what if?

Hypocrites of the One Percent

“The system is rigged to benefit the rich.”

Thus said Elizabeth Warren.

Uh, Professor Warren........ that'd be you?!?!!

While U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren sleeps in her $5 million mansion in Cambridge, and got paid $350,000 to teach just one class at Harvard, she had the audacity to say in an interview with Jon Stewart this week that “the system is rigged to benefit the rich.”

Yes, Sen. Warren, that would be you. Under a free-market, capitalist system, you became a U.S. senator and multimillionaire whose own net worth hovers around $14.5 million, according to personal financial disclosure reports filed in 2011.

Newsflash for Warren: With that kind of cash, you are a one-percenter! That very demographic you vilified and campaigned against.

Yet liberal hypocrites, like Warren and countless fellow phonies in Hollywood, want to denigrate a capitalist system — and make America a socialist country after they personally benefited from a free-market system. Now once Warren and Hollywood hypocrites are living lavishly in their ivory towers, they preach about “income inequality” and the “little guys.”

Memo to Warren: Students at Harvard are among the little guys. Like millions of other college students across America, they are paying outrageously high tuition so one-percenters like yourself can reap the benefits.

If Sen. Warren truly cared about the little guy, why not return most of her salary to Harvard for teaching just one class and lobby fellow liberal professors to do the same? Then Harvard could actually lower its tuition costs for all students. Sounds like practical income redistribution to me.

Race

When I was a child in the '50's, growing up in Chicago, interaction between whites and blacks was quite different than it is today.  Most of the black people whites knew were cleaning people, or took care of children, or were cooks or laborers of some sort. No black people lived in our modest suburban neighborhood. When I attended high school in the '60's, out of almost 4,000 students, only a handful were black.

Today? In Minnesota suburban neighborhood - the land where 40 years ago people wondered "what my country of origin was" because I had dark brown hair (!) - people of all races are everywhere ... No matter where you go, you see people of color who are doctors and salespeople, attorneys, CEO's - you name it. Walk through Costco and you'd think you'd been dropped in the middle of the United Nations. My friends and I are all colors, all religions, from various parts of the world - and - so what? We share common interests in bridge, real estate, politics, photography, movies and more. Skin color is irrelevant.

Yet, day after day, year after year, to read the pages of the mainstream media and to listen to the bleating of too many politicians, you'd think that we were still but an inch removed from the days of Jim Crow, when blacks couldn't walk through certain neighborhoods, or ever think of going to medical school, or marrying a pleasant blonde girl. And I, for some time, am of the opinion that this constant harping on racism and venom and hate does little more than exacerbate the hate that does still exist in the minds of a few, flaming it and keeping it alive - even growing it. These people are not reporting; they are parasites, harming the lives of millions so they can sell papers or magazines or get elected.

One recent example of how this plays out occurred in Detroit. Some poor man happened to be driving in a neighborhood when a child ran in front of his car. Unable to stop in time, the child was hit - and the man immediately got out to see what he could do to help the child. 

What did he receive for this honorable behavior? A beating that nearly cost him his life.

Need we remark that the victim was white, and the child and assailants black?

Personally, I think that at least part of why this occurred is because of the race industry - keeping hate alive so that those who make a living off of racism don't see it die off.

Today, I read a fine opinion piece in the New York Times about this awful event - and what it means for all of us. Please read both the column - and the comments. Then, the next time that someone starts ranting about the terrible racism in our nation today - tell him to STFU. 

Sadly, the talk after the attack on Mr. Utash wasn’t about a man who stopped to do the right thing. It wasn’t about Ms. Hughes, the gun-toting angel of mercy who saw no color except the red of his blood. It wasn’t about the use of justifiable force or the value of carrying a sidearm.

Instead white people asked: Where were the old-school civil rights advocates who usually spoke out against such beatings? Where was Reverend Al? Why did it take Jesse Jackson almost two weeks to say something? Not that any of them really wanted famous civil rights leaders coming to town and marching around. What they seemed to be demanding was an admission from black leaders that blacks harbor racial hatred, too.

But leaders nationally and in Detroit stayed curiously silent. A medical fund was established for Mr. Utash, but it took more than a week to convene a vigil for him as he lay in a coma. Until that vigil not even Mike Duggan — the first elected white mayor of Detroit in 40 years — made a public appearance about it. (Though he did put out a press release and a tweet.) Nor did any City Council person that I’m aware of. And nothing from President Obama. Rage and hopelessness are no excuses here. All Detroit, whether black or white, noticed the silence.

The fact is, it’s often hard to be white in America, too, especially in a struggling city like Detroit. Just ask the Utash family.

Three black men I spoke with at the gas station a few days after the beating acknowledged this two-way street. They called Mr. Utash an honorable man for stopping to help when too many people in this city don’t. They mocked the silence of civic leaders. They wanted to know why the mayor had not come to their neighborhood. They knew the score. They’re Americans. And they also know that we can’t expect those leaders to solve this riddle of ours called race.

If you’re looking for any hope in this story, go back to the corner of Morang and Balfour on the east side of the city of Detroit, where two very good people named Steve Utash and Deborah Hughes met one very bad day.

There are plenty of Mr. Utashes out there, and Ms. Hughes. I want to read more about all these fine people who Do The Right Thing - no matter the race of who is involved.

The Whistleblower

Many times, I've heard people castigate those in a field who know something wrong is occurring - yet do nothing at all to stop it. Add me to those who think people should Do The Right Thing, and try to weed out the "bad apples" by exposing them.

Yet, when I read this article today, I could only wonder:  is it moral to ask of anyone to live through this kind of hell to assist in reaching justice?  Would you be willing to have this happen to you?

In a landmark judgment, the tribunal ruled that Dr Mattu had been targeted specifically by hospital managers because he’d blown the whistle on dangerous practices.

This is Dr Mattu’s first in-depth newspaper interview since his name was cleared, and what he reveals is a shocking indictment of the way the NHS is managed and the way it treats staff who speak out on behalf of patients.

He is now seeking a meeting with Health Minister Jeremy Hunt, but has this stark warning for any other health professional thinking of blowing the whistle to protect their patients.

‘Don’t do it, because the way I have been treated is nothing short of an outrage and a scandal,’ said Dr Mattu, a once world-renowned specialist who is now unemployed and doubts his medical career will ever recover.

‘Instead of listening to me, embracing what I said and working with me to improve conditions for patients, Trust managers tried to destroy me. It was a form of torture.

‘They stopped at nothing to change the focus from the patients - who were at the heart of my concerns - onto false claims about this allegedly “bad doctor” who needed to be removed.

‘They tried to shut me up and sideline me. I was marched from my office in broad daylight in front of my staff, colleagues and patients sitting in my waiting room.

‘Rather than work with me to improve patient care, they searched for reasons to discredit me, humiliate me and destroy my career. And once they’d set the wheels in motion, they were prepared to throw millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money at it.

‘I am relieved that this judgment completely vindicates me. It found I had not caused nor contributed to my dismissal; that my dismissal was inextricably linked to whistleblowing and that I had suffered directly.

‘Patients have been betrayed. Even today, there has still been no investigation into the deaths that I witnessed.’

 ‘There’s been a shift in my working life from managers working alongside clinical staff to dictating from a central office how care should be delivered, which may not be in the best interests of patients.

 ‘And so millions of pounds which could have been better spent elsewhere have been wasted persecuting me. It is ridiculous.’

 

 

 

 

Inequality in America

Many of my "progressive" friends bewail the rigid almost "caste-like" system in the U.S. today. They strongly believe that if you were born into poverty, there you shall stay for virtually all your life. Likewise, if you parents were well-to-do or rich; you shall be, also.

Nevertheless, statistically America is still a land where you can prosper - or fail, depending upon the combination of effort, thought and your ration of luck (good or bad) in life.

It turns out that 12 percent of the population will find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. What’s more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and a whopping 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.

Yet while many Americans will experience some level of affluence during their lives, a much smaller percentage of them will do so for an extended period of time. Although 12 percent of the population will experience a year in which they find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, a mere 0.6 percent will do so in 10 consecutive years.

It is clear that the image of a static 1 and 99 percent is largely incorrect. The majority of Americans will experience at least one year of affluence at some point during their working careers. (This is just as true at the bottom of the income distribution scale, where 54 percent of Americans will experience poverty or near poverty at least once between the ages of 25 and 60).

A further example of such fluidity can be found in an analysis by the tax-policy expert Robert Carroll. Using data from the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Carroll showed that between 1999 and 2007, half of those who earned over $1 million a year did so just once during this period, while only 6 percent reported millionaire status across all nine years.

One of the reasons for such fluidity at the top is that, over sufficiently long periods of time, most American households go through a wide range of economic experiences, both positive and negative. Individuals we interviewed spoke about hitting a particularly prosperous period where they received a bonus, or a spouse entered the labor market, or there was a change of jobs. These are the types of events that can throw households above particular income thresholds.

Ultimately, this information casts serious doubt on the notion of a rigid class structure in the United States based upon income. It suggests that the United States is indeed a land of opportunity, that the American dream is still possible — but that it is also a land of widespread poverty. And rather than being a place of static, income-based social tiers, America is a place where a large majority of people will experience either wealth or poverty — or both — during their lifetimes.

Rather than talking about the 1 percent and the 99 percent as if they were forever fixed, it would make much more sense to talk about the fact that Americans are likely to be exposed to both prosperity and poverty during their lives, and to shape our policies accordingly. As such, we have much more in common with one another than we dare to realize.

Above and Beyond

The imagination of even Richard M. Nixon.

We know what the left thought of what he did. What do they think of an administration that does far worse?

So let’s look at True the Vote’s “crime,” and how the Democrats intended to punish Engelbrecht and what it all means.

There was a plan by Democrats, in Congress and infested in the government bureaucracy, to use Barack Obama’s second term to destroy freedom of speech and the right to dissent, through prosecution and the fear of prosecution. Lerner’s emails disclosed today prove that. Only Russell George’s unstoppable disclosure forced her to shut it down and issue a modified, limited hangout to control the damage that was about to be done to her, the IRS and possibly the entire Democratic Party and the Obama White House. Lerner pleaded the Fifth Amendment to protect herself, and many others.

The purpose of the plan that Lerner was moving on was to stifle dissent and give Democrats total control of Congress in 2014, giving President Obama full control of all of government for his last two years in office.

Alongside that plan, was a plan to destroy anyone who advocated for election integrity legislation, legislation which gained steam and widespread passage at the state level after the 2010 mid-term elections. What this tells us is that the Democrats, at least some Democrats, fully intended to weaponize government against dissent while it watered down election law and used lawfare via the Justice Department to damage and even remove state-level election law improvements.

Criminalizing conservative activism was about consolidating the Democrats’ 2012 gains and winning back the House in 2014. Destroying voter ID by whatever means Democrats deemed necessary was about 2016. There’s only one reason to make it easier to commit election fraud. You only do that if you intend to commit election fraud.

The Action of Goons

Taking assets from the sons and daughters of people who were children when the purported violation occurred?  Does this seem like theft to you; it surely does to me!

A few weeks ago, with no notice, the U.S. government intercepted Mary Grice’s tax refunds from both the IRS and the state of Maryland. Grice had no idea that Uncle Sam had seized her money until some days later, when she got a letter saying that her refund had gone to satisfy an old debt to the government — a very old debt.

When Grice was 4, back in 1960, her father died, leaving her mother with five children to raise. Until the kids turned 18, Sadie Grice got survivor benefits from Social Security to help feed and clothe them.

Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family — it’s not sure who — in 1977. After 37 years of silence, four years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her daughter. Why the feds chose to take Mary’s money, rather than her surviving siblings’, is a mystery.

Across the nation, hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who are expecting refunds this month are instead getting letters like the one Grice got, informing them that because of a debt they never knew about — often a debt incurred by their parents — the government has confiscated their check.

“It was a shock,” said Grice, 58. “What incenses me is the way they went about this. They gave me no notice, they can’t prove that I received any overpayment, and they use intimidation tactics, threatening to report this to the credit bureaus.”

Grice filed suit against the Social Security Administration in federal court in Greenbelt this week, alleging that the government violated her right to due process by holding her responsible for a $2,996 debt supposedly incurred under her father’s Social Security number.

Is It REALLY Wrong

For a woman who literally lived through this sort of abuse to talk about it at Brandeis?  

According to the Powers That Be at Brandeis - the answer is yes.

What Ayaan Hirsi Ali would have said - had she been allowed to speak.

Pathetic that she was not....

I stand before you as someone who is fighting for women's and girls' basic rights globally. And I stand before you as someone who is not afraid to ask difficult questions about the role of religion in that fight.

The connection between violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be ignored. We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect.

So I ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era? Both Christianity and Judaism have had their eras of reform. I would argue that the time has come for a Muslim Reformation.

Is such an argument inadmissible? It surely should not be at a university that was founded in the wake of the Holocaust, at a time when many American universities still imposed quotas on Jews.

The motto of Brandeis University is "Truth even unto its innermost parts." That is my motto too. For it is only through truth, unsparing truth, that your generation can hope to do better than mine in the struggle for peace, freedom and equality of the sexes.

 

Totalitarians

A strong word?  Indeed it is.

But - read this column by Charles Krauthammer. When you are done, tell me if you don't think the word is, unfortunately, most accurate.

Two months ago, a petition bearing more than 110,000 signatures was delivered to The Post, demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming. The petition arrived the day before publication of my column, which consisted of precisely that heresy.

The column ran as usual. But I was gratified by the show of intolerance because it perfectly illustrated my argument that the left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition.

The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences — from social ostracism to vocational defenestration — upon those who refuse to be silenced.

Sometimes the word comes from on high, as when the president of the United States declares the science of global warming to be “settled.” Anyone who disagrees is then branded “anti-science.” And better still, a “denier” — a brilliantly chosen calumny meant to impute to the climate skeptic the opprobrium normally reserved for the hatemongers and crackpots who deny the Holocaust.

Then last week, another outbreak. The newest closing of the leftist mind is on gay marriage. Just as the science of global warming is settled, so, it seems, are the moral and philosophical merits of gay marriage.

To oppose it is nothing but bigotry, akin to racism. Opponents are to be similarly marginalized and shunned, destroyed personally and professionally.

Like the CEO of Mozilla who resigned under pressure just 10 days into his job when it was disclosed that six years earlier he had donated to California’s Proposition 8, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

But why stop with Brendan Eich, the victim of this high-tech lynching? Prop 8 passed by half a million votes. Six million Californians joined Eich in the crime of “privileging” traditional marriage. So did Barack Obama. In that same year, he declared that his Christian beliefs made him oppose gay marriage.

Yet under the new dispensation, this is outright bigotry. By that logic, the man whom the left so ecstatically carried to the White House in 2008 was equally a bigot.

Just Imagine

A black woman, who is an atheist and a strong defender of women's rights. Someone who believes women should be treated with respect - a woman who did this:

She established a foundation, the goal of which is to protect women in the West who are the victims of religiously inspired oppression and, in Ali’s own words, to

reinforce the basic rights and freedoms of women and girls, including security and control of their own bodies, access to an education, the ability to work outside the home and control their own income, freedom of expression and association, and the myriad other basic civil rights defined under the laws of Western democracies and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I mean, doesn't this sound right up the alley of what today's progressives are all about?

You might think so.  But - you'd be wrong.

Read the whole thing.  Then wonder what has happened to a nation and some of our best universities, that because a woman whose body has been mutilated, who was promised away as a young girl to a man she didn't love in marriage, whose partner in a film was murdered because of that film - and she also threatened with death ... wonder why someone who has lived through all this and fights against all for which it stands is told she cannot get an award which originally was promised.

This was OK for someone to get an award at Brandeis - but - not Ali.  What a world.

Those who have remarked reflexively that they could not imagine a university giving in to pressure leveled against a staunch critic of Christianity or Judaism presumably do not know just how right they are. Responding to criticism after it elected to confer an honorary degree on Tony Kushner — a playwright who has admitted to having “a problem with the idea of a Jewish state” and to believing that “the biggest supporters of Israel are the most repulsive members of the Jewish community” — Brandeis clarified its policy toward the controversial, explaining that the college

bestows honorary degrees as a means of acknowledging the outstanding accomplishments or contributions of individual men and women in any of a number of fields of human endeavor. Just as Brandeis does not inquire into the political opinions and beliefs of faculty or staff before appointing them, or students before offering admission, so too the University does not select honorary degree recipients on the basis of their political beliefs or opinions.

 

 

What Liberalism Used to Be

Acceptance of diversity.  Freedom of expression.  Respect for individuals.

Well.  That was then.  This is now.

That’s the argument: Each company has a right—indeed, it has a market-driven obligation—to make hiring and firing decisions based on “values” and “community standards.” It’s entitled to oust anyone whose conduct, with regard to sexual orientation, is “bad for business” or for employee morale.

The argument should sound familiar. It has been used for decades to justify anti-gay workplace discrimination.

Twelve years ago, Larry Lane, a former manager at a carpet company, testified before Congress about how he lost his job:

In the late summer/early fall of 1998, an employee, one of the sales representatives that I supervised, learned that I was gay and “outed” me—that is, told a number of other direct reports in my Region that I was gay—without my knowledge. … [Two of them] informed one of their coworkers that they didn't want to work for me … [They] told my supervisor that they could not trust me and said that I was secretive. … [M]y supervisor and his boss, the Vice President of Sales, placed me on probation and advised me that my “job was in jeopardy.” They explained that I was “hired to build the team in NY” and that based on feedback from “several of [my] people'” I was failing to get this “critical phase of [my] job done.” They … told me to return to New York and “reflect on what may be causing this dissension among my people.” … [Then they] fired me. When asked if this had anything to do with my performance or work ethic the Vice President of Sales stated, “Let's just say you don't fit” …

Dissension. Building the team. Don’t fit. Sounds a lot like the case for removing Eich.

Losing your job for being gay is different from losing your job for opposing gay marriage. Unlike homosexuality, opposition to same-sex marriage is a choice, and it directly limits the rights of other people. But the rationales for getting rid of Eich bear a disturbing resemblance to the rationales for getting rid of gay managers and employees. He caused dissension. He made colleagues uncomfortable. He scared off customers. He created a distraction. He didn’t fit.

It used to be social conservatives who stood for the idea that companies could and should fire employees based on the “values” and “community standards” of their “employees, business partners and customers.” Now it’s liberals. Or, rather, it’s people on the left who, in their exhilaration at finally wielding corporate power, have forgotten what liberalism is.

Did Time Magazine REALLY Print This?

Yes.

Hank Aaron Would Have Faced Worse Racism Today

At least those leaving comments "get it."

The only people consumed by the issue of race are the coastal elites who are out of contact with the real country and race hustlers who make their livelihood by stirring derision. The American public by and large are past it.

 

America, though far from perfect, is probably the LEAST racist nation on planet earth

.

I’m not sure what else to say except that anybody who sees “ubiquitous” bigotry and hate in a largely white nation that has black judges, police chiefs, doctors, lawyers, celebrities, CEOs, Congressmen, a Supreme Court Justice, and President, and thinks it’s as bad or worse today than it was 40-50 years ago….is an idiot. 

 

this is one of the most ignorant pieces from the left in a long long long long time 

When Rights Collide

I am a staunch supporter of gay rights. I have close friends, family, colleagues, clients, bridge partners, teammates, neighbors and others who happen to be gay. Yet, even if I knew few who were gay, I see no reason why someone should face discrimination due to their sexual orientation.

That being said.... Sometimes, rights collide. 

People can actually be supportive of the rights of others, but disagree as to exactly how certain protections should be defined by law. In addition, we simply don't always view the world identically. And when we do not, what kind of sanctions, public or private, should be levied against those with whom we do disagree?

Most are aware that the CEO and one of the founders of Mozilla, Brenden Eich, was forced to step down this past week. His crime? He gave a donation to California's Proposition 8, against gay marriage.

A number of my friends who also support gay rights think that this was an appropriate action on the part of Mozilla. I cannot help but wonder, however - do these same people realize that President Obama was clearly in the "Gay marriage should not be law, and my religion teaches me this" camp at the same time Eich made his donation? My guess is that most of these same people voted for Obama.  If I am correct, then why aren't they upset that Obama is still leading our nation? And how could they vote for him?

Two posts at Hot Air have excellent analysis of this affair.  Both Thursday's and Friday's collections of opinion and commentary are well worth your while to read.

I am a supporter of gay marriage; I worked toward laws for it in Minnesota that passed, and I am grateful that, irrespective of sexual orientation, every adult in our state now can marry the person they love. Still, I also share the thoughts expressed below.  "If we cannot live and work alongside people with whom we deeply disagree, we are finished as a liberal society."

As I said last night, of course Mozilla has the right to purge a CEO because of his incorrect political views. Of course Eich was not stripped of his First Amendment rights. I’d fight till my last breath for Mozilla to retain that right. What I’m concerned with is the substantive reason for purging him. When people’s lives and careers are subject to litmus tests, and fired if they do not publicly renounce what may well be their sincere conviction, we have crossed a line. This is McCarthyism applied by civil actors. This is the definition of intolerance. If a socially conservative private entity fired someone because they discovered he had donated against Prop 8, how would you feel? It’s staggering to me that a minority long persecuted for holding unpopular views can now turn around and persecute others for the exact same reason. If we cannot live and work alongside people with whom we deeply disagree, we are finished as a liberal society…

Here’s what Eich said last month: “I know some will be skeptical about this, and that words alone will not change anything. I can only ask for your support to have the time to ‘show, not tell’; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain.” There is not a scintilla of evidence that he has ever discriminated against a single gay person at Mozilla; he was dedicated to continuing Mozilla’s inclusive policies; he was prepared to prove that the accusations against him were unfair, and that his political views would not affect his performance as CEO. But this was not enough. He had to be publicly punished for supporting a Proposition that is no longer in effect. This is absolutely McCarthyism from an increasingly McCarthyite left.

A Free Society

How can anyone not support a man with these values and principles?

I have devoted most of my life to understanding the principles that enable people to improve their lives. It is those principles—the principles of a free society—that have shaped my life, my family, our company and America itself.

Unfortunately, the fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal freedom are under attack by the nation's own government. That's why, if we want to restore a free society and create greater well-being and opportunity for all Americans, we have no choice but to fight for those principles. I have been doing so for more than 50 years, primarily through educational efforts. It was only in the past decade that I realized the need to also engage in the political process.

A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value. In a truly free society, any business that disrespects its customers will fail, and deserves to do so. The same should be true of any government that disrespects its citizens. The central belief and fatal conceit of the current administration is that you are incapable of running your own life, but those in power are capable of running it for you. This is the essence of big government and collectivism

Instead of fostering a system that enables people to help themselves, America is now saddled with a system that destroys value, raises costs, hinders innovation and relegates millions of citizens to a life of poverty, dependency and hopelessness. This is what happens when elected officials believe that people's lives are better run by politicians and regulators than by the people themselves. Those in power fail to see that more government means less liberty, and liberty is the essence of what it means to be American. Love of liberty is the American ideal.

If more businesses (and elected officials) were to embrace a vision of creating real value for people in a principled way, our nation would be far better off—not just today, but for generations to come. I'm dedicated to fighting for that vision. I'm convinced most Americans believe it's worth fighting for, too.