10/28/2009 Page 1 Issue 142
The "Bold Colors" Conservative Voice in
Washington
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
Obama's Tangled Contradictions
From the Battle Line Culture Wars
Obama's Tangled Contradictions Chesapeake Science Renewal
by Donald Devine by Dennis Avery
Dollar Fall Luxury Over Health?
by Fred Kingery by Linda Halderman
Inflation-Adjusted Money Kerik Persecution
by Wesbury and Stein by Bob Barr
Media Pass in Review Political Front
Beck Populist Revolution Nobel Fraud
by Daniel Crandall by David Keene
Inadvertently Finding God Obama Is Miss World!
by S.T. Karnick by Mark Rhoads
Left v Right Protest News Carter's Divisive Politics
by Brent Bozell by Craig Shirley
Government Maneuvers Reader Backfire
Anti-Youth Health Care Maxine on ObamaCare
by John Goodman
No Rights for Right Activism
EPA Retards Growth by Bill Sizemore
by Alan Caruba
Reader Comments
50 Government Wastes
by Brian Riedl
10/28/2009 Page 2 Issue 142
Obama's Tangled Contradictions
by Donald Devine
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
Everything President Barack Obama touches is caught in a tangle of
contradictions. Every time he tries to follow his leftist “progressive”
handbook on one issue, it conflicts with another dogma as both hit hard
reality, which causes him to flinch.
The most important matter for Mr. Obama is the economy. His presidency
will sink or swim depending on how it performs. As a good progressive, he
embraced a straight John Maynard Keynes line by adopting a $787 billion
stimulus and a $2 trillion Federal Reserve increase in monetary liquidity.
This unprecedented infusion of funds into the economy did produce a
recovery of sorts. The economic optimists like Brain Wesbury and Robert
Stein even think growth will rise to an impressive 5.5 percent annual rate.
But they also warn that the Fed and Treasury will have to tighten money
and spending at least by 2012, when inflation will become impossible to
overlook any longer, leading to another slowdown and possibly a new recession and stagflation.
At least this scenario might get the president past the next election. But it is doubtful the dollar’s
weakness can be ignored that long and a more immediate contradiction will get him first. The fact is,
all that money produced few jobs, and even fewer long-term ones. Indeed, unemployment is still
increasing. Since the start of the late 2007 recession, 8 million jobs have been lost - the first time
there has been a decline from a decade earlier since the big 1930s crash. Economists Joseph Seneca
and James Hughes of Rutgers estimate that even with a go-go 1990s growth rate, it would take until
2017 to reduce unemployment from the current 9.8 to 5 percent. Even many like Robert Samuelson
who think the Fed/stimulus package worked do not see a jobs effect and no one thinks another large
infusion is possible. Unfortunately for the president, voters care more about jobs than growth rates
and stock prices.
Samuelson says the president’s only option is to eliminate government
restrictions that discourage job creation. He recommends starting with the
proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules requiring firms to use
“best practices” to reduce six greenhouse gasses and then prove to the
government that they are actually the “best.” The EPA would decide
whether it actually was the best on a case-by-case basis, delaying or
denying permits that could have produced jobs. He was not optimistic that
Congress or the president would act because green interests would not let
them. He also mentioned current restrictions on oil and gas drilling as
costing jobs. He could have added Obama’s proposed new cap-and-trade
energy limits making such matters even worse, or “fuel efficiency”
standards that make now profitable U.S. autos unprofitable by having to
subsidize smaller cars, hardly job creators. But the unions and the green
lobbies will not let this happen, whether it means lost jobs or not. Job
creation and progressive goals just happen to be in conflict.
Or take health reform. The president has demanded a plan that would expand coverage to the sick
and all who are uninsured, would lower costs, and would not increase the federal deficit. Needless to
say these clash with each other – trying to insure millions more people at less cost. But even the
health goals collide. One of the top progressive goals for the past half century has been “community
rating” –not allowing insurance companies to charge higher premiums based on preexisting poor
health status or high risk factors. Yet, another goal is to positively make people healthy, promoting
so-called wellness, both to satisfy the progressive altruistic instinct that leads it to promote health
10/28/2009 Page 3 Issue 142
reform in the first place and to supposedly save money on future treatment. It
turns out that both Senate bills enable higher premiums for people who smoke, who do not manage
their obesity, who do not regulate their glucose intake, who do not exercise and so forth.
Unfortunately, propensity in these matters is mostly pre-existing so insurance companies will be able
to get around community rating restrictions with higher non-wellness
premium increases.
The other top goal of progressive health reform has been to assure
that everyone is covered by insurance. The reality is that the young
are less ill than the elderly and so they often take the (minor) risk of
being uninsured to avoid insurance premiums. Requiring all to
purchase insurance or pay a penalty means that healthy young people
who will tend not to need health insurance will have to subsidize the
elderly who tend to get sick – costing thousands of dollars per year for
mostly low-earning young entry workers. Presumably to offset this,
retirees are asked to bear somewhat more of the burden. The result
of this conflict is that both groups oppose the plan. A poll by the Galen
Institute shows 71 percent of Americans oppose mandating insurance
coverage with a penalty for not purchasing it and 68 percent oppose even small restrictions on
seniors. In addition, if additional taxes, penalties and premiums are actually imposed, job growth in
this one-sixth of the economy will be further restricted.
The inconsistencies are not restricted to domestic policy. President Obama has been consumed for
weeks in making a decision about Afghanistan. Progressive doctrine has always supported nation
building, guaranteeing world peace and promoting global democracy, with Woodrow Wilson’s “14
Points” setting the shining example. Ronald Reagan was often criticized for supporting right wing
“dictators” who helped advance U.S. interests or for removing American marines from the Middle
East (by Clintonite Louis Freeh, for example) rather than idealistically pursuing human rights and
democracy in the Wilsonian manner. Yes, progressives shrunk from Vietnam at the end and opposed
Iraq – but that was because Richard Nixon and George W. Bush managed them. Under John
Kennedy and Bill Clinton nation-building was fine. But now, as in Vietnam and Iraq, things are
getting tough in Afghanistan, in what Mr. Obama called “the necessary war.” Will he chose
progressive nation-building or progressive peace and understanding? It has all become very
confusing.
A particularly perplexing challenge to progressive orthodoxy
rose at a recent football game when Nikole Churchill, having
been elected Hampton University homecoming queen, was
“heckled” at the game and later on-line because of her race,
according to the Washington Post. But both Hampton and its
opponent Howard University are black and the beauty queen
was white. The incident was simply ignored until Ms. Churchill
wrote President Obama and asked him to come to her university
and explain to her fellows why they should “stop focusing on the
color of my skin” and look at her qualifications. How is a
progressive bureaucracy like the Civil Rights Commission
supposed to solve something like this? It is “supposed” to be the
other way around. Not surprisingly, Ms. Churchill has, as yet, to
receive a reply.
If it were not so serious, one would be forced to laugh at the perplexity of the president’s position.
The contradictions inherent in progressivism are becoming painfully obvious now that it has the
power to force its program. Instead, everything in President Obama’s liberal playbook has become
irreversibly tangled. He is still doing rather well in the polls personally but everything he attempts to
do results in contradictions that ultimately will tie so tightly around the progressive ship-of-state
propeller, it will simply stop. Then real reform can begin.
10/28/2009 Page 4 Issue 142
Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of
the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 under Ronald Reagan and is Senior
Scholar at Bellevue University’s Center for American Vision and Values.
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10/28/2009 Page 5 Issue 142
Dollar Fall
by Fred Kingery
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
If you've seen the movie "Thelma and Louise," you'll never forget the
ending: In the last scene, the two main characters head down a dirt road
in their top-down convertible. The road dead-ends at a very high cliff. The
last picture of the movie shows the car in a dramatic free-fall off the cliff.
That ending is a perfect metaphor for the fate of the United States dollar.
Our currency is headed for a free-fall off a cliff in the international
foreign-exchange markets. Why is this almost a certainty? Consider the
following.
At no other time in our nation's history has the federal government ever attempted to end a
borrowing binge like the one we are experiencing now; not during the Revolutionary War, the Civil
War, or even World War II.
During World War II, marketable federal-debt levels reached a record 120 percent of GDP. Almost
100 percent of the financing for borrowing came from the savings of American citizens. When the
war ended, the borrowing stopped. Our country emerged from the conflict with 100 percent of our
industrial-economic might intact. We were a net-creditor nation to the rest of the world, we exported
more than we imported, and we enjoyed this very strong economic position with no real competition
for over 25 years. Most importantly, the U.S. dollar became recognized as the one and only global
reserve currency. As the U.S. economy grew, the war debt was reduced to a comfortable 35 percent
of GDP.
Today, our nation faces the opposite. We are now a net-debtor nation, we run large trade deficits,
we have minimal private savings, we face significant economic competition from all corners of the
globe, and, most ominously, over half of our marketable federal debt is owned by foreign countries
that are not particularly friendly to our nation. Thus, the global-reserve currency status of the U.S.
dollar is being seriously challenged. And yet, we continue to set records with unending federal
borrowing.
How did this serious challenge to the reserve-currency status of the dollar happen?
About 10 years ago, an unprecedented economic imbalance developed in the world's global trading
pattern. China became the world manufacturer of first resort and the United States became the
world consumer of last resort.
China, with its low-cost labor pool, became a magnet for global manufacturing. The result, after
almost a decade, is that China has become a leading exporter of low-cost, quality-manufactured
goods. The accumulated trade surpluses over the years have generated a cash surplus position for
China of over 2000 billion U.S. dollars. Not surprisingly, the communist nation has become the single
largest holder of U.S. Treasury debt outside the United States. About 800 billion of the 2000 billion
cash surplus that China holds has been invested in U.S. Treasuries. The Treasury debt held by China
now represents 23 percent of the 3428 billion of Treasury debt held by all non-U.S. citizens.
Additionally, the 3428 billion of Treasury debt held by non-U.S. citizens now constitutes over 50
percent of all privately held marketable debt issued by the U.S. government. The 23 percent position
held by China in particular, and the over 50 percent position held by non-U.S. citizens in general,
represents a financial Achilles heel for the entire U.S. financial system and the reserve-currency
status of the dollar.
10/28/2009 Page 6 Issue 142
Economic warfare against the United States is now a very real possibility. Should
China and a like-minded group of other non-citizen holders of U.S. debt wish to diversify away from
an excessive exposure to the U.S dollar, then our governments ability to secure financing could
become seriously questioned. In addition, our ability to conduct foreign policy and military
operations anywhere in the world would also have to factor in the calculus of future financing. (There
is plenty of precedent for this economic warfare; the 1956 Suez Crisis is one example.)
The risks are clear: We are a nation very dependent on future borrowing to support our current
standard of living. We are also a nation dependent on sources of financing that are increasingly
nervous with our future borrowing requirements. We therefore are a nation that could very easily
loose access to the foreign-sourced financing we have become dependent on. In short, we are now a
nation vulnerable to being forced to raise taxes dramatically or turn to the Federal Reserve to
monetize our future funding needs.
As Treasury borrowing dramatically ramps up in the out years immediately ahead, the call for a new
global financial regime will also ramp up. If that regime is implemented it will not be a U.S. dollar-
based reserve-currency arrangement. The result will be a significant and permanent reduction in the
standard of living of all American citizens almost overnight as the reserve currency role of the U.S.
dollar is devalued.
Individuals can and often do go bankrupt. Sovereign nations can also go bankrupt. The bankruptcy
of a nation just looks different. The beginning of the event is usually marked by a collapse of the
nation's currency. What unfolds next for a country like the United States will probably be highlighted
by the number 20, as in 20 percent inflation, 20 percent unemployment, and 20 percent interest
rates.
The origin of this financial train wreck has more to do with politics than economics. We are a nation
hooked on borrowing simply to support government-sponsored consumption. We are a nation that
demonstrates every day a clear lack of political will to cure our debt addiction.
Consider: If you were a career Washington politician, which would you view as the least painful: a
decision that could result in personal political suicide or a decision to procrastinate on a decision that
could avoid a national economic suicide that you might be able to blame on someone else?
I think we all know the answer to the question. Consequently, there will probably be a "Thelma and
Louise" moment for the U.S. dollar in the not-too-distant future.
Fred A. Kingery is a self-employed, private-equity investor in domestic and international financial
markets from New Wilmington, Pa. and a commentator for Grove City College's Center for Vision and
values.
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10/28/2009 Page 7 Issue 142
Inflation-Adjusted Money
by Brian S. Wesbury and Robert Stein
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
With each passing month, partisan fighting in Washington
gets harsher and harsher. The hostility is in large part due
to the debate on health care, which is an issue where the
two parties and their supporters have very different visions
for the country.
In this atmosphere, we would like to make a simple
proposal – having nothing to do with health care – that
could temporarily bring the parties together in a way that
helps the American people without costing the taxpayer a
dime.The idea is to eliminate taxes on all newly-issued
inflation-adjusted Treasury securities (TIPS).
Right now, an investor who buys 10-year TIPS can get a guaranteed inflation-adjusted (“real”)
return of 1.5%. But the return is on a pre-tax basis. After taxes, the return could be positive or
negative depending on the level of inflation.
For example, if inflation ends up at 5%, the nominal return on TIPS will be 6.5% (the “real” return
plus inflation). A taxpayer in the 39.6% tax bracket would pay taxes equaling 2.6%, which is greater
than the real return, meaning he loses money on an inflation-adjusted after-tax basis. There is also
a problem with investor cash flows. Inflation causes an annual adjustment to the securities’ principal
amount, but investors have to pay taxes on the increase in principal every year, even though they
don’t get the principal until the security matures.
As the US population ages, more and more investors have a simple goal: to hit a targeted living
standard in retirement with minimal risk. Right now, there is no security anywhere in the world that
guarantees an after-tax return, inflation-adjusted, in US dollars.The only entity that can even make
that offer is the US government and so far, it’s decided not to do it.
Making this change is a win-win for the US government and investors. Although the government
would lose some tax revenue, investors should respond by bidding up the prices of the securities,
resulting in a corresponding reduction in federal interest outlays, leaving the federal budget roughly
unchanged.We say roughly, because there is a good chance the reduction in interest outlays will be
greater than the loss in tax revenue, as many investors should be willing to pay a premium for TIPS
that give them absolute certainty about their after-tax return.
Meanwhile, economic populists concerned about foreign ownership of the US debt should also like
this idea. Right now, foreign central banks are already tax exempt. By leveling the playing field, we
could increase the share of the debt owned domestically.
The one key obstacle to this proposal is that state and local issuers of municipal debt, which is
already tax free, won’t like the competition. But the budget process in Washington only requires
simple majorities (not a filibuster-proof 60 Senators) when the plan doesn’t increase the deficit.
Presidential leadership and a few creative minds in Congress should try to make this happen.
Brian S. Wesbury is Chief Economist and Robert Stein, CFA is Senior Economist at First Trust
Advisors.
10/28/2009 Page 8 Issue 142
Beck Populist Revolution
by Daniel Crandall
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
Nothing irritates the elite more than being shown up by those
they consider their inferiors. Make the "conservative" media
aristocracy look bad (not a particularly difficult thing to do), and
charges of populism, or worse, will slide down their noses, as they
grumble about the hoi polloi over cocktails and cigars in the
Brooks-Frum “New Majority” smoking lounge.
Imagine you discover a way to decrease costs, increase revenue,
and give the employees a greater stake in the company. Your
senior manager, however, hates the idea and its radical nature.
“It is not how we do things around here,” you’re told. Undaunted,
you go around him, show the CEO the idea, and she loves it.
It is implemented across the company to great success. There’s a
perceptible shift in the company culture. The senior manager, who
shot it down, despises you because the organization now sees
him, if not as an obstacle to advancement, as someone unwilling
to shake up the status quo because it might put his authority at
risk. Some wonder if he ever cared about the company at all, or
was it just the salary and office perks that concerned him.
Some among the conservative intellectual elite are sounding like that self-serving senior manager.
They are irritated with the populist rhetoric coming from Glenn Beck and the Tea Party activists for
what appears to be no other reason than its effectiveness at mobilizing the public into action.
David Brooks took this potshot: “For no matter how often their hollowness is exposed, the jocks still
reweave the myth of their own power. They still ride the airwaves claiming to speak for millions.
They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are aided in this endeavor by their enablers. …
[T]he slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.”
Glenn Beck, according to David Frum, is “paranoid,” “hysterical,” “none too scrupulous about facts
and truth,” and, perhaps worst of all, “working for himself … [choosing] his targets according to his
own scheme of priorities,” which are limited to making “a pleasant living for himself by reckless
defamation.” I wonder if Mr. Frum is familiar with the term projection.
Stephen F. Hayward is a bit more charitable than Frum and Brooks. Unfortunately, he still sees the
boots on the ground in the political battles as “unfocused, lacking the connection to a concrete
ideology.” While less dismissive of Beck and his fans, Hayward believes good conservatives come
with law degrees (Hugh Hewitt –Michigan Law, Michael Medved – Yale Law, William Bennet –
Harvard Law) or write serious books like William F. Buckley Jr., Milton Friedman or Irving Kristol.
“Today,” Hayward writes, “the conservative movement has been thrown off balance, with the
populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating.”
My bookshelves are full of tomes by conservative intellectuals (Buckley, Hayek, Kirk, Thomas Sowell,
Robert Nisbet). I ask myself at the end of the day, however, did their books reduce the size and
scope of government? No. Have they curtailed federal regulatory infringement on the lives of
everyday folks? No. Has a single conservative intellectual done anything to reverse the trends S.T.
Karnick described:
“Since the end of World War II, the American culture has trended toward ever-greater promotion of
narcissism, self-expression, antinomianism, identity politics, and questioning of all conventions and
authority. It has become an instrument for the devaluation of all values.”
10/28/2009 Page 9 Issue 142
In a word: No. And yet, for many Republicans these intellectuals are the
conservative movement.
Brooks, Frum and other conservative opinion-shapers have been the source for Republican talking
points. Michael Medved, one of those shapers, with the fifth largest audience on talk radio, has
stated the only way beat Obamunism is by “electing more Republicans to high office.”
In one sense, Medved is right. If we want to curtail the Left-wing fast track into the Euro States of
America, then Republicans are the way to go. However, arguing, as often Medved does, that electing
Republicans, especially of the moderate brand, is a way to “fight back against the menacing
expansion of government” flies in the face of facts.
Consider a Heritage Foundation report on welfare spending in America. Spending has seen a steady
upward climb, beginning in 1964 with LBJ and his “War on Poverty” dolling out about $50 billion (in
2008 dollars). In 1981, Reagan was elected and spending dipped, for a brief time, below $300
Billion. In 1996, with welfare eating up about $500 billion, along came Newt Gingrich, the Contract
with America, and “reform” intended to “end welfare” as we know it. In 2008, spending is over $700
billion. Please explain how electing Republicans has stopped the “expansion of government.”
Concerning the intellectuals’ embrace of Reagan (David Brooks notwithstanding), one can only
comment that nothing succeeds like success. In the 1970s, when Reagan’s conservatism inspired
him to oppose Carter’s plan to abandon the Panama Canal the conservative elite, as represented by
Buckley, National Review, et al, stood four-square with … Jimmy Carter.
What really has conservative intellectuals’ panties in a bunch? Are Tea Party folks, as Hayward says,
“brain-dead?” Before these intellectual elites continue down that road, they might want to check with
Mark Steyn, writing at National Review:
The intellectual heft at the tea-party protests consists of the animating principles of the American
idea: the Founding Fathers writ large in comic-book lettering---TRADE FREEDOM FOR SECURITY AND
YOU WILL HAVE NEITHER! That so many conservative sophisticates regard this as either hopelessly
provincial or beyond the bounds of political viability testifies to the real intellectual bankruptcy out
there.
From where I sit, in the hinterlands of the Pacific Northwest, Glenn Beck has done, in about a year’s
time, what the right-wing intellectual elite residing in the New York-Washington DC megalopolis have
never done. Beck got people to put down the books, get off their couches, and get out in the street.
He is not satisfied with simply reading about America’s Founding Fathers or the history of
Progressivism in America. He demands that the People make their views known to their elected
officials. And people are responding.
William F. Buckley Jr. the godfather of conservative punditry, famously stated, “I am obliged to
confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston
telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard
University.” Glenn Beck inspired not 2,000 but hundreds of thousands of average citizens to travel
across America on planes, trains, buses, and automobiles to demand that their elected
representatives live up to their oath of office and “support and defend the Constitution of the United
States against all enemies, foreign or domestic.” Today, many of Buckley’s intellectual progeny
bemoan this unseemly behavior; telling this phone directory riff-raff that they should listen to their
betters.
I appreciate the information and intellectual stimulation that comes from the great minds on the
Right, both past and present. Today, however, we have a chance to cleanse the Right of big-
government Republicans and their intellectual defenders with a free-market, liberty-oriented populist
movement. It would be a shame if this opportunity were lost to a few squishy conservatives writing
for the movement's bitter enemies at the New York Times and USA Today.
10/28/2009 Page 10 Issue 142
Daniel Crandall blogs at The American Culture where this first appeared.
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10/28/2009 Page 11 Issue 142
Inadvertently Finding God
by S. T. Karnick
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
The Invention of Lying tells a fantasy story about a world in which people do not
know how to lie. The conceit is that lying is the product of a gene no human had
before it suddenly popped up in Gervais's character, fortysomething failure Mark
Bellison. But instead of simply being a cute comedy based on a silly concept, The
Invention of Lying is an ambitious, largely unfunny comedy based on a silly
concept. It's not nearly as cute, innocent, or funny as Gervais's fans might expect,
In fact, it's really rather dreary. Yet it does have some good points. Although the
early scenes in the film, in which we see Mark's sad, unsuccessful life, are pretty
depressing, there as some funny moments after he invents lying. In addition, the philosophy behind
the film is sufficiently confused and inconsistent to be more interesting than one might expect.
Before Mark invents lying, no one in the society is truly happy. They speak with brutal honesty
toward one another, in particular calling attention to one another's faults and their own very base
desires, and no one seems to mind the situation too much.
However, there's something more than just truth-telling going on here, as the characters in these
early scenes seem like the pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There's no love and no
generosity. People's lives have no meaning, and they don't look for any. They live for the purpose of
advancing the human race genetically, each person trying to find the most genetically superior mate
they can catch. Love does not enter into it.
As it happens, the film posits that human beings have no concept of God, and hence do not see any
higher purpose in life and have no hope of a life beyond death. This seems part and parcel of the
depressing nature of the society depicted in these scenes, though it is difficult to imagine that
Gervais intended to make that particular point, given his public statements about the film.
Nonetheless, it is a definite truth that the godless society is unpleasant and uninspired.
After Mark starts lying, things become somewhat interesting--and human kindness begins to make
an appearance. Mark's lies stop a neighbor from committing suicide, help a homeless man get
money, bring a troubled couple back together, and give hope to a depressed woman and the
occupants of an old people's home.
Mark then uses his invention to enrich himself, as one might expect. But even that does not bring
him happiness, because his real desire, to have the love of beautiful Anna (Jennifer Garner), remains
unfulfilled.
He sets out to become successful at his old job, writing screen documentaries, by telling fanciful
stories that are much more interesting and fun than the true-life tales that had been produced
thereto. The first big story he invents is a clearly mythical saga combining scifi and other fantasy
notions.
Next come the controversial scenes in which Mark invents God and an afterlife. (In the theater at
which I watched the film, there were only two other people at the showing, and they walked out
during this scene. Obviously they were not expecting the overt stance for atheism in the film.)
What motivates Mark to invent an afterlife is something we've seen nothing of to this point: love. His
sympathy for his dying mother inspires him to tell her that there is hope beyond death. It's
important to note that neither Mark nor anyone else in the film shows actual evidence of loving
10/28/2009 Page 12 Issue 142
another person until this moment, when Mark has already invented lying. The
lying gene is strangely connected to the ability to love. As we will see, the key to both is
imagination.
Mark is overheard while telling his mother the good news about the next life, and of course people
want to hear more. Hope is in the air. So Mark explains further. There is a Good Place where good
people go after death, and a Bad Place for the others. He says that doing three bad things will send
people to The Bad Place instead of The Good Place. (That, of course, is nothing like what Christianity
teaches, although one could see it as a misinformed atheist's mistaken impression of the faith.)
Under a good deal of sincere but understandably confused questioning by a great crowd of people
gathered on his lawn, Mark explains more about the Man in the Sky, the afterlife, and morality, in a
scene reminiscent (perhaps too much so) of similar scenes in Monty Python movies.
This is all very difficult for the people to understand, as the early scenes and a park-bench
conversation with Anna have established that what people lack most of all in this fictional world is
imagination. They cannot see past the surfaces of things.
Soon after his invention of The Man in the Sky, however, people begin to lose their concerns about
practical matters and set their thoughts on the next. (Here, too, the difference with Christianity is
evident, as Christians are explicitly called to love one another and be good stewards of the blessings
given to them in this world.) Their new concern for the next life is manifested in the same way as
their previous concerns for this one, however, because they remain selfish and still don't have love
for one another.
Eventually, however, even that changes, as Anna comes to see that a fat little boy tormented by
bullies is "so much more than fat little Brian." She starts to imagine what is behind the boy's dumpy,
genetically unattractive surface.
This leads to a very affecting ending, as Anna finally makes a free choice to marry Mark. (The film,
despite its odd concept, hews to a traditional romantic comedy structure.)
Yet there is a further irony in this. In reacting to Anna's choice to marry a more genetically attractive
man (Rob Lowe), Mark is given a couple of opportunities, including one at the dramatic climax, to
lure her into marrying him regardless of her genetic preference. In particular, she asks him directly
whom the Man in the Sky wants her to marry. All Mark will have to do is say yes, and she will marry
him.
Mark refuses to tell her. Like God in dealing with mankind, Mark refrains from forcing or tricking
Anna into loving him. She must do so of her own free will, or it has no meaning.
So what we have here are two worlds. One, without God and controlled by thoughts of evolution, is
a spectacularly dreary, unhappy place without love or meaning. On the other hand, even a fictional
God brings the world meaning, joy, liberty, and wonder.
Thus although Ricky Gervais has publicly said that his film takes an atheist position, it appears that
even he cannot imagine a happy, emotionally fulfilling world that does not acknowledge a good
many fundamentally religious thoughts, and in particular Christian ones.
S. T. Karnick is editor of the American Culture website, http://culture.stkarnick.com, where this first
appeared.
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10/28/2009 Page 13 Issue 142
Left v Right Protest News
by Brent Bozell
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
Radical-left protesters outside the G-20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh last
week underlined once again that our friends in the news media see no real
enemy or extremist to their left. But conservative protests against Team
Obama are an ugly sign of incivility, and according to House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, even impending violence.
HBO talk show host Bill Maher exemplified the liberal-media atttitude on his
Twitter page on September 24: "Even with a face full of tear gas, these G-20
protesters [are] better looking than the teabaggers."
But there’s a big difference between the sea of tens of thousands of
conservative protesters in Washington on September 12 and the three
thousand anti-capitalist radicals in Pittsburgh. The tone from the podium in
Washington was happy and patriotic, which meant nothing to The Washington Post, which covered it
as an outpouring of a "spectrum of conservative anger."
But in Pittsburgh, protesters on September 24 assembled with no permit to march, and destroyed
property on their route. On radical Pacifica Radio, they championed a guy calling himself Reverend
Billy of the Church of Life After Shopping. He sounded like Nancy Pelosi’s nightmare: " Some of us
will go to jail today! We will take care of you! We will be there when you get out!" And then this:
"Some of us may lose our lives today! We will respect you! You will be our heroes!"
No one heard this rant on national TV.
As usual, network reporters couldn’t even place these fringe activists as "liberal," let alone far-left.
On "The Early Show" on CBS, viewers could see wacky signs that read "No Bailouts, No Capitalism"
and "No Borders, No Banks." But amazingly, reporter Susan Koeppen portrayed them as nonpartisan
police...victims. "Protesters have been hit with a massive police presence," she announced. "During
the day, police set off pepper spray, forcing marchers and the media to flee." Koeppen mentioned in
passing that the protesters had no permit, but she let the leftists run down the cops. "There is no
freedom of speech in this country, there is no right to assemble!," claimed one. "These are all rights
that have been violated today!"
Speaking of Nancy Pelosi, her old Democratic primary opponent Cindy Sheehan was outraged at the
Pittsburgh police presence as well. She blogged: "Pittsburgh is what a police state looks like!...We’re
like ants trying to struggle against anteaters....The cops and soldiers should be ashamed of
themselves for allowing their selves to be used as tools of the Robber Class ‘elites.’"
When Cindy Sheehan savaged George Bush, she was the darling of the major media. She was
lovingly interviewed by Chris Matthews and he urged her to run for Congress.
In Pittsburgh, she was ignored.
CNN demonstrated a dramatic contrast in protest coverage. For the conservatives on September 12,
they found violent radicals. For the leftists on September 24, they found peaceful nonpartisans.
CNN producer Jim Spellman couldn’t find a scary nut in Washington on September 12, so he aired
canned footage of a man – somewhere in Michigan – holding an AK-47 and talking of a possible civil
war. This allowed our intrepid CNN correspondent to highlight a "dark undercurrent" poisoning the
right: "It’s a bit of a dark undercurrent. You have the bulk of the people that are there for low taxes,
10/28/2009 Page 14 Issue 142
less government control, but there really is an element that's got these kind of
outlandish conspiracy theories about death camps and about the, you know, this takeover, people
comparing President Obama to Hitler. That really is a sizable thread. It's not just a couple of people
on the edges."
In Pittsburgh, CNN reporter Brian Todd sang from the usual protest songbook, highlighting the
"very, very diverse" nature of the protesters: "We're told this is the biggest march in Pittsburgh
since the 1970s, estimated at least a few thousand people. But it is much more peaceful, less
confrontational. Very, very diverse group of protesters here, everyone from people protesting the
Chinese occupation of Tibet, to women's rights groups, to anti-capitalists."
Todd interviewed organizer Pete Shell and asked if he worried that anarchists would cause trouble:
"I wasn't that concerned about it, because, actually, they have marched with us in the past, and
they have been peaceful." Todd said nothing about Pete Shell’s website, which touts every radical
cause from the "Cuba Solidarity Project" to sympathy for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
There was no "dark undercurrent" in that interview.
For the record, Speaker Pelosi: In Pittsburgh, there were three thousand protesters and 200 were
arrested. In Washington DC, there were reportedly 75,000 protesters. Try to find a report on a
single arrest.
L. Brent Bozell III is President of the Media Research Center.
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10/28/2009 Page 15 Issue 142
Anti-Youth Health Care
by John Goodman
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
Here we are at the eleventh hour, about to enact
Obama/Baucus/Kennedy/Waxman Care and no one other than the insurance
industry executives seems to be aware of how genuinely foolish this reform is
likely to be.
At the top of my list of foolish things is the idea that no one should ever have
to pay the real cost of his own health insurance. The most popular alternative
is having everyone pay the same premium although, as previously reported,
community-rated premiums are not even good for sick people.
We do not as a rule find this attitude in the market for other important goods.
For example, most of us think people should pay the market price for the
food they eat, the clothes they wear and the house they live in. We also don’t seem to have a
problem with people paying market prices for life insurance or disability insurance.
So what’s so different about health care? There is always the possibility that someone cannot afford
to pay an actuarially fair premium. But there are also people who cannot afford to pay for food,
clothing and shelter. We solve these problems through public and private programs to help people
out. No one is seriously proposing to socialize the food, clothing and housing industries. And if
people can’t afford — or otherwise neglect — to buy life or disability insurance, we have programs to
deal with the sympathetic cases there as well.
I have often said (and each time it provokes a reaction from Uwe Reinhardt) that everyone’s I.Q.
falls about one standard deviation when thinking about the health care system. With same-
premium-for-all life insurance, we all seem to grasp the problems very quickly. With health
insurance, the mental wheels grind more slowly.
Take a healthy 20-year-old for whom the actuarially fair premium is, say, $1,000. Under community
rating, he will have to pay, say, $3,000. But suppose he refuses and remains uninsured. What fine
should he be assessed? Answer: $1,000. If we are going to allow him to obtain insurance even after
he has a medical event (no pre-existing condition limitations), then society is effectively insuring him
anyway and the social cost of that insurance is $1,000. So, a $1,000 fine forces the youth to pay the
social cost of his decision.
Now in the insurance industry there is much worry and gnashing of teeth over the very real
possibility that the youth will pay the fine and remain uninsured. (And, why not? It appears to be a
sensible option.) Problem is, the $3,000 is the needed premium assuming lots of young (and
overcharged) people are participating. If they opt out, then the community-rated premium will have
to be $4,000 or $5,000 — thus encouraging even more people to pay the fine and opt out.
So the industry is apoplectic over the fact that the fine isn’t high enough. What they really want, in
the above example, is a fine of $3,000 for anyone uninsured. In their words, “in order for insurance
pools to work, we need healthy people.” This, of course, is poppycock (but remember, the mental
wheels are still grinding slowly).
Private sector, same-premium-for-all plans do not need healthy people. They need healthy people’s
money. More precisely, they need somebody to gouge in order to offset the people they are
undercharging. A healthy person who pays a fair premium does nothing to help the finances of a
health insurance pool.
10/28/2009 Page 16 Issue 142
But why pick on young, healthy people? If all we are doing is scrounging for
money to subsidize the care of older, sicker people, does it matter where the money comes from?
Why not levy a tax on the Physicians for a National Health Program? They seem to be gung ho for
self-immolation and self-sacrifice in the name of wooly-headed schemes.
Ironically, both capitalism and socialism would seem to work better than the private sector socialism
described above. Under socialism, everyone is enrolled and “premiums” are actually taxes — which
are not optional and which are nowhere near the same for everybody. Under capitalism, premiums
would reflect real expected costs. Our 20-year-old would either pay the $1,000 or self-insure.
Neither system victimizes the young and the healthy, however, as would ObamaCare.
John Goodman is president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
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10/28/2009 Page 17 Issue 142
EPA Retards Growth
by Alan Caruba
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
No single government agency has grown so big and so fast as the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) - and no single agency threatens constitutionally
guaranteed property rights and nationwide economic growth more than the EPA.
It is the Blob that is eating America.
Signed into law by the Republican Richard M. Nixon in 1970, the EPA has so
consistently twisted the truth about the environment that its announcements
must be dissected like a cadaver to find any verifiable facts.
This agency of the government is so brazen that it is currently trying to bully
Congress, the seat of government, into passing the horrid Cap-and-Trade bill so that it might then
regulate stationary sources that emit more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year.
In its endless quest for more and more power over all aspects our lives, the EPA wants to rewrite the
1970 Clean Air Act to include so-called greenhouse gases. That is why its Senate sponsors have
obligingly renamed it a “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act."
It is based entirely on the global warming hoax.
The EPA has been the spear point for global warming, the creation of many worldwide and domestic
environmental groups that continue to lie, saying it is caused by humans. There is, however, NO
global warming. The Earth has been into a cooling cycle for the past decade. The current cooling is
predicted to last for decades to come.
The platform for the global warming hoax has been provided by the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The EPA is justifying its latest power grab claiming that
the regulation of greenhouse gases will avoid a global warming that is NOT happening.
The EPA has such a disdain for real science that it wants to declare greenhouse gases, primarily
carbon dioxide (CO2), as “pollutants” when in fact CO2 has nothing to do with either warming or
cooling.
The simple truth is that water vapor constitutes 95% of all so-called greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere and CO2 represents an infinitesimal 3.616%. Man-made CO2 whether generated by
industry or just a backyard barbeque is an even more miniscule 0.117%. CO2 molecules in the
atmosphere are so diffuse as to render this gas unable to cause any climate change.
The EPA proposal reflects the effort of environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth and
the Sierra Club to thwart the construction of any new plants to generate electricity. This is especially
true of coal-fired plants that currently provide half of all the electricity used daily. Costly technology
to capture and clean emissions is already in place wherever coal or other fuels are utilized.
All industrial activity is the ultimate target. What the nation’s industrial and manufacturing sector
really generates are jobs, profits, stock dividends, and tax revenue.
The climate/energy bill has no basis in scientific fact. Despite a Supreme Court decision, CO2 can in
no way be defined as a “pollutant.” CO2 is vital to all vegetation from backyard gardens to wheat
fields to forests. Humans and other mammals exhale it. Vegetation absorbs and uses it. More CO2
would, in fact, mean more robust harvests and greater forest growth worldwide.
10/28/2009 Page 18 Issue 142
Simply put, the Clean Air Act was never intended to include greenhouse gases
and that is the EPA’s dilemma as it seeks to do what it clearly was never intended to do.
The only good news is that Obama’s environmental czar, Carol Browner, now says that the cap-and-
trade or pollution control act will not likely come to a vote until December. Then or ever, it would
strangle economic growth in America at the same time such growth is taking place in the world’s
emerging powers such as China and India.
While the rest of the world is encouraging industry to provide the jobs and revenue needed for their
population, the United States President and Congress would hand the Greenhouse Gun to an EPA
eager to pull the trigger on our own growth.
Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. A business and science
writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.
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10/28/2009 Page 19 Issue 142
50 Government Wastes
by Brian Riedl
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
With federal spending topping $33,000 per household, its past time to begin
streamlining government.
Reforming expensive entitlement programs is most important. Yet building public
credibility to reform Social Security and Medicare will be extraordinarily difficult if
lawmakers cannot even first pick the low-hanging fruit of government waste.
Thus, lawmakers should immediately address wasteful spending such as the:
• $72 billion in improper payments annually
• $92 billion spent annually on corporate welfare (excluding TARP) versus $71 billion on
homeland security
• $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties
• $123 billion on programs in which government audits cannot find evidence of success
• $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job
• $350,000 to sponsor NASCAR driver David Gilliland; and
• $3.9 million rearranging desks and offices at the Securities and Exchange Commission
headquarters.
“50 Examples of Government Waste” can be found at
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm2642.cfm (click pdf for printable version)
Brian Riedl is Senior Policy Analyst and Grover Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs at The
Heritage Foundation.
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10/28/2009 Page 20 Issue 142
Chesapeake Science Renewal
by Dennis Avery
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
The Chesapeake Bay is in eco-collapse. The once-clear waters are
clouded with sediment, so the eel-grass cannot grow across the
bottom for baby crabs to hide in. The oysters, which once filtered
every bit of the bay’s water twice daily, have mostly succumbed to
such viral diseases as MSX and Dermo.
The bay that yielded 25 million bushels of oyster per year in the
1940s has lately produced only about 200,000 bushels annually.
Chesapeake seafood restaurants mostly import their crabmeat and
oysters. Watermen have left for other jobs. A massive federal
restoration project began in 1983, aiming to cut “over-fertilization” in
the Bay by 40 percent—but regulating sewage plants and farm
fertilizer has failed to make much difference.
We hadn’t done the science. Blaming “pollution” was no adequate
prescription for restoring the Bay’s health. But research has
apparently now found the key. A recent massive experiment in the Great Wicomico River found that
oysters on high shell reefs (16–18 inches above the bottom) are thriving. The test-bed oysters are
fighting off the diseases and grow above the sediment, while oysters on the river bottom and on
lower shell mounds failed again.
The Great Wicomico now has as many oysters as all the waters of Maryland—185 million. The
journal Science reports “unprecedented restoration of a native oyster population.”
It wasn’t pollution. It was the gradual permission for power dredges in the Bay, which traditionally
had permitted only sail-powered dredges. The power dredges tore at the shell piles that were vital to
the health of the oysters and the baywater they filtered. Viruses attacked successfully because the
oysters were no longer growing high up at optimum-flow depths. After the oysters failed, the water
then clouded, hampering the eelgrass and the baby crabs.
The eco-activists’ cries of “overharvesting” and “pollution” led us in the wrong direction. The money
spent on the bay’s restoration up until now has been largely wasted. But now the future of the by
looks bright: give the oysters high starter-reefs, protect them from harvest until they reach
sustaining numbers, and guard the shell reefs against power dredging.
Obviously, we need a better way to harvest oysters—which will provide major benefits to oyster
populations in Europe, Australia and affluent regions around the world where oysters and their
water-filtering have been 90 percent lost.
It seems so simple suddenly! Since we did the research.
The environmental movement hasn’t been much help at fixing things:
• Farmers, not environmentalists, invented the herbicide-based no-till farming that cuts soil
erosion by up to 95 percent.
• The behavior of the ozone hole in the Arctic hasn’t changed since we banned the supposedly-
evil CFCs.
10/28/2009 Page 21 Issue 142
• School children found frogs with too many legs or too few, and the
activists blamed it on pesticide runoff. Science has shown the deformities were caused by
natural parasites burrowing into the leg joints of the tadpoles—and dragonfly larvae eating
them off.
Conservation is a wonderful thing, but it is science that gives us the capacity to achieve it.
DENNIS T. AVERY is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in
Washington, DC. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author,
with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years. Resource: D.M.
Schulte et al; “Unprecedented Restoration of a Native Oyster Population, Science, vol. 325, August
28, 2009; pp. 1124–1127.
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10/28/2009 Page 22 Issue 142
Luxury Over Health?
by Linda Halderman, MD
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
I learned a lot about the cost of health care when I had a hybrid general
surgery practice in California 's rural San Joaquin Valley. My practice
consisted of uninsured women with breast cancer combined with a smaller
percentage of cosmetic patients whose cash payments for "vanity care"
subsidized the treatment of women unable to pay for needed medical
treatment.
Although patients seeking cosmetic services tend to be healthy, I evaluated
them like any other patient. I asked about medical history, allergies,
medications and genetic disorders.
Upon questioning Sherry S., a pretty 46-year-old seeking wrinkle relief, I learned that four of her
immediate family members had been diagnosed with breast or colon cancer before the age of 50.
Alarmed, I asked why she had not had the recommended screening mammogram for more than four
years.
She said that she knew already that her risk for developing breast cancer was likely higher than that
of most women.
"But I don't have insurance," she replied.
A screening mammogram could be obtained for about $90 and was discounted or free at local
facilities every October for "Breast Cancer Awareness Month."
She smiled when I proposed a deal: if she were to get a screening mammogram within sixty days of
her treatment, I would offer a discount on what she paid me for cosmetic services.
"I'll think about it," she said, then shelled out over $400 for Botox TM injections that took me ten
minutes to administer.
Five months later, when she returned for her next wrinkle treatment, she reported that she still had
not obtained a mammogram.
I encountered patients who gladly paid upwards of $1000 in cash for laser hair removal treatments.
The paperwork filled out during their initial consultation asked them to indicate whether or not they
had health insurance. Several hair removal patients reported being covered by Medi-Cal, the
government funded health coverage for California 's low-income population.
A friend of mine sells private health insurance plans. He told me of the 39-year-old father of two
whose family was quoted a monthly insurance premium of $250.
"Are you kidding?" he said, refusing the coverage. "That's almost as much as my boat payment!"
When serving in the Rural Health Center in my community, my colleagues and I offered free or
discounted care for a large number of patients. Many were covered by Medi-Cal or one of dozens of
state programs paid for by the taxpayers of California.
The following items were commonly seen on patients or carried by their dependent children, who
were also covered by subsidized programs:
10/28/2009 Page 23 Issue 142
• Cell phones and "BlackBerry" PDAs, including just-released models with a
price tag of $400, plus an ongoing monthly service fee of $65-$150
• iPods and portable DVD players
• GameBoys and handheld electronic games
• Artificial fingernails requiring maintenance every two weeks at a cost of $40-$60 per salon
visit
• Elaborate braided hair weaves, $300 per session plus frequent maintenance
• Custom-designed body art, including tattoos covering the entire torso, neck and arms, as well
as body jewelry piercing every skin surface imaginable-and a few unimaginable ones.
Custom tattoo work, particularly the "portrait-type" and "half sleeve" art popular in this area,
runs from $100-$300 per hour and can require up to 20 hours of work, depending on the
complexity of the design.
From the office I shared with another doctor at the clinic, I had a clear view of the patient parking
lot. It was not unusual for me to see clinic patients drive away in late model SUVs or cars
customized in the style popular in my area. I was given an education about the after-market
accessories I saw daily, including "mag" wheels, chrome trim, spinning hubcaps and fancy custom
paint jobs. Gasoline prices were particularly high in central California at that time.
I overheard patients and their children chatting as I wrote in their charts. Many had an excellent
command of the plotlines of cable television shows aired only on premium channels. Basic cable in
my area cost over $50 per month, with premium channels extra.
I also overheard the front desk clinic staff members explain politely to angry patients that they did,
in fact, have to make $5 co-pays for an office visit or meet their $20 "Share of Cost" on a $600 bill
as required by Medi-Cal.
Like many of my colleagues in rural communities with few resources, I did care for patients who
actually lived in poverty. For them, luxury meant keeping the utilities on and having clean clothes
for a rare visit to the doctor. In California 's Central Valley , "dirt poor" is not just a phrase. But
these patients, who rewarded me in ways that don't fit in the lines on any tax return, were
outnumbered by others who considered health care a lower budget priority than decorated skin and
expensive toys.
Individuals in this country have a right to decide how -- and how not -- to spend their money.
But that right does not include accepting entitlements without sharing responsibility. Doing so
contributes to the high cost of care that burdens every unsubsidized patient.
If individuals prefer to buy luxury items rather than pay for their healthcare needs, that preference
should not be rewarded while taxpayers struggle to foot their own bills.
Dr. Linda Halderman was a Breast Cancer Surgeon in rural central California until unsustainable
Medicaid payment practices contributed to her practice's closure. She now serves as the healthcare
policy advisor for California's Senator Sam Aanestad while continuing to provide trauma and
emergency services in rural communities.
[Author's note: in three years, I performed over a dozen operations as the result of complications
related to infected or abnormally healed body piercings. Breast abscesses were the most common
pathology, followed by cauliflower-shaped keloid scars that interfered with function. Blood-borne
diseases can be contracted during amateur and prison tattoos and piercings, and patients self-
reported Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV infections. Treatment of the complications of body art
among my patients was largely covered by Medi-Cal or left unpaid.]
10/28/2009 Page 24 Issue 142
Kerik Persecution
by Bob Barr
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
One of the most spectacular falls from grace in recent years is that suffered by
former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard ("Bernie") Kerik. This was the
man who shared the international limelight and afterglow with Rudy Giuliani for
their visibility on September 11, 2001. He had very nearly served as a US cabinet
officer; nominated by former President George W. Bush in late 2004 to be the
nation's second Secretary of Homeland Security (to succeed Tom Ridge).
Bernie Kerik's meteoric rise to the top echelon of government service ended
abruptly, however, just one week after his nomination was announced - the result
of damaging allegations that surfaced and took root in the hot light of the media
scrutiny that surrounded his short-lived stint as secretary-designee.
While most of those men and women who withdraw their names from consideration after a high-
level nomination suffer nothing more than bad publicity and a bruised ego, Kerik's nightmare has
continued for nearly five years and threatens to land him in federal prison for many years more.
Some of those allegations that came to light following his nomination by Bush will be presented soon
in the first of three federal trials Kerik is set to undergo. The case set for jury selection involves
allegations of corruption against the former top cop; later trials will center on charges of tax evasion
and perjury.
The government's relentless pursuit of Kerik raises questions that should trouble all Americans, but
especially those who occupy or may in the future pursue public office.
These concerns date back at least to the time of Kerik's decision to withdraw his name for
confirmation as Homeland Security Secretary. At that time, the district attorney for the Bronx
apparently became intrigued by allegations that when Kerik was police commissioner in 1999, he
improperly accepted renovations to his apartment in that New York City borough. The local
prosecutor's case against Kerik was strikingly similar to the case the US Department of Justice had
brought against former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens - and in which the Department was later forced
to exonerate Stevens after securing a tainted conviction. Unlike Stevens, however, Kerik opted in
2006 to cop a plea to state misdemeanor ethics violations.
Unfortunately for Kerik, that decision was but the start of a long legal nightmare.
During the course of the Bronx investigation, Kerik was subjected to surreptitious electronic
eavesdropping - surveillance that picked up a conversation between Kerik and former Westchester
County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro. Among other things, Pirro was well known for having run
briefly for the 2006 Republican Senate nomination to oppose Hillary Clinton. In one recorded
conversation, Pirro asked Kerik - then a private security consultant - to conduct surveillance on her
husband because she thought he was cheating on her. Although Kerik tried to talk Pirro out of the
surveillance, this brief conversation was sufficient to cause the Manhattan US Attorney to investigate
Kerik for conspiring to illegally wiretap.
The federal prosecutor then pressured Kerik to plead guilty to wiretap conspiracy. The US attorney
also resurrected the Bronx apartment case, this time from the perspective of Kerik not having paid
taxes on the renovations. He tried to get Kerik to plead guilty to this trumped up tax charge as well
as the wiretap charge. When Kerik refused to accept the offered plea, the government moved its
prosecution into high gear. The feds played the hardest of hard ball.
The government successfully stopped a civil suit in New York from proceeding, because evidence in
10/28/2009 Page 25 Issue 142
that case would have proved beneficial to Kerik in the federal criminal case. Also,
and as it does in many of its prosecutions, the federal government brought in testimony by a
convicted felon in the cases it has arrayed against Kerik. The feds also decided to charge Kerik with
failure to pay a housekeeper's Social Security taxes; apparently the only instance in which a public
official has been charged criminally for an infraction that literally dozens of public office nominees
have admitted or been accused of. He has also been charged with improperly taking a federal tax
deduction for a home office five years ago, even though his accountant had caught the error,
amended the return and for which Kerik paid a penalty.
The government has gone after Kerik's defense counsel, and even levied a lien on his home so he
could not obtain a mortgage to secure funds to pay his lawyers. Still, Kerik has chosen to fight
rather than cave. In at least two instances, his stubbornness has paid off. The federal judge
overseeing his cases in White Plains, New York, dismissed a wire-fraud count and also dropped
charges that Kerik had lied to the White House when he denied there were any embarrassing
"secrets" that might harm him or then-President Bush.
A Department of Justice that would attempt to put a man in prison for failing to tell political
operatives at the White House about something that might at some point prove "embarrassing" to
the president, is a Department of Justice that has lost sight of what should be its goal of seeing that
"justice is done," not mounting scalps on the wall.
Bob Barr is a former Congressman and is a lawyer in Atlanta. Check out the BARR CODE Monday and
Friday’s at http://blogs.ajc.com/bob-barr-blog/
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10/28/2009 Page 26 Issue 142
Nobel Fraud
by David Keene
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
Some years ago a friend of mine and I flew from Miami to Johannesburg on
South African Airlines. We bought coach tickets, hoping to score an upgrade
at the airport for the long and tiring flight. The business and first-class
sections weren’t even close to full, so we approached the gate agent with a
good story and high hopes.
Our pleading fell on the deaf ears of the old Afrikaner and Calvinist gate
agent. Like his Calvinist superiors, he wouldn’t approve an upgrade because
we hadn’t earned it and giving it to us “would be bad for our souls.”
When I heard last week that President Barack Obama had won the Nobel
Peace Prize, I couldn’t help wondering whether the Nobel selection
committee had considered how awarding Obama something he hadn’t
earned might affect his soul.
Since his nomination had to have been made less than two weeks after his inauguration and he had
accomplished absolutely nothing but election, his supporters, celebrating his good fortune, began
describing his selection as “aspirational.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, for example, who seems almost
desperate to become court jester to a president again, leaped to Obama’s defense, arguing both that
the president richly deserved the Nobel, but would now have to justify the committee decision by
“earning” it.
Apparently neither the Norwegians nor Brzezinski has experienced the homeowner’s disappointment
after naively paying a contractor for work before the job was completed. If they had, they might
have waited.
The Norwegians seem to have been caught up in the cult of Obama that swept Europe after his
election. Obama was viewed as the leader who would reverse the policies of the hated Bush and
“change” his country to more closely resemble theirs. They no doubt believe the young president,
who has gratifyingly apologized to the Europeans and pledged to emulate their economic and foreign
policies, deserves encouragement.
Some Europeans who perhaps take the Nobel Prize more seriously have been as unimpressed by the
arguments mustered in support of giving it to the president as, say, Rush Limbaugh. The London
Times, for example, wrote that the award “risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronizing in its
intentions, and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun the period in
office.” Others were less kind.
I, for one, applaud the Nobel Committee for finally blatantly revealing itself to be what most
conservatives have known it to be since it got into the business of using the prize to promote its
peculiar ideological agenda: a fraud. If bestowing the award upon Jimmy Carter for bringing peace to
the Middle East and giving it to Al Gore for a sensationalist movie weren’t enough, this one should do
the job.
The London Times denounced the committee for “its obvious political and partisan intent” for
another award to a president who has yet to accomplish much of anything. Whatever moral
authority the Nobel Prize of old retained these selection committee members blew when they in
essence shed their clothes and ran naked down the streets of Oslo shouting political slogans.
10/28/2009 Page 27 Issue 142
It is perhaps not just early, but too harsh to suggest that President Obama has
accomplished so little. He has, in fact, accomplished a fair amount in just the few months he’s been
president. He’s united Republicans in a way that few of us believed possible a year ago, and he’s
managed to reinvigorate the body politic. More Americans than ever are today calling and writing
their elected officials, attending Tea Parties and promising to vote and turn out their neighbors in
2010 and 2012.
Obama has reawakened the healthy fear of an over-intrusive government and reminded Americans
of the importance of federalism and the checks and balances the Founders so wisely built into our
system of government. Seniors, gun owners and others threatened by his brand of change have
been drawn back into the political process, and for that he deserves our gratitude.
Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union.
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10/28/2009 Page 28 Issue 142
Obama Is Miss World!
by Mark Rhoads
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
Johannesburg, South Africa… A three person
committee of the 59th Miss World pageant, has
shocked the beauty pageant world with an
announcement that its judges have already chosen
President Barack Obama of the United States to
win the crown as Miss World 2009 and he will be
crowned on December 12, 2009 at the Standton
Convention Center in Johannesburg.
The 2008 Miss World, Kesenia Sukhinova of Russia
, told reporters in Moscow that she was “stunned”
by the news. “I swear I did not know President
Obama was a contestant. The first 120
contestants were not even supposed to arrive in
South Africa until Nov. 7,” Sukihinova said.
“This is so soon, it just does not seem right,” said
a tearful contestant Joyce Mphande of Malawi.
“President Obama did not even show up for the
preliminary evening gown competition in Dubai
last week.”
Another contestant, Diana Nilles of Luxembourg
said the Miss World crown for Mr. Obama is “a
very good thing.” Nilles said, “We will show
beauty contestants everywhere that our pageant is inclusive of diversity and we will never go back
to the old pro-beauty prejudices of former President George W. Bush.”
But a very different opinion was expressed by The 2006 Miss World, Taťána Kuchařová of Slovakia
who said, “This is so wrong on so many levels. I think he’s cute enough in an odd way, but he just
passed up the swimsuit and all the other events. How is this fair to all the other 120 girls who have
worked for this crown all year?”
“It just proves that their pageant is a joke and ours is the real deal,” said Donald Trump in New
York, who owns the Miss USA and Miss Universe franchises.
David Axelrod said at the White House that “the President did not seek this honor.” Axelrod also said
that this crown should be “a source of pride to all Americans and proves that the three South
Africans have “turned an important page” in rejecting “their past history of intolerance."
Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Vladimir Putin, Korean President Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro,
and Hugo Chavez all sent telegrams of congratulations to President Obama. Brown said, “If the IOC
had been as enlightened as the Miss World committee is, they could have at least had the gallantry
to recognize the sacrifice of Michelle Obama in going to Copenhagen and award her the 2016
Olympic Gold Medal for the Decathalon. That would have been justice for humiliating the President’s
home town of Chicago in losing the host city bid.”
David Axelrod also assured White House reporters that Presient Obama’s teleprompter will not be
allowed to accept the Pultizer Prize for nonfiction next year should it be offered.
10/28/2009 Page 29 Issue 142
Mark Rhoads blogs at Illinois Review, where this first appeared.
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10/28/2009 Page 30 Issue 142
Carter's Divisive Politics
by Craig Shirley
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
There he did it again.
Jimmy Carter, former Jim Crow man, has accused millions of his
fellow Americans of engaging in the type of racial politics that
marked his political career for years, even up to the eve of the
1980 presidential election and for which he has never
apologized or acknowledged.
Branding his opponents as racists is nothing new for the old, self
described “redneck.” In the fall of 1980, he and his minions
unleashed one of the most vicious campaigns in recent
American history against his opponent, Ronald Reagan.
The attacks were so unprecedented, Nancy Reagan did
something herself which was unprecedented; she appeared in a
television commercial taking it to President Carter over the slurs against “Ronnie.” Carter had
shamefully accused his GOP opponent of wanting to divide American, “black from white, Christian
from Jew…”
It was a curious and more importantly nasty and unfounded attack, as Reagan had a long history of
fighting racism and anti-Semitism. As a young man playing football for Eureka College, several
African-American members were barred from staying at a “whites only” hotel. While their coach tried
to make some other accommodations, Reagan took his teammates to his home, where his parents
kindly took them in.
In the 1940’s, Reagan quit a country club in Los Angeles in protest when he discovered it had a
policy of barring Jewish members. As governor of California, Reagan appointed more blacks to
positions in his administration, hundreds more than his so-called progressive predecessors, including
Earl Warren and Pat Brown.
Meanwhile Carter, in the early sixties, supported legislation in the Georgia State Senate, which
would have effectively eviscerated the Civil Rights Act, and would have prevented the desegregation
of public schools there as well as open housing.
In 1966, during the contested gubernatorial election in Georgia, Carter had a choice as a State
Senator. He could support the Republican, Bo Calloway. He could support the moderate Democrat,
Ellis Arnall. Or he could stand with Lester Maddox, one of the repugnant leaders of segregation in
the South. Carter chose the stand with Maddox, in order to protect his political future.
During the nasty 1970 Democratic primary for governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter’s campaign mass
produced photos of his opponent, Carl Sanders, with the black members of the Atlanta Hawks.
Sanders was the real progressive in the campaign.
Even as late as 1976, Carter, while campaigning in the South, praised Senators John Stennis and
Jim Eastland, two longtime Southern Democrats who were supporters of “Massive Resistance,” the
attempt by some whites in the South to oppose racial integration. For the record, Lyndon Johnson
also supported Massive Resistance.
When reporters caught up with Stennis to ask him his position on racial desegregation he replied,
“I’m against it. Always have been and always will be.”
10/28/2009 Page 31 Issue 142
Also that fall, Carter’s home church, the Plains Baptist Church, voted to ban
blacks from joining. Carter did not quit in protest, knowing it would undermine his “Southern
Strategy” in the election. Weakly, he said he would attempt to change the policy from the inside.
In 1976, Carter took all of the South, excepting Virginia, and the region constituted forty percent of
his electoral total. He knew in 1976 and again in 1980 that to win, he needed to hold onto the states
below the Mason-Dixon line.
If possible, it got worse in 1980. His campaign produced newspapers ads charging Reagan with
wanting to win so he could stop Carter from appointing blacks to government. Fearful of losing urban
black votes to the independent candidacy of John Anderson, his campaign ran false ads on African
American radio stations claiming Anderson had voted against the Civil Rights Act.
Even liberal editorialists eviscerated Carter for his vindictive campaign and two Democratic
opponents, Hubert Humphrey and Ted Kennedy had often complained over the years over Carter's
nasty brand of politics. The great Hugh Sidey of Time Magazine wrote at the time, “The wrath that
escapes Carter’s lips about racism and hatred when he prays and poses as the epitome of Christian
charity leads even his supporters to protest his meanness.”
In Carter’s defense, his peanut business was once boycotted by the citizens of Plains in the 1960’s
because he’d supported a local desegregation issue.
Carter is not a bigot. Sometimes he rose above his culture. Other times, he embraced it, especially
when there was an election at stake.
The irony in Carter’s attack on the Tea Party protesters is that his 1976 campaign was based in part
on attacking the elites of Washington, the lobbyists, the bankers, the inside traders. Precisely what
has the Tea Party protesters up in arms today. Indeed, Carter wanted to reduce their power and
influence and give Americans a government “as good” as they were.
If Carter was true to his revolutionary campaign of the bicentennial year, he’d be defending the Tea
Party protesters, not smearing them. What’s got them upset is not racism, but elitism. Carter, in
1976, would have torn into tax cheats like Timmy Geithner and Kathleen Sebilius.
In his dotage, Carter should give his fellow citizens the benefit of the doubt, seeing they are lusting
in their hearts not for racism or women, but for freedom and ethics in their government.
Craig Shirley is President and CEO of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs in Alexandria, VA. He is the
author of the recently published book, "Rendezvous with Destiny" about Reagan’s 1980 campaign.
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10/28/2009 Page 32 Issue 142
Maxine On ObamaCare
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
Let me get this straight.
...we're going to pass a health care plan
written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it,
passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it,
to be signed by a president that also hasn't read it and who smokes,
with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes,
all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country
that's nearly broke.
What could possibly go wrong?
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10/28/2009 Page 33 Issue 142
No Rights for Right Activism
by Bill Sizemore
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
Let me make something clear right up front. Misleading press reports
notwithstanding, I have never been convicted of a crime in my life. In fact, I
have never been so much as charged with a crime. And I have never even got
off on a technicality.
Someday, I may get the chance to stand before a jury and defend myself
against some trumped up charge, but to date I have not been afforded that
opportunity.
Even though I have never been charged or convicted of any crime, here is a
list of the restrictions two Multnomah County Circuit Court judges (Portland, Oregon) have placed on
me, my family, and on my business and political activities.
By order of the court:
I can never be a director, manager, or key employee of a nonprofit charity for the rest of my life.
That includes churches, homeless shelters, and charities that do such things as feed the poor or fund
missionary projects in the Congo.
I also cannot be a chief petitioner for a ballot measure unless a Portland judge, who by the way
opposes everything I believe in, gives me permission to do so. Assuming it is possible to obtain the
judge’s permission, to do so I must demonstrate a number of almost impossible things that no other
ballot measure sponsor, including my political opponents, is required to prove or demonstrate.
I cannot run for public office without the judge’s consent and in order to win her approval I must
again prove or demonstrate things no other candidate is required to prove or demonstrate.
Believe it or not, it gets worse. If I am involved with a political committee or PAC, that committee or
PAC cannot spend any of the money it raises. Not for any reason. All of the organization’s funds are
immediately frozen if I am working with it.
Even though under Oregon law you can’t put a measure on the ballot or run a campaign without
forming a PAC, if I am involved, a PAC cannot pay rent on an office or pay its employees’ wages. It
cannot spend money paying utilities or phone bills. It cannot pay to print or mail fundraising letters
or brochures. It cannot spend money printing petitions or buying radio or television ads.
Forget about the First Amendment. If I am involved with a PAC, it is automatically out of business.
And even though no petitioning company that I have owned or operated has ever been sued or
found guilty of a crime, no petitioning company I operate can run the signature drive for any
measure for which I am a chief petitioner.
Oddly, this restriction applies only to me and my measures. A signature gathering company that I
own or operate can run signature drives for other peoples’ measures, just not mine.
How does that make sense? One might get the impression that these restrictions are designed for
just one purpose: Stopping Bill Sizemore from putting measures on the ballot.
10/28/2009 Page 34 Issue 142
In addition to all these restrictions on my political activities, I also cannot spend
more than a “reasonable” amount each month providing for my family. What “reasonable” means is
not defined in the court’s order.
Nonetheless, each month I must present to the teachers unions, the attorney general, and the court
all of the bank statements for my personal and business accounts, all of my credit card receipts,
copies of my grocery receipts and receipts for movie rentals. If I stop on the street corner and buy a
hot dog or a newspaper, I have to get a receipt and give a copy to the teachers union.
No kidding. The teachers union and the attorney general get to know what movies I rent and what
the Sizemore family buys at the grocery store. And if the amounts spent are not “reasonable,”
whatever that means, I could go to jail for contempt of court.
Because I am not entirely sure what “providing for my family” means, I assume and probably must
assume that I cannot donate money to my church or to the local homeless shelter or to any of the
candidates or political causes I support.
Of course, this is all a bit hard to believe. When I try to explain what the courts have done to me,
people always respond the same way: “How can they do this?”
And I always respond, “They can do this because I’m Bill Sizemore and this is Oregon. There are two
sets of laws in this state: One set for me and one for everyone else.”
I have even had liberal attorneys approach me on the streets of Portland and tell me that they have
never supported any of my ballot measures and yet are embarrassed and confounded by the way
the Oregon courts are treating me.
A few months ago, I was circulating in a petition to create a Homestead Exemption to lower property
taxes on residential property. I was doing well and had collected more than 20,000 signatures.
However, when the court placed these severe restrictions on my political activities, everything
stopped.
Now, those 20,000 signatures will go for naught. Because of the court’s order, the measure will die
because I cannot spend money printing or mailing petitions.
In desperation, I filed a motion with the Oregon Supreme Court seeking a Writ of Mandamus, asking
the court to order the lower court judge to come in and explain how these restrictions are
constitutional or remove them. Just this afternoon, I received the disappointing news that the
Oregon Supreme Court without comment declined to hear the case.
The Supreme Court’s decision is very disappointing. If I was a pornographer challenging some local
zoning law that was stopping me from putting an adult bookstore across the street from a church or
school, that Court would have dashed to my rescue.
So, you might ask, what have you done to get so many big dogs chasing you? Why is the entire
political machine lined up against this one man and no one willing to step in and put a halt to the
abuse, at least the most blatant violations of constitutional rights?
That’s actually a pretty easy question to answer.
Laying the morality of their tactics aside, I completely understand why the liberal machine in Oregon
wants me gone. The public employee unions and the extreme environmentalist groups have spent
more than $50 million running campaigns against my measures. That’s a lot of money by Oregon
standards.
10/28/2009 Page 35 Issue 142
My measures have saved Oregon taxpayers in the neighborhood of $10 billion so
far. That may sound like a good thing to you, but those who live off tax dollars, i.e. government
employees and their unions, don’t like it and they are using the courts to insure that I stop putting
tax cutting measures in front of those Oregon voters, who “selfishly” want to keep more of the
money they earn.
However, it’s not just my tax cutting measures the liberal machine doesn’t like. One of my measures
sought to rein in Oregon’s ridiculously extravagant public employee retirement system. Voters
approved the measure, but after the election the courts threw it out. In the end, the public unions
won, but they have never forgiven me for bringing their largess to the public’s attention.
(By the way, that system is now tens of billions of dollars in the hole, a deficit that would not exist
today had four of the seven justices on the Oregon Supreme Court, all of whom were participants in
the retirement system, not overruled the voters and nullified my measure.)
Another of my measures sought to rein in the obscene political power of the public employee unions
by prohibiting the use of the public payroll system to collect their coerced political donations. That
was the last straw. Seeing that I had my sights set on the left’s Achilles heel, i.e. their money
supply, the unions went nuclear and asked a judge to make it all but impossible for me to put
measures on the ballot.
So, here I stand with fewer rights than a convicted felon and the ACLU and all the newspapers and
television stations in Oregon, all of which live and die by the First Amendment, are turning their
heads and ignoring the blatantly unconstitutional way the left is shutting me down.
Well, I have said enough for today. I have a family to feed. I need to wind this up and head out to
the grocery store and find something for dinner. Hmm. Which should it be tonight, chicken or roast
beef? Better go with the chicken. The court might not consider roast beef “reasonable.”
Bill Sizemore is a former Republican nominee for governor of Oregon and an expert in petitioning
and ballot measures campaigns.
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10/28/2009 Page 36 Issue 142
Reader Comments
Issue 142 - October 28, 2009
Editor: Regarding your “Racist America” editorial, first, racism is America's original sin: it's in our
DNA at birth, according to those on the Left. Secondly, to demonstrate overt racism (vice "latent"),
one need only disagree with President Obama. Jeff Dover, Scottsdale, AZ
Editor: In response to your “Racist America” article, let me say that Jimmy Carter is an ultra liberal
and always has been. He was responsible for one of the most disastrous administrations in our
nation’s history. So liberal, he allowed criminals from Cuba by the thousands into the Country. I
guess we all know the disastrous results of that move. Americans are supposed to like people like
that? Racism will always exist in America because it will forever be propagated by jerks like Al
Sharpton, the Masons, the Madox's and that sorry lot. But then we add liberal guys like Jimmy
Carter stirring things up and how could we possibly be free from the stigma? People are always
going to dislike people and in reality it just so happens that a white may dislike a black, a black
dislikes a Hispanic and so on. Does that make it racist? We don't like Barrack Obama for a number
of reasons. He is a dangerous ultra liberal and socialist. We don't make this up, that is what he
demonstrates and that is what he is. He has little experience to be the "Commander in Chief" of the
most powerful Nation on earth. It is crystal clear that he has done little to nothing since he has
been elected. While he spouted off about curbing taxes during the campaign, it is crystal clear that
the American people are going to be clobbered with new taxes. Unemployment is at a near all time
high. Obama created a near panic over gun control to a point where we could hardly find
ammunition to buy. I dislike Obama because I don't like any form of socialism. I don't like
affirmative action programs and minority programs to "give" things to people that they don't
deserve at someone else's expense. I don't like the realization that my Country has acquired
trillions of dollars in debt by the pen stroke of this liberal socialist. I will like or dislike who I want,
when I want, whether they are black, white, yellow, or green. And that does not make me a racist.
It makes me a free man. Richard Christensen
Editor: As your “Racist America” suggests, Jimmy Carter knows exactly what racism is. He being
from the South can speak in authority about it there and back then, but he should not speak out
about what he sees now and try to compare it to the past. His facts come from a poll that shows
only Whites as being prejudice against Blacks? No. The only one I hear saying the TEA PARTY &
TOWN HALL AMERICANS believe in racism is Mr. Carter. He blames Conservatives who work hard to
create employment opportunities, who want to keep America FREE from the growth of Big
Government Intrusion against the way the CONSTITUTION states, and to put up a wall so HUGE as
to NOT allow any form of SOCIALISM to invade the shores and continent of this wonderful and
beautiful land known as: "GOD BLESS AMERICA." That's all Mr. Carter. My offer to all of you who
side with the Jimmy Carter's and Barack Obama's, stop being COLOR BLIND and open your eyes for
the first time and allow the BEAUTY of the RED WHITE BLUE to wave over you and your FREEDOM !!!
Bob Spiers
Editor: Regarding your “Racist America”, I am disappointed that Jimmy Carter has taken the position
that opposition to the policies of President Obama is due to "a “Southern strain” of Americans who
can’t support an “uppity” black as chief executive." Statements like this are inflammatory and
10/28/2009 Page 37 Issue 142
divisive. Racism exists in America; I don't deny it. However, it is not just a
character flaw of people with Southern lineage. Racism is alive and well on the other side of the
Mason-Dixon Line. As a person of "Southern strain", I have listened to this drivel most of my life. It
amazes me how the righteous people of our society can cast blame on anyone of their choosing
while rejecting any notion of equal guilt. The color of President Obama's skin does not guide my
political positions. The US simply cannot afford a social program of the size he has proposed. One of
our newspaper's main articles today about cuts in Medicaid. In an earlier article, seniors are up in
arms over how their increased Medicare Advantage rates will help pay for the new health care
program. Or consider Obama’s argument of whether medical insurance rates will go up: unless
someone has found some new ways to explain economics, our insurance industry, required to insure
everyone under the proposed plan, will not reduce their rates. The proposed changes in health care
will cause total fees to increase, period. So, if one person will receive coverage at "reasonable
rates", then someone else will have their rates increased to help pay for the difference. The
Democrats just can't understand how large numbers of Americans can be so vocal in their opposition
to the Democrats' efforts to help us all! So they now try to divide and conquer to get their way.
However, let's not forget that President Carter's disapproval ratings were over 50% at the end of his
one term. So maybe Americans will simply ignore his comments. James May, Wilson, NC
Editor: The new Issue of Conservative Battleline and its lead article “Racist America,” as always, it
looks great. Keep up the good fight. If we all work together, we might just win this war. Joan R.
Neubauer
Editor: I'm on your side, but have a few important suggestions regarding John Goodman on
“Rationing Is the Issue.” I use the battlefield analogy, to stress that a good general will fight on a
battlefield of his choosing, with his choice of weapons and at the time of his choosing. The battlefield
in this case, referring to "Health Care Reform" emphasizes the plan chosen by the
Democrats,,,,,BAD. There is a world of difference between health CARE and health INSURANCE. We
have allowed the Democrats to muddy the discussion using health CARE when it suits them and
health INSURANCE when that suits them. We can't let that continue, it will cost us dearly in the
upcoming debate. Are we reforming health CARE or health INSURANCE? Obamacare is deliberately
using health INSURANCE to reform health CARE. Is not the American public content with their health
CARE? Why do we (including your article) let that continue? If you/we don't change the battlefield
(the words used in the debate), who will? Fred Ward
Editor: Regarding John Goodman on “Rationing Is the Issue,” I am not always vocal about my
opinion but the healthcare issue has got to stop. We, the American People, do not want socialized
medicine. That means, no government run healthcare, no limiting procedures/treatments your
personal doctor (who knows you) orders, no insurance companies making decisions, etc. Get the
picture? I have one request of all the anti-ObamaCare groups; let's put a stop to Congress and the
Senate passing something we do not want. We as the American People want the opportunity to
place into the Constitution that the Congress, President, Senate, Judge's, and all government
workers have to be covered under any health care reform that is passed by the same list. If it is
good enough for the general public it is good enough for the people putting it into action. For a
matter of fact I believe that a Constitutional Amendment stating that all government benefits, pay
scales and retirement/after office payments have to be voted on by the American People. This
would put a stop to the issues we are now seeing in both the House and Senate. Rep. Pete Sessions
presented a bill in the House that would make whatever health reform was passed would be the
health care that the House and Senate members would receive. YOU GUESSED it. They (the House)
10/28/2009 Page 38 Issue 142
immediately put that bill to rest with a resounding NO!!! Let's do something that
settles this once and for all. God Be With You, Debbie Walker
Editor: Good article by John Goodman on “Rationing Is the Issue” but something is missing! I'm
writing to make a comment - NONE of the options out there include anything other than whatever
might be dispensed by the current health care cabal: AMA doctors, dispensing FDA-approved
prescriptions, made by large pharmaceutical companies. Never mind, that as a US citizen, I ought to
have the freedom to choose what manner of health care I really want. Examples: 1. Safe,
intravenous treatment that makes heart bypass unnecessary, and also eliminates the need for
diabetic amputations. 2. Safe Vitamin D3 instead of the dubious and expensive flu shot. 3. Safe
treatments for soft tissue damage (backs, joints) 4. Chelation detoxification for heavy metals toxicity
(shown to have an impact on autism - doctor in our area cured his own son!) 5. All of those on statin
drugs are in peril. They are NOT advised to take CoQ10 - which the statins remove from the body.
Essential for heart health. Plus, statistics are being ignored that show that the lower your
cholesterol gets - and the older you are, the more likely you will DIE. 6. Many people on synthetic
thyroid hormone may not need it - they simply need the proper form of Iodine. 7. There are some
very safe minerals and at least one very effective herb that help diabetics. 8. Under the guidance of
a really bad study, we all get to drink up to 1.5 parts per million of toxic fluoride from aluminum
plants - it works as an oxidizer in the body and can affect the main core that regulates many body
functions (including the thyroid). This practice was initiated from a study paid for by those who
needed a high volume source to dispose of their waste. Charlotte now pays them about $850,000
per year to put it into the drinking water. Fluoride is NOT political - when you drink it, the chemical
does what it does, and it isn't nice. The list goes on and on. There is the equivalent of a Berlin Wall
that keeps "regular AMA" doctors from using any of these safer treatments. They do not generate
the $$ the prescriptions do, and they actually require the doctor to really examine the patient!
Steven Purdy, Harrisburg, NC
Editor: Regarding Don Soifer’s “Dangerous Schools,” there are no dangerous schools in Tennessee?
What a joke the government is. Your author is right. Why did the schools put security police in all
the city schools in Memphis? They only needed a job, I guess. Bill
Editor: Regarding Jim Lakely’s “Dissing Britain,” I offer the following. Dear Great Britain, We
apologize for the Disrespect and Treatment of your nation from the newly elected ingrate. As you
well know, America as well as Great Britain, Israel and a great number of countries have been
infected with a virus known as IMMORALITY and lack of RESPECT. It's very much like cancer as it
spreads throughout the nation. Removing "anything GOD" from the public square and these are the
effects we both are embattled with. With the uneducated it seems to spread rampantly. The World
has the antidote if we individually accept it before it is too late. Your Trusted Family and Friend, RWB
Editor: Thank Brent Bozell for sharing the true facts with the public in his “Worst TV For Kids.” Most
of we "Christians who are clinging to our religion and guns" appreciate someone who obviously is a
believer and writes that way. God has a way of taking care of the pompous, self-important people in
what they consider high places. He takes them down and they are too foolish to realize they are
down until they realize just where down is and how warm it is there. Barb, Atlanta, GA
Editor: In light of the constant vigilance that we as conservative Americans must maintain in the
face of this communist (read the life of Lenin if you think I exaggerate) takeover of our country, I
10/28/2009 Page 39 Issue 142
would like to make a suggestion. We are constantly being forced to make phone
calls to those despicable, corrupt, Congress people we have in Washington and I think many people
do not know of an extremely inexpensive way to do that. There is a free downloadable program that
has been around for quite awhile that I believe people do not understand just how great it is. If you
will notice, many of the news networks now use it for video interaction all over the world. I am
talking about *Skype*. After a free download of the program you can sign up to call Canada and the
USA for $2.95 a month. That is it. You can call any landline or cell phone…any number for that
price. They will automatically bill you the $2.95 each month and you do not have to sign any
agreement or contract. The only other thing you will need is a headset with a microphone. ($19.95
at Best Buy) Of course you have to be connected to the internet. The other feature is that you can
talk computer to computer anywhere in the world, for free. That is a little more tedious because
both people have to be on the internet at the same time. I have no connection or anything to do
with Skype. I am just a concerned American who is trying to save this nation. I know many people
cannot afford to make long distance phone calls that might take many minutes to connect with the
congressional office you are trying to contact. We will have to hound these irresponsible tyrants until
we die so we might as well avail ourselves of some of the technology that is out there. This is not
about political parties or partisan politics. It is about the survival of our nation as it once was. Fred
Beene
Editor: I have written to many leaders in the Republican Party, from the heads of the party to you
name it. I presented what I thought was a simple plan, but so far no response. I called for a dozen
leaders in the Conservative movement from politics, business, and media to meet now, produce a
Conservative Agenda, then with support from the best PR firm around, bring in an additional
hundred or so to complete the Agenda and with a unified force go public, a full court press. Time has
been wasted, we are still preaching to the choir, and it appears that the Republicans are isolated and
unable to muster National response. The Tea Parties were a sample of what could be done, but what
effect did it have on the public once the Left with their organized attacks moved forward? Where is
our George Soros, our Moveon, etc? Is it only Newt? If we are waiting for the elections next year,
good luck. It will be too late to reverse what is happening now to our health care, our foreign
policy, and our Nation. Bill W
Editor: If you folks really want to return Congress to the people, we have to beat the Demoncrats at
their game and that does not necessarily mean winning with Republicans (I used to be one but am
too embarrassed by the name). We are still divided and everyone who has a conservative agenda is
trying to tap money to support all their individual ideas. This division of effort and funds will ensure
a conservative failure. The following are the ones in my in-box that you need to corral under a single
umbrella. You get them to come together and we all win!!! That is worthy of your time and energy
and I'm sending this to all of you. The groups and leaders are: American Solutions with Newt
Gingrich, Numbers USA with Roy Beck, Senate Conservatives Fund with Jim DeMint, American
Family Association with Tim or Don Wildmon, Conservative Battleline Online with Donald Devine,
National Right to Work Committee with Mark Mix, Grassfire.org Alliance with Steve Elliott, The
American Conservative Union with Larry Hart and David Keene, National Right to Work Legal
Defense Foundation, Inc. with Stephan Gleason, Susan B. Anthony List with Marjorie Dannenfelser,
Media Research Center with Brent Bozell, 912 Project with Glenn Beck, the National Rifle Association
with Wayne LaPierre, and American Vision - americanvision.com, Born Again American -
bornagainamerican.org. Regards, Craig Campbell