It was not so long ago when, throughout Bill Clinton's tenure, that phony Republican party of "conservative" principle loudly proclaimed its commitment to fiscal caution, small government, and playing by the rules of the Constitution -- each of which was dumped down the sewer, in order to support the warmongering, big government advocacy of the feeble-minded George W. Bush.
Well, here's another Paul Mulshine gem on those Republican hypocrites. From his column, "Republicans continue to be the great pretenders," some excerpts:
In the past few months, the national Republican Party has experienced a miraculous conversion to the principle of fiscal conservatism. Let's hope it's a deathbed conversion. I, for one, am ready to see the Republican Party disappear from the political scene. I would like to see it replaced by a party that believes in the U.S. Constitution, limited government, defense of our borders and balanced budgets -- in other words, everything the national Republicans claimed to espouse back when Bill "Slick Willie" Clinton was in the White House.
Now that a Democrat is again in the White House, the Republicans again claim to endorse those sacred values. But there is the small matter of how they behaved in the eight years George W. Bush was in power. And they behaved like . . . let me think of an appropriate invective . . . Oh, yeah, they behaved like Democrats. And now that we have a real Democratic president, they have no grounds to criticize him.
Consider President Obama's response to a reporter's question the other day about Republican criticism of the huge deficits in his proposed budget. Good question. But Obama dodged it with ease. "I suspect that some of those Republican critics have a short memory, because, as I recall, I'm inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit, annual deficit, from them," said Obama. Slick Barry will be repeating that argument for years to come. And the Republicans will be powerless to refute it. Their credibility on economic matters is shot and they won't be getting it back anytime soon thanks to the legacy of big-spender Bush. ...
This is what happens when Republicans govern like Democrats: They get replaced by Democrats. And just as is happening now, when McGreevey took office the New Jersey Republicans suddenly rediscovered their conservative roots. And everyone got a good laugh, just as everyone is doing now.
Read Mulshine's complete column, followed by an earlier one on immigration entitled, "GOP is migrating toward oblivion," in which Mulshine warned that "the liberal George Bush and his not-so-smart svengali Karl Rove" were assuring "the demise of the GOP through unlimited immigration of future Democrats."
Read more!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The poison of foreign aid
What happens when an enlightened African challenges Westerners' long-time habit of giving foreign aid to African countries? In his homeland of Uganda, Andrew Mwenda is fast learning what happens when a government, steeped in corruption and incompetence and almost totally dependent on the largesse of Western donors, sets out to punish those who would interfere with the sources of its revenue stream.
In the Winter 2009 edition of The Insider, Mwenda expresses his belief that foreign aid distorts the incentives of both donors and recipients. He says:
And further,
Instead of being looked upon as citizens, Mwenda says that the Ugandan government, as well as other African governments, "look at us as clients who they can bribe with welfare handouts from international donors. But if our governments depended on us for that revenue, they’d look at us as citizens whom they are supposed to account to because they depend on us for the public expenditure of revenues."
In 2007, Mwenda began publication of a news magazine, The Independent, a vehicle to express the views of like-minded observers of the African scene. Calling for a "scaling down" of foreign aid to African governments, Mwenda believes that "When the governments run out of revenue and they do not innovate new ways of generating revenue domestically, they will fall."
And, he maintains, "The moment governments in Africa realize that the public expenditure needs cannot be sustained from abroad, they will immediately develop a vested interest in harnessing the domestic economy—the gross potential of the economy. But, in fact, the beginning point of reform in Africa is to scale down aid."
Mwenda has been held for interrogation by the Ugandan police on many occasions, and has been charged with more than 20 "crimes," including sedition and libel, for writing about the nepotism and corruption that is common to the government of Uganda President Yoweri Museveni. This is only part of the response of the government to the many heretical views expressed in Mwenda's magazine, which enjoyed a 30% circulation growth in its second year of publication. Mwenda reports,
And still another tactic used by government, claims Mwenda:
In spite of these attempts at repression, Mwenda remains optimistic. Rightly or naively, he believes that the Ugandan government is subject to world opinion. In 2008, he was granted a freedom award by the Committee to Protect Journalists, and says,
Visit Mwenda's blog here, and read his recent article: You want freedom? It is expensive
Read more!
In the Winter 2009 edition of The Insider, Mwenda expresses his belief that foreign aid distorts the incentives of both donors and recipients. He says:
When governments have to depend on their own citizens for revenue, they develop a vested interest in the prosperity of their citizens. When governments depend on foreign donors for revenue, they develop a vested interest in manipulating international donors for money.
And further,
The only way the people of Africa can hold their governments to account, can participate in the policymaking and the policy implementation processes in their own countries is for them to be the source of the revenues that sustain governments in power. But because our governments depend on donors for money to build roads, schools, and hospitals, they do not look at us as citizens.
Instead of being looked upon as citizens, Mwenda says that the Ugandan government, as well as other African governments, "look at us as clients who they can bribe with welfare handouts from international donors. But if our governments depended on us for that revenue, they’d look at us as citizens whom they are supposed to account to because they depend on us for the public expenditure of revenues."
In 2007, Mwenda began publication of a news magazine, The Independent, a vehicle to express the views of like-minded observers of the African scene. Calling for a "scaling down" of foreign aid to African governments, Mwenda believes that "When the governments run out of revenue and they do not innovate new ways of generating revenue domestically, they will fall."
And, he maintains, "The moment governments in Africa realize that the public expenditure needs cannot be sustained from abroad, they will immediately develop a vested interest in harnessing the domestic economy—the gross potential of the economy. But, in fact, the beginning point of reform in Africa is to scale down aid."
Mwenda has been held for interrogation by the Ugandan police on many occasions, and has been charged with more than 20 "crimes," including sedition and libel, for writing about the nepotism and corruption that is common to the government of Uganda President Yoweri Museveni. This is only part of the response of the government to the many heretical views expressed in Mwenda's magazine, which enjoyed a 30% circulation growth in its second year of publication. Mwenda reports,
We are facing serious challenges. Our challenges are not coming right now from the market, because we have been extremely successful in the market. The government, realizing we are successful in the market, has now brought political pressure to bear on us—has stopped printers from printing our newsmagazine. It has been lobbying advertisers to stop them from advertising with us.
Remember that in spite of privatization and liberalization, the government of Uganda remains the largest consumer and largest formal sector employer. For most businesses, their profit margin lies in the ability to get government contracts and government handouts. And the government says: 'OK, we will not give you a contract if you advertise with The Independent.' They are using political influence to distort the market.
And still another tactic used by government, claims Mwenda:
The second cost the government has imposed on us is by keeping us at police stations and in court; by doing this, they reduce the amount of time we can devote to strategies for our newsmagazine, editing it, generating stories. So this year is going to be a challenging year because a new threat has come and that is not just interference, but a direct attempt to undermine our existence as a business.
In spite of these attempts at repression, Mwenda remains optimistic. Rightly or naively, he believes that the Ugandan government is subject to world opinion. In 2008, he was granted a freedom award by the Committee to Protect Journalists, and says,
Remember that first of all the government of Uganda depends on Western aid for its own political survival here. And the Western governments would be embarrassed to be seen to be giving money to a government that is busy harassing independent newspapers. So in a way, when international actors like the Committee to Protect Journalists highlight our woes, there is incipient pressure on the government of Uganda to exercise restraint. So they’re very helpful in putting breaks on what the government of Uganda can do. Without them, the government of Uganda would have killed me. Last year they planned to kill me, but they feared the response of the international community. Then they planned to kidnap my fiancé. They would have shut us down here as a newspaper, but they are afraid of the international reaction to such a reaction.
Visit Mwenda's blog here, and read his recent article: You want freedom? It is expensive
Read more!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
From the heights of power to a basket case
Many people are still trying to sort out the reasons for what happened to the American auto industry and how it managed to fall from its formerly commanding heights into the current sinkhole. Last January, at Hillsdale College, Joseph White did an exemplary job of succinctly pinning down the basic reasons for the demise of the great auto companies, by tracing the case of General Motors' downfall.
White has covered the auto industry for the Wall Street Journal since 1987, writes a weekly column about the business, and is co-author of Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry. Here are excerpts from his talk at Hillsdale:
•
With Alfred P. Sloan in charge, General Motors settled down to become the very model of the modern corporation. It navigated through the Great Depression, and negotiated the transition from producing tanks and other military materiel during World War II to peacetime production of cars and trucks. It was global before global was cool, as its current chairman used to say.
By the mid-1950s the company was the symbol of American industrial power—the largest industrial corporation in the world. It owned more than half the U.S. market. It set the trends in styling and technology, and even when it did not it was such a fast and effective follower that it could fairly easily hold its competitors in their places. And it held the distinction as the world's largest automaker until just a year or so ago.
How does a juggernaut like this become the basket case that we see before us today? I will oversimplify matters and touch on five factors that contributed to the current crisis—a crisis that has been more than 30 years in the making.
1. Detroit underestimated the competition—in more ways than one.
2. General Motors mismanaged its relationship with the United Auto Workers, and the UAW in its turn did nothing to encourage GM (or Ford or Chrysler) to defuse the demographic time bomb that has now blown up their collective future.
3. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler handled failure better than success. When they made money, they tended to squander it on ill-conceived diversification schemes. It was when they were in trouble that they often did their most innovative work—the first minivans at Chrysler, the first Ford Taurus, and more recently the Chevy Volt were ideas born out of crisis.
4. General Motors (and Ford and Chrysler) relied too heavily on a few, gas-hungry truck and SUV lines for all their profits—plus the money they needed to cover losses on many of their car lines. They did this for a good reason: When gas was cheap, big gas-guzzling trucks were exactly what their customers wanted—until they were not.
5. General Motors refused to accept that to survive it could not remain what it was in the 1950s and 1960s—with multiple brands and a dominant market share. Instead, it used short-term strategies such as zero percent financing to avoid reckoning with the consequences of globalization and its own mistakes.
In hindsight, it's apparent that the gas shocks of the 1970s hit Detroit at a time when they were particularly vulnerable. They were a decadent empire—Rome in the reign of Nero. The pinnacles of the Detroit art were crudely engineered muscle cars. The mainstream products were large, V8-powered, rear-wheel-drive sedans and station wagons. The Detroit marketing and engineering machinery didn't comprehend the appeal of cars like the Volkswagen Beetle or the Datsun 240Z.
But it took the spike in gas prices—and the economic disruptions it caused—to really open the door for the Japanese automakers.
Remember, Toyota and Honda were relative pipsqueaks in those days. They did not have much more going for them in the American market prior to the first Arab oil embargo than Chinese automakers have today, or Korean automakers did 15 years ago. The oil shocks, however, convinced a huge and influential cohort of American consumers to give fuel-efficient Japanese cars a try. Equally important, the oil shocks persuaded some of the most aggressive of America's car dealers to try them.
The Detroit automakers believed the Japanese could be stopped by import quotas. They initially dismissed reports about the high quality of Japanese cars. They later assumed the Japanese could never replicate their low-cost manufacturing systems in America. Plus they believed initially that the low production cost of Japanese cars was the result of automation and unfair trading practices. (Undoubtedly, the cheap yen was a big help.) In any case, they figured that the Japanese would be stuck in a niche of small, economy cars and that the damage could be contained as customers grew out of their small car phase of life.
They were wrong on all counts.
• • •
Read the rest of Joseph White's insightful remarks here, to learn what doomed the American auto industry, and what the industry might expect from its new partnership with the U.S. Government.
Read more!
White has covered the auto industry for the Wall Street Journal since 1987, writes a weekly column about the business, and is co-author of Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry. Here are excerpts from his talk at Hillsdale:
With Alfred P. Sloan in charge, General Motors settled down to become the very model of the modern corporation. It navigated through the Great Depression, and negotiated the transition from producing tanks and other military materiel during World War II to peacetime production of cars and trucks. It was global before global was cool, as its current chairman used to say.
By the mid-1950s the company was the symbol of American industrial power—the largest industrial corporation in the world. It owned more than half the U.S. market. It set the trends in styling and technology, and even when it did not it was such a fast and effective follower that it could fairly easily hold its competitors in their places. And it held the distinction as the world's largest automaker until just a year or so ago.
How does a juggernaut like this become the basket case that we see before us today? I will oversimplify matters and touch on five factors that contributed to the current crisis—a crisis that has been more than 30 years in the making.
1. Detroit underestimated the competition—in more ways than one.
2. General Motors mismanaged its relationship with the United Auto Workers, and the UAW in its turn did nothing to encourage GM (or Ford or Chrysler) to defuse the demographic time bomb that has now blown up their collective future.
3. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler handled failure better than success. When they made money, they tended to squander it on ill-conceived diversification schemes. It was when they were in trouble that they often did their most innovative work—the first minivans at Chrysler, the first Ford Taurus, and more recently the Chevy Volt were ideas born out of crisis.
4. General Motors (and Ford and Chrysler) relied too heavily on a few, gas-hungry truck and SUV lines for all their profits—plus the money they needed to cover losses on many of their car lines. They did this for a good reason: When gas was cheap, big gas-guzzling trucks were exactly what their customers wanted—until they were not.
5. General Motors refused to accept that to survive it could not remain what it was in the 1950s and 1960s—with multiple brands and a dominant market share. Instead, it used short-term strategies such as zero percent financing to avoid reckoning with the consequences of globalization and its own mistakes.
In hindsight, it's apparent that the gas shocks of the 1970s hit Detroit at a time when they were particularly vulnerable. They were a decadent empire—Rome in the reign of Nero. The pinnacles of the Detroit art were crudely engineered muscle cars. The mainstream products were large, V8-powered, rear-wheel-drive sedans and station wagons. The Detroit marketing and engineering machinery didn't comprehend the appeal of cars like the Volkswagen Beetle or the Datsun 240Z.
But it took the spike in gas prices—and the economic disruptions it caused—to really open the door for the Japanese automakers.
Remember, Toyota and Honda were relative pipsqueaks in those days. They did not have much more going for them in the American market prior to the first Arab oil embargo than Chinese automakers have today, or Korean automakers did 15 years ago. The oil shocks, however, convinced a huge and influential cohort of American consumers to give fuel-efficient Japanese cars a try. Equally important, the oil shocks persuaded some of the most aggressive of America's car dealers to try them.
The Detroit automakers believed the Japanese could be stopped by import quotas. They initially dismissed reports about the high quality of Japanese cars. They later assumed the Japanese could never replicate their low-cost manufacturing systems in America. Plus they believed initially that the low production cost of Japanese cars was the result of automation and unfair trading practices. (Undoubtedly, the cheap yen was a big help.) In any case, they figured that the Japanese would be stuck in a niche of small, economy cars and that the damage could be contained as customers grew out of their small car phase of life.
They were wrong on all counts.
Read the rest of Joseph White's insightful remarks here, to learn what doomed the American auto industry, and what the industry might expect from its new partnership with the U.S. Government.
Read more!
Friday, March 20, 2009
Compounding the mistakes of the past
If you want to learn some of the facts behind the early strategies conceived for Israel's control of the Middle East, as well as details on last year's rocket attacks, there is no better place to start than the January 26, 2009 edition of the American Conservative magazine. Here are two excellent articles that take on subjects forbidden to public discussion by that Lobby that does not exist.
In "Captive Nation: How Gaza became a Palestinian prison," Israeli author Avi Shlaim describes the thousands of refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land with no infrastructure or natural resources as a "uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development."
In "Another War, Another Defeat," John Mearsheimer, co-author of the much-acclaimed and much-defamed The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, debunks the notion that Israel was ever serious about making peace with the Palestinians in 2005. He says, "Even before Hamas came to power, the Israelis intended to create an open-air prison for the Palestinians in Gaza and inflict great pain on them until they complied with Israel’s wishes."
Mearsheimer reveals that, after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Ariel Sharon's adviser, Dov Weisglass, candidly stated that the disengagement from Gaza was aimed at halting the peace process, not encouraging it. Israel was checkmated in March 2007, when Fatah and Hamas came together in unity and pushed for a long-term ceasefire, promising to end all missile attacks, if the Israelis ceased arresting and assassinating Palestinians, and ended the economic blockade of their territory. Faced with such a deal, what was the great rogue state to do?
Not only did Israel's leaders reject this offer, they realized that, in order to keep the Palestinians in disarray (the ongoing goal), they had to keep Hamas and Fatah divided, and they set about fomenting a civil war between the two groups. Mearsheimer details how this was done.
Avi Shlaim, who served in the Israeli military, describes how, from the very beginning, "Local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination and establish the economic underpinnings essential for independence." Although Israeli settlers were withdrawn from Gaza, he reports, "Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip. The Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and terrorize the hapless inhabitants." [Read Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.]
He asks how any people can tolerate being so demonized, while trying to survive the years-long blockade of their trade – their exports, incoming supplies and medicines. Shlaim concludes, "Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbors but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones."
[See Philip Weiss commentary, "Was there an intentional Israeli policy in Gaza to kill civilians?"]
Excerpt:
"Shoot and cry" used to just be an Israeli cliche about the guilt soldiers felt after committing unspeakable acts while serving the Israeli occupation. Now it appears to have become official military doctrine.
Read more!
In "Captive Nation: How Gaza became a Palestinian prison," Israeli author Avi Shlaim describes the thousands of refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land with no infrastructure or natural resources as a "uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development."
In "Another War, Another Defeat," John Mearsheimer, co-author of the much-acclaimed and much-defamed The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, debunks the notion that Israel was ever serious about making peace with the Palestinians in 2005. He says, "Even before Hamas came to power, the Israelis intended to create an open-air prison for the Palestinians in Gaza and inflict great pain on them until they complied with Israel’s wishes."
Mearsheimer reveals that, after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Ariel Sharon's adviser, Dov Weisglass, candidly stated that the disengagement from Gaza was aimed at halting the peace process, not encouraging it. Israel was checkmated in March 2007, when Fatah and Hamas came together in unity and pushed for a long-term ceasefire, promising to end all missile attacks, if the Israelis ceased arresting and assassinating Palestinians, and ended the economic blockade of their territory. Faced with such a deal, what was the great rogue state to do?
Not only did Israel's leaders reject this offer, they realized that, in order to keep the Palestinians in disarray (the ongoing goal), they had to keep Hamas and Fatah divided, and they set about fomenting a civil war between the two groups. Mearsheimer details how this was done.
Avi Shlaim, who served in the Israeli military, describes how, from the very beginning, "Local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination and establish the economic underpinnings essential for independence." Although Israeli settlers were withdrawn from Gaza, he reports, "Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip. The Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and terrorize the hapless inhabitants." [Read Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.]
He asks how any people can tolerate being so demonized, while trying to survive the years-long blockade of their trade – their exports, incoming supplies and medicines. Shlaim concludes, "Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbors but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones."
[See Philip Weiss commentary, "Was there an intentional Israeli policy in Gaza to kill civilians?"]
Excerpt:
"Shoot and cry" used to just be an Israeli cliche about the guilt soldiers felt after committing unspeakable acts while serving the Israeli occupation. Now it appears to have become official military doctrine.
Read more!
Friday, March 13, 2009
More news from the Palin brood
Coming as no news at all, we learn that the celebrated unmarried parents of the country's most celebrated illegitimate baby are not going to tie the knot, after all. Like, we didn't suspect this? A rambunctious young man, popular, and dating several girls, happens to impregnate one of them -- and she's not even his favorite, as the pipeline reported. In this age of permissiveness, what's a young man to do?
So, what happens now, Ms. Palin, when your next daughter becomes pregnant? Observing the free-style living of Bristol, who appears to be enjoying life as a part-time mother, part-time employee, and part-time student, why shouldn't Willow eventually reach for the pregnancy brass ring? And then, why not Piper? Look at all the rewards awaiting these girls, perhaps even a celebratory stint at the next Republican convention. Why not expect such adulation? After all, those wonderful "family values" conservatives, throughout the last election, not only gave their blessings, but assured us that such behavior is okay as long as the principals involved, or their parents, display a fervent attachment to the "correct" political party.
And so continues the riveting family melodrama that helped to bring about the election of Barack Obama. Following is some of the pertinent background already cited on this blog:
Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin
Pro-lifers bring underclass mores into the mainstream
Palin fills in those cracks in the ceiling
The good liberal Palin makes a mockery of conservatives
An awful mistake
Thanks to Sarah, we can do just about anything we want
Parading the unwed daughter
Laughing at conservatives
We didn't know this?
Teenage pregnancy should never be glorified
Book - Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!), by Carol Platt Liebau
Read more!
So, what happens now, Ms. Palin, when your next daughter becomes pregnant? Observing the free-style living of Bristol, who appears to be enjoying life as a part-time mother, part-time employee, and part-time student, why shouldn't Willow eventually reach for the pregnancy brass ring? And then, why not Piper? Look at all the rewards awaiting these girls, perhaps even a celebratory stint at the next Republican convention. Why not expect such adulation? After all, those wonderful "family values" conservatives, throughout the last election, not only gave their blessings, but assured us that such behavior is okay as long as the principals involved, or their parents, display a fervent attachment to the "correct" political party.
And so continues the riveting family melodrama that helped to bring about the election of Barack Obama. Following is some of the pertinent background already cited on this blog:
Thank you for nothing, Ms. Palin
Pro-lifers bring underclass mores into the mainstream
Palin fills in those cracks in the ceiling
The good liberal Palin makes a mockery of conservatives
An awful mistake
Thanks to Sarah, we can do just about anything we want
Parading the unwed daughter
Laughing at conservatives
We didn't know this?
Teenage pregnancy should never be glorified
Book - Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!), by Carol Platt Liebau
Read more!
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
There goes E-Verify
Last October, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported on the "E-Verify" program:
Put into place in 1996, E-Verify is a voluntary program run by the Department of Homeland Security that uses an automated internet-based system to check every new employee’s information against more than 500 million records in Social Security and DHS databases. It’s fast, easy and free for businesses to use and it means that businesses don’t have to be document experts. Over 70,000 employers are using it and 1,000 are joining every week. Nationwide, 1 in 10 new hires are screened using it and it is 99.5 accurate.
In "Immigration apparently not high on Obama's priority list," (2/28/09), Vanderbilt University Professor Carol Swain tells us the state of E-Verify today:
There are an estimated 6 to 7 million illegal immigrants working in low-wage, low-skill positions that could be filled with U.S-born workers with high school educations or less. A detailed breakdown of U.S. Census unemployment data released by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals startling levels of unemployment for U.S.-born blacks and Hispanics without a high school education. Blacks had a 24.7 percent unemployment rate and Hispanics were at 16.2 percent. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for legal and illegal immigrants without a high school education was 10.6 percent. ... Instead of expanding and protecting American jobs, the president allowed Senate Democrats to strip two E-Verify provisions from the stimulus bill. ...
The program is scheduled to expire unless Senate Democrats reauthorize the program by March 6. Not only should the program be reauthorized, it should be made mandatory for all employers. We can aggressively tackle unemployment by taking simple steps to ensure that American workers are protected from illegal competition from those unauthorized to work in this country.
Our rising health-care costs and educational burdens are all impacted by the presence of large numbers of undocumented and unauthorized residents who make it more difficult for hard-working Americans to enjoy some of the benefits of living in a nation that used to be one of the greatest in the world. Read more!
Put into place in 1996, E-Verify is a voluntary program run by the Department of Homeland Security that uses an automated internet-based system to check every new employee’s information against more than 500 million records in Social Security and DHS databases. It’s fast, easy and free for businesses to use and it means that businesses don’t have to be document experts. Over 70,000 employers are using it and 1,000 are joining every week. Nationwide, 1 in 10 new hires are screened using it and it is 99.5 accurate.
In "Immigration apparently not high on Obama's priority list," (2/28/09), Vanderbilt University Professor Carol Swain tells us the state of E-Verify today:
There are an estimated 6 to 7 million illegal immigrants working in low-wage, low-skill positions that could be filled with U.S-born workers with high school educations or less. A detailed breakdown of U.S. Census unemployment data released by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals startling levels of unemployment for U.S.-born blacks and Hispanics without a high school education. Blacks had a 24.7 percent unemployment rate and Hispanics were at 16.2 percent. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for legal and illegal immigrants without a high school education was 10.6 percent. ... Instead of expanding and protecting American jobs, the president allowed Senate Democrats to strip two E-Verify provisions from the stimulus bill. ...
The program is scheduled to expire unless Senate Democrats reauthorize the program by March 6. Not only should the program be reauthorized, it should be made mandatory for all employers. We can aggressively tackle unemployment by taking simple steps to ensure that American workers are protected from illegal competition from those unauthorized to work in this country.
Our rising health-care costs and educational burdens are all impacted by the presence of large numbers of undocumented and unauthorized residents who make it more difficult for hard-working Americans to enjoy some of the benefits of living in a nation that used to be one of the greatest in the world. Read more!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The New York Times, the Watchdogs, and the crusade to destroy the immigration reform movement
Who started the lie that the Founders of this nation expended their energies, in order to create a haven for the rescue of the world's displaced populations? Did it come about chiefly from cynical 19th century industrialists eager only for cheap labor, who sought to soften their true motives by wrapping them in sentimental bombast?
Was the lie then perpetuated through the fantasies of some early lucky refugees who found their way to these shores, and who desired to make the path to the Golden Door easier for their family and kin left behind?
Or was the lie deliberately concocted by those who despised the country's powerful and entrenched establishment, with the expectation that making mass immigration a national religious mandate might eventually unglue said establishment?
When restrictive immigration laws were changed in the 1960s, who expected to benefit most from the mass influx that inevitably would begin to stream from around the world?
I ask these questions in light of the New York Times' recent editorials [here and here and here,] denigrating those Americans who campaign, through organizations and modest media outlets, to regain control over our borders, in order to preserve the traditional cultural integrity of the United States. The Times and its comrades share the presumptuous notion that the US is the rightful destination of every conceivable population on earth. They send the word far and wide that, if you're hurting in the land of your birth, then you have a right to alleviate that hurt by transporting yourself to the USA, no matter what stress is put upon the resources of American citizens.
Thanks to our education system and a century of media propaganda, it has become a fixed notion that this country, unlike every other on earth, was put together for the benefit of the world's faceless masses. He who desires entrance must merely claim to share certain ideals, that is, the "propositions" contained in the founding documents, with a couple of modern axioms thrown in for good measure. Because of America's "special" status, there need be no regard for prevailing social and economic conditions, since the welfare of the existing population is not as important as that of the prospective immigrant. After all, America was founded on nothing more than a bundle of universalist ideas based around themes of freedom; it has no borders and no heritage.
In an earlier post on this blog, "Farewell to Thomas Jefferson," I ask what the likelihood is that any group would form a nation for a people other than their own kind. Why would these men not desire to retain the cultural integrity of their lineage? Other than today's self-consciously de-racinating whites, what people do not possess this very preference? Would the Hutu be likely to expend their energies to develop a society to benefit alien tribes and foreigners? Would the Tamil? Those who claim that the world has now moved beyond ethnocentric loyalty, or ought to, might do well to take a look at the real world.
In that post, I also suggest that the Founders would not be in concert with the platitudes contained in that mawkish poem that was belatedly affixed to the base of the Statue of Liberty. Which Founder envisioned this country's future in the hands of "huddled masses" from every nook and cranny of the earth? Certainly not John Jay, who thanked Providence for giving "this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs." That doesn't sound like a proposition to win over the huddled masses to me. Today, is it unreasonable to assume that, for the sake of preserving the Anglo-European institutions on which this country was nurtured, an Anglo-Euro majority should prevail?
The Times' editorialists do not seem to blush as they pronounce the outright lie that the United States was "composed of people without any common national heritage." How can they attach the reputation of their once preeminent publication to such a colossal falsehood? Now, if you're out to eliminate the Anglo-European cultural make-up of the US, and are thrilled by the increasingly multiracial polyglot nature of this society, say so. But don't fabricate history, in order to prove that this country was formed in a vacuum by people who shared no heritage.
One would have thought that coping with the real disabilities of the descendants of the country's slaves, as well as accommodating the Hispanics-Latinos, who had always been a presence, would be enough to occupy the administrators of an already multiracial nation. To open the floodgates in the 1960s, ensuring an even greater heterogeneous influx, would seem an act of folly.
• • •
In its editorials, the Times cavalierly dismisses the impact of these recent decades of mass immigration on employment. With a wave of the hand, the editorialists imply that immigration reformers are not motivated by concern about jobs since, apparently, to the Times, this is just another "wedge" issue, that is, insignificant.
Blacks have known for some time that their leaders – politicians, academics, and varieties of "civil rights" bureaucrats – have turned their backs on the struggle against illegal immigration. The primary interest of these dignitaries is the protection of their careers and/or political turf. In Immigration: Betrayal By Black Elites, I outlined the pattern of black leadership organizations (take your pick) and black politicians (take your pick), who eagerly make alliances with the elites of other groups, no matter how detrimental such unions prove to blacks in the long run.
Black politicians like Sheila Jackson-Lee, Maxine Waters and John Conyers seek only to expand their constituent base. As racial demographics change in their districts, they frantically scramble to court and win the confidence of the burgeoning foreigners. The fact that these foreigners, a great many of them illegal, end up displacing Americans, frequently poor blacks, in a shrinking job market is of no concern, either to these representatives of the people, or to the editorialists at the New York Times.
As more and more Americans find themselves laid off or fired from stagnating companies, they discover that even the most modest work has become a scarce commodity. If Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, at a special hearing, is not moved when a black worker informs her of American minorities who have been displaced by illegals as roofers, drywallers and truck drivers, why should the New York Times care?
• • •
The Times has joined the bandwagon of those who smear as "racists" and "white supremacists" decent Americans who are seeking genuine solutions to the immigration crisis. Peter Brimelow targets it exactly. He notes that, since the Democrats are made up of a coalition of minorities, they "must at all costs prevent America's majority from uniting. Hence, the New York Times' hysteria." (By the way, the "white supremacist" tag has now replaced the much over-abused label of "racist" as the epithet of choice. Watch for it everywhere.)
To the camp followers of the Times, it is imperative to prevent average white citizens, who are still the majority, from ever uniting in the name of any cause. Preventing an effective immigration reform movement is paramount to those who seek to keep this country's borders wide open. This is certainly one of the reasons why the editors of the Times are spending their energies these days castigating three of the most successful immigration reform organizations – the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA. I have followed the outstanding work of each of these groups since their formation [see here and here], and have always been impressed by the respectful manner in which they handle what has become a volatile subject.
The Times further discredits itself by favorably acknowledging the biased reports and materials disseminated by the spurious Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC is among a handful of self-appointed "watchdogs," a cluster of groups whose creators have mastered the ability to acquire funding by instilling fear and indignation in the general public. Besmirching individuals and groups that work to end illegal immigration as "racists" and "xenophobes," the SPLC has diligently set about the task of destroying all proponents of restrictive immigration laws.
Traveling under the umbrella of "civil rights" or "human rights," these "watchdog" groups are represented through a fawning, deferential media as altruistic protectors of society's downtrodden. Depicting themselves as noble champions of "Anti-racism," they spend a great deal of time crusading for the expansion of "hate crime" legislation, that is, laws specifically designed to give government greater control over Americans' thoughts and behavior. They have acquired enough political power to behave as quasi-government agencies, and some misguided citizens actually believe that these self-appointed entities, and their executive directors, possess official power.
Two of the major "watchdogs," the SPLC and the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League (ADL), are darlings of the media, because they can be counted on to provide an endless stream of news fillers. Reporters are happy to take the easy way out when supposedly covering a story on race. Just get the press release from the SPLC or ADL on some particular event or individual, copy what it says and, instantly, you have a news item to send to your editor. How often have you seen a news story end with a quote by an SPLC or ADL spokesman denouncing some individual as a "racist" or "white supremacist?" And we know it's so, because the ADL or SPLC says it's so!
Character assassination is the SPLC's speciality. Its "link and smear" tactics are notorious, along with its ever-expanding hit list. Through insinuations, it will link an individual or group to some other group or event that is deemed evil by SPLC standards. It then relentlessly pursues the public destruction of the unfortunate target, all the while sending out poisonous press releases, that are lapped up and quoted by an eager, uninquiring media.
If these watchdogs could make the "white supremacist" tag stick to immigration reform organizations, and could frame their leaders with some illegal charge, they would then set about stripping these immigration groups of all their financial resources. Both the ADL and SPLC have done exactly this to other organizations whose racial politics were perceived as "incorrect."
For an in-depth examination of groups like the SPLC, there is nothing better than Laird Wilcox's The Watchdogs: A close look at Anti-Racist "Watchdog" Groups. Wilcox has spent over two decades watching the watchdogs and compiling detailed information on their strategies and smear tactics.
• • •
If you have been paying attention, you know that the New York Times, like all newspapers, is withering away. You also know that, in a desperate move, its owners recently requested and received a $250 million investment from Mexican businessman Carlos Slim. Some observers are suggesting that the recent attacks by the Times' directors on the most high-profile opponents of open borders come as partial payment to their Mexican benefactor.
If those New York Times editorials are any barometer, the battle to resolve this country's immigration dilemma is going to be an even longer, more acrimonious one.
Here is an interesting turn of events: Mexicans in Mexico worried about foreigners (like Americans) despoiling their culture. "Many Mexicans complain about the rapid growth of the American population in their neighborhoods, the threat they see to Mexican culture and language, and the possible drain on Mexico's inexpensive health care." So writes Alfredo Corchado in Some Mexicans fear threat to way of life with rapid growth of American residents
Read more!
Was the lie then perpetuated through the fantasies of some early lucky refugees who found their way to these shores, and who desired to make the path to the Golden Door easier for their family and kin left behind?
Or was the lie deliberately concocted by those who despised the country's powerful and entrenched establishment, with the expectation that making mass immigration a national religious mandate might eventually unglue said establishment?
When restrictive immigration laws were changed in the 1960s, who expected to benefit most from the mass influx that inevitably would begin to stream from around the world?
I ask these questions in light of the New York Times' recent editorials [here and here and here,] denigrating those Americans who campaign, through organizations and modest media outlets, to regain control over our borders, in order to preserve the traditional cultural integrity of the United States. The Times and its comrades share the presumptuous notion that the US is the rightful destination of every conceivable population on earth. They send the word far and wide that, if you're hurting in the land of your birth, then you have a right to alleviate that hurt by transporting yourself to the USA, no matter what stress is put upon the resources of American citizens.
Thanks to our education system and a century of media propaganda, it has become a fixed notion that this country, unlike every other on earth, was put together for the benefit of the world's faceless masses. He who desires entrance must merely claim to share certain ideals, that is, the "propositions" contained in the founding documents, with a couple of modern axioms thrown in for good measure. Because of America's "special" status, there need be no regard for prevailing social and economic conditions, since the welfare of the existing population is not as important as that of the prospective immigrant. After all, America was founded on nothing more than a bundle of universalist ideas based around themes of freedom; it has no borders and no heritage.
In an earlier post on this blog, "Farewell to Thomas Jefferson," I ask what the likelihood is that any group would form a nation for a people other than their own kind. Why would these men not desire to retain the cultural integrity of their lineage? Other than today's self-consciously de-racinating whites, what people do not possess this very preference? Would the Hutu be likely to expend their energies to develop a society to benefit alien tribes and foreigners? Would the Tamil? Those who claim that the world has now moved beyond ethnocentric loyalty, or ought to, might do well to take a look at the real world.
In that post, I also suggest that the Founders would not be in concert with the platitudes contained in that mawkish poem that was belatedly affixed to the base of the Statue of Liberty. Which Founder envisioned this country's future in the hands of "huddled masses" from every nook and cranny of the earth? Certainly not John Jay, who thanked Providence for giving "this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs." That doesn't sound like a proposition to win over the huddled masses to me. Today, is it unreasonable to assume that, for the sake of preserving the Anglo-European institutions on which this country was nurtured, an Anglo-Euro majority should prevail?
The Times' editorialists do not seem to blush as they pronounce the outright lie that the United States was "composed of people without any common national heritage." How can they attach the reputation of their once preeminent publication to such a colossal falsehood? Now, if you're out to eliminate the Anglo-European cultural make-up of the US, and are thrilled by the increasingly multiracial polyglot nature of this society, say so. But don't fabricate history, in order to prove that this country was formed in a vacuum by people who shared no heritage.
One would have thought that coping with the real disabilities of the descendants of the country's slaves, as well as accommodating the Hispanics-Latinos, who had always been a presence, would be enough to occupy the administrators of an already multiracial nation. To open the floodgates in the 1960s, ensuring an even greater heterogeneous influx, would seem an act of folly.
In its editorials, the Times cavalierly dismisses the impact of these recent decades of mass immigration on employment. With a wave of the hand, the editorialists imply that immigration reformers are not motivated by concern about jobs since, apparently, to the Times, this is just another "wedge" issue, that is, insignificant.
Blacks have known for some time that their leaders – politicians, academics, and varieties of "civil rights" bureaucrats – have turned their backs on the struggle against illegal immigration. The primary interest of these dignitaries is the protection of their careers and/or political turf. In Immigration: Betrayal By Black Elites, I outlined the pattern of black leadership organizations (take your pick) and black politicians (take your pick), who eagerly make alliances with the elites of other groups, no matter how detrimental such unions prove to blacks in the long run.
Black politicians like Sheila Jackson-Lee, Maxine Waters and John Conyers seek only to expand their constituent base. As racial demographics change in their districts, they frantically scramble to court and win the confidence of the burgeoning foreigners. The fact that these foreigners, a great many of them illegal, end up displacing Americans, frequently poor blacks, in a shrinking job market is of no concern, either to these representatives of the people, or to the editorialists at the New York Times.
As more and more Americans find themselves laid off or fired from stagnating companies, they discover that even the most modest work has become a scarce commodity. If Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, at a special hearing, is not moved when a black worker informs her of American minorities who have been displaced by illegals as roofers, drywallers and truck drivers, why should the New York Times care?
The Times has joined the bandwagon of those who smear as "racists" and "white supremacists" decent Americans who are seeking genuine solutions to the immigration crisis. Peter Brimelow targets it exactly. He notes that, since the Democrats are made up of a coalition of minorities, they "must at all costs prevent America's majority from uniting. Hence, the New York Times' hysteria." (By the way, the "white supremacist" tag has now replaced the much over-abused label of "racist" as the epithet of choice. Watch for it everywhere.)
To the camp followers of the Times, it is imperative to prevent average white citizens, who are still the majority, from ever uniting in the name of any cause. Preventing an effective immigration reform movement is paramount to those who seek to keep this country's borders wide open. This is certainly one of the reasons why the editors of the Times are spending their energies these days castigating three of the most successful immigration reform organizations – the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA. I have followed the outstanding work of each of these groups since their formation [see here and here], and have always been impressed by the respectful manner in which they handle what has become a volatile subject.
The Times further discredits itself by favorably acknowledging the biased reports and materials disseminated by the spurious Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC is among a handful of self-appointed "watchdogs," a cluster of groups whose creators have mastered the ability to acquire funding by instilling fear and indignation in the general public. Besmirching individuals and groups that work to end illegal immigration as "racists" and "xenophobes," the SPLC has diligently set about the task of destroying all proponents of restrictive immigration laws.
Traveling under the umbrella of "civil rights" or "human rights," these "watchdog" groups are represented through a fawning, deferential media as altruistic protectors of society's downtrodden. Depicting themselves as noble champions of "Anti-racism," they spend a great deal of time crusading for the expansion of "hate crime" legislation, that is, laws specifically designed to give government greater control over Americans' thoughts and behavior. They have acquired enough political power to behave as quasi-government agencies, and some misguided citizens actually believe that these self-appointed entities, and their executive directors, possess official power.
Two of the major "watchdogs," the SPLC and the B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League (ADL), are darlings of the media, because they can be counted on to provide an endless stream of news fillers. Reporters are happy to take the easy way out when supposedly covering a story on race. Just get the press release from the SPLC or ADL on some particular event or individual, copy what it says and, instantly, you have a news item to send to your editor. How often have you seen a news story end with a quote by an SPLC or ADL spokesman denouncing some individual as a "racist" or "white supremacist?" And we know it's so, because the ADL or SPLC says it's so!
Character assassination is the SPLC's speciality. Its "link and smear" tactics are notorious, along with its ever-expanding hit list. Through insinuations, it will link an individual or group to some other group or event that is deemed evil by SPLC standards. It then relentlessly pursues the public destruction of the unfortunate target, all the while sending out poisonous press releases, that are lapped up and quoted by an eager, uninquiring media.
If these watchdogs could make the "white supremacist" tag stick to immigration reform organizations, and could frame their leaders with some illegal charge, they would then set about stripping these immigration groups of all their financial resources. Both the ADL and SPLC have done exactly this to other organizations whose racial politics were perceived as "incorrect."
For an in-depth examination of groups like the SPLC, there is nothing better than Laird Wilcox's The Watchdogs: A close look at Anti-Racist "Watchdog" Groups. Wilcox has spent over two decades watching the watchdogs and compiling detailed information on their strategies and smear tactics.
If you have been paying attention, you know that the New York Times, like all newspapers, is withering away. You also know that, in a desperate move, its owners recently requested and received a $250 million investment from Mexican businessman Carlos Slim. Some observers are suggesting that the recent attacks by the Times' directors on the most high-profile opponents of open borders come as partial payment to their Mexican benefactor.
If those New York Times editorials are any barometer, the battle to resolve this country's immigration dilemma is going to be an even longer, more acrimonious one.
Here is an interesting turn of events: Mexicans in Mexico worried about foreigners (like Americans) despoiling their culture. "Many Mexicans complain about the rapid growth of the American population in their neighborhoods, the threat they see to Mexican culture and language, and the possible drain on Mexico's inexpensive health care." So writes Alfredo Corchado in Some Mexicans fear threat to way of life with rapid growth of American residents
Read more!
Waiting for the glorified fireman
The traditionalist conservative Rev. Chuck Baldwin does it again. He puts these self-declared "patriotic" Christians, who enabled and propped up George W. Bush for eight years, to shame. "Does anticipation of Christ's Second Coming," he asks, "excuse personal neglect, indifference, and downright laziness?" He argues that, if Christians of 18th century America had behaved as do their counterparts today, this country would still be a colony of the British Crown, and writes:
Read the entire column, Christians Use Prophecy To Excuse Laziness
Read also Baldwin column, Where Are Dobson and PCC Now?
See also Baldwin cited in posts on this blog:
Loving the Emperor more than Christ
The state's patriotic sheep
Laughing at conservatives
Whose "Constitutional crisis?"
Read more!
In the meantime, millions of Christians across America are trying to play God. They talk as if they know when Christ will come. It's actually worse than that. They have the attitude that they have no personal responsibility to defend freedom and resist despotism. They seem to look at God as some kind of glorified fireman, who is obligated to rush in at the last minute to rescue them from a burning fire – a fire that they helped ignite, or at least, refused to put out themselves when they had the opportunity to do so. It's the old, "God would not let that happen in America" syndrome. ... Are Christians in the United States really that arrogant as to believe that God loves them more than He loves believers in other countries?
Read also Baldwin column, Where Are Dobson and PCC Now?
See also Baldwin cited in posts on this blog:
Loving the Emperor more than Christ
The state's patriotic sheep
Laughing at conservatives
Whose "Constitutional crisis?"
Read more!
Monday, February 02, 2009
Immigration: How much more obnoxious can this get?
The AP headline: Bailed Out Banks Sought Foreign Workers For High-Paying Jobs
American workers can never expect to get a break from the globalizing traitors, who have shipped millions of jobs out of the USA. After dispatching said jobs away from the hands of Americans, these corporate schemers then bring thousands more aliens into this country for the jobs left over. Many of the banks that recently received federal bail-out money (from the taxes of dispossessed American workers) are among those that regularly import foreign labor. So, what happens when the economy goes belly-up, and even the aliens must be laid off?
Excerpts:
Companies are required to pay foreign workers a prevailing wage based on the job's description. But they can use the lower end of government wage scales even for highly skilled workers; hire younger foreigners with lower salary demands; and hire foreigners with higher levels of education or advanced degrees for jobs for which similarly educated American workers would be considered overqualified. "The system provides you perfectly legal mechanisms to underpay the workers," said John Miano of Summit, N.J., a lawyer who has analyzed the wage data and started the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group that opposes the H-1B system.
"You're using taxpayer dollars and there's an expectation that there are benefits to the U.S.," said Ron Hira, a national expert on foreign employment and assistant public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "What you're really doing is leaking away those jobs and benefits that should accrue to the taxpayers."
Jennifer Scott of Yreka, Calif., a retired technical systems manager at Bank of America in Concord, Calif., said in 2004 she oversaw foreign employees from a contractor firm that also sent overnight work to employees in India. "It had nothing to do with a shortage, but they didn't want to pay the U.S. rate," she said, adding that the quality of the work was weak. "It's all about numbers crunching."
See also:
Foreign workers take jobs from Americans
Hundreds Of Indian Techies To Lose Jobs In Microsoft’s 5000 Job Cuts
H-1B Visa Numbers: No Relationship to Economic Need
A Green Card Giveaway for Foreign Grads Would Be Unwarranted
See early Issues & Views articles:
Abandon hope in Silicon Valley
Ongoing amnesty for illegals
Closing the floodgates
Immigration: Betrayal By Black Elites
Related
Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors, published by CIS
Read more!
American workers can never expect to get a break from the globalizing traitors, who have shipped millions of jobs out of the USA. After dispatching said jobs away from the hands of Americans, these corporate schemers then bring thousands more aliens into this country for the jobs left over. Many of the banks that recently received federal bail-out money (from the taxes of dispossessed American workers) are among those that regularly import foreign labor. So, what happens when the economy goes belly-up, and even the aliens must be laid off?
Excerpts:
Companies are required to pay foreign workers a prevailing wage based on the job's description. But they can use the lower end of government wage scales even for highly skilled workers; hire younger foreigners with lower salary demands; and hire foreigners with higher levels of education or advanced degrees for jobs for which similarly educated American workers would be considered overqualified. "The system provides you perfectly legal mechanisms to underpay the workers," said John Miano of Summit, N.J., a lawyer who has analyzed the wage data and started the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group that opposes the H-1B system.
"You're using taxpayer dollars and there's an expectation that there are benefits to the U.S.," said Ron Hira, a national expert on foreign employment and assistant public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "What you're really doing is leaking away those jobs and benefits that should accrue to the taxpayers."
Jennifer Scott of Yreka, Calif., a retired technical systems manager at Bank of America in Concord, Calif., said in 2004 she oversaw foreign employees from a contractor firm that also sent overnight work to employees in India. "It had nothing to do with a shortage, but they didn't want to pay the U.S. rate," she said, adding that the quality of the work was weak. "It's all about numbers crunching."
See also:
Foreign workers take jobs from Americans
Hundreds Of Indian Techies To Lose Jobs In Microsoft’s 5000 Job Cuts
H-1B Visa Numbers: No Relationship to Economic Need
A Green Card Giveaway for Foreign Grads Would Be Unwarranted
See early Issues & Views articles:
Abandon hope in Silicon Valley
Ongoing amnesty for illegals
Closing the floodgates
Immigration: Betrayal By Black Elites
Related
Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors, published by CIS
Read more!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Will free trade or protectionism prevail?
At the World Economic Forum that opened this week in Davos, Switzerland, Professor Nouriel Roubini, eminent New York University economist and author of the book, “Bailouts or Bail-ins?," and Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, were interviewed by the Reuters news staff. Among the subjects were free trade and protectionism. Here are brief excerpts:
Q - Is there likely to be a trend toward greater protectionism and nationalist economic policies around the world in 2009? What will be the implications for the global economy?
Roubini - Protectionist pressure will become more severe if the global economic slump is more protracted and deep. ... Protectionist tariff actions have already started to emerge in places such as Russia and India and they may spread further. Trade-distorting subsidies are more likely than tariffs (see the rescue of Big Auto in the US). ... The new U.S. administration is dominated by pro-globalization figures (such as Tim Geithner and Larry Summers), but Obama's choice for Labor Secretary and U.S. Trade Representative, and the ongoing pressures by trade unions, counter-balance these free-trade leaning forces.
Bremmer - There will be a heavy nationalist influence on economic policies globally this year because the overwhelming priority among political players will be to stimulate economies, growth and job creation. These are "national" projects. Governments will appeal to national pride to maintain domestic support. ... We will see austerity programs all over the world this year. Austerity breeds populism, but populism can easily breed protectionism in any country with significant exposure to international markets. If one country finds political advantage in throwing up a wall to protect a vulnerable industry or economic sector, other governments will have a political incentive and justification to do the same. The West has preached the virtues of free trade and free markets for years. Now, many in the developing world can cite massive state spending by Americans and Europeans to justify kick-starting their own economies, including by protectionist measures.
In another Reuters article, "Davos Policymakers sound alarm over protectionism" (1/29/09), Jonathan Lynn cites the observations of several Davos participants on the subject of free trade:
India's trade minister, Kamal Nath, warned at the World Economic Forum that the global economic crisis could fuel protectionism to safeguard national industries and jobs. He told Reuters that India saw growing signs of protectionism and would respond with its own measures if its exporters were threatened. "We do fear this because one must recognise that at the heart of globalisation lies global competitiveness, and if governments are going to protect their non-competitive production facilities it's not going to be fair trade," he said. "If there are protectionist measures India will be compelled to also take commensurate measures against those countries which will be good for no one." ...
India has raised tariffs on steel to protect local producers, a measure trade experts say was aimed at China, which India does not regard as a market economy. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned in a keynote speech at the opening of the Davos meeting on Wednesday that protectionism would only deepen and prolong the crisis.
Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), said it was to be expected that the crisis would generate protectionist pressures. "We all know by experience that erecting obstacles to trade would make things worse. And the first thing you have to do when you have to cope with a crisis like this is don't shoot in your own foot," he told reporters. "It's pretty clear that there is a risk and that we have to be very vigilant." ... The WTO has started to monitor trade measures taken by its 153 members for signs of protectionism. A first report this week will be updated in time for a meeting in London in April of the G20 group of rich and emerging nations, Lamy said. "At this stage there's nothing dramatic. There are spots here and there which have appeared. Not real significant macroeconomic importance, but there is an area which deserves a lot of vigilance which is subsidies," he said. ...
On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a "Buy America" provision requiring public works projects funded by an $825 billion stimulus package to use only U.S.-made iron and steel. European steelmakers have challenged the move. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which opposed the provision, believes it will be of only limited impact. "An expansion of the current 'Buy American' rules would be a dumb idea, it would be a bad idea because the natural reaction would be for our trade partners to react in kind," Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive of the Chamber, which represents more than 3 million U.S. businesses, told Reuters. "The more difficult it gets the more we have to keep saying 'no isolationism, no protectionism.' We need to keep markets open, we need to keep our ability to sell stuff working and to do that we have to keep our own markets open," Donohue said.
See also: Protect first, free trade be damned
Read more!
Q - Is there likely to be a trend toward greater protectionism and nationalist economic policies around the world in 2009? What will be the implications for the global economy?
Roubini - Protectionist pressure will become more severe if the global economic slump is more protracted and deep. ... Protectionist tariff actions have already started to emerge in places such as Russia and India and they may spread further. Trade-distorting subsidies are more likely than tariffs (see the rescue of Big Auto in the US). ... The new U.S. administration is dominated by pro-globalization figures (such as Tim Geithner and Larry Summers), but Obama's choice for Labor Secretary and U.S. Trade Representative, and the ongoing pressures by trade unions, counter-balance these free-trade leaning forces.
Bremmer - There will be a heavy nationalist influence on economic policies globally this year because the overwhelming priority among political players will be to stimulate economies, growth and job creation. These are "national" projects. Governments will appeal to national pride to maintain domestic support. ... We will see austerity programs all over the world this year. Austerity breeds populism, but populism can easily breed protectionism in any country with significant exposure to international markets. If one country finds political advantage in throwing up a wall to protect a vulnerable industry or economic sector, other governments will have a political incentive and justification to do the same. The West has preached the virtues of free trade and free markets for years. Now, many in the developing world can cite massive state spending by Americans and Europeans to justify kick-starting their own economies, including by protectionist measures.
In another Reuters article, "Davos Policymakers sound alarm over protectionism" (1/29/09), Jonathan Lynn cites the observations of several Davos participants on the subject of free trade:
India's trade minister, Kamal Nath, warned at the World Economic Forum that the global economic crisis could fuel protectionism to safeguard national industries and jobs. He told Reuters that India saw growing signs of protectionism and would respond with its own measures if its exporters were threatened. "We do fear this because one must recognise that at the heart of globalisation lies global competitiveness, and if governments are going to protect their non-competitive production facilities it's not going to be fair trade," he said. "If there are protectionist measures India will be compelled to also take commensurate measures against those countries which will be good for no one." ...
India has raised tariffs on steel to protect local producers, a measure trade experts say was aimed at China, which India does not regard as a market economy. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned in a keynote speech at the opening of the Davos meeting on Wednesday that protectionism would only deepen and prolong the crisis.
Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), said it was to be expected that the crisis would generate protectionist pressures. "We all know by experience that erecting obstacles to trade would make things worse. And the first thing you have to do when you have to cope with a crisis like this is don't shoot in your own foot," he told reporters. "It's pretty clear that there is a risk and that we have to be very vigilant." ... The WTO has started to monitor trade measures taken by its 153 members for signs of protectionism. A first report this week will be updated in time for a meeting in London in April of the G20 group of rich and emerging nations, Lamy said. "At this stage there's nothing dramatic. There are spots here and there which have appeared. Not real significant macroeconomic importance, but there is an area which deserves a lot of vigilance which is subsidies," he said. ...
On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a "Buy America" provision requiring public works projects funded by an $825 billion stimulus package to use only U.S.-made iron and steel. European steelmakers have challenged the move. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which opposed the provision, believes it will be of only limited impact. "An expansion of the current 'Buy American' rules would be a dumb idea, it would be a bad idea because the natural reaction would be for our trade partners to react in kind," Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive of the Chamber, which represents more than 3 million U.S. businesses, told Reuters. "The more difficult it gets the more we have to keep saying 'no isolationism, no protectionism.' We need to keep markets open, we need to keep our ability to sell stuff working and to do that we have to keep our own markets open," Donohue said.
See also: Protect first, free trade be damned
Read more!
An old, familiar story
Here is a no-longer-shocking, but still appalling story of a now common tale -- that of a powerful, single-minded lobby and how it impacts American politics. Told by Philip Weiss, on his remarkable blog Mondoweiss, it is entitled "How the Israel lobby flexed its muscle to destroy New Jersey freeholder candidacy of a Lebanese-American who had expressed sympathy for Palestinians" (1/29/09).
Weiss writes: This morning Adam Horowitz wrote a post about Congressman Bill Pascrell's journey to supporting relief for the people of Gaza in the House. The post prompted a journalist friend to send along the following story about a supporter of Pascrell who had political ambition in New Jersey. As the journalist says, "It's a textbook example of the intimidating impact that 'the lobby' has on politicians -- an explanation of why we get 390-5 votes in the House on pro-Israel resolutions. I wrote this essay about it a while back, but obviously there's no place to publish it."
Weiss asked if he could publish it on his site and proceeded to do so. Here is the link:
Mondoweiss
Read more!
Weiss writes: This morning Adam Horowitz wrote a post about Congressman Bill Pascrell's journey to supporting relief for the people of Gaza in the House. The post prompted a journalist friend to send along the following story about a supporter of Pascrell who had political ambition in New Jersey. As the journalist says, "It's a textbook example of the intimidating impact that 'the lobby' has on politicians -- an explanation of why we get 390-5 votes in the House on pro-Israel resolutions. I wrote this essay about it a while back, but obviously there's no place to publish it."
Weiss asked if he could publish it on his site and proceeded to do so. Here is the link:
Read more!
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Let's all be outraged
Here is a prime example of the overbearing white person, who lives to demonstrate his protective concern for the feelings of "African Americans," even when members of said group would happily live without his protection. In "PC Whiners Aside, Downey Jr. Deserves His Oscar Nod" (Huffington Post, 1/23/09), black author John Ridley reacts to Los Angeles Times' Scott Feinberg, the white person who takes offense for blacks, even when blacks take no offense.
In his January 16 column, Feinberg expresses "shock" over a role played by Robert Downey, Jr., for which he has been nominated for the Academy Award. Feinberg is dismayed, not only because he sees Downey's role as disrespectful to blacks, but because the role has won "widespread approval" from people who, apparently, should know better. In the film, Tropic Thunder, Downey's character, an actor, undergoes an operation that alters his skin pigmentation so he can play a black soldier in a film. In effect, he performs in black face.
"Where is the outrage?" demands the presumptuous Feinberg, ignoring the context of the film's story line. Enjoying his self-appointed position as watchdog for the underdog, he then offers a history lesson about those bad, old Hollywood producers in years past, who thrived on negative portrayals of blacks. "Many in the film industry are so focused on the present," he complains, "that they forget, or worse still, never properly learned, about the past." So, Feinberg, the enlightened white man, is here to straighten out such insensitive white folks. "You can sugarcoat it all you want," he blusters,"but blackface is blackface."
In his brief, terse response to Feinberg's bombast, Ridley nominates him for "Best Performance by a White Guy Who Takes it Upon Himself to be Offended For Black People." Ridley compares Downey's acting achievement in the film to the artful New Yorker cover cartoon of Barack and Michelle Obama. It's designed to go for the gut, while making its point. "Trustees of the Liberal Plantation aside," writes Ridley, "Downey Jr.'s performance is sharp, smart satire."
Feinberg seems to imply that what he calls the "wounds of the past" should neither be forgiven nor forgotten. Yes, let's keep the wounds open and bloodied, in order to give types like Feinberg grist for their everlasting race-hyping mill. Commenters on Feinberg's article (on the Times' site) reflect Ridley's impatience with the columnist's intolerant, narrow-minded view of the Downey film:
"This is just more knee-jerk, over-the-top, over-sensitivity to a non-issue. There hasn't been huge outrage from the black community because the community understands the context."
"As an African American woman, I fail to see how celebrating Downey, Jr.'s performance would be the same as celebrating 'blackface.' ... I hope the Academy does recognize Mr. Downey's performance as it was worthy of an Oscar."
"Let's go ahead and ignore the fact that no black people seem to have been offended by the movie. Instead, let's all sit down and have this white guy from LA tell us what is offensive to black people."
Read more!
In his January 16 column, Feinberg expresses "shock" over a role played by Robert Downey, Jr., for which he has been nominated for the Academy Award. Feinberg is dismayed, not only because he sees Downey's role as disrespectful to blacks, but because the role has won "widespread approval" from people who, apparently, should know better. In the film, Tropic Thunder, Downey's character, an actor, undergoes an operation that alters his skin pigmentation so he can play a black soldier in a film. In effect, he performs in black face.
"Where is the outrage?" demands the presumptuous Feinberg, ignoring the context of the film's story line. Enjoying his self-appointed position as watchdog for the underdog, he then offers a history lesson about those bad, old Hollywood producers in years past, who thrived on negative portrayals of blacks. "Many in the film industry are so focused on the present," he complains, "that they forget, or worse still, never properly learned, about the past." So, Feinberg, the enlightened white man, is here to straighten out such insensitive white folks. "You can sugarcoat it all you want," he blusters,"but blackface is blackface."
In his brief, terse response to Feinberg's bombast, Ridley nominates him for "Best Performance by a White Guy Who Takes it Upon Himself to be Offended For Black People." Ridley compares Downey's acting achievement in the film to the artful New Yorker cover cartoon of Barack and Michelle Obama. It's designed to go for the gut, while making its point. "Trustees of the Liberal Plantation aside," writes Ridley, "Downey Jr.'s performance is sharp, smart satire."
Feinberg seems to imply that what he calls the "wounds of the past" should neither be forgiven nor forgotten. Yes, let's keep the wounds open and bloodied, in order to give types like Feinberg grist for their everlasting race-hyping mill. Commenters on Feinberg's article (on the Times' site) reflect Ridley's impatience with the columnist's intolerant, narrow-minded view of the Downey film:
"This is just more knee-jerk, over-the-top, over-sensitivity to a non-issue. There hasn't been huge outrage from the black community because the community understands the context."
"As an African American woman, I fail to see how celebrating Downey, Jr.'s performance would be the same as celebrating 'blackface.' ... I hope the Academy does recognize Mr. Downey's performance as it was worthy of an Oscar."
"Let's go ahead and ignore the fact that no black people seem to have been offended by the movie. Instead, let's all sit down and have this white guy from LA tell us what is offensive to black people."
Read more!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Bush myths and lies
"We owe him gratitude, since there were no attacks after 9/11 on American soil."
"We’ve gone seven years without another terrorist attack."
"He kept us safe."
And this is all these Bush fanatics have -- the one thing that no one can prove or disprove, sort of like God's existence. Was a second attack planned against the US by the original perpetrators, or, considering the many years of planning that went into the first one, was there never an interest in repeating the atrocity? Were those who had the resources to make another strike ever of a mind to do so? Well aware of the grievous damage done, why should the perpetrators feel the need to take any further risks, especially since the element of surprise would no longer be in their favor? How do we know we were protected from anything?
For eight years we were victims of incompetents, who willfully spat on the Constitution, while exasperating the American people to such a degree, that they decided anything would be better than a continuance of the neocon monstrosities who hijacked the government in 2000. Anything -- even electing an African to run the country.
Read more!
"We’ve gone seven years without another terrorist attack."
"He kept us safe."
And this is all these Bush fanatics have -- the one thing that no one can prove or disprove, sort of like God's existence. Was a second attack planned against the US by the original perpetrators, or, considering the many years of planning that went into the first one, was there never an interest in repeating the atrocity? Were those who had the resources to make another strike ever of a mind to do so? Well aware of the grievous damage done, why should the perpetrators feel the need to take any further risks, especially since the element of surprise would no longer be in their favor? How do we know we were protected from anything?
For eight years we were victims of incompetents, who willfully spat on the Constitution, while exasperating the American people to such a degree, that they decided anything would be better than a continuance of the neocon monstrosities who hijacked the government in 2000. Anything -- even electing an African to run the country.
Read more!
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Protect first, Free Trade be damned
Is Free Trade something like Communism, that is, a religion or ideology that's supposed to work when all the right conditions prevail? Remember when Communist apologists used to explain that the Soviet model did not work because true Communism, the real McCoy, was never applied? Is the reason why the US finds itself in a deficit hole today due to the fact that real Free Trade has never been tried? Is Pat Buchanan right in his claim that Free Trade is a practice in which only fools would entrap their country? Here is Buchanan on the subject.
From column, "George Bush, Protectionist":
"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," President Bush told CNN, defending his offer of $17 billion in loans to the Big Three "to make sure the economy doesn't collapse." Thus did Bush concede that protectionism, if a critical U.S. industry is in peril, must trump free-trade ideology. For in offering the bailout to GM, Ford and Chrysler, Bush, by omission, excluded BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai – though all operate auto plants here in the United States and all are feeling the same sales slump.
Bush may believe he has sinned against free-market principles, but he is following the path of his great free-market predecessor. Ronald Reagan, too, was not prepared to see Japan take down the U.S. auto industry, or steel industry, or computer chip industry, or Harley-Davidson. Believing Japan was dumping to destroy U.S. companies, Reagan put patriotism before ideology and imposed quotas on Japanese imports. He, too, was castigated by the same commentariat that is berating Bush.
Averting Chapter 11 for GM, which could lead to liquidation of the greatest manufacturing company in U.S. history – cutting America out of the premier consumer market of the 21st century – makes sense not only from the standpoint of politics, but economics, as well. For other nations, as the Washington Post reports, are far ahead of Bush in sheltering their industries and protecting their markets:
India has levied a 20% duty on soybeans to cut imports and protect her farmers. The United States has just filed charges with the World Trade Organization against China for "unfair support of its export industry – including the award of cash grants, rebates and preferential loans to exporters."
Awfully late in the game, Bush seems to have awakened to an ancient reality. When the tough times come, nations protect their own interests first, free trade be damned.
By traditional free-trade theory, a nation should import what it does not produce from the nations that produce it most cheaply. But in 1946, Japan produced almost no steel, no TVs and no cars. Instead of buying them from America, Tokyo subsidized its own steel, TV and auto industries for decades, and protected their market. Now, as Sony did to Philco and Dumont, Toyota, Honda and Nissan are taking down Ford, GM and Chrysler. Were the Japanese foolish to subsidize their industries and protect their market? Were we wise to let our TV industry be taken down, and watch our auto and steel industries driven to death's door?
To 1970, Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas produced almost all of the world's jetliners. But rather than rely in perpetuity on Americans for passenger planes, Britain, France, Germany and Spain subsidized a socialist cartel, Airbus, that did not make a profit for 25 years and sold its planes for less than it cost to build them. That trampled all over free-trade theory, but it did kill Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas and almost killed Boeing. Were the Europeans foolish to create an aircraft industry and subsidize the destruction of Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas? Or were they wise to sacrifice today to capture the world's aircraft market of tomorrow?
Like Prohibition in Hoover's phrase, globalism is "an experiment, noble in purpose, that has failed." As we have learned, at a cost of $10 trillion in wealth wiped out on Wall Street, the nations of the future are not the consumer nations that pile up debt as they live on imports, but the producer nations that save and sacrifice and make the things the world wants.
•
Back in 2004, Buchanan wrote in his column, "Suicide by Free Trade":
Like companies that continue to make products no one wants to buy anymore, parties that persist in policies that are visibly failing – like LBJ in Vietnam – end up being abandoned.
If the GOP persists in this free-trade fanaticism, it is courting suicide. For the policy is not working in the eyes of the people. And if Republicans insist the returns from global free trade – a disintegrating dollar and a merchandise trade deficit of $550 billion a year and rising – are good for America, folks are going to conclude that Republicans are too out of it to govern. If the GOP does not offer ideas to halt the de-industrialization of America and the hemorrhaging of blue- and white-collar jobs, it is going to wind up on a landfill.
The problem with the columnists and think-tank scribblers who make up the intelligentsia of the GOP is not that they believe in free markets but that they worship them. They believe that if NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and MFN for China mean production goes overseas, the market is telling us where production ought to be. And the voice of the market is to be obeyed, because that is the voice of their god. When Reagan, a devout free trader, saw the U.S. auto industry sinking, he did not let ideology interfere with a rescue. He imposed quotas on imported Japanese cars and saved Detroit, though he was denounced for apostasy and heresy.
Free-trade Republicans are like militant Christian Scientists who prefer to let patients die rather than call in a doctor – which is fine, as long as you’re not the patient. Americans believe that the interests of U.S. workers and their families come ahead of what may be good or best for the Global Economy. For years they have seen industrial jobs disappear. Now white-collar jobs are being outsourced. They want to know what Bush and the Republicans are going to do about it.
•
In his book, Where the Right Went Wrong, Buchanan cites Alexander Hamilton's guidelines that he believed would insure an economically independent nation. Buchanan observes that Presidents "from Washington to Madison to Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt" followed Hamilton's prescriptions, which were:
• America must not be thirteen separate markets but a single free market. All state tariffs that impede domestic commerce are to be abolished. Free trade among the thirteen states is embedded in the Constitution.
• To ensure free trade among the states, a new national government has been created. How is it to be financed? With tariffs on imports from abroad, imposed at customs houses at the port of entry. All exports and all income of U.S. citizens are to be exempt from taxation. This prohibition was to be written into the Constitution.
• The tariff revenue extracted from foreign merchants will be used to build a new capitol, create an army and navy to defend us from imperial predators, and construct the roads, harbors, and canals that will bind us together as a people.
Buchanan concludes:
From Hamilton's mind and pen had come the greatest free market in history. But as Hamilton was, like Washington, an American nationalist, it was a national free-trade zone he had created. All Americans participated in that free market as their birthright, but British merchants, who had held life-and-death power over the colonies, would pay a price of admission – a tariff.
That tariff would finance a small but strong central government. And by raising the price of foreign goods, tariffs would stimulate our own people into building factories here in the United States. Strategic goal: Cut the ties of dependency to Europe and create bonds of commerce among Americans. The US economy was designed to weld us into one nation and one people, dependent upon one another. What was best for America, and for our people as a whole, was the basis of Hamilton's great idea.
Washington and Hamilton wanted to wean the republic off a reliance on foreign trade so Americans would never again be drawn into the wars of the old continent. They wanted to cut the umbilical cord to Europe and set out over the mountains for the West. They were statesmen, visionaries, and patriots.
See also: Will free trade or protectionism prevail?
Read more!
From column, "George Bush, Protectionist":
"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," President Bush told CNN, defending his offer of $17 billion in loans to the Big Three "to make sure the economy doesn't collapse." Thus did Bush concede that protectionism, if a critical U.S. industry is in peril, must trump free-trade ideology. For in offering the bailout to GM, Ford and Chrysler, Bush, by omission, excluded BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai – though all operate auto plants here in the United States and all are feeling the same sales slump.
Bush may believe he has sinned against free-market principles, but he is following the path of his great free-market predecessor. Ronald Reagan, too, was not prepared to see Japan take down the U.S. auto industry, or steel industry, or computer chip industry, or Harley-Davidson. Believing Japan was dumping to destroy U.S. companies, Reagan put patriotism before ideology and imposed quotas on Japanese imports. He, too, was castigated by the same commentariat that is berating Bush.
Averting Chapter 11 for GM, which could lead to liquidation of the greatest manufacturing company in U.S. history – cutting America out of the premier consumer market of the 21st century – makes sense not only from the standpoint of politics, but economics, as well. For other nations, as the Washington Post reports, are far ahead of Bush in sheltering their industries and protecting their markets:
Moving to shield battered domestic manufacturers from foreign imports, Indonesia is slapping restrictions on at least 500 products this month, demanding special licenses and new fees on imports. Russia is hiking tariffs on imported cars, poultry and pork. France is launching a state fund to protect French companies from foreign takeovers. Officials in Argentina and Brazil are seeking to raise tariffs on products, from imported wine and textiles to leather goods and peaches, according to the World Trade Organization.
India has levied a 20% duty on soybeans to cut imports and protect her farmers. The United States has just filed charges with the World Trade Organization against China for "unfair support of its export industry – including the award of cash grants, rebates and preferential loans to exporters."
Awfully late in the game, Bush seems to have awakened to an ancient reality. When the tough times come, nations protect their own interests first, free trade be damned.
By traditional free-trade theory, a nation should import what it does not produce from the nations that produce it most cheaply. But in 1946, Japan produced almost no steel, no TVs and no cars. Instead of buying them from America, Tokyo subsidized its own steel, TV and auto industries for decades, and protected their market. Now, as Sony did to Philco and Dumont, Toyota, Honda and Nissan are taking down Ford, GM and Chrysler. Were the Japanese foolish to subsidize their industries and protect their market? Were we wise to let our TV industry be taken down, and watch our auto and steel industries driven to death's door?
To 1970, Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas produced almost all of the world's jetliners. But rather than rely in perpetuity on Americans for passenger planes, Britain, France, Germany and Spain subsidized a socialist cartel, Airbus, that did not make a profit for 25 years and sold its planes for less than it cost to build them. That trampled all over free-trade theory, but it did kill Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas and almost killed Boeing. Were the Europeans foolish to create an aircraft industry and subsidize the destruction of Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas? Or were they wise to sacrifice today to capture the world's aircraft market of tomorrow?
Like Prohibition in Hoover's phrase, globalism is "an experiment, noble in purpose, that has failed." As we have learned, at a cost of $10 trillion in wealth wiped out on Wall Street, the nations of the future are not the consumer nations that pile up debt as they live on imports, but the producer nations that save and sacrifice and make the things the world wants.
Back in 2004, Buchanan wrote in his column, "Suicide by Free Trade":
Like companies that continue to make products no one wants to buy anymore, parties that persist in policies that are visibly failing – like LBJ in Vietnam – end up being abandoned.
If the GOP persists in this free-trade fanaticism, it is courting suicide. For the policy is not working in the eyes of the people. And if Republicans insist the returns from global free trade – a disintegrating dollar and a merchandise trade deficit of $550 billion a year and rising – are good for America, folks are going to conclude that Republicans are too out of it to govern. If the GOP does not offer ideas to halt the de-industrialization of America and the hemorrhaging of blue- and white-collar jobs, it is going to wind up on a landfill.
The problem with the columnists and think-tank scribblers who make up the intelligentsia of the GOP is not that they believe in free markets but that they worship them. They believe that if NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and MFN for China mean production goes overseas, the market is telling us where production ought to be. And the voice of the market is to be obeyed, because that is the voice of their god. When Reagan, a devout free trader, saw the U.S. auto industry sinking, he did not let ideology interfere with a rescue. He imposed quotas on imported Japanese cars and saved Detroit, though he was denounced for apostasy and heresy.
Free-trade Republicans are like militant Christian Scientists who prefer to let patients die rather than call in a doctor – which is fine, as long as you’re not the patient. Americans believe that the interests of U.S. workers and their families come ahead of what may be good or best for the Global Economy. For years they have seen industrial jobs disappear. Now white-collar jobs are being outsourced. They want to know what Bush and the Republicans are going to do about it.
In his book, Where the Right Went Wrong, Buchanan cites Alexander Hamilton's guidelines that he believed would insure an economically independent nation. Buchanan observes that Presidents "from Washington to Madison to Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt" followed Hamilton's prescriptions, which were:
• America must not be thirteen separate markets but a single free market. All state tariffs that impede domestic commerce are to be abolished. Free trade among the thirteen states is embedded in the Constitution.
• To ensure free trade among the states, a new national government has been created. How is it to be financed? With tariffs on imports from abroad, imposed at customs houses at the port of entry. All exports and all income of U.S. citizens are to be exempt from taxation. This prohibition was to be written into the Constitution.
• The tariff revenue extracted from foreign merchants will be used to build a new capitol, create an army and navy to defend us from imperial predators, and construct the roads, harbors, and canals that will bind us together as a people.
Buchanan concludes:
From Hamilton's mind and pen had come the greatest free market in history. But as Hamilton was, like Washington, an American nationalist, it was a national free-trade zone he had created. All Americans participated in that free market as their birthright, but British merchants, who had held life-and-death power over the colonies, would pay a price of admission – a tariff.
That tariff would finance a small but strong central government. And by raising the price of foreign goods, tariffs would stimulate our own people into building factories here in the United States. Strategic goal: Cut the ties of dependency to Europe and create bonds of commerce among Americans. The US economy was designed to weld us into one nation and one people, dependent upon one another. What was best for America, and for our people as a whole, was the basis of Hamilton's great idea.
Washington and Hamilton wanted to wean the republic off a reliance on foreign trade so Americans would never again be drawn into the wars of the old continent. They wanted to cut the umbilical cord to Europe and set out over the mountains for the West. They were statesmen, visionaries, and patriots.
See also: Will free trade or protectionism prevail?
Read more!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
A shameful blot
On the cover of the November 17, 2008 edition of The American Conservative magazine is a list of the dismal accomplishments of our outgoing President, George W. Bush. It reads as follows:
Missions Accomplished
• Start a war (or two)
• Shred Constitution
• Crash economy
• Expand entitlements
• Ruin America's reputation
• Create Democratic majority
• Bribe churches
• Recruit for al-Qaeda
• Discredit conservatism
• Nationalize banks
• Cut taxes now, pay later
• Misunderestimate hurricane
• Export jobs, import workers
• Federalize education
• Spy on citizens
The cover story inside, "Bush's Broken Record," offers observations by several writers on the Bush tenure. A few excerpts:
He Fought the Wars and the Wars Won, by Gary Brecher
What George W. Bush loved best about his job was being a war president. Playing war, that is, as opposed to making war like a grown-up. Remember him strutting onto that carrier in his little flight jacket? You never saw Eisenhower, a real general, playing out his martial fantasies this way. You can take the drink out of the drunk, but you can’t take the swagger out of a fool. ...
Maybe there’s a lesson here: if the president doesn’t cut it in a crisis, we’re better off admitting that to ourselves and telling him so instead of pretending he’s a great leader. When you make a weakling into a hero, you give him a lot of power. ...
So we poured American blood and treasure into the Iraqi dust to prove the half-baked theories of a bunch of tenth-rate professors. The most expensive experiment in the history of the world, all to learn something any 10-year-old could have told them: people don’t take to foreign troops on their streets, and not everybody wants to be like us. You know those Ig-Nobel awards they hand out to the dumbest science projects of the year? The Iraq invasion is the all-time winner. Retire the trophy with the names of the winning team: Bush, Cheney, Kristol, Wolfowitz, Feith. ...
It’s no puzzle: we pretended a goon was a hero, let him play out his foolish fantasies about remaking the Middle East, and wasted our strength on a losing effort while the rest of the world drifted out of our power. Our leader was a laughingstock around globe, and he made America the butt of the world’s contempt. But Bush got his wish—he was a war president and then some. The rest of us were the casualties.
•
A Long Train of Abuses, by Alexander Cockburn
No doubt the conservatives who cheered Bush on as he abrogated ancient rights and stretched the powers of his office to unseen limits would have shrieked if a Democrat had taken such liberties. But now Obama will be entitled to the lordly prerogatives Bush established.
Growing up in Ireland and the United Kingdom, I gazed with envy at the United States, with its constitutional protections and its Bill of Rights contrasting with the vast ad hoc tapestry of Britain’s repressive laws and “emergency” statutes piled up through the centuries. Successive regimes from the Plantagenet and Tudor periods forward went about the state’s business of enforcing the enclosures, hanging or transporting strikers, criminalizing disrespectful speech, and, of course, abolishing the right to carry even something so innocuous as a penknife. ...
Bush has forged resolutely along the path blazed by Clinton in asserting uninhibited executive power to wage war, seize, confine, and torture at will, breaching constitutional laws and international treaties and covenants concerning the treatment of combatants. The Patriot Act took up items on the Justice Department’s wish list left over from Clinton’s dreadful Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which trashed habeas corpus protections.
The most spectacular abuses of civil liberties under Bush, such as the prison camp at Guantanamo, are acute symptoms of a chronic disease. The larger story of the past eight years has been the great continuity between this administration and those that have come before. ...
In the past eight years, Bush has ravaged the Fourth Amendment with steadfast diligence, starting with his insistence that he could issue arrest warrants if there was reason to believe a noncitizen was implicated in terrorist activity. Seized under this pretext and held within America’s borders or in some secret prison overseas, the captive had no recourse to a court of law. Simultaneously, the “probable cause” standard, theoretically disciplining the state’s innate propensity to search and to seize, has been systematically abused, as have the FBI’s powers under the “material witness” statute to arrest and hold their suspects. Goodbye habeas corpus.
•
Discounting Family Values, by Allan Carlson
The Bush team sacrificed the prospect of greater pro-family initiatives—like so much else—to the war in Iraq. Most disturbingly, the Defense Department relentlessly manipulated, and at times simply ignored, laws that limited exposure of women to combat. Desperate to fill its ranks, the Army ignored the lessons of all human history and put women—including young mothers—at risk, a shameful blot on the American record. Hundreds have been killed and many more severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands have spent months, if not years, separated from their families.
The administration’s deliberate twisting of gender roles was on gruesome display in the case of Jessica Lynch, in which Pentagon propagandists blatantly lied about her capture in the early days of the Iraq War, turning a frightened victim of Iraqi sexual abuse into a female version of Sergeant York. Private Lynndie England’s infamous exploits in the Abu Ghraib prison were another sign of the Pentagon’s direct complicity in the feminist-inspired degradation of American women.
In pursuit of its military agenda, the Bush administration achieved another landmark of gender-role engineering. Its deployment of women into combat made sure, given prior court decisions, that if the nation must someday return to a draft, the daughters of American families will join their brothers in involuntary military service.
•
Conservatives Follow the Leader, by Llewellyn Rockwell
To be sure, cultural problems abound, given the warfare state and the welfare state. But the answer is hardly to put the feds in total charge. Just as religion must be free from state interference, so must the culture, which is informed by religion. But once conservatives helped make these issues part of the political agenda, the state happily developed an aggressive strategy for shaping the culture in its image, through a wide variety of legislation and spending.
So when it came time for Bush to rally conservative support, he pushed very bad ideas like putting religious charities on the government dole. You might think that this would be opposed by anyone who valued religious independence, charitable autonomy, free enterprise, and limiting government. But no: conservatives stood foursquare with Bush, and even had their hands out for contracts. ...
Every Republican president can count on the conservatives eventually supporting whatever policies he dishes out for one simple and profound reason: they hate the Left more than they hate the state. So in the end, they will back anything that keeps the Left out of power. By anything, I mean anything—military dictatorship, fascist central planning, state management of the whole of the culture. One wonders what horror they think they are preventing by opposing the Left.
The answer is that they do not think. Most people calling themselves conservatives pay no attention to the history of ideas. George W. Bush certainly took no such interest. His understanding of American history, economics, and world affairs is thin and superficial. His goal as president was not to accomplish anything as such but merely to be president and do presidential things and hope to land on the right side of history.
Read more!
• Start a war (or two)
• Shred Constitution
• Crash economy
• Expand entitlements
• Ruin America's reputation
• Create Democratic majority
• Bribe churches
• Recruit for al-Qaeda
• Discredit conservatism
• Nationalize banks
• Cut taxes now, pay later
• Misunderestimate hurricane
• Export jobs, import workers
• Federalize education
• Spy on citizens
The cover story inside, "Bush's Broken Record," offers observations by several writers on the Bush tenure. A few excerpts:
He Fought the Wars and the Wars Won, by Gary Brecher
What George W. Bush loved best about his job was being a war president. Playing war, that is, as opposed to making war like a grown-up. Remember him strutting onto that carrier in his little flight jacket? You never saw Eisenhower, a real general, playing out his martial fantasies this way. You can take the drink out of the drunk, but you can’t take the swagger out of a fool. ...
Maybe there’s a lesson here: if the president doesn’t cut it in a crisis, we’re better off admitting that to ourselves and telling him so instead of pretending he’s a great leader. When you make a weakling into a hero, you give him a lot of power. ...
So we poured American blood and treasure into the Iraqi dust to prove the half-baked theories of a bunch of tenth-rate professors. The most expensive experiment in the history of the world, all to learn something any 10-year-old could have told them: people don’t take to foreign troops on their streets, and not everybody wants to be like us. You know those Ig-Nobel awards they hand out to the dumbest science projects of the year? The Iraq invasion is the all-time winner. Retire the trophy with the names of the winning team: Bush, Cheney, Kristol, Wolfowitz, Feith. ...
It’s no puzzle: we pretended a goon was a hero, let him play out his foolish fantasies about remaking the Middle East, and wasted our strength on a losing effort while the rest of the world drifted out of our power. Our leader was a laughingstock around globe, and he made America the butt of the world’s contempt. But Bush got his wish—he was a war president and then some. The rest of us were the casualties.
A Long Train of Abuses, by Alexander Cockburn
No doubt the conservatives who cheered Bush on as he abrogated ancient rights and stretched the powers of his office to unseen limits would have shrieked if a Democrat had taken such liberties. But now Obama will be entitled to the lordly prerogatives Bush established.
Growing up in Ireland and the United Kingdom, I gazed with envy at the United States, with its constitutional protections and its Bill of Rights contrasting with the vast ad hoc tapestry of Britain’s repressive laws and “emergency” statutes piled up through the centuries. Successive regimes from the Plantagenet and Tudor periods forward went about the state’s business of enforcing the enclosures, hanging or transporting strikers, criminalizing disrespectful speech, and, of course, abolishing the right to carry even something so innocuous as a penknife. ...
Bush has forged resolutely along the path blazed by Clinton in asserting uninhibited executive power to wage war, seize, confine, and torture at will, breaching constitutional laws and international treaties and covenants concerning the treatment of combatants. The Patriot Act took up items on the Justice Department’s wish list left over from Clinton’s dreadful Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which trashed habeas corpus protections.
The most spectacular abuses of civil liberties under Bush, such as the prison camp at Guantanamo, are acute symptoms of a chronic disease. The larger story of the past eight years has been the great continuity between this administration and those that have come before. ...
In the past eight years, Bush has ravaged the Fourth Amendment with steadfast diligence, starting with his insistence that he could issue arrest warrants if there was reason to believe a noncitizen was implicated in terrorist activity. Seized under this pretext and held within America’s borders or in some secret prison overseas, the captive had no recourse to a court of law. Simultaneously, the “probable cause” standard, theoretically disciplining the state’s innate propensity to search and to seize, has been systematically abused, as have the FBI’s powers under the “material witness” statute to arrest and hold their suspects. Goodbye habeas corpus.
Discounting Family Values, by Allan Carlson
The Bush team sacrificed the prospect of greater pro-family initiatives—like so much else—to the war in Iraq. Most disturbingly, the Defense Department relentlessly manipulated, and at times simply ignored, laws that limited exposure of women to combat. Desperate to fill its ranks, the Army ignored the lessons of all human history and put women—including young mothers—at risk, a shameful blot on the American record. Hundreds have been killed and many more severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands have spent months, if not years, separated from their families.
The administration’s deliberate twisting of gender roles was on gruesome display in the case of Jessica Lynch, in which Pentagon propagandists blatantly lied about her capture in the early days of the Iraq War, turning a frightened victim of Iraqi sexual abuse into a female version of Sergeant York. Private Lynndie England’s infamous exploits in the Abu Ghraib prison were another sign of the Pentagon’s direct complicity in the feminist-inspired degradation of American women.
In pursuit of its military agenda, the Bush administration achieved another landmark of gender-role engineering. Its deployment of women into combat made sure, given prior court decisions, that if the nation must someday return to a draft, the daughters of American families will join their brothers in involuntary military service.
Conservatives Follow the Leader, by Llewellyn Rockwell
To be sure, cultural problems abound, given the warfare state and the welfare state. But the answer is hardly to put the feds in total charge. Just as religion must be free from state interference, so must the culture, which is informed by religion. But once conservatives helped make these issues part of the political agenda, the state happily developed an aggressive strategy for shaping the culture in its image, through a wide variety of legislation and spending.
So when it came time for Bush to rally conservative support, he pushed very bad ideas like putting religious charities on the government dole. You might think that this would be opposed by anyone who valued religious independence, charitable autonomy, free enterprise, and limiting government. But no: conservatives stood foursquare with Bush, and even had their hands out for contracts. ...
Every Republican president can count on the conservatives eventually supporting whatever policies he dishes out for one simple and profound reason: they hate the Left more than they hate the state. So in the end, they will back anything that keeps the Left out of power. By anything, I mean anything—military dictatorship, fascist central planning, state management of the whole of the culture. One wonders what horror they think they are preventing by opposing the Left.
The answer is that they do not think. Most people calling themselves conservatives pay no attention to the history of ideas. George W. Bush certainly took no such interest. His understanding of American history, economics, and world affairs is thin and superficial. His goal as president was not to accomplish anything as such but merely to be president and do presidential things and hope to land on the right side of history.
Read more!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Beating up on the Dixie Chicks
An interesting thread about the Dixie Chicks and their travails, which still do not seem to be over, appeared on the Country Music Television site.
So many people still do not understand that the First Amendment was conceived to act as the primary vehicle that makes it safe for Americans to speak out against our government and those who claim to represent us. For many citizens, freedom of speech stops short of criticism of their pet politician.
• • •
(Dec. 5)
Jim C says:
Politics and Natalie Maine’s big mouth aside….. the Dixie Chicks play great music, and I look forward to hearing their new music. Having been in the Marine Corps for 25 years, I tend to forgive people who shoot off their mouth’s because I fight for their freedom to make asses of themselves. People in the public eye make stupid statements all of the time with little consequences; however, Ms. Maines forgot one important thing…. Country Music fans are very patriotic people!!!! We love our Country and we love our Country Music and we don’t like anyone treading on either one.
•
(Dec. 5)
Rosebud says:
Jim C, the first thing I want to do is thank you for serving our country. I do really appeciate the men and women who fight for our great nation. I do not agree that their (Dixie Chicks) comments make them unpatriotic. It’s been so long since they made those statements. The fact of the matter is their feelings of going to war were the same as a lot of people. That does not mean those people do not support the troops only they may question the motives of our Commander and Chief.
•
(Dec. 5)
Jim C says:
Rosebud…. what you say is valid; however, remember that America has a “Mob Mentality.” What Natalie Maines said about President Bush wasn’t that bad compared to other remarks that have been made about him. In her case, the timing was just wrong and the Dixie Chicks paid for it in the only way the “Angry Mob” could get back at them …. and that was by pulling their cd’s off the shelves and taking them off of playlists at Country Music Stations. Was it right? No way …… but as I stated in a previous entry, Country Music Fans love their country and they love their country music and Natalie Maines, for a moment, forgot about that. But here’s the thing …. the Chicks have made some great music since then and have had a very successful tour schedule, so their going to be okay.
•
(Dec. 6)
Stella says:
How does anyone buy the notion that lambasting a politician, whether the President or not, is the same as lambasting your country or its principles? Where does such an idea come from? Every President has faced an opposition that has torn him to shreds.
Politicians are there to be criticized and denounced by the citizens. Who else deserves it more? And how in the world does that make an American less “patriotic?” Why should anyone buy the notion that mindless robots, who meekly follow the mob, are people who “love their country?” Maybe they just love not having to think for themselves.
Why can’t the Dixie Chicks’ music be appreciated, while they are accepted on their own terms? Do you think that if Elvis had gone against the political grain of the times, that he would have been shunned and his music ignored by radio jocks?
•
(Dec. 6)
Jim C says:
. . . The fact of the matter is that a majority of Country Music fans, and many American’s do see the President as a symbol of American Patriotism. If you have ever traveled abroad, then you know that much of the world equates America’s President as America itself and judges us accordingly. I have been to many countries where the only English word they all collectively know is the name of the current President.
•
(Dec. 6)
Leanne says:
So, will country music fans be this respectful to our incoming president? Will they get up in arms if someone like Trace or Toby says something disrespectful about soon-to-be President Obama -- here in the U.S. or even on foreign soil? I’m thinking Mr. Keith will be able to say whatever he wants about Obama at his concerts and the majority of country music fans will simply cheer him on.
So, it’s somewhat disingenuous to suggest that the uproar over Maine’s remarks was a result of someone saying something negative against the President. I’m more inclined to believe that the anger was because she dared to say something about a Republican president, because I’m sure Obama will not be shown such patriotic respect by the fans who currently claim to be so respectful of the office of the president. ...
I just don’t believe that they would have been so angry if Natalie had spoken out against Clinton in the ’90s, and I don’t believe they will be angry if country artists say something disrespectful about Obama in the next 4 years, no matter what soil it’s said on. So, I wish people would just admit that they were mad because Natalie said something they didn’t agree with and stop trying to justify it for what might seem like a nobler reason.
• • •
Yes, as Leanne suggests, let's all wait to see if those patriotic country music fans insist on respecting the "Office of the President," when the flak is flying hot and heavy over Obama's head. Is the Office of the President respected only when a Republican holds it?
As each citizen should desire the right to criticize political figures, of any party, we should refrain from punishing one another when the verbal rocks are being thrown at our pet politician. Read more!
So many people still do not understand that the First Amendment was conceived to act as the primary vehicle that makes it safe for Americans to speak out against our government and those who claim to represent us. For many citizens, freedom of speech stops short of criticism of their pet politician.
(Dec. 5)
Jim C says:
Politics and Natalie Maine’s big mouth aside….. the Dixie Chicks play great music, and I look forward to hearing their new music. Having been in the Marine Corps for 25 years, I tend to forgive people who shoot off their mouth’s because I fight for their freedom to make asses of themselves. People in the public eye make stupid statements all of the time with little consequences; however, Ms. Maines forgot one important thing…. Country Music fans are very patriotic people!!!! We love our Country and we love our Country Music and we don’t like anyone treading on either one.
(Dec. 5)
Rosebud says:
Jim C, the first thing I want to do is thank you for serving our country. I do really appeciate the men and women who fight for our great nation. I do not agree that their (Dixie Chicks) comments make them unpatriotic. It’s been so long since they made those statements. The fact of the matter is their feelings of going to war were the same as a lot of people. That does not mean those people do not support the troops only they may question the motives of our Commander and Chief.
(Dec. 5)
Jim C says:
Rosebud…. what you say is valid; however, remember that America has a “Mob Mentality.” What Natalie Maines said about President Bush wasn’t that bad compared to other remarks that have been made about him. In her case, the timing was just wrong and the Dixie Chicks paid for it in the only way the “Angry Mob” could get back at them …. and that was by pulling their cd’s off the shelves and taking them off of playlists at Country Music Stations. Was it right? No way …… but as I stated in a previous entry, Country Music Fans love their country and they love their country music and Natalie Maines, for a moment, forgot about that. But here’s the thing …. the Chicks have made some great music since then and have had a very successful tour schedule, so their going to be okay.
(Dec. 6)
Stella says:
How does anyone buy the notion that lambasting a politician, whether the President or not, is the same as lambasting your country or its principles? Where does such an idea come from? Every President has faced an opposition that has torn him to shreds.
Politicians are there to be criticized and denounced by the citizens. Who else deserves it more? And how in the world does that make an American less “patriotic?” Why should anyone buy the notion that mindless robots, who meekly follow the mob, are people who “love their country?” Maybe they just love not having to think for themselves.
Why can’t the Dixie Chicks’ music be appreciated, while they are accepted on their own terms? Do you think that if Elvis had gone against the political grain of the times, that he would have been shunned and his music ignored by radio jocks?
(Dec. 6)
Jim C says:
. . . The fact of the matter is that a majority of Country Music fans, and many American’s do see the President as a symbol of American Patriotism. If you have ever traveled abroad, then you know that much of the world equates America’s President as America itself and judges us accordingly. I have been to many countries where the only English word they all collectively know is the name of the current President.
(Dec. 6)
Leanne says:
So, will country music fans be this respectful to our incoming president? Will they get up in arms if someone like Trace or Toby says something disrespectful about soon-to-be President Obama -- here in the U.S. or even on foreign soil? I’m thinking Mr. Keith will be able to say whatever he wants about Obama at his concerts and the majority of country music fans will simply cheer him on.
So, it’s somewhat disingenuous to suggest that the uproar over Maine’s remarks was a result of someone saying something negative against the President. I’m more inclined to believe that the anger was because she dared to say something about a Republican president, because I’m sure Obama will not be shown such patriotic respect by the fans who currently claim to be so respectful of the office of the president. ...
I just don’t believe that they would have been so angry if Natalie had spoken out against Clinton in the ’90s, and I don’t believe they will be angry if country artists say something disrespectful about Obama in the next 4 years, no matter what soil it’s said on. So, I wish people would just admit that they were mad because Natalie said something they didn’t agree with and stop trying to justify it for what might seem like a nobler reason.
Yes, as Leanne suggests, let's all wait to see if those patriotic country music fans insist on respecting the "Office of the President," when the flak is flying hot and heavy over Obama's head. Is the Office of the President respected only when a Republican holds it?
As each citizen should desire the right to criticize political figures, of any party, we should refrain from punishing one another when the verbal rocks are being thrown at our pet politician. Read more!
You handed government a sword
Some excerpts from the wise words of Robert Hawes, who identifies as a Christian libertarian, in his post, "Enabling Tyranny: An Open Letter to Conservative Republicans," on his blog, The Jeffersonian:
• • •
In the meantime, while the GOP is busily rubbing at that boot-print on its rear end and wondering what to do next, let me ask you conservative Republicans out there a question:
Do you realize that what scares you the most about Obama and his democratic allies is largely your own fault?
I’m not talking about a failure to get the vote out for McCain (God help us), or the general ins and outs of campaign strategy. Rather, I’m talking about the powers that you have allowed Washington DC to consolidate, particularly during the last seven-and-a-half years.
You couldn’t see the wolf in Republican clothing. You trusted George W. Bush and his congressional allies because they had that all-important R behind their names. So you looked the other way while they tore the Constitution to shreds and stomped on it. You excused the abuses of power, the torture, the signing statements, the “unitary executive” rhetoric, the wars waged against populations that had done us no harm, the raids against war protestors and other suspicious characters, the destruction of the dollar, the increased federal control in everything from education to healthcare; and just because the “good guys” were doing it, you thought everything would work out fine.
You handed government a sword because you trusted the hand that would wield it, and because it had that good ‘ole “Made in the U.S.A.” label on it. And now that a new hand is reaching for it, you fear that you may soon find the edge of that sword pressed to your own throat.
• • •
Read this entire, impressive post at The Jeffersonian. Read more!
In the meantime, while the GOP is busily rubbing at that boot-print on its rear end and wondering what to do next, let me ask you conservative Republicans out there a question:
Do you realize that what scares you the most about Obama and his democratic allies is largely your own fault?
I’m not talking about a failure to get the vote out for McCain (God help us), or the general ins and outs of campaign strategy. Rather, I’m talking about the powers that you have allowed Washington DC to consolidate, particularly during the last seven-and-a-half years.
You couldn’t see the wolf in Republican clothing. You trusted George W. Bush and his congressional allies because they had that all-important R behind their names. So you looked the other way while they tore the Constitution to shreds and stomped on it. You excused the abuses of power, the torture, the signing statements, the “unitary executive” rhetoric, the wars waged against populations that had done us no harm, the raids against war protestors and other suspicious characters, the destruction of the dollar, the increased federal control in everything from education to healthcare; and just because the “good guys” were doing it, you thought everything would work out fine.
You handed government a sword because you trusted the hand that would wield it, and because it had that good ‘ole “Made in the U.S.A.” label on it. And now that a new hand is reaching for it, you fear that you may soon find the edge of that sword pressed to your own throat.
Read this entire, impressive post at The Jeffersonian. Read more!
The everlasting quest: To transform whites
Change you can believe in? For Black Panther veteran Larry Pinkney, the only change that would benefit society is a total overturn of the capitalist system. Pinkney, as a hard-core leftist, desires more than just reform; he wants revolution, which he deems a long-term goal. He is upfront about where he's coming from as he emphasizes class inequities, not race, as society's critical problem. The majority of this blog's readers tend to be miles to the right of Pinkney's policy positions, but this does not mean that all his observations about Barack Obama are worthless.
Pinkney holds no doubts about the role played by the "corporate media" in helping to bring about Obama's political ascension. On this subject, he and the political right are in agreement. There are times when he comes off sounding very much like my favorite presidential candidate, Patrick Buchanan, especially when he urges American citizens to recognize that "The very subterfuge of the corporate/military elite, and its hand maiden, the corporate media, is in fact what brought Barack Obama to power as the face of U.S. Empire."
The "slippery tongued" Obama is a product of a mainstream media that branded and marketed him, "with the people of the United States as their targets," Pinkney writes in "More of the Same Only Worse." This country's military adventurism will continue, declares Pinkney, as it now can be rationalized by a new potent weapon, that is, "the dangerously double-talking 'Emperor' in black face - Barack Obama."
Pinkney predicts that the "corporate-military elite" will use their media-created "Messiah" ultimately to destroy all liberation struggles throughout the world. In the meantime, "Wall Street barons prolong their glut of the every day people’s finances, resources, hopes, and dreams."
While rightwing partisans are going ballistic over the new President-elect, whom they label as "socialist" and "communist," and certainly an enemy of capitalism, to many leftwingers he is nothing more than a carefully crafted tool of the same warmongering powers that crafted George W. Bush.
And what will happen to dissidents and protesters? Non-blacks, who stand in opposition to Obama's policies, predicts Pinkney, "will be branded as racists and traitors." While blacks who oppose the Obama regime "will be ignored and/or branded as fringe radicals and traitors."
Pinkney holds a far more grandiose belief in "the people" than I do. He claims that, over time, the anger of the masses will "peak and explode," as "the proverbial scales of blindness" drop from their eyes, and they see that they've been had, once again. I think it's far more likely that, once the current economic beast is tamed, and "the people" realize they will not have to give up any of their toys, after all, and may even look forward to hoarding still more, they will be the compliant little mice they have grown used to emulating.
Once assured of bread, they will return to their circuses, as they continue to entertain themselves to death. Although we can expect some rumblings from a few hardy souls (like those who occupied that factory building or others who have taken to the streets), the only angry stirrings we are likely to witness among the masses will come when they are denied access to the latest plasma television sets or Apple's newest iPod.
Attention must be paid
While Larry Pinkney's predictions are huge, global and a-racial, mine tend to be modest, and focus more on the ramifications of social interactions.
I believe that blacks will take this Obama victory as a mandate, not to straighten out the mess in their own backyards, but to continue the job of "fixing" white folks. This means stepping up the crusade designed to keep whites in the habit of working to exterminate the "guilt" and "shame" that supposedly taints their hearts and souls. And it will not matter how you label these blacks. You may call them "liberal" or "radical" or even "conservative," but their quest will be the same. If there is one thing that unites blacks across all politics, religious attachments, and classes, it is the desire to control the attitudes and behavior of whites.
Our exalted black movers and shakers – heads of academia, civil rights mountebanks, government functionaries and elected officials – are sure to support even more vigorous integration policies. These will be necessary in order to reach those white holdouts, who are not actively working to de-racinate themselves for the coming "post-racial" world. That is, the world as devised by the coloreds, along with their white professional "anti-racists."
From the most trivial pop culture junk, to the gravest issues, whites are expected to pay attention when blacks are the principals involved. Take the concern of New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, for example. His very first column for the world's most prestigious newspaper is one I have never forgotten, if for nothing more than its unmitigated shallowness.
The column was a sermon scolding whites for neglecting to pick up on a piece of jargon that was popular for about ten minutes in 1993. Entitled, "In America, There It Is!," Herbert (a leading black "intellectual" pundit) expressed dismay over the fact that he kept encountering whites who had never heard the bit of black doggerel that went, "Whoomp, there it is!," and explains further, "Or, if you prefer, "Whoot, there it is!" (He offers the alternative spelling of this important contribution to the American vocabulary, because slang tends to get transformed from place to place; in this case, from black ghetto to black ghetto.)
About this piece of slang, Herbert exults:
Enraptured with this notion, he continues:
And then Herbert gets to the point of this brilliant first essay for the eminent New York Times. He claims to be "amazed" that very few people outside of the "black urban environment" (we know who they are) possess an awareness of this endorphin-rousing expression, "although the phrases have launched two hit songs." (Obviously, everyone is expected to share his interest in simple-minded popular music.) He then educates his readers:
We also learn that a Manhattan bowling alley plays the song whenever someone scores a strike, and that a special version was recorded for the Chicago Bulls. Yet, in spite of all this outstanding acclaim, so many Americans (you know who) are oblivious to this verbal expression, which Herbert, several times, calls a "phenomenon." He writes:
Oh, wicked, indifferent America! And, he continues:
Calling such ignorance "a shame," Herbert offers the names of a couple of Congressmen who could benefit "from a little loosening up." Of course, they just happen to be Republicans: Senator Robert Dole, who has a "gloomy view of the world," along with the "exasperated" Senator Orrin Hatch.
And then the philosopher Herbert caps off his words of wisdom with observations about what disregard of this creative argot by "America's youngsters" says about black-white relations. How can one miss viewing "Whoomp!" as metaphor?
So, even ridiculous black slang must be respectfully acknowledged by the mainstream population, if Americans are to avoid leading "separate existences," a choice that is troublesome to Herbert and which he implies no one should have the freedom to make. The implication is that whites are culpable for their negligence of not learning about all aspects of "black culture," even that which an intelligent mind would dismiss as worthless rubbish.
Forbidden to whites
As Herbert so clearly demonstrates, whites are expected always to be thinking about and worrying over blacks. Are blacks happy or discontented? Can more be done to satisfy them? Just what is it that whites are expected to do to finally make blacks feel "equal" and certain that they are not neglected? Well, several black conservatives are happy to offer the key to this dilemma. They share the same principal quest as their liberal counterparts, that is, the longing to bring equality between blacks and whites at every level of economic and social interaction – most especially in the social realm of physical intimacy.
Now, you might think that people who call themselves "conservative," i.e., traditionalists, would wish to maintain the traditions of their own group, and that marriage within that group would be at the top of the list. How else to pass on one's traditions? Not so, with conservative blacks. They are as eager to break tradition as their liberal counterparts, if it assures marriage to a white person.
The public ascension of the mixed-race Barack Obama has brought great joy to these so-called black conservatives, as it has to the liberals who share his political convictions. For both political camps, Obama's personal ethnic history is a model for white Americans to ponder and consider emulating, as they mend their evil, "separatist" ways.
In a February 2008 commentary ("Changing Attitudes, Changing Lives") for Project 21, the black conservative B.B. Robinson laments the fact that black-white intermarriage is not as high as intermarriage between other groups. Although surveys show that in 1958, Americans' acceptance of black-white marriage was, in Robinson's words, "a dismal 4%," today that acceptance figure is up to 77%.
But this is just not good enough, according to Robinson, since it is "not as much as one would expect or want today." Robinson is hopeful that with the public's acceptance of Barack Obama as commander-in-chief will come a greater willingness on the part of whites to look to blacks "to fill the most cherished positions" in their lives. It seems that the Obama electoral victory shows that America has "graduated," and hence, "it is time to address the issue of interracial relationships."
Robinson discusses this most personal of all subjects as though it is incumbent upon society to sit white people down and reason with them. Perhaps a government agency could be formed to institute quotas on the numbers of whites who are permitted to marry one another, while offering incentives to those whites who intermarry with blacks. Will a white person have to explain him/herself for preferring a white mate? What if a person is genuinely not attracted to kinky hair and dark skin? Isn't the attraction component an important feature of mating? In such a case, should that government agency offer more multicultural workshops and "sensitivity" training sessions, to help counsel whites to overcome such clearly racist sentiments?
If you've wondered about how to recognize the indicators of "racial progress," there are black conservatives eager to explain this to you. In another Project 21 commentary, we learn more about the true goal of race relations. In a breathless article entitled, "The True Indicator of Race Relations," authors Joe Hicks and David Lehrer tell of an exhilarating event that took place on New Year's Day in 2007, when two football teams (Boise State University and Oklahoma University) squared off at the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona. At the game's end, one Ian Johnson, a black sophomore running back, fell to his knees, as witnessed by the entire stadium, and very publicly proposed marriage to one Chrissy Popadics, a white cheerleader. She accepted, and the authors exult that this was "a fitting end to a bowl game."
Hicks and Lehrer can hardly contain their enthusiasm, as they describe how the crowd in the stadium "noisily endorsed the union as a welcome part of the victory celebration." This episode, they joyously declare, is "a good barometer of the nation's race relations."
The Fiesta Bowl event is a very adequate indicator for those blacks, of which there are millions, who view as "progress" the ability to intrude themselves deeper into the social and family circles of whites. If this is the black conservative's view of "racial progress," you might wonder what's his beef with liberals. Coerced integration, that leads to assimilation, that leads to the Johnson-Popadics union, appears to be viewed by both conservatives and liberals as a "social good." And, apparently, a social goal for which to strive.
It comes as no surprise to savvy blacks and enlightened whites that the reason why so many blacks continue to insist that "integration" has not been fully realized, is a desire for closer proximity to whites, in order to better position themselves to form social attachments. The call to put an "end to racism" is really a call to limit the ability of whites to make personal choices on the basis of race or ethnicity. If possible, whites should be denied the right to be "racist," even in this most intimate corner of their lives.
The conservative Shelby Steele, of mixed-parentage himself, in his many books, articles and Op-ed pieces, offers his take on the black-white linkage. In his writings, we discover that the definition of "white supremacy" has expanded to include a host of sins, the major one being a strong acknowledgement of racial identity (an "atavistic connection," in Steele's words). He writes about race as though it were a remote characteristic, a residue of the past, an "atavism" that should not be embraced "too strongly." At least, not by whites.
Blacks spend inordinate amounts of time hyping their racial identity, but, according to Steele, "Only the strictures against a white racial identity keep us at all civilized around race." And, he writes, "Racial identity is simply forbidden to whites in America and across the entire Western world." This precept has so penetrated the minds of whites, that vast numbers of them work at keeping one another on a short leash, to prevent actions that might possibly be interpreted as acknowledgment of their white heritage.
Steele extends to minority ethnics his admonition to abstain from too strong an attachment to racial identity, but we know the true target of his caution – that group whom he cites as having pursued power in the past "in the name of their race."
What are we to make of the fact that Steele admits that a piece of cloth on a flag pole (i.e., the Confederate flag) poses a "racially aggressive" insult to his being, that he feels "profoundly rejected" by a symbol? And why exactly should anyone indulge his feelings enough to care? Are you a white supremacist if you consciously choose not to care about his feelings or his possible flag neurosis?
What of that white father, who desires white sons-in-law for his daughters, and white grandchildren? Should he care about Steele's disapproval of his choice to demonstrate his attachment to an "atavistic identity?" Such attachments "are inherently anti-democratic," says Steele, because they "exclude all outside the atavism." Well, yes, that's the general idea.
In this universe of "equality," where does personal preference and choice come in? Since when did handling your "hurt" feelings over rejection cease to be your own personal obligation? Or does the campaign to protect certain individuals from psychic pain trump all common sense? One would expect conservatives to be among the first to protect the right of association, which is essentially the right of the individual to discriminate.
The media drives the culture
Some years ago, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson described a dispute between the well-known black minister Frederick K.C. Price, founder of the Crenshaw Christian Center, a mega-church in Los Angeles, and a white pastor, with whom Price had a long friendship. It seems that the white pastor's son, also a preacher, touched on the subject of interracial marriage in one of his sermons. He suggested that he did not believe in such unions.
Word of this heretical attitude got back to Rev. Price, who demanded the father reprimand his "racist" son. The father refused to do so, and indicated that he shared his son's views on the subject. Price became enraged and sent a tape of the white pastor's comments on to various prominent black ministers, expecting them to share his outrage and to dissociate themselves from the white pastors.
Instead, the black ministers responded that the white pastors had a right to their views on the subject and, frankly, those views did not disturb them. Price now became even more enraged and, in his church, denounced the black ministers as "house niggers," citing as "evil" the position taken by the white and black pastors. Peterson asks, "When did it become evil to want your children to marry a man or woman who has the same skin color as their parents?"
Second only in influence to the education system, the entertainment media, for decades, has been force feeding the nation a steady diet of black cultural symbols and black imagery. In an adept move to coerce white producers and studios to continue increasing the visibility of black faces on the TV screen and in films, the black lobby persists in its lies about Hollywood's "racism." (See "Keeping the pressure on Hollywood.") This is a longstanding and clever game that black elites play: Even when there is an overabundance of the perquisites they demand, the best way to keep whites jumping through hoops and nervous about possibly being smeared with the "racist" tag, is to keep shrieking that enough still has not been done.
In an article about depictions of interracial coupling on television, Robert Entman, a professor at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, praises such depictions as "progressive." Says Entman, "It makes these couples more normal, and if they're more normal on TV, they might seem more normal out on the street." Now, here's a man who makes the goal crystal clear.
However, Entman is dismayed that these shows still aren't doing a good enough job of getting at the heart of mixed relationships, and he calls this a "missed opportunity to acquaint whites with the persistence of racism." Apparently, after all these years, whites still need more tutoring. What will it take for them to get the point? According to Entman, a white man, there's much work to be done, to convert the white mind.
Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, an executive producer at ABC, reflects perfectly the mentality of the black elite. She declares, "To show a black man and a white woman in an embrace, or in bed, tells how huge strides have been made." When a person like Anderson is pressed to explain just what social benefits, or "strides," these kinds of depictions bring to blacks, in particular, and to the society at large, they are at a loss to offer anything beyond feeble clichés and platitudes. Their convoluted blatherings usually drift from insisting on a "moral" need to "challenge viewers' assumptions," to the standard banality, which claims that the removal of any taboo is a social good.
Wherever two or more groups live in close proximity, there is going to be a certain degree of intergroup coupling. Usually, such intermixing is tolerable, as far as the racial and cultural integrity of each group is concerned. But what we now have is an activist media, spurred on by social engineers within academia and the civil rights movement. These collaborators seem to be determined, not only to undermine mainstream social mores, but often appear hell-bent on a biological goal – that is, purposely transforming white caucasian DNA. Are they taking their cues from the likes of the late Susan Sontag and her pernicious defilement of whites as a "cancer" on the human race? Have they taken on a mission to reduce that cancer?
As racial admixture browns their skin, darkens their eyes, and shrinks their IQs, the fast declining white race, that soon will make up only 50% of this country's population, is on the way to joining the ranks of extinct populations. These projections appear to be acceptable to some whites, who are proud of having "grown" beyond ethnocentric concerns to a "post-tribal morality," as put by Jason, a young white man, who writes to comment on my posts.
Jason accepts my contention that blacks take advantage of whites by using "racial victimhood" to gain power. However, he expresses pride that such acquiescence on the part of whites is a demonstration of "noble intentions" and proof that "white men have a real concern for those outside their own race." This sentiment is important to Jason and, apparently, to many other whites.
When asked to explain whites' lack of consciousness of their own race – a clearly self-destructive behavior in the midst of other "tribal" populations that are strengthening their ethnic bonds – Jason takes the moral high ground by declaring that, no matter the consequences, it is always morally preferable to live on a plane that is "beyond race."
To no avail do I remind Jason that whites may be in a "post-racial" stage, but no one else is. To no avail do I suggest that what he mistakes for a superior morality may be nothing more than a form of moral degeneracy.
Is the culture driving the media, or are members of the media earnestly striving to overturn and remake the culture? In a recent discussion on National Public Radio about the film Milk, a guest inadvertently answered the question of whether the culture or the media is in the driver's seat. The film is the story of the assassination, in 1978, of Los Angeles' openly homosexual city supervisor Harvey Milk and the city's Mayor. Needless to say, this is a partisan account of gay life and homosexual aspirations, as the producers offer heavy doses of politically correct propaganda.
The NPR guest arrogantly claimed that such dramatizations are important, because they play a part in "making people used to what they ought to become used to." This observation clarifies the nature of the social burdens that the denizens of Hollywood have taken upon themselves, as they lead their self-righteous crusades to reconstruct the American mind, whether it be around the issue of race or sexual proclivity. We're going to make you so used to our way of thinking, until it becomes a part of you. And we're going to attack you with all our invented politically correct buzz words – racist, sexist, homophobe, white supremacist, separatist – until you comply.
If you think that blacks have been a high maintenance group in the past, with a constant need for attention to their demands and their adversities, self-inflicted and otherwise, the coming years promise to offer more of the same, and then some. If you think that black issues have been front and center and in-your-face for too long, the Obama era, as envisioned by the above-mentioned B.B. Robinson, promises to make even greater demands for individual whites to "prove" their lack of bigotry. The ballot is not enough. There will be no peace until whites demonstrate, in all aspects of their lives, especially the personal, that they have reached that lofty state, which Robinson describes as one of "universal acceptance."
See also:
Brainwashing whites
It's about power
Read more!
Pinkney holds no doubts about the role played by the "corporate media" in helping to bring about Obama's political ascension. On this subject, he and the political right are in agreement. There are times when he comes off sounding very much like my favorite presidential candidate, Patrick Buchanan, especially when he urges American citizens to recognize that "The very subterfuge of the corporate/military elite, and its hand maiden, the corporate media, is in fact what brought Barack Obama to power as the face of U.S. Empire."
The "slippery tongued" Obama is a product of a mainstream media that branded and marketed him, "with the people of the United States as their targets," Pinkney writes in "More of the Same Only Worse." This country's military adventurism will continue, declares Pinkney, as it now can be rationalized by a new potent weapon, that is, "the dangerously double-talking 'Emperor' in black face - Barack Obama."
Pinkney predicts that the "corporate-military elite" will use their media-created "Messiah" ultimately to destroy all liberation struggles throughout the world. In the meantime, "Wall Street barons prolong their glut of the every day people’s finances, resources, hopes, and dreams."
While rightwing partisans are going ballistic over the new President-elect, whom they label as "socialist" and "communist," and certainly an enemy of capitalism, to many leftwingers he is nothing more than a carefully crafted tool of the same warmongering powers that crafted George W. Bush.
And what will happen to dissidents and protesters? Non-blacks, who stand in opposition to Obama's policies, predicts Pinkney, "will be branded as racists and traitors." While blacks who oppose the Obama regime "will be ignored and/or branded as fringe radicals and traitors."
Pinkney holds a far more grandiose belief in "the people" than I do. He claims that, over time, the anger of the masses will "peak and explode," as "the proverbial scales of blindness" drop from their eyes, and they see that they've been had, once again. I think it's far more likely that, once the current economic beast is tamed, and "the people" realize they will not have to give up any of their toys, after all, and may even look forward to hoarding still more, they will be the compliant little mice they have grown used to emulating.
Once assured of bread, they will return to their circuses, as they continue to entertain themselves to death. Although we can expect some rumblings from a few hardy souls (like those who occupied that factory building or others who have taken to the streets), the only angry stirrings we are likely to witness among the masses will come when they are denied access to the latest plasma television sets or Apple's newest iPod.
Attention must be paid
While Larry Pinkney's predictions are huge, global and a-racial, mine tend to be modest, and focus more on the ramifications of social interactions.
I believe that blacks will take this Obama victory as a mandate, not to straighten out the mess in their own backyards, but to continue the job of "fixing" white folks. This means stepping up the crusade designed to keep whites in the habit of working to exterminate the "guilt" and "shame" that supposedly taints their hearts and souls. And it will not matter how you label these blacks. You may call them "liberal" or "radical" or even "conservative," but their quest will be the same. If there is one thing that unites blacks across all politics, religious attachments, and classes, it is the desire to control the attitudes and behavior of whites.
Our exalted black movers and shakers – heads of academia, civil rights mountebanks, government functionaries and elected officials – are sure to support even more vigorous integration policies. These will be necessary in order to reach those white holdouts, who are not actively working to de-racinate themselves for the coming "post-racial" world. That is, the world as devised by the coloreds, along with their white professional "anti-racists."
From the most trivial pop culture junk, to the gravest issues, whites are expected to pay attention when blacks are the principals involved. Take the concern of New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, for example. His very first column for the world's most prestigious newspaper is one I have never forgotten, if for nothing more than its unmitigated shallowness.
The column was a sermon scolding whites for neglecting to pick up on a piece of jargon that was popular for about ten minutes in 1993. Entitled, "In America, There It Is!," Herbert (a leading black "intellectual" pundit) expressed dismay over the fact that he kept encountering whites who had never heard the bit of black doggerel that went, "Whoomp, there it is!," and explains further, "Or, if you prefer, "Whoot, there it is!" (He offers the alternative spelling of this important contribution to the American vocabulary, because slang tends to get transformed from place to place; in this case, from black ghetto to black ghetto.)
About this piece of slang, Herbert exults:
It's the joyous cry of the streets and the clubs in the big cities, the cry of the young who refuse to succumb to their troubles and grief. "Whoot, there it is!"
Enraptured with this notion, he continues:
Little kids can't stop saying it. A 10-year-old boy in Detroit opened his birthday package and pulled out a new Nintendo game. "Whoomp!" he shouted. "There it is!" A little girl in Atlanta was striving for an A on an English test. When her graded paper came back, she jumped up in the classroom. "Whoot," she said, "there it is!" It's a phrase that makes you feel good. It gets the endorphins going. It's much better than a cigarette or a cocktail. Whoomp, there it is!
And then Herbert gets to the point of this brilliant first essay for the eminent New York Times. He claims to be "amazed" that very few people outside of the "black urban environment" (we know who they are) possess an awareness of this endorphin-rousing expression, "although the phrases have launched two hit songs." (Obviously, everyone is expected to share his interest in simple-minded popular music.) He then educates his readers:
The number two song in the country is by the rap duo Tag Team. It's called "Whoomp! (There It Is)." Also on the charts is "Whoot, There It Is," an altogether different – and blatantly risque – song by the rap group 95 South.
We also learn that a Manhattan bowling alley plays the song whenever someone scores a strike, and that a special version was recorded for the Chicago Bulls. Yet, in spite of all this outstanding acclaim, so many Americans (you know who) are oblivious to this verbal expression, which Herbert, several times, calls a "phenomenon." He writes:
In other words, the whoomp-whoot phenomenon is very big. But as it comes primarily from black kids, much of the country remains absolutely unaware of it. The media have stayed away from it big time. These are America's youngsters, but it's as if America can't hear them.
Oh, wicked, indifferent America! And, he continues:
On Capitol Hill, where Congressmen are shadowboxing with the big issues of our time, you'll get a dumbfounded stare if you happen to mention, "Whoot, there it is!" Several blocks away, in the D.C. neighborhoods, the phrase is everywhere, but hardly anyone on the Hill has heard it.
Calling such ignorance "a shame," Herbert offers the names of a couple of Congressmen who could benefit "from a little loosening up." Of course, they just happen to be Republicans: Senator Robert Dole, who has a "gloomy view of the world," along with the "exasperated" Senator Orrin Hatch.
And then the philosopher Herbert caps off his words of wisdom with observations about what disregard of this creative argot by "America's youngsters" says about black-white relations. How can one miss viewing "Whoomp!" as metaphor?
The whoomp-whoot phenomenon is a terrific example of how most blacks and whites in the U.S. continue to lead separate existences, looking past each other, not seeing one another, not hearing one another, except on those days when, inevitably, we collide and it's time to fight.
So, even ridiculous black slang must be respectfully acknowledged by the mainstream population, if Americans are to avoid leading "separate existences," a choice that is troublesome to Herbert and which he implies no one should have the freedom to make. The implication is that whites are culpable for their negligence of not learning about all aspects of "black culture," even that which an intelligent mind would dismiss as worthless rubbish.
Forbidden to whites
As Herbert so clearly demonstrates, whites are expected always to be thinking about and worrying over blacks. Are blacks happy or discontented? Can more be done to satisfy them? Just what is it that whites are expected to do to finally make blacks feel "equal" and certain that they are not neglected? Well, several black conservatives are happy to offer the key to this dilemma. They share the same principal quest as their liberal counterparts, that is, the longing to bring equality between blacks and whites at every level of economic and social interaction – most especially in the social realm of physical intimacy.
Now, you might think that people who call themselves "conservative," i.e., traditionalists, would wish to maintain the traditions of their own group, and that marriage within that group would be at the top of the list. How else to pass on one's traditions? Not so, with conservative blacks. They are as eager to break tradition as their liberal counterparts, if it assures marriage to a white person.
The public ascension of the mixed-race Barack Obama has brought great joy to these so-called black conservatives, as it has to the liberals who share his political convictions. For both political camps, Obama's personal ethnic history is a model for white Americans to ponder and consider emulating, as they mend their evil, "separatist" ways.
In a February 2008 commentary ("Changing Attitudes, Changing Lives") for Project 21, the black conservative B.B. Robinson laments the fact that black-white intermarriage is not as high as intermarriage between other groups. Although surveys show that in 1958, Americans' acceptance of black-white marriage was, in Robinson's words, "a dismal 4%," today that acceptance figure is up to 77%.
But this is just not good enough, according to Robinson, since it is "not as much as one would expect or want today." Robinson is hopeful that with the public's acceptance of Barack Obama as commander-in-chief will come a greater willingness on the part of whites to look to blacks "to fill the most cherished positions" in their lives. It seems that the Obama electoral victory shows that America has "graduated," and hence, "it is time to address the issue of interracial relationships."
Robinson discusses this most personal of all subjects as though it is incumbent upon society to sit white people down and reason with them. Perhaps a government agency could be formed to institute quotas on the numbers of whites who are permitted to marry one another, while offering incentives to those whites who intermarry with blacks. Will a white person have to explain him/herself for preferring a white mate? What if a person is genuinely not attracted to kinky hair and dark skin? Isn't the attraction component an important feature of mating? In such a case, should that government agency offer more multicultural workshops and "sensitivity" training sessions, to help counsel whites to overcome such clearly racist sentiments?
If you've wondered about how to recognize the indicators of "racial progress," there are black conservatives eager to explain this to you. In another Project 21 commentary, we learn more about the true goal of race relations. In a breathless article entitled, "The True Indicator of Race Relations," authors Joe Hicks and David Lehrer tell of an exhilarating event that took place on New Year's Day in 2007, when two football teams (Boise State University and Oklahoma University) squared off at the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona. At the game's end, one Ian Johnson, a black sophomore running back, fell to his knees, as witnessed by the entire stadium, and very publicly proposed marriage to one Chrissy Popadics, a white cheerleader. She accepted, and the authors exult that this was "a fitting end to a bowl game."
Hicks and Lehrer can hardly contain their enthusiasm, as they describe how the crowd in the stadium "noisily endorsed the union as a welcome part of the victory celebration." This episode, they joyously declare, is "a good barometer of the nation's race relations."
The Fiesta Bowl event is a very adequate indicator for those blacks, of which there are millions, who view as "progress" the ability to intrude themselves deeper into the social and family circles of whites. If this is the black conservative's view of "racial progress," you might wonder what's his beef with liberals. Coerced integration, that leads to assimilation, that leads to the Johnson-Popadics union, appears to be viewed by both conservatives and liberals as a "social good." And, apparently, a social goal for which to strive.
It comes as no surprise to savvy blacks and enlightened whites that the reason why so many blacks continue to insist that "integration" has not been fully realized, is a desire for closer proximity to whites, in order to better position themselves to form social attachments. The call to put an "end to racism" is really a call to limit the ability of whites to make personal choices on the basis of race or ethnicity. If possible, whites should be denied the right to be "racist," even in this most intimate corner of their lives.
The conservative Shelby Steele, of mixed-parentage himself, in his many books, articles and Op-ed pieces, offers his take on the black-white linkage. In his writings, we discover that the definition of "white supremacy" has expanded to include a host of sins, the major one being a strong acknowledgement of racial identity (an "atavistic connection," in Steele's words). He writes about race as though it were a remote characteristic, a residue of the past, an "atavism" that should not be embraced "too strongly." At least, not by whites.
Blacks spend inordinate amounts of time hyping their racial identity, but, according to Steele, "Only the strictures against a white racial identity keep us at all civilized around race." And, he writes, "Racial identity is simply forbidden to whites in America and across the entire Western world." This precept has so penetrated the minds of whites, that vast numbers of them work at keeping one another on a short leash, to prevent actions that might possibly be interpreted as acknowledgment of their white heritage.
Steele extends to minority ethnics his admonition to abstain from too strong an attachment to racial identity, but we know the true target of his caution – that group whom he cites as having pursued power in the past "in the name of their race."
What are we to make of the fact that Steele admits that a piece of cloth on a flag pole (i.e., the Confederate flag) poses a "racially aggressive" insult to his being, that he feels "profoundly rejected" by a symbol? And why exactly should anyone indulge his feelings enough to care? Are you a white supremacist if you consciously choose not to care about his feelings or his possible flag neurosis?
What of that white father, who desires white sons-in-law for his daughters, and white grandchildren? Should he care about Steele's disapproval of his choice to demonstrate his attachment to an "atavistic identity?" Such attachments "are inherently anti-democratic," says Steele, because they "exclude all outside the atavism." Well, yes, that's the general idea.
In this universe of "equality," where does personal preference and choice come in? Since when did handling your "hurt" feelings over rejection cease to be your own personal obligation? Or does the campaign to protect certain individuals from psychic pain trump all common sense? One would expect conservatives to be among the first to protect the right of association, which is essentially the right of the individual to discriminate.
The media drives the culture
Some years ago, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson described a dispute between the well-known black minister Frederick K.C. Price, founder of the Crenshaw Christian Center, a mega-church in Los Angeles, and a white pastor, with whom Price had a long friendship. It seems that the white pastor's son, also a preacher, touched on the subject of interracial marriage in one of his sermons. He suggested that he did not believe in such unions.
Word of this heretical attitude got back to Rev. Price, who demanded the father reprimand his "racist" son. The father refused to do so, and indicated that he shared his son's views on the subject. Price became enraged and sent a tape of the white pastor's comments on to various prominent black ministers, expecting them to share his outrage and to dissociate themselves from the white pastors.
Instead, the black ministers responded that the white pastors had a right to their views on the subject and, frankly, those views did not disturb them. Price now became even more enraged and, in his church, denounced the black ministers as "house niggers," citing as "evil" the position taken by the white and black pastors. Peterson asks, "When did it become evil to want your children to marry a man or woman who has the same skin color as their parents?"
Second only in influence to the education system, the entertainment media, for decades, has been force feeding the nation a steady diet of black cultural symbols and black imagery. In an adept move to coerce white producers and studios to continue increasing the visibility of black faces on the TV screen and in films, the black lobby persists in its lies about Hollywood's "racism." (See "Keeping the pressure on Hollywood.") This is a longstanding and clever game that black elites play: Even when there is an overabundance of the perquisites they demand, the best way to keep whites jumping through hoops and nervous about possibly being smeared with the "racist" tag, is to keep shrieking that enough still has not been done.
In an article about depictions of interracial coupling on television, Robert Entman, a professor at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, praises such depictions as "progressive." Says Entman, "It makes these couples more normal, and if they're more normal on TV, they might seem more normal out on the street." Now, here's a man who makes the goal crystal clear.
However, Entman is dismayed that these shows still aren't doing a good enough job of getting at the heart of mixed relationships, and he calls this a "missed opportunity to acquaint whites with the persistence of racism." Apparently, after all these years, whites still need more tutoring. What will it take for them to get the point? According to Entman, a white man, there's much work to be done, to convert the white mind.
Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, an executive producer at ABC, reflects perfectly the mentality of the black elite. She declares, "To show a black man and a white woman in an embrace, or in bed, tells how huge strides have been made." When a person like Anderson is pressed to explain just what social benefits, or "strides," these kinds of depictions bring to blacks, in particular, and to the society at large, they are at a loss to offer anything beyond feeble clichés and platitudes. Their convoluted blatherings usually drift from insisting on a "moral" need to "challenge viewers' assumptions," to the standard banality, which claims that the removal of any taboo is a social good.
Wherever two or more groups live in close proximity, there is going to be a certain degree of intergroup coupling. Usually, such intermixing is tolerable, as far as the racial and cultural integrity of each group is concerned. But what we now have is an activist media, spurred on by social engineers within academia and the civil rights movement. These collaborators seem to be determined, not only to undermine mainstream social mores, but often appear hell-bent on a biological goal – that is, purposely transforming white caucasian DNA. Are they taking their cues from the likes of the late Susan Sontag and her pernicious defilement of whites as a "cancer" on the human race? Have they taken on a mission to reduce that cancer?
As racial admixture browns their skin, darkens their eyes, and shrinks their IQs, the fast declining white race, that soon will make up only 50% of this country's population, is on the way to joining the ranks of extinct populations. These projections appear to be acceptable to some whites, who are proud of having "grown" beyond ethnocentric concerns to a "post-tribal morality," as put by Jason, a young white man, who writes to comment on my posts.
Jason accepts my contention that blacks take advantage of whites by using "racial victimhood" to gain power. However, he expresses pride that such acquiescence on the part of whites is a demonstration of "noble intentions" and proof that "white men have a real concern for those outside their own race." This sentiment is important to Jason and, apparently, to many other whites.
When asked to explain whites' lack of consciousness of their own race – a clearly self-destructive behavior in the midst of other "tribal" populations that are strengthening their ethnic bonds – Jason takes the moral high ground by declaring that, no matter the consequences, it is always morally preferable to live on a plane that is "beyond race."
To no avail do I remind Jason that whites may be in a "post-racial" stage, but no one else is. To no avail do I suggest that what he mistakes for a superior morality may be nothing more than a form of moral degeneracy.
Is the culture driving the media, or are members of the media earnestly striving to overturn and remake the culture? In a recent discussion on National Public Radio about the film Milk, a guest inadvertently answered the question of whether the culture or the media is in the driver's seat. The film is the story of the assassination, in 1978, of Los Angeles' openly homosexual city supervisor Harvey Milk and the city's Mayor. Needless to say, this is a partisan account of gay life and homosexual aspirations, as the producers offer heavy doses of politically correct propaganda.
The NPR guest arrogantly claimed that such dramatizations are important, because they play a part in "making people used to what they ought to become used to." This observation clarifies the nature of the social burdens that the denizens of Hollywood have taken upon themselves, as they lead their self-righteous crusades to reconstruct the American mind, whether it be around the issue of race or sexual proclivity. We're going to make you so used to our way of thinking, until it becomes a part of you. And we're going to attack you with all our invented politically correct buzz words – racist, sexist, homophobe, white supremacist, separatist – until you comply.
If you think that blacks have been a high maintenance group in the past, with a constant need for attention to their demands and their adversities, self-inflicted and otherwise, the coming years promise to offer more of the same, and then some. If you think that black issues have been front and center and in-your-face for too long, the Obama era, as envisioned by the above-mentioned B.B. Robinson, promises to make even greater demands for individual whites to "prove" their lack of bigotry. The ballot is not enough. There will be no peace until whites demonstrate, in all aspects of their lives, especially the personal, that they have reached that lofty state, which Robinson describes as one of "universal acceptance."
See also:
Brainwashing whites
It's about power
Read more!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
