Domestic Policy

The Curse of Arrowhead and the Death of Good American Education

NFL junkies like myself are aware of an old curse that has afflicted the fortunes of Kansas City Chiefs football teams ever since they tore down their old complex and built Arrowhead Stadium. This curse, The Curse of Arrowhead, is perhaps not as virulently toxic as having Dan Snyder LBO your favorite team. However, it supposedly explains why the team stopped being competitive in Super Bowls after building the new stadium in which to play their games.

The year was 1985, Kansas City Schools had been taken to court and a Federal Judge, with the customary modesty that befits the modern judiciary, decided that he would do a much better job of running the organization than a bunch of people who, you know, had formerly taught or something. Like the alien invaders at the end of Rush’s 2112 Suite, Judge Russell Clark assumed control. Since, the Curse of Judge Clark has laid low the fortunes of Kansas City Schools.

Using Civil Rights Act jurisprudence as a legal gravamen, he imposed a $2B, 12 year mandate on The State of Missouri. Kansas City proceeded to massively upgrade its physical capital and institute a forced integration program. The latter proved challenging, owing to the paucity of non-minority students attending school in the district, but Judge Clark plowed ahead.

To fund this ambitious project in civic fascism, Judge Clark raised property taxes by 150%, and imposed a 1.5% income tax surcharge. When the taxpayers of Missouri could no longer pony up the rest, he went to the state government and hit them up for the balance. The results remind the objective reader more of The Recovery Summer than the Platonic Academy. Paul Ciotti writes of the experiment below.

For more than a decade, the Kansas City district got more money per pupil than any other of the 280 major school districts in the country. Yet in spite of having perhaps the finest facilities of any school district its size in the country, nothing changed. Test scores stayed put, the three-grade-level achievement gap between blacks and whites did not change, and the dropout rate went up, not down.

(HT: The Cato Institute)

We fast-forward to the present and see an even more tragic and human result from the feckless, arrogant and fascist enstupidation of Federal Judge Russell Clark’s unmitigated Progressive hubris. Today, 10 years after the mega-funded educational fiasco, Kansas City still struggles. The billions of dollars have been dissipated in a manner reminiscent of a drunkard leaning over a urinal. The schools still fail, the money has long gone, and the new generation of children stand there and eat the unintended consequences of unmitigated big-government hubris.

Like many who compete for good grades, Micah Chaney imagined this moment in her life to be different. She envisioned a “rise to the top,” where the finest colleges waited to be wowed. Now with her education in the Kansas City School District nearly complete, can she still see it? “No,” Micah, 16, told the school board last month. The auditorium fell silent. “I just don’t think I’m that prepared.”

(HT: Rick Montgomery, The Kansas City Star)

Montgomery continues to describe the woeful management that occurred both with and without enlightened Federal Judges to make all the trains run on time.

In fatter fiscal times, the budget pie was portioned, by and large, to feed grown-ups or fulfill judges’ orders. Some slices were carved to fight social ills related to gangs, drugs and homelessness. Or to take advantage of federal grants awarded to groups promoting, say, sexual abstinence. Student achievement? In many classrooms, success was just the cherry on top, if success occurred at all.

That so many of the neediest kids were seen as commodities was an open secret. Their economic needs and learning issues meant more public dollars and grants for the city schools. Yet the district’s overall scores in math and communications seldom reached half the levels targeted in recent years by the state of Missouri.

(HT: Rick Montgomery as cited above).

Now, with yet another Superintendant, their 26th in the last 40 years, Kansas City, Mo faces all the same problems that Judge Russell Clark came to save them from. Only now, they have no money to solve them with and no Federal Judge to Shanghai taxpayers into forking over more loot. Schools have been closed, teachers have been laid off. If I had to guess, this new superintendant will last about 1.5 years as well. Roman Barracks Emperors had better prospects during the 3rd Century AD. Cives on the Roman sportulary had better future prospects than the citizens sending their kids to Kansas City Schools.

Some would read this blog cynically, accuse me of being a San Diego Chargers fan or something, and just write all of this off as bias. Except that the failures in Kansas City can teach an object lesson and the idiotic philosophies from whence these terrible spending initiatives sprung still dominate the policy conversations involving education in America. John Derbyshire describes how the public school system his children attend plans to abuse a $700M government grant.

$219.7 million: New standards and assessments, revised curriculum. $177 million: Programs still to be determined that comply with federal education reform priorities. $113.6 million: Improvements at failing schools. $110.3 million: Training of teachers and school principals. $64.2 million: New data systems to track student performance.

(HT:NRO)

Given that description of expenditures, I see no possible way to insure this money will be spent wisely or in a manner consistent to the needs of children. Yet education gets funded without oversight and everyone assumes that the tooth-fairy will make these officials use it for the children. In Los Angeles, CA the LAUSD opens a $578M “Taj Mahal” school; The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Reactions predictably differ.

“There’s no more of the old, windowless cinderblock schools of the ’70s where kids felt, ‘Oh, back to jail,’” said Joe Agron, editor-in-chief of American School & University, a school construction journal. “Districts want a showpiece for the community, a really impressive environment for learning.”

However, parent groups want to know if this big, impressive building will actually help their children learn.

“New buildings are nice, but when they’re run by the same people who’ve given us a 50 percent dropout rate, they’re a big waste of taxpayer money,” said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education. “Parents aren’t fooled.”

Thus educational spending has been and still remains a completely unaccountable government spending piggy-trough. Nobody tells the education lobby no. They can’t ever seem to make it passed all the “underprivileged” children serving as human shields. This hits at the true tragedy of our soul-sucking educational establishment.

These children will never stop being underprivileged or having special needs. If their needs ever got fed, and the children could truly stand on their own, this would be a loss to the American educational bureaucracy. Kids that read, write, have goals and don’t take Ritalin just don’t justify a big enough budget…

For Slandering Americans and Ignoring the Plight of Muslim Women, The New York Times Deserves to Wear the Cone of Shame

OK–it’s time to just come out and say it. Liberals must be desperate, because–with regard to the Ground Zero mosque (as with so many other past cultural issues)–Barack Obama has sided against the American people–again. How do I know this to be true? Well, let’s just look at the steady stream of hysterical op-eds coming out of The New York Times slandering the American people as racist, Islamaphobic, unpatriotic dumb-dumbs. (Yes, I know, liberals must be pretty desperate to play the patriotism card–I thought they thought that patriotism was gauche.)

For instance, last weekend, TV entertainer, Dick Cavett, wrote a column titled, Real Americans, Please Stand Up. (Did you get that? If you disagree with him about the Ground Zero mosque, you aren’t a “real American”.) In this op-ed, Cavett goes on to lament how “ashamed of us” he is, and he even goes so far as to write the following insanity–

As a war kid, I also heard an uncle of mine endorse a sentiment attributed to our Admiral “Bull” Halsey: “If I met a pregnant Japanese woman, I’d kick her in the belly.”

So now, not only am I not a “real American”, but I want to kick pregnant Japanese women in the belly.

Oh, but Mr. Cavett is not alone in his inane ramblings. On Sunday, theater critic, Frank Rich, wrote a column titled, How Fox Betrayed Petraeus, and on Monday cultural writer, Nicholas Kristof, wrote a column titled, Taking bin Laden’s Side.

Now, just from the titles of these op-eds alone, it should be painfully obvious what The New York Times is trying to do–i.e., “otherize” all opponents of the Ground Zero mosque as bigoted, anti-American rednecks with the worst possible motives. However, all of these columns were rich in over the top rhetoric, but deeply lacking in any information about the previous troubling, statements from Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (the man behind the mosque), or the fact that that Iman Rauf has not been at all transparent about where the money’s coming from to build this mosque at Ground Zero. So, for flat out slandering the American people as anti-American bigots–and being disingenuous as to why they are really upset about the Ground Zero mosque–The New York Times deserves to wear “The Cone of Shame”.

Speaking of Imam Rauf, I would very much like to take a closer look at him before going much farther. To be specific, soon after 9/11, Imam Rauf called America “an accessory to the crime” (in reference to 9/11–see embed below), has refused to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization, has stated that, “The US has more Muslim blood on it’s hands than Al Queada”, and has refused to swear off money from Iran or Saudi Arabia for the one hundred million dollar Ground Zero mosque (that could very well be terrorist/blood money).

Second of all, it seems to me that Imam Rauf is being deliberately provocative by calling the Ground Zero mosque “The Cordoba Mosque”, which would be named after The Cordoba Mosque in Spain built by the Moors when they conquered the Christians in 600 AD. (It is a well-known fact that Muslims build a mosque on ground after they conquer it. Why don’t they just call the Ground Zero mosque the “We Conquered Your Ass/Who’s Your Daddy?” mosque and get it over with?)

Furthermore, I find the sheer size of the mosque–or the fact that it looks like a skyscraper or a giant monument to Islam, rather than a house of prayer–to be deliberately provocative as well. Now, in his recent column, Nicholas Kristof shamefully compared the Ground Zero mosque to a YMCA. However, how many YMCAs look like the image below? I rest my case.

[FYI, my husband and I went to Egypt on our honeymoon and we toured a slew of Medieval era mosques--NONE OF THEM looked like that, but I digress.]

By the way, it’s not just me who feels like this. Real moderate Muslims–you know, the ones who don’t blame America for 9/11 and who have no problem calling Hamas a terrorist organization–have stated that the Ground Zero mosque is in poor taste and is deliberately provocative. To be specific, on The O’Reilly Factor, moderate Muslim, Raheel Raza, called the Ground Zero mosque “confrontational, in bad faith, and a slap in the face to all Americans” (see embed below). (Ms. Raza has since received a threatening phone call from the property owner of the Ground Zero mosque for speaking out against it.)

Moreover, a secular/moderate Muslim, named Neda Bolourchi whose mother was killed on 9/11, wrote a column for The Washington Post titled, Build Your Mosque Somewhere Else. Specifically, she wrote the following with regard to the Ground Zero mosque–

From the first memorial ceremonies I attended at Ground Zero, I have always been moved by the site; it means something to be close to where my mother may be buried, it brings some peace. That is why the prospect of a mosque near Ground Zero — or a church or a synagogue or any religious or nationalistic monument or symbol — troubles me.

I do not like harboring resentment or anger, but I do not want the death of my mother — my best friend, my hero, my strength, my love — to become even more politicized than it already is. To the supporters of this new Islamic cultural center, I must ask: Build your ideological monument somewhere else, far from my mother’s grave, and let her rest. “

Oh, but silly me. I forgot. According to Dick Cavett and The New York Times, Ms. Bolourchi is just an Islamaphobic bigot who wants to kick pregnant Japanese women in their bellies.

However, what I find to be the most troublesome feature of the whole Ground Zero mosque brouhaha, is the fact the Imam Rauf has referred to America as “A Sharia compliant state”.

Now, why is calling America a “Sharia complaint state” so troubling? Well, to understand why that statement is so troubling, one has to first understand what exactly Sharia Law is and what it entails/allows for.

Sharia Law is a particular type of fundamentalist Islamic law that dates back to the time of Muhammed, and deals specifically with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexuality, hygiene, diet, prayer, and fasting. Classic Sharia Law is most famously practiced in Iran and Saudi Arabia (two places that Imam Rauf won’t swear off taking money from). For instance, under Sharia Law, hanging homosexuals is perfectly OK (warning–Allahphundit has the photos of this happening in Iran in this link and they are disturbing)–which is why Greg Gutfeld has called for a Muslim gay bar to be built right next to the Ground Zero mosque. Furthermore, strong adherents to Sharia Law have absolutely no problem with beating women, or even disfiguring them, if they disobey their husband. (For example, we’ve all seen the, now, infamous image below of the woman whose nose and ears were cut off by the Taliban. However, The New York Times was mad at Time magazine for running the image–they called it “war porn”–instead of the Taliban and Sharia adherents for cutting her face up in the first place.)

However, I would say that the worst part about Sharia Law is that it condones honor killings of women (which have recently been on the rise in America)–and, in particular, stoning them to death. Below is an embed of an exert of a film called The Stoning of Soraya M that NewsReal’s own Chris Yogerst has written about in great detail. It is extremely painful to watch (it, literally, gave me nightmares), but it is important that we don’t turn away and avert out eyes from this horror simply because it makes us uncomfortable.

Now, after gazing into the horrible face of Sharia Law, I can’t help but be reminded of David Horowitz’s chilling exchange with a member of the Muslim Student’s Association when he asked her if she would condemn Hamas (who also condones Sharia Law).

Here is a piece of the exchange (see embed below for the entire exchange)–

Horowitz:

If you don’t condemn Hamas, obviously you support it. Case closed. I have had this experience at UC Santa Barbara, where there were 50 members of the Muslim Students Association sitting right in the rows there. And throughout my hour talk I kept asking them, will you condemn Hizbollah and Hamas. And none of them would. And then when the question period came, the president of the Muslim Students Association was the first person to ask a question. And I said, ‘Before you start, will you condemn Hizbollah?’ And he said, ‘Well, that question is too complicated for a yes or no answer.’ So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll put it to you this way. I am a Jew. The head of Hizbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally. For or Against it?

MSA member:

For it.

Horowitz:

Thank you for coming and showing everybody what’s here.

So, in conclusion, I would like to ask all of the liberals at The New York Times who are in support of the infamous Ground Zero mosque–”Are you for it or against it?”, with regard to the US becoming “a Sharia compliant state”, as well as Imam Rauf’s refusal to condemn Hamas. These are not issues that you can sit back and shamelessly sip your latte while you try to morally equivocate by uttering idiocies such as, “Radical Christianity is as big a threat as radical Islam!” or, “But, George Bush!!”. You are either for honor killings, or you are against them. You are either for hanging homosexuals, or you are against it. You are either for stoning women, or you are against it. You are either for mutilating women, or against it. You are either for rounding up all of the Jews and killing them, or you are against it. There is no middle ground on these issues or wiggle room for a nuanced position. And, if you take money from countries who support these kinds of activities in order to build a mosque at Ground Zero, refuse to call out Hamas as a terrorist organization, or support the building of a mosque by someone who thinks that “America is a Sharia compliant country”, then that is the same thing as being “for it” in most sane people’s book, who don’t want any part of America to be “Sharia compliant”, much less Ground Zero.

Moreover, it’s quite obvious to me what happened here–or rather, how The New York Times (and liberals in general, not to mention President Obama) found themselves on the wrong side of this issue and siding with an Imam who actually praised the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The New York Times, as well as many of it’s readers, reflexively and shamefully side against the majority of Americans and always assume that they are racist or have bad intentions. (One only need to look to the fact that Frank Rich wrote an entire column bashing America on The Fourth of July as evidence of this unfortunate fact.) In other words, if the bitter, gun-clingers in Middle America are against the Ground Zero mosque, then The New York Times is reflexively for it, without even looking into it, or asking any hard questions about the project. They, blindly, took this Imam at his word that he was a “moderate”. (By the way, I went to medical school with several moderate/secular Muslims, and they would be insulted if you lumped them in the same category with this Imam.) And now that they got caught with their pants down not having done their homework, they are screaming “Raacist!!” in order to shut people up and distract from their own incompetence. I think that Mark Hemingway put it best when he wrote the following–

It reminded me a of a joke from last season’s “30 Rock,” where Alec Baldwin’s character was being told that in order to protect the feelings of a co-worker, he needed to “lie to her, coddle her, protect her from the real world.”

Baldwin’s retort? “I get it. Treat her like the New York Times treats its readers.”

The media seem to think they must reflexively defend any minority thrust into the public square from intolerant hordes throwing nooses around lampposts. But since 9/11 there’s been almost no violence or concerted oppression of America’s peaceful Muslim community.

At the same time, Americans remain clear-eyed about the fact certain Muslim attitudes are on a collision course with Western society. The mosque’s backers may be tolerant relative to the Taliban and other Muslim extremists. However, their refusal to condemn Hamas and the fact that they won’t rule out taking money from Iran cannot be considered tolerant by any enlightened standard.

Furthermore, Dick Cavett’s shameful ignorance was on full display for all to see when he wrote the following–

“What other churches might be objectionable because of the horrific acts of some of its members? Maybe we shouldn’t have Christian churches in the South wherever the Ku Klux Klan operated because years ago proclaimed white Christians lynched blacks. How close to Hickam Field, at Pearl Harbor, should a Shinto shrine be allowed? I wonder how many of our young people — notorious, we are told, for their ignorance of American history — would be surprised that Japanese-Americans had lives and livelihoods destroyed when they were rounded up during World War II? Should all World War II service memorials, therefore, be moved away from the sites of these internment camps? Where does one draw the line?”

My response would be if that Christian church was funded in part by white supremacists, and refused to call out the KKK, then no, they should not be allowed to build next to a monument where blacks were lynched by whites. Not to mention, if Fred Phelps–you know, the “God hates F*gs” guy–wanted to build a church next to a military base (or even next to a gay bar in San Fransisco), I would say no to that idea as well. And finally, I think that Charles Krauthammer explained it beautifully when he wrote the following–

“That’s why Disney’s 1993 proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition that feared vulgarization of the Civil War (and that was wiser than me; at the time I obtusely saw little harm in the venture). It’s why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It’s why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.

And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place; it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign. “

Now, I realize that it’s a lot more fun for liberals at The New York Times to use this issue to look down their noses at Sarah Palin and Middle America, than it is for them to actually, you know, look into this issue and do some real reporting on it. However, their inability to recognize real evil here when it is, literally, throwing rocks at their face, is shameful–and it’s actually quite racist. Why? Because they are sacrificing these Muslim women (and gay Muslim men) on the alter of multiculturalism just so that they can pat themselves on the backs about how “tolerant” they are.

[By the way, The New York Times couldn't even bother to report on a recent would be stoning in Iran that we here at NewsReal covered for days. David Swindle, our managing editor, even put up a petition in order to stop the woman from being stoned to death. Full disclosure--I signed the petition.]

I mean, suppose some small town in Middle America decided to try to pass laws allowing for the stoning of adulterous women or the hanging of gay men? I guarantee you that The New York Times would be up in arms over it–and rightfully so (especially Nicholas Kristof who fancies himself as a spokesmen for women’s rights). However, now an Imam–who would take money from countries who participate in this kind of evil, who praised Sharia Law and the Iranian Revolution, who says that the US has more blood on its hands than Al-Qaeda, and who won’t condemn Hamas–wants to build a mosque at Ground Zero, and they are attacking his critics as “anti-American”?! Please! The New York Times would never turn a blind eye like this to the plight of Western women, but they are totally ignoring the plight Middle Eastern women, just so they–initially–could shout, “I’m more multicultural than thou are!”. And now, so they don’t have to admit a mistake.

So for refusing to do any honest reporting with regard to Imam Rauf, and then for calling the critics of the Ground Zero mosque “anti-American raaaaacits!!”, The New York Times ought to be ashamed of itself.

Put them in the Cone of Shame!

This diary was cross-posted from NewsReal, and it is also posted on 73 Wire, Many Faces of Barack and Hillbillypolitics.

Location! Location! Location!

New York City Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama have really messed up and created turmoil where it is not needed when they talk about a constitutional freedom of religion right. Why start their statements with something that is not questioned? What statists like Bloomberg and Obama are completely clueless about is popular sovereignty. This issue was never about whether residents in the US have a constitutional right, freedom of religion. They do. The issue is whether the majority of local concerned citizens have a right to decide what types of buildings and structures are permitted to be built at what location. A majority of New Yorkers do not want a huge mosque to be built in the financial district near where the World Trade Center once stood. It can be built in another location with the consent of the governed.

Buddhist Meditation Temple                           St. John Cathedral
  

Staten Island Hindu Temple                            Temple Emanue-El
  

Masjid Malcolm Shabazz Mosque

The pictures are of religious structures that have been built in New York. Nobody is calling for these buildings to come down. None of these building are located in New York City’s financial district. Obama just made matters worse the day after he said they had a right to build. On Saturday when reporters questioned him he said that he had nothing to say about whether they should build. Why does he have nothing to say? Why do his and Hilary’s speeches now have the line freedom of worship instead of freedom of religion? I think anybody has a right to practice their religion, and this practicing includes erecting buildings. I also think a local community has a right to have guidelines and laws on where particular types of buildings are going to be erected. I don’t see any pork BBQ pit eateries and gay bars getting built beside a mosque. I also don’t see gambling casinos and adult bookstores getting built beside an elementary school. I guess common sense and statism just don’t go hand in hand.

Oval Office Reversals

by Lance Thompson

President Obama must be frustrated. No matter what position he takes on the
13-story mega-mosque to be built next to the hallowed ground of the 9/11
terrorist attack (and he’s taken as many positions as possible), none of
them seems to satisfy everyone.

Obama first came out four-square behind the mosque and the rights of the
radical imam who wishes to build a monument to radical islam at the site of
its greatest desecration. Later, Obama clarified that he was only defending
the constitutional right to freedom of religion, not the wisdom of building
the mosque. Then White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, in a
Saturday evening statement, said that this backpedaling should not be seen
as backpedaling. Now even Harry Reid, a man desperately in need of
political allies, has broken with the president’s position (whatever it
currently is) to say that no mosque should be built at Ground Zero.

It prompts one to wonder what might have happened if all our presidents
possessed Obama’s unwavering commitment to a principle.

Ronald Reagan hastened the end of Soviet domination of Europe with his
challenge, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Obama’s version might have
added, “And we’ll use American taxpayer money to help you build a better
wall.”

John F. Kennedy challenged a generation with, “We shall pay any price, bear
any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe in order
to assure the survival and success of liberty.” Obama’s version might have
added, “unless that means irritating state sponsors of terrorism or radical
islamists, in which case we will roll over and abandon our long time
allies.”

Franklin Roosevelt, to help Great Britain during the harrowing, early days
of World War II, established the Lend-Lease program to supply aid to the
Brits in their struggle against Nazi Germany. FDR said America must become
“the great arsenal of democracy.” Obama might have added, “unless the Nazis
win another battle, in which case we’ll plan a summit with Hitler and
discuss plans for redecorating Buckingham Palace.”

Abraham Lincoln identified the purpose of the Civil War as ensuring that
“this government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not
perish from this earth.” Obama’s version would have added, “But we’d settle
for a socialist utopia that will plunge us into unsustainable debt and
worldwide ridicule.”

These amendments to famous presidential pronouncements are unthinkable to
Americans who treasure their heritage and take pride in what this country
stands for. President Obama will never understand such feelings, for he
does not share them. He will never understand such people, for he is not
one of them. And he will not be re-elected by such people, because,
increasingly, they understand him all too well.

You Got That Right, Peter. Pray They Don’t Alter It Any Further

Reason magazine features a commendable article by Peter Suderman describing the latest bureaucratic prestidigitation associated with ObamaCare. It reflects well the current reliance on agency regulation to break the promises made during the bill’s passage in ways that the voters have no redress to fight against. His article, HHS Is Altering Its Deal. Pray It Does Not Alter It Any Further. makes a point that can be expanded to how our current president uses his executive powers without any significant loss of generality.

Suderman does good work in laying out a fundamental problem of the new plan not having anywhere near the resources it requires to deliver on the grandiose promises espoused to get it passed.

We’ve known for months that funding for the high-risk pools was lower than needed to meet demand. Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, estimated that the $5 billion earmarked to run the subsidized insurance pools could run out as early as 2011, and the CBO estimated that it would require $5-10 billion in additional funding in order to run as intended.

(HT: Reason Magazine as linked above.)

To many, this may not raise any hackles or engender concern. Gubbermint sux, we’re used to it, this just the Joe Pisarcik hand-off to Larry Csonka that we’ve all grown accustomed to from these turkeys.

If things simply remained screwed-up, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were called in to fork over yet another “Stimulus Plan” to cover the shortfall for the “least able among us” because it was “the only decent thing to do,” we could all just nod smugly as another piece of America’s future got jammed into the In-Sink-Erator. But here’s where Suderman’s reportage reveals something more deeply and significantly wrong with modern America than just the piss-poor coaches’ decisions that make economic statistics and budgetary performance “worse than expected.” Suderman sources to HealthAffairs.org which explains how the increasingly empowered HHS can clean this little mess up all by its own self.

At this time, HHS has not indicated how it might exercise its authority to close a deficit in the program. But the interim final rule issued on July 30 would permit adjustments to premiums, changes in the benefits the plans would be required to offer, limits on new applications, and other measures to limit program costs. These steps would probably reduce the number of individuals receiving coverage under the program.

(HT: Healthaffairs.org)

If this were just HHS, it would be a scandal. This is not just HHS. Regulatory agencies under our current President are increasingly activist and increasingly empowered. They are no more accountable under President Obama than they were under Bush II, Clinton or FDR. Equipoise is lost and unelected Federal officials make decisions that impact the lives of citizens who have no recourse to debate or to law.

The EPA issues an Endangerment Finding regarding so-called Greenhouse Gases that is supported by science that has proven to be questionable at best. It does so, coincidental to a failed push in Congress to pass a Cap-And-Trade Bill aimed at curbing emissions of these gasses.

When the People’s Representatives reject an Obama Administration initiative or goal, it just gets tossed to the regulators for “further clarification.” The regulators are then employed to directly spurn the will of the governed. This blatant and unabashed contempt for both democracy and republicanism is an obvious milestone along America’s highway to hell.

America functions on the basis of a social contract between the governed and those who rule. The government serves a function that is supposed to be in accordance with the wishes of the governed to the maximum extent to which that is possible. Yet instead, we now find the terms of this contract being modified unilaterally by the current Presidential Administration to a much greater extent than other administrations before.

The regulatory apparatus of the Executive Branch now seems to exist to change and expand the survey of dominion rather than to institute and enforce the laws passed by Congress. Increasingly, America is a nation of men and not laws. Our profane and ignorant worship before the Obama Cult of Personality in 2008 has led to the Divine Right Presidency that we all now suffer under in 2010.

Thus Peter Suderman was condign in alluding to Darth Vader in his title. The American People forged a social contract with the institutions which govern. We were once a nation that recognized no feudal nobility. The Governing elites are altering their deal, pray that they don’t any further.

And The Visigoths Engage In a Fratricidal Holiday….

It was Philosopher cum Theologian Belloc who pointed out the following with regards to barbarians.

The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.

(HT: Catholiceducation.org)

Hilaire Belloc has long since passed. He does not now, nor at any time in the past work for NewsCorp or broadcast a show on Fox News. If he did, however, the quote he spoke above would aptly describe Pelosi’s latest spending debaucle.

It is the act of a people consuming the future of our economy for the sake of fending off ruin over a shorter and shorter time horizon. The desperate, final epistemological spasms of Keynesian thought (if any) can be seen this week in the recent actions and words of Speaker Pelosi and President Obama.

We examine this $26B “Baby Stimulus” passed through the incontinent intestines of the House of Representatives. This bill, purportedly designed to rush much-needed funding to school districts, is a vastly expensive, poorly targeted, propagandic exercise in venal corruption. Barack Obama gave out the predictable scare rhetoric to ram through the predictable “emergency bill” that we pass to deal with all the “unexpectedly weak” economic circumstances we repeatedly find ourselves in. Thus spake the POTUS.

“If we do nothing, these educators won’t be returning to the classroom this fall, and that won’t just deprive them of a paycheck, it will deprive the children and parents who are counting on them to provide a decent education,” Obama said in the White House Rose Garden shortly before the bill passed on Tuesday.

“This proposal is fully paid for, in part by closing tax loopholes that encourage corporations that ships American jobs overseas. So it will not add to our deficit,” he said. “And the money will only go toward saving the jobs of teachers and other essential professionals…I urge members of both parties to come together and get this done, so that I can sign this bill into law.”

(HT: Fox News)

The loophole-mongering corporate interests, getting their just desserts, just happen to be the food stamp recipients that we all know secretly control Wall Street from a secret cabal in the trailer parks and projects. I can’t think of anyone more capable of shipping American jobs abroad than your average High School drop-out dependent upon food stamps. We have elected a President with a genetic defect that prevents him from feeling shame while he prevaricates quite like the rest of the human race.

This bill pays for the desperate, stop-gap funding of the education profession by foreswearing billions of dollars of food stamp funding in future years. This obviously isn’t truly paid for, because large piles of feces will stick to the moon before the Progressive Caucus of the House allows Food Assistance Programs to fund other liberal interest groups.

The people who seriously WANT to see Progressives elected in large numbers are weighing in loudly.

“While we support the education initiatives (in the bill), we adamantly oppose using food stamps to pay for them,” said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center. “The raid on food stamps to pay for other things absolutely has to stop and stop now.”

(Ob. Cit: Fox News)

Congresswoman DeLaura of CT inveighed against the use of food stamp money to pay the teachers. It totally contradicts the classic FDR strategy of using the disbursement of Federal monies to build up electoral blocks. It gives the tribals too close a look at what will happen when there are more reavers in the raiding party than there is loot to purloin. The hangover the morning after the Visigoth Holiday is not a pleasant sight to behold.

Yet this, increasingly, is what Progressive Politics has become. Nobody believes that Socialism really works. The Intellectual Left got personal insight in what it felt like to be a Chicago Cubs fan after rooting for the CCCP for lo the decades. It perhaps explains our current national CEO’s preference for The White Sox.

However, the band has stayed together after the death of their system of beliefs. Something drives them on further, beyond what they could get from Newtonian inertia. They are in it for the swag and because they have nothing else to do with themselves. What else is Bernadette Dorn going to organize her life around other than Progressive Theology?

But we see of in the hazy distance the end state to this Zombie Movie Left. The smoldering ruins of American Civitas are increasingly picked clean of rubies and opals. The loot only buys another few years or a few more less-insatiate months. The hunger gnaws and the comity among increasingly discordant political allies wanes.

Then these Progressives learn what else Hilaire Belloc knew about barbarians. Then we see the final and fatal endgame. Belloc describes it thus.

We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.

Remember this November. Vote Pelosi out while something still remains within the Pale to provide for our vouchsafe against the growing hordes.

The Tempting of Judges, Justices, Obama and Congress

Congress cedes power to Obama as King and judges as oligarchs

The problem of judge-made law trumping We the People’s contract with our government is as old as the Supreme Court’s rulings on Dred Scott (1857), Plessey (1896), Roe (1973), and Kelo (2005) and as new as this year’s federal district court rulings on illegal immigration enforcement in Arizona and gay marriage in California.

The Grand Canyon, State proper and between the rule of law and rule (whim) of men

In the Arizona case, DeVine Law searched high and low for an argument justifying the federal government’s claim of having “preempted” the field of immigration law, above and beyond those offered by Judge Susan Bolton. We searched in vain.

The “best” argument having been given tepid acknowledgement by a respected legal scholar, we affirm Andy McCarthy’s evaluation thusly:

Preemption hinges not on theexecutive branch’s enforcement priorities but on congressional statutes. This distinction is accurately framed in Heather’s aforementioned NRO column: “A state law unconstitutionally conflicts with federal if either ‘compliance with both State and federal law is impossible, or . . . the state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.’” (My highlighting, for reasons that will become clear presently.)

The “federal government” has not ignored the illegal alien in question. To the contrary, Congress has enacted an applicable law; the president is simply choosing not to enforce it. Similarly, Arizona has not put itself at odds with the “federal government’s” immigration priorities. It has mirrored Congress’s priorities; it is at odds only with the president’s (non-)enforcement policy. A state law does not run afoul of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (which the preemption doctrine vindicates) by colliding with executive branch enforcement priorities. That becomes clear when we apply the preemption test Heather quotes above: (a) compliance with both the state and federal laws is entirely possible, and (b) the state law is no obstacle to the purposes and objectives of Congress, which are evinced by federal statutes.

This gets us to the crucial distinction: Congressional statutes are law, executive branch enforcement policies are politics. Preemption is a legal question, not a political matter.

After Robert Bork (pictured) was “borked” (lied about ambush-style) by the late Ted Kennedy and his Democratic Party-dominated U.S. Senate in the late 1980s, conservatives set about organizing Federalist Societies in American law schools, which has produced a not-insubstantial bench of judges with records of resistance to what Bork calls “the tempting” in his seminal “The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law“. From this millieu emerged The Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito.

In “The Tempting” and “Slouching Towards Gomorrah“, the greatest legal mind the nation’s highest court would have ever known, describes the politicization of nearly every institution and discipline in America, beginning at least since the late 19th Century, including the global warming “science” institution, but I digress. But in the former tome, Bork goes into detail about how judges cloaked in a robe of esteem and presumed objectivity are tempted to impose their will from a “living constitution”, while still couching their arguments in the language of the actual Constitution. Although given the given the brazenness of President Barack Obama’s actions in office and the testimony of his second appointment to the Supreme Court, even this pretense appears on the wane.

Checks and Balances reduced to We the People

America’s revered “rule of  law” wasn’t involved in Obama’s firing of GM’s CEO, nor in the the imposition of a second moratorium against deep-water oil drilling instituted in clear violation of a federal judge’s Temporary Restraining Order issued less than 24 hours earlier. Those under the moratorium fear challenging Obama in court lest they have his pitchforks sicked on them.

The Democrat Congress doesn’t intervene despite clear violations of federal statutes, giddy with delight that their liberal dreams are being imposed and even go one step further toward the “rule of (liberal) men” with grants of executive discretion in Dodd and ObamaCare bills.

President Obama already signaled the ripping of the blindfold from Lady Justice with the empathizing Sonia Sotomayor as Elena Kagan defends justices amending the Constitution. The Rule of Law seems distant if not dead.

So what of politics? More from McCarthy:

We are a body politicnot a body legal. Federal law is (and is supposed to be) very limited in what it can prevent a sovereign state from doing. Beyond those narrow limitations, the state has discretion to govern itself as its citizens see fit. Similarly, the federal executive branch is vested with vast powers but finite resources, and it has discretion over how it will husband the latter. When a state’s lawful discretionary action conflicts with the president’s lawful discretionary decision not to enforce a congressional statute, that is not a legal issue. It is a political issue.

In such a situation, the job of the federal courts is to stay out of it. Then, in the court of public opinion, Arizona gets to demonstrate why illegal immigration is a huge problem, and the Obama administration can try to defend the de facto amnesty it seeks to confer on the illegal immigrant population. Indeed, it is only when the law throws back its veil and politics is allowed to operate, that we actually get to see that de facto amnesty is the president’s objective. That’s why the administration and its Justice Department want you to think of this as a legal case — if it’s politics, they lose . . . big.

It is very important not to permit the Supremacy Clause’s elevation of congressional enactments, which actually constitute federal law and thus the supreme expression of the national will, to devolve into an elevation of presidential priorities, which are not law at all but political choices that can, in fact, frustrate the national will by not enforcing it.

Obama refuses to obey Constitution to defend the states

Article IV, Section 4 of The Constitution of the United States declares:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Clearly President Barack Obama should be impeached for intentionally not protecting Arizona and the remainder of the Lower Forty-Eight from invasion and just as clearly Judge Bolton has succumbed to the temptation of re-writing the Constitution and statutes as she wishes them to be. She has succumbed to the tempting of the serpent in Garden, as has President Obama, to be “as Gods”.

Bork speaks much of how dependent our system has always been on men and women of character on the bench that would self-discipline themselves not to make law and hide behind such terms as “equal protection” and “due process”.

Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln bemoaned the usurping of We the People’s self governance  with a judicial oligarchy replacing a King; and the near impossibility of impeaching those granted robes and power for life.

Yet now, we also have a character problem in a Congress that will not be a check on a mobster in the White House.

The continued domestic tempting of Justice (Commander-in-Chief) Anthony Kennedy

The American people will most likely have given ObamaDems the boot by the time the Supreme Court reinstates Arizona’s law, but the other bombshell from the Tempted class is on a very different track.

I speak, of course, concerning the striking down of California Proposition 8, which had banned all but opposite-sex marriage (as if) entered into by no more than one man with one woman.

Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker followed Obama-Kagan’s living empathy constitution and declared 5000 years of civilization (much less the Constitution of the United States and 5.5 million voters in the Golden State) null and void with a telegram to Chief Judicial Oligarch Anthony Kennedy to impose gay marriage on America ASAP.

You remember the replacement for Judge Bork don’t you? He upheld the invented right to kill really small human beings lest BMW payments go unpaid. He joined with like-minded liberals to declare sodomy a fundamental right akin to free speech. Finally, he replaced President George W. Bush as Commander-in-Chief of illegal enemy combatants before Obama ran for Mayor of Gitmo.

Into Kennedy’s hands will fall the issue that spelled the rise of empires Roman and pagan throughout history:

Will Man be God via King-like Obamas and judicial tyrants and re-define civilization’s essential institution of the  family with Uncle Sam as daddy in one fell swoop, or will the United States again return to the Creator and self-governance?

Upon this question and those questions to be asked of We the People at the polls in the next three Novembers, does all rest concerning the continuing viability of the Hill upon which this City called America has shined.

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Charlotte Observer, The Minority Report and Examiner.com archives

www.devinelawvista.com

Destroying Our Nation One Concept at a Time

The old saying is that you eat an elephant one bite at a time. The concept is timeless and has application across broad swaths of society, including politics. Incrementalism is a well established tactic, particularly by the political Left and judicial activists. The idea is that you need not reach your goal in one fell swoop. It might take longer, but goals can be just as surely, and often more permanently, accomplished in several steps.

The tactic is being effectively applied to basic tenets of American culture. We see it when Supreme Court justices put international precedents on a par with the Constitution when deciding cases. We see it when US troops, who swear allegiance to the Constitution, military officers and military legal code of the United States , are put under the military command authority of foreign armies. We see it when easily understood and universally accepted concepts are perverted. It is hard not to see, particularly this last tactic, as both intentional and designed to undermine US sovereignty.

Consider Tim Graham’s NewsBusters expose of its most recent application by Jorge Ramos, a Univision anchor and the focus of Time Magazine’s, “10 Questions for Jorge Ramos”. His first question is “As a Mexican-born, naturalized U.S. citizen, what is your take on the immigration debate?” His outrageous answer is, “The Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal, but right now millions of men and women in Arizona and in other parts of the U.S. are not being treated as equals, and I can’t believe that. Countries are judged by the way they treat the most vulnerable, and the most vulnerable population in the U.S. right now is undocumented immigrants.”

The Declaration, indeed, recognizes all men are created equal. This is a foundational principle of the country to which Ramos himself swore allegiance when he became a citizen. Yet nothing in the Declaration lets Ramos ignore US law or advocate for others to do so under the guise of equality. The equality the Declaration recognizes is that there are basic rights belonging to all men which must be equally recognized by all men. Further, no man or government is permitted to violate those rights. Ramos’ notion of equality seems to be that all men must be considered American citizens in order to be equal.

Ramos gratuitously alleges millions in the US are treated less than equally. Such a notion is indefensible. Everyone in the US must obey its laws and the laws of the states in which they are present. Insisting they do so is not unequal treatment. It is the essence of equality. All who break the law must answer to the law.

Equality requires the law to be applied the same to all men, even illegal aliens. Ramos wants illegal aliens to be exempt from some laws. That’s hardly equal. Ramos refuses to have illegal aliens abide by the same 4th Amendment Due Process protections the rest of us must rely on. That’s hardly equal. Illegal aliens and citizens alike are protected from running afoul of law enforcement because they have dark skin and a Hispanic surname. They must first be found or suspected of violating another law before their immigration status is relevant.

Of course, law enforcement might abuse its authority. It has happened before and there are precedents to deal with that. That, too, is part of equality under the law. But one cannot assume because the possibility exists in any given situation, the reality exists in all situations. Ramos’ argument depends on that assumption. It’s not that law enforcement might violate the rights of Hispanics on occasion. He must argue for a routine, near universal, violation of the rights of Hispanics. There is no evidence supporting this conclusion.

Finally, such reasoning requires Ramos to apply as valid a concept he must also condemn as wrong. Law enforcement cannot draw negative conclusions about Hispanics based on heritage but Ramos can draw negative conclusions about law enforcement based on occupation. Once again, that’s hardly equal.

It is precisely such small and incremental devaluations of language and concepts that must be exposed, condemned and corrected if our country’s heritage and strength are to endure. Ramos, and those like him, are ignorant of the most basic concept upon which this country was founded; that all men, even the King, are subject to the law. It is “Lex Rex” (The Law is King) and not “Rex Lex” (The King is Law). Rather than call Ramos on his ignorance, Time celebrates it. Such a disregard for truth by Ramos and Time serves no one, least of all the illegal aliens in our midst.

Allowing such specious reasoning to muddy the waters only means the needed solutions to such a vexing question are put off even longer while small minds rail against the very concepts established for their protection. It also weakens the strength of our nation, the same strength so many come here to be protected by, one ignorant argument at a time …

Drug law crack-up welcome

John McCain Should Be President. He Has Some Explaining To Do.

Today I again wish Barack Obama had lost the election of 2008. Again, I wish that John McCain were the president. Ironically, today at least, this has nothing to do with any particular disagreement I have with how President Obama is handling his duties. Today, at least, it has nothing to do with the fact that I admired the courage and grace shown by Sarah Palin as she was set upon by the vile and despicable denizens of JournOlist.

My desire for a fictitious John McCain Presidency comes from my desire to see him deliver a State of the Union Address next January. I want to see this man mount the podium in the teeth of the condign anger of the America he has made less safe and less prosperous. On the issues of taxation and immigration that John McCain has explaining to do.

We know well that 1 January 2011 marks the expiration of the tax cuts enacted under George W. Bush. We know this will not be a pretty thing. Deutsche Bank issued research regarding what would happen once the tax cuts lapsed.

The nascent US economic recovery would be halted in 2011 if Congress fails to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, analysts at Deutsche Bank said. …Deutsche said the drag on gross domestic product should they lapse could be as much as 1.5 percent, with the more likely impact at 1.1 percent.

(HT: Jeff Cox, CNBC)

This information becomes public against the leafy, green backdrop of the Commerce Department “re-issuing” three years of economic numbers in a shiny, red “Blame George Bush” collector’s edition. Details of the carnage follow below.

The Commerce Department, in revisions issued Friday, estimates the economy shrank 2.6 percent last year — the steepest drop since 1946. That’s worse than the 2.4 percent decline originally estimated. The economy’s plunge underscores why the unemployment rate surged to 10.1 percent in October, a 26-year high. The revisions in gross domestic product, or GDP, now show zero growth in 2008. That compares with a 0.4 percent gain previously estimated. The economy also grew less in 2007 (1.9 percent) than earlier thought (2.1 percent).

(HT: Jeannine Aversa, Rueters)

Keep in mind that it was Senator John McCain who spear-headed the demand to make the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts passed under President Bush expire in 2010. We would love to hear his perspective on how he would intend to “save or create jobs” in his own right in the face of a 1.5% down-step in American private sector wealth. This is your tidal wave, John McCain, explain to me why you would be better at allocating all of this wealth than a professional investor or industrialist. Explain to me why you and your fellow Senators have a moral entitlement to do so.

Taxes are not the only issue on which I’d love to see John McCain tap-dance on the hot stove of voter indignation. Federal Judge Susan Bolton last Wednesday struck down several portions of an Arizona law giving state authorities expanded authority and responsibility for enforcing Federal immigration laws. In her ruling, she disallowed a provision of Arizona SB 1070 that would have required officers to check the immigration status of suspected illegal immigrants.

“The number of requests that will emanate from Arizona as a result of determining the status of every arrestee is likely to impermissibly burden federal resources and redirect federal agencies away from the priorities they have established,” Bolton wrote. “Federal resources will be taxed and diverted from federal enforcement priorities as a result of the increase in requests for immigration status determination(s),” she said.

(HT: Waren Richey, Christian Science Monitor)

The question John McCain should have to answer involves why this situation ever reached the point at which actually enforcing a set of laws already on the books as a part of the USC could be construed as an impermissible burden to Federal resources. Why is this law against being in the US being so flagrantly violated? This is a question for John McCain because his legislative career has done nothing but aid and abet the problem.

In 2006, John McCain spear-headed a legislative attempt to give the 400,000 people illegally in the State of Arizona an attenuated path to citizenship. This attenuated path to citizenship would have leapfrogged every one of these lawbreakers ahead of anyone stupid enough to go through the INS and immigrate to the United States in the legally proper fashion. His legislative initiative told the lawbreakers that Washington was really on their side.

As Senator McCain did everything in his power to make Arizona prostate before an unstoppable wave of undocumented immigrants, his sycophantic two-star flunky, “Senator” Graham from South Carolina libeled opponents of the measure by announcing “We will not let the bigots win.” As Arizona lost $2B every year because of illegal immigration and the U3 (not U6 mind you, U3) unemployment rate in border cities, amongst legal US citizens approached 20%, they finally took action born of desperation, and passed SB 1070. This all took place while their own Senator, John McCain, sold them down the river so that he could be seen as a “Mavarick.”

So once again, I wish John McCain were President. This time, for a change, this has nothing to do with any personal discontent I have with Barack Obama. It’s because once a year, at the State of The Union Address, the President has to face America. In 2011, with the Bush tax cuts expired, and the Arizona immigration law felled by nefarious, political lawfare, I would not want to be on that podium.

But somebody deserves to have to stand up there and try explaining to America why their country had been so sordidly raped by its uncaring, elitist, political leadership. I would hate being the guy who had to do it. I would especially hate being the guy who had to do it if I had as much to do with that state affairs as John McCain has throughout his political career. Next year’s State of The Union Address may be the one time in his adult life when John McCain actually deserves to be The President of The United States.