SodaHead - Bill - Buffalo Soldier's Blog

How about some fun??

2009-06-03T00:59:35Z

+27 raves

A buddy of mine sent me this web site designed to make you crazy. http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/chatnoir/chatnoir.swf TRY TO ENCIRCLE THE CAT, WITHOUT LETTING IT GET OUT ! START BY CLICKING ON THE IMAGE THEN ON THE LIGHT GREEN DOTS TO TRY TO TRAP IT WITH DARK GREEN DOTS. NOT EASY, IT'S A SMART CAT. Warning: this will make you nuts!!!

Sotomayor: Criticize, then Confirm

2009-05-29T16:11:27Z

Bill - Buffalo Soldier

+14 raves

Sotomayor: Criticize, then Confirm by Charles Krauthammer WASHINGTON -- Sonia Sotomayor has a classic American story. So does Frank Ricci. Ricci is a New Haven firefighter stationed seven blocks from where Sotomayor went to law school (Yale). Raised in blue-collar Wallingford, Conn., Ricci struggled as a C and D student in public schools ill-prepared to address his serious learning disabilities. Nonetheless he persevered, becoming a junior firefighter and Connecticut's youngest certified EMT. After studying fire science at a community college, he became a New Haven "truckie," the guy who puts up ladders and breaks holes in burning buildings. When his department announced exams for promotions, he spent $1,000 on books, quit his second job so he could study eight to 13 hours a day, and, because of his dyslexia, hired someone to read him the material. He placed sixth on the lieutenant's exam, which qualified him for promotion. Except that the exams were thrown out by the city, and all promotions denied, because no blacks had scored high enough to be promoted. Ricci (with 19 others) sued. That's where these two American stories intersect. Sotomayor was a member of the three-member circuit court panel that upheld the dismissal of his case, thus denying Ricci his promotion. This summary ruling deeply disturbed fellow members of Sotomayor's court, including Judge Jose Cabranes (a fellow Clinton appointee) who, writing for five others, criticized the unusual, initially unpublished, single-paragraph dismissal for ignoring the serious constitutional issues at stake. Two things are sure to happen this summer: The Supreme Court will overturn Sotomayor's panel's ruling. And, barring some huge hidden scandal, Sotomayor will be elevated to that same Supreme Court. What should a principled conservative do? Use the upcoming hearings not to deny her the seat, but to illuminate her views. No magazine gossip from anonymous court clerks. No "temperament" insinuations. Nothing ad hominem. The argument should be elevated, respectful and entirely about judicial philosophy. On the Ricci case. And on her statements about the inherent differences between groups, and the superior wisdom she believes her Latina physiology, culture and background grant her over a white male judge. They perfectly reflect the Democrats' enthrallment with identity politics, which assigns free citizens to ethnic and racial groups possessing a hierarchy of wisdom and entitled to a hierarchy of claims upon society. Sotomayor shares President Obama's vision of empathy as lying at the heart of judicial decision-making -- sympathetic concern for litigants' background and current circumstances, and for how any judicial decision would affect their lives. Since the 2008 election, people have been asking what conservatism stands for. Well, if nothing else, it stands unequivocally against justice as empathy -- and unequivocally for the principle of blind justice. Empathy is a vital virtue to be exercised in private life -- through charity, respect and lovingkindness -- and in the legislative life of a society where the consequences of any law matter greatly, which is why income taxes are progressive and safety nets built for the poor and disadvantaged. But all that stops at the courthouse door. Figuratively and literally, justice wears a blindfold. It cannot be a respecter of persons. Everyone must stand equally before the law, black or white, rich or poor, advantaged or not. Obama and Sotomayor draw on the "richness of her experiences" and concern for judicial results to favor one American story, one disadvantaged background, over another. The refutation lies in the very oath Sotomayor must take when she ascends to the Supreme Court: "I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich. ... So help me God." When the hearings begin, Republicans should call Frank Ricci as their first witness. Democrats want justice rooted in empathy? Let Ricci tell his story and let the American people judge whether his promotion should have been denied because of his skin color in a procedure Sotomayor joined in calling "facially race-neutral." Make the case for individual vs. group rights, for justice vs. empathy. Then vote to confirm Sotomayor solely on the grounds -- consistently violated by the Democrats, including Sen. Obama -- that a president is entitled to deference on his Supreme Court nominees, particularly one who so thoroughly reflects the mainstream views of the winning party. Elections have consequences. Vote Democratic and you get mainstream liberalism: A judicially mandated racial spoils system and a jurisprudence of empathy that hinges on which litigant is less "advantaged." A teaching moment, as liberals like to say. Clarifying and politically potent. Seize it. About The Author -------------------------------------------------------------... Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.

Sotomayor: "Empathy" in Action

2009-05-28T23:22:28Z

Bill - Buffalo Soldier

+7 raves

Sotomayor: "Empathy" in Action by Thomas Sowell It is one of the signs of our times that so many in the media are focusing on the life story of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States. You might think that this was some kind of popularity contest, instead of a weighty decision about someone whose impact on the fundamental law of the nation will extend for decades after Barack Obama has come and gone. Much is being made of the fact that Sonia Sotomayor had to struggle to rise in the world. But stop and think. If you were going to have open heart surgery, would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to get where he is or by the best surgeon you could find-- even if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had every advantage that money and social position could offer? If it were you who was going to be lying on that operating table with his heart cut open, you wouldn't give a tinker's damn about somebody's struggle or somebody else's privileges. The Supreme Court of the United States is in effect operating on the heart of our nation-- the Constitution and the statutes and government policies that all of us must live under. Barack Obama's repeated claim that a Supreme Court justice should have "empathy" with various groups has raised red flags that we ignore at our peril-- and at the peril of our children and grandchildren. "Empathy" for particular groups can be reconciled with "equal justice under law"-- the motto over the entrance to the Supreme Court-- only with smooth words. But not in reality. President Obama used those smooth words in introducing Judge Sotomayor but words do not change realities. Nothing demonstrates the fatal dangers from judicial "empathy" more than Judge Sotomayor's decision in a 2008 case involving firemen who took an exam for promotion. After the racial mix of those who passed that test turned out to be predominantly white, with only a few blacks and Hispanics, the results were thrown out. When this action by the local civil service authorities was taken to court and eventually reached the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Sotomayor did not give the case even the courtesy of a spelling out of the issues. She backed those who threw out the test results. Apparently she didn't have "empathy" with those predominantly white males who had been cheated out of promotions they had earned. Fellow 2nd Circuit Court judge Jose Cabranes commented on the short shrift given to the serious issues in this case. It so happens that he too is Hispanic, but apparently he does not decide legal issues on the basis of "empathy" or lack thereof. This was not an isolated matter for Judge Sotomayor. Speaking at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001, she said that the ethnicity and sex of a judge "may and will make a difference in our judging." Moreover, this was not something she lamented. On the contrary, she added, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." No doubt the political spinmasters will try to spin this to mean something innocent. But the cold fact is that this is a poisonous doctrine for any judge, much less a justice of the Supreme Court. That kind of empathy would for all practical purposes repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees "equal protection of the laws" to all Americans. What would the political spinmasters say if some white man said that a white male would more often reach a better conclusion than a Hispanic female? For those who believe in the rule of law, Barack Obama used the words "rule of law" in introducing his nominee. For those who take his words as gospel, even when his own actions are directly the opposite of his words, that may be enough to let him put this dangerous woman on the Supreme Court. Even if her confirmation cannot be stopped, it is important for Senators to warn of the dangers, which will only get worse if such nominations sail through the Senate smoothly. About The Author -------------------------------------------------------------... Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.

Race Talk

2009-05-13T12:46:45Z

Bill - Buffalo Soldier

+15 raves

Race Talk by Walter E. Williams What to call black people has to be confusing to white people. Having been around for 73 years, I have been through a number of names. Among the polite ones are: colored, Negro, Afro-American, black, and now African-American. Among those names, African-American is probably the most unintelligent. You say, "What do you mean, Williams?" Suppose I told you that I had a European-American friend or a South-America-American friend, or a North-America-American friend. You'd probably say, "Williams, that's stupid. Europe, South America and North America are continents consisting of many peoples." You might insist that I call my friend from Germany a German-American instead of European-American and my friend from Brazil a Brazilian-American rather than a South-America-American and my friend from Canada a Canadian-American instead of a North-American. So would not the same apply to people whose heritage lies on the African continent? For example, instead of claiming that President Barack Obama is the first African-American president, it should be that he's the first Kenyan-American president. In that sense, Obama is lucky. Unlike most American blacks, he knows his national heritage; the closest to a national heritage the rest of us can identify is some country along Africa's gold coast. Another problem with the African-American label is not all people of African ancestry are dark. Whites are roughly 10 percent of Africa's population and include not only European settlers but Arabs and Berbers as well. So is an Afrikaner who becomes a U.S. citizen a part of United States' African-American population? Should census takers and affirmative action/diversity bean counters count Arabs, Berbers and Afrikaners who are U.S. citizens as African-Americans and should they be eligible for racial quotas in college admittance and employment? Are black Americans a minority group? When one uses the term minority, there is an inference that somewhere out there is a majority but in the United States we are a nation of minorities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2000 census, where people self-identify, the ancestry of our largest ethnic groups are people of German ancestry (15.2 percent), followed by Irish (10.8 percent), African (8.8), and English (8.7) ancestry. Of the 92 ethnic groups listed, in the census, 75 of them are less than 1 percent of our population. Race talk often portrays black Americans as downtrodden and deserving of white people's help and sympathy. That vision is an insult of major proportions. As a group, black Americans have made some of the greatest gains, over the highest hurdles, in the shortest span of time than any other racial group in mankind's history. This unprecedented progress can be seen through several measures. If one were to total black earnings, and consider black Americans a separate nation, he would find that in 2005 black Americans earned $644 billion, making them the world's 16th richest nation -- that is just behind Australia but ahead of Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. Black Americans are, and have been, chief executives of some of the world's largest and richest cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. It was a black American, Gen. Colin Powell, appointed Joint Chief of Staff in October 1989, who headed the world's mightiest military and later became U.S. Secretary of State, and was succeeded by Condoleezza Rice, another black American. Black Americans are among the world's most famous personalities and a few are among the richest. Most blacks are not poor but middle class. On the eve of the Civil War, neither a slave nor a slave owner would have believed these gains possible in less than a mere century and a half, if ever. That progress speaks well not only of the sacrifices and intestinal fortitude of a people; it also speaks well of a nation in which these gains were possible. These gains would not have been possible anywhere else. About The Author -------------------------------------------------------------... Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.

Talking Points

2009-05-12T12:48:46Z

Bill - Buffalo Soldier

+9 raves

Talking Points by Thomas Sowell One of the many signs of the degeneration of our times is how many serious, even life-and-death, issues are approached as talking points in a game of verbal fencing. Nothing illustrates this more than the fatuous, and even childish, controversy about "torturing" captured terrorists. People's actions often make far more sense than their words. Most of the people who are talking lofty talk about how we mustn't descend to the level of our enemies would themselves behave very differently if presented with a comparable situation, instead of being presented with an opportunity to be morally one up with rhetoric. What if it was your mother or your child who was tied up somewhere beside a ticking time bomb and you had captured a terrorist who knew where that was? Face it: What you would do to that terrorist to make him talk would make water-boarding look like a picnic. You wouldn't care what the New York Times would say or what "world opinion" in the U.N. would say. You would save your loved one's life and tell those other people what they could do. But if the United States behaves that way it is called "arrogance"-- even by American citizens. Indeed, even by the American president. There is a big difference between being ponderous and being serious. It is scary when the President of the United States is not being serious about matters of life and death, saying that there are "other ways" of getting information from terrorists. Maybe this is a step up from the previous talking point that "torture" had not gotten any important information out of terrorists. Only after this had been shown to be a flat-out lie did Barack Obama shift his rhetoric to the lame assertion that unspecified "other ways" could have been used. For a man whose whole life has been based on style rather than substance, on rhetoric rather than reality, perhaps nothing better could have been expected. But that the media and the public would have become so mesmerized by the Obama cult that they could not see through this to think of their own survival, or that of this nation, is truly a chilling thought. When we look back at history, it is amazing what foolish and even childish things people said and did on the eve of a catastrophe about to consume them. In 1938, with Hitler preparing to unleash a war in which tens of millions of men, women and children would be slaughtered, the play that was the biggest hit on the Paris stage was a play about French and German reconciliation, and a French pacifist that year dedicated his book to Adolf Hitler. When historians of the future look back on our era, what will they think of our time? Our media too squeamish to call murderous and sadistic terrorists anything worse than "militants" or "insurgents"? Our president going abroad to denigrate the country that elected him, pandering to feckless allies and outright enemies, and literally bowing to a foreign tyrant ruling a country from which most of the 9/11 terrorists came? It is easy to make talking points about how Churchill did not torture German prisoners, even while London was being bombed. There was a very good reason for that: They were ordinary prisoners of war who were covered by the Geneva Convention and who didn't know anything that would keep London from being bombed. Whatever the verbal fencing over the meaning of the word "torture," there is a fundamental difference between simply inflicting pain on innocent people for the sheer pleasure of it-- which is what our terrorist enemies do-- and getting life-saving information out of the terrorists by whatever means are necessary. The left has long confused physical parallels with moral parallels. But when a criminal shoots at a policeman and the policeman shoots back, physical equivalence is not moral equivalence. And what American intelligence agents have done to captured terrorists is not even physical equivalence. If we have reached the point where we cannot be bothered to think beyond rhetoric or to make moral distinctions, then we have reached the point where our own survival in an increasingly dangerous world of nuclear proliferation can no longer be taken for granted. About The Author -------------------------------------------------------------... Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.

Compassionate Liberalism

2009-04-23T19:31:18Z

Bill - Buffalo Soldier

+8 raves

Compassionate Liberalism by George Will WASHINGTON -- Monday morning the government braced for austerity, as the government understands that. Having sent Congress a $3.5 trillion budget, the president signaled in advance -- perhaps so his Cabinet members could steel themselves for the new asceticism -- that at the first meeting of his Cabinet he would direct the 15 heads of departments to find economies totaling $100 million, which is about 13 minutes of federal spending, and 0.0029 percent -- about a quarter of one-hundredth of 1 percent -- of $3.5 trillion. If the Department of Agriculture sliced the entire $100 million, that would be equal to 0.1 percent of its fiscal 2008 budget. The president, peering from beneath his green eyeshade at the secretary of agriculture, might remember this from The Washington Post of Jan. 24: "Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack ... learned that his new workplace contains a post office, fitness centers, cafeterias and 6,900 employees. But he remained uncertain about exactly how many employees he supervises nationwide. 'I asked how many employees work at USDA, and nobody really knows,' he said." The president's $100 million edict actually suggests an insufficiency in the river of federal assistance flowing out of Washington to the deserving poor, as that category is currently understood: incompetent car companies, reckless insurance companies, mismanaged banks, profligate state governments, etc. But political satirists, too, deserve a bailout from a federal government that has turned their material into public policy. The president has set an example for his Cabinet. He has ladled a trillion or so dollars ("or so" is today's shorthand for "give or take a few hundreds of billions") hither and yon, but while ladling he has, or thinks he has, saved about $15 million by killing, or trying to kill, a tiny program that this year is enabling about 1,715 District of Columbia children (90 percent black, 9 percent Hispanic) to escape from the District's failing public schools and enroll in private schools. The District's mayor and school superintendent support the program. But the president has vowed to kill programs that "don't work." He has looked high and low and -- lo and behold -- has found one. By uncanny coincidence, it is detested by the teachers unions that gave approximately four times $15 million to Democratic candidates and liberal causes last year. Not content with seeing the program set to die after the 2009-10 school year, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (former head of Chicago's school system, which never enrolled an Obama child) gratuitously dashed even the limited hopes of another 200 children and their parents. Duncan, who has sensibly chosen to live with his wife and two children in Virginia rather than the District, rescinded the scholarships already awarded to those children for the final year of the program, beginning in September. He was, you understand, thinking only of the children and their parents: He would spare them the turmoil of being forced by, well, Duncan and other Democrats to return to terrible public schools after a tantalizing one-year taste of something better. Call that compassionate liberalism. After Congress debated the program, the Department of Education released -- on a Friday afternoon, a news cemetery -- a congressionally mandated study showing that, measured by student improvement and parental satisfaction, the District's program works. The department could not suppress the Heritage Foundation's report that 38 percent of members of Congress sent or are sending their children to private schools. The Senate voted 58-39 to kill the program. Heritage reports that if the senators who have exercised their ability to choose private schools had voted to continue the program that allows less-privileged parents to make that choice for their children, the program would have been preserved. As the president and his party's legislators are forcing minority children back into public schools, the doors of which would never be darkened by the president's or legislators' children, remember this: We have seen a version of this shabby act before. One reason conservatism came to power in the 1980s was that in the 1970s liberals advertised their hypocrisy by supporting forced busing of other people's children to schools the liberals' children did not attend. This issue will be back. In a few months, the appropriation bill for the District will come to the floor of the House of Representatives, at which point there will be a furious fight for the children's interests. Then we will learn whether the president and his congressional allies are capable of embarrassment. On the evidence so far, they are not. About The Author -------------------------------------------------------------... George F. Will is a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner whose columns are syndicated in more than 400 magazines and newspapers worldwide

The Top Ten Reasons Conservatism is Dead as Disco!

2009-04-21T22:48:12Z

Bill - Buffalo Soldier

+20 raves

The Top Ten Reasons Conservatism is Dead as Disco! by John Hawkins First of all, I know this column isn't going to be popular with all the mouth breathing, troglodytic, primitive dittoheads out there. But, facts are facts: conservatives are NEVER, EVER, EVER going to get back into power again. The mainstream media says so, legendary conservative icons like David Frum, Meghan McCain, and David Brooks say so -- and, yes, Democrats in Congress who we should remember soundly beat us in November, say so. So, I think it's time to point out what even completely unbiased political luminaries like Chuck Schumer and Keith Olbermann have been saying since Barack Obama was elected: conservatism is done, over with, as finished as warm days in the middle of December! 1) Sure, America's political history has been one long churning political cycle with both party's fortunes going up and down, but that's not going to happen this time! This time, the Republicans aren't going to learn anything from losing, conservatives aren't going to be inspired to take action by being out of power, and the Democrats aren't going to get even more complacent and corrupt as they enjoy the rewards of being in power. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid are just too smart, too sharp, and too doggone perfect to allow that to happen! 2) Conservatives are fighting with each other too much to ever get organized again. That certainly never happened when liberals were out of power...well, except when the environmentalists fought with the unions over ANWR. Oh, then there was Joe Lieberman vs. the netroots. We also can't forget the gay lobby vs. black Democrats over gay marriage. Kos vs. New Republic, too. Plus, The Democratic Leadership Council vs. the Left. We also shouldn't forget about the Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton brawl and dozens and dozens of other minor fights, feuds, and brouhahas. But certainly, all those fights are nothing like the fights on the Right! 3) The biggest disadvantage Republicans have is all those darn Christian conservatives. As everybody knows, Christianity is passe in America. It's as old hat as conservatism and capitalism now. Don't bother to close the barn door, Mary, because Jesus and the donkey he's riding on are long gone and this is now post-Christian America. So, until Republicans smarten up and stop trying to represent the views of the 76% of Americans who still consider themselves Christian, they're just wasting their time! 4) As many people have pointed out, you can't win with conservative values in America any more. Republicans have just got to accept that and follow in the shoes of the Democrats -- who completely re-did their agenda by rolling out a plan that combines the long discredited elements of FDR's agenda that kept us mired in the Depression and the parts of Mussolini's agenda that served as an example to fascists worldwide. Republicans may as well abandon all hope if they think they can go toe-to-toe with that combination without completely abandoning everything they've stood for since Reagan was first elected and start over from scratch. 5) Notice how popular Barack Obama is today? He's on the cover of every magazine, the press loves him, and everybody at all the best Washington cocktail parties agree that it will be that way forever. Besides, Presidents never get less popular over time, do they? George Bush had a popularity in the thirties for his entire presidency -- didn't he? Wow, wonder how he ever got re-elected? How did that happen? My memory is a little foggy on that one. 6) The percentage of minorities in the American population is rising and as we all know, party affiliation is genetically programmed into people at birth. Certainly black Americans, who used to vote overwhelmingly for the Republican Party before they began voting overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, can never vote for Republicans again. And Hispanics? Jews? They're ALWAYS going to vote Democratic in increasingly larger blocks, no matter how much their interests tilt towards the GOP! 7) Everybody knows that the GOP has practically been "wiped out" in much of the Northern United States. Why, they've lost seat after seat that they'll never win again! Granted, some people might think that when the political winds shift again, that moderate Republicans could run and win in many of those same districts -- just as the Democratic Party won in moderate Republican districts in 2006 and 2008, but every liberal I know agrees that just won't be possible for some very legitimate reason that isn't quite coming to mind right now! 8) The advantage that liberals have with the mainstream media is just insurmountable! They own the cable news (well, except for the one people watch, Fox), they own the newspapers (which seem to be rapidly going out of business) and they own the blogosphere (granted, the liberal blogs are all shrinking now while the conservative blogs seem to be getting bigger). Anyway, as we all know, it's impossible to overcome the mainstream media given how much the public trusts them. That's why that crazypants actor Ron Reagan lost to Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush lost to Michael Dukakis, and George W. Bush lost twice to Al Gore AND John Kerry! Wait a second...oh, yeah. So, ah, how's that Fairness Doctrine coming along? 9) Certainly America's enemies wouldn't be so rude as to take advantage of Barack Obama. After Barack Obama decided to close Gitmo and started weakening our security, Al-Qaeda must be too grateful to attack. Iran wouldn't go ahead and build nukes on Obama's watch after he risked so much to reach out to them, right? Then there's Castro and Chavez -- they won't make Obama look like a fool at this point, after he risked so much to reach out to them. And Europe, well, they're not cooperating with Obama now, but they love the big guy! That has to pay off at some point. Doesn't it? 10) Barack Obama's policies, which consist primarily of expanding government and government spending faster than any politician in history, are sure to remain popular long-term -- well, as long as we never have to pay for anything -- right? Our good friends, like the Chinese, Russians, and Saudis, will be delighted to keep footing our bill forevermore without expecting us to pay it back. That's what friends do, right? If not, the rich would certainly never change their behavior in any way to avoid paying an ever-increasing percentage of their income in taxes -- would they?

Thou Shall Not Question Barack Obama

2009-04-19T20:20:19Z

Bill - Buffalo Soldier

+20 raves

Thou Shall Not Question Barack Obama by Austin Hill Perhaps they just don’t want to think through the details. Then again - - maybe some of them don’t have the capacity to think through the details. I’m referring to the apparent plethora of partisan, passionate, “see-no-evil” Obama minions, who become outraged should any of the rest of us ask questions about the forty-fourth President. I continually encounter the minions both as callers on talk radio, and as mailers responding to my various editorial columns. Whereas last year during the election cycle when I would dare to ask questions of the dear leader Obama, the minions’ first line of attack would be to call me a “racist” (or as one talk show caller put it to me last October, “you just can’t handle the idea of being under the authority of a black man, Austin”), today the line of attack is different. And while each talk show call and each email message are unique, the minions nonetheless typically follow a predictable pattern. These days, the minions’ first line of attack on those of us who dare to ask questions about the dear leader seems to be to change the subject back to President George W. Bush. I heard plenty of this in March when I was back at my Washington, D.C. radio home, 630 WMAL, during the fiasco with the AIG Corporation and their executives. When I posed the question “why did President Obama hand-over $30 billion of our tax dollars to AIG in the first place?,” the responses frequently followed this pattern. “This whole bailout mess got started with Bush” one caller stated to me (this is true, of course - - but it didn’t answer the question about Obama’s bailout behavior). “Obama wouldn’t have to bailout AIG had Bush not destroyed it,” and “if you think things are bad now, let’s go back and review the previous eight years” were some of the other subject-changing comments I got on talk radio. And after authoring a column entitled “Is Obama The Moral Alternative to Capitalism?” wherein I detailed the President’s propensity to control private corporations, and determine who their CEO’s and board members will be, one simple-minded minion emailed “I suppose you think things would be better if Bush and his cronies were in charge…” After attempting to change the subject, and get the focus of the conversation OFF of dear leader Obama, the second line of attack from the minions seems to be to demonize the talk show host, and talk radio generally. I got an earful of this during a recent show I hosted at Phoenix, Arizona’s NewsTalk 92-3 KTAR. Noting President Obama’s plans to set earnings limits on corporate executives, I posed the question, “should President Obama determine how much money you’re allowed to earn?” “You all can’t do anything but hate on this guy” a caller said in response. “All you talk radio guys know how to do is trash Obama” another caller said. Oh really? I was “hating on” the dear leader, and “trashing” him? I pressed further with one caller, saying “seriously…should President Obama set the limit on how much money you’re allowed to make at your job - - just to make certain that you don’t make ‘too much’?” “He’s not proposing to limit my pay, you idiot” the minion replied. “He’s only limiting the salaries of corporate CEO’s, which he should be doing.” “So, are you saying that some of your fellow Americans deserve less freedom that you do?” I asked. “You should be free to make as much money as you can, but your fellow American should not - - is that your point?” “That’s not what I’m saying, you idiot!” the angry minion replied. Of course, that was precisely what the angry minion was saying. The third line of attack from the minions seems to be a simple “how dare you?” response. I encountered this after the publication of a column in my local hometown newspaper. After stating the obvious about President Obama’s economic plan - - that his plan has essentially nothing to do with growing the private sector economy, and everything to do with creating more government control over private individuals and businesses - - I had people, literally, stopping me around town to ask “how dare you?” - - or something similar. While attending a school function with my ten year old son, another Dad confronted me and asked, “how could you say such a terrible thing about the President of the United States?” “I supported my claims in the column” I told the Dad. “It’s all right there in the text.” “But how could you say such a thing about the President?” he asked. “What part of my analysis was inaccurate?” I replied. “But this meltdown isn’t Obama’s fault” he stated. “So what‘s your point? What part of my analysis was inaccurate?” “But he’s trying to do the right thing, Austin…….” I hope you remain willing to ask questions. But be prepared for the attacks - - and by all means, don’t expect any rational answers. About The Author -------------------------------------------------------------... Austin Hill is a Talk Show Host At Washington, DC's 630 WMAL Radio, and a frequent Guest Host on the Fox Newstalk Radio Network. He is the author of "White House Confidential: The Little Book Of Weird Presidential History."

Racing Past the Constitution

2009-04-12T17:40:04Z

Bill - Buffalo Soldier

+13 raves

Racing Past the Constitution by George Will WASHINGTON -- Rampant redistribution of wealth by government is now the norm. So is this: It inflames government's natural rapaciousness and subverts the rule of law. This degeneration of governance is illustrated by the Illinois Legislature's transfer of income from some disfavored riverboat casinos to racetracks. Illinois has nine licensed riverboat casinos and five horse-racing tracks. In 2006, supposedly to "address the negative impact that riverboat gaming has had" on Illinois horse racing, the Legislature -- racing interests made huge contributions to Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- mandated a transfer of 3 percent of the gross receipts of the four most profitable casinos, those in the Chicago area, to the state's horse-racing tracks. This levy, subsequently extended to run until 2011, will confiscate substantially more than $100 million. What is to prevent legislators from taking revenues from Wal-Mart and giving them to local retailers? Or from chain drugstores to local pharmacies? Not the tattered remnant of the Constitution's takings clause. The Fifth Amendment says private property shall not "be taken for public use without just compensation" (emphasis added). Fifty state constitutions also stipulate taking only for public uses. But the Illinois Supreme Court ignored the public use question. Instead, the court said it is "well settled" that the takings clause applies only to government's exercise of its eminent domain power regarding land, buildings and other tangible or intellectual property -- but not money. Conflicting rulings by state courts demonstrate that that question is chaotically unsettled. That is one reason the U.S. Supreme Court should take the Illinois case and reject the preposterous idea that money is not property within the scope of the takings clause -- an idea that licenses legislative confiscations. Another and related reason why the court should take the case is to reconsider its 2005 ruling that rendered the "public purpose" requirement empty. The careful crafters of the Bill of Rights intended the adjective "public" to restrict government takings to uses directly owned by government or primarily serving the general public, such as roads, bridges or public buildings. In 1954, in a case arising from a disease-ridden section of Washington, D.C., the court broadened the "public use" criterion. It declared constitutional takings for the purpose of combating "blight" that is harmful to the larger community. In 2005, however, in a 5-4 decision, the court radically attenuated the "public use" restriction on takings, saying that promoting "economic development" is a sufficient public use. The court upheld the New London, Conn., city government's decision to seize an unblighted middle-class neighborhood for the purpose of turning the land over to private businesses which, being wealthier than the previous owners, would be a richer source of tax revenues. So now government takings need have only some anticipated public benefit, however indirect and derivative, at the end of some chain of causation hypothesized by the government doing the taking and benefiting from it. In a brief opposing the Illinois Legislature, the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of state legislators, makes this argument against "predatory taxation": Suppose Congress, eager to aid newspapers hurt by competition from new information technologies, decides to take a percentage of the assets of Bill Gates and half a dozen other beneficiaries of those technologies, and give the money to newspapers. Would not this "take and transfer" scheme be unconstitutional? Targeting specific, identifiable persons or entities for unfavorable treatment, and transferring their assets to equally identifiable persons or entities, surely also raises equal protection issues. Unquestionably a legislature can impose a levy on casinos if the revenues become subject to what the state legislators' brief calls "allocation via the familiar push and pull of political decision-making." But Illinois' confiscation of riverboat revenues is a private-pockets-to-private-pockets transfer, without even laundering the money through the state treasury. The Supreme Court has held that "one person's property may not be taken for the benefit of another private person without a justifying public purpose." But in the aftermath of the court's ruling in the New London case, the Illinois Legislature merely seeks judicial deference toward its judgment that transferring wealth from casinos to racetracks serves the public purpose of benefiting "farmers, breeders, and fans of horse racing." The court's virtual nullification of the "public use" requirement encourages lawlessness, which will proliferate until the court enunciates the constitutional principle that the takings clause protects money, like other forms of property, against egregious seizures. Enunciating such a principle would be a step toward restoring meaning to the "public purpose" clause. About The Author -------------------------------------------------------------... George F. Will is a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner whose columns are syndicated in more than 400 magazines and newspapers worldwide.

Government Deception

2009-04-08T16:47:07Z

Bill - Buffalo Soldier

+24 raves

I have posted this article in three places - for those who are getting repeats I apologize but I thought it was so doggone good I did not want to miss any thinking person. Government Deception by Walter E. Williams Most Americans accept the continuing attack on tobacco companies and smokers, but how do they feel about the massive government deception? In 1998, 46 state attorneys general and major tobacco companies signed the Master Settlement Agreement. The major tobacco companies agreed, among other things, to give states $240 billion over 25 years to provide for smoking cessation programs and cover the health costs associated with using their product. In return state attorneys general promised tobacco companies that they wouldn't sue them and would use their lawmaking power to protect the major tobacco companies from competition from small tobacco companies. Of the $80 billion extorted so far, states have spent about 30 percent on health, not all tobacco-related, and less than 6 percent on smoking cessation programs. Instead, state legislatures spent the bulk of their tobacco money for items such as museum building, tax relief, rainy-day funds and other expenditures having nothing to do with tobacco or health. The U.S. Congress' deception was, and continues to be, a major player in our financial meltdown. In congressional hearings, before the meltdown, on the soundness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Rep. Maxine Waters said, "Through nearly a dozen hearings, we were frankly trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Franklin Raines." Rep. Barney Frank, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, said, "These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." Other congressmen gave similar assurances. Unfortunately for our nation, the forces pushing for "affordable" housing won the day and saddled us with today's unprecedented financial disaster. How stupid is it of us to ask those who brought us "affordable" housing to now turn their attention to bringing us "affordable" health care? Congressional deception about government finances means today's children will face a financial disaster that will make today's mess seem like a walk in the park. What's called the public debt stands at $11 trillion and growing. That pales in comparison to the federal government's unfunded liability -- obligations that are not covered by an asset of equal or greater value. Mike Whalen, former policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, commenting on last year's Social Security Trustees annual report on the state of the Social Security and Medicare programs, said, "The report on the state of entitlement programs is rather grim -- the combined unfunded liabilities of both programs are $101 trillion." What that means is that in order for government to make good on its promises, Congress would have to put aside tens of trillions of dollars in the bank today. Keep in mind that our GDP is only $14 trillion. In the absence of massive tax increases or cuts in benefits, in order to meet its promises Congress must cease spending on one in four programs by 2020, such as education and highway construction, and one in two by 2030, and by 2050 or so all federal revenue will be spent supporting Social Security, Medicare and prescription drug benefits. Such a scenario is unsustainable. There will be economic and political chaos. Today's politicians are not likely to take measures to avoid the coming chaos because senior citizens, the major beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare, vote in large numbers and will exact a high political price. Plus, neither today's senior citizens nor today's politicians will be alive in 2050. I'd be more optimistic if my fellow Americans were simply suffering from congressional deception as opposed to their not caring about the economic calamity that awaits tomorrow's Americans. I'd be even more optimistic if today's seniors started putting heat on Congress to allow those Americans who want nothing to do with Social Security to opt out. About The Author -------------------------------------------------------------... Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.