Playfull Youngsters Robbing Subway Riders

CBS News in New York has reported a crime spree conducted by a gang of young people on NYC subways. The gang, four males and one female, have held up subway riders on three separate occasions since August 15th. The youths have threatened their victims with box cutters and a gun.

To date, 10 victims have been robbed by the petulant youths, though no injuries have yet been reported. One subway rider expressed concern, saying, “It would seem there would be at least one officer or undercover on platform if it’s this large,” a Brooklyn resident opined when asked if he was surprised the gang was able to strike so easily during rush hour.

Another rider from Brooklyn expressed concern for the young scamps saying, “They look pretty young and it’s sad because they have such a great life ahead of them and there’s so much more they can be doing.” It’s safe to say that the great life they have ahead of the will include long periods of incarceration.

New York Police report that crime on the city’s subway system has gone up 17 percent this year. Despite the 4000 Transit Division police officers assigned to maintain order among the 5 million riders per day, this gang of armed teenagers have managed to elude police, though they have been photographed several times, including those photos seen above.

Possibly these youngsters may have not heard about another subway rider in New York City who took a dim view of a gang of young toughs attempting to relieve him of his possessions in 1984. On December 22 of that year, New Yorker Bernhard Goetz was accosted by a similar gang. Mr Goetz declined to hand over his money and instead unloaded an unregistered firearm into the gang, seriously wounding all four.

Of course, the New York City, then under the steady hand of Mayor Ed Koch, arrested Mr Goetz, outraged that he had the nerve to defend himself against the depredations of a gang of thugs. Goetz was charged with attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment, as well as several firearms offenses. A jury of his peers, however, found Goetz not guilty of all charges except illegal possession of a firearm. Goetz spent 8 months of a one year jail term behind bars for his “crime.”

Is it possible that the gang of road agents now terrorizing the subway riders of New York have heard about the Goetz story and have learned a valuable lesson from that incident? Since the current Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is a vociferous opponent of guns in the hands of private citizens, this gang of youths robbing subway passengers can act with relative certainty that no citizen of the city will actually have a weapon in his possession with which to defend himself. And if a subway rider did have a weapon, under Nanny Bloomberg’s administration, the subway rider would be in more jeopardy from the police than the criminal, as was Mr Goetz.

So this group of young footpads can continue to relieve New York subway riders of their money and property secure in the knowledge that most of their intended victims are probably more afraid of what Mayor Bloomberg will do to them than what the gang of hoodlums will do.

And crime in New York’s subways has only gone up 17 percent this year?

Dim-wits in High Places

Vice President Joe Biden has taken the point in the Obama Administration’s campaign to pass another half trillion dollar “Jobs Bill.” Mr Biden appeared at a democrat rally on Capital Hill, attended by fellow democrat senators and congressmen, posing as thoughtful and serious representatives of the American people.

Mr Biden, who was once the most intellectually challenged individual ever to enjoy a seat in the U.S. Senate (which is no small feat since he was a contemporary of the late Edward Kennedy), has gone on to become the dumbest individual ever to stand a single heartbeat from the presidency.

Speaking of republican opposition to Mr Obama’s so-called “Jobs Bill,” Mr Biden quipped, “Are you going to put 400,000 school teachers back in classrooms, are you going to put 18,000 cops back on the street and 7,000 firefighters back in the firehouses? Or are you going to save people with average incomes of $1 million a one-half of 1 percent increase in tax on every dollar they make over a million?”

Mr Biden was referring to the choice between funding a half trillion dollars to be used to hire government union employees and the proposed means of paying for it: a one half of one percent additional tax on incomes above $1 million.

Mr Biden made his remarks despite the knowledge that the rich already pay nearly half of the income taxes collected by the IRS. Mr Biden knows, or would if he had the capacity to fathom subjects of such depth, that the top one percent of income earners (the rich) pay nearly four of every ten dollars collected by the IRS. In fact the top 50 percent of taxpayers pay nearly all income taxes (97 percent). Still, to the radicals now running the government, there is room for the “rich” to pay a little more. Mr Biden knows how much the “rich” pay, and the Obama Administration’s implication that the rich enjoy tax breaks unavailable to middle class Americans is a disingenuous prevarication.

But then, Mr Biden has been wrong about virtually every issue of major importance to U.S. foreign policy (his supposed area of expertise) since entering the senate in 1972. He was one of the democrat party heroes who threw the Vietnamese government under the bus in 1974-1975. During the Cold War, he favored cuts in Defense spending so large that even the very liberal Walter Mondale opposed them. He opposed aid to the Contras in Nicaragua and assistance to the government of El Salvador, then resisting the Marxist FMLN guerrillas. He opposed President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, credited by most observers as the largest single contributing factor to winning the Cold War. To Mr Biden, it was a reckless and irresponsible program. He voted against the Gulf War in 1991 and opposed the surge in the Iraq War in 2007, which won that war.

The only reason Mr Biden is not greeted with howls of derisive laughter whenever he ascends a podium is the fawning American media, who are unable bring themselves to criticize the bumbling vice-president. Mr Biden is after all, a democrat. Many wondered why Mr Obama would ever pick such a dim-witted individual for his vice-president. The answer is obvious: insurance. If Mr Obama was ever forced from office, either for reasons of ill-health or impeachment, Mr Biden would become president. Mr Obama rightly perceived that with Mr Biden as vice president, the American people would hold their noses while patiently awaiting the next election.

Bam's Next Job!

President Barack Obama seems to be working very hard at honing his skills for his next job, that of former president. After his disastrous first term, it is pretty clear that Mr Obama will be moving out of the White House in January 2013. When he does leave the White House in January, 2013, he will finally have a chance to do something he has never done: a job for which he is qualified.

With absolutely no experience as an executive, Mr Obama was ushered into the Oval Office by an electorate dissatisfied with the Bush Administration and eager to vote for the first African-American presidential candidate. His dearth of experience and radical leftist ideology were of no apparent interest to the American electorate. But when he becomes a former president immediately after the next election, Mr Obama will enter an occupation for which he has all the experience he needs.

Former presidents do pretty much what Mr Obama does now. They give speeches, play golf, raise money for disaster victims, build libraries to laud their achievements, travel abroad, vacation in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard, and democrat former presidents sometimes win Nobel Prizes. For once in his life, Mr Obama need not be embarrassed at being the least experienced person in any meeting he attends. With the amount of time Mr Obama spends on the golf course and going on vacation, he should have no trouble making the transition. He even has some experience in winning Nobel Prizes.

The major difference, of course, is that as a former president, Mr Obama will no longer hold the reins of power in the United States. He will no longer be able to stifle business recovery with the staggering burden of federal regulations. He will no longer prevent meaningful l development of domestic energy sources. He will no longer be able to suggest raising taxes on particular groups of Americans, while increasing welfare distributions to other groups. He will be free to do what he does best, relax and give speeches, while the American people will be free to do what they do best, innovate and work hard to save the American economy from the mismanagement of this dangerous economic illiterate.

While many other former presidents have been hampered by the silly tradition of silence with regard to their successors, Mr Obama has the example of fellow former president and fellow democrat Jimmy Carter to follow. While previous presidents have had the class and dignity to refrain from casting aspersions on their successors, Mr Carter has traveled the world, castigating his republican successors despite their obvious successes in international and domestic economic affairs, while simultaneously reviling his country.

Here again, Mr Obama has already demonstrated that the traditional refrain shown by previous presidents not named Carter is no obstacle for him. He has already been very vocal in assigning responsibility for every malady facing the nation to the administration of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Beyond that, he has traveled the world apologizing for his country, and presumably all previous presidents, while still occupying the office of its Chief Executive.

All indications suggest that the next presidential election will be interesting. It will be an election similar to that which followed the inept Carter administration, a landslide repudiation and defeat of the democrat incumbent, followed a quarter century of economic growth and prosperity. Mr Obama can then attend to his new job as former president with all the venom and perfidy now solely the province of the hapless Jimmy Carter, but the nation will no longer have to suffer the consequences of his breathtaking ineptitude. But he certainly is supremely qualified to take the baton from the aging peanut farmer.

A Tale of Two Attacks

Heavily Armed Israeli Soldiers

On November 5, 2009 a Muslim terrorist, masquerading as a U.S. Army psychiatrist, conducted an attack on Army personnel at Fort Hood, Texas. Major Nidal Hassan, the terrorist, opened fire with a handgun on military personnel on their base and succeeded in killing 12 American soldiers and wounding 31 others.

On August 18, 2011, three Palestinian terrorists conducted an attack on a bus full of Israeli military personnel traveling from their base at Be’er Sheva to the resort city of Eilat on leave. When the three Palestinians opened fire on the bus with automatic weapons, the Israeli soldiers got off the bus and engaged the terrorists with their own automatic weapons, killing two and seriously wounding the third.

These were two separate attacks with two very different results. But how could the Fort Hood terrorist with a handgun succeed in killing 12 and wounding 31 while the three Palestinians with automatic weapons ended up the only victims of their attack? Simple, the U.S. Army (and the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps) prohibit the possession of weapons, either military issue or private weapons, by military personnel while not directly involved in training exercises. So American soldiers are liable to be shot down as helpless victims of a deranged Muslim on their own base while Israeli soldiers, when attacked while riding on a bus through the desert, are able to dismount the bus under attack and successfully defend themselves.

But this is the United States, not the violent Middle East, where everyone needs to be armed and capable of defending themselves, right. If a Muslim terrorist can conduct an attack on a U.S. military base with enough impunity to kill 12 and wound 31 before being stopped by an armed policeman, it will not be long before such attacks are conducted in the public domain such as at malls, shopping centers, and sporting events. The attacks of September 11, 2001 are nearly a decade behind us, yet the United States still does not consider itself a nation under attack.

The critical difference is trust. The Israeli military trust their personnel to possess weapons and to use them for their intended purpose: defending themselves and the state of Israel. The Israeli military issues weapons to every soldier. Israel then trains them extensively on their use and allows the soldiers to retain possession of them at all times. The U.S. military does not trust the American servicemen to retain possession of their weapons, except when using them in training or in actual combat. That’s why Nidal Hassan knew he would be able to kill and wound many Americans before being subdued at Fort Hood.

Its time that we in the United States understand that we are at war, as the Israelis have been for years. We are all at war, and are all vulnerable to committed Muslim terrorists who want nothing so much as the sight of dead American bodies in the street.

Governor Perry is no John McCain

Texas Governor Rick Perry has come out swinging in his bid for the U.S. presidency. Governor Perry, who announced his intention to oust incumbent Barack Obama in the 2012 election last Saturday, said he considered the Federal Reserve Board policy of printing money, known as Quantitative Easing, could be treasonous.

The fair and balanced news agency Reuters reported Perry’s strong statement on August 16th. The article, by objective journalist Patricia Zengerle, quoted Governor Perry saying, “Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous, treasonous in my opinion.”

The White House naturally denounced Governor Perry’s stated opinion, with Obama Press Secretary, the former objective journalist Jay Carney, asserting, “Its not a good idea threatening the Fed Chairman.” What Carney should have said was he does not consider it a good idea to have an opinion on Quantitative Easing that differs from that of his boss.

Ms Zengerle went on to fret that such a belligerent stance might go a long way to scare squishy independents from the conservative republican candidate, though if that were the case it would probably be cause for celebration in the Reuters editorial offices.

Republican establishment figures also expressed concern over the Texas Governor’s tone. Ford O’Connell, a former advisor to the failed 2008 presidential campaign of Arizona Senator John McCain, offered sage advice to the Texan, bleating, “When you say these things in the Lone Star State, you look colorful. When you say it on a national stage…it’s going to come back to get you.” Mr O’Connell went on to say, “You’ve got to be more James Bond than Rambo.”

And who would know more about what can “come back to get you” while making nice to political opponents than a squishy, inoffensive advisor to the failed McCain candidacy. It was McCain’s abysmal campaign, advised so inadequately by the likes of Mr O’Connell, that refused to call out then-candidate Obama on any of the myriad issues that could have been raised in the campaign to defeat him. It was McCain’s half-hearted effort to stand up for conservative principles of limited government and fiscal discipline, advised by the likes of Mr O’Connell, that led directly to the disaster we are living through with this incompetant socialist in the White House.

It’s about time someone started speaking up to the incumbent president’s sycophants in the administration and in the fawning, corrupt media, telling the truth about “Quantitative Easing.” Such a policy is not, as Reuters breathlessly reports, “an attempt to right a stumbling economy.” It is a disingenuous attempt by a political toady to prop up an inept, stumbling administration.

Grabbing DoD Funding

With pressure mounting on President Obama and his allies in Congress to reduce the profane spending of the federal government, the budget of the Department of Defense is once again the target of another inept democrat administration. Like President Jimmy Carter before him, Mr Obama views the Defense budget with envious eyes. Unlike Carter before him, however, Mr Obama presides over a military fully engaged in two live wars and several percolating hot spots.

Mr Carter did not have to deal with active wars (only the Cold War with the Soviet Union) during his administration’s efforts to gut the Pentagon, resulting in the “hollow force” of the late 1970’s, but Mr Obama does. He has troops engaged in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as smaller scale efforts such as the NATO effort to oust Libyan strongman Muammar Khadafi, and ongoing effort to destroy Al Qaida in Yemen. Still, Mr Obama feels he can find nearly $400 billion is savings from the Department of Defense, nearly half of the total bill for the military in 2011 of $861 billion.

It is curious that Mr Obama and his congressional toadies seek to cut the budget for national defense nearly in half, while any suggestion that the government limit spending on many of the less significant areas of federal spending is met with hysterical wailing about republican cruelty to children and the elderly. Oversight of the national defense effort is one of the tasks and powers specifically granted to the Congress and the President by the U.S. Constitution.

Article I, Section 8 of the document empowers the Congress to “declare war” and to “provide for the common defense.” Congress also has the power to punish piracies on the high seas; raise and support armies; and to provide and maintain a navy. Article II, Section 2 identifies the president as the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, and the Militia of the several states when called into actual service.” These are all legitimate activities for which the Congress can appropriate funds, and on which the President can spend those funds.

But the U.S. Constitution does not say one word about the power of the government to spend a dime on health care. The document does not confer any power on the government to mandate mileage standards for automobiles, nor does it empower the federal government to bail out failing businesses, no matter what their size may be. The Constitution does not enumerate any power of the government to participate, let alone control education, or labor, or the production of energy. And yet, cabinet level departments exist for each activity.

To be sure, the Department of Defense could probably do well to reduce some of the waste in its huge budget. But before Mr Obama and his allies in the democrat congress and the derelict media repeat the folly of the Carter years, perhaps they should cast their eyes in the direction of government activities that the government has no authority to conduct in the first place.

How can we possibly identify activities that are not authorized by the Constitution? Simple, read the 10th Amendment to the document. It says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” While that simple text should require no definition, it clearly means that if the activity cannot be found enumerated in the Constitution of any of its 27 ratified amendments, the federal government has no authority to be conducting that activity.

After we eliminate all the money the federal government wastes on unauthorized activities, we will have solved the government’s spending problem and we can get on with defending the nation. But we will also have removed the last viable method for democrat politicians to buy votes with the tax revenues of their fellow citizens. And that is why it will never happen.

He Just Doesn't Get It

Within two hours of the bill’s passage by the Congress, President Barack Obama signed the Debt Limit Increase Bill into law on August 2nd, averting by several hours the dreaded possibility of national default.

The president then ran to the microphones outside the Oval Office to thank the American people for keeping the pressure on the Congress to ensure the continued solvency of the government.

The president went on to add a few personal observations to his remarks. He stated as an accepted fact his supposition that, “We can’t close the deficit with just spending cuts.” Without pausing to consider the mendacity of that comment, he went on to suggest that the only way to accomplish “closing the deficit” would be to have the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations pay their fair share.

Then he went on to say something he may come to regret if anyone in the neutered American press would take him to task. The president said, “Everyone is going to have to pay their fair share. It’s only fair.”1

As it stands today, the president is correct; everyone does not pay their fair share of taxes. Today, 47 percent of the wage earners in the country do not pay any federal income tax at all. Either due to low income, tax credits, or deductions, these workers, numbering over 110 million people, have zero federal income tax liability. It is possible for a family of four earning $50,000 a year to owe no income tax. But even if all those individuals paid an average of $2500 in federal taxes, it would only total about $275 billion, enough to run Mr Obama’s administration for just over three weeks. 2

So, if 47 percent of wage earners pay no federal income taxes, who does? The top 10 percent of all income earners, the evil rich, those earning more than $113,000 per year, pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes collected by the government.3

President Obama is simply using class warfare as a straw dog to deflect attention from the actual problem: outrageous federal spending. To turn Mr Obama’s original statement around, we cannot “close the deficit” by taxing the rich or corporations. As indicated in the very entertaining video at the Heritage Foundation web sight (narrated by Bill Whittle), if we were to confiscate 100 percent of all the profits earned by the Fortune 500 companies ($357 billion) plus 100 percent of the assets of the rich ($1.412 trillion), we could only run Mr Obama’s government for about six months. After that, we’d be out of money with no way to produce more.

While the rich are a tempting target for the socialists and communists of the world, they are not the solution to the budget problem we are facing. Mr Obama’s declarations to the contrary notwithstanding, the only way to eliminate the budget deficit and the resulting increase in the national debt is to stop the runaway federal spending.

The idea that there are no areas of the federal budget that can be cut without harming children or the elderly is preposterous. Examples of federal profligacy are well known, but some of the more ridiculous are catalogued at Darwin’s Money.com where some of the more foolish examples of spending from Mr Obama’s Stimulus spending are documented.4 Examples like the California Academy of Sciences receiving $1.9 million to send researchers to the islands of the Southwest Indian Ocean to capture and photograph exotic ants, or the $90,000 in stimulus money that the town of Boynton, Oklahoma received to replace a five year old length of sidewalk.

In normal times, these expenditures would be thought unnecessary and perhaps even somewhat amusing. But in a time when the economic future of the planet may be in jeopardy if we do not get our fiscal house in order, they are a travesty. Spending trillions of dollars of money we do not have should not be a political issue; it should be a criminal issue. The days of using the endless flow of taxpayer money to ensure the re-election of politicians is over. We need someone in Washington D.C. who can be trusted to act in the best interests of the nation. In years gone by, that’s what we elected the president to do. Sadly, the current occupant of the White House seems unable, or unwilling to do so.


1- http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60503.html
2- ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat3.txt
3- http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/14/video-eat-the-rich-liberals-will-still-be-hungry/
4- http://www.darwinsmoney.com/dumb-stimulus-bill-spending/

We can keep screwing them for years!

Watching the continuing drama of democrats and republicans sparring over the resolution of the “debt crisis,” its difficult to resist a chuckle over what is really happening in Washington. What we are witnessing is the collapse of the biggest Ponzi Scheme ever imagined, with the beneficiaries of the scam scrambling to keep their ill-gotten gains and preserve the golden goose they have been choking for years.

A Ponzi Scheme, of course, is a scheme where investors (citizen taxpayers) are duped to put their money (taxes) into an investment plan that purports to pay unusually high rates of return (government benefits for all our friends). The benefits of a Ponzi Scheme are paid out today as other investors continue to pay in. To keep the scheme going, the perpetrators must maintain a continuing flow of money into the scheme. It is only when the incoming revenue fails to keep up with the demands for payouts that the Ponzi Scheme begins to unravel.

Until this year, with the arrival of the freshman class of Tea Party republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate, the American government’s Ponzi Scheme was in no danger. When the incoming revenue to the federal government was not sufficient to cover the huge outlays of benefits to the “Investors,” the congress simply spent all the money it had and borrowed the rest. Each year, the amount of money spent in excess of the revenue coming in was simply labeled “the budget deficit.” When the next year began, the deficit was simply added to the previous deficits that total up to the national debt. So far, so good investors, but then those rascally republicans came along and spoiled all the fun.

When the national debt began to approach the debt limit, that staggering figure approved by a previous congress and president, the managers of the Ponzi Scheme thought they would be able to do as they have always done. They would simply raise the national debt limit. But the sweeping republican/Tea Party success in the congressional election of 2010 has changed the picture in once-placid Washington. The leadership in the House and Senate cannot simply raise the debt ceiling in the current atmosphere inside the beltway. The American people are balking at continuing the scheme. The Tea Party has changed the debate from increasing the budget and deficit to reducing both.

When a real Ponzi Scheme is discovered, the result is typically panic. Investors run on the banks and attempt to regain as much of their equity as they can from what remains. But in this grandest of all Ponzi Schemes, the victims are behaving in a very civil manner. Instead of marching on Washington with pitchforks and firearms, demanding the heads of their politicians, they are simply demanding that the Ponzi Scheme be stopped, and the damage repaired. In the case of this congress, it is the schemers themselves who are beginning to panic. Instead of running for the tall grass to hide their shame, our congressional leadership is standing firm, demanding that the investors approve an increase to the debt ceiling and continue to invest in the scheme.

The panic began earlier this year in Wisconsin, when Governor Scott Walker attempted to limit the amount of “benefits” the government union employee were receiving from that state’s Ponzi Scheme. The wild scenes of hateful demonstrators seen on the national news every night illustrate the degree of panic that shutting off the flow of taxpayer benefits will cause. We are witnessing a similar panic growing in Washington.

President Obama’s petulant speech last Friday evening, where he castigated those who dared to forward the Cut, Cap and Balance legislation, and “summoned” the leadership of a co-equal branch of the government to the White House to explain why they could not raise the debt limit, was only slightly more dignified than the mobs rioting in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capital.

What we are witnessing could be the dissolution of the republic. When the political ruling class in Washington realize that the people, through the Tea Party movement, will no longer fund the gravy train they have been riding for many decades, they will have to decide if they will accede to the demands of the people, or chose some other route that will allow them to continue to live in the styles to which they have become accustomed. The former option would return us to the freedom and free enterprise system that generated the prosperity we used to enjoy. The latter will continue the descent into a statist hell.

Drill Domestically, Probably Not!

Democrat politicians like to crow that expanding domestic oil production by expanding exploration and drilling will not be effective in reducing gasoline prices at the pump. Their contention is that it would take years for increased supplies of domestic oil from new drilling to actually get to the pumps, so why bother? That ridiculous, flat-earth assertion notwithstanding, the news today illustrates the folly of this argument.

The United States, in concert with other members of the International Energy Agency, has agreed to release as much as 60 million barrels of oil from strategic stockpiles. Responding only to the news that reported this agreement, oil prices plummeted nearly 5% in a single day, to the lowest price in the last six months.

If world oil prices could be affected so significantly by the news concerning a relatively small injection of supply from the IEA’s strategic oil reserves, what would the promise of hundreds of millions of barrels of oil flowing from new US wells for decade upon decade have of world oil prices. Of course, prices would continue to plummet to levels where Americans could once again afford to drive cars, buy boats, fly on jet airplanes and heat their homes without taking a second job.

Prices would fall THE SAME DAY congress opened up new discovery opportunities, because oil prices reflect what the future supply would be. If the oil futures market gurus saw the prospect of a nearly unlimited supply of safe, domestically produced energy available for years, prices would necessarily fall. And that price reduction would become relatively permanent. Oil prices would stabilize at an affordable level. Businesses, governments, and individuals could plan for future energy use, secure in the knowledge that prices would be low and stable. Oil prices, the millstone around the neck of American families and businesses since the 1970’s, would once again become invisible and nearly irrelevant to consumers.

A renewal of domestic exploration and drilling is, sadly, not likely to happen with a democrat in the White House. Cheap and plentiful gasoline is anathema to the Obama Administration, as cheap energy would surely lead to increased consumption of gasoline, causing the planet to disintegrate in a firey blaze from man-made Global Warming. But cheap and plentiful energy supplies would also lead to an explosion of economic expansion and growth, which would lead to a massive reduction in the stratospheric unemployment rates that are choking Mr Obama’s popularity.

With the solution to his plummeting popularity right in front of his eyes, Mr Obama’s rigid ideological adherence to the socialist, redistributionist, big government, anti-business solutions that have failed him thus far will prevent him from taking this ridiculously easy and productive path back to prosperity and popularity. For someone who has castigated his predicessor's "failed policies," Mr Obama's rigid ideological allegiance to his own failing policies will guarantee a weak democrat candidate in the 2012 presidential election. In the end that will be good news for the republic, if not our wallets.

Running Rings Around Corrupt Media

The recent release of over 24,000 documents detailing the email communications of Governor Sarah Palin serve to illustrate the woefully corrupt and derelict nature of the American news media. The release of email traffic, made due to a specific request by the Associated Press, generated a frenzy in the media to scrutinize each email to find the “story behind the story,” the smoking gun with which they could destroy the ascending political career of the conservative former governor of Alaska.

The news media, in their haste to find dirt on Ms Palin, enlisted the support of thousands of readers to pour over the emails. The enlistment of readers to do their legwork is an indication of the corruption of a once-proud industry. At one time, the media would actually do that kind of work itself. Back in J-School, they used to call it “Investigative Reporting.” Now, the corrupt media asks readers to do their work and mail in whatever dirt they can find.

Since the Palin emails were only released for public consumption in boxes in Alaska, hungry news organizations flocked to the state to make the pickup, and presumably quickly escape back to the lower 48. And what have the denizens of the American press found on the republican they apparently fear the most?

They discovered the fact that Sarah Palin was a hard working and totally engaged state governor. They did find one smoking gun email that revealed that Governor Palin actually entertained thoughts of securing the republican nomination for Vice President months before the actual event occurred. Imagine the horror of it! She is a politician who actually had ambition to ascend to a higher office. When does that ever happen? I am afraid to tell my children of the depth of this scandal. How would they ever understand?

What would have been interesting, though, would have been to see the attack dog media act with a similar zeal to vet candidate Obama prior to his election in 2008. While they had serious concerns over the fact that Governor Palin had not yet served a whole term in office, they gave Mr Obama a pass on his 100 plus day career in the U.S. Senate, preceded by terms in the Illinois state senate. They seemed entirely uninterested in Mr Obama’s professed drug abuse.

One remembers the derisive references to President George W. Bush’s brush with alcoholism as a young man. Though Mr Bush had passed nearly 20 years without a drink, he was still suspect to the American media. The clear implication of all those hard hitting news stories was that an alcoholic is always an alcoholic and perhaps we shouldn’t be allowing a booze-hound access to the nuclear trigger. Did the press even react to the clear admissions that Mr Obama made concerning his actual use of illegal drugs? An extended yawn was all they could muster at Mr Obama’s admission, in a story by Katharine Q. Seelye in the New York Times on October 24, 2006, that “When I was a kid, I inhaled. That was the point.” Mr Obama’s derisive reference to former president Bill Clinton’s admission that he had smoked pot, but didn’t inhale resulted in a chorus of laughter from the adoring stenographers in the press.

It seems that a similar admission, in Mr Obama’s autobiography “Dreams of My Father,” that he had used marijuana and cocaine were also met with concerted disinterest by his fans in the media. They also failed to take any notice of his admission, in the same publication, that he did not ever try heroin, because “I didn’t like the pusher.” No reporter asked, “What if you had liked the pusher? Would you have used heroin then?” Not one reporter or commentator mentioned that perhaps having someone so comfortable with the use of illegal, highly addictive drugs might constitute a problem if he had his finger on the nuclear trigger.

The fact is that the American press could never tell the truth about Barack Obama, and still preside over his win in the presidential election. They knew they could never tell the American people the truth about his radical socialist associations, or his political goals to nationalize the health care industry, expand government unions, while systematically reducing American power and prestige in the world. Nor could they expose Mr Obama’s dangerous lack of understanding about how the free market capitalism has led to the highest level of affluence ever known on the planet. Had the American electorate known these facts about Mr Obama, he could not have won a race for alderman in Chicago.

One wonders what it will take for the derelict American press to acknowledge their mistake and recognize that every day the man spends in office is another day that America hurtles toward the abyss of economic destruction; it’s another day that the greatest engine of economic activity ever known sputters and approaches a stall; it’s another day closer to the political and economic ruin of our nation. It would take what it always would have taken: an honest press, dedicated to finding and reporting the truth to their customers, the American people (not the democrat party).

No, all it will just take to get the American media back to work reporting the facts and exposing the abuses of power to the American people is a republican in the Oval Office. If a republican finds his or her way to the Oval Office in the next election, the denizens of the press will again have work to do, if we still have an Oval Office after November 2012.

Unemployment in the White House

For the last few years, the denizens of the once-adversarial press have been on extended sabbatical with little to do but sing the praises of the current occupant of the White House. In the long political campaign that led to the 2008 presidential election, the American press did little to vet the aspiring Senator from Illinois. They ignored many of the questions that should have been asked of a man vying for leadership of the world’s most powerful economy (for now), and the most powerful military (also for now). They failed to ask many of the questions that are now being raised by the American people, many of whom feel they have been sold a bill of goods with Mr Obama. Indeed, Mr Obama’s birth certificate and his college transcripts seem to be the only information not yet available on Wiki Leaks.

In failing to report any “news” about Mr Obama, the American press has turned its back on competition for those prizes they value most: the back-slapping notoriety among their peers and prizes such as those issued by the Pulitzer Board for “excellence in Journalism.” For years the American press would figuratively crawl over broken glass to “get the story.” What they really sought was the product of winning the old prizes: the fawning acclamation of their peers, and some bargaining power at their next salary negotiation. But why would the watchdogs of democracy cease their quest for those prizes?

Members of the American press could not overlook the historic significance of the first viable African-American presidential candidate. Mr Obama fit their template for the correct candidate for them to support. He was a liberal; he “cared” for the working man; he was not a cowboy; his name was not Bush, and he was black. Well, he sort of fit the template. Their template did not include a man who is so completely ideological that he cannot conceive of changing his policies, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that his program is failing and is continuing to impede the economic recovery. The template does not go so far as to include a man whose role models include dedicated Marxists and violent terrorists, or does it? But he was in the ball park, he was not George Bush, and he was African-American.

In a year that has seen the imposition of the Obama Health Care monstrosity, coupled with a destroyed housing market and soaring unemployment (black unemployment continues to rise, from 16.3% in 2009 to 17.3% in 2010) and a new war in Libya, and the price of gasoline at the pump threatening to surpass $5.00 per gallon, what was the watchdog media to report? The Pulitzer Prizes are still being awarded, but alas, not for the vital reportage we need.

The 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism went to a writer at the Sarasota, Florida Herald-Tribune for a hard-hitting and timely investigation of property insurance in Florida. Runners up for the once-prestigious award were the New York Times for a dashing expose of medical radiation errors that led to some patient injuries and to the Chicago Tribune for a story on the deaths of 13 residents of a home for disabled children. Hmmm.

Those were all interesting and important subjects in their own communities. But one wonders in this year of rage in the Middle East and stagnation in the American economy if there might have been some other subjects the members of the adversary press might have addressed. We have a Senate that has not passed a budget for several years, and the press wants to know why republicans want to lower taxes on the rich. We have a president who has incurred more debt in his two years in office than all previous presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush combined, and the press reports breathlessly about the White House Easter Egg Hunt. We have a president who routinely turns his back on U.S. allies while apologizing and bowing to tyrants and dictators all over the world, and the watch dogs are sleeping.

And yet, there are grumblings from the somnolent American media. Some are noticing that something is terribly wrong with this occupant of the White House. DeWayne Wickham, a columnist for USA Today and founding member and former President of the National Association of Black Journalists has criticized Mr Obama for his lack of action on Black unemployment. Mr Wickham faults Mr Obama for failing to keep his campaign promise to reduce unemployment in the black community. See Mr Wickham’s column from USA Today at: http://dewaynewickham.blogspot.com/

The important question in Mr Wickham’s discourse, though, is not the resolution of black unemployment, though that is important, but whether the flood gates of honest reporting will be opened if a renowned black journalist leads the way by criticizing Mr Obama first. With that permission granted, will the derelict, negligent American media return to their typewriters and get to work? Or will they simply collect their unemployment checks and wait for the next republican administration to take office before resuming the chase for the prize?

Howie Carr Wisecrack

Howie Carr, Boston Herald columnist and Boston radio talk show host had an interesting remark concerning President Obama on a recent radio show.

Carr was discussing the Mainstream Media’s absolute lack of interest in reporting any stories critical to the historic president. Referring to Mr. Obama’s next book, Carr suggested that the title of it be, “Base on Balls, A Life of Intentional Passes.”

Obama's Economic Illiteracy

President Obama’s speech this week on the looming budget crisis correctly described the calamity we face as a nation as a result of the staggering, and rapidly increasing, national debt. Then, Mr Obama ruined any credibility he may have had by blaming everyone else in the room for the problem, despite the fact that he is personally responsible for doubling the nation debt in his own brief tenure in the White House.

Mr Obama then thoroughly trashed the serious and thoughtful plan presented by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) to reduce spending and the national debt, incorrectly accusing the republicans of abandoning the elderly, the poor and the children. While that is a pretty standard democrat response to any plan, on any subject, presented by any republican, it is demonstrably false. Mr Obama went on to outline his plan that would continue all entitlement programs forever, while magically saving four trillion dollars in the next 12 years.

The problem is that the dilema so accurately described by Mr Obama in his opening remarks is real, and will not go away by wishing it away. In this area, unlike other areas where Mr Obama has enjoyed success, a good speech will do nothing to ease the problem. What is required is action; and Mr Obama’s proposal is nothing more than to continue to accelerate towards the cliff. He is like a man returning to a burning building holding a gas can.

Mr Obama’s statement of the problem followed by his intention to simply go ahead on his current spending plan is nothing less than dereliction of duty. It is irresponsible, immature and verges on criminal negligence. Likewise, the Senate has refused to seriously consider reductions in spending that have to be made. It is not like there is an alternative; spending must be reduced. But, like Mr Obama, his allies in the congress have been accusing republican attempts at fiscal restraint as abandoning the elderly, the poor, and the children, none of whom could possibly survive without the largess of their fellow taxpayers.

Where can we go to find expenditures to eliminate and thus reduce spending? Everywhere! The Heritage Foundation has identified more than $300 billion dollars in savings that could be made today by eliminating or reducing the spending on a variety of programs from all over the federal leviathan. They have suggested saving $60 billion in unspent stimulus funds, $45 billion by devolving the Federal Highway Program to the states, $15 billion in farm subsidies, $8 billion by returning educational Pell Grants to 2009 levels, $6.5 billion in reduced energy subsidies, and $1.9 billion by privatizing Amtrak, and many others. A personal favorite of my own is a savings of $300 million by returning the House and Senate budgets to the 2009 level of only $2.2 billion!

All of these programs, and literally hundreds of others funded by the federal government would be fine, even noble expenditures for a government that enjoyed huge surpluses in federal revenue. If we actually had the money, we’d all like to fund Pell Grants and provide subsidies to farmers. But the government of the United States is broke. We don’t have the money. We are borrowing from the Chinese and printing money just to keep up with the level of federal spending.

If we do not have the money, what responsible individual actually advocates continuing to spend what we do not have on marginal or even silly programs like the $2 billion we spend on the Foreign Agriculture Service? Much of the federal budget is wasted on unnecessary and wasteful expenditures on programs that just don’t matter and just don’t deserve to receive tax money from taxpayers, living and yet unborn. Chasing these recipients from the federal trough will take leadership and courage to do what is right for the American people. Unfortunately, we must endure nearly two more years of this incompetent president, who is neither a leader nor courageous.

Where did I put that Birth Certificate?

The sweeping republican victories in the November, 2010 elections may result in President Barack Obama being declared ineligible for re-election in the 2012 general election.

The republicans won dramatic victories in the U.S. House of Representative, gaining 62 seats and re-claiming the majority in that chamber. They enjoyed some success in the U.S. Senate as well, narrowing the democrat majority in that chamber to 53-47. But nationwide republicans gained 700 seats in state legislatures. They took control of 19 previously-democrat controlled state legislatures and now control 55 of the nation’s 93 legislative chambers (some states having only one legislative chamber). Additionally, republican state governors now outnumber democrats 29-20 (with one independent).

This has troubling implications to democrat hopes for future elections as many congressional districts will undergo redistricting in the next few years as a result of population changes highlighted by the 2010 census. Redistricting will re-apportion congressional seats based on the current population figures, but it is the state legislatures that draw the new district lines. They usually draw those new district boundaries to favor the electoral chances of the party in power, which is now the republicans.

But in recent weeks, another implication of the national republican victory has emerged. Arizona, and at least four other states, are considering passing laws that will require future presidential candidates to prove that they are eligible to hold the office of the presidency before allowing their names on the ballot. This, of course, stems from the discussions relating to Barack Obama’s citizenship. Mr Obama claims to have been born in Hawaii, but has not produced evidence of that event, to date. Article II, section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that, “No person, except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible for the Office of the President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five Years; and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

Mr. Obama and his supporters have derisively referred to anyone who questions the authenticity of his citizenship as “Birthers,” with the clear implication that their sanity should be questioned due to their obviously poor judgement. But with republicans in charge of many state legislatures and governor’s offices, the chances are pretty good that Mr Obama will have to actually produce a long-form birth certificate to get his name on the ballot in several, perhaps many states for the 2012 presidential election.

All of this would be unnecessary, of course, if there was a vigorous, objective national press corps performing their constitutionally protected function; digging up facts and actually reporting news. If we were not possessed of a corrupt, derelict, lap dog media made up of hopeless sycophants breathlessly carrying Mr Obama’s water, some fearless “journalist” would have made his claim to the Pulitzer Prize and discovered the truth about Mr. Obama’s arrival in this life. Clearly, if he had nothing to hide, we'd have seen the proof by now. If Mr Obama was a republican, we would know every detail of his birth, and every unsavory moment of his life since.