Monday, October 17, 2011

Is America's Decline Inevitable?

My wife and I recently talked about whether it is possible for our nation to get back on a positive track. She, being the family optimist, believes the answer is yes. I, being the family pessimist, do not believe it likely.

By on track I do not mean simply an economic recovery but a moral and social renaissance for without the latter the former is doomed.


I posed these 18 questions to her and she was unable to give me answers or a time line so I fear I may be correct.

a) What will restore the sanctity of a solid family structure?

b) When will men become responsible for children they bring forth and when will women quit allowing themselves to become breeders?

c) When will education return to its former role of preparing youth for reasoning and possessing employable skills?

d) When will politicians begin to focus on the nation's needs and make their own subservient?

e) When will government begin to live within its means, when will the nation expand its tax base and when will we devise rational tax laws ?

f) When will our nation return to placing value on character and personal responsibility?

g) When will the nation's flirtation with drugs end?

h) When will the Supreme Court return to rulings that do not bend over backwards stretching Constitutional intent in order to set us on a course that is foreign from the intent of The Founders.

i) When will we return to protecting our borders and allow those who wish to come here do so by following laws that are designed to encourage legitimate immigration ?

j) When will we quit thinking we can buy friends with aid that is misappropriated and seldom accomplishes its stated goals?

k) When will we cease being the U.N.'s favorite patsy?

l) When will academia become infiltrated with Conservatives in order to bring campus balance?

m) When will we end PC'ism and affirmative action?

n) When will we teach economics and history as required courses?

o) When will government get out of the way and allow free markets to allocate capital?

p) When will our media and press begin to accept their responsibility for accuracy?

q) When will we return to basing decisions on science that is not manipulated to support a preconceived goal?

r) When will we end class warfare?


Gideon Rachman seems to agree with my concerns. Reade "America Must Manage Its Decline" - Gideon Rachman, Financial Times.
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Extending the reach of law? Are political organizations and corporations liable world wide for human rights abuses? What do you think? (See 1 below.)
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I know Larry Sabato and he is one of the best. (See 2 below.)
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Keep on keeping on. (See 3 below.)
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As expected - out of step with America and whatever is left of our declining values! (See 4 below.)
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This should get you hot under the collar. (See 5 below.)
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Lloyd Marcus writes about Cain the runaway slave whose accomplishments were traditional and not dependent on special considerations. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)Supreme Court to decide on reach of global human rights law
By David G. Savage


Can -- and should -- corporations and political organizations be treated like individuals?

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to resolve an international human rights dispute over whether corporations and political groups can be held liable in American courts for their role in the torture, murder and enslavement of victims abroad.

Since the Nazi war crimes trial at Nuremberg, international law has held that human rights abuses can be prosecuted around the globe. And two U.S. laws — the Alien Tort Statute of 1789 and the Torture Victims Protection Act of 1992 — give American courts the jurisdiction to decide these human rights cases.

But it is unclear whether the targets of such cases are limited to the actual persons who perpetrated the abuses or to corporations and political organizations as well.

The Supreme Court said it will decide both questions in a pair of cases.

The justices will hear the case of a dozen Nigerians who sued the Royal Dutch Shell oil company for the torture and execution of dissidents in Nigeria in the 1990s. The victims included noted playwright and human rights campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa. The suit alleges Shell aided and abetted the Nigerian regime.

Last year, however, the U.S. court of appeals in New York threw out the suit and said corporations were not liable for such abuses. Its opinion cited the Nazi-era example of the I.G. Farben Co., which supplied the deadly gas for the Auschwitz death camp. The judges said 24 executives of I.G. Farben were charged with war crimes, but not the company itself.

Los Angeles attorney Paul Hoffman, in his appeal on behalf of the Nigerian plaintiffs, called the ruling "the first to exempt corporations from liability for the most heinous human rights violations." The case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch, is likely to be heard in February.

The second case involves a suit against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization by the sons and widow of Azzam Rahim, a Palestinian-American. Rahim was allegedly tortured and murdered by Palestinian intelligence officials in the 1990s.

His family brought suit under the Torture Victims Protection Act, but the U.S. court of appeals in Washington ruled such claims are limited to individual perpetrators and do not extend to political groups like the PLO. The court said it will hear the family's appeal in Mohamad v. Rajoub at the same time as the Royal Dutch case.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)Sabato: Obama to 'Lose Badly' If Election Were Today
By David Patten and Kathleen Walter

If the 2012 election were held today, President Barack Obama would not only lose but “lose badly,” according to University of Virginia Center for Politics guru Larry J. Sabato.

In an exclusive Newsmax.TV interview, Sabato said he expects to wait until July or August of 2012 to predict the outcome of the presidential contest.

“You look at all the available data: economic, political, social, polling – everything, and then make a judgment. We’re not anywhere close to that,” he said.

Then he added: “I will say this, though. Barack Obama is very lucky the election isn’t this November. He would lose badly if it were this November.”

Sabato gave Newsmax a state-by-state breakdown for 2012. He predicts the Old Dominion might be the canary in the Obama’s coal mine.

“Virginia’s going to be an early indication of election night,” he said. “Virginia gave a larger percentage to Barack Obama than Florida or Ohio. If Obama can’t win Virginia for a second time, I don’t see how he carries Florida or Ohio. And, if he loses all of those key states, and North Carolina as well, how does he win?”

According to the political expert, the two swing states Obama carried in 2008 that he is most likely to lose in 2012 are Indiana and North Carolina. Indiana, he says, is “gone regardless of what happens.” But Democrats conceivably could save the Tar Heel state, he says.

“The only hesitation is they have the convention there. They picked North Carolina on purpose – convention in Charlotte on Labor Day. And because of that, the Democrats will be able to get a major organizational effort moving in North Carolina. But it’s still an uphill climb for them,” he said.

Florida, according to Sabato, will be “very tough” for Obama to win if Sen. Marco Rubio is on the GOP ticket. Otherwise, he says, the Sunshine State will be up for grabs.

If the election were held today, Sabato says, polls indicate that Ohio would go Republican.

“And what it will do in 13 months, we’ll have to see,” he added.

One of his most interesting predictions: If the GOP fails to win control of the Senate in 2012, it is a lock to do so by 2014.

“The Republicans will hold on to the House, and in the Senate they have at least a 50-50 chance of taking control,” he explained. “If by some fluke they don’t get the Senate -- say they lose by a vote in 2012 -- [then] given the combination of seats coming up in 2014, they are certain to gain it by then.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)A New Spending Record
Washington had its best year ever in fiscal 2011.

Maybe it's a sign of the tumultuous times, but the federal government recently wrapped up its biggest spending year, and its second biggest annual budget deficit, and almost nobody noticed. Is it rude to mention this?


The Congressional Budget Office recently finished tallying the revenue and spending figures for fiscal 2011, which ended September 30, and no wonder no one in Washington is crowing. The political class might have its political pretense blown. This is said to be a new age of fiscal austerity, yet the government had its best year ever, spending a cool $3.6 trillion. That beat the $3.52 trillion posted in 2009, when the feds famously began their attempt to spend America back to prosperity.

What happened to all of those horrifying spending cuts? Good question. CBO says that overall outlays rose 4.2% from 2010 (1.8% adjusted for timing shifts), when spending fell slightly from 2009. Defense spending rose only 1.2% on a calendar-adjusted basis, and Medicaid only 0.9%, but Medicare spending rose 3.9% and interest payments by 16.7%.

The bigger point: Government austerity is a myth.

In somewhat better news, federal receipts grew by 6.5% in fiscal 2011, including a 21.6% gain in individual income tax revenues. The overall revenue gain would have been even larger without the cost of the temporary payroll tax cut, which contributed to a 5.3% decline in social insurance revenues but didn't reduce the jobless rate.

The nearby table shows the budget trend over the last five years, and it underscores the dramatic negative turn since the Obama Presidency began. The budget deficit increased slightly in fiscal 2011 from a year earlier, to $1.298 trillion. That was down slightly as a share of GDP to 8.6%, but as CBO deadpans, this was still "greater than in any other year since 1945."

Mull over that one. The Obama years have racked up the three largest deficits, both in absolute amounts and as a share of GDP, since Hitler still terrorized Europe. Some increase in deficits was inevitable given the recession, but to have deficits of nearly $1.3 trillion two years into a purported economic recovery simply hasn't happened in modern U.S. history. Yet President Obama fiercely resisted even the token spending cuts for fiscal 2011 pressed by House Republicans earlier this year.

The table also shows how close the federal budget was to balance as recently as fiscal 2007, with a deficit as low as $161 billion, or 1.2% of GDP. Those are the numbers to point to the next time someone says that the Bush tax rates are the main cause of our current fiscal woes.

Under those same tax rates in 2007, the government raised $2.57 trillion in revenue but it spent only $2.73 trillion. Four years later, the government raised $265 billion less thanks to the tepid recovery, but it spent nearly $900 billion more thanks to the never-ending Washington stimulus.

The lesson for Congress's super committee contemplating fiscal reform is that faster economic growth and spending restraint are the keys to reducing deficits. Higher taxes will hurt growth and feed a Washington spending appetite that is as voracious as ever, despite the claims of political sacrifice.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd
In interviews, protesters show that they are leftists out of step with most American voters. Yet Democrats are embracing them anyway
By DOUGLAS SCHOEN

President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election.

Last week, senior White House adviser David Plouffe said that "the protests you're seeing are the same conversations people are having in living rooms and kitchens all across America. . . . People are frustrated by an economy that does not reward hard work and responsibility, where Wall Street and Main Street don't seem to play by the same set of rules." Nancy Pelosi and others have echoed the message.


'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrators in the financial district of New York
.Yet the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform.

The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.

Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.

The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%).

An overwhelming majority of demonstrators supported Barack Obama in 2008. Now 51% disapprove of the president while 44% approve, and only 48% say they will vote to re-elect him in 2012, while at least a quarter won't vote.

Fewer than one in three (32%) call themselves Democrats, while roughly the same proportion (33%) say they aren't represented by any political party.

What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.

Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost. By a large margin (77%-22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%).

Thus Occupy Wall Street is a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation. Among the general public, by contrast, 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 36% as moderate, and only 21% as liberal. That's why the Obama-Pelosi embrace of the movement could prove catastrophic for their party.

In 1970, aligning too closely with the antiwar movement hurt Democrats in the midterm election, when many middle-class and working-class Americans ended up supporting hawkish candidates who condemned student disruptions. While that 1970 election should have been a sweep against the first-term Nixon administration, it was instead one of only four midterm elections since 1938 when the president's party didn't lose seats.


With the Democratic Party on the defensive throughout the 1970 campaign, liberal Democrats were only able to win on Election Day by distancing themselves from the student protest movement. So Adlai Stevenson III pinned an American flag to his lapel, appointed Chicago Seven prosecutor Thomas Foran chairman of his Citizen's Committee, and emphasized "law and order"—a tactic then employed by Ted Kennedy, who denounced the student protesters as "campus commandos" who must be repudiated, "especially by those who may share their goals."

Today, having abandoned any effort to work with the congressional super committee to craft a bipartisan agreement on deficit reduction, President Obama has thrown in with those who support his desire to tax oil companies and the rich, rather than appeal to independent and self-described moderate swing voters who want smaller government and lower taxes, not additional stimulus or interference in the private sector.

Rather than embracing huge new spending programs and tax increases, plus increasingly radical and potentially violent activists, the Democrats should instead build a bridge to the much more numerous independents and moderates in the center by opposing bailouts and broad-based tax increases.

Put simply, Democrats need to say they are with voters in the middle who want cooperation, conciliation and lower taxes. And they should work particularly hard to contrast their rhetoric with the extremes advocated by the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

Mr. Schoen, who served as a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is author of "Hopelessly Divided: The New Crisis in American Politics and What It Means for 2012 and Beyond," forthcoming from Rowman and Littlefield.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5) The Solar thing just got a little more interesting.......REALLY!

•The Tonopah Solar company in Harry Reid's Nevada is getting a $737 million loan from Obama's DOE.

•The project will produce a 110 megawatt power system and employ 45 permanent workers.

•That's costing us just $16 million per job.

•One of the investment partners in this endeavor is Pacific Corporate Group (PCG).

•The PCG executive director is Ron Pelosi who is Nancy Pelosi's brother-in-law.
Just move along folks.....nutthin' goin' on here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6)Herman Cain: Runaway Slave
By Lloyd Marcus

I keep having images of Herman Cain barefoot, covered in sweat and mud, wearing an old patchwork shirt and handmade burlap pants held up by a rope rather than a belt, out of breath and frantically running for his life; to freedom. Menacing sounds of barking dogs in the distance focused on Cain's scent. Not far behind, hot on Cain's trail, are black overseers determined to keep their fellow black slaves in check for their white liberal Democrat massas.

Cain's crime? He achieved success via traditional routes; education, hard work and character. Cain did not use or need affirmative action or lowered standards; a clear violation of the left's law for acceptable minority success.
White massas Lawrence O'Donnell, Janeane Garofalo and the Democratic Party leadership have instructed their black "slave control" enforcers/overseers to "Stop Cain! NOBODY, escapes the Liberal Democrat Slave Plantation! NOBODY!!!"

So a posse of black overseers consisting of Harry Belafonte, Tavis Smiley, Morgan Freeman, Al Sharpton and other blacks who are loyal to their white liberal Democrat massas are on a mission to destroy runaway slave, Herman Cain.

Why has the left launched a stop-at-all-cost political hit on Herman Cain? The answer is quite simple. Herman Cain represents truth. Truth can be devastating such as the great Oz is only a man behind a curtain pulling levers, Soylent Green is people, and the greatest enemy of black Americans is the Democratic Party.

Cain was correct in saying black voters have been brainwashed by the Democrats. Black overseers have kept blacks obediently and mindlessly monolithically voting Democrat for years despite huge elephants in the black community's living room; over 70% black high school dropout rate, over 70% black out of wedlock births and unprecedented black unemployment under Obama.

Black overseers and liberal white Democrats do not want to see a character-driven black in the Oval office who will not exploit his race to further a socialistic agenda. They do not want a black Commander in Chief whose life confirms the limitless opportunities for success available to all Americans who choose to "go for it." The last thing in the world the left wants to see is a black president who does not think more government control is the solution to every problem. They also do not want a powerful black voice celebrating America rather than proclaiming America to be the greatest source of evil on the planet. A black leader who loves and stands up for America, individual rights and freedom petrifies the left.

Obama uses his skin color to insulate himself from criticism as he usurps authority like no other president before him. All opposition to Obama's hostile takeovers is branded racist. Obama preaches his gospel of entitlement; everyone is a victim and everyone is entitled to the fruit of someone else's labor. Anyone daring to disagree with Obama's sermons is declared heartless and racist.

As president, Herman Cain would be the left's worst nightmare. Cain would be historic, not as the first black president, but as the first black "leader" to occupy the Oval Office. Cain's Justice Department would distribute equal justice to all Americans regardless of skin color, unlike the Obama Justice Department which said they would not press charges against fellow blacks.

President Cain would be a true celebration of all which has made America great; education, hard work, individuality, character, religious faith and freedom. Such wholesome virtues are deemed corny and repulsive to the left who are typically spoiled brat former hippie rich white kids.

And for this reason, black overseers and liberal white Democrats must capture, hogtie and drag Cain's black "n----- a--" back to the liberal Democrat plantation where he belongs.

And yes, my personal experience bears witness that white liberals freely call us black conservative runaway slaves the "N" word.

Lloyd Marcus, Proud Unhyphenated American, Chairman of The Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama. Please help me spread my message by joining my Liberty Network. Lloyd is singer/songwriter of the American Tea Party Anthem and author of Confessions of a Black Conservative, foreword by Michelle Malkin
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