Latest Culture War Skirmish -- Stomping on Jesus at Florida Atlantic University

The skirmish of the week in the ongoing culture war between those who would preserve and those who would weaken traditional Judeo-Christian cultural values broke out at Florida Atlantic University.  Often the dust-up involves a cowardly teacher asserting his power position over powerless students just trying to get a grade and not cause trouble.  In covering this story (link), Dennis Prager calls the modern indoctrination-prone university "left-wing seminaries", referring to the quasi-religious nature of the modern leftist/ultra-liberal movement.

At this particular school there is a teacher, one Deandre Poole, who also happens to be an official with the local Democrat party.  This fellow happens to be black, so undoubtedly he's familiar with the current cultural ethos on sensitivity and diversity.  However, apparently he doesn't feel cultural sensitivity should extend to Christians.


Florida Atlantic Univ Teacher Deandre Poole

Poole ran a classroom exercise in his Intercultural Communications class which involved students being asked to write "Jesus" on a piece of paper, then to place it on the floor and stomp on it.  All no doubt in furtherance of some important purpose in this guy's head.  One student refused to participate and supposedly told the teacher that the exercise was inappropriate and that he should stop it.  Apparently stomping on Mohammad was not part of that day's exercise -- the teacher must have been saving that for another time.

This story followed the usual trajectory in skirmishes like this.  Step One -- defiance.  First, the University defended the teacher and the exercise on the grounds of some gobbledygook about it fulfilling the purpose of education, [speak now like Yul Brenner] etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  The school also denied that it was taking any disciplinary action against the student, but this turned out to be a lie, because at the same time a Florida Atlantic beaurocrat, one Rozalia Williams, informed the student in writing of pending disciplinary action (link), ostensibly for his non-cooperation but more likely because he went public with the whole affair.

However, according to a letter written by Associate Dean Rozalia Williams, [student] Rotela is facing a litany of charges – including an alleged violation of the student code of conduct, acts of verbal, written or physical abuse, threats, intimidation, harassment, coercion or other conduct which threaten the health, safety or welfare of any person.”  “In the interim, you may not attend class or contact any of the students involved in this matter – verbally or electronically – or by any other means,” Williams wrote to Rotela. “Please be advised that a Student Affairs hold may be placed on your records until final disposition of the complaint.”

Florida Atllantic Univ Dean Rozalia Williams

The administrators at Florida Atlantic don't seem to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.  They send the student a hostile disciplinary letter yet deny it to the press.  They're mendacious and stupid -- with university leaders like this our children are in the best of hands.

Interesting is the role a teacher from a Catholic University played in this (link), although the anti-Christian values espoused by some at supposedly Catholic institutions are getting more commonplace these days (witness Notre Dame's honoring (link) of Barack Obama, a prominent defender of partial birth abortion and infanticide (link)):

[Florida Atlantic] Communications department director Noemi Marin had earlier defended the assignment, saying, "while at times the topics discussed may be sensitive, a university environment is a venue for such dialogue and debate."The exercise came from an instructor's manual written by St. Norbert College communications professor Jim Neuliep. The assignment was part of a chapter about dealing with the power of certain words."This exercise is a bit sensitive, but really drives home the point that even though symbols are arbitrary, they take on very strong and emotional meanings," the exercise states. "Most will hesitate. Ask why they can't step on the paper. Discuss the importance of symbols in culture."

FSU Assoc Professor Noemi Marin

"The exercise is a bit sensitive", says professor Marin.  Ya think?  Wait till they get around to stomping on Muhammad or Martin Luther King.  That, of course, will never happen, since the point of the leftist exercise is to weaken Christianity, the perceived religion of those in power -- white males -- as viewed through the prism of race/gender/class.

Step Two -- the reaction, which was swift and widespread.  Too busy waging their cultural war by bullying their students, the brain trust at this University apparently is unaware of the power of the internet.

Step Three -- the apology and retreat.  It's very important to remember that the first response of the University was to defend the teacher and punish the student.  Initially, the school issued a weak pseudo-apology if anyone "took offense", but now after the Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott asked for an investigation (link) of the incident the school is in full tactical retreat (link):

On behalf of all of us here at FAU, we are deeply sorry for any hurt that this incident might have caused our students, people in the community and beyond,” says Charles Brown, senior vice president for student affairs, in the recording. “As an institution of higher education, we embrace academic freedom. But with that comes a level of responsibility which we did not uphold.” Brown went on to promise and swear that FAU faculty will never use the exercise again. He then swore that the school would take no disciplinary action against any student concerning the incident.

The school's retreat is surely just tactical, and it will regroup to repress another day.  The forces of liberty, light, and tolerance must forever stay vigilant.

John M Greco

Government Run Medical Care -- Dispatches from the UK

From the UK (link), the home to a government-run medical care system gushed over by Obama acolytes such as one of his big-name heath care experts, the controversial Dr Donald Berwick:

This morning, the British government released a major report outlining 290 recommendations for the country’s health-care system, the National Health Service. The move came in response to widespread disgust over the failures of Britain’s nationalized system, epitomized by the Stafford Hospital scandal, in which between 400 and 1,200 preventable deaths occurred from 2005 to 2008 at one hospital.

Hmm.  290 recommendations?  That's quite a big number.  As long as they got into that neighborhood, why not a nice round number, like 300, or something catchy, like 299?  They got to 290, and with all their problems couldn't come up with 10 more?  Then again, why not 289?  Did they stretch the count to have a number rounded to the nearest 10?

I doubt very much that Berwick and the left like the UK system because it results in better outcomes, because I very much doubt it does, accurately and honestly measured and reported.  The intellectual vanguard of the left likes it because it is a system controlled by self-appointed experts like themselves.  It's  all about undemocratic control by experts (see Liberalism as Bossism, & the Obamacare Medical Care Rationing Board).

Government-run medical care -- what could possibly go wrong, and how could it not be better than what we have now?

John M Greco

Also see:
More Liberal Love & Lies From MSNBC About Healthcare in Repressive, Socialist Countries

Will Cyprus Be a Sarajevo?

This Monday morning I'm trying to understand why there is, apparently, no run on Eurozone banks in countries with troubled banks and shaky sovereign debt.  Over the weekend news of the latest Eurozone bailout emerged, in which the EU, which I read as Germany, has agreed to bail out the Cypriot banks but only upon the condition, never seen before, that such banks seize from depositors a hefty amount of deposits, some of which have guarantees.  On the other hand, the deal does not require that the equity holders or bondholders take a hit, which would be how it should be.  The reason, as I'm reading, appears to be because the equity holders and bond holders are to a great extent foreigners who would truly collapse the banking system in Cyprus, and then perhaps elsewhere, with a run if they were to take a hit.  So Cyprus agrees to seize a percentage of guaranteed deposits from small depositors, many of whom, like the 3,000 Brits living there at the moment (link), are not even Cypriots.

I understand that underneath this is a reluctance by German leaders to put the German people on the hook for yet another bailout if Cypriots themselves don't have to pony up as well.  But seizing guaranteed deposits appears to be in violation of bank guarantees, if not the law, so in essence the deal upends the law and sound business practice to protect the big players and screw the little ones.  Boy, sounds exactly like Obama's seizure (link) of Chrysler and General Motors to circumvent normal bankruptcy procedure and replace it with a forced deal that illegally screwed bondholders to unjustly enrich the unions.  And in another nod to the machinations of Obama, the Cypriot government is calling the seizure not a seizure but a "tax", which apparently as with Obamacare makes it all OK.  Gangsta government is in vogue all over the West.

Now it seems the Cypriot government is having second thoughts about illegally screwing small depositors, and is mulling it over while it keeps the banks closed.  Meanwhile, apparently no run on banks in Greece (what's left there to run on), Italy, or Spain, despite this clear indication of bank insolvency and EU treachery.  Has socialism turned Eurozone people into sheeple?  Will Cyprus be a Sarajevo, or will the sheeple roll over?

John M Greco 

From the Annals of Inanities: Women Of/With Color

In talking to students about racial diversity at the racially mixed Oak Park High School in suburban Chicago, one woman speaker, described by the school's principal as "a woman of color", made reference to "colored people" in a historical context.  This apparently offended some people of color who do not like hearing the term "colored people", forcing the principal to issue an apology (link) for what he called "offensive" speech.

In a new development, it is rumored that some women of color colored women minority  women females who received the letter were offended by the principal's use of the term "woman of color" and are demanding an apology, preferring, instead, to be referred to as "women with color".  In yet another related development, some females people were offended by the use of the term "woman", preferring to be referred to as "persons", finding the term "woman" to be offensive sexual stereotyping. 

UPDATE: Unconfirmed reports have it that the school principal has apologized to all self-defined identity groups for every word that was said at the event, and, in response to those who were offended about his apologies believing he had nothing for which to apologize, he apologized for apologizing.

JM Greco

Democrat SequesterMania

Legendary liberal journalist Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, apparently maintains a shred of integrity and so broke with the liberal media palace guard protecting the Democrat president and called Obama’s dishonest rabble rousing behavior on the sequester “madness”.  Of course, we all now know, thanks in part to Woodward himself, that the so-called sequester, or automatic budget cuts, was Obama’s idea.

The Democrats are wailing about cutting about 2.4% from the federal budget, or as it seems, as it usually is, cutting 2.4% off the rate of growth of the federal budget.  That’s cutting just a bit off a federal budget that’s already mushroomed beyond recognition under Obama.  Larry Kudlow writes (link):  “The White House and the CBO are predicting a 0.5 percent to 0.7 percent decline in GDP, post-sequester, and a loss of 750,000 jobs. All this from a spending reduction of roughly 2.4 percent over the next ten years, in which Uncle Sam’s spending growth will be $44.8 trillion rather than $46 trillion.”  And while Obama and his minions and acolytes have been wailing, new US Secretary of defense Long John Kerry just promised $250 million more to the Islamist government of Egypt.  Can’t possibly cut there!     

To listen to Obama and Democrats, 2.4% less spending will cut the federal government to the bone and will impact countless essential services.  Democrats are of course claiming that they can’t possibly find even 2% of fat to cut, or even 2% of non-essential services.  Not a penny is there to cut.  On local Chicago CBS news radio, a woman identified as chief economist for Mesirow Financial, apparently a money management firm, talked about some seniors losing their government subsidized housing and being forced out onto the street in the cold of late winter.  It seems Mesirow is on board with the Obama agenda.

Mark Steyn writes (link): “Can you pierce the mists of time and go back all the way to the year 2007? Back then, federal spending was 40 percent lower than it is today. In a mere half-decade, has all that 40 percent gravy become so indispensable to the general welfare that not even a teensy-weensy sliver of it can be cut?”

 

Obama is not trying to find a negotiated settlement with Republicans – far from it.  For the Obama Democrats, this whole debate is really not about trying to find a budget solution to the massive deficit.  It’s really about a radical position to spend, spend, and spend, borrowing all the way, until the system breaks down, until it collapses upon itself, and in the ensuing crisis of their own making, Democrats think they will be able to expand and solidify their centralized control over a bigger piece of America and every person in it. 

John M Greco

American Egyptologist – Breasted & The Oriental Institute

Jeffrey Abt has written a fascinating and detailed account of the life of James Henry Breasted, the much celebrated University of Chicago ground-breaking epigrapher and founder, at UChicago, of the Oriental Institute.  Abt thoroughly covers Breasted’s work in epigraphy and archaeology, and also many interesting aspects of UChicago’s early history.  The book is exhaustingly researched, and is handsomely bound in rich, dark blue cloth by the University of Chicago Press (at one time, and maybe still, the largest university press in the world).

Breasted was foremost an epigrapher, studying ancient inscriptions and language, and though not trained as an archaeologist he became one by necessity, given the need to find, excavate, and explore ancient sites.  Working from the 1890s into the 1930s, his primary focus was ancient Egypt, and as a young man, struck by the deterioration of the known sites, he began a lifelong project to record and interpret the inscriptions.  In time, Breasted became famous; he was, for example, at the opening of the chamber containing the sarcophagus and mummy of King Tutankhamum.  He emphasized studying not just past events but past conditions and institutions, which seemed novel for the time. 

Breasted also became, through books and lectures, a very well-known popular educator about ancient Egypt and early Eurasian civilizations.  In his teaching and writing, he was a pioneer in the use of visual, diagrammatic displays of information, and coined the now well-known term “fertile crescent”.  He was one of the first to appreciate the important influence of Egypt’s ancient civilization on that of Greece.  The Oriental Institute’s projects eventually encompassed all the civilizations of the Near East and the field work spread out accordingly; its museum displays one of the finest collections of ancient Near East artifacts in the world, and I have enjoyed many a desultory stroll through the exhibits.      

The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago

Breasted was born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1865, and grew up in Chicago’s western suburbs.  He started out in pharmacy, of all things, and graduated from what is now North Central College in suburban Naperville.  He eventually turned to theology (at the Chicago Theological Seminary), then to languages (studying Hebrew at Yale), and then finally to epigraphy which became his life’s work.  As his career moved on, he became as much an administrator and fundraiser (Rockefeller money) as researcher and educator, and at that point in the story the book gets dry with detail I imagine not of particular interest to the casual reader, who I suspect might be inclined to tread lightly over those sections.  An abridged version for the general reader would not be misplaced.

Breasted was the first archaeologist to be elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, and became so well-known that he made the cover of Time magazine in 1931.  When he died at 70 in 1935, his memorial service at Rockefeller Chapel on the UChicago campus featured the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and was broadcast nation-wide on CBS radio.  He was buried in Rockford, with a large granite cube from ancient Egypt placed as his tombstone.  Years later, when a film maker was creating the fictional story of a young, dynamic epigrapher, he placed his character at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, no doubt because he figured where else would you find someone like Indiana Jones. 
 

American Egyptologist:  The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute
By Jeffrey Abt (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

Richard R Balsamo

Related Posts at this blog:
The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
Ancient Assyria & the Transience of Economic Strength
The Oriental Institute's "Striding Lion" of Babylon

La Boheme at the Lyric Opera

Original Poster for La Boheme

Everyday people (sort of), everyday life (mostly), and an everyday love story (maybe not quite).  Opera Verismo.  Certainly not grand opera, not an Aida or even a Lucia.  But rather a small, simple love story, direct and tragic, encased in some of the most beautiful melodies in opera.    

The other day with family and friends I took in the first of two Lyric Opera ensembles performing Puccini’s La Boheme this winter at Chicago’s Civic Opera House, with Ana Maria Martinez and Dimitri Pittas very enjoyable in the leads.  I first saw Boheme at the Lyric around 30 years ago, with Pavarotti in the male lead role.  The strength, depth, and breadth of his voice seem to have almost been unique, and other tenors since then have sounded a touch thin, but that’s just me. 

Mr Pittas is a New York native who is quoted in the Program saying that he was first turned on to opera listening to the collection of duets by Bjorling and Merrill.  Well, for 30 years I myself have been enjoying those duets, coincidentally given to me by a dear friend also at the performance that night, and anyone who can listen to them and not want to hear more is a lost cause, operatically speaking.

Main Hall of Chicago's Civic Opera House

Unfortunately the set was underwhelming, and we know just whom to blame – owned and constructed, says the Program, by the San Francisco Opera, clearly a budget conscious outfit.  The garret shown in Acts One and Four consisted of a small elevated platform in the middle of the stage with a large border around it that took up most of the space, so that it all looked like a small painting in a frame three sizes too big.  But it’s La Boheme, after all, where the characters and the music get all the attention, which, of course, they should.

R Balsamo

Brokest Illinois Dems Go On Spending Spree On Themselves

In the Utopia called Illinois, controlled for generations by Democrats and the occasional Democrat-like Republican, something has gone wrong with the model -- it's the brokest state with the lowest credit rating in the brokest country in the world.  Its debt is staggering.

But hell, what's the use of being a liberal Democrat if you can't spend like one.  The Illinois Senate and House, both controlled by Democrats with super-majorities, and the Democrat Illinois governor have just all enacted a new spending bill of about $1.6 billion that the state doesn't have, no doubt all going to Dem constituencies and Dem donors.  Illinois voters sure like Democrats.

That's new Democrat spending of $1.6 billion, after just having fallen further behind in 2012 on state employee pension obligations despite a recent 67% hike in the state personal income tax and an almost 50% hike in the state corporate income tax.  

The Chicago Tribune says (link) the "Republicans decried the measure as including ill-timed, pork barrel money."  So what else is new. 

From a commentator to the Trib article:

$10,000 to the Life Center Church of Deliverance for infrastructure; $28,461 to the Chabad Living Room (?)for infrastructure improvements; $528,000 for Wings Program to buy a building; $225,000 to Fulfilling Our Responsibility Unto Mankind for infrastructure improvements; $100,000 to the Uhlich Children's Advantage Network to buy a building; $1 million to the Children's Museum Foundation to buy a building; $115,000 to the Illinois Basketball Hall of Fame. The list goes on and on. Don't these people know that Illinois is broke? That Illinois owes billions of dollars to doctors, pharmacies and others providing services to residents? Owes billions of dollars to its delinquent pension funds, aka its employees? WTF?

Not for nothing is Chicago's unofficial motto (with outstretched palm) "Where's mine?" as in "Where's my share of the loot?"  Something that can't go on forever won't, and the end to this graft and madness will not be pretty.

John M Greco

Obama's Latest Nominee a Big Obamacare Supporter -- For Her Competitors But Not For Herself

Well, she was for it before she was against it.  She still thinks Obamacare is right for you and me, just not for her.

From the Daily Caller (link):

President Barack Obama’s newly-named nominee to run the Department of the Interior, REI CEO Sally Jewell, sought and received a waiver from Obamacare requirements for her outdoor clothing and equipment company [REI] in 2011....  Obama welcomed Jewell to the White House in 2009 to jointly argue for the passage of Obamacare.  Obama held REI up as a model company.

But after passage, Obamaphile Jewell's not so hot on Obamacare for her own company.  Better that her competitors spend the money to comply.

Two years later, Jewell secured an exemption from the law for REI.  REI received an Obamacare waiver around the same time that nearly 20 percent of the businesses in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district received waivers.

So that's the scam.  Pass an onerous law expensive to comply with, then give your friends, but to be sure not their competitors, a pass.  Reminds me of how the Democrats in Illinois play this same game.  They recently passed an almost 50% hike in the state corporate income tax, then welcomed the stream of supplicants from big companies and selectively passed out various exemptions, all of course behind closed doors.  If you're a midsized Illinois company not making contributions to Democrats, either because of cost or ethics, you're screwed.

John M Greco

Obama Says It Is "Legal, Ethical, and Wise" For Him To Kill Americans (But Bush's Waterboarding Was Reprehensible)

Latest Dispatch from the Obama Wonderland:

It is “legal, ethical and wise” (link; link) to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism on Obama's say-so without a shred of due process, but it is morally reprehensible, if not clearly illegal, for the US government (i.e., George Bush) to waterboard for 10 minutes captured foreign terrorists who are reasonably felt to hold vital information about future terrorist plans.

Perhaps Obama feels he's doing those "suspected" American Muslim terrorists a favor by facilitating their deaths in the cause of jihad, whisking each one to heaven to frolic for eternity with his very own 72 perpetual virgins.  Or maybe Obama feels Americans are better off not trying to capture and interrogate suspected American terrorists and learning their current contacts and future plans, since that could only serve to cause some Neanderthals among us to look askance at a non-assimilated Muslim or two, and what could be worse than that?

Obama's crack team of lawyers say Obama's ordering of killings -- assassinations -- is all fine and dandy under US law, but remember Obama came within a hair of prosecuting Bush lawyers who said waterboarding was OK. 

And countless liberals and foreigners who want George Bush tried as a war criminal for waterboarding say what to all this?  The sound of silence.  

John M Greco

Obama's Ultimate Agenda

Orwellian was the very word that occurred to me when I read how, in his Second Inaugural Address, Obama used the language of America's founding principles in which to couch his socialist, collectivist true agenda, as a kind of misdirection confidence game to fool the rubes, the masses who need governing by wise elites.  For Obama, the Constitutional limitations on government power must be subverted.

The meaning of Obama's speech has been covered by many, of course; some particularly worthwhile analyses are here, here, here, and here.  Now, at National Review Online Michael Auslin has posted a particularly trenchant commentary (link), excerpted here, that to me gets at the root of the matter:

Perhaps the keynote of Obama’s second inaugural address, the Magna Carta of the new liberalism, is this line: “Preserving our individual freedom ultimately requires collective action.”  The line was certainly banal, as well as Orwellian. But it would be a mistake to ignore it as a rhetorical weapon. What Obama hopes to achieve, above and beyond his policy goals, is to move American society to a point where he won’t even have to give lip service to concepts such as “individual freedom,” at least when talking about his statist agenda. Today, he must still use such traditional American concepts, must still appeal to what one hopes is deeply rooted in our national psyche....  While he was certainly more unbound in his second inaugural, ... one can see where he is still constrained, perhaps by an understanding (distasteful to him, no doubt) as to how far he can push without stirring some deeper unease among even those sympathetic to his less far-reaching goals. 

But this is clearly a gambit to shift the country’s political philosophy ... by utilizing the vital role of rhetoric. Changing how we talk is a prerequisite to changing how we think, shaping reality through our words. Over the next four years, how far will Obama, with the support of the media, universities, and popular culture, have succeeding in changing forever our national rhetoric, where the liberal statist conception of the American collectivity supplants our timeless appeal to individual freedom? 

[Obama’s] thrust to more subtly shift how we think of ourselves and our relation to the state is a necessary ingredient for softening current and future opposition to the expansion of government and the dependency society. Even more insidiously, it is a bid to redefine the American character, from which all else flows.

John M Greco

Tough Times in Democrat Utopia Illinois – How’d That Happen? And When's the Rally?

The breakdown of the Democrat Party social model continues apace, and the day of reckoning draws ever near. 

Illinois has just been recognized as the brokest state in the Union, with the worst credit rating of all.  In Chicago, a city with some of the strictest anti-gun regulations in the country, gun violence continues to set new records (link).  No more Second City! 

Illinois should be a liberal paradise after a generation of almost complete control by Democrats and the occasional liberal Democrat-like Republican.  That’s Democrat-like as in fiscal irresponsibility, social license, and corruption. 

The latest skirmish just broke out in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, home to the private University of Chicago, which has just opened an expensive, new hospital sans a trauma unit.  Even the ultraliberals now in control there understand that shouldering most of the burden on the South Side for caring for gang banger shooting victims is a sure path to bankruptcy, especially since the Democrat-controlled state is beyond broke and can’t even make timely payments on Medicaid claims, the rates for which are of course paltry compared to private insurance. 

Democrats know just what to do, what they’ve been doing for decades about all the serious problems that are much of their own making – hold a protest (link).  But now they’re just protesting against themselves, their own social model, but are too dim to realize it.  Touchingly, a sweet little old white lady from the neighborhood complains that the lack of a trauma center affects not just bullet-ridden black gang bangers but people like her, perhaps though not able to realize that there are likely 25 insurance-less gang banger cases for every one with a patient like herself, who is by the way as a Hyde Parker statistically highly likely to be a lifelong Democrat voter.  Fifty years of destructive liberal social policies and attitudes and excuses have ruined cities and communities, and the money is gone, long gone, and it’s just smoke and mirrors now.  Chicago’s new top cop, a fellow named McCarthy new mayor Emanuel found somewhere on the East Coast, blames (link) racism and Sarah Palin for the escalating gun violence (I kid you not); not mentioned were liberal policies.  Doctors will tell you that effective treatment requires the correct diagnosis, but then these Democrats aren't brain surgeons.  Next up, no doubt – a rally! (link)

John M Greco             

Naked City Redux

In this time of economic instability, escalating global Islamic terrorism, and an increasingly imperial presidency, one savors pleasant distractions wherever they can be found.  In recent months I’ve caught some episodes of the old TV series Naked City, a police drama set in New York City which a cable station has been airing of late. 

The plots often move slowly, but the window into the mores, language, and look of the time, and the many great outdoor shots of NYC, can be captivating.  The show was recognized, even at the time as I vaguely recall, for its gritty realism.  The stories often, if not usually, revolved around the guest stars, and one can see in vivid black and white young actors, unknown at the time, who later became stars; Robert Duvall and Sandy Duncan are two I’ve seen lately.  The writing was character-driven and has a larger component of psychological drama than later cop shows like Kojak (who loves you baby?).  Naked City can seem a bit brooding, almost noirish, as it brought to television a gritty realism, almost documentary-like in parts.  In retrospect, a simpler time, not that they thought so then.

Said in the famous voice-over narration, by producer Herbert Leonard, at the end of each episode, referring presumably to the population of New York City:  "There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them."  Unfortunately, there turned out to be only 138 of them, all told.

R. Balsamo

Will Illinois Dems Snooker Repubs on Pension Reform? Don't Answer That

Despite a recent 67% hike in the personal income tax flat rate and an almost 50% increase in the corporate income tax rate, Illinois is sinking deeper in debt because the increased revenues are not keeping up with ever-increasing pension payments.  For years, Illinois Democrat politicians, abetted by the occasional Republican, have rewarded their state employee party supporters with salary and benefit packages that are not only higher than the private sector but unaffordable.  For years, in a state that has been dominated by Democrats for generations, Democrat pols have used fiscal chicanery and massive borrowing to hide the debt and delay the day of reckoning.  But that day is just about here.

Per the Wall Street Journal (link) on January 7:

Illinois is wrestling with a $95 billion pension gap that has left it neck-and-neck with California for the worst state credit rating in the country. The Democrat-controlled legislature has been stalled over how to reverse its failure over decades to adequately fund pensions for state workers.... Several states are struggling to right their pension funds, which have been battered by lackluster investment returns, increases in benefits paid out and chronic underfunding. But Illinois stands out as the worst, with only 45% of assets needed to meet future obligations based on 2010 data....

After the Democrat governor and the state House and Senate, both with Democrat super-majorities, failed once again to enact some kind, any kind, of reform, the governor came up with a bold new plan.  A "bipartisan" commission appointed by the super-majority Democrats and the rump band of surviving Republicans that would come up with binding changes.  That's right -- pawn the whole mess off to a committee that Dems would give, for once, equal representation to Republicans so the latter can take equal heat for cuts to the over-generous pension benefits.  Do Democrats possibly think that Illinois Republicans could be stupid enough to fall for such a transparent ploy?  ... Don't answer that question.

From the Chicago Tribune (link) yesterday:

The Illinois House adjourned this afternoon without even voting on Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn's desperation pension reform plan. Quinn threw his support behind a bill that would set up a commission to decide how to fix Illinois' financially failing government worker retirement systems. Conventional efforts to craft a compromise on pension changes have gone nowhere during the lame-duck session. The new measure filed today would set up an eight-member commission appointed by the four legislative leaders. The panel would issue a report on pension system changes that would become law unless the General Assembly voted to overturn it.

One way or another, pensions will be reduced, though I feel for honest retirees.  But public employees vote heavily Democratic, so in some large sense it's their own fault, to say nothing of the rampant abuse like final-year salary spiking that guarantees by formula a higher, undeserved pension.  What is unsustainable will end, and what can't last forever won't.

John M Greco

Conflicting Views of Radical Islam

Victor Davis Hanson writes (link) that recent Obama nominees Hagel and Brennen give us clear insight, if any more was needed, into Obama's view of the meaning of radical Islam and America's culpability, if any, in its rise:

First, Hanson summarizes what he calls the “Standard View”, one I share:

....radical jihadists and Islamists scapegoated the West for the mostly self-inflicted wounds of the Middle East. Endemic tribalism, gender apartheid, statism, corruption, religious intolerance, fundamentalism, and an absence of transparency — in a globally connected world that is progressing without these burdens — best explain why the region is a remarkably poor place, despite enormous natural wealth.

In rage at the more successful systems abroad — who, after all, should not be successful given their obvious decadence and absence of piety — the Islamists call for a reactionary return to centuries-past glories. These mythologies are based on solutions found in sharia and the Koran rather than in liberalizing their societies. 

....Finally, hatred and violence is usually directed at the U.S. — and not to the same degree at Russia or China, whose records on Islama are far more intolerant than that of the West — largely because such grievances against the world’s superpower better resonate worldwide, and because a self-critical America is so bothered by such dislike in a way not true of a Putin or the Chinese Communist Party.

Hanson then contrasts the “Standard View” to that of Obama’s (and, I would add, that of many American liberals):

...jihad, Islamism, and Muslim intolerance are largely ... a product of either Western ignorance of Middle East customs or willful [Western] prejudices. A far better approach than a “war on terrorism” or zero-tolerance of Islamic hate-filled extremism toward the United States, or constant calls for Middle Easterners to reform, is a more subtle understanding of what drives such hatred — poverty, hopelessness, illiteracy — for which to some degree the West is culpable and therefore obligated to be patient with and understanding of otherwise incomprehensible rhetoric and violence.

Obama's view to me is that The West is over-reacting to a problem in Islam of significantly their own making and so must be understanding, patient, and self-effacing in response -- what to me seems to be an attitude of "It's the West's fault" and "Muslims will be Muslims." 

 

John M Greco

The New Tax Deal Just Dents Debt

The so-called fiscal cliff avoidance federal tax deal is done, and both parties caved on long-standing positions.  After almost a decade of claiming the Bush-era temporary tax cuts were responsible for all things bad, budgetarily speaking, Democrats supported a deal that made those cuts permanent for over 98% of taxpayers.  That’s right – just as with the “fierce moral urgency” when GW Bush was president to closing the Guantanamo terrorist prison and stopping renditions, which is still open and still going on, respectively, after four years of Obama – the Democrats were just posturing. 

The new tax scheme will raise revenues a relatively small amount compared to what is needed to reduce and pay off the debt, which is growing every day.  The federal government could confiscate all of the wealth of the top 1% of Americans and most of the problem would still be there.

As an aside, Billionaire Warren Buffet has debased the debate, which should be about reforming spending, to claim that the rich were not paying their “fair share” and using half-truths to spin a lie.  In fact, as one can simple ascertain from official government data (link), the top 1% of earners take in 20% of all income but pay 38% of all taxes, and the top 10% of earners take in 46% of all but pay 70% of all taxes.  How’s that for tax-paying fairness right now in the Warren Buffet top 1% cohort – earn 20% of all income but pay 38% of all taxes.  Now, Buffet may want the top 1% to pay, say, 50% rather than 38% of all taxes, but he lies, and he knows he lies, when he says the top 1% of earners are not paying their fair share, because paying anything above a flat rate for everyone is already their “fair share”.  And again, confiscating all of the wealth of the top 1% still leaves most of the debt problem unsolved.  Buffett prefers to stoke the flames of raw envy for his own moral preening and to ingratiate himself with regulation-happy Democrats so he can get special treatment from them, and get pretty, young CNBC TV hosts to travel to Omaha to fawn all over him.         

From the liberal Politico (link):  “The staggering national debt — up about 60 percent from the $10 trillion Obama inherited when he took office in January 2009 — is the single biggest blemish on Obama’s record, even if the rapid descent into red began under President George W. Bush. 

Well, even that stern statement from a liberal about Obama’s culpability is a half-truth amounting to a lie.  Budget deficits were actually "rapidly undescending" in Bush’s second term until the Democrats took over Congress. 

As Glenn Reynolds writes (link), “You can blame Bush all you want, and Obama likes to talk about ‘two wars on the credit card,’ but this chart [above on his blog page] illustrates that things were actually improving until we got a Democratic Congress in 2007, and got worse when we elected Obama."  Actually much worse.

John M Greco

By All Means, Let's Go Over the Fiscal Cliff

The so-called federal fiscal cliff is the combination of the expiration of the Bush-era temporary tax cuts, the temporary cuts to the Medicare and Social Security taxes, and a set of previously-enacted "automatic" spending cuts.  The conventional wisdom is that this will all be bad for the economy, and that that US should continue to borrow money from foreigners like to Chinese to spend on ourselves.

Only academics could buy that manure -- that the way to fight the effects of massive, long term overspending, much of it via borrowed money, is to borrow much more to spend more.  They argue that less federal spending will cause people to worry about the economy and, with less money in their pockets via higher taxes, they will spend less and therefore "hurt" the economy.

The US is functionally bankrupt and must cease going into deeper debt to spend on ourselves now.  Plain and simple.  And one reason the bad economy didn't hurt Obama as much as Republicans hoped for is that a huge proportion of the electorate has been shielded from the Obama spending binge because Republicans, those of the Stupid Party, pressured, or were duped into pressuring, Obama to go along with extending the Bush cuts a few years ago.  So taxes stayed lower while spending skyrocketed.

Enough.  Enough.  Although I don't want to pay higher taxes, especially to fund a Democratic party spending binge that primarily serves to increase dependency on big government (the prime Democrat strategy), people have voted for big government and now everyone must pay up.  When voters are fully paying for bigger government maybe then more voters will think twice about voting for it.

Avik Roy and Marc Thiessen agree (link).

John M Greco

Bears Win First de facto NFL Championship Game Indoors -- 80 Years Ago Today

The University of Chicago's "C" Logo

It was 1932 and at the end of the NFL season the Chicago Bears and Portsmouth Spartans finished tied for first place.  A play-off game was scheduled, the first ever NFL post-season de facto Championship Game, in Chicago.  Unfortunately, when the day came a blizzard dropped in and organizers scrambled.  The solution – move the game from outdoors in Wrigley Field to indoors at the Chicago Stadium. 

Yes, the first NFL post-season game was played indoors (link), on a field only 80 yards long.  The local team prevailed, as the Chicago Bears, the second oldest NFL franchise and the long-term, ahem, borrowers of the University of Chicago nickname Monsters of the Midway and football-shaped “C” logo (pictured; link), defeated the Portsmouth Spartans (now the Detroit Lions) 9-0 – 80 years ago today.
 
No doubt sensing a good thing when it saw it, the NFL honchos instituted an official post-season Championship Game thereafter.  The following year the first official one was played, once again in Chicago, and this time at Wrigley Field.  And once again the Bears prevailed, with a game-ending designed trick play (link), this time over the New York Giants.   

But times change.  The Bears have won only one championship in the past almost 50 years – the 1985 Super Bowl Shuffle Bears under former Bear player and Coach Mike Ditka.  They could use a trick play or two now. 

R. Balsamo

Want More Federal Tax Revenue -- Eliminate Deductibility for State & Local Taxes and Stop Subsidy of High Tax Democrat States

In all the "fiscal cliff" talk about how to raise more revenue for the federal government, one sure-fire way is conspicuously absent from the headlines -- removing or at least limiting the deduction for state and local taxes.  The reason for the non-coverge is a combination of Democrat obfuscation and Republican incompetence.  Obama wants more federal money -- OK, let's eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes, worth a cool quarter of a trillion dollars a year to the feds. 

But this will never happen because this "fiscal cliff" kabuki theater is not about tax fairness -- if it was the deduction would already be gone.  For Obama, it's about protecting Democrats by preserving an incredibly unfair aspect of the tax code.  Allowing taxpayers to deduct their state and local taxes from their federal income tax means they pay a lot less, for a given level of income, than taxpayers in states with low state and local taxes.  Deductibility results in a subsidy from low tax states (read -- Republican controlled) to high tax states (read -- Democrat controlled).

From the Wall Street Journal editorial of 12/17/2012 (link): 

·       One post-election budget surprise has been President Obama's resistance to John Boehner's proposal to get $800 billion in new revenue by closing tax loopholes. Here's one likely reason: the high tax rates of his blue-state Democratic brethren.... 

·       One of Mr. Boehner's ideas, taking a cue from Mitt Romney, would impose a limit on annual deductions....  

·       But suddenly liberals are having second thoughts, and our guess is that this is because residents of high-tax Democratic-run states are about twice as likely to take advantage of tax loopholes as taxpayers in low-tax states....  

·       One tax writeoff in particular illustrates the point: the deduction for state and local income taxes.... Because the highest federal tax rate is 35%, the value of the state and local deduction is enormous for high-tax states....   

·       One pernicious effect, however, is to favor high-tax states at the expense of the nine states with no income tax and those with low rates. That's clear from looking at the IRS tax return data for the 50 states and the District of Columbia.  In 2010, the deduction for state and local income taxes for all states amounted to $249.7 billion....  

·       But here's the blue-state kicker: $51 billion of those writeoffs were claimed by residents of one state, California. And five liberal states—California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Massachusetts—accounted for about $121.8 billion.  A mere five states accounted for nearly half the federal revenue lost from this tax deduction.... 

·       All of which helps to explain what appears to be the ebbing liberal support for a tax reform that reduces rates in return for fewer deductions.  Democrats in Congress once supported that kind of reform. But these days they tend to represent states with ever-higher tax rates that prop up state and local governments dominated by public unions that demand ever-higher pay and benefits. The resulting state tax burden would be intolerable if much of it weren't passed off on Uncle Sam.... 

·       Mr. Obama wants to raise tax rates, rather than eliminate deductions, so his fellow Democrats can keep raising state and local taxes without bearing the full economic and political cost....  

I would add to the last clip from the WSJ:  “Mr. Obama wants to raise tax rates, rather than eliminate deductions, so his fellow Democrats can keep raising state and local taxes without bearing the full economic and political cost....” and thus continue to play the taxpayers of Republican-dominated low tax states for suckers.

 

John M Greco

When the Going Gets Tough, the Republicans ....

From my somewhat desultory post-election reading, when I can rouse myself out of some eerie combination of disgust and dread, Republicans seem to be losing the public relations battle to the Democrats over the so-called "fiscal cliff" negotiations.  Just one more in a series of issues or sequence of events that should have strengthened the Party, but instead went essentially nowhere.  Despite the innumerable Democrat scandals, mendacity, and repulsive, corrosive behavior, Obama won anyway, narrow as it was, but it would have been a Republican blow out with the electorate of 1980, 1990, or, I think, even of 2000.  Times have changed, and the Democrat leftist/Alinsky strategy of in-you-face viciousness and win-at-any-cost tactics has, unfortunately and disappointingly, paid off, combined with the successful Dependency Agenda, to turn the masses into wards of the state and supporters of the Party of the State -- the Democrats.

The incomparable Michael Walsh sums up the current state of the Republican party today at National Review Online (link), essentially arguing, as he has for some time, that in general Republican Party leaders still have not recognized what they're up against, what the modern Democrat Party has become:

Fortune favors the bold, as the saying goes. The Romney fiasco should be the death knell of the Washington Generals approach to competing against the Democrats, and the whole lot of the Old Guard — starting with weepy John Boehner — should be tossed out and replaced with those who can distinguish between strategy and tactics and who understand that the only acceptable strategic outcome should be total victory over the modern Left and its alien, imported ideology. After all — that’s certainly the other side’s goal.

Of course, that depends on whether you see the current conflict as simply politics-as-usual, in which both sides share the same basic values and aspirations, and differ only in methods (the Boehner approach); or as a struggle between individualism and collectivism, which has been going on in Europe since Rousseau and his evil love child, Karl Marx, but is still relatively new to these shores. But extending the olive branch toward an opponent who’s not prepared to extend to you the slightest shred of moral or political legitimacy is suicidal. Unless, of course, you think it’s all a big game, a racket in which both sides have pretended to fight in order to divvy up the near-boundless swag of the federal treasury and keep the suckers back home happy come election time with a little kabuki and pantomime.

Accordingly, over the past two decades, the establishment Republicans — who knew the Rockefeller wing had such tenacity? — have nominated a string of reach-across-the-aisle types, and where has that gotten them? In the aftermath of 9/11, the author of the No Child Left Behind act was pilloried as a warmongering beast, McCain was savaged by his former “buddies” in the media as the walking dead, and Romney stood by mildly as he was accused by the Democrats of murder and Obama cried for revenge.

You can’t win a fight unless you’re prepared to credit your enemy with the will and the capacity to achieve his stated objectives, and as long as the Republicans continue to treat the Democrats as just a slightly more extreme version of themselves, they’ll continue to lose. On November 6, conservatives received a valuable object lesson in living inside their own bubble, slurping up what Fox News told them and believing that the ghost of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 electorate would once again show up at the polls, like the phantom army in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Meanwhile, in the 40 years since they seized control of the Democratic party, leftist radicals have honed their divisive message and perfected their blunt-force tactics — all in the service of a strategy, as the actions of President Obama make abundantly clear.

Yes, there are 30 Republican governors and the Party hasn't been stronger at the state level for generations, and there are reasons for that strength that should be translatable to the national scene.  But it still is hard not to despair for a culture and politic predicated on promoting and protecting individual liberty, self-reliance, free-enterprise, and the rule of law.

John M Greco