what if?

The Chicago Way

Chicago is my home town; the place in which I lived all of my childhood.  I loved Lake Michigan and the vast array of museums; all the skyscrapers and the multitude of ethnic neighborhoods and restaurants.  It was a beautiful city - and the "City that Works."

Yet it wasn't until I grew up and moved away that I learned Chicago worked differently than many other cities. It didn't work because of a wise set of laws and equity for all.  It worked because Mayor Daley ran it with an iron fist, and because those in power demanded with muscle and bribes that - if you wanted to do business in Chicago, you had to pay off the right people and kow-tow to what they wanted; period, end of story.

Today, John Kass, Chicago Tribune writer, expounds on this in a column that gets it exactly right.

The Best of Times; The Worst of Times

The New York Times used to be considered "the" national paper of record.

Now?  Well - you be the judge.

The Post has two front-page above-the-fold articles on the scandal, a news story and an in-depth look at the IRS in the wake of the controversy. There’s also a tough lead editorial expressing renewed outrage at the IRS’s conduct and demanding thorough reform.

Yet after the first dramatic day of congressional hearings, the Times has no front-page coverage at all of the scandal per se. Instead we have a story on President Obama’s efforts to move his agenda forward, beyond “distraction.” The Times story quotes White House aides accusing Republicans of seizing on “woes” to thwart the president’s agenda. The paper itself seems to be taking the White House line.

Just below the Times story on Obama’s attempts to move past “distraction,” a tiny squib notes that there is an article about the IRS on page 12. The teaser is: “Republicans are widening their aim at the Internal Revenue Service.” The headline of the page 12 Times article itself is: “Republicans Broaden Scope of I.R.S. Inquiry, Hoping to Entangle White House.” For comparison, the Post’s front-page news story headline is: “Panel grills IRS on tax targeting.” In other words, the Times treats the scandal as little more than a Republican-hyped distraction, while the Post takes it as a matter that should concern everyone. In contrast to the Post, there is no Times editorial on the scandal today.

Colbert King’s Op-Ed in today’s Post condemns the IRS in passing, while also trying to rescue government itself from the taint of the scandal. Times Op-Eds by Gail Collins and Charles Blow in various ways try to minimize the scandal. All the Op-Eds seem to line up fairly well with the news coverage and official editorial stances (or lack thereof) of their respective papers.

 

Boomtown

The weather in Houston is barely tolerable.  But it's mayor?  More like this woman - please!

Tory Gattis, who writes the Houston Strategies blog, says: "I'd argue we may be the most libertarian city in America. Live and let live; strong property rights; not much corruption; small business culture."

"If you look at her record in governing," a political consultant I meet in Houston says, "you'd think she was a conservative."

Hearing this description, Ms. Parker doesn't choke on her Korean braised goat and dumplings.

"There used to be jokes about how a Democrat in Texas was a moderate Republican in Connecticut," she says. "I do think there's a sweet spot there, where government is a tool to make peoples' lives better. . . . But I'm fiscally conservative. I came out of a conservative industry. I understand making payroll and balancing books."

She also doesn't sound like a mayor who will tell you what size soda to buy.

"I'm the black sheep in my family," she continues. "I'm from a long line of Republicans. Everyone else in my family is a Republican. The social issues are what drove me away from the Republican Party." 

 

Filthy Rich

Some of us dream about creating a huge fortune.  Only a tiny percentage of us do.

Some of us disparage the uber-wealthy among us.  They believe that most of those with immense wealth use it to frolic around the planet, purchase fabulously expensive material goods and live a hedonistic life style. And - some do.

Yet of those with these means, some choose an entirely different path.  They are the people who judge to give away almost all of what they have earned - and to do great good with it.

Arnold and his wife, Laura, have a somewhat unique approach to giving. Most billionaires tend to write checks to good causes they're part of, hospitals where they were treated or universities they attended. These are the so-called "grateful-recipient" donors. Or there are donors who make sizable gifts to meet an obvious need in a community, such as hunger or education. But at a time when charitable giving in the U.S. is still down from its peak in 2007, the Arnolds want to try something new and somewhat grander. John says the goal is to make "transformational" changes to society.

The Arnolds want to see if they can use their money to solve some of the country's biggest problems through data analysis and science, with an unsentimental focus on results and an aversion to feel-good projects—the success of which can't be quantified. No topic is too ambitious: Along with obesity, the Arnolds plan to dig into criminal justice and pension reform, among others. Anne Milgram, the former New Jersey attorney general hired to tackle the criminal-justice issue, has a name for all this: She calls it the "Moneyball" approach to giving, a reference to the book and movie about how the Oakland A's used smart statistical analysis to upend some of baseball's conventional wisdom. And the Arnolds are in no hurry for answers. Indeed, they believe patience is a key resource behind their giving. 

Today, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation is bankrolling a $26 million nutrition study by Attia's nonprofit, an effort that involves the use of metabolic chambers and that Attia likes to call "the Manhattan Project of obesity." And that's just part of the splash the foundation is making: Out of virtually nowhere, the couple gave away or pledged $423 million last year, vaulting them to the third-highest givers in the country, according to the latest ranking from The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The Arnolds aren't stopping at research; they're also funding reform efforts that they say align with the findings of their studies—and the political candidates who agree.

 

Aloha!

Wonder why Detroit is flat broke?  Here are a few clues for you.

 

Four trustees of Detroit’s two public pension funds are heading to a Hawaiian beach resort this weekend with their $22,000 tab paid for by the funds, which are mired in claims of mismanagement and said to be at least $600 million underfunded.

Trustees say the conference provides the education they need to manage complex investments for the funds’ retirees and beneficiaries. But other major public pension systems, including the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions, avoided sending their officials to Hawaii because of concerns the exotic locale sends the wrong message at a time when pensions nationwide are contemplating or implementing reduced benefits to cope with rising retirement costs and shaky investment returns.

Stanford University professor Joe Nation, who specializes in public employee pensions, criticized the trip.

“Trustees don’t need to go to Waikiki to learn about best practices,” he told the Free Press. “Everyone knows they go there and they don’t work very hard. That’s just the nature of it.”

Detroit General Retirement System Trustee Riehl’s expenses are $5,245:a $1,278 flight, $2,967 for his hotel stay and $1,000 in registration fees. He’ll be joined by General Retirement System Trustee Cedric Cook, whose expenses total $3,874: $719 for a plane ticket, $2,505 for hotel stay and $650 in registration fees. Cook’s registration fees are smaller because he’s not attending all of the conference’s programs.

From the Police and Fire Retirement System, Honolulu expenses for Trustee Edsel Jenkins, a deputy fire commissioner, are $5,957: a $1,138 plane ticket, $2,769 for lodging, $1,000 in registration fees, $900 for meals and $150 for miscellaneous expenses. PFRS Trustee Angela James’ expenses total 6,871: a first-class plane ticket for $2,052, lodging costs of $2,769, registration fees of $1,000, $900 for meals and $150 for miscellaneous costs.

 

 

 

Whom Do You Trust?

One of the keys to having a successful government is for its citizens to trust it.  They must believe that they will be treated equitably; that laws apply to all of us.  They must believe that, overall, the government strives to work toward the common good.  They must think that when mistakes are made, those who perpetrated the mistakes are held accountable.

Unfortunately, with recent scandals, none of the above is happening.  Peggy Noonan explains - and adds why this is so very important for our nation.

Do you trust the president's answers when he's pressed on an uncomfortable story? Do you trust his people to be sober and fair-minded as they go about their work? Do you trust the IRS and the Justice Department? You do not.

The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you.

But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department. 

What happened at the IRS is the government's essential business. The IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that position's powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be cleaned. Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don't, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn't stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.

Republicans should take note of this, too.

And it would be shameful and shallow for any Republican operative or operator to make this scandal into a commercial and turn it into a mere partisan arguing point and part of the game. It's not part of the game. This is not about the usual partisan slugfest. This is about the integrity of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function.

We must have the same underlying laws, principles and Constitutional faithfulness, no matter which party is in power.  Our trust depends upon it.

 

Not the Only One

Think that Kermit Gosnell was the only physician doing third-trimester abortions and then killing babies born alive?  If you do - you would be wrong.

Houston doctor Douglas Karpen is accused by four former employees of delivering live fetuses during third-trimester abortions and killing them by either snipping their spinal cord, stabbing a surgical instrument into their heads or 'twisting their heads off their necks with his own bare hands'.

Other times the fetus was so big he would have to pull it out of the womb in pieces, Karpen's ex-assistant, Deborah Edge, said in an Operation Rescue video, which has prompted a criminal investigation into the doctor.

'Sometimes he couldn't get the fetus out... he would yank pieces – piece by piece – when they were oversize,' Edge explained. 

'And I'm talking about the whole floor dirty. I'm talking about me drenched in blood.'

Those who read my blog know that I do believe abortion ought to be legal early in a pregnancy.  Yet, as far as I am concerned, there is a world of difference in aborting an embryo or early fetus - versus a fetus past viability.  People who share my viewpoint ought to be outraged that this is occurring.

 

Stunning

So says Mitch McConnell.  

Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harrassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.

More recently, Ingram was promoted to serve as director of the tax agency's Obamacare program office, a position that put her in charge of the vast expansion of the IRS' regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health care, ABC reported earlier today.

Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009, according to data obtained byThe Washington Examiner from the IRS, then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550 last year, for a total of $103,390. Her annual salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during the same period.

The 2010, 2011 and 2012 bonuses were awarded during the period when IRS harrassment of the conservative groups was most intense. The newspaper obtained the data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Earlier Thursday, The Washington Examiner reported that the IRS paid out more than $92 million in bonuses during the four-year period of Ingram's awards to her and nearly 17,000 other agency employees. Those bonuses averaged more than $5,500 per employee.

It is rather stunning, isn't it?

Quote of the Day

As you continue to file your stories on this subject, ask yourself before you write, how would I be writing this story if this were a Republican administration?

If The IRS Targeting Conservatives, Jews

and who knows else doesn't scare the you-know-what out of you ....

Then perhaps this will.

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP's newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know," Pruitt said.

It sure as hell scares me.

 

"Appalling"

The newspaper that I consider to be the best in the U.S. today - the Washington Post - produces a superb editorial.

A BEDROCK principle of U.S. democracy is that the coercive powers of government are never used for partisan purpose. The law is blind to political viewpoint, and so are its enforcers, most especially the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Any violation of this principle threatens the trust and the voluntary cooperation of citizens upon which this democracy depends.

So it was appalling to learn Friday that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny. It was almost as disturbing that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have not personally apologized to the American people and promised a full investigation.

“Mistakes were made,” the agency said in a statement. IRS official Lois Lerner explained that staffers used a “shortcut” to sort through a large number of applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status, highlighting organizations with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names. The IRS insisted emphatically that partisanship had nothing to do with it. However, it seems that groups with “progressive” in their titles did not receive the same scrutiny.

If it was not partisanship, was it incompetence? Stupidity, on a breathtaking scale? At this point, the IRS has lost any standing to determine and report on what exactly happened. Certainly Congress will investigate, as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) promised. Mr. Obama also should guarantee an unimpeachably independent inquiry.

 

 

The First Amendment

Is it time to say "Adios"?  From this report, one might think so.

 

In a shocking affront to the United States Constitution, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education have joined together to mandate that virtually every college and university in the United States establish unconstitutional speech codes that violate the First Amendment and decades of legal precedent. 

Among the forms of expression now punishable on America's campuses by order of the federal government are: 

• Any expression related to sexual topics that offends any person. This leaves a wide range of expressive activity—a campus performance of "The Vagina Monologues," a presentation on safe sex practices, a debate about sexual morality, a discussion of gay marriage, or a classroom lecture on Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita—subject to discipline.
• Any sexually themed joke overheard by any person who finds that joke offensive for any reason.
• Any request for dates or any flirtation that is not welcomed by the recipient of such a request or flirtation.

There is likely no student on any campus anywhere who is not guilty of at least one of these "offenses." Any attempt to enforce this rule evenhandedly and comprehensively will be impossible.

"The federal government has put colleges and universities in an impossible position with this mandate," said Lukianoff. "With this unwise and unconstitutional decision, the DOJ and DOE have doomed American campuses to years of confusion and expensive lawsuits, while students' fundamental rights twist in the wind."

 

J'accuse

Alan Dershowitz demonstrates that brilliance in one field does not necessarily translate into others.

The only logical conclusion that can be derived from Stephen Hawking’s decision to join the academic boycott of Israel, coupled with his enthusiastic visits to Iran and China, is that he actively endorses and supports the repression practiced by the Iranian mullahs and the Chinese party bosses. Why else would he single out the world’s only Jewish state for his academic boycott?

Prior to the cancelation of his academic talk in Israel, it might have been argued that his visits to Iran and China reflected not support for the regimes but rather a neutral approach to academics, or a refusal to participate in academic boycotts.  No longer can this justification work.  The only possible justification for distinguishing between Israel on the one hand and Iran and China on the other hand would be if Israel’s actions were worse than those of Iran and China.  Only a knave or a fool would believe that to be so.  Israel’s academies are among the most open, diverse and free in the world.  Israeli universities have affirmative action programs for Palestinians and other minorities.  Political dissenters receive tenure and thrive at Israeli universities.

The very concept of an Iranian university is an oxymoron.  There are no free and open places of learning in that repressive theocracy.  Dissenters are not given tenure; they are murdered, after first being tortured.  Blasphemy, which is broadly defined, is punished.  Gays are not only excluded from Iranian universities, but are imprisoned and killed.  Women are oppressed.  Baha’is are persecuted and killed.  There is no freedom in Iran—a country that is seeking to develop nuclear weapons so that they can wipe the State of Israel off the map.

Yet Iran is a country that Stephen Hawking visited.  He did not boycott that Islamic country.  He limited his boycott to the democratic nation state of the Jewish people.

Israeli universities have an unmatched record of developing devices that assist people with disabilities in their daily tasks.  Ironically, Israeli universities have developed the very microchips that allow people suffering from motor neurone disease, like Stephen Hawking, to communicate.  I do not know why Hawking, whose intellectual accomplishments are beyond reproach, uses these devices now to call for the boycott of the very country that enables to him to communicate in the first place. But we have long ago learned that people who are brilliant in some areas may be utter fools in other areas.

 

Our Broken System

Our immigration system is broken.  More than a few Republicans appreciate this - and want reform.  Yet, there is a divide in the party as to what direction to take.  Which side ultimately wins will have a big impact on the party - and our country.

On the reform side, occupied by Mr. Rubio and growing numbers of conservatives, is a party that wants to rekindle its pro-growth roots, that has remembered it succeeds when it exudes optimism and solves problems. That is why the media judgment that the GOP is simply in search of "Hispanic votes" is trite. The right's budding embrace of reform reflects something bigger, an effort to reclaim principles that appeal to broad swaths of the public.

The other side—the Heritages, the National Reviews, the Jeff Sessions—are still channeling the party's more angry, reactive element. That bitterness—the obsession with income redistribution and equality, the fear-and-envy approach—are traditionally the remit of the far left of U.S. politics. 

The test for the GOP now is which side wins out. That is why so many conservative leaders came out this week for efforts to fix our broken immigration system. They know that if they are to avoid a repeat of 2007, now comes the hard part.

 

Freedom to Marry

Today in Minnesota's House, a bill was passed to allow for same-sex marriage in our state.  The bill must be approved in the Senate to become law.  Nevertheless, those of us who believe in the freedom of adults to marry - irrespective of sexual orientation - celebrated.

When I saw this photo, it epitomized to me what the bill represents.  Gay couples aren't "weirdos" or "perverts."  They are couples just like straight couples... young and old, urban and rural, of every race and religion.  Like my friends who were able to obtain marriage licenses when they wished to wed, my gay friends and relatives have been together a few years - or fifty - and have been through the ups and downs that a committed relationship entails.

For a long time, I didn't understand why my gay friends weren't content with "civil unions."  I do think it might have been easier to get such laws passed.  The more that I talked with them about it, though, the more I began to understand.  Being barred from marriage, and having a different category in which to be placed made it clear to the world that gay couples aren't like "regular" people.  And, while it is true that they are different from the majority - those who are attracted to members of their own sex are not different from the rest of us in the ways that matter.  

It's often been said that if same-sex attraction was the norm, and heterosexuality was "deviant" - then how many heterosexuals would be willing to force themselves into relationships with someone of the same sex?  How many would want to have to hide their true feelings, and pretend to be content in a relationship with someone to whom they felt no romantic love?  The answer is:  very few.  Yet, for way too long, that is what we have demanded of those who are gay.

I'm delighted that Minnesota's house passed this law today - and I hope that our senate has the wisdom and courage to do the same.  I look at this photo above, with people who are graying and perhaps have been denied the same right I have enjoyed all my adult life, and I am filled with the same hope they are.  Freedom to marry the one you love.  Yes; it should be for us all.

Wimps R Us

On a family vacation in Florida when I was about 7, Dad decided he was going to teach me to dive off the high dive.  I got up there, looked down alllll that way - and went.  Some of the time, I did belly-flops - or landed on my face.  Yet, Dad taught me to get up and try again - so I did.  One day after a particularly bad angle, I marched back to the diving board steps, and someone shrieked, "Peggy; what happened?!"  As it turns out, my last maneuver resulted in a bloody nose.  Who would have known?  I was trained to forge ahead and get better - bloody nose or not.

For today's kids, the above scenario would have been impossible.  Why?  We are raising a nation of wimps.

Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without skinned knees or the occasional C in history. "Kids need to feel badly sometimes," says child psychologist David Elkind, professor at Tufts University. "We learn through experience and we learn through bad experiences. Through failure we learn how to cope."

Messing up, however, even in the playground, is wildly out of style. Although error and experimentation are the true mothers of success, parents are taking pains to remove failure from the equation.

"Life is planned out for us," says Elise Kramer, a Cornell University junior. "But we don't know what to want." As Elkind puts it, "Parents and schools are no longer geared toward child development, they're geared to academic achievement."

And what is wrong with having everything "planned for us"?  We don't learn how to handle tough times ourselves.  Hell; sometimes we simply don't learn - period!

Those who allow their kids to find a way to deal with life's day-to-day stresses by themselves are helping them develop resilience and coping strategies. "Children need to be gently encouraged to take risks and learn that nothing terrible happens," says Michael Liebowitz, clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and head of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at New York State Psychiatric Institute. "They need gradual exposure to find that the world is not dangerous. Having overprotective parents is a risk factor for anxiety disorders because children do not have opportunities to master their innate shyness and become more comfortable in the world." They never learn to dampen the pathways from perception to alarm reaction.

My childhood was filled with scraped knees, bloody noses and messy situations from which I had to learn to extricate myself.  For that - I thank my parents.  They allowed me to experience life and the myriad of experiences that were difficult.  While it (alas) doesn't guarantee a stress-free life as an adult - it has given me more tools to deal with what comes my way.

 

The Sad State of Journalism Today

I wish I could say I'm kidding you.  But alas; I am not.

 

My Kind of Regulation

Economist Donald Boudreaux writes about the kind of "regulation" we all ought to support.

The demand for government regulation springs from the lack of understanding that markets are amazingly proficient at regulating themselves through the competitive process. This process involves firms' competition for customers, workers, financing and suppliers.

Call this regulation that arises through the natural operation of markets “competitive regulation.”

Competitive regulation uses sticks and carrots. The sticks are lost market share, even bankruptcy, suffered by businesses that harm their customers and workers. The carrots are the higher profits earned by businesses that satisfy their customers and treat their workers fairly.

One key to the success of competitive regulation is that consumers can shift their spending away from merchants who deliver too little value for the dollar to merchants who deliver good value for the dollar. Therefore, the self-interest of merchants to increase their profits pushes them to work hard to deliver to consumers as much value per dollar as they can.

Likewise with workers. Firms that pay wages that are too low (given their workers' productivity) or that offer poor working conditions lose employees to firms that pay higher wages and offer better working conditions. Just as workers' self-interest drives them to seek jobs with the best combination of wages and working conditions, firms' self-interest drives them to treat workers fairly.

None of this regulation is done according to a plan. It's not enforced by government officials. But this regulation has always been — as it remains today — by far the chief source of regulation in market economies.

As long as we don't skew the system with laws that favor one company over another, or one industry to the detriment of another - "competitive regulation" works pretty well.  It never will be perfect, as Boudreaux asserts.  Nevertheless, I maintain that in the long run, allowing market forces to "do their thing" will almost always be superior to the heavy hand of governmental regulation.

 

The Guts to Say It

As a high school kid, about the worst thing that could happen to a girl was to get pregnant.  I'm not sure that any of us ever really knew someone to whom this happened.  Surely no one ever freely disclosed it.  Yet, we'd hear rumors, and once in a while, a girl would be missing for a bit.  But single motherhood?  Honestly; I can't think of anyone for whom that was a reality in the late 60's.

"Fast forward" four decades - and life has changed.  Now, single motherhood isn't something to be hidden and a scarlet "A" for the mother without a husband.  It's common and frequent - and supported from the start by our government.

Joe Soucheray has the guts to tell the truth about it.

It was reported the other day on an inside page of the Pioneer Press, and without nearly enough fanfare, that more than six out of 10 women who give birth in their early 20s are unmarried. That is census data, from census demographers, from the very government that then becomes responsible for many, if not most, of those unmarried women and children.

If that isn't an astonishing statistic, it should be. Why, to any logical person's way of thinking, it explains everything in terms of government at all levels bloating out of control.

Supposing that even angels might fear to tread here, it being liberal dogma that I shouldn't be telling women what to do, or men, either, for that matter, I would submit that marriage would solve virtually every economic issue facing this country. 

Statistically, you can avoid poverty in America by getting a high-school degree and waiting to get married before having a child. It's really that simple.

Please don't misunderstand me.  I have no desire to return to a time when a 16 year old might seriously consider suicide rather than have anyone know that she's pregnant.  I have enough challenges in my own life about my own activities to be pointing fingers at others.

Nevertheless, I must agree with Soucheray about personal responsibility versus public.  If you take on the awesome role of becoming a parent, then - barring something extraordinary - you should be prepared to be a decent parent to that child - and do it on your own steam.  If you can handle it all as a single parent - fine.  But, if not, then, as recommended above, stay in school and simply do not become a parent until you have the education and skills and support - preferably a husband - to help you with one of the biggest roles a woman can ever face.

 

Muzzling Free Speech

Who is doing this?  Our courts.  Yes, those who are sworn to uphold our Constititution.

Spirit, Allegiant and Southwest are low-cost carriers that have thrived since the deregulation of the airline industry, which began in 1978. The government retains a narrow authority to prevent deceptive advertising practices. But as the airlines argued in petitioning the Supreme Court to hear their case, the government is micromanaging their speech merely to prevent the public from understanding the government’s tax burdens.

The government’s total price rule forbids the airlines from calling attention to the tax component of the price of a ticket by listing the price the airline charges and then the tax component with equal prominence. The rule mandates that any listing of the tax portion of a ticket’s price “not be displayed prominently and be presented in significantly smaller type than the listing of the total price.” The government is trying to prevent people from clearly seeing the burdens of government.

These three low-cost carriers compete for the most price-conscious travelers, and they want to tell those travelers which portion of a ticket’s cost the airlines control. The government, far from regulating to prevent customer confusion, is trying to prevent customers from understanding the taxes and fees that comprise approximately 20 percent of the average airline ticket.

In their brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse the D.C. Circuit’s decision, the airlines noted that the government is forbidding them to do what virtually every American industry does — advertise the pre-tax price of their products. Shirts and shoes and salamis are sold with the pre-tax sum on the price tag.

D.C. Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph, dissenting from the court’s permission of this unauthorized and indefensible regulation, asked: How can the government’s supposed interest in consumers having “accurate” information be served by requiring “significantly smaller” typefaces for taxes and fees that make up a larger share of the prices of the low-cost airlines than of the older airlines? Randolph said the government’s purpose is “to control and to muffle speakers who are critical of the government.”

 

 

Austerity

Liberals take the English language to places it has never been before.

From 2007 to 2008, when the economy first felt the recession’s effects, federal outlays jumped 9.3 percent, from $2.729 trillion to $2.983 trillion. In 2009, they jumped another 18 percent, to $3.518 trillion -- a 29 percent leap in two years.

Juxtaposed with this profligacy, we find the following spending “austerity”: an $85 billion sequester that took effect just two months ago. That spending cut represents a 2.3 percent reduction from where spending otherwise would have been. In our $16 trillion economy, it is only a 0.5 percent slice.

So where is the “austerity” part of this austerity? 

 Only in Washington, and to liberals, could the slightest step toward spending normalcy be misnamed “austerity.” Only if Europe -- which taxed to the verge of bankruptcy everything hinting at success, and then sought to subsidize its failures into perpetuity by borrowing to square this impossibility -- is the model, could this pass as austerity. Of course, if Europe is to be America’s model, then as bad as our economic and budget problems have been, they are just beginning. 

 

Income Inequality

And equality of opportunity. Economist Don Boudreaux doesn't give a fig about the former - and cares deeply about the latter.  He expresses my own sentiments just about perfectly!

I care – very deeply – whether the process for pursuing one’s life’s goals is fair or not.  I want everyone to have as fair a chance in the economy as is humanly possible.  I despise special privileges that stack the deck either in favor of Jones or against Smith.  (We can have a debate about what the details of “fair process” and “special privileges” look like, but this post is not the place for such a debate.)  But I do not care about differences in monetary income or wealth as such.

I'm also delighted to hear that Boudreaux's liberal friend, Steve Horwitz, feels similarly:

This bleeding heart libertarian mostly agrees with you about inequality.

 

What I DO care about is how well collections of social institutions do for the least well off among us.  That markets continually raise the standard of living of the poor is what matters, not how rich the rich are in absolute or relative terms.  Give me the society that is far more unequal but where the poor live better over the one that is more equal but where the poor don’t do as well.  Please.

Finally, do read this poignant column that Boudreaux wrote about his mother upon her death.  

Both my mother and father were born into working-class families, and Mom and Dad were working-class until they retired -- Mom from clerking in a hardware store, Dad from fitting pipes in a shipyard. Not once did I hear either of them express as much as a whiff of resentment that their incomes were below average.

It simply did not occur to them to envy wealthier families or to suppose that other persons' wealth was extracted from our family's hide. Whenever my siblings or I complained about the poor quality of our family's car or the cramped conditions of our home, Mom and Dad always said, "Be grateful for what we have and work hard so that you can have more when you grow up."

Note the optimism in this reply. Work hard and you'll achieve. As politically incorrect as it is to affirm, this statement is true.

"I Lift My Lamp"

For over a century, the Statue of Liberty has welcomed immigrants to our land.  Most of us are the descendents of immigrants - and I believe that this is part of what has caused us to be a great nation.

That being said, illegal immigration causes many difficulties.  So - what are the answers?  Do we work more diligently to stop people from coming here, and figure out how to remove those who are here illegally?  Is that latter task even feasible?  Do we welcome any and all who wish to come to the U.S.?

My personal belief is that immigration remains a positive for our nation.  Nevertheless, our system is broken and in need of major reform.  Marco Rubio is one of the bright lights in the Republican party, and a man who has both personal insight and wise thoughts about immigration reform.  He expounds in the Wall Street Journal.

In January, I outlined my principles for conservative immigration reform in these pages—principles that guided the drafting of this legislation. These include securing the borders; requiring all employers to verify their workers' eligibility and severely penalizing them if they hire illegal immigrants; cracking down on legal immigrants who overstay visas; and modernizing the legal immigration system to meet America's 21st-century economic needs for both highly skilled talent and guest workers to fill labor shortages.

Since my colleagues and I introduced immigration legislation, intense public scrutiny has helped identify shortcomings and unintended consequences that need to be addressed. Many concerned citizens have gone a step further and offered specific ideas to improve it. This kind of constructive criticism is a positive force that should always be welcomed in the political process.

The overwhelming majority of Americans understand that the status quo on immigration is unacceptable. They support modernizing the legal immigration system and accommodating those who are now in the U.S. illegally, but only if we secure the border and make sure that another wave of illegal immigration doesn't happen.

That is why I remain committed to getting this done. I ran for office because I want to solve problems, and America has a very serious immigration problem. I took on this difficult issue, despite the political risk it entails, because fixing immigration is essential for the nation's security, is good for job creation and has always helped separate America from the rest of the world. What we have now is a disaster. It threatens our security, sovereignty and economy.

Conservatives aren't anti-immigrant—conservatives are pro-legal immigration. What the American people deserve are reforms that make sure the laws are enforced and ensure that the country doesn't face this problem again. 

"You've Reached Your Personal Slice Limit"

In a rare moment, life works out just as it ought.

 

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was denied a second slice of pizza today at an Italian eatery in Brooklyn.

The owners of Collegno's Pizzeria say they refused to serve him more than one piece to protest Bloomberg's proposed soda ban,which would limit the portions of soda sold in the city.

"Hey, could I get another pepperoni over here?" Bloomberg asked owner Antonio Benito.

"I'm sorry sir," he replied, "we can't do that. You've reached your personal slice limit."

Mayor Bloomberg, not accustomed to being challenged, assumed that the owner was joking.

"OK, that's funny," he remarked, "because of the soda thing ... No come on. I'm not kidding. I haven't eaten all morning, just send over another pepperoni."

"I'm sorry sir. We're serious," Benito insisted. "We've decided that eating more than one piece isn't healthy for you, and so we're forbidding you from doing it."

"Look jackass," Bloomberg retorted, his anger boiling, "I fucking skipped breakfast this morning just so I could eat four slices of your pizza. Don't be a schmuck, just get back to the kitchen and bring out some fucking pizza, okay."

"I'm sorry sir, there's nothing I can do," the owner repeated. "Maybe you could go to several restaurants and get one slice at each. At least that way you're walking. You know, burning calories."

Alas.  My friend Ed Morrissey at Hot Air tells me that the Daily Current is a satire site like The Onion.  Of course, I should have known.  Yet - I love this story so much, I'm going to keep it up here.  It ought to be true!!

 

 

 

Taking Responsibility

I am not a People Magazine aficionado.  But I am a Reese Witherspoon fan.  So, when this article caught my eye, I read it.

We went out to a restaurant in Atlanta, and we had one too many glasses of wine," the Oscar winner and mother of three, 37, said, referring to herself and her husband, agent Jim Toth. After their car, which Toth was driving, was stopped, he was charged with DUI, and she with disorderly conduct. 

"We thought we were fine to drive," she said, "and we were absolutely not, and we are so sorry and just so embarrassed." She added, "We know better and we shouldn't have done that." 

Blaming "poor judgment" for not simply calling a cab, Witherspoon said, "We made a mistake, and it was something that will absolutely never happen again." 

"I was so disrespectful to him," the actress acknowledged on GMA. "I have police officers in my family. I work with police officers every day. I know better. It's just unacceptable." 

Telling her older children about the very public incident, she said, was "the hardest part about it. " When you make a mistake, you take responsibility, and we are taking responsibility, and we are doing everything within our power to make it right.

We all make mistakes; impossible to avoid them.  Some people, however, try to cover up or make excuses. Others, like Witherspoon, own up to them and attempt to do the right thing thereafter.  How refreshing!

By the way - if you want to see a moving film with a very young Witherspoon delivering a fine performance, then watch The Man in the Moon.  If you can view it without going through a third of a box of Kleenex, you're a better man than I!

Vacant

Perhaps our government could sell or rent these buildings rather than make people wait four hours in airports?

According to a report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' chief watchdog agency, the federal government owns more than 100,000 office buildings, warehouses and other structures that aren't in use.  And maintenance and upkeep on those vacant buildings costs an estimated $1.7 billion each year.

It's one type of spending that Ranking Member Gerald Connolly, D-Va., said should come to an end.

"Every dollar spent on an unnecessary lease is a dollar diverted away from a mission-critical function," he said.  "In this current era of austerity, inefficiencies such as these have real world consequences for the citizens they serve."

As the seat of the federal government, D.C. alone has roughly 14,000 of the abandoned buildings.  The location of the committee hearing, a warehouse located in southeastern D.C., was used by the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff for storage until 2009.  Now it sits vacant and unused, costing tens of thousands of dollars in maintenance and upkeep each year.

"This is a $70,000 a year hearing," Connolly joked.

Among other things.......

A Dangerous Course

Why is it that so many people are not even willing to allow ideas that don't match their own to see the light of day?

A prominent African-American pastor and alumnus of the historically-black Morehouse college has been disinvited from the school’s graduation ceremonies after penning an op-ed critical of President Obama, who is scheduled to give the commencement address.

Earlier this month, Reverend Kevin Johnson, the senior pastor at Philadelphia’s Bright Hope Baptist Church, wrote a column for the Philadelphia Tribune titled “A President For Everyone, Except Black People,” arguing that the president has neglected the African-American community. “Indeed, if we objectively look at Obama’s presidency,” Johnson wrote, “African-Americans are in a worse position than they were before he became president.” He also criticized the lack of diversity in Obama’s cabinet.

The following day, Johnson said he received a call from Morehouse president Silvanus Wilson Jr. about what he called an ”untimely” column. He learned a few days later that he had been replaced at the college’s baccalaureate ceremony.

A group of pastors and fellow alumni across the country are demanding Morehouse reinstate their invitation, warning that if Wilson “turns his back on one of our most distinguished alumni because of an exercise of free speech and political commentary, he will have set Morehouse on a dangerous course and departed from the great tradition bequeathed to us.”

Indeed!

One Can ONLY Hope

Frankly, I hope they all quit.

 

And Now--

One of the most grotesque stories I've read in some time.

And - no excerpt.  You truly must read the Whole Thing as almost every word is unbelievable.

Racism is Alive and Well

But - it may not be quite what you are expecting.

A Chinese-born artist competing for the chance to produce a civil rights memorial calls an outspoken Nashville activist a hero but says he’s wrong to question her age, ethnicity and ability to do the project justice.

Former Metro Councilman Kwame Leo Lillard, who participated in demonstrations and helped organize Freedom Rides as a college student and recent graduate in the early 1960s, protested again outside a workshop about the project last month.

In a story published March 19, Lillard told The Tennessean, “There’s no way in the world a Chinese kid from California who’s under 50 years old can come here and develop a piece of art that symbolizes the struggle of the Nashville Movement.”

Ai Qiu Hopen, who lives in Sutton, W.Va., said she’s capable of capturing the spirit of the civil rights movement, even though she didn’t witness it.

“It is true I wasn’t there, nor was I even born yet, but I know the greatness of conscience in all the (walks of) life that bond us together as human, that language is universal, I respect the history of what occurred, and each day during the studying of the history, I believe that having faith in humanity still can bring greater change in our society,” she wrote.