Let It Burn?

As you know, conservatism/the GOP has a lot of internal problems right now. They cover a lot of ground, but I think they especially relate to what kind of party or movement the Right wants to be. I don't have an answer myself, but it's best to talk about it.

Just about a year ago, us Commentaramans (not sure if that's a word, but I'm rolling with it) rang in the presidential election. As you may remember if you were on the site, things got kinda ugly. Profane rants, gnashing of teeth, condemning the public in general and anyone who might have been even slightly responsible for Obama's victory, slightly inebriated excoriations of said groups on Facebook, etc. I don't remember what everyone else on the blog was doing.

Anyway, the general bitterness lingered, and over the next few days, a lot of us discussed how we were going to relate to Obama-voters from now on. The consensus: Let it burn. Screw trying to mitigate the Dems' screw-ups, or make the pain of ObamaCare slightly less severe. Boycott all organizations and businesses associated with TOTUS, only patronize those who lean Right, let the liberals ram everything they want through the government, and allow the rest of the country to choke on it. It didn't entirely stick, of course (though I for one have only ordered pizza from Papa John's since then), but it was so mean-spirited, and it felt sooo, so good.

Again, such a course is not exactly being followed. Consider the battles of the past year in Congress. Say what you will about the merits of the amnesty fight, there's no doubt those opposing any kind of immigration reform truly believed it was their duty to keep Obama from bringing into the country a whole new voting bloc for the Dems and leaving the Left in total control for the foreseeable future--whether or not that would have happened is of course another story, but they clearly believed it would have and that they ought to prevent it. Ditto for the whole ObamaCare/shutdown blowup last month. Congressional Republicans had no intention of letting ACA in all its awfulness come crashing down on the public without a fight. Regardless of their strategic or tactical wisdom (or lack thereof), they're still invested in the governing process and contesting the Left's agenda where possible (at least in theory).

That's not going to change. But I do wonder where much of the base stands on this. Browsing the blogosphere as I often do, I come across a lot of loose talk about how we ought to have just let the government go bankrupt and crash, forcing people to take responsibility for themselves instead of relying on DC, inducing a constitutional crisis, and basically just starting from scratch. Of course it sounds vague; no one knows how it would go off in reality. It is, however, a very tempting idea.

Of course, this is kind of an updated, slightly more bitter version of the whole "going Galt" idea from a year or two ago. It comes from Atlas Shrugged and suggests that the productive elements of society should, in effect, cease to be productive, cloistering themselves and their resources while the unproductive hangers-on are forced to either starve or adapt. I've always been of two minds about this idea. There are days when I would opt for the whole "nuke the system"/"post-apocalyptic" scenario, especially when there's a particularly outrageous story in the news--days when I would accept such a breakdown, hardship and all, just to force the Left and all its constituents into brutal reality. But again, the question is, could we accept this in reality?

The truth is, as much as a lot of us would like to fantasize about burning it all down and starting over, we are very rooted in the world we live in. We like hanging out with our friends, watching the game on TV, living a quiet life--all that. And while I would never suggest the kind of government we have right now makes that possible--truth be told, it kinda undermines it--the stability that comes from a lack of inner political turmoil does. Efforts to collapse the system might not hurt us right away, and the long-term damage might well be very survivable, but there would be effects from provoking crisis after crisis and a breakdown in government efficiency. Our international financial position would suffer, our infrastructure would decay, many places would see a breakdown in law and order....think Detroit writ large. It might not be horrific, and we might be better for it afterward, but it would hardly be pleasant to experience.

As a political philosophy, conservatism has always recognized this on some level. Among its first principles are 1) A reluctance to sacrifice the personal well-being of others for the sake of some quasi-utopian vision of government, 2) A belief that continuity and gradualism are preferable to rapid and violent change, and perhaps most importantly 3) The certainty that there is always much good in the world, and that it ought not be thrown away for no reason. All of this militates against the "going Galt"/"Let it burn" theory.

I won't say this means we shouldn't at times sacrifice our peace and tranquility to go toe-to-toe with the Left on something of importance. Obviously, we have to every now and then. It also doesn't mean I won't indulge fantasies about applying the wrecking ball to the diseased parts of society every now and then. Rather, it means that if we engage in real talk about bringing down the government or attacking whole institutions, we ought to pause and consider the cost before going any further with it. And who knows, it may be worth it. But make sure it is first.

Kind of a tangential issue, I know. But as it's a commonly circulated idea among some on the Right, it's worth talking about a little. Any thoughts?

(Note: Due to an academic conference/ego-stroking session in St. Louis over the weekend, I won't be available to reply to comments, so feel at liberty to rummage through the thread. If I'm not back next week, it means I and other distraught Cardinals fans have decided to end it all.)

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Ain't No Liberals Here. . .

Do you know how you can tell it’s election time? Because the Democrats are scrambling to pretend they’re conservatives. They always do this before elections, it's how they assure the yokels back in the hinterlands that they are one of them, and not some loony Washington Democrat. That means Democrats who’ve been happily supporting everything Pelosi/Obama have done, will now start taking very vocal positions in direct opposition to their party. Of course, these are fake positions, i.e. symbolic at best, but they're hoping no one notices.

In the past couple weeks and days, we’ve seen the following:

• A group of Democrats (WHAP) have “attacked” their leadership for not proposing real spending cuts. WHAP offered symbolic cuts, which they and their friends in the media described as courageous. They were of course nothing of the sort, $40 in every $10,000 of spending.

• Sen. James Webb from Virginia this week argued that it was time for the government to drop affirmative action, which he (correctly) claims helps people who don’t need it and never faced any historic discrimination, and hurts poor whites. Of course, his party will never act on this, so he can safely pound this drum without anything happening.

• Sen. Ben Nelson took the courageous step of declaring that he would vote NO on Kagan. Of course, his vote won’t matter as she is assured to win nomination. . . but just to be safe, he’s made it clear he wouldn’t join a filibuster.

• At least eight Democrats have called for Charlie “RICO” Rangel to resign. They are “outraged” at his conduct. Actually, they are concerned the American people will see his corruption as endemic. So by sacrificing the 80 year old multi-millionaire Congressmen from a safe district who is always rumored to be retiring anyway, they can claim to oppose corruption, even as they remain silent about all the other corrupt Democrats. And if Rangel does decide to retire, every Democrat will rush to the podium to take a meaningless punch at this safe target for the benefit of the viewers at home.

• A week or so ago, Obama’s HHS mysteriously issued a ruling that basically prevents abortion from being included in policies issued under the high risk pools being set up for ObamaCare. The pro-abortion people claimed they were caught off guard. Is this a pro-life victory? No. This is a sales pitch. This lets about 40 Democrats, e.g. the Stupak group, go home and tell their districts that their cave-in on ObamaCare actually did result in keeping federal funds from being used to fund abortions. Then, after the election, HHS will suddenly revise the rule to allow abortions.

• And as Bev pointed out, Steny Hoyer is actually trying to claim the Republicans want to raise your taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. . . the same tax cuts they've been promising to let expire.

You can expect a lot more of this until November because this is how the Democrats survive. They vote far left on vote after vote in the Congress and happily support Lunacrats like Pelosi in the leadership, but then they cast a few symbolic votes in the other direction, make a few angry conservative speeches, point a dirty finger or two at their corrupt leaders, and generally pretend that they aren’t really what their record says they are.

Now this is not to say that they will ignore their leftist base, but they leave that up to others at this point. Indeed, while these Democrats are putting on their “I’m more conservative that Rush Limbaugh” masks, national Democrats like Howard Dean and Democratic organizations like the NAACP are out there working hard to excite the base. For example, both Dean and the NAACP have been busy slinging racism charges: the Tea Party is racist, the Republicans are racist, this ham sandwich is racist, wahhhhhhh. They’ve also been promising to end global warming, end capitalism, and turn the whole world gay.

Sadly, this has been working. Too many people in too many places like West Virginia and Ohio only hear about the few symbolic conservative instances and they don’t realize that their “conservative” representative has a liberal voting record eerily similar to Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi.

That’s why it’s important to call the Democrats out on this. When Nelson says he’s voting against Kagan, ask him why he waited to announce his vote until after it became clear she had enough votes to get nominated and why he won’t filibuster her if she’s so unqualified? When WHAP talk about spending cuts, ask them why they couldn’t find more than $40 dollars out of every $10,000? When your representative tells you they think Charlie Rangel should resign, ask them why they don’t feel the same about Max Baucus, Maxine Waters, Obama/Clinton/Sestak’s Jobsgate, and a dozen others. When Steny Hoyer speaks. . . ask him if he's really that stupid.

Their conservatism is for show only.

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There Will Be No Gays In The Future

Oh boy, look at that title. People are going to go ape sh~t. Add in that this post touches upon abortion and maybe it’s time to head for the old bunker? No. It’s cold down there, and the television reception stinks. Let’s just plow ahead. When we started this blog ten months ago, one of the first articles I posted dealt with the reasons I felt that gays should be very cautious about joining hands with pro-abortion groups. In light of some recent statistical evidence out of China and India, it’s time to revisit that discussion.

At the start, let me say that I’m not talking today about the morality of abortion or homosexuality. So let’s leave those issues for other days. What I am talking about here is the intersection between political decisions today and the world of tomorrow. All I want to do is ask the question of whether or not there will be gays in the future.

Gendercide: The Parental War On Girls

In nature, there are around 105 males born for every 100 females. These numbers have been constant all over the world for many decades. Indeed, these numbers are so constant that scientists are now sure that this is nature’s way to ensure a 1 to 1 ratio at the time of puberty because males are more likely to die than females before reaching puberty.

But China and India are turning nature on its head. In China and India, there is a distinct preference for males. This has led to what has been called “Gendercide” in both countries. Girls in China and India are often considered too expensive to keep. They require a dowry to marry off and they are perceived as “leaving” the family to marry, whereas sons stick around to take care of the parents as they age. Thus, for a long time now, baby girls have often been murdered at birth or left to die (not coincidentally, this resulted in an abnormally high suicide rate among young mothers).

Until recently, however, the effects of this were not very pronounced on the population numbers. Indeed, as late as the 1980s, the sex numbers were only slightly skewed above the 105 to 100 ratio. But in the past decade or so, the effects have become shockingly obvious as the numbers have spiked. In China, the ratio of males to females in the younger generations now averages 124 to 100! In some provinces, this number is as high as 130.

To give you a sense of the magnitude of this problem, the China ratio will translate into 40 million surplus males (or missing females) of marrying age in 2020. That is equal to the total number of expected males of marrying age in Germany, France and Britain combined in 2020. That is also the same number of marrying age males expected to live in the United States in 2020. That’s really bad news for China, as single males mean crime and upheaval. And it could be even worse for China’s neighbors, as war is a great way to thin the male population and bride-napping is becoming big business in some parts of the world.

And before you blame China’s one child policy, that does not appear to be the problem. Indeed, India has a similar ratio, but no similar policy. South Korea hit 117 to 100. The Philippines hit 109. Even somewhat western countries like Serbia (108), Macedonia (108), Armenia (117), Azerbaijan (117), and Georgia (111) have reached unnatural levels. And lest you think this couldn’t happen here, there is evidence of similar ratios starting to appear in Asian-American communities.

So what has caused this sudden surge? Ultrasound equipment. The introduction of ultrasound has coincided with the spike in sex-selection based abortions. Indeed, this is borne out even within these countries, where abortions are much more prevalent where ultrasound machines are introduced. India has tried to combat this by making it illegal to abort a child to choose the sex of the child. But women have gotten around this by getting ultrasounds from one doctor and then having another abort the girls.

What all of this tells us is that people find early term abortion much more palatable than infanticide. We can conclude this because the preference for males has not changed in these countries, yet the number of abortions spiked with the introduction of ultrasound gear. That means that parents are much more willing to abort a fetus than they are to kill a child after it is born. Moreover, the massive numbers indicate that a shockingly large number of parents are willing to make this decision, perhaps as many as a third.

Gendercide Round II: The Coming Parental War On Gays

So what does this have to do with gays? Everything.

First, I accept the idea that homosexuality is genetic. I don’t accept this because gays claim to feel born that way. Indeed, our own justifications mean nothing when it comes to explaining human nature, because humans are inherently self-delusion and are extremely good at justifying their own behavior to themselves. What convinces me is the ever-more-proven fact that most of our impulses, especially when it comes to sex, are genetic in nature.

In fact, over the past few years, scientists have discovered that despite our culture’s obsession with skinniness, men and women do not prefer skinny partners. They prefer partners who have the “appropriate” proportion between hips and waist -- no matter what the size of the body. These results transcend culture, race and age, and, apparently, we don’t even consciously realize that we are using this as a search criteria. Similarly, a link has been found between race preferences and body fat percentage when people engage in interracial dating. Other recent studies have shown that all humans, again regardless of culture, find near-symmetry beautiful in humans (but not perfect symmetry, which we find disturbing). They have even found now that the biggest indicator of what will attract mates is smell, which may clue us in regarding the “genetic distance” and health of a potential partner. Interesting.

What all of this tells me is that our sexual impulses are hardwired by our genetic code, and that we are not even consciously aware of why we act the way we do. Thus, I have no reason to think that homosexuality isn’t anything more than a genetic variation.

Now here’s the catch. If this is true, then we will soon find the “gay gene.” If the gene can be repaired, then I have little doubt that parents will have it fixed before the child is born. Why? Because as genetics takes greater leaps into remaking the human being, we are already seeing parents opt for a variety of preferences. If it becomes common to remake children to be stronger or smarter or change their eye color, it will certainly become common to remove genetic defects that lead to diseases or other negative hereditary conditions -- like baldness or stuttering, for example. Under such circumstances, it is simply inconceivable that parents would leave in place a gay gene that gives the child impulses that run counter to what 97% of the general population possess.

In other words, even leaving morality out of this, it is inconceivable that parents would leave in place genes in their children that limit their chances of finding a happy mate to less than 3% of the population (a percentage that will shrink continually as other parents make similar choices).

More importantly, even if no fix is ever found for the gay gene, just being able to locate it will be enough to start the cascade of abortions that will eliminate homosexuality. Indeed, if parents think nothing of eliminating baby girls because they want to control the sex of the child, there is no reason to think that they would be any more troubled in eliminating children with the gay gene, especially if devices like ultrasound allow for the clearly more palatable choice of early term abortion.

Thus, it is likely that parents will start to eliminate homosexuality from our species through these practices, and I suspect that there will be no significant amount of homosexuality within a few generations.

Can this be stopped? Probably not. If you make abortion a right, then you can’t really say “except where we don’t like your reasoning.” Indeed, as I noted in my first article on this, Sweden has now ruled that if abortion is to be a right, then the state cannot prohibit sex selection as a motive. And even if you did prohibit abortion based on the presence of the gay gene, how do you keep parents from doctor shopping as they do in India?

Should this be stopped? I guess that’s up to you. But if you’re gay, then you might want to reconsider who your political friends are. Maybe helping to make abortion a right is not a great idea. In fact, as China and India are demonstrating now, maybe letting people select the “options” their kids will have is not a great idea for anyone?


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Obama Agenda: Ethics

Today we continue our walk through Obama’s agenda by examining the issue of ethics. Stop laughing. Obama, like every other recent administration, promised to be the most ethical administration in history -- a pledge he broke, like his predecessors, the minute his implant-laden booty hit the big chair. Now, he’s paying a heavy price for this, as ethics have climbed to the top of voters concerns about his administration.

Promises Ignored

Let’s knock out the easy ones first. These are the promises Obama made that he ignored after he took office, i.e. no action taken:

• To issue an executive order that requires all new hires to affirm that no political appointee offered them the job “solely” on the basis of political affiliation or contribution.

• Issue an executive order banning registered lobbyists from giving gifts in any amount or in any form to executive branch employees.

• To end “the abuse” of no-bid contracts by requiring that all contracts be competitively awarded.

• To require his appointees to conduct significant business in public, so that any citizen can see in person or watch on the internet.

• To create a “contracts and influence” database that will disclose to the public how much federal contractors spend on lobbying.

• To create a central database of lobbying reports, ethics records and campaign finance filings, so that people can easily see what is going in their government.

• To seek an independent watchdog agency to investigate congressional ethics violations.

Promises Broken

Now let’s look at the more problematic ones. These are the ones where Obama took action, but not the kind he said he would. These are the ones he’s been breaking left and right. Most of these deal with lobbyists or transparency:

• Obama promised he would not accept contributions from Washington lobbyists and political action committees.

But he did. In fact, he received a ton of money from these very people. For example, among his list of “bundlers” (i.e. people who gather contributions from groups of people or organizations (think "personal PAC")), you would find directors of Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Capital Partners, Landmark Partners, various hedge funds, Merrill Lynch, New Century Financial, and UBS among many others.

And Obama wasn’t shy about rewarding his top donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with the administration advisors and invitations to events. Examples of the privilege that came with giving bribes. . . er contributions, include:

USB CEO Robert Wolf, Obama’s top contributor, who got to golf with Obama in Martha’s Vineyard. Thirty-nine donors who were treated to a lavish St. Patrick’s Day celebration. One donor got a birthday visit to the Oval Office. Another got to take his family bowling in the White House. Others get to watch movies with Obama. No word if they all snuggled together as Obama picked $1,000 bills out of their underwear, but it sounds likely. Other donors received a personal visit from deputy chief of staff Jim Messina who flew to Los Angeles and San Francisco to provide in-person briefings on Obama’s health care plans.

Obama assigned Chicago lawyer David Jacobson to dole out ambassadorships to his most prolific donors. Jacobson asked each to provide a list of their top six choices and then sorted out the list. Some examples include: music executive Nicole Avant, who became ambassador to the Bahamas, and fundraiser Alan Solomon who got Spain.

Other contributors were appointed to presidential commissions and advisory panels, like the president’s Economic Advisory Board (Pritzker, Wolf) or the Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of the American Latino (Lopez, Pollak). Penny Pritzker, by the way, the Obama campaign finance chair, is the former CEO of a defunct bank that was deep into a subprime lending scam in Chicago. Pritzker wasn’t charged with a crime, but “voluntarily” paid the government $460 million to defray the government’s losses.

On this whole issue, the White House has gone from saying it wasn’t happening, to suggesting that these donors were invited by people other than Obama and the DNC to laughably saying: “I would say that from our reckoning, our research, there are fewer donors getting fewer things, whatever you may call them, from this White House than from any White House in memory.”

• Close the revolving door on former and future employers. And I quote: “No political appointees . . . will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.”

This was the cornerstone of Obama’s ethics platform, and he’s broken it repeatedly.

Team Obama granted three waivers to former lobbyists, allowing them to serve in the administration (e.g. former Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn, who is now deputy secretary for defense; Jocelyn Frye, a lobbyist for the National Partnership for Women; Cecilia Muñoz, a lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza). Moreover, they’ve let them work in areas from wence they came.

But this doesn’t tell the whole story. In some instances, Team Obama hasn’t bothered with the waivers, relying instead on the lobbyist-turned-appointee to recuse themselves from matters on which they worked as lobbyists. This includes, for example, Mark Patterson, the chief of staff to Tim Geithner, who worked as a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs in 2008 and has never obtained a waiver. Determining the exact extent to which Obama has broken this promise is not easy as Team Obama has played games with releasing information about the waivers they’ve granted and the recusals supposedly undertaken.

Now Team Obama is singing a different tune. Apparently, they’ve discovered that some lobbyists are good people and many others bring expertise that you just can’t find elsewhere. Compare that to Obama’s campaign stump speech:

“Make no mistake: We need to end an era in Washington where accountability has been absent, oversight has been overlooked, your tax dollars have been turned over to wealthy CEOs and the well-connected corporations. You need leadership you can trust to work for you, not for the special interests who have had their thumb on the scale. And together, we will tell Washington, and their lobbyists, that their days of setting the agenda are over. They have not funded my campaign. You have. They will not run my White House. You'll help me run my White House.”

Not a true word in the bunch.

Even where Obama appeared to take a tough stance on lobbyists, he ultimately didn’t. Like those serving on the Industry Trade Advisory Committees, which give business leaders a voice in U.S. trade policy. Obama claimed his lobbyist rules applied to these boards. But rather than remove the lobbyists, Obama allowed the lobbyists on these boards to simply drop their certification as lobbyists and stay on the Board.

• Require Congress to post bills on line for 72 hours before voting on them and will make them available to the American public for five days before signing them.

Obama and the Democrats have broken this on virtually ever major bill on which they’ve worked, from the credit card bill to the CHIPs bill to the health care bill. In some instances, they haven’t even given the representatives 72 hours to examine the bill before the vote.

• Make White House communications public.

Obama hasn’t done this either. In fact, they’ve gone out of their way to hide visitor logs (something they used to attack Dick Cheney for).

• Nullify Bush attempts to make the release to presidential record more difficult.

Obama hasn’t done this either. In fact, they’ve flat out refused to release Bush-era documents about TARP bailout, and they’ve struggled against FOIA requests by anyone they don’t like.

Further Ethical Deficits

But even beyond his promises, Obama has had serious ethical lapses.

In April, Obama met repeatedly with lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry, the AMA, AARP, the American Cancer Society, the Business Roundtable, Family USA, and the SEIU. All sides officially claim there was no quid pro quo, these groups suddenly decided to support ObamaCare and Obama suddenly decided that they needed tax breaks, needed to have their monopolies protected, needed an additional $250 billion for doctors under Medicare, and needed various other things that Obama handed out like well-paid-for candy. Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that advocates for greater transparency and ethics in government said the meeting “raises issues.”

An interesting side outcome of this meeting was that these groups ended up paying two firms to produce ads. One of these firms, AKPD Message and Media, was founded by David Axelrod, employs one of Axelrod’s sons, and still owes Axelrod $2 million. Smell like bribe?

Team Obama also has been beset by hypocrisy problems. For example, despite his enthusiasm for class warfare, Obama’s cabinet is packed with millionaires, as is 44% of the Congress, compared to 1% of the population at large. Clinton’s net worth is $21 million, SEC Chairwoman Mary Shapiro’s net worth is $26 million. Obama himself is worth $4 million.

Even as late as November 2009, Obama was still appointing officials with tax problems. Obama’s nominee for undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, Lael Brainard, was the fifth Obama nominee who failed to pay her taxes. She joins Tom Daschle, Timothy Geithner, and others.

Team Obama also has shown an inability to be truthful, like when it was discovered that at least 20% of the 700,000 jobs they claim were “saved or created” were fictitious.

The Democrats Aren’t Helping Either

Nor have the Democrats provided much of an example to offset Obama’s problems. In October, we learned that more than 30 House members, most of them Democrats, were under scrutiny for ethics violations. . . Democrats like Maxine Waters (D-Cal), who used her influence to help a bank in which her husband owned large amounts of stock. Laura Richardson (D-Cal) who received special treatment from a lender. Others were accused of steering appropriations to clients of lobbying firms, from whom the Congresscritter had received a bribe. . . er, campaign contribution. This included nearly half the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. Some of these names included Frank Murtha (D-Pa), Peter Visclosky (D-Ind) and James Moran (D-Va).

And, of course, you had Chris Dodd (D-Conn), who got a sweetheart deal from Countrywide, a mortgage company which he regulated. You had Charlie Rangel (D-NY) who apparently doesn’t pay taxes. He’s also under investigation for his travel, his financial deals, his fundraising and his financial disclosures. And let’s not forget William Jefferson (D-La), who went to prison with a 33 year sentence for bribery, fraud and money laundering.

Basically, you can’t swing a dead voter without striking a Democrat under investigation for corruption. The problem, of course, is that the weasels are investigating themselves.

The effect of all of this is that Obama may go down in history as the most corrupt administration of all time. U.S. Grant must be smiling.


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Journalism Is Dead

With Glenn Beck, not the mainstream media, exposing Van Jones for the rest of us, it might be the appropriate time for a little rant against the state of modern journalism. How to put this: “Journalism Is Dead.” Yep, that about sums it up. And I have particular anger for Fox News.

Modern journalism is in a bad state. Though, to be fair, most of what ails modern journalism has ailed it since journalism first began:

• Modern journalists are biased. True enough, and when I get the chance, I will put together an article showing you just how biased. But journalistic bias is nothing new. Indeed, at one time, journalists were openly biased. When you pick up the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, for example, you’re looking at a paper that was founded as a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party.

So even though the New York Times is a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, that’s nothing new -- they’re just less honest about it. Same thing with the Associate Press announcing just prior to the election that they would no longer present all views “uncritically,” but will instead put their own spin “on the news”. And while this may represent a change of official policy, it certainly won’t change the practice, which has involved spinning for as long as I can remember.

• Charges of being co-opted are nothing new either. The Founders called for a free press. But other countries have not been so noble. Pravda means “truth” in Russian, but you would have been hard pressed to find much truth coming from Pravda during the cold war. The Pentagon periodically gets caught paying journalists to present favorable opinions on its behalf. And while corporations now dominate journalists, this is not so different than the days when Randolph Hearst ran his newspaper empire with an iron fist.

Modern journalists are also an easily co-opted group. The Washington Post tried to use its connections to sell “off the record” private meetings between the rich and powerful and those with too much money. White Houses have learned to manipulate the press corp as well by granting special access. . . hello ABC. The NFL, a master at manipulating journalists, dispenses tickets, interviews, and access to keep its journalists in line -- when they don’t outright hire them. Corporations have gotten very good at using journalists for their purposes as well. Maria Bartiromo of CNBC got in trouble when it was revealed that she accepted favors (like flights on private jets) from the same people she reported on. And CNBC has started pimping for sponsors, unless you want to believe their repeated “spontaneous” sales pitches for Gap jeans are actually news.

At this point, modern journalists are little more than press agents for the people they cover.

• Charges of sensationalism are not new either. Sure modern journalists try to create crises and false urgency to sell their work and they often trade in salacious details rather than relevant fact, but that’s all been done before. The phrase “yellow press journalism,” which fanned the flames or populist resentment to begin the Spanish American war, was hardly meant as a compliment.

The Real Problem Is Journalistic Laziness

So what is different today? Frankly, journalists have gotten lazy. How else do you explain the media, with its vast resources and supposed training and drive for the truth, being scooped repeatedly by bloggers? How else do you explain allowing plagiarized work to appear in a paper like the NYT day after day for so long without any editor noticing? How do you explain journalists who don’t know what they are talking about and don’t take the time to inform themselves?

You do know that you really can’t trust anything they tell you, right? As anyone who has ever been involved in an incident that ended up getting press coverage can attest, the journalist is often the least knowledgeable person in the room, both when they arrive on scene and when they leave. And few facts survive the journey through the journalist’s mind to reach the work itself, if they ever made it into the mind in the first place. Indeed, in my experiences with journalists, I have been shocked to see how poorly the journalists understood the events about which they reported and opined, and how little they cared.

And frankly, modern journalists are a strangely uninquisitive lot. They don’t know and they don’t want to know. Why? Maybe because the more you know about something, the more you realize just how much more you don’t know. Perhaps, it’s easier to remain ignorant of our ignorance. After all, ignorance is bliss.

So how does this manifest itself? It manifests itself in many ways. Stories are shallow and often wrong on fundamental levels. Journalists do little work to cultivate contacts, which used to be the lifeblood of journalism. Instead, they read the AP wire or scan the net. Place a quick mid-night phone call that won’t be returned in two rings, and bamo, you have a story and a failure to deny the story: good to go! Journalists no longer even wait to confirm their stories with a second source, which used to be the fundamental rule of journalism. Instead, they just add the magic words “is being reported” to let you know that this news is really only rumor. And when was the last time you heard of real investigate journalism?

When I look at modern journalism, the writing is poor, the research is worse or non-existent, and the reasoning is laughable. Not a week goes by that I can’t find some article that contains such obvious logical inconsistencies that the journalist should have realized their “facts” were impossible. Even when I read a “reputable” magazine like the Economist, I marvel at how easily I can rip up article after article without even researching a single fact. Your names are wrong, your dates are wrong, your numbers don’t add up. You just claimed an average rate that exceeds the population size. You claim that no one raised and objection, right before quoting someone who objected. Think people.

My Problem With Fox “News”

So what bothers me about Fox News? Fox News had a unique opportunity and they blew it. When Fox burst onto the scene, conservatives flocked to Fox in drove because they were sick of hearing their views ridiculed on each of the other channels. At that point, Fox had a chance to re-define journalism.

Fox could have changed the face of modern journalism. Fox could have forced journalists everywhere to start dusting off their sense of journalistic integrity and to stop being so damn lazy. But they didn’t.

Fox could have teamed up with a good reporting unit like the Washington Times and started to give us hard hitting news. They could have easily drawn in people like John Stossel and asked him to perform the kind of investigative journalism that he has done so well throughout the years -- hard facts, gathered through traditional means and verified, fairly presented, with logic and reasoning and without political bias. But they didn’t.

Did you wonder what life was really like on the streets of Baghdad when all that CNN would show you was Marines being killed? How about an investigation into what caused the banking crisis? Who was responsible? What is China doing in Africa (future article coming up on that one)? Did you even know they were in Africa? How about the Saudis? Does ethanol make sense?

Well, Fox didn't investigate (though their anchors happily gave you their opinions). Fox does not produce its own news, it just reads wire service reports. You can get those on-line a lot quicker and a lot more accurately (Fox shortens the reports to keep them simple). Fox does not do investigative journalism -- other than puff pieces. They will never uncover a government fraud or expose a defective missile system, because they just don’t do that kind of work. And they barely know other countries exist.

Fox doesn’t bring in experts to enlighten you, it brings in combatants to snipe at each other for thirty seconds before the segment ends. Fox News is news for those with attention deficit disorder. It is for people who want to hear someone argue for their side, it is not for people who are looking to learn the truth. It is talk radio, done on television by well-endowed anchors and anchorettes. And we conservatives accept this because there is no alternative.

Now, I'm not saying that the other networks are better, they're not. But that doesn't change the fact that Fox is offering very shallow product to us. It also doesn’t change the fact that Fox is squandering a golden opportunity here. If they tried harder, they could redefine news and give the words "journalistic integrity" some meaning again. They could give us the free press that a democracy needs. They could enlighten us about the world around us, about our politics, about each other. They could tell us the things we need to know to make good decisions. And most importantly, they could give us a source of news that we could trust. But that would be hard.

* end of rant *

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United States of America™, Property of Goldman Sachs

In 1873, Mark Twain co-authored a book called The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, and thereby gave a name to era between Reconstruction and the Progressive Era. Were Twain alive today, he would likely name our present era “The Second Gilded Age.” And nothing illustrates this more than the many-tentacled creature known as Goldman Sachs.

The Gilded Age

Events today read like a repeat of the Gilded Age.

The Gilded Age is generally considered to have begun under the Grant administration. It was an era noted for massive corruption, dramatic social and economic upheaval, and a shocking incestuousness between big business and government. These two became so intertwined that the public came to see government action as nothing more than favoritism, bribery, kickbacks, inefficiency, waste, and corruption. Smart people.

The Gilded Age was the age of robber barons, like Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John Pierpont Morgan -- names that continue to mark our most powerful corporations today. It was the time of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed, of corrupt local politics and election fraud, of Republican Mugwumps calling for an end to the spoils system in the civil service, of Bourbon Democrats calling for free market reforms, and of national parties ignoring all the cries for reform. And in 1889, this Age gave us the Billion Dollar Congress, an outrage that seems quaint compared to this year’s trillion dollar deficit.

The Gilded Age also gave us waves of immigrants to keep factory costs down, Chinese labor to build the nation’s railroads, and the birth of labor unions. The media too was changing, with the introduction of yellow press journalism, and the abandonment of factual news for sensationalism and sentimental stories. And the economy endured two depressions, the Panic of 1873, caused by the manipulation of the gold market by Jay Gould and James Fisk (“Black Friday”), and the Panic of 1893, a deep depression that ushered in the Progressive Era.

Sound familiar? Try substituting Goldman Sachs, ACORN, Tea Party, Mexicans, infrastructure, Madoff, Stafford, and reading this again.

By the 1890s, the Gilded Age was ending. Spurred on by reformers, the government imposed new regulations in response to corporate excesses, dangerous workplace and consumer conditions, exploitive labor practices, and anti-competitive behaviors. Many of those regulations remain with us today.

Goldman Sachs: The Corruption of the Revolving Door

It seems we are doomed to repeat the Gilded Age. And as history loves irony, the company at the center of this Second Gilded Age is a company formed at the tail end of the first Gilded Age: Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs was founded as Marcus Goldman & Co. in 1869. It was renamed Goldman Sachs in 1882. The company made a name for itself in its pioneering use of commercial paper and it joined the New York Stock Exchange in 1896. Over the next 100+ years, it would grow to become one of the most influential companies in the world.

Now before I continue, let me be clear, I do not believe in conspiracies. There is no small group of illuminati that meet regularly to decide our fates and control the world. That said, I am not fool enough to believe that our government acts in the best interests of its citizens. It should be painfully clear to all of us that the government responds to those who have the most access to it. Thus, where we find access, and we find favored treatment for those with access, we must wonder whether the system is working or not. That is the point to this article.

Nor, is this article an attack on Goldman Sachs per se. Goldman is simply one of dozens of groups with too much influence. I have picked Goldman from the crowd only because they’ve made it very easy lately to see how they use their influence to help themselves at our expense.

How Much Influence Does Goldman Have?

How powerful is Goldman? Said one recent commenter: “It’s Goldman’s world, folks. We just live in it (at Goldman's discretion, of course).” Consider these facts. In October of last year, the New York Times reported that thirteen Goldman employees worked in senior positions with the George W. Bush administration. This included Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, and the man who would oversee the TARP, Neel Kashkari. The Times called this “Government Sachs.”

The Clinton administration too was staffed with Goldman employees, including Treasure Secretary Robert Rubin. Obama, who received $918,000 from Goldman employees for his campaign, also has hired his share of Goldman alumni. Indeed, in a rather controversial move, Timothy Geithner hired former Goldman employee Mark Patterson to be the Treasury Department Chief of Staff, in direct violation of Obama’s “no lobbyists” policy.

But Goldman employees aren't just in the administration. Goldman employee Robert Zoellick is president of the World Bank. Mario Drahi is the governor of the Bank of Italy. Romano Prodi is the former Prime Minister of Italy. Mark Carney is the governor of the Bank of Canada. Michael Cohrs is the Head of Global Banking at Deutsche Bank. Malcolm Turnbull is the leader of Australia’s Liberal Party. Jim Cramer spends his days talking up Goldman Sachs on his show on CNBC, along with former Goldman alum Erin Burnett. Edward Lampert bought K-Mart in 2003. Ashwin Navin is President of BitTorrent. John Corzine, the former head of Goldman Sachs became a United States Senator and then governor of New Jersey. And there are many more.

Some are in key positions that regulate Goldman itself. Goldman alumnus Stephen Friedman and current Goldman board member, became an economic advisor to President Bush and Chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, before leaving the administration to become Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s Board of Directors. . . the agency that regulates Goldman Sachs and which has a significant role in setting interest rates, which affect Goldman directly. Even worse, Friedman received a waiver, allowing him to remain on Goldman’s board during his time on the New York Fed. However, when it was learned in May 2009 that he purchased 52,000 shares of Goldman Sachs in January, he resigned from the Fed “to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Wouldn’t want that.

William Dudley, a former Goldman economist, was appointed as president of the New York Fed to replace Tim Geithner, who was mentored by former Goldman CEO and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Rubin has been an economic advisor to President Obama.

Goldman executive Gary Gensler became the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, replacing Brooksely Born, who was criticized for failing to regulate the derivatives market. Gensler himself stated that Born, “should have done more to reign in exotic financial instruments that have battered global markets.” What went unmentioned, however, was that Born’s efforts to regulate derivatives were blocked by Goldman alum Robert Rubin, who recommended to Congress in 1999 that the Congress strip the CFTC of its regulatory authority over derivatives. More on Goldman’s role in the derivative issue in a moment.

Goldman's Influence Equals Power

So what has Goldman gotten from all this influence? Remember cap and trade? Goldman Sachs, which gave $4,452,585 to the Democratic Party, has been pushing cap and trade because Goldman dominates the new carbon-credit market. Matt Tabbi of Rolling Stone notes that this

“is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that’s been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.”

In an interview in July 2009, former Assistant Secretary of Treasury Paul Craig Roberts was asked “Does the US Secretary of the Treasury work for the people or does he work for the banking system on Wall Street?” He replied: “He works for Goldman Sachs.”

Do you remember the bailout? The bailout was designed by former Goldman leader Hank Paulson. Here’s what you might not know:

• Paulson let Goldman competitor Lehman Brothers go bankrupt. The very next day, Paulson established the bailout program.

• Paulson put Goldman employee Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the bailout (TARP) funds.

• Paulson gave $300 billion in taxpayer money to Citigroup, which was run by ex-Goldman head Robert Rubin.

• Paulson gave $138 billion to help Bank of America buy, and thus bailout, Merrill Lynch, then run by former Goldman employee John Thain. According to recent testimony by Bank of American president Ken Lucas, Paulson threatened Lucas to go through with the deal and to pay off bonuses to Thain and others. Thain, by the way, was rumored to be John McCain’s choice for Treasury Secretary had he won the election.

• Goldman/Treasury employee Robert Steel was put in charge of Wachovia, which he turned around and sold to Wells Fargo after a few months, triggering $225 million in golden parachutes that went to a handful of Wachovia executives, including Steel.

Now consider the AIG shell game. As we noted above, Goldman alumnus Robert Rubin stood in the way of the CFTC regulating derivatives. A derivative is basically insurance against a bond defaulting. When the derivatives market took off, AIG became heavily involved. Goldman was the first group to realize that AIG had underestimated the risks in issuing these derivatives and it bought lustily from AIG.

When the market turned and it became clear that AIG had over extended itself and likely could not pay off these derivatives (in fact, the company appeared ready to fail), Paulson stepped in. He not only agreed to bail out AIG to the tune of $85 billion, but he put former Goldman employee Ed Liddy in charge of AIG. Liddy paid $13 billion of these moneys over to Goldman, paying off 100% of AIG’s debt to Goldman. No other institution received 100 cents on the dollar from AIG.

But this is nothing new for Goldman. According to Matt Tabbi, Goldman has been heavily involved in inflating every bubble and then profiting from the bailouts that follow the busting of those bubbles.

Nor is Goldman’s influence limited to the national level. Do you remember Goldman head John Corzine? He’s now the governor of New Jersey. Guess what company floats bonds for New Jersey? More interestingly, in November 2008, it was revealed that at the same time that Goldman was selling bonds for New Jersey, it was telling its wealthiest customers that they should short those bonds. This advice would make those bonds appear riskier than they actually were and would increase the interest rates the state needed to pay on future bonds (and Goldman profits).

At the same time, the Los Angeles Times accused Goldman of doing the same thing in California.

Conclusion

This is not an issue of Republicans or Democrats. Both sides are equally guilty. Nor is this an issue of Goldman Sachs being evil or running the world. Goldman is simply taking advantage of a system that lets people move between government and industry with amazing easy, that lets people profit from conflicts of interest, and that converts our government from a referee into a cash machine. It is time for serious ethics reform to prevent the types of arrangements that make the above possible.


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Sotomayor Needs To Withdraw

In a story the mainstream media seems intent on ignoring, it was revealed this week that Obama Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor belongs to a “secret society” known as the Belizean Grove. Her membership in that group violates the code of conduct that regulates the behavior of federal judges and, therefore, her nomination should be withdrawn.

Because of their position, federal judges are held to a higher standard than the rest of us in terms of their public comments, in terms of their financial affairs, and in terms of the groups to which they choose to belong. Indeed, according to Canon 2 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which regulates the conduct of federal judges, judges (like Judge Sotomayor) must “accept restrictions that might be viewed as burdensome by the ordinary citizen and should do so freely and willingly.”

Her membership in the Belizean Grove violates this Canon of judicial ethics in three ways:

1) Judges Must Avoid Even The Appearance of Impropriety and Bias
Section A of Canon 2, requires that judges “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary,” including avoiding “even the appearance of impropriety.”

While the Canon does not contain an exhaustive list of unallowable behavior, the comments to Section A explain that the test for determining whether or not conduct constitutes an impropriety is:

whether the conduct would create in reasonable minds, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances that a reasonable inquiry would disclose, a perception that the judge's ability to carry out judicial responsibilities with integrity, impartiality, and competence is impaired.

Sotomayor’s membership in the Belizean Grove, at the very least, creates the appearance of a lack of impartiality on her part. That is sufficient to violate her ethical obligations. (Whether there was actual bias should be examined as well should she not withdraw.)

Secret societies typically are formed so that members can help other members succeed by favoring them over non-members wherever possible. The Belizean Grove is no different. It’s own website concedes that the group was established in response to “the power of the Bohemian Grover, a 130-year-old, elite old boy’s network” after “realizing that women didn’t have a similar organization.” In other words, the group was established to create an "elite old girl's network." This is confirmed by the group’s mission statement, which provides that:

The Belizean Grove is a global constellation of influential women who are key decision makers in the profit, non-profit and social sectors; who build long term mutually beneficial relationships in order to both take charge of their own destinies and help others to do the same.

At the very least, these statements appear to identify the group’s purpose as the promotion of bias in favor of group members, which would violate Canon 2’s requirement that Sotomayor take no action that casts doubt upon her impartiality. Remember, whether or not Sotomayor acted on such bias is relevant, the appearance of impropriety is sufficient to violate the Canon.

And before you think this is hypercritical, ask yourself if you were accused of a crime, how comfortable would you feel knowing that the judge and the prosecutor (or the victim) had both agreed to enter into a “long term mutually beneficial relationship.”

Moreover, Sotomayor’s silence on her membership and the fact that the group has a secret membership list make this issue all the worse, in that litigants would have no way of knowing if they were facing a stacked deck (which affects everything about how an attorney would handle the case).

Would this not call into question the integrity of the entire judicial system if people knew that some unknown number of judges might favor an equally unknown group of possible litigants or attorneys? Could you ever believe that you got a fair trial?

Thus, even if the group’s purpose is ultimately benign, her membership creates the appearance of impropriety, which violates the code of judicial conduct. She should have resigned. When she failed, she violated Cannon 2, and she should not now be allowed to sit on the Supreme Court.

2) Judges May Not Allow Others To Suggest Special Influence

Section B of Canon 2 provides that judges may not allow their “family, social or other relationships” to influence their decisions, nor may they “convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.”

Belonging to a secret society violates this Canon. Indeed, even if Sotomayor has never once allowed her judgment to be swayed, her membership in this group allows other group members to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence her decisions.

And while you may say the fault of such a statement lies with the person making it, the Canon makes it clear that the judge is at fault for putting themselves into a position where others can make such claims of influence.

This is a primary reason that judges resign from even the most benign sounding groups, like charities or hospital boards, so that no one can claim to have the ear or the loyalty of the judge.

Thus, again, her membership in the group violates this Canon and she should have resigned.

3) Judges May Not Belong To Groups That Practice Discrimination

Finally, Section C of Canon 2 provides that a judge may not be a member of any “organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin.” The Belizean Grove does. Thus, her conduct violates Section C as well.

Now some will argue that this group's purpose is not invidious discrimination, but that it exists solely to "promote" women. But it is clear from the Belizean Grove’s own mission statement that they discriminate on the basis of sex, in that they are open only to female members. This is invidious discrimination just as if it were open only to white or males.

Moreover, the purpose of the group as discussed above, is not to promote women generally, but to discriminate in favor of female members. That too is invidious discrimination.

Sotomayor’s conduct violated all three parts of Canon 2. It is inconceivable that she could not have known this. That she would have continued in her membership despite this is a violation of the Code, for which she should be sanctioned, and which should preclude her from being appointed to the Supreme Court.
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A Word of Advice To The Gay Community: Rethink Your Friends

Before we get into this, let’s be absolutely clear about one thing . . . I am NOT taking a stance on abortion or on homosexuality in this post. I may in the future, but not today. So DO NOT start arguing about whether abortion/homosexuality is right or wrong. Capiche?

Many of you may have missed it, but the other day Sweden became the first country in the world to decide that the government (and doctors) may not stop women from using abortion to select the gender of their children. This practice is already wide-spread in India and China, where the number of males now far exceeds the number of females, even though both governments have made the practice illegal. In Sweden, it is now a right.

As India and China have shown, and as Sweden is now demonstrating, a great many parents are willing to go to fairly extreme lengths to get the “perfect” child. Indeed, many fear that as genetic manipulation becomes more prevalent, parents will begin selecting specific traits for their children. Want an athlete, add the strength and speed gene. Want a scientist, give them the brainiac gene. Want a natural leader. . . Khhaaaaaan!!! Pushed too far, we could even end up with multiple strands of humanity -- the athletic, the intelligent, and the rest of us.

Why should this bother gays? Most gays firmly believe that they are gay because their genes have made them so. The jury is still out on this, but it’s certainly highly possible. And if this is true, then it is only a matter of time before that gene can be found.

Now let’s put two and two together. If parents will abort a normal healthy child because they don’t like its gender, or because it has some genetic disease or an unfavorable genetic trait, how do you think they will act when they discover that their child carries the gay gene?

So does it make any sense for gays to align themselves with the abortion rights crowd? Isn’t that like helping to build the gallows from which you will be hung?

I could understand the position of gay groups if they thought it was going to be illegal to abort children because of their homosexuality, but Sweden tells us that it won’t be. If Sweden won’t protect fetuses based on gender, how can they protect children based on sexual orientation?

Moreover, even if such a law could be put in place, the Indian and Chinese experience tells us that parents will find ways around it.

So as a word of advice, you might want to rethink your allies.
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