like the gun.
The Center for Naval Analysis found the same results in a 2006 independent survey of 2,600 soldiers who had been in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But soldiers did complain about a lack of lethality. One of the major gripes was from retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, a highly decorated artillery officer.
Perhaps more important, 20 percent reported that the M4 had jammed during a firefight. Of those, 18 percent said the stoppage had a “large impact” in battle.
Put to the test
Gen. Scales said the problem with such surveys is that they do not focus on the soldiers who engaged in the most intense combat during which the M4 is fired and relied on the most.
“The people who use the M4 seriously, the close-combat soldiers, when they use it seriously for a Wanat, their vote is the same in these surveys as the kid who is a computer operator at Camp Victory,” he said. “So when you lump it all together, the whole thing seems to be perfectly fine.”
As for Chief Warrant Officer Stafford’s firsthand experience with M4 magazines, Gen. Scales said: “If my son were in the infantry, for his birthday I would buy him about 50 [German] Heckler and Koch magazines, not just for him, but for his buds. Why do we die for a dollar-and-seventy-cent item when a fighter plane costs $550 million?”
Exactly one year after Wanat, the Army began fielding what it said was an improved M4 magazine.
The survey numbers on jamming alarmed Mr. Coburn. He took on a large group of Army supporters — its huge following of lawmakers and staffers in Congress and retired top brass who sit on the boards of various munitions manufacturers — to advocate a better rifle.
By December 2007, the Army was testing the M4 against competitors at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
The competition matched the M4 against three European-designed assault rifles, all firing 6,000 rounds in sandstorm conditions. The three interlopers recorded 233 or fewer stoppages. The M4 racked up more than three times as many: 882, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The Army and manufacturer Colt Defense LLC later said the M4 had much fewer shutdowns and blamed the high count on M4s that were not combat-ready.
Next came the Army’s most extensive M4 review to date: a small-arms capabilities-based assessment. By January 2009, the Army was telling Congress that its rifles and machine guns, including the M4, had 25 “capability gaps,” including a need for greater lethality and for a gun that did not need constant cleaning and lubrication — in other words, what critics had been saying about the M4.
With the report completed, the Army embarked on a major M4 upgrade, though it contended the gun’s basic design remained sound.
Critics persisted. One was Sgt. Charles Perales, at the time stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C.
He wrote a letter published in Defense News:
“My unit — B Company, 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment — was deployed to Afghanistan from April 2005 to March 2006. While there, we were attached to Special Forces at Camp Tillman on the Afghan border. I saw first-hand what happens when your weapon jams up because of the harsh environments we have to call home there. An 18B weapons sergeant was shot in the face due directly to his weapon jamming. I just can’t believe that after things like this happen, the Army is still buying more M4s. Soldiers’ lives are on the line. Why is it a hassle to make an improvement that could save lives? The M4 isn’t a bad weapon; it just needs improvements. It’s about time people stop fighting to keep things the same and start moving toward a better weapon system.”
After the shootout
Green Berets have a method to prevent a “Wanat” from happening: They upgrade the rifle themselves.
Senior Warrant Officer Russton B. Kramer, a 20-year Green Beret, said he realized during training that the M4 was subject to malfunctions. Shells would not extract. Overheating. The gun got too dirty.
“It’s a maintenance queen,” he said. “It’s an incredibly finicky gun. You have to run it with the right amount of lubrication. You have to keep it clean. You’ve got to be kind of delicate with it to make it function right.”
But he never experienced jamming in battle because he took precautions — by performing unauthorized upgrades on the gun himself.
Senior Warrant Officer Kramer recalled the five-day battle of Operation Siege Engine. The military dropped five Special Forces teams into Afghanistan’s Helmand province in 2008 to take down a Taliban opium lab. While one group destroyed components, the others defended a perimeter against waves of Taliban.
“I don’t have time to perform maintenance,” he said. “I don’t have time to pull back to a safe perimeter and clean my gun. I may not have time to pull a little bottle of oil out of my pocket and fix my gun.
“If we don’t make these changes to our guns out there, I don’t feel like it’s going to be a reliable weapon,” he added.
Gen. Scales said he wants to see a debate in Washington on “Why does the world’s greatest superpower have less capable small arms than the enemy? For whatever reasons, we are perfectly happy to give soldiers and Marines crappy small arms and not pay any attention to it.”
Mr. Coburn tried to spark such a debate. He sent letters, gave interviews and delayed Pentagon appointments — all over the M4. The Army appeared to be on the edge of moving toward a more advanced carbine.
To find the next light, short-barreled rifle, the Army started a grand shootout in 2011 pitting some of the world’s most renowned rifle makers: Colt, which designed the M4, along with Beretta, Fabrique Nationale, Adcor Defense, Heckler & Koch, Remington and Lewis Machine & Tool.
By March 2103, the Army got a blunt warning from the Pentagon’s top fraud and waste investigator. Lynne Halbrooks, principal deputy inspector general, told a House panel that the Army could not guarantee the gun would be any better than the M4. She also said the service wanted to buy thousands of new rifles as its soldier force was shrinking.
The Army apparently got the message. When the smoke cleared in June, it scheduled a press conference to update the competition. The winner: no one. The M4 remained the champ, by default.
After the Army called off the competition, the Defense Department inspector general scolded the Army again — this time in a written report — for conducting the shootout. It said the service’s 2009 small-arms assessment did not identify a need for a new carbine, just an improved one.
“The final report stated that none of the solutions for meeting small-unit effectiveness, lethality, and survivability start with replacing the M4,” the report said. “As a result, the Army wasted $14 million on a competition to identify a source to supply new carbines it does not need.”
In the end, Mr. Coburn, who declined to be interviewed for this report, did not get soldiers a new gun. But he did prod the Pentagon to improve what it had.
“The senator fought a long battle to get the soldiers a better gun,” said Mr. Traudt. “The Army is powerful. It can close bases and send jobs elsewhere.”
On Sunday, the people of Switzerland approved a referendum that imposes restrictions on the number of foreigners allowed to live and work in their country despite an all-out opposition campaign on the part of the country’s political, social and economic establishment, as well as by every government of the European Union.
The Euro-American ruling class is up in arms at the result because the Swiss people decided to do things that the majority of people throughout Europe and America might like to do, but which the rulers in these pretend democracies prevent the people from doing.
There is no appealing a referendum in Switzerland because the people are “the sovereign” practically as well as theoretically. Now the Euro-American ruling class fears that the Swiss example might spread.
Because the people’s exercise of their sovereign power is the main lesson to be taken from Sunday’s events, let us look at what we might learn from Switzerland’s ballot.
The Swiss do not engage in isolationism or xenophobia. The country is made up of three major linguistic groups, and 27 percent of its population is made up of foreigners. It lives by foreign trade.
Nor do the Swiss question the need for, and desirability of, foreign workers or residents. However, unlike their self-appointed betters, they want to consider what limits may be consistent with maintaining their very identity.
To this end, the referendum merely authorized annual quotas for work permits and mandated preferential hiring for Swiss citizens. Substantively, no big deal.
The political class showed by its reaction that, like the Swiss voters themselves, it understands that the issue really is about who rules: Who is really the sovereign in modern European (and, one may add, American) society? Who is “sovereign,” the people or the political parties, the government bureaucracy, and those whose fortunes depend on them?
Zurich’s daily Neue Zurcher Zeitung thus summed up the fact that the issue goes well beyond immigration: “The Yes to the ‘Massive Immigration Initiative’ is a censure that is comparable to No to the European Economic Area.”
In short, as the Swiss people have done on previous occasions, they rejected the unanimous advice, entreaties, warnings and threats of the ruling class of their country, their continent and, indeed, the entire Euro-American establishment.
Just as in 1992 the Swiss people had rejected binding themselves to the common rules of the European Economic Area (which morphed into the EU), in 2014 they asserted their right to limit who comes into their country.
Unlike pretend democratic countries, Switzerland did this openly, upfront and, above all, by the expressed will of the people. In contrast, consider France, whose foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, used Switzerland’s vote as an excuse for accusing the country of wanting to “withdraw unto itself.”
This is the same France that by decree and contrary to treaty commitments, monitors its border with Italy to exclude migrants from Africa.
What the ruling class of Europe (and of America) fear is not that any country — much less a tiny one like Switzerland — might isolate itself. What they fear is that the people will express themselves.
Switzerland — so different in its obviously democratic constitution — is no different from other Western countries in that its traditional political parties have become largely indistinguishable from one another.
Indeed, whether in Bern, Paris, London, Rome or Washington, D.C., the traditional parties have formed a barely differentiated amalgam with the governing bureaucracies, big business and finance, the educational establishment and the media.
This oligopoly is an interest group unto itself. It legislates, executes and judges in its own interest. Except in Switzerland, the people cannot change the conditions of public life by voting for the opposition party.
Even in Switzerland, where real opposition has swelled the ranks of the People’s Party — the only one that is really different — the referendum is the only real means of popular resistance to the ruling class.
The results of referendums in tiny Switzerland deeply upset the Euro-American governing classes because they see in them the danger that haunts them. Yes, they have obviated the standard routes of opposition by amalgamating themselves into a mostly undifferentiated ruling party.
Yes, they hurl invectives of “extremism” at all political forces outside their orbit. Yes, they manipulate elections. Yes, they avoid or negate referendums. By eliminating differences among themselves, they have left the role of opposition free for the taking.
Throughout Europe, without exception, parties of the right are rising. Important as questions about their quality are, they are overshadowed in practice by the inescapable fact that they are, de facto, the alternative to ruling classes that are grossly, increasingly, irremediably unpopular.
Most unpopular is the European Union itself, and for the best of reasons; namely, that it underlines the nasty fact that modern government — the administrative state — is the negation of government of the people, by the people, for the people.
That is why the referendum in Switzerland, which America’s Founders called “our sister republic,” are so interesting.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Arkansas’ plan for expanding Medicaid by buying private insurance policies for the poor instead of adding them to the rolls was heralded as a model for convincing more Republican-leaning states to adopt a key part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
But now, as Republican lawmakers face election season and step up attacks on what they deride as Obamacare, the state that pioneered the private option is on the brink of abandoning it. The plan has lost two supporters in the Senate, leaving backers worried that they won’t have enough votes to keep it alive after the Legislature convenes Monday.
Rejecting the program could jeopardize the state’s budget and reverberate through other states considering similar options for expanding Medicaid as the federal government wants.
”The ramifications are way beyond Medicaid and they’re way beyond the people who would now go uncovered and they’re way beyond the hospitals that would be severely impacted,” Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, told reporters. “The ramifications are huge, and the Legislature will have to figure that out.”
Narrowly approved by the Republican-led Legislature last year, Arkansas’ plan uses federal money to purchase the private insurance for those newly eligible under the new health care law. Republicans believed private insurers would administer the benefits more efficiently than the Medicaid program, which they consider bloated. Republicans also saw it as a step toward finding more options around Medicaid.
”Prior to Arkansas you had two options: expand Medicaid or don’t,” said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. “With Arkansas going to the table, other states saw there’s now a third option.”
More than 83,000 people signed up and now have coverage through Arkansas’ plan. Thousands more are expected to enroll.
Other states have pursued similar compromises, with Iowa receiving federal approval for an expansion modeled in part on Arkansas and Pennsylvania exploring a similar plan. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, wants to expand Medicaid and is considering Arkansas’ approach. Overall, 26 states have agreed to expand Medicaid while the rest, mostly Republican-dominated, have not.
In winning approval, Beebe compared the expansion to federal highway funding, saying that Arkansas taxpayers help pay for it so they should benefit.
But the takeover of a vacant state Senate seat by a Republican who vowed to kill the private option and a reversal by a former Republican supporter have threatened the thin margin of support.
Republican John Cooper, the new member, and others have said they don’t believe the state can afford the 10 percent share it will eventually have to pay under the new federal law.
“I think it’s going to be more detrimental to our state in the long term,” Cooper said.
The Republican fire aimed at the health overhaul has also intensified as the 2014 elections approach.
“I now see it is leading us in the wrong direction,” said Republican Sen. Missy Irvin, an earlier supporter who has changed her position.
Beebe, who has ramped up his speeches and private lobbying in an attempt to save the program, said that losing more than $915 million in federal funding for the expansion would be calamitous for the budget. He said the state is also counting on spending $89 million less to compensate hospitals for treating patients without insurance, and that the lost savings could mean serious cuts in other state priorities.
Human Services Director John Selig warned of damage to the state insurance market.
“If the private option goes away, I think you could see carriers leave Arkansas and you could see insurance rates rise for everyone,” Selig said.
Republican opponents are skeptical of the consequences.
“That money wasn’t there when we grew government, and I think we’d be ok if we cut it back,” Sen. Bart Hester said earlier this month.
The suspense about the expansion’s future has rattled some of those who have signed up for the coverage.
Lori Latch, 35, said she was looking forward to having health insurance for the first time since she was a teenager. She and her husband, who is self-employed, have racked up more than $5,000 in bills for emergency room visits.
“Financially, hopefully it’s going to mean that we’re not going to be in debt anymore,” said Latch, 35. “I can’t get a car or anything because of medical bills.”
Health experts are watching to see whether Arkansas’ decision affects other states weighing a similar expansion.
“I do think it would have national repercussions if it were defunded,” said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “I think a lot of it will come down to the perception why it happened and we’ll just have to see how it plays out.”
The Virginia legislature years ago banned governors from donating excess inauguration funds to political causes, but that hasn’t stopped Gov. Terry McAuliffe from finding a way to route $211,000 from his inaugural fund back to his election campaign and the Virginia Democratic Party, disclosure records show.
Mr. McAuliffe’s aides say the two $78,000 checks his inaugural committee sent to his campaign committee along with a $55,000 check to the state Democratic Party were expenditures for the rental of email lists. But campaign finance analysts told The Washington Times that the costs of the email rentals appeared to be exorbitant, and critics suggest the transactions look like an end run around the state prohibition.
“It’s Terry McAuliffe,” said Bradley A. Smith, a Federal Election Commission member during the George W. Bush administration. “It’s probably legal, but it may make you raise an eyebrow.”
Mr. Smith said such transactions sometimes occur to abolish a committee’s debt or to get a campaign some assets.
“Here, you have the campaign maybe trying to retire debt or whatever, so they may actually be paying too much for the list,” he said. “My gut is that if somebody really wanted to prove this, it might be worth snooping around a little bit more.”
Mr. McAuliffe’s campaign defended the transactions in November and December as legitimate expenditures to invite people to Mr. McAuliffe’s inauguration in Richmond. The payments were listed in the most recent report his inaugural fundraising committee filed.
Republicans, who tried unsuccessfully to defeat Mr. McAuliffe in the November election by focusing on ethics issues related to his earlier career as a major political fundraiser for Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, jumped on the revelations.
“Color me surprised that Terry McAuliffe is involved with what looks like a highly questionable decision involving money and politics,” said Garren Shipley, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Virginia. “Whether it’s renting out the Lincoln Bedroom, cashing in on Global Crossing as the company tanked, or investing in a program state officials worried was a visa-for-sale scheme, Terry McAuliffe continues to give Virginians every reason to be skeptical of his actions.”
The question of how leftover inaugural funds are spent became a big issue in Virginia in 2006 after Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, used $400,000 of his inaugural funds as seed money to form a political action committee. Mr. Kaine raised nearly $3.2 million for his 2006 inauguration and contributed roughly $80,000 to Democratic candidates out of the inaugural fund. The total included donations made in the period after his election and before he was sworn in.
A Republican-led General Assembly subsequently tightened the laws governing the purposes for which inaugural funds can be spent. Now, excess funds can only be returned to contributors or donated to charity. Former Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican and a target of ethics charges for gifts he and his family reportedly received while he was in office, donated more than $100,000 in surplus inaugural funds in 2010 to a handful of charities that included a museum, a charter school and some nonprofit organizations.
A full accounting of Mr. McAuliffe’s inaugural funds is not due until March 15, so it is unclear whether any additional funds were transferred past the reporting period that ended Dec. 31. Committees are required to report contributions of more than $10,000, and a tally of the money he received solely from large donors shows the Democrat having collected at least $1.7 million.
Campaigns and political action committees routinely farm out email lists to interested parties — Mr. McAuliffe in the course of his campaign was able to take advantage of President Obama’s coveted campaign list, run by the Democratic National Committee.
Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College in Maine, said sharing email lists is common in politics.
“It’s not that atypical. In order to make use of the list, oftentimes a list will be purchased by another entity. Typically, that’s where you would see the common use of a list.”
The real issue becomes the cost of the list, which depends on various factors, he said.
A spokeswoman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that studies campaign finance and political ethics, agreed that list rentals are common but that Mr. McAuliffe appeared to have paid a lot.
The only examples a researcher with the center could find in 2012 of candidates placing that kind of value on their lists were Mr. Obama, who rented his list to the Democratic National Committee, and Republican Herman Cain. In Mr. Cain’s case, however, the former presidential candidate offered the list as an in-kind donation from his PAC to his campaign committee — meaning no money was exchanged.
The highest price one campaign committee paid another for a list was Obama for America, spending $62,782 on lists from Hillary Clinton for President, Sarah Flocken of the Center for Responsive Politics said in an email.
“I think that number’s high,” political consultant Kurt Luidhart said of the money Mr. McAuliffe paid for the list. “It also strangely doesn’t make sense in the context [of] the situation. If you’re trying to get an email blast out, there are a lot cheaper ways to get that out.”
Mr. Luidhart, who works with lists of national-level Republicans, said it typically costs a set amount every time an email blast is sent — meaning Mr. McAuliffe’s inaugural committee theoretically pegged the value of his campaign committee’s list at $78,000 or thereabouts.
“I would imagine Terry McAuliffe’s list is good [but] he’s running for governor, not president,” Mr. Luidhart said.
By comparison, the campaign lists for 2012 Republican presidential contenders Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum went for $25,000 — and Mr. Santorum’s had more than 100,000 donors, he said.
“Friend to friend, I might have said, ‘Well, I might charge the actual cost to blast out an email’ — not market rate plus 30 percent,” he said.
The U.S. Green Building Council, the controversial nonprofit whose green building standards are mandated by 14 federal agencies, as well as 34 state governments, and in excess of 440 municipalities, is the cornerstone of a widespread taxpayer shakedown.
This week, the shakedown expanded when the council began applying changes to its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, adding new categories such as climate change, human health and biodiversity.
These amendments would be an occasion for celebration if they erased the program’s legion failings but instead, the new changes only make the existing problems more pronounced.
According to a recent performance analysis conducted by the Washington Examiner, program compliance has few energy rewards and steep financial burdens. In New York, the paper found the LEED-certified buildings actually consumed more energy per square foot than conventional buildings.
It’s not just New York where Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design’s vaunted green buildings are failing to outperform conventional structures.
A study of 11 U.S. Navy-owned buildings in January revealed four certified green structures were outperformed by noncertified structures; three more were at parity; and four others so narrowly outperformed conventional buildings their margin of energy savings were so insignificant they couldn’t earn points in the LEED program.
The U.S. General Services Administration, which serves as the landlord for the federal government by managing its various properties, estimates that each federal project in which LEED certification is pursued costs the taxpayers an additional $150,000.
It’s not just when Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is followed by the government that taxpayers bear its brunt, though. The program gets you coming and going.
Merely by installing bike racks and reminding guests to reuse towels, the Palazzo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas won certification. In return, it received a $27 million tax break.
How has U.S. Green Building Council managed to become the government’s de facto green-building czar? Pretty simple: the promise of LEED compliance is a powerful one — that through intelligent design and construction, buildings can have a lesser impact on our environment and even cost less over the long run. However, its practice falls far short.
Not only does LEED-certification not lead to more energy-efficient buildings, the standards are also detrimental to local businesses who are shut out of government contracts because their products don’t meet the program’s arbitrary product approval.
Take, for instance, the case of Lampe & Malphrus, a manufacturer of Southern pine lumber in North Carolina. The company, which has its lumber certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), is unable to provide lumber to LEED projects because those standards only recognize lumber that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
Instead of supporting responsibly sourced U.S. timber, LEED compliance forces government builders to look elsewhere — mainly FSC-rich Russia — for lumber. Ross Lampe, half of the Tar Heel State timber company’s namesake, wrote of his struggles earlier this year:
“For the last several years, we have not been able to sell or supply lumber to state building and renovation projects. The reason for our getting blocked from these projects is that the state enforces ‘LEED’ standards for builders and businesses seeking to participate. LEED affects the timber industry, as it only awards sourcing credits to wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. A minuscule number of Southern pine lumber companies have received FSC certification in Southern states, none of which are headquartered in North Carolina.”
Forest Stewardship Council certification immediately excludes wood produced in 75 percent of America’s certified forests. In fact, 90 percent of the approved wood for LEED buildings comes from foreign suppliers.
Not only is our government’s insistence on Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design compliance wasting tax dollars and failing to positively affect environmental impact, but it’s threatening American industry simply to pacify environmental radicals.
“Going green” is making the government ledger go red. This order of waste and taxpayer abuse is a feat even for the Obama White House, and it’s high time it ended.
First of three parts
Ninety-seven percent of the bus and train operators at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are black, with only six white women out of more than 3,000 drivers, according to Metro documents — a lack of diversity at one of the region’s largest employers that has led to an acknowledgment of failure in affirmative-action documents and spawned a series of lawsuits.
The homogeneity, interviews with dozens of current and former Metro workers indicated, is a proxy to a clubby culture of favoritism in which merit has little to do with promotions, and accountability, such as noting safety violations, is a career death knell. In typical examples, court and Metro records show, a black man who spent eight years in prison for dealing PCP was promoted to a high-level management position soon after his release, and whites in the same positions as blacks with far less seniority are inexplicably paid less.
With Metro’s budget chronically strained and reports of mismanagement coming more regularly than trains, interviews and internal records depict a likely root: an environment in which hardworking employees are actively excluded and those who rise are those willing to do the bare minimum — never causing a stir by flagging rampant safety violations, reporting malfeasance or proposing improvements.
“When the accident happened in 2009, I called a supervisor and said, ‘Is this the one we all dreaded?’ The way workers do their jobs, we all knew it was a matter of time. … The inept get promoted, and the capable get buried. Smart people were put in the corner, ostracized and given nothing to do,” said Christine Townsend, who sued Metro for discrimination and won.
It is a culture in which a white male engineer near completion of a Ph.D. was passed over for a management position in favor of a black man who was barely literate, multiple staffers said.
“The average rider wouldn’t believe the things that go on. There are so many easy things we could do to make the system better,” a station manager said. “But they’d never put me in charge because they know I’d make sure others actually did their jobs. They don’t want change. It’s go along to get along.”
Metro is a quasi-public agency that receives funding from the federal government, Maryland, Virginia and local jurisdictions to operate a regional bus and rail transportation system in the national capital area, but is not beholden to rules that apply to fully governmental entities. With a $2.5 billion operating and capital budget for fiscal 2012, Metrorail serves 86 stations and has 106 miles of track, while Metrobus serves the nation’s capital with 1,500 buses.
Metro’s affirmative-action plan notes that the 1.4 percent of its bus and train operators who are Hispanic and the 25 percent who are female of any race are “less than reasonably expected.” It does not make note of the 1.5 percent who are white.
Even in entry-level occupations typically dominated by Hispanics, there are virtually none at Metro. Only one laborer out of 67 is Hispanic; of 540 landscapers, carpenters and cleaners, only 22 are Hispanic. In the national capital region, Hispanics make up 13 percent of adults and blacks comprise 25 percent; white women constitute 29 percent.
“The odds of such a disparity occurring by chance are statistically infinitesimal,” Ronald A. Schmidt, a lawyer representing 12 white women exploring a class-action lawsuit, wrote in a 2003 letter. “There appears to be an entrenched network of African-American employees at WMATA that is able to steer jobs, promotion, training and other career enhancing benefit to persons of their own racial or ethnic group.”
The average Metro worker had a $60,000 salary, which rises to $69,000 including overtime. That is more than 71 percent of area residents who had an income in 2010, including 62 percent of whites, census records show.
No recourse
White and Hispanic employees who allege discrimination have found a deaf ear at Metro’s civil rights office, whose 17 employees are black. Until at least 1999, that office tracked complaints via a handwritten ledger on a series of taped-together sheets of paper, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times. The system “made determining statistics impossible,” said a civil rights employee from the time.
In recent months, such antiquated record keeping has allowed employees to steal thousands of dollars that electronic systems easily could have detected — and in more than one case, a culture of complicity has kept prosecutors from trying those who were caught because they feared no clean witness or proper records could be found.
“There’s a strong sense of nepotism, and it is the culture of Metro,” the civil rights employee said. “It was more of a buddy system than it was merit-based.”
Metro did not respond to requests for information about workforce demographics. Asked about a court case in which a woman alleged she was sexually harassed by a man about whom Metro had received complaints from multiple women but did nothing, and that many workers are not given sexual-harassment training, spokesman Dan Stessel would not deny the charges but pointed to the agency’s legal response, which also did not deny the charges but noted the statute of limitations had expired.
First-line managers
Of a dozen senior supervisors overseeing the rail division in 2007, 10 were black and two were white, and five black supervisors, all with less than a year of tenure in the position, were paid more than both whites, who had more seniority — one with 20 years — personnel records obtained by The Times show.
The group making more money includes senior supervisors such as Orlando Terrell King, who has been charged with reckless endangerment and fraudulently attempting to obtain a driver’s license, according to Maryland state records. Mr. King, who is paid $62,536, was promoted by Metro to oversee those who drive trains carrying thousands of passengers daily.
Also rising rapidly to senior supervisor was Robbie O. McGee, who spent eight years in federal prison for felony distribution of PCP while on probation for another crime. He received five pay increases at Metro in two years.
“There’s a problem with the first-line supervisors and possibly above actually enforcing basic discipline. When a supervisor walks into a kiosk on Sunday when the game’s on and asks where’s the TV and brings a plate of food in, there’s a disconnect,” a former union representative said.
The personnel record of the white male senior supervisor, Robert Fish, meanwhile, indicates strict standards and scrutiny, including suspensions and severe reprimands for minor infractions such as possession of a covered cup of coffee.
Anti-elitism
Ms. Townsend had a college degree and a decade of experience as a schoolteacher when she was passed over for a training job in favor of a man who had taken some community college courses and, it turned out, could barely write a sentence.
She sued Metro and won, but retired from the rail department in 2005 after another personnel decision that seemed to have nothing to do with merit. By that time, she had earned a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. But when a position as head of training arose, it went to someone whose most relevant experience was as secretary at a community college, she said.
It is not just that mediocrity is overlooked. Dozens of employees whom Metro rules forbid from speaking to the media said: Diligence is discouraged, because anywhere one looked was something that needed to be fixed — and change, especially when it involved work, was anathema to senior Metro line workers.
For example, Ms. Townsend said, by 2004, many trains were operating without radios in defiance of federal rules. Other drivers confirmed that was common knowledge. So she authored a study and included a recommendation that Metro start substituting cellphones.
“I was read the riot act: ‘You had no right to compile these statistics,’ even though it was my job. They didn’t want people showing problems,” she said.
Her capacity as trainer gave her a vantage to long-term impact of the workplace culture.
“Some new people, especially earlier on, would come in so enthusiastic, like little boys who liked to have toy trains. But when you put them out there with a supervisor who didn’t care about anything except covering his butt, it killed their enthusiasm” she said.
Pencil-whipping
Days after a Red Line accident killed nine in July 2009, Brenda Whorton drew the line.
“I told them I wasn’t going to pencil-whip for them,” she said, referring to a technique so common in Metro culture that there is a term for it. “It means fudging it: like marking down that a motor’s according to specs when it’s not.” It is common for midnight-shift workers to “lock the doors and go to sleep, because they’ve got other jobs,” and equally common for supervisors to turn a blind eye, she said, leading to pencil-whipping of the inspections they’re supposed to be doing — and delays for morning riders.
“Anyone who blew the whistle or caused any trouble, when pick time came — every six months you pick shifts — you’d be moved. They spend more time trying to manipulate this stuff than they do doing their job.”
Dozens said white workers, especially women, were openly subject to racist and sexist remarks without repercussion — behavior that drove many targets to seek transfers or leave the agency. All said they have been inexplicably passed over hundreds of times for promotions to positions such as station manager while others with less seniority passed them by.
“I was the only white woman in car maintenance out of 338, and they made my life miserable,” Ms. Whorton said, adding that colleagues once electrified a track circuit on which she was working and laughed. “Nothing happened to them.”
Union dues and don’ts
In its affirmative-action plan, Metro management contends that union policies dictate who receives jobs, stifling ability to provide diversity. “Unless these protected groups are already employed in the collective bargaining food chain, good faith efforts to transfer or promote them are non-existent. This scenario further creates a vicious cycle with more of the same groups being promoted or transferred,” managers wrote.
Most workers are required to join the Amalgamated Transit Union 689, and a curious arrangement allows many managers to retain their affiliation with the union, creating an alliance in which disciplining poor-performing workers is discouraged.
“To write someone up within the 689, you just don’t do that,” Ms. Whorton said.
The union has acknowledged that many employees are aware of safety issues and theft and do not report them because of a culture in which retaliation is common. It says that’s impropriety from management and that the union will work to protect whistleblowers if they ask.
Union President Jackie L. Jeter noted that the union isn’t in charge of hiring and said that whites, women and Hispanics must not be applying for jobs.
“If Caucasians or Hispanics want to put in for jobs, they have ample opportunity to apply — and once they become bus operators, they can go work in Southeast,” she said.
White women say those words are uttered repeatedly to those who apply for jobs and those in their first years, but that it is more of an attempt at intimidation than a reality.
Union leaders sometimes invoke racial language, including Mrs. Jeter, who heads the $20 million union with her husband, Roland Jeter, second in command. Graphics on the union’s website have depicted her in her role as union president alongside photos of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
A flier circulated as Mrs. Jeter was running for election claimed she worried that “too many whites might end up in charge. She also told me she was sick and tired of hearing about the Latino Caucus.”
When a worker says he or she has been treated unfairly by Metro, the union membership holds a vote to decide whether to defend the worker, typically obtaining reductions in punishment from management for or voting to take to arbitration more than 40 complaints monthly.
Court records show that a white woman, Denise Brooks, was fired after her wallet was stolen from an area accessible only to employees. She reported the theft, then asked to modify the report to better reflect the contents of her wallet after checking bank records. A supervisor said the update amounted to lying and fired her, a move that ultimately was overturned.
When Mrs. Brooks brought problems about the way she was being treated to the union, records show, the membership voted twice to deny her grievances.
Court records show many of those who get into trouble at Metro for fighting, drugs and the like and have disciplinary actions reversed at the union’s behest, meanwhile, already have documented track records of similar behavior. A newsletter boasts, for example, that the union won reinstatement with back pay for a train operator if she completed a drug class. But a search of her name in criminal records indicates that far from this being an isolated incident, the woman has a well-documented drug and theft problem.
“That was a court problem, not a Metro problem,” Mrs. Jeter said, adding that it wasn’t the union’s job to address professionalism — that is done by performance reviews that reward the best workers with raises. “Professionalism is rewarded when you get your paycheck.”
Second of three parts
The mechanics tasked with maintaining the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s chronically broken escalators start at $81,000 a year. Bus driver pay goes as high as $114,000 for anyone with a driver’s license and a GED.
Yet despite an economy that has left people from all walks of life looking for work, Metro says it can’t find qualified job applicants.
The transit system’s failure to meet its personnel needs was largely responsible for the $88 million in overtime it paid in 2010. The overtime paid to some station managers exceeded their base salaries, and maintenance workers made as much as $100,000 in overtime alone, according to an analysis of the most recent records officials would provide.
A personnel system that appears broken will be put to the test like never before as the agency prepares to add 1,000 new positions, an expansion coinciding with the opening of the Silver Line to Washington Dulles International Airport, that will push its total employee ranks past 12,000.
With nearly 1 in 10 existing positions unfilled and an additional 5 percent turnover each year, the chance of successfully filling all the new positions is virtually nil, said Tom Downs, a member of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board.
“There are 1,700 people before you get to that 1,000,” he said of the new positions, which officials say are mostly for track maintenance, the new Silver Line and transit police.
Construction on the Silver Line began in 2008 and the 11.6-mile first phase is scheduled to open in 2013. The 11.5-mile second phase will be opened in 2016.
Current Metro policies, The Washington Times reported Tuesday, have led to a workforce whose largest job category is 97 percent black and has only 70 white women out of 10,000 non-executive workers, and where disciplinary and pay records document that some workers get away with chronic malfeasance while others are disciplined frivolously or harassed.
Metro officials have said that 1,000 applicants are whittled to a pool of 30 candidates and even fewer hires. Yet the cream of the crop, court and Metro documents and interviews showed, is rife with convicts, drug addicts and the marginally literate, while others with college degrees or strong work ethics have documented an inability to succeed within Metro.
Officials declined to say at what stage, or for what reasons, the 970 applicants were rejected.
“What happens to the 970? We’re looking for people who are qualified for the position. You get some people who are not qualified,” agency spokesman Dan Stessel said. “You should be happy we have hiring standards.”
Only 1 in 4 applicants passes Metro’s three-part test with reading, behavior and customer-service sections. But a statistical analysis of test results shows curious results.
In one class, nearly everyone who could read, according to the literacy test, was marked down as failing a “behavior assessment.” Everyone deemed tops on behavior, meanwhile, failed the other segments.
Metro officials said the tests were multiple choice and that the behavior test is designed to fail about half of the applicants.
“I don’t think the test is rocket science,” said Jackie L. Jeter, president of the union that represents most Metro workers.
She said filling the new jobs wouldn’t be a problem. “All you have to do is look at the unemployment line. … How long it’s going to take to get to 1,000, I don’t know, but the ones they are advertising are pretty good-paying jobs.”
To explain the 1.4 percent of operators who are Hispanic and 1.5 percent who are white, Mrs. Jeter speculated that such people must not be applying. (The union is not responsible for hiring.)
Mr. Downs said, for the same reasons Mrs. Jeter noted, that is false.
“Of course they are. These are good-paying jobs with retirement and health care,” Mr. Downs said.
Metro declined to provide demographic information on applicants.
Pay and a pension
The average Metro worker had a $60,000 salary, which went up to $69,000 including overtime, about the same as D.C. schoolteachers.
The 144 people who try to keep Metro’s escalators in service make $80,000 to $100,000, after paid training at a $60,000 to $80,000 per year rate. The 488 station managers inside glass kiosks at rail stations — occasionally fielding questions, often with a bare minimum of information, riders say — have base salaries in the high $50,000s, but in reality, most take home closer to $70,000. Including overtime, 20 station managers made in the six figures.
Nearly all of Metro’s 3,000 bus and train operators were paid overtime, with more than 1 in 3 making more than $10,000 in overtime and more than 1 in 10 supplementing his or her salary by more than $25,000, according to a Times analysis of payroll records obtained through open-records requests.
The fiscal 2010 budget includes some emergency work done after the June 2009 Red Line crash. Metro officials declined to provide The Times with detailed records since 2010, but overtime rose in 2011 before falling sharply in 2012 in emergency-related categories. Overtime for station managers and bus and train operators, however, has remained constant for years, and the agency’s 2013 budget allots for an increase in overtime across all categories.
Some overtime for bus drivers comes from shuttles that replace trains when portions of tracks are shut down for repairs. Other overtime is preferred over hiring more workers because of the cost of benefits for new hires, Mr. Stessel said.
Overtime allows workers to dramatically increase the pension they collect upon retirement. The pension is based on an average of the worker’s highest-earning years.
Mrs. Jeter said low-ranking workers’ salaries weren’t too high given what managers earn.
“I had a supervisor who retired the other day, his average was $196,000,” she said. Workers who are promoted from unionized positions to supervisory roles can stay in the union for retirement purposes.
At Metro headquarters downtown, General Manager Richard Sarles, the former head of New Jersey Transit, is paid $350,000 — $50,000 more than his predecessor — and employees say he has made the system more top-heavy.
“He brought in Lynn Bowersox, his spokesman in New Jersey, to be No. 2 in communications, creating a layer that never existed and paying her in the high $160s plus $30,000 to relocate,” a former top Metro executive said. “Then they brought in Dan Stessel from the same place … and paid him to relocate. Under their own policies, they’re only supposed to pay relocation for hard-to-locate skill sets like engineers. PR people are a dime a dozen in this town.”
The agency’s marketing and public relations staffs number about 72 while its safety department staff numbers 61, records show. And those hires have not led to higher-quality work, the official said.
“They run the communications office like a political campaign now,” she said. “They give statements when it’s convenient. They don’t answer questions.”
Another person until recently at the highest level of Metro noted that rapid turnover among executives has exacerbated a divide between out-of-touch executives and a long-standing culture of apathy among workers outside headquarters.
“The people down at that level say Mr. Whoever-you-are, you want us to change, but you’re going to be gone in three or five years, and we’ll still be there. I could walk into that building and not know 20 percent of the people,” he said.
Mr. Stessel said long-standing issues with hiring bus drivers have improved. “We’ve increased [human resources] staff to handle bus operator staffing” and held recruiting events for military veterans, he wrote in an email.
Projects scheduled for this year still include large amounts of overtime.
When a rail car repair facility is revamped, for example, most of the 5,200 hours paid to Metro workers will be at overtime rates, largely so they can escort contractors. Multiple Metro workers who have overseen such projects said that contractors are given keys to facilities in violation of rules, and that Metro workers provide virtually no supervision or services on such assignments.
Even office workers took home large amounts of overtime. The overtime paid to computer specialists was 37 percent of their combined base salaries, while the overtime paid to information agents was one-third of their base — a fact that immediately stood out in the Times review of 2010 records.
But it wasn’t until more than a year later that overtime fraud was caught.
Two weeks ago, a jury convicted former information agent supervisor Alfred Atanga of theft for paying for hours that were never worked to Lakisha Gardin, Empriss Jacobs and Keesha Richardson. Gardin received probation. Ms. Richardson, who records show had previous drug and assault arrests and was placed on paid leave pending an investigation, had theft charges dropped in court. Jacobs will be sentenced Thursday in Prince George’s County.
Take up the slack
Metro’s inexplicable backlog in processing applicants has led jurisdictions to take up the slack, prescreening them, running criminal background checks and forwarding the names in an attempt to help Metro do what it has not been able to do for itself for years, Mr. Downs, the Metro Board member said.
D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray had one idea for breaking the decided homogeneity in Metro’s workforce: Hire more D.C. residents. Indeed, the good-old-boys network that comprises Metro’s 10,000 field workers is dominated by men from Prince George’s County, with only 14 percent of Metro workers living in the city. Including executives, 15 percent live in Virginia.
“There’s a story behind that,” Mr. Downs said. “At one point, 70 percent lived in the District. A bus driver can make $70,000 and that’s middle class, and like a lot of middle-class people they want to move to the suburbs. The same people are still working for Metro, they just moved to Prince George’s.”
Last of three parts
It was just after midnight, and Isaiah N. Nichols was prowling Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast Washington looking for sex. Twenty dollars, answered a woman who was “trying to make some money.”
“That’s what’s up. I’ll meet you over there,” Mr. Nichols said.
The woman turned out to be an undercover police officer conducting a sting, and Mr. Nichols was arrested. He agreed to enroll in a “john school” class and was ordered to stay away from the Northeast strip.
But Mr. Nichols, too, was a police officer, and is still on the beat for the Metro Transit Police Department (MTPD).
While police in Maryland, Virginia and the District work to keep the region safe, also among the mix is the Metro transit system’s lesser-known 600-member force, which uniquely has law enforcement authority across all three jurisdictions. But records suggest that the agency has conducted little enforcement of the transit system’s everyday rules and that the department also counts among its ranks people who have been arrested for violent and predatory crimes.
Officer Sivi Jones, for example, has a long history of arrests in connection with violent crimes, including felony threatening to injure a person, domestic assault and simple assault, according to court records and colleagues. She was largely able to escape convictions, including a “no papered” judgment, where prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges if the defendant stayed out of trouble.
But it was not out of respect for the justice system she is tasked with upholding: Court records note that the Southeast resident also failed to appear for a court date on assault charges filed against her.
Metro’s officers carry guns and are tasked with enforcing all laws on Metro property, including its 86 rail stations and thousands of bus stops. It also enforces quality-of-life rules of the transit agency, such as a ban on eating and drinking.
“These guys are not the cream of the cop in law enforcement. They are less educated and don’t know how to assess a situation in a logical manner,” said James Bitner, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor who has represented clients who he said have been beaten and wrongly charged by Metro police. “You’re not getting a straight-A student. You’re getting a C and D student.”
In some cases, that has led to corruption.
Light penalties
Officer John V. Haile pleaded guilty to theft from a federally funded agency this month after stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Metro. The transit police officer was supposed to ensure compliance with the law as another Metro employee recovered revenue from fare machines, but instead, Haile, with the other employee, hid $500 bags of coins in bushes and bought lottery tickets with the money. Metro said it did not know exactly how much money went missing.
Mr. Nichols and Ms. Jones are just two of a number of MTPD officers who court records suggest have been arrested in connection with drug, theft and violent crimes, a comparison by The Washington Times of the MTPD roster and D.C. and Maryland criminal filings found. Metro would not confirm or deny any of the cases. Some, including Ms. Jones, talked openly about their rap sheets on the job, according to colleagues.
In most cases, the officers avoided formal convictions by securing entry into programs by which convictions are averted by performing community service, seeking treatment or avoiding more trouble. In other cases, they took steps to seal their records after the fact.
This sometimes allowed them run-in after run-in with the law without a mark that would mandate their exclusion from the force. When Mr. Nichols was arrested on charges of trespassing for returning to a Greenbelt Safeway from which he had been banned because of a prior incident, for example, prosecutors agreed to spare the expense of a trial and conviction if he performed 24 hours of community service. His participation in john school after the prostitution arrest garnered a similar result.
Arrest histories were most common in the MTPD’s Special Police unit, 150 commissioned officers who guard Metro facilities such as headquarters and bus depots. Mr. Nichols and Ms. Jones are both members of that unit. It was special police officers who, when a teenager who did not work for Metro drove a bus out of the Bladensburg Road station in 2010, allowed him through two identification checkpoints. He later crashed the bus into a tree and fled.
Another officer recently fired his service weapon accidentally inside Metro’s headquarters downtown, officers said.
Still, in some cases, little accountability from management was evident, according to records. Mr. Nichols received a three-day suspension for the prostitution incident, according to MTPD records.
A report by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s Office of Inspector General initiated after on-the-job drug use by department employees last year, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, also said that the special police section’s supervisor, Capt. Anthony Metcaffe, did not act on information about officers sleeping on the job.
“He said that he did not recall receiving or did not receive” the complaints, the report said, but an examination by the information technology department “reflected that he received all these emails.”
Little enforcement
Some information about the department is impossible to know because the agency has failed to turn over materials under public-records requests. It recently invested in MetroStat, a crime-tracking tool that provides sophisticated analysis. But when a reporter filed a formal request for such analysis, Metro claimed the closest thing in existence was a video of MTPD Chief Michael A. Taborn announcing the tool’s arrival.
Records that Metro separately released to The Times show that in 2010, the transit police confronted a total of 50 riders about consuming food or beverages in the transit system, nine of whom were ticketed and one of whom was arrested. Forty were warned. Officials said protocol calls for warnings before ticketing.
At about 215 million trips per year, that is one contact every 4 million riders.
Eight were confronted for playing loud music, according to data recently produced by Metro in response to an open-records request filed last year.
Officers said that informal warnings for infractions are recorded as the issuance of “calling cards.” Records show 250 of those given to people on foot each year.
The force’s primary activity was making an average of 5,200 stops yearly for fare evasion, 10 percent of whose targets were arrested, 11 percent of whom were warned, and 35 percent of which had an unclear outcome, including some evaders who got away. The rest were ticketed. It also gave 1,800 tickets for alcohol violations.
In terms of serious crimes between 2008 and 2010, the transit police force reported four rapes, three of which remain unsolved. Also reported were two homicides, neither of which resulted in an arrest.
That works out to about 11 tickets and three arrests per officer yearly.
Metro police say one of their major functions is as a deterrent.
The rarity with which officers encounter serious altercations, though, has sometimes led to apparent overreactions. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is pursuing two cases against the transit police involving excessive or unnecessary use of force, one after officers knocked a wheelchair-bound man out of his chair on U Street Northwest and arrested the man’s friend who questioned their actions. Prosecutors dropped charges against the friend, Lawrence Miller, whom the ACLU is now representing in a civil case.
Metro police charged the wheelchair-bound man with assault on an officer, but those charges were also dropped.
The MTPD is set to have its numbers swell as 1,000 more positions are added within the transit agency, some going to the police.
The minimal basic enforcement has not stopped the transit police from engaging in high-profile displays of force and security, in part a result of $3 million per year in counterterrorism funds it receives as a reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The measures include periodic checkpoints, where police post at an entrance to a Metro station and check random customers’ bags for explosives.
“The ACLU believes it’s costly and ineffective and that we’d prevail in a court challenge,” said senior staff attorney Fritz Mulhuaser.
Civil liberties questions aside, critics say, the checks do not prohibit a would-be terrorist from simply using another entrance to the station.
