Geraldine Doyle passed away this week. She was 86. You may not know the name Geraldine Doyle but you know the face. Geraldine Doyle was a 17 year old stamping press operator in Montana when a news photographer snapped her picture in 1942. Commercial artist J. Howard Miller turned her image into one of the most iconic posters of World War II--that of young, brassy American female, her jaw set and her hair wrapped in a bandanna while she brazenly flexes her bare bicep for all the world--especially the Axis powers-- to see.
Ms Doyle's iconic image became emblematic of the fighting spirit of female American workers who turned out munitions, airplanes, tanks and trucks to support their men fighting overseas. This theme is supported by the poster's caption: We Can Do It!
The poster's image is often mistaken for that of "Rosie the Riveter," a similar illustration later penned by Norman Rockwell in 1943 for the cover of the Saturday Evening Postmagazine.
What you may not know is that Miller's poster was designed as part of a motivational series to be displayed in the Midwest factories of the Westinghouse Electric Company. The poster, intended for internal consumption, was to become emblematic of American can-do spirit--motivating American working women and fighting men, and dispiriting America's enemies.
Ms. Doyle apparently didn't know that she had become the original poster child for girl power until she came across the illustration in 1984 in a copy of Modern Maturity magazine.
Photography and art live forever. After inspiring not only a cadre of Westinghouse workers, but the American war effort, We Can Do It! had a second life in the 1970s and 1980s inspiring a new generation of American feminists.
Another thing you may not know about Geraldine Doyle. Although she became an icon for American working women, Ms. Doyle lasted only about a week on the shop floor of that stamping plant. Soon after the photo was snapped, she quit to take a job as a timekeeper.
For a relatively young country, American has rich tradition of passing history down from generation to generation. The advantage of a young, dynamic country like ours is that history can span a relatively short period of time but include many epochal events.
My wife's aunt was born in the 1880s and lived over 100 years. In that period of time she saw New York City grow into a world-class metropolis (She actually remembered seeing sheep graze in what is now Central Park's Sheep Meadow). She saw gas lamps replace candles and electric lamps replace the gas. She lived to see the birth of the automobile and the death of the buggy. The rise and fall of railroading and the popularity of jet air travel. And finally, one hot July night, men on the moon.
My own grandmother told the story of arriving in America as an 11-year old immigrant. She remembered being at the train station in Buffalo, New York the day President McKinley was assassinated in 1901. "A great man had been shot," she said, although she didn't know who he was at the time. Her perspective was that of a frightened 11-year old in a strange land as soldiers brandished their rifles, trying to lock down the train station as she was arriving from New York.
On a business trip I once visited an elderly aunt who soon would be overtaken by dementia, but at that point still remembered being a little girl who accompanied my grandmother in 1919 to bring dinner to an old soldiers home. The soldiers were World War I veterans and many were victims of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. Her life would eventually encompass sending a husband off to fight in World War II, losing a brother in that same war, protesting the Vietnam War, even as two nephews fought in it, and watching the bombs drop on Baghdad in the First Gulf War.
Fay Vincent, the former commissioner of Major League Baseball, reminisced recently in a Wall Street Journal piece about sitting in a meeting in the 1970s and speaking with an attorney who had clerked for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Mr. Vincent, a student of history, asked whether Justice Holmes had ever spoken about his Civil War experiences. Justice Holmes had been wounded three times in that war.
The attorney, according to Vincent, told how Justice Holmes once took his clerks to Arlington National Cemetery. This was the late 1920s when the barbarism of the First World War was still fresh in the minds of Americans. Justice Holmes spoke about the current generation of Americans and the recent war's brutality. "They should have been with me at Antietam," he quietly told his clerks.
So here you have Justice Holmes, born in 1840 when he certainly would have seen veterans of the Revolutionary War, speaking about his experiences in the American Civil War to clerks who had just come through the First World War--all of which was recounted by a man who had lived to see both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam to a man who has witnessed countless global conflicts since then.
As Mr. Vincent writes, oral tradition is at the heart of our history. At this holiday season don't lose a chance to ask an older relative or family friend to share a story or two. Once our elders die a rich oral heritage dies with them unless we save it to hand down to the next generation.
Lost in the news of Christmas week was a short Associated Press dispatch that Fred Hargesheimer died.
Doubtful many people knew who Fred Hargesheimer was. But like the character George Bailey in the Christmas chestnut It's a Wonderful Life, Mr Hargesheimer touched the lives of many, in the way that his life had been touched so many years before.
On June 5, 1943 Fred Hargesheimer was a P-38 pilot on a mission over Japanese-held New Britain island. Shot out of the sky by the enemy he parachuted into the jungle where for a month he survived until, near death, he was found by some local hunters.
The natives took him to their village on the island's coast and for 7 months hid him from the Japanese. They fed him and nursed him back to health. In February 1944 two Australian commandos engineered his pick-up by a U.S. submarine.
If that were the end of the story it would have been remarkable enough. But Fred Hargesheimer was more than remarkable. Sixteen years after his repatriation in the South Pacific he returned to the village of Ea Ea and the Nakanai people who had saved him. Moved by what he saw he realized the debt he owned them. It took him three years, but he raised $15,000 and returned to the village to build the first school for the impoverished residents.
Fred Hargesheimer was a salesman by trade, and apparently a pretty good one. Using his fundraising skills he would raise money and return to Ea Ea over several decades, building a clinic, a second school and libraries. In 1970 he and his wife moved to New Britain to teach the village children themselves. A school experiment harvesting oil palm turned into a commercial venture creating for the first time a local economy for people who had only known only poverty.
Fred Hargesheimer died December 23, 2010 in Lincoln, Nebraska at the age of 94.
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
One of the pleasures of living where we do is that we have access to modern services like healthcare and good education systems, while at the same time having the feeling of tradition that comes from living in a tight knit community, rather than a bedroom subdivision. The town in which we live dates to 1640, making it one of the oldest communities in the U.S.
This respect for history and tradition protects our sense of community, despite the nearby Interstate highways, shopping malls, and cineplexes.
Every year in our little town we have what is billed as an "Old Fashioned Christmas Parade." Not an Old Fashioned Holiday Parade. Not an Old Fashioned Winter Solstice Parade. An Old Fashioned Christmas Parade.
New this year was "The Running of the Elves" to start things off on the big night. The Elf Run was followed by Christmas carols on the courthouse green, right near the Christmas tree and Nativity creche--set up on public property. Following the lighting of the Christmas tree, the parade stepped off like it has every year for the last 31 years.
This year it was particularly good. A bakers' dozen (that's 13 for you younger readers) high school marching bands. Antique tractors and fire engines. A parade of classic cars from '39 Fords to '57 Chevys. Clowns and South American indigenous dancers. And finally, the big man himself-Santa Claus atop a the biggest fire engine of them all.
Perhaps the biggest thrill of the night was the sight of the Lone Ranger suddenly galloping around the corner. Parade watchers were stunned as Silver reared on his hind legs while the Lone Ranger, with a hearty "Hi-ho Silver!" squeeze off a few rounds into the cold night air.
We're basically a conservative community concerned about our neighbors and concerned about celebrating our values. So we'll let other people argue about separation of church and state at Christmas time. I just know that in an increasingly complex era, the parade packs 'em in. Thousands of people lining the streets of a little town. And not just old timers. Young parents with infants swaddled in fleece. Grandparents. Even teenagers jaded by what the world has to offer them, crane their necks for a look as the bands march around the block.
And in a world seemingly gone mad the Old Fashioned Christmas Parade appeals to the sense of community and tradition in all of us.
You see, when you boil it all down, the world is still a pretty simple place. We're the ones who have gotten complicated.
This post is dedicated to my late uncle, Sgt. Edward H. Bucceri, a member of the 351st Bomb Group killed in action off the coast of England in World War II. Today is the anniversary of his death during a combat mission over the North Sea 67 years ago today. It was originally posted December 22, 2009. It is reprinted here in its entirety.
Uncle Ed died long before I was born. We know little about the incident that took his life other than it was his eighth combat mission. What information we have is preserved in The Chronicle of the 351st Bomb Group, by Peter Harris and Ken Harbour, and is the basis of this post.
Sgt. Bucceri's plane, serial number 42-39778 , and known as "Lucky Ball," was part of the 511th Squadron on a 34-plane bombing run that took off on December 22, 1943 from its base in Polebrook, England on a night-time mission to bomb a steel mill in Osnabruck, Germany. In command of Lucky Ball was the pilot, Lt. Lewis Maginn of Rochester, New York. It was to be the plane's fifth and final mission.
According to Lt. Maginn's recollection of the event, Lucky Ball was anything but lucky that night. It had just been overhauled prior to the mission, with two engines ripped out and replaced by rebuilt ones. Lt. Maginn recalls being uneasy with the fact that the plane was pressed into service without the rebuilt engines having logged some more running time following the overhaul.
In addition to having to make the run with untested engines, two of the regular crew could not go on the mission and were replaced in the ball turret and tail gun positions.
Early into the mission, the pilot realized something was wrong. Bomb Groups assigned to the position behind them were rapidly gaining on Lucky Ball. Lt. Maginn put the hammer down to "near full power" and still found himself falling behind his formation.
And then the oil pressure in the number four engine began to drop.
The pilot killed the four engine and, being close to the target, tried to make the run with three motors. Then the oil pressure on number three began dropping.
With two engines out on one side, and an impossible task to keep up, Lt. Maginn made the decision to break formation and turn back to base. The crew jettisoned its bomb load, ammo and equipment in hopes of lightening the load on the two remaining engines.
The crew then mistook an American plane for an enemy fighter and dived into a cloud bank. But the maneuver cost the crew "precious altitude," according to Lt. Maginn. Then the oil pressure in number two began to drop. The crew began to take flak from German fighters, worsening their altitude situation. The pilot was forced to shut down number two, leaving Lucky Ball one engine.
The crew dumped all remaining equipment, guns and ammunition and began a desperate run to the English coast. Sgt. Palmer, the radio man, sent out the SOS. But there was no luck for Lucky Ball that night as it struggled westward into a gale headwind.
With the English coastline in plain view, the crew came to the realization they would never reach it. They prepared to ditch their craft into the chop of the North Sea. Cruising low above the waves, the pilot cut the last engine to try and glide to a straight landing. The bomber hit the water at 85 miles per hour, breaking in half.
Lt. Maginn describes the intense cold of the North Sea in late December as "instantly numbing." The crash landing had jammed the cables on the life rafts, forcing the crew to "take to the water, their flotation devices their own hope for survival. Huddled together in the freezing water they watched Lucky Ball sink below the waves. The first big wave to break over them scattered them about the sea, each man to his own.
Sgt. Palmer assured Maginn that the rescue squadrons had a fix on their position, but it would be 45 more agonizing minutes before the first boat appeared. During that 45 minutes as the men drifted apart, Lt. Maginn later said, "the wind and bitter cold water took its toll rapidly." Five of the ten-man crew were rescued. Perishing that night were the navigator, Lt. James McMorrow of Akron, Ohio, Sgts. Albert Meyer of Roswell, New Mexico, Docile Nadeau of Fort Keat Mills, Maine, and Clarence Rowlinson of Des Moines, Iowa. Sgt. Meyer was the only one whose body was recovered.
Sgts. Nadeau and Rowlinson were the replacement ball turret and tail gunners fatefully assigned to the flight that night.
The fifth crew member killed was my uncle, Edward H. Bucceri of Jersey City, New Jersey.
No memorial marks the spot where these men went to their final rest. There was no military funeral at a national cemetery, no 21-gun salute, no honor guard. No one made a movie about the Lucky Ball's last run, and no Grammy-winning folk singer penned a mournful song . The crew that perished that night were just five of the more than 400,000 Americans killed in action in that war. Today I remember one of them.
Rest in Peace, Uncle Ed. Merry Christmas. And thank you.
Just thought you might like to know.
Polebrook England today. Site of former RAF base for the 351st Bomb Group (H)
There is a storm gathering in this country over the issue of government-funded employee pensions. In Pennsylvania, for example, pension costs will account for nearly 30% of state and school district employee costs within four short years. Government agencies are being crushed under the weight of pension obligations. Keystone State law limits the percentage by which government entities can raise taxes each year, creating budget gaps that many government entities that cannot possibly hope to fill. This scenario is being played out across the country. The legislative lions in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives today approved a bill backed by government unions that would limit pension obligations to 11.5% of employee expenditures. But this will only kick the problem down the road where it will explode like an I.E.D. near the end of the decade.
This background is important to understand what's going on in Pennsylvania's neighboring state, New Jersey. New Jersey is perhaps the poster child for runaway pension costs. So it makes what Susan Bass Levin is doing inexplicable.
From 1988 to 2002 Susan Bass Levin was the popular mayor of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Cherry Hill is a sprawling bedroom suburb of Philadelphia. Following her term as mayor, Bass Levin was appointed commissioner of the state's department of community affairs by then Gov. James McGreevey where she oversaw municipal finances and state aid.
After a 2005 stint working on Jon Corzine's election campaign Mayor Bass Levin was appointed by Corzine to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Her salary: $300,000 per year plus an expensive apartment in Manhattan.
Best of all for Mayor Bass Levin, she didn't have to give up her DCA job. Gov. Corzine appointed her to a finance board at DCA, which kept the state pension meter running for New Jersey taxpayers while she was earning $300,000 in her PA day job. So here's Mayor Bass Levin picking up 300 large every year, living la dolce vita in Manhattan, and teeing up a fine retirement, thanks to inside New Jersey politics.
Wonder of wonders, Mayor Bass Levin recently announced that she will be retiring from state service this month after 25 years. Her modest payout: about $60,000 a year for as long as she lives, which at her current age of 58 could be a very, very long time. Especially since she'll also receive Cadillac medical care, courtesy of New Jersey taxpayers, till death do them part.
What doesn't pass the smell test here is that a woman who as DCA commissioner should have seen the looming pension crisis coming when she oversaw municipal finances in the state, who grabbed $300,000 a year working for a public agency that is historically troubled financially, and who better than most people should know the crisis facing states like New Jersey works the system to her advantage. Meanwhile, New Jerseyans face one of the highest tax burdens in the country.
This is an intractable problem. We have a solemn obligation to meet contractual requirements entered into with good faith by both sides. On the other hand, through no fault of our own, we can no longer afford those obligations. We are like the long-distance swimmer who finds himself halfway across the channel unable to continue. We face the dilemma of choosing to continue on or turn back. One thing's for sure: We don't need to carry the Susan Bass Levins of the country on our backs.
President Obama continues to maintain that the reason his party was "shellacked" (his word) in the recent mid-term elections was that Democrats didn't "communicate" their messages well enough. Failure to communicate might account for a "spanking," or maybe a "drubbing." But a "shellacking" goes a lot deeper than blaming the electorate for not getting your nuanced brillance.
And diving deeper, a researcher from California now says that the president's legislative agenda, not his golden pipes, accounted for 32 seats of the historic losses suffered by Democrats on November 2.
Eric McGhee of the Public Policy Institute of California focused on the four most unpopular Obama initiatives: the TARP bailout, the failed stimulus bill, healthcare taxation-and-annexation, and the carbon tax known as cap and trade. He compared Democrats who voted for those four boat anchors to lawmakers who voted against them. The result? For each time a Democrat running for reelection lined up behind Pres. Obama on these four bills he or she lost anywhere from two-thirds of a percentage point to four percentage points in his election re-bid. Losses were obviously greater in the more moderate districts.
McGhee's conclusion is that Republican gains would have topped out at 210 House seats, rather that the 242 they'll have in the next Congress, had the losing lawmakers not lined up behind the White House Pied Pipers.
Former Bush election engineer Karl Rove points out that McGhee's analysis demonstrates that legislators who buck the will of their constituents end up paying their own postage come January.
Meanwhile the fingerpointing of Democrat failure continues--it's the president's fault, it's Speaker Pelosi's fault, it's Harry Reid's fault, It's Fox News' fault, Rush Limbaugh's fault and on and on. The real story is that a bunch of congressmen who at some point stopped listening to their constituents have only themselves to blame.
Michael Jackson never moonwalked better than Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. The National Reviewreported this week that Prof. Tribe in March 2009 urged Pres. Obama on the down low not to nominate Sonia Sotomayor to a seat on the Supreme Court. According to blogger Ed Whelan, the good professor told the president that now-Justice Sotomayor wasn't all that bright, could be "a bully" and might antagonize and further polarize the Court's four conservatives.
According to Whelan, Tribe's purpose in contacting the president was to promote the cause of Solicitor General and former colleague Elena Kagan for the Court vacancy. In order to do that, Tribe put the beatdown on Justice Sotomayor's Court quals. Pres. Obama later nominated, and the Senate confirmed, Elena Kagan for the Court seat vacated by Justice John Paul Stevens.
And what of Tribe, whose law students have included the president himself, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justice Kagan? To his credit he fessed up to contacting the president, but then backpeddled across history's stage more deftly than Michael Jackson every moonwalked to Billy Jean.
In an email he wrote that Justice Sotomayor's performance in her first year on the Court, as well as a second reading by Tribe of her record "amply refuted" his earlier take that she was dumb, a bully and could be a pain in the ass. Huh?
Who says academics can't bust a move now and again?
If you've been around long enough to think the dollar doesn't go as far as it used to, you'd be right. I remember as a kid my parents buying a slick new Ford that cost $3,600. That same car today would cost about $30,000.
The questions are why and what does that have to do with today's woeful economy?
The answer to the first question is that a dollar now buys a sixth of what it did 40 years ago because of misguided monetary policy. So says Charles Kadlec of the American Principles Project. Up until 1971 the value of the dollar was pegged to the price of gold--a stable medium of exchange for thousands of years.
From the years immediately following World War II to the years leading up to 1971 when the U.S. cut the ties between the dollar and gold, the U.S. economy ran pretty well. During this 30-year period:
Employment averaged only 4.7% (for three decades) and never went higher than 7%
Real growth averaged 4% a year
Inflation, checked by low unemployment and high growth, averaged less than 2% a year
Interest rates were stable--moving in a 4%-6% range for 30 years
What happened in the 40 years since Pres. Nixon cut the gold cord? It hasn't been pretty:
Since 1972 unemployment has averaged 6.2%, a point and a half higher than the average for the previous 30 years
Real growth has fallen to less than 3%
We've had the three worse recessions since the end of World War II (in 1975, 1982 and 2008)
Consumer prices have risen at an astounding average of 4.4.% a year ever since the monetary swamis at the Fed replaced an ounce of gold in deciding what a dollar was worth
Interest rates have been extremely volatile, with corporate bonds never falling below 6% in the period, and averaging 8% during this time
Wild swings in interest rates are the canary in the coal mine of financial uncertainty. Fluctuating interest rates are a sign the economy is trying to protect itself from a series of financial problems.
The purpose of devaluing the dollar was supposed to be to help American exports. Kadlec points out that since the time Pres. Nixon pulled the plug on the gold standard the dollar has lost 75% of its value compared to the Japanese yen. Nevertheless, during that period the U.S. has compiled a massive trade deficit.
Kadlec doesn't venture a guess why the economy worked so well when the dollar was pegged to gold. But it's clear that life was a lot better before the black-cloaked wizards at the Fed started crystal balling the value of a dollar.
The15th century Spanish conquistadorHernando Cortes famously said that his fellow Spanish explorers "suffer from a disease that only gold can cure." One could say the same thing about 21st century Americans.
The mid-term elections are a week away. It appears as if the Democrats will lose control of the House of Representatives; loss of the Senate to the Republicans is not as clear. But will it make any difference?
While Pres. Obama may tout his legislative accomplishments, the truth is that even with huge majorities in Congress, he struggled with his two main domestic goals: healthcare reform and punishing the American people for climate change. It took months of rancorous debate for him to pass healthcare and then by only a wafer-thin margin. His plan to tax American business for their productivity and success, euphemistically called cap-and-trade, couldn't get out of the Senate. If, holding large majorities in Congress, he couldn't rally the nation, it's hard to see him doing worse without them.
So in the next Congress it appears now that he will lose his majority in the House, and, while retaining the Senate, he will lose his ability to shut off debate in the upper chamber on proposed legislation. Expect Democratic party discipline to go out the window after the president and speaker Pelosi lead the troops over a cliff next Tuesday. The weak in politics are killed and eaten. Pres. Obama will be a weakened president.
That leaves him with two options. The first is to continue pressing his left-leaning agenda, despite the fact that poll upon poll shows the American people thinking that this is taking the country in the wrong direction. He's already said he'd rather be a one-term president (one can only hope) than compromise his principles. So the threat of his continuing to march into hell for a heavenly cause, becoming the Harold Stassen of left-wing domestic policy, is real.
On the other hand he could steal a play from Bill Clinton's playbook, work with the Republican and position himself, as he did during his presidential run, as a centrist. The question is whether anyone will buy that the second time around.
However, George Friedman writes today in Stratfor that there is a third choice: shift his focus from the domestic agenda and make his case for a second term in foreign policy. As Mr. Friedman points out, "The founders created a system in which the president is inherently weak in domestic policy and able to take action only when his position in Congress is extremely strong. This was how the founders sought to avoid the tyranny of narrow majorities."
Foreign policy is another matter, with our system giving the president, in his role as commander-in-chief and head of state, pretty decent leeway without congressional interference. Ronald Reagan took advantage of this following his midterm election reversals in 1982 by basing Pershing missiles in Europe to blunt any Soviet thoughts of expansion. He also played party pooper with Libya's Colonel Ghaddafi, dropping a cruise missile in his tent in 1986. These acts energized his base and made him a stronger president.
But on this third rail Pres. Obama will also struggle, notes Friedman. Despite plenty of opportunities to show his chops in Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan and with Iran, the president's M.O. up to this point has been conciliation, not confrontation. So it's as hard to see him blowing up Ahmadinejad's nuke plants as it is to see him extending the Bush tax cuts.
Second, the American public has settled into a war weariness--nine years in Afghanistan, seven in Iraq, and almost constant deployments throughout the equitorial hot spots of the world. The American public's focus isn't abroad--it's on our ailing economy. And unless that improves nothing else matters. Like everything else in this world, it comes down to money.
A recent political debate between Illinois Democratic Rep. Melissa Bean and her GOP challenger Joe Walsh provides a look at the intolerance of the socialist left and how their notion of free speech being free only if you agree with them is closer to the Castro brothers than the Founding Fathers.
Rep. Bean and her challenger squared off in a local high school in a debate moderated by league member Kathy Tate-Bradish. In evaluating her bona fides as an impartial moderator know please that Ms. Tate-Bradish is also a member of Organize for America, Pres. Obama's scam to register Democrat voters and have you and I pay for it.
Also note that Ms. Tate-Bradish is a former member of ACORN, the disgraced community organizing group with which Pres. Obama was formerly associated. To give her credit, she also teaches sex education at an AIDS clinic in Africa.
During her introductions of the candidates, someone from the local audience asked if they could begin by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Ms. Tate-Bradish said no. Click over to You Tube to see what happened next.
Ms. Tate-Bradish gave it the academic suede show act to try and lecture the audience about why they had erred by expressing their fidelity to their country and not being stifled by an academic hard core leftist. Somebody should have shown her a road map of her location-middle America.
Perhaps no incident in the last two weeks has shown the dichotomy in American than this. On one hand you have people like Ms. Tate-Bradish's audience. People who understand the greatness of this country, feel a debt to those who have gone before and created that country, and are unashamed to express their loyalty to it. On the other hand you have people like Ms. Tate-Bradish herself. People who believe that most Americans are stupid and need an elite class to think for them, who believe that reciting the Pledge or singing the national anthem are hopelessly outdated, and who look down on the rest of us who think the Pledge is as meaningful today as when it was first penned by Francis Bellamy. Frankly, I'm happy to be counted in the first group.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBCpoll concludes that Americans have largely given up on the idea that free trade is good for the economy.
According to the Journal more than half the people polled say that free trade has hurt the U.S. economy. That's up 66% over the last 10 years. It's one thing for blue collar workers, unionized and non-unionized, to feel that free trade is responsible for jobs being shipped to South America or Asia. But 95% of upper income, highly educated respondents agreed that such outsourcing is responsible for our ailing economy.
But free trade is a two-edge sword. The same people lambasting it are the same ones walking out of Walmart with $89 DVD players. The fact is that the issue of free trade goes hand-in-hand with monetary policy. In fact, one of the factors in Congress currently igniting the firestorm over free trade is the value of the Chinese yuan compared to the U.S. dollar and China's apparent unwillingness to let its currency rise in value. Chinese currency manipuation has made Chinese goods a bargain here, and U.S. goods in China hopelessly uncompetitive.
But for many years U.S. monetary policy has resulted in low-cost imports, cushioning the blow from the loss of so many manufacturing jobs. Per capita income may have declined with outsourcing, but the U.S. manipulated the value of the dollar to cushion the blow of lost jobs.
The fact is the number one job of central banks is to value their currencies in such as way as to promote domestic bliss. Neither China nor the U.S. is an exception nor exceptional when it comes to this.
But turning our back on global trade right now is the wrong thing to do. In 1930 Congress passed, and Republican President Herbert Hoover signed, the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill. Why? Because in the midst of economic distress the popular belief was that the U.S. was being disadvantaged in the global trade of agriculture products. Then, as now, Congress believed that taxing imports would improve the economy by "leveling the playing field" for American exports-the same rationale the anti-globalization crowd gives for its opposition to expanding free trade. The result in 1930 was a global trade war that further plunged the U.S. and the rest of the world into what we now know was the Great Depression. Protectionist policies 80 years later would have the same result.
Like it or not we live in a global economy. Igniting a trade war will deny our farmers, manufacturers, service companies and entertainment industry access to important markets and further weaken our economy. Once again, as with healthcare, education, and social welfare, Congress will end up hurting the very people it purports to help.
Today marks the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States-September 11, 2001. Today the weather in the East is much like it was that morning: cool, clear air, low humidity and not a cloud in the sky.
There will be memorials today at the sites of all the terrorist homicidal crashes. But the elephant in the room that no one will acknowledge--today or any day--is whether the terrorists were successful in their mission. We like to think they failed--that the steel and the resolve of the American people got us back up off the ground ask quickly as the twin towers in New York went down.
To answer the question of who really won you have to look at the terrorists' targets that day:
The World Trade Center in New York, a symbol of America's financial muscle
The Pentagon, emblematic of American military power
The White House, the residence of the most powerful man on earth
The Capitol, a symbol of freedom to the world
Clearly, America continues to project military strength the world over. And while we've had two spirited presidential elections and two off-year congressional elections since that day nine years ago, it's clear that our democracy continues to function vibrantly.
But what about our financial system? True, in the last nine years we've had periods of unprecedented economic growth. But we've also had the worst recession in 30 years. If you connect the dots from 9-11, this is what you have:
A central bank, the Fed, that flooded the market with cheap money and artificially low interest rates after 9-11 to prevent an economic collapse
Two rounds of tax cuts that pumped even more money into the consumer markets to restore confidence in the American economy after 9-11
A grandstanding Congress that got into the mortgage business and created a Fun House of low interest loans, no down payment loans, liar loans, and ultimately the sale of billions of dollars in real estate in deals that made no sense
An explosion in a complicated mortgage-backed securities market fueled ultimately by the Fed's cheap money policy and Congress' meddling in the mortgage market
An economic wild fire fueled initially by the collapse of the mortgage backed securities market but fed by the winds of panic that sucked all the liquidity out of the markets
Not one but two ill-advised "stimulus" plans, not to mention bank and auto industry takeovers that converted precious but dwindling liquidity into government assets through the tax system
A punishing recession caused by lack of liquidity and confidence
A timid and cautious private sector, blamed for the collapse by the government, whose Keynesian approach to the crisis further diminished consumer and business confidence
A crisis in confidence, credit and credibility that has lead to 10% of the American work force without jobs
So you could say that American resolve got us back on our feet after 9-11. But you could also say that the panic that 19 Islamic terrorists caused on that beautiful day in 2001 forced the American government--Democrats and Republicans--into a series of missteps: a cheap money policy that led to an explosion in mortgages that should never have been written that led to a mortgage securities market too opaque and too complex for even regulators or bond rating agencies to understand, which led to the collapse of this securities market, which led to a collapse of the West's financial system, which resulted in lack of liquidity, bankruptcies and ultimately 10% unemployment.
This post is short and sweet. Sometimes when you're in the midst of an ongoing story it's difficult to rise above daily details to get the full picture of events that have unfolded before your eyes. But if you can somehow rise above the details and "connect the dots," to coin a phrase, a picture will emerge before you.
So if you want to really understand the economic difficulty that we're in, I recommend to you the lead editorial in today's Wall Street Journal. Titled The Obama Economyit explains clearly and briefly how the current administration squandered nearly a trillion hard-earned taxpayer dollars in a year and a half and has almost nothing to show for it.
In laymen's terms the editorial identifies all of the administration's missteps and connects them to produce a sorry picture of career politicians who have few clues how to right the ship of state.
It's depressing, really. But if you can invest ten minutes and click on the link above you'll better understand why we're where we are and what the only hope for change might be.
There is supposed to be a new movie hitting theaters this fall. The timing places it in advance of the Congressional mid-term elections in November. It's called I Want Your Moneyand it's by film maker Ray Griggs. That is if Griggs can come up with the cash to finish production.
This movie depicts the national debt crisis through a combination of documentary interviews and animation. In it an animated Ronald Reagan tries to teach Barack Obama about economics and budgeting. The animation, as well as the logo, were done by an artist from Mad Magazine. Among those appearing in the movie are Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and John Stoessel.
One little problem: It is inconceivable that a conservative look at the last two years like I Want Your Money could ever be produced and then screened in any multiplex controlled by the left-leaning entertainment industry. Just remember the difficulty that conservative comic Ben Stein had getting Expelled: No Intelligence Allowedmade. Conservatives who long for the days of Thirty Seconds over Tokyo and Medal of Honor: The Audie Murphy Storyknow the drill. No liberal bent, no investors. No investors, no screens. No screens, no movie.
Nevertheless, take a look at the trailer below. Share it with a friend. It's almost as good as a movie. And it's cheaper than ten bucks and a bucket of popcorn. If by some quirk this thing gets made and screened, so much the better.
President Obama's wife Michelle has raised the issue of obesity to the forefront as part of the national debate on American health and healthcare. The administration is spending millions of dollars on "public outreach" to educate people about eating in a more healthy manner.
The assumption is that the American people are ignorant about nutrition and the dangers of poor diet and--Heaven help us--fast food.
But are fast food consumers really ignorant? Do they really need Uncle to educate them about what they eat? Are the fast food shops preying on consumers who need to be saved? Who knows?
But a new survey just out by Scarborough Research pokes some holes in the stereotypical fast food consumer as a morbidly obese illiterate dropout with grease stains on his wife beater.
According to the survey more than a third of American adults will eat breakfast this month in a fast food restaurant. In addition, these consumers
are 16% more likely to live in a household with an annual income of $100,000 or more
more likely to have a college or advanced degree
more likely to eat breakfast at a fast food restaurant than other consumers
18% more likely to spend 20 or more hours online each week
more likely to obtain news and information from the Internet
Far from being obese drains on the nation's healthcare system, fast food breakfast consumers are more likely to live active lives, including belonging to a gym or health club. They're also more likely to be a jogger or play soccer, basketball or tennis.
It seems that these consumers are figuring out this healthy lifestyle thing just fine, with or without Uncle's help.
Every year at this time, since 1998, Beloit College in Wisconsin has published its Mindset List of incoming freshmen. For anyone old enough to have voted for or against Bill Clinton the mindset of the Class of 2014 is, well, scary. Hard to believe, but these 18-year olds:
have never known TV that didn't have 500 channels
can text the result of a basketball game in 160 characters, but can't write cursively
know Clint Eastwood as the artistic director of films like Grand Torino-not the testosterone-fueled vigilante detective Harry Callahan
listen to Kurt Cobain on an oldies channel-if they listen to radio at all
know Russia as an ally of the U.S.
have never known phones that have corded receivers
have never had to study countries like Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia in geography class
don't wear wristwatches to tell time
To someone who grew up with 3 network TV stations, enjoyed both Dirty Harry and Grand Torino, who as a Boy Scout passed out flyers on the nearest local shelter from Russian nukes, remembers the pride of a first wristwatch, and who didn't hear of Kurt Cobain until I was 45, this all comes as a shock.
This blog is on vacation till mid-August. The history of vacations in American is a curious one. The first recorded vacation in the colonies occurred in the 18th century when a Dr. Alexander Hamilton (presumably not that Alexander Hamilton) saddled his horse in Maryland and rode off seeking "health and recreation."
Since the good doc took some time off in 1744 until now, vacationing has become a multi-billion dollar industry. The psychology of vacationing is that you've worked like a field hand for 50 weeks, and you're entitled to spend anything you want. It's as if someone handed you a pile of Monopoly dollars when you jumped behind the wheel (or up on your horse, in the case of Dr. Hamilton). Things you wouldn't be caught dead with or spending a dollar on in real life somehow end up making their way home with you after vacation. Tee shirts with stupid sayings. Sombreros for the beach. Wet suits you'll never use again. $100 worth of fishing tackle. I know of people who have come home with new cars. People who won't wait at a traffic light will stand in line for an hour to get in to a seafood restaurant. There they'll spend for $40 for fish that spent the last 2 years of its life frozen in a box in some one's freezer.
Money has no value on vacation, and hence, is no object.
The term we use, "vacation," as opposed to "holiday," employed in much of the rest of the world, is an English term that originally referred to the break taken by King's courts and later the universities. The concept of vacation was brought to England from France by William the Conqueror. In France it was used to denote the period of time when life stopped so the grapes could be harvested.
Today, just under half of all Americans take a summer vacation. This year we'll spend on average about $1600 to relax. All in, that's about $7 billion more than we spend as a nation last year (seems like I spent that last week).
Where will we all go to relax? About 40% of us will head to an ocean or beach of some kind--by far the most popular place to go. About 20% will go to the mountains to chill, while the rest of us will head overseas or to grandma's house.
Me? Count me in that 40% for whom the fascination with rolling waves, sand beneath the feet, and catnaps on the beach never grow old.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Today is Flag Day in the U.S. Although not an official federal holiday, the occasion is marked in some cities with parades and celebrations.
One of the longest running Flag Day parade traditions is in Quincy, Massachusetts. This year marks the 58th consecutive Flag Day Parade. The largest parade is held each year in Troy, New York. This year an anticipated 50,000 people will watch the event. Where parades are not staged, ordinary people make a point of flying or posting the flag outside their homes or places of business.
Flag Day commemorates the adoption of the Stars and Stripes as the official banner of the United States by the Second Continental Congress in 1777. A midwestern dentist, Bernard Cigrand, is generally recognized as the "father of Flag Day," having staged the first known Flag Day celebration at a Wisconsin school in 1885.
In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation declaring June 14 to be Flag Day. In 1949 the day was firmly fixed through an Act of Congress. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is the only state that has adopted Flag Day as a state holiday.
This year President Obama has doubled down and proclaimed the entire week of June 14 "Flag Week."
Despite the celebrations in places like Quincy and Troy, most people probably don't know that today is Flag Day. It seems to have taken on the aura of a bygone era-like straw boaters, big band music, or black-and-white TV. Much of that stems from the 1960s, when the Flag was downgraded to an instrument of fashion., embroidered on everything from shirts to underwear. It was also the time that young protesters rebelled against anything by burning the Flag.
But Flag Day remains important. The U.S. does not have a national culture like, say, France or England. We have no official language. We don't have thousands of years of history like other countries do. If someone is a Frenchman or an Englishman, he is the product of thousands of years history, culture, language and art-all of which he shares with his compatriots.
But in America we don't have thousands of years of common background. We, either directly or through our forebears, come from all over the earth. To some extent we share the gifts we bring here. Sometimes that doesn't work. You end up with O'Malley's Pizza or suburban white kids dressing like rappers. Most most of the time it does. It works because, while we may not have a common culture, we have a common set of beliefs. And those beliefs are symbolized and wrapped up in the Flag. That's why our enemies, who can't touch us economically or militarily do the worst thing to us they can think of: They burn the American Flag.
And that's what makes Flag Day still relevant, even though few people know it.
One of the greatest American presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, knew it. Near the end of his presidency, June 14, 1908, TR was taking a meal near Philadelphia, when he noticed a man apparently blowing his nose with the American flag. Incensed at the desecration, the president picked up a piece of wood and began beating the man with it. After hitting him about a half dozen times, TR noticed that the man hadn't been using a flag, but a piece of blue cloth decorated with stars.
The president apologized, but then turned and gave him one last Sonny Corleone whack for good measure. He got my American pride riled up, said TR as he walked away.
Near the end of Pres. Obama's first year in office, columnist Jeff Jacoby noted the president's decision not to attend the celebration in German marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The president, wrote Mr. Jacoby, was "too busy to attend the celebrations," opting instead to send a video of himself.
In the video, Mr. Jacoby writes, the president was careful not to offend any current or former enemy, blandly calling the wall '' 'a painful barrier between family and friends' that symbolized 'a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being.' He referred to 'tyranny,' but never identified the tyrants - he never uttered the words 'Soviet Union' or 'communism,' for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan - or even Mikhail Gorbachev."
Pres. Obama, however, was not too busy to talk about...well...Pres. Obama.
Recently, the president spoke at a fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). According to The Weekly Standard, Mr. Obama gracelessly decried what he saw as the mess his predecessor had left him when he assumed office on Jan. 20, 2009. He then recited the litany of Democratic initiatives he was responsible for in his 14 months in office: the second stimulus bill, the healthcare bill, etc.
The president's self-congratulatory conclusion: "This has been the toughest year-and-a-half since the 1930s."
Oh, really?
Granted, the U.S. president has shown himself in that last year and a half to be shockingly ignorant of American history (for most leftists, American history started in the streets of Chicago in 1968). but has this president had a tougher go than:
FDR in 1933-34 confronting not only an economic depression but the near collapse of a monetary system, as well as a natural disaster that left much of the nation's breadbasket a parched wasteland?
Harry Truman coming to grips with a devastated and vanquished Nazi Europe, a stubborn enemy in the Pacific that refused to yield, and the soul-wrenching decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan?
Jack Kennedy navigating by Braille through the Bay of Pigs in 1961, only to be taken to the nuclear woodshed the following year by the more experienced Soviet leaders?
Lyndon Johnson trying to bind the nation's wounds after JFK's assassination while trying to get his arms around that thing called Vietnam?
George W. Bush confronting a stateless, invisible enemy that perpetrated the most significant attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor?
Mr. Obama is much taken with his own accomplishments in the face of what he sees as adversity. But quite frankly, a lot of that adversity was of his own making. And while he views his legislative conquests as a lasting accomplishment, it may instead be a phyrric victory. Because if the president leaves any lasting accomplishments it appears that they will be the destruction of American initiative, the death of American exceptionalism, the end of America as a counterweight to the forces of tyranny in the world, and the permanent re-classification of the U.S. as a debtor nation.
You want to talk about a tough year and a half? That will be the first 18 months of whoever replaces him in the White House and has to untangle this mess.
Copts are Egyptian Christians descended from among the first Gentiles who embraced Christianity two thousand years ago. The religion of Jesus Christ was brought to Egypt by no less than St. Mark, the author of one of the four Christian Gospels.
By the third century Coptic Christians were the majority in Egypt, and remained so until the Muslim conquest in the 7th century. From then on, for the most part, Copts, along with Jews, were relegated to the status of dhimmi, or inferior, by their Arabic Muslim rulers. Today about 12% of Egypt is Coptic.
Throughout history there have been many famous Copts ranging from Maria al-Qibtiyya, wife of the Prophet Mohammed to Boutros Boutros Ghali, the 6th secretrary-general of the United Nations.
But today, Coptic Christians in Egypt are as persecuted a minority as the first Christians were at the hands of the Roman empire. Several weeks ago in Marsa Matrouh, a crowd of 3,000 Muslims, whooped into a war frenzy by an angry Imam, descended on the Christian community in order to "cleanse the city of its infidel Christians," democracy advocate Moheb Zaki wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal.
The result: 18 homes, 23 shops, and 16 cars destroyed while the Coptic community barracaded itself in its church for 10 hours until the Muslim fury died out.
Over the last year there have been more than a dozen such instances of religious "cleansing" in Egypt. In Naga Hamadi a drive-by shooting at a Coptic church, following Christmas Eve mass, resulted in the massacre of seven Christians and the wounding of 26 more.
The following disturbing video was taken with a mobile phone shortly after the shooters did their work:
Egyptian Copts have been forced to flee their homes by the thousands. Police, writes Mr. Zaki, arrive conveniently late to the scene after reported attacks on Copts. Often, he reports, the result is police pressure on Copt victims to "reconcile" with their Muslim attackers.
Far from being the product of a few bad actors, this violence is being condoned and supported by a government that looks the other way, and a Muslim religious leadership that feeds the frenzy. One Sunni Islamic institution, according to Mr. Zaki, has declared the Bible to be corrupt and Christianity a pagan religion. And despite the dramatic rise in these attacks, no Muslim has yet been convicted of any crime.
For all this talk, we continually hear that Islam is a religion of peace. Good luck finding many Egyptian Copts who agree with that. The plain fact is that if there are any peaceful Islamic leaders-religous or secular-now is the time for the big talkers to come forward and walk the walk: Unequivocally denounce this terrorism.
Until that happens, most non-Muslims, rightly or wrongly, will continue to view Islam as a violent cult stuck in a time warp and a threat to civilized society the world over.
This blog has for some time decried the actions of the federal government in taking over commercial enterprises--nationalizing whole industries with the aplomb of a third world dictator. The mad dash to remake American society before anyone figures it out has been as breathtaking as it has been effective. A few examples:
The nationalization of two-thirds of the domestic auto industry. This includes the dismantling of personal property rights engineered by the Obama administration when it rendered worthless the bonds of secured creditors and gave 55% of Chrysler to the administration's union masters.
The federalization of the student loan industry. This has all but guaranteed that college tuitions will keep rising unchecked. As academia, which has its first member in the Oval Office since Woodrow Wilson, keeps raising the price of its product, the federal government compliantly will keep shoveling more and more money into student loan furnace. There will be no market force to push back. Pres. Obama will be able to keep its friends in academia fat and happy behind their ivy-covered walls
The nationalization of one-sixth of the U.S. economy represented by the so-called healthcare reform bill. Should this law ever go into effect, and we pray it doesn't, the end game will be a single-payer--the government--system of healthcare
Following on this impressive rush to socialism comes a just released a draft report by the Federal Trade Commission entitled "Potential Policy Recommendation to Support the Reinvention of Journalism." The purpose of the report is to float some ideas on how the federal government can "support" the newspaper business.
This is a business with few exceptions (News Corp. properties like the Wall Street Journalor New York Post) that has, for the most part, been in the tank for Barack Obama since he began his improbable ascendancy to the White House. But newspapers are a dying technology. We need them to know what's going on about as much as we need buggy whips to get to the general store. Fewer and fewer people read newspapers on a daily basis, and those who do mostly focus on features and opinion content. And the number of people under the age of 30 who read a daily paper is miniscule.
What is not miniscule to the the 20 and 30-something crowd is the Internet--social media like blogs, Twitter and Facebook; You Tube and the like. But the administration doesn't much like this social media stuff because they can't control it like they can the newspapers.
A conservative president like George Bush fails to visit Louisiana during the Hurricane Katrina clean up and every major daily editorializes on how out of touch the Republican president is with the troubles facing Louisiana. Barack Obama waits weeks before visiting the same state to view the site of the worst oil spill in the nation's history and the papers bury the story.
But the story's not buried on the blogosphere. Neither was Scott Brown's improbably takeover of what mainstream media poobah David Gergen sonorously pronounced "the Kennedy seat" in Massachusetts. Nor the stories of how administration policy is being shaped by policy payoffs to Friends of Barack.
But administration wants to keep its journo friends employed and writing nice things about Barack. So the FTC, acting as an agent of the Democratic National Committee, decides to re-invent newspapering to prop it up against the market forces that are sending it the way of parchment scrolls and quill pens. How? In two ways: First by making it easier for newspapers to assert rights over its product and charge the "Internet freeloaders" (read: conservative bloggers) for content. And second (this is the really the sneaky part), by federalizing the newspaper business through direct financial support.
That's right: take from your opponents and give to your friends. Tony Soprano would be proud. The FTC justifies confiscating your money through fees and taxes and giving it to the Friends of Barack this way: "The federal government has supported journalism through indirect means since the founding of the Republic."
Some of its suggestions? For one, create a "journalism" branch of AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps is the federal boondoggle that provides payoffs to Obama supporters to train their youngsters to be community activists. Not exactly the Hitler Youth, but nevertheless a subsidy whose ultimate goal is to skew public opinion the president's way largely by registering people most likely to vote Democratic, or by informing the public debate from the left.
Other proposals include establishing a "federal fund for local news," and granting newspapers a tax credit for every journalist they employ. Is there a managing editor alive who would dare sic his journo-dogs on the Joe Sestak-take-an-election-dive allegation against the White House if his profit margin relied on the quarterly check from Uncle Sam?
And as for tax-credits-for-journos, who gets to decide who is a journalist and who isn't? Sounds like a new federal bureaucracy needs to be created. Would a senile embarrassment like Helen Thomas get her J-card, but the world's most powerful blogger, Matt Drudge, not?
The FTC goes on to cite what it calls precedents in having government support a private industry, as if that would be a justification. There is a difference between a fourth-class manuscript postage rate and the wholesale propping up of a superfluous industry about to fall.
This may be the most insidious of the Obama plans to remake the U.S. as a European socialist system. It's one thing to nationalize Chrysler. They were third in a three-horse race when the feds took them over, and they're still third. Student loans only affect students. But by economically weakening his opposition, and showering your tax dollars on newspapers whose policy is to fawn over the president and look the other way when he stumbles, President Obama is using the reins of government to tighten the leftist grip on the U.S. and shape public opinion by restricting the flow of information.
And the historical precedents for that are found not in the Postal Service or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as the FTC maintains, but in Germany, Russia, Cuba and Venezuela.
Just Thought You Might Like to Know is dedicated to Mr. Fred Palmer, the late chief executive of radio station WATH-AM in Athens, Ohio. Mr. Palmer was a broadcasting pioneer and a longtime FCC licensee. Part of the WATH broadcast schedule always included a short commentary by Mr. Palmer on current events, local politics or just plain musings. Each commentary ended with his standard "outcue": Just thought you might like to know. Mr. Palmer's commentaries always reflected his common sense Midwest heritage. It is to him this blog is dedicated. Just thought you might like to know.
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