Why the Left Lost It--calculation and belief in foes' evil

Why the Left Lost It

The accusation that the tea parties were linked to the Tucson murders is the product of calculation and genuine belief.

By DANIEL HENNINGER

There has been a great effort this week to come to grips with the American left's reaction to the Tucson shooting. Paul Krugman of the New York Times and its editorial page, George Packer of the New Yorker, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and others, in varying degrees, have linked the murders to the intensity of opposition to the policies and presidency of Barack Obama. As Mr. Krugman asked in his Monday commentary: "Were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?"

The "you" would be his audience, and the answer is yes, they thought that in these times "something like this" could happen in the United States. Other media commentators, without a microbe of conservatism in their bloodstreams, have rejected this suggestion.

So what was the point? Why attempt the gymnastic logic of asserting that the act of a deranged personality was linked to the tea parties and the American right? Two reasons: Political calculation and personal belief.

The calculation flows from the shock of the midterm elections of November 2010. That was no ordinary election. What voters did has the potential to change the content and direction of the U.S. political system, possibly for a generation.

Only 24 months after Barack Obama's own historic election and a rising Democratic tide, the country flipped. Not just control of the U.S. House, but deep in the body politic. Republicans now control more state legislative seats than any time since 1928.

What elevated this transfer of power to historic status is that it came atop the birth of a genuine reform movement, the tea parties. Most of the time, election results are the product of complex and changeable sentiments or the candidates' personalities. What both sides fear most is a genuine movement with focused goals.

The accusation that the tea parties were linked to the Tucson murders is the product of calculation and genuine belief.

The tea party itself got help from history—the arrival of a clarifying event, the sovereign debt crisis of 2010. Simultaneously in the capitals of Europe, California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and elsewhere it was revealed that fiscal commitments made across decades, often for liberally inspired social goals, had put all these states into a condition of effective bankruptcy.

This stark reality unnerved many Americans. The tea partiers' fiscal concerns were real. Despite that, a progressive Democratic president and congressional leadership spent 2009 and 2010 passing the biggest economic entitlement since 1965 and driving U.S. spending to 25%, or $3.5 trillion, of the nation's $14 trillion GDP. A public claim of that size hasn't been seen since World War II.

They expected to take losses in November. What they got instead was Armageddon. Suddenly an authentic reform movement, linked to the Republican Party, whose goal simply is to stop the public spending curve, had come to life. This poses a mortal threat to the financial oxygen in the economic ecosystem that the public wing of the Democratic Party has inhabited all these years.

The stakes for the American left in 2012 couldn't possibly be higher. If then, and again in 2014, progressives can't pull toward their candidates some percentage of the independent voters who in November abandoned the Democratic Party, they could be looking in from the outside for as many years as some of them have left to write about politics. A wilderness is a terrible place to be.

Against that grim result, every sentence Messrs. Krugman, Packer, Alter, the Times and the rest have written about Tucson is logical and understandable. What happened in November has to be stopped, by whatever means become available. Available this week was a chance to make some independents wonder if the tea parties, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Jared Loughner are all part of the same dark force.

Who believes this? They do.

Linking the tea parties to Tucson is both calculation and genuine belief.

The divide between this strain of the American left and its conservative opponents is about more than politics and policy. It goes back a long way, it is deep, and it will never be bridged. It is cultural, and it explains more than anything the "intensity" that exists now between these two competing camps. (The independent laments: "Can't we all just get along?" Answer: No.)

The Rosetta Stone that explains this tribal divide is Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter's classic 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Hofstadter's piece for Harper's may be unfamiliar to many now, but each writer at the opening of this column knows by rote what Hofstadter's essay taught generations of young, left-wing intellectuals about conservatism and the right.

After Hofstadter, the American right wasn't just wrong on policy. Its people were psychologically dangerous and undeserving of holding authority for any public purpose. By this mental geography, the John Birch Society and the tea party are cut from the same backwoods cloth.

"American politics has often been an arena for angry minds," Hofstadter wrote. "In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority."

Frank Rich, Oct 17: "Don't expect the extremism and violence in our politics to subside magically after Election Day—no matter what the results. If Tea Party candidates triumph, they'll be emboldened. If they lose, the anger and bitterness will grow."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tuesday in the Huffington Post: "Jack's death forced a national bout of self-examination. In 1964, Americans repudiated the forces of right-wing hatred and violence with an historic landslide in the presidential election between LBJ and Goldwater. For a while, the advocates of right-wing extremism receded from the public forum. Now they have returned with a vengeance—to the broadcast media and to prominent positions in the political landscape."

This isn't just political calculation. It is foundational belief.

So, yes, Tucson has indeed been revealing. On to 2012.

Write to henninger@wsj.com Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Importance of Issues--voters trust Repubs over Dems 7 of 10

Importance of Issues

Voter Concern About Economy Hits Highest Level In Over Two Years

With a new Congress scheduled to swing into action this week, the number of voters who rate the economy as a Very Important issue has reached its highest level since early August 2008.

A new national telephone survey finds that 87% of Likely U.S. Voters view the economy this way, well above the importance they place on any other issue on a list of 10 regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The new finding is up five points from 82% in late October and has consistently been the issue voters place the highest level of importance on since regular tracking began several years ago.

Republicans will have majority control of the House in the new session of Congress, and voters continue to trust the GOP more than Democrats on the issue of the economy as they have since June of last year.

Voters trust Republicans more on seven of 10 issues, with the two breaking even on the issue of health care which earns the second highest level of concern: 71% of voters describe it as a Very Important issue.

Separate polling finds that voters still strongly support repeal of the national health care law passed by Democrats last March, to update and in mid-December, a majority of voters for the first time since March said they believe the law will be repealed by the new Congress.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/importance_of_issues

Death Threats Against Bush at Protests Ignored for Years

Death Threats Against Bush at Protests Ignored for Years

Go to linked article for text and multitude of photos:


http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621

A disgrace to nuts everwhere

A disgrace to nuts everwhere  by Scott at 9:24 AM

The race is on to place Jared Loughner among conservatives and attribute responsibility for yesterday's murders to the political opponents of President Obama. It is a handy device to stifle resistance to the left. As you might expect -- see, e.g., "Don't Leave it to Cleaver: Last call" -- the folks at McClatchy News have pulled out all the stops. Fox News Sunday even hauled out Rep. James Clyburn, a cog in the wheel of the "Tea party protesters scream 'nigger' at black congressmen" lie, to play his accustomed role.

The evidence doesn't quite fit the first prong of the syllogism. More than anything else, Loughner appears to be victim of severe mental derangement. He appears to belong to the free floating assembly of nuts that inhabits a big country. Loughner is a disgrace to nuts everywhere, but I doubt that is a message we'll be hearing much of from other anyone other than the attorneys who end up defending him.

Byron York puts it this way: "Journalists urged caution after Ft. Hood, now race to blame Palin after Arizona shootings." Greg Farrell, a Power Line reader and close student of the left, puts it this way:

The murders yesterday in Arizona were a despicable act of murder and hopefully the gunman and accomplices if any will be executed after a trial without delay. All condolences go out to the families of the deceased and the wounded. With that being said, a line must be drawn in the sand hard and fast against the slew of irresponsible journalists and left-wing political activists, in the rare case the two are different, and their attempts to pin blame on conservative Americans who advocate for the role of a smaller government.


The party of ELF, ACORN, ECO-TERRORISTS, THE BLACK PANTHERS, THE NEW BLACK PANTHERS, THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, THE WINTER SOLDIERS, MUMIA ABU-JAMAL and his supporters, CAIR, LAMONT HILL, VAN JONES, SAUL ALINSKY, CODE PINK , RASHID KHALIDI , REV WRIGHT, BERNARDINE DOHRN the cop killing wife of Obama confidant, proud domestic terrorist, cop killer accomplice BILL AYERS whose hero SIRHAN SIRHAN assassinated Robert Kennedy, must never get away with trying to blame a senseless isolated act of violence against an entire political group or advocates for a political group such as the Tea Party, Glenn Beck and/or Rush Limbaugh.


This incident should not be turned into a political issue. That is the lecture we get from left-wing advocates every time an Islamic terrorist or left-wing soldier with obvious political connections commits or attempts to commit an act of murder, violence and/or terrorism. But right on cue, the first chance the radical left has to become hypocritical while constantly lecturing the majority of America not to jump to conclusions in most other incidents, left-wing soldiers in the media and in the national spotlight (again in the rare case that there is a difference) are out there putting the blame on conservative personalities and political parties.


With more of an eagerness to make false political points to stir up anger against the Tea Party rather than reporting the story and showing respect for this tragedy, soldiers such as Paul Krugman of the NY TIMES, are already out there demanding people like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party be held to account. This can not and will not go unchallenged this time.


Although we really have no power to control what they say or write or desire it like the radical left wants with the fairness doctrine or an overreaching FCC, we do have the power of response and must [respond]. If the party of "GET IN THEIR FACES" want to try to spin this into a conservative vs liberal incident they must be met with fierce intellectual resistance.


For over a year now the radical left and the media (again in the rare case that there is a difference) have been trying to lay the foundation of belief that the Tea Party and its advocates are racists, violent, and a threat to the nation. With the constant bombardment of false allegations, trumped up charges and flat out made up stories of racist chants and violence which ironically have been found many times on the left and ignored by the leftwing media this is the type of incident they need to connect to their false template.


Starting with their emails, Facebook and/or Twitter accounts, people like Paul Krugman must be relentlessly bombarded with emails and posts confronting their false accusations....The network switchboards of any news division that tries to link this incident to the Tea Party of conservative personalities should be bombarded with emails and phone calls in opposition. It is the left that is turning this into a political issue with the hope of sparking a national crisis.

And Rick Moran asks: "Is Daily Kos to blame for Gifford attack?" Rick's report features a screen capture of a post Kos dispatched to the memory hole yesterday as soon as it became inconvenient.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin elaborates some related points.

(Go to original for a multitude of source links): http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/01/028100.php

Ramirez says it all in one cartoon

http://www.investors.com/image/RAMclr-011211-murdereribd-f.jpg.cms

Obama: Not Always a Fan of Upping Debt Ceiling

Obama: Not Always a Fan of Upping Debt Ceiling - By Katrina Trinko - The Corner - National Review Online By Katrina Trinko

While President Obama’s economic advisor Austin Goolsbee argued Sunday that a refusal by the Senate to increase the government’s debt ceiling (currently $14.3 trillion) would be “catastrophic” and a sign of “insanity,” that’s not the position the president has held in the past.

Here are Obama’s thoughts on the debt limit in 2006, when he voted against increasing the ceiling:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

In 2007 and in 2008, when the Senate voted to increase the limit by $850 billion and $800 billion respectively, Obama did not bother to vote. (He did vote for TARP, which increased the debt limit by $700 billion.)

Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) told Human Events in an interview released today that the decision about the debt ceiling “needs to be a big showdown” in the Senate.

“We are going to cut [spending] necessary to stay within the current levels, which is over $14 trillion,” said DeMint.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256199/obama-not-always-fan-upping-debt-ceiling-katrina-trinko

Not "crosshairs" from rifle scope--just surveyor mark

Oh, By the Way...  by John Hinderacker/Powerline
The Democratic Party is trying to blame Jared Loughner's crime on Sarah Palin. So, if Governor Palin or any other Republican were to be raped, or shot, or come to any other harm, would it be the liberals' fault? By their logic, the case would be more than air-tight. One can reasonably ask: did any Republican ever suggest that it would be a good thing if Representative Giffords were shot or raped? Of course not. Only liberals sink that low.

I haven't had much time to watch cable news over the weekend, but from what I've seen, I've been disappointed in the performance of Republicans. Conservatives need to hit back aggressively against the Democrats' ridiculous attacks, not try to be high-minded.

PAUL adds: Some Democrats are relying on a map by Sarah Palin's PAC indicating that it was targeting certain congressional districts in the 2010 election. The map identifies the districts as targets by placing crosshairs on them. Palin also stated that Republicans should not retreat, but rather reload.

There is no evidence that this speech had anything to do with the shooting of Rep. Giffords. Nor, obviously, did it advocate or suggest that she be the target of violence. The crosshairs appear on geographic locations, not the faces of individuals. And the word "reload" is often used in non-gun contexts (e.g., the Duke basketball program doesn't rebuild, it reloads).

Nonetheless, it would be nice if, going forward, politicians and the PACs refrained from using crosshairs in ads.

JOHN adds: Well, perhaps. But as many commentators have pointed out, the target motif has been common in both parties' communications. Thus, we have this graphic from the Democratic Leadership Committee, illustrating its "targeting strategy" for attacking those Republican Congressmen who are "behind enemy lines":

As well as this graphic from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where each of the bulls-eyes represents a "targeted Republican":

My own view is that it is pointless to try to wipe out military metaphors, which abound in our language, political and otherwise. Military metaphors, in my opinion, have nothing to do with mass murder by lunatics, whether those metaphors crop up among Republicans or Democrats.

PAUL adds: I'm not sure anyone is going to have to try wipe out shooting metaphors from our politics. Using them gains nothing and risks the kind of criticism Palin is getting now. Thus, politicians with serious ambitions would be foolish to employ shooting metaphors where other rhetorical devices will do.

I won't miss them. They may be edgy, but it's an edginess we can do without. In this country politics is not warfare.

SCOTT adds: Oh, by the way, those aren't crosshairs on Palin's map.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/01/028104.php
 
http://bigjournalism.com/dloesch/2011/01/09/the-difference-between-purveyor-symbols-and-crosshairs/

The upper 1% earned 19.6% of total income before tax, and paid 41% of the individual federal income tax

"theblogprof" A blog about politics, faith, science and technology, physical fitness, and life

Fleeced: The upper 1% earned 19.6% of total income before tax, and paid 41% of the individual federal income tax. "No other major country is so dependent on so few taxpayers"

The most productive citizens in this country are being fleeced by the unproductive. The so-called rich are being punished for achieving the American Dream via punitive taxation. Earlier this month, and after voters repudiated Democrats' class warfare rhetoric in November, Dick Durbin trots it out again - the class warfare card - and gets taken behind the woodshed by Dave Ramsey for his effort:

 
Note that the bottom 50% pay almost no taxes, while the top 5% pay about 60% of the federal tax bill. I agree with one thing - this isn't fair. But I think it is the rich that are paying too much, only to be sneered at by those that pay nothing at all and get OUR money back from the government. It's now gotten so bad, so unfair, that the top 1% pay more in federal taxes than the bottom 95%:
 

 
(The entire blog post is not that long, has YouTube and more charts, that explain it better than words):
 
http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2010/12/fleeced-upper-1-earned-196-of-total.html

The Utter Futility of Reducing Carbon Emissions

Pajamas Media » The Utter Futility of Reducing Carbon Emissions

The Utter Futility of Reducing Carbon Emissions

Even with the calculations used by the warmists, virtually nothing would happen if man never produced another CO2 molecule.

 by Art Horn

The Climate Catastrophe Confab in Cancun, Mexico, is now over. Once again we heard the cries from the 20,000 delegates about how the wealthy nations of the world have stolen the future from developing nations by using up all the carbon space in the air by their reckless and selfish use of fossil fuels. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proclaimed:

We need to fundamentally transform the global economy, based on low carbon, clean energy resources.

It’s quite interesting and revealing — when one looks at the decisions made at the conference, nearly all of them are about money, not climate.

The problem with this transformation of the world economy to low carbon resources? Even if we could eliminate all fossil fuel use around the world, it would have virtually no effect on Earth’s temperature. The attempt to reduce human carbon dioxide emissions to control global warming is completely, utterly pointless and doomed to failure. … well, perhaps I should qualify that statement a bit: Reducing man-made carbon dioxide emissions is completely and utterly pointless if your goal is to change the future climate. On the other hand, if you’re looking to make money from the trading of carbon allowances (carbon credits), then it makes a great deal of sense. If you’re looking to control the way the modern world makes energy, then it makes perfect sense as well. If you’re trying to save the world from capitalists, it’s highly desirable to reduce “dirty” carbon emissions.

If your mission is to extract money from developed nations and give it to those countries that have been robbed of their right to burn fossil fuels to grow their economies, then it is the moral thing to do. If you are in the renewable energy business, it makes perfect sense to support the reduction of carbon dioxide “pollution.” If you’re one of hundreds of environmental corporations whose mission is to save the planet at any cost, then shutting down all sources of man-made carbon dioxide is quite sensible.

Earth has a thick atmosphere that provides the living things on it and in its oceans with a warming greenhouse effect. This keeps the Earth’s temperature at an average of 59 degrees Fahrenheit. If there were no greenhouse effect the average temperature of the Earth would be zero. Life as we know it would not likely exist.

The primary greenhouse gases listed in order of their contribution to the effect are: water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane. There are others, but their concentrations in the atmosphere are so small they don’t contribute much effect. Water vapor and clouds are about 90% of the greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide about 8%, nitrous oxide about .95% and methane about .36%. It’s the combined greenhouse warming from these gases that gives the Earth its current average temperature.

Studies by Raval & Ramanathan (1989) estimated that the greenhouse effect of a cloudless atmosphere is 146 W/m2 (watts per square meter) for the average Earth. They further pointed out that water vapor is accounting for most of this greenhouse effect, leaving about 8 W/m2 for the total amount of atmospheric CO2 — some 8%. In addition, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment showed that 3% of the atmospheric CO2 comes from man-made sources. Global gross primary production and respiration, land use changes, plus CO2 from the oceans totals 213 gigatonnes of carbon exchanged each year between the Earth/oceans and the atmosphere. The IPCC figure also shows man-made carbon emissions to be about 7 gigatonnes, bringing the total to 220 gigatonnes per year. So from this, we can see that making energy from fossil fuels is producing about 3% of the carbon dioxide added to the air each year. From that, the total human component of the greenhouse effect is therefore about 3% of the total carbon dioxide component of the greenhouse effect, which is 8%.

That gives us a value of .2% from man-made carbon dioxide. If you think that’s a small number you’re right.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says even this small component of warming caused by man’s use of fossil fuels will cause dramatic warming in the future. This dramatic warming is forecast by the use of computer models. The IPCC’s forecasts are flawed for many reasons, but one significant error is the residency time of carbon dioxide in the air far into the future. The IPCC claims carbon dioxide, once emitted into the air, stays there for 50 to 200 years. The vast majority of studies say the residency time for carbon dioxide is more like 5 years.

The very small human component of the greenhouse effect has profound implications when governments are considering reducing carbon dioxide concentrations to fight global warming. The United States produces about 20% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions each year. If we were somehow able to shut down all sources of carbon dioxide emissions from the United States, the effect on the global average temperature would be 20% of .1 degree, or .02 degrees. And that’s with shutting down everything that makes carbon dioxide! This decrease of .02 degrees is so small it is completely irrelevant. If achieved, it would drop the global average temperature from 59.0 to 58.98 degrees, and it would take billions, if not trillions, to achieve. After all — we make 87% of our energy from burning fossil fuels. If there were a way to eliminate all carbon dioxide emissions on a global scale, the decrease in temperature would be .1 degree — dropping the temperature from 59.0 degrees to 58.9 degrees. Once again, completely insignificant at a cost that would quite possibly bankrupt the world.

When so much is at stake you would think this would be common knowledge, but apparently it is not. Part of the reason is that there are so many competing factions looking to squeeze every dollar they can from the lie. Interestingly, the Chicago Climate Exchange closed its doors recently. This can only be seen as good news. Not for Al Gore, Goldman Sachs and others, but for the nation at large: very good news. Apparently, the Republican revolution of 2010 has caused the climate exchange to be taken off life support. The Republicans took over the House of Representatives and made significant gains in the Senate. Because of this, the idea of a national cap and trade law that would allow the buying and selling of carbon allowances on a national scale is over. “It is dead for the foreseeable future,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and the Environment, part of the Competitive Energy Institute. “Economy-wide cap and trade died of what amounts to natural causes in Washington,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund that supported cap and trade legislation.

So on the bright side, not all is lost. The bad economy is dragging on and on, and enough people, except for the 20,000 delegates in Cancun, have come to see that trying to control the climate is potentially out-of-this-world expensive and impossible. They’ve seen that a few individual investors would make billions while nations go broke and the climate goes on doing what it has been doing for millions of years — changing on its own. If only more people knew the total temperature payback for eliminating all carbon dioxide emissions was one-tenth of one degree of cooling.

Art Horn spent 25 years working in television as a meteorologist. He now is an independent meteorologist and speaker who lives in Connecticut. He can be contacted at skychaserman@cox.net.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-utter-futility-of-reducing-carbon-emissions/

K-12 Spending Per Student in the OECD

K-12 Spending Per Student in the OECD Mercatus

K-12 Spending Per Student in the OECD
Veronique de Rugy

This chart by Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy compares K-12 education expenditures per pupil in each of the world’s major industrial powers. As we can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends more than any other country on education, an average of $91,700 per student between the ages of six and fifteen.

That’s not only more than other countries spend but it is also more than better achieving countries spend – the United States spends a third more than Finland, a country that consistently ranks near the top in science, reading, and math testing.
 
 http://mercatus.org/publication/k-12-spending-student-oecd

Think the anti-capitalist left is resting? They want O to preside over more chaos like the EU failed states--goal: US must fail

The Second Time is Farce: Frances Fox Piven Calls for a new Cloward-Piven Strategy for Today  By Ron Radosh

Writing in The Nation magazine on May 2, 1966, sociologists Richard Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven published what was to become in later years one of the most famous and influential of leftist articles. Titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty,” the two socialist intellectuals developed a new so-called “crisis strategy” — that of trying to use the existing welfare system to create chaos that would weaken the corporate capitalist state and eventually foment revolution. “Discover the Networks” has a good summary [1] of their thesis.

The two became the ideologists of a group formed to implement their strategy, called “The National Welfare Rights Organization,” or NWRO. As Stanley Kurtz explains [2] in Radical-in-Chief: “the idea was to flood state and local welfare systems with more applicants than they could possibly afford to carry. Cloward and Piven believed that this ‘break the bank’ strategy would force President [Lyndon B.] Johnson and a liberal Democratic Congress to bail out overburdened state welfare systems with a federally guaranteed annual income.” This experience of activism by the poor would create a new anti-capitalist sentiment, and would stoke the poors’ “sense of entitlement and rage.” Later, the group’s mission would be carried on by ACORN, whose leaders endorsed and built upon Cloward and Piven’s strategy.

The idea was to consciously create a fiscal crisis of the state. ACORN’s chief strategist, Peter Dreier, explained this in an article, “The Case for Transitional Reform,” which appeared in the journal Social Policy in February 1979. Dreier called for injecting “unmanageable strains into the capitalist system, strains that precipitate an economic and/or political crisis,” producing a “revolution of rising entitlements” that “cannot be abandoned without undermining the legitimacy of the capitalist class.” Once a “fiscal crisis in the public sector” occurred, the movement could push for creation of “socialist norms” being advanced as the only possible solution.

A few decades have passed since this strategy was first announced. They had great hopes that when Bill Clinton became president, they could implement their strategy. But the Clinton administration — once seen potentially by the Left as a vehicle for fulfillment of its dreams — worked with Republicans in Clinton’s second term to pass meaningful and successful welfare reform. This was precisely the opposite of what the Left wanted and hoped for.

Now, as President Barack Obama is beginning the mid-point of his first and possibly only term in office, the Left is again trying to advance a new form of the old strategy. And the author of the new program is none other than Frances Fox Piven, the co-author with her late husband of the original 1966 article. Clearly, Piven looks back fondly with memories of what NWRO did in the 1970s. The New York Times reported on their tactics on September 22, 1970:

There have been sit-ins in legislative chambers, including a United States Senate committee hearing, mass demonstrations of several thousand welfare recipients, school boycotts, picket lines, mounted police, tear gas, arrests — and, on occasion, rock-throwing, smashed glass doors, overturned desks, scattered papers and ripped-out phones.

My friend Sol Stern, now with City Journal and the Manhattan Institute, explained how successful they were [3]:

The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley’s wildest dreams. From 1965 to 1974, the number of households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city’s private economy.

Under the liberal administration of Mayor John Lindsay, welfare spending more than doubled, from $400 million to $1 billion a year. Money for the poor was now 28 per cent of the city’s budget, and New York almost collapsed as a result — precisely the hope of Cloward, Piven and George Wiley.

Now, as our national economy and many state and city budgets again are at the breaking point, Frances Fox Piven has issued a new call to repeat and build upon the ruinous strategies that she and her late husband advanced decades ago. And as in 1966, her vehicle is The Nation, the flagship magazine of the Left which today has a huge circulation and much greater influence than it had in the 1960s.

Writing in the current issue, Piven presents [4] a clarion call for a new mass movement, one that the magazine publishes as an editorial statement representing its editors. (It is currently under the magazine’s firewall.) She begins by noting that nothing is taking place to deal with ending what she claims is an unemployment rate of 15 million people. To regain the 5 percent rate of 2007, she estimates there would have to be 300,000 jobs created each month for several years, something that is next to impossible.

Thus Piven asks a question: “So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs?” In other words, the kind of action her protégé George Wiley fomented in the 70s with the NWRO. She admonishes the Left not to wait for “the end of the American empire and even the end of neoliberal capitalism,” but to up the ante at present to pressure for “big new [government] initiatives in infrastructure and green energy” that could “ward off the darkness.” Her fear is that the new Congress, instead of moving in the direction she and the Left favors, will concentrate on “deficit reduction by means of tax cuts and spending cuts.” As for President Obama, she sees him as a new version of Herbert Hoover, who foolishly meets with corporate executives and seeks to placate them.

What is needed, she suggests, are “mass protests” that might influence Obama and press “him hard from his base.” To do that, however, she notes that they have to get past the many obstructions to mobilize the unemployed. This is especially the case that the unions today “do little for their unemployed,” who don’t pay dues and “are likely to be malcontents.”

Piven argues that their task is harder than it was in the past, because the unemployed are diverse, are not in one area of the country and have no common institutional setting. It is hard to bring people together, even in welfare and unemployment centers, she complains, since often administrators try to avoid long lines and crowded waiting areas, where organizers could proselytize and inflame the dissatisfied applicants.

But most important, she writes, “they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant (my emphasis) …Losing a job is bruising; even when many other people are out of work, most people are still working. So, a kind of psychological transformation has to take place; the out-of-work have to stop blaming themselves for their hard times and turn their anger on the bosses, the bureaucrats or the politicians who are in fact responsible.”

They also need targets, which she sees as “the most difficult of the strategy problems.” Since she knows well that “local and state governments are strapped for funds,” the poor and the unemployed must demand “federal action.” It is, in other words, another “fiscal crisis of the state” that, as in the past, can be used to advance the radical goal. There first have to be local protests that have to “accumulate and spread,” then “become more disruptive” (my emphasis) in order to pressure our national political leaders. What does Piven mean when she calls for disruption? She is clear and up front about her intent:

An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees. (my emphasis.)

What she is calling for is nothing less than the chaos and violence engulfing Europe. Disgruntled leftist unionists, students who expect an education without cost, and citizens of social-democratic states cannot accept that the old terms of the social contract they thought would last forever have worn out their welcome. The European welfare-state governments can no longer function with the kind of social programs that now far exceed their nation’s budgets and hence are moving their countries to the precipice of total collapse.

So Piven hopes that in our own country, “a loose and spontaneous movement of this sort could emerge,” spurred on, no doubt, by ideologues like Piven and the encouragement of the New York City leftists who run The Nation magazine. Perhaps on their next Carribbean cruise they can talk about it some more. Hence Piven hopes that young workers and students, “who face a future of joblessness, just might become large enough and disruptive enough to have an impact in Washington.”

Will it happen here? There is no exact science of protest movements, she notes. But who, she asks, “expected the angry street mobs in Athens or the protests by British students?” Living in the past, she looks hopefully at the strikes in 1934, and the civil rights movement of the1960s. Clearly no student of history, Piven fails to comprehend the very different circumstances that made these social movements have legs. All she can do is issue her hope that another “American social movement from the bottom” will emerge, and then the organized Nation left can “join it.”

This time, however, ACORN is collapsing, and no George Wiley and NWRO even exists to implement her strategy. Somehow, I doubt whether the current Nation readers will even pause to leave their cruise ship to try and organize the social base she thinks is the movement’s hope. It’s far easier to issue flaming declarations in the magazine’s pages and hope that someone will take her up on it. Doesn’t she remember her Karl Marx?

http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2010/12/30/cloward-piven-strategy-for-today/

The Liberal Reckoning of 2010--voters said "Hell, no!"

The Liberal Reckoning of 2010

The year voters saw the left's unvarnished agenda and said no..
 
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent out a press release last week headlined "111th Congress Accomplishments." It quoted a couple of Democratic Party cheerleaders calling this the greatest Congress since 1965-66 (Norm Ornstein) or even the New Deal (David Leonhardt), and listed in capital letters no fewer than 30 legislative triumphs: Health Care Reform, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a Jobs Package (HIRE Act), the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Food Safety, the Travel Promotion Act, Student Loan Reform, Hate Crimes Prevention, and so much more.

What the release did not mention is the loss of 63 House and six Senate seats, and a mid-December Gallup poll approval rating of 13%. Never has a Congress done so much and been so despised for it.

While this may appear to be a contradiction, it is no accident or even much of a surprise. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party had been waiting since the 1960s for its next great political opening, as we warned in an October 17, 2008 editorial, "A Liberal Supermajority." Critics and some of our readers scored us at the time for exaggerating, but in retrospect we understated the willful nature of that majority.

Democrats achieved 60 Senate votes by an historical accident of prosecutorial abuse (Ted Stevens), a stolen election (Al Franken) and a betrayal (Arlen Specter). They then attempted to do nearly everything we expected, regardless of public opinion, and they only stopped because the clock ran out.

Editorial Board Member Matt Kaminski on the winners and losers of 2010.

The real story of 2010 is that the voters were finally able to see and judge this liberal agenda in its unvarnished form. For once, there was no Republican President to muddle the message or divide the accountability. The public was able to compare the promise of 8% unemployment if the government spent $812 billion on "stimulus" with the 9.8% jobless result. They stood athwart liberal history in the making and said, "Stop."

Note well, however, that the Democrats still standing on Capitol Hill remain unchastened. In her exit interviews, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she would do it all the same way again, and her colleagues have seconded her lack of remorse by keeping her as their leader despite their November thumping. Her consolation to defeated Democrats was not to invite them to the House caucus meeting when she denounced President Obama's tax deal with Republicans.

Note, too, that the organized left and its media allies are also beginning to rewrite the story of the 111th Congress as an historical triumph. The same people who claimed that ObamaCare was a defeat because it lacked a public option are suddenly noting it will put 32 million more Americans on the government health-care dole. It won't be long before liberals and the press are defending the 111th Congress's every achievement as historic.

There is a lesson here both about modern liberalism and for Republicans who will soon have more power in Congress. For today's left, the main goal of politics is not to respond to public opinion. The goal is to impose the dream of an egalitarian entitlement state whether the public likes it or not. Sooner or later, they figure, the anger will subside and Americans will come to like the cozy confines of the cradle-to-grave welfare state.

This is the great Democratic bet with ObamaCare. The assumption is that once the benefits start to flow in 2013 the constituency for "free" health care will grow. As spending and deficits climb, the pressure for higher taxes will become inexorable and the GOP will splinter into its balanced budget and antitax wings. A value-added tax or some other money-machine will pass and guarantee that the government will control 40% to 50% of all economic resources.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she would do it all the same way again.

If the price of this bet was losing control of the House for a moment in time in 2010, Mrs. Pelosi's view is so be it. You have to break a few Blue Dog careers to build a European welfare state. Liberals figure that as long as President Obama can be re-elected in 2012, their gamble will pay off and the legacy of the 111th Congress will be secure. The cheerleaders will write books about it.

The lesson for Republicans is to understand the nature of their political opponents and this long-term bet. The GOP can achieve all kinds of victories in the next two years, and some of them will be important for economic growth. But the main chance is ObamaCare, which will fundamentally change the balance of power between government and individuals if it is not repealed or replaced.

While repeal will no doubt founder in the Senate in the next two years, Republicans can still use their House platform to frame the debate for 2012. They can hold hearings to educate the public about rising insurance costs and other nasty ObamaCare consequences. And they can use the power of the purse to undermine its implementation.
***
The difference between the work of the 111th Congress and that of either the Great Society or New Deal is that the latter were bipartisan and in the main popular. This Congress's handiwork is profoundly unpopular and should become more so as its effects become manifest. In 2010, Americans saw liberalism in the raw and rejected it. The challenge for Republicans is to repair the damage before it becomes permanent.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703909904576051803529108190.html

Relatively Speaking, It's Still Cold--so much for "warming"

Relatively Speaking, It's Still Cold

Most people, I think, have caught on to the fact that global warming hysteria is a politically-inspired hoax. In that regard, it is helpful to put current temperatures into historical context. At Watts Up With That? Don Easterbrook charts temperatures since the last Ice Age, approximately 10,000 years, based on Greenland ice cores. This is his description of the methodology:

One of the best ways to look at long-term temperatures is with isotope data from the GISP2 Greenland ice core, from which temperatures for thousands of years can be determined. The ice core isotope data were obtained by Minze Stuiver and Peter Grootes from nuclear accelerator measurements of thousands of oxygen isotope ratios (16O/18O), which are a measure of paleo-temperatures at the time snow fell that was later converted to glacial ice. The age of such temperatures can be accurately measured from annual layers of accumulation of rock debris marking each summer's melting of ice and concentration of rock debris on the glacier.

Is the methodology reliable? I don't know, but it is typical of the sort of data that climate scientists use. This is the chart that shows temperatures over the last 10,000 years; as you can see, virtually all of that time has been warmer than the present.

We are still warming up from the Little Ice Age, and, according to these data, we have quite a distance to go before we reach temperatures that are normal in historical terms. This chart also reflects the fact that human civilization has generally prospered the most during warmer periods.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/12/028039.php

Must read and see charts: http://liten.be//LFRhK

Time to Rethink Public Employee Unions

Time to Rethink Public Employee Unions by John Hinderacker/Powerline

In New York, sanitation workers have reported that their union ordered them to sabotage the city's blizzard cleanup efforts. If that claim is true, the union may be responsible for at least one death. Mayor Bloomberg has vowed to investigate.

It remains to be seen what will come of this particular controversy, but the broader point is coming into ever-clearer focus: it is time to ban public employee unions.

For the large majority of our history, public employee unions have been illegal. It is only since the 1960s and 1970s that they have been allowed. Currently, they are legal in roughly half the states. The United States has carried on a four-decade experiment in legalization, and the results are in: public employee unions are a cancer on our country.

Public employee unions flourish because government is, by its nature, a monopoly. Thus, there is no need for unionized government units to compete against non-unionized units. Moreover, public officials who negotiate with public employee unions generally lack the same incentives that private employers have to keep costs down. The result has been a fiscal disaster, with numerous states and municipalities now going over the waterfall of bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, public employee unions have become perhaps the dominant force in our political life. They extract dues from their members which go to fund the candidacies of politicians who will pay public employees even more money. The unions' ill-gotten clout has created a vicious cycle; at the same time that government units are going broke, public employees are now far better paid than their private sector counterparts, while enjoying better benefits and ridiculous job security.

Enough is enough. Legalization of public employee unions has been a disaster. It is time to end the experiment and make them illegal once again, at both the federal and state levels. I expect that this will become one of the great political issues of the next decade.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/12/028031.php

The early returns on Obamacare

The early returns on Obamacare by Paul Mirengoff/Powerline

The Washington Post reports that Obamacare is off to a rocky start. One of its key early features -- the one that allows people who are already sick to obtain insurance -- is attracting few customers and costing more than expected.

As to the first matter, the chief actuary of the Medicare program predicted earlier this year that 375,000 people would sign up for the new pool plans by the end of 2010. As of early December, only 8,000 people had enrolled.

As to the second matter, the Post reports that in some states the "high-risk pools" are proving very costly. Thus, "it is an open question whether the $5 billion allotted by Congress to start up the plans will be sufficient."

It is also an open question whether the high-risk pools are even serving their intended purpose -- making affordable insurance available to people who are already sick. In addition to citing anecdotal evidence of how costly premiums are, the Post quotes one researcher who states, "from my perspective, [the new plans] are not a good match for people who have expensive conditions." This may help explain why so few people are signing up.

The high-risk pools are only one aspect of Obamacare, of course. However, according to the Post, some health-policy researchers believe that "the success or failure of the pools could foreshadow the complexities of making broader charges in health insurance by 2014, when states are to open new marketplaces -- or exchanges -- for Americans to buy coverage individually or in small groups."

At a minimum, I think the early experience with the high-risk pools foreshadows the unreliablility of key predictions made by Obamacare's supporters. Look for the serious overstatement of benefits and the serious understatement of costs to be a constant feature as the rest of Obamacare is rolled out (assuming no repeal).

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/12/028014.php

White House Plans to Push Global Warming Policy, GOP Vows Fight

White House Plans to Push Global Warming Policy, GOP Vows Fight

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/28/white-house-plans-push-global-warming-policy-gop-vows-fight/

Obama under pressure to deliver on climate

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/environment/2010-12-29-Obamaclimatefull29_ST_N.htm?csp=34news&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+usatoday-NewsTopStories+%28News+-+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

Gangster government, HHS edition--tyranny on installment plan

Gangster government, HHS edition by Scott Johnson/Powerline (use links for more info from sources)

Obamacare figures to be a fount of gangster government if and when it is ever fully implemented. Over time it will render us all subjects of the administrative state.

As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius is giving us a preview of coming attractions. Jeffrey Anderson explains:

Not satisfied with the colossal amounts of power that she would acquire under Obamacare if it isn't repealed, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Kathleen Sebelius has issued a 136-page "rule" that will now give her (and her subordinates) largely unchecked power to pass judgment on the prices of health insurance throughout the United States. Notwithstanding the fact that 43 states already regulate and approve health insurance premiums, Sebelius claims that we need an additional, more centralized, protection against insurers' unseemly "profit motive." But a far greater threat to the future of American republicanism is posed by the impulse that animates Sebelius and the bulk of the Obama administration: the power motive.


It's staggering that one person would think that she should ultimately get to decide what a product, which Obamacare would soon require all Americans to purchase, should cost. Moreover, the Wall Street Journal writes that Sebelius's "rule" marks "an effort to end-run Congress, which by some miracle declined to give HHS the formal legal authority to explicitly block premium increases, despite a direct appeal from President Obama." Not having been granted that formal power, "Ms. Sebelius is creating by regulatory fiat larger de facto powers to achieve the same end."

The linked Wall Street Journal editorial concludes: "Politicized rate-setting is the new reality of the U.S. health insurance market, not that consumers will in any way benefit."

Anderson also links to Charles Kesler's Claremont Review of Books editorial. Kesler writes of Obamacare's administrative regime:

Faster than one might think, a government of equal laws turns into a regime of arbitrary privileges.


A "privilege" is literally a private law. When law ceases to be a common "standard of right and wrong" and a "common measure to decide all controversies," then the rule of law ceases to be republican and becomes despotic. Freedom itself ceases to be a right and becomes a gift, or the fruit of a corrupt bargain, because in such degraded regimes those who are close to and connected with the ruling class have special privileges.

Anderson concludes that Obamacare leads to "the politicizing of health care, the compromising of liberty, and the debilitating consolidation of power in the hands of the unelected few."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/12/027993.php

Obama's useful idiots

Obama's useful idiots

by Scott Johnson/Powerline
The new START Treaty that passed the Senate today seems to come out of a Cold War time warp. Let's take a look back at Obama's thoughts on the American nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

When Ronald Reagan set out to bring down the Soviet Union, he built up America's nuclear arsenal while deploying short-range nuclear warheads in Europe and undertaking a widely derided missile defense program. Reagan's build-up took place over the massive worldwide opposition of the left, much of it orchestrated by the Soviet Union under the auspices of one or another of its "peace offensives."

Reagan's efforts induced a kind of mass hysteria. ABC brought us The Day After, the documentary-style film portraying a fictional nuclear war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact that rapidly escalated into a full-scale exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The film graphically displayed the effects of the war on Lawrence, Kansas. Nuclear war was a bitch, of course, and the film served as a timely warning against the nightmare toward which Reagan's policies would deliver us.

in Useful Idiots Mona Charen also recalls that public television brought us Testament (1983), "a moving film about a family in Washington State slowly dying of radiation poisoning after a nuclear war." Not to be outdone, Charen adds, NBC "broadcast its own scaremongering documentary called Facing Up To the Bomb (1982)." (The title of Charen's book comes from a phrase attributed to Lenin describing Western left-liberals and Social Democrats.)

In 1983 protesters formed a 14-mile anti-nuclear "human chain" in Berkshire, England. When Reagan visited London for an economic summit the following year, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament turned out somewhere between 80,000 (police count) and 200,000 (CND count) protesters marching from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square to greet him. Reagan modestly allowed that he didn't "take credit for all of the demonstrators being there for me..."

Nowhere was the hysteria greater than on college campuses. It manifested itself in intense hostility to the military, to national defense and security, and to every aspect of the Reagan defense build-up. The college crowd hated Reagan's opposition to Communism, wherever applied.

The New York Times has reported that in 1983, as a Columbia undergraduate, Barack Obama was among the "useful idiots" expressing high-minded disparagement of Reagan's defense policies. That's not exactly how the Times put it, because Times reporters William Broad and David Sanger failed to supply the missing historical context that Charen's book provides, and because the Times itself figures prominently among the "useful idiots" chronicled by Charen.

The Times article reported on Obama's March 1983 article "Breaking the war mentality." The Times noted that in the article Obama railed against discussions of "first-versus second-strike capabilities" that "suit the military-industrial interests" with their "billion-dollar erector sets," and agitated for the elimination of global arsenals holding tens of thousands of deadly warheads.

In his article Obama praised the nuclear freeze movement and celebrated the work of two groups: Arms Race Alternatives and Students Against Militarism. By Obama's description of them, the groups were among the "useful idiots" promoting the Soviet line on Reagan's build-up: "These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are shifting their weight into throwing America off the dead-end track."

Obama expressed and dismissed a possible reservation regarding the "narrow focus" of the groups, citing the deep wisdom of Peter Tosh that "everybody's asking for peace, but nobody's asking for justice." Heavy, man.

But if Peter Tosh was heavy, he had nothing on Obama himself. Obama decried "the most pervasive tendency of the collegiate system specifically, and the American experience generally." Obama described this "tendency" as the disembodiment of "elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory from individual choices and government policy." According to Obama, Arms Race Alternatives and Students Against Militarism had come "to save us from the twisted logic of which we are today a part."

The Times chose to portray Obama's 1983 article as the early expression of his continuing pursuit of "a nuclear free world." That's one way to put it. While others may hope that Obama has outgrown his youthful radicalism, the Times suggested that he is fulfilling it. The Times unfortunately appears to have gotten that right.

The Soviet Union is gone, but Obama's fantasy of a nuclear free world survives. Enter the new START Treaty. It's hard to follow the rationale offered in support of the treaty by supporters such as Robert Wright without laughing out loud. Rich Lowry swallowed hard and got the job done here.

John Podhoretz does not condemn the treaty, but finds that it does no harm: "This is an unnecessary treaty, made with a bad international actor of the second rank whose word cannot be trusted and who does not deserve to be elevated to the level of a bilateral negotiator with the United States." I am afraid that this errs on the side of charity, but we can hope.

I am more certain that the passage of the treaty on the dying day of a lame duck Congress is an illegitimate act. Matthew Spalding and Anna Leutheuser have reviewed the record since the passage in 1933 of the Twentieth Amendment limiting lame duck sessions. Spalding and Leutheuser write: "The State Department maintains a comprehensive listing of all agreements and treaties currently in force. While considerable research would be required to establish definitively that no treaty has ever been ratified by a lame duck session, it is of note that current research efforts have yet to find any such treaty."

Spalding and Leutheuser therefore conclude: "The ratification of New START by a lame duck Senate would not only ignore the message sent by voters in November but also break a significant precedent, consistent with the principle of consent, maintained by Presidents and Congresses since the passage of the Twentieth Amendment in 1933."

According to Politico, the new START Treaty could not have passed without the support of 10 Republican Senators. In the event, 13 Republican Senators voted for it. Here is the roster via Politco: Indiana's Richard Lugar, Ohio's outgoing senator George Voinovich, Utah's outgoing Bob Bennett, Tennessee's Senators Corker and Alexander, Mississippi's Thad Cochran (the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations panel), Georgia's Johnny Isakson, Massachusetts's Scott Brown, New Hampshire's Judd Gregg, Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, and Nebraska's Mike Johanns. Is it unduly harsh to think of these folks as Obama's useful idiots?

See for links:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/12/027985.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/world/europe/23treaty.html?_r=1&hp

Abolish the FCC over bogus "net neutrality" takeover by feds

Abolish the FCC by Scott Johnson/Powerline (Be sure to open the linked pieces)

It's hard to keep up with the outrages perpetrated by the Obama administration, the lame duck Congress, and the Obamaite federal agencies. Our freedom is under assault on many fronts, but this one deserves special attention.

Since Congress declined to adopt the Orwellian "net neutrality" legislation, the FCC stepped into the breach. It's another example of the usurpation of constitutional government by the administrative state.

John Fund calls out the FCC in "The net neutrality coup," and David Harsyani proposes that we "Abolish the FCC." Michelle Malkin holds that net neutrality is the Obamacare of the Web. Senator DeMint is not amused.

Richard Epstein applies the law-and-economics perspective to the underlying issue of policy. Professor Epstein concludes that the "operation [of the Internet] is too important to be left to the FCC, whose record of consistent failure in regulation starts with its control over radio in 1912 and continues to this present day. The rise of an alternative technology is the best way to break the current FCC monopoly. Unfortunately, the FCC knows that as well, which is why it won't stay on the sideline."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/12/027980.php
 

Our Muslim Congressman: Where Does He Stand?

Our Muslim Congressman: Where Does He Stand?  by JohnHinderacker/Powerline

We have written many times about Keith Ellison (formerly known as Keith Hakim and Keith X Ellison), who represents the city of Minneapolis in Congress and is the nation's first Muslim Congressman. As such, one might expect that he could do some good: he could support moderate Muslims, many of whom are threatened with death; denounce jihad; and distance himself from radical groups like the Nation of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, and CAIR. But Ellison has not chosen to do any of these things. Instead, he has aligned himself with, and run interference for, radical Muslims, starting with Farrakhan and continuing on with CAIR and others.

Currently, Ellison is embroiled in a controversy with Rep. Peter King of New York, who proposes to conduct Congressional hearings on radical Islam. Ellison went on the wacko-left-wing Ed Schultz show to denounce King's proposal:

Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress, has been crossing swords with New York Republican Peter King, who has suggested that it's time for an investigation of radicalization in the American Muslim community.


King, a Long Islander, told Fox News "We've seen what happened in England, and we know that Al Qaeda is trying to recruit people over here." ...


"It's scary," Ellison said Monday night in an appearance on MSNBC's Ed Schultz show. "I got so concerned that when I heard about it I actually approached Congressman King on the House floor and told him that, you know, look, we all need to be concerned about violent radicalization, but not just against Muslims, against anybody. What about the guy who flew the plane into the IRS, or what about the guy who killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum?" ...


Ellison said King's plans have "McCarthyistic implications."

Apparently Ellison hasn't noticed that radical Islam poses the principal threat to civilization in the 21st century. Lone left-wing nuts with ideologies like Ellison's, like the guy who flew an airplane into a building, are certainly a concern, but they aren't the reason why we have a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. Anyone who doesn't understand that shouldn't be a small-town sheriff, let alone a member of Congress.

"McCarthyistic" [sic] is one of those words that liberals think have magical powers. But let's parse it. What, exactly, was wrong with the Congressional hearings with which McCarthy is associated? Not that there was no legitimate target--on the contrary, Communism was an even more existential threat than radical Islam. McCarthy's problem was that he was a dishonest drunk; he claimed to hold in his hand a fictitious list of Communists, and so on. But there is no reason to assume that next year's hearings on radical Islam will misrepresent anything. It is not "McCarthyistic" to try to defend the United States against an obvious peril.

On the other hand, accusing those who try to defend the United States of "McCarthyism" is a longstanding, and long-discredited, left-wing trick. It is hard to imagine, knowing what we now know about Communism as well as radical Islam--a weirdly similar ideology--how shouts of "McCarthyism" could dissuade anyone from wanting to learn about the threat that radical Islam poses. Keith Ellison has gotten himself on the wrong side of this issue; but then, that is precisely why he got involved in politics in the first place.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/12/027976.php