GSA has to 'flea' to Las Vegas for fun , Secret Service no longer secret about chasing Columbian 'curs' and Sec. Clinton pops a beer to take everyone's mind off the complete and utter failure of expanded government run wild.
This Week's Exploding Cigar: Obama, the Dog Eater
By Clarice FeldmanAs Don Surber notes: "Sadly, the economy still slogs along with gun sales as the lone bright sport." Aware that this is not the kind of record you win re-election on, Obama's crack campaign stuff has --with the aid of their 
media lapdogs-- set up a series of diversions, each of which is exploding in Obama's face like Wile E. Coyote's Acme exploding cigars.
media lapdogs-- set up a series of diversions, each of which is exploding in Obama's face like Wile E. Coyote's Acme exploding cigars.Last week the "Republican War on Women" disintegrated when DNC operative Hilary Rosen claimed Ann Romney, a mother of five, never worked a day in her life, so was an odd choice for Mitt's adviser. That was followed by the news that Obama paid the women on his staff 18% less than the male staffers and that Hilary Rosen was a very well paid corporate lobbyist with unprecedented access to the same white House Obama had pledged would not be influenced by lobbyists.
This week, the campaign, aka Acme Cigar Corporation,decided it was time again to try to paint Mitt Romney as personally dislikeable by trotting out a 30 year old tale about his putting the family dog in a carrier on the family station wagon for a trip. Seamus, the dog, protected by a jerry built wind screen, survived, but the story was touted once again by Acme and its press buddies in the belief that as history proved, one can with media helpers knock out Republican candidates on silly externals. Play the race game (Trayvon), the Women's Rights charade (Rosen and Fluke) and the animal lovers' heart strings (Seamus), and in that way pick up piece by piece the blocs of independents they so sorely need to prevail.
Treacher dug this out of Dreams from My Father, Obama's supposed autobiographical novel which the press praised as evidence of his genius, apparently without ever reading it:
"With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share."Yep, that's Barack Obama, writing about his childhood with his stepfather Lolo Soetoro in Indonesia, from Chapter Two of his bestseller Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance---
This from a friend and fellow memo reader. The "Leo" Zimmerman plot thickens. (See 1 below.)
And then. (See 1a below.)
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Mark Steyn as he sees America. Ollie North as he sees American leadership.
From apologies to making us the laughing stock of the world. The Barak and Hillary show! (See 2 and 2a below.)
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NASA to turn itself into a green advocacy agency? (See 3 below.)
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Tom Sowell, one of the best. (See 4 below.)
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'Bad fare' up 41% and no end in sight until all Americans are dependent upon larger and less effective government programs that over-lap and basically wreck lives! (See 5 and 8 below.)
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I am not posting this article on China's gold purchases to suggest buying gold stocks but rather to point out China's plan to back the Yuan with gold thus, replacing the use of the dollar as a world currency standard.
It will take time but when it happens it will raise inflation in our nation by many per cents and further weaken our financial standing in the world community.
The Obama administration either purposely intends to allow this to happen or does not understand the implications. (See 6 below.)
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Not meant to bluster - you can bank on it! (See 7 below.)
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Long article emphasizing what I have been alluding to - nations rot from within and the process is hastened when government institutions fail to accomplish their intended missions and meet their espoused goals. This is why big expanded government is its own worst enemy. It generally fails, citizens, justifiably, lose faith and seek something to replace it which also never works - then anarchy!
This is the Soros plot and he has a worthy 'dummy' in Obama.. (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1)Zimmerman Bombshells: Mayor And Pictures
George Zimmerman was allegedly recognized by the Mayor for his intervention in the events surrounding the homeless (black) man that was beaten by a Sanford police officer's relative.
There has been a near-complete media blackout in this regard -- and questions about whether the letter published somewhat-recently was authentic.
Well, it appears (from testimony of his mother this morning) that the Sanford Mayor personally recognized George Zimmerman for his efforts to obtain justice for that homeless man.
And where is the media who tried to turn this into a racial issue?
Just as importantly, where is the Mayor of Sanford who gave that commendation and thus knew damn well what the history of this man was when it came to his views on race?
Further there was testimony introduced this morning that George Zimmerman has been actively mentoring black kids in Orlando despite being urged not to by his mother as a consequence of the area of the city in question where he traveled to being a known high-crime area and thus dangerous to his person.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the media intentionally attempted to present a false picture of both the incident itself and George Zimmerman personally with regard to any racial issues surrounding this event.
Oh, and the claims that Zimmerman wasn't injured? Here's a picture taken three minutes after EMS arrived:
Update: Not only is that damage consistent with the claim that Zimmerman was having his head bashed against the concrete sidewalk but two other things came out of the interview linked above that are of great importance to the development of facts surrounding that night -- the embedded data in the image file has a time stamp off the cell tower (it was an iPhone 4s) and geotag information from the phone's GPS matches the location. There's a high probability that photograph and the tags embedded in it will be deemed admissible evidence. Second, the person who took the picture says Zimmerman was visibly staggering, which is consistent with a low-grade concussion from the impacts to his head.
Finally the witness said that there were visible powder burns on Martin's clothing (one of the questions I had originally as their presence would be expected given Zimmerman's narrative of what happened.)
If this all holds up it's pretty clear that the legal standard of objectively reasonable fear of great bodily injury or death was met for Zimmerman, and if so the shooting was justified -- period.
Note that there is no resort to "stand your ground" necessary to reach that conclusion.
Prediction: This case is going to go nowhere and, in my opinion, Zimmerman has an excellent lawsuit against the media outlets for libel and/or slander and perhaps even against the special prosecutor for knowingly false and malicious prosecution.
1a) It just occurred to me... With all the noise the media is making about Romney's wealth, I don't recall such bluster and hand-wringing over the Kennedy fortune. Or, for that matter, John Kerry. Or the fact that John Kerry gave virtually nothing to charity while Romney gave something on the order of $4 million...in addition to his entire inheritance from his father.
Oh. Wait. I just remembered. Romney is Republican. Kerry and the Kennedys are Democrats. Also, Romney worked for his money. Kennedy inherited his. And Kerry married it.
Never mind. Nothing to see here folks. Please move along now!
President Barack Obama at the Americas Summit in Cartagena, Colombia
Text 
Unlike the government of the United States, I can’t claim any hands-on experience with Colombian hookers. But I was impressed by the rates charged by Miss Dania Suarez, and even more impressed by the U.S. Secret Service’s response to them.
Cartagena’s most famous “escort” costs $800. For purposes of comparison, you can book Eliot Spitzer’s “escort” for $300. Yet, on the cold grey fiscally conservative morning after the wild socially liberal night before, Dania’s Secret Service agent offered her a mere $28.
Twenty-eight bucks! What a remarkably precise sum. Thirty dollars less a federal handling fee?
Why isn’t this guy Obama’s treasury secretary or budget director? Or, at the very least, the head honcho of the General Services Administration, whose previous director has sadly had to step down after the agency’s taxpayer-funded public-servants-gone-wild Bacchanal in Vegas.
All over this dying republic, you couldn’t find a single solitary $28 item that doesn’t wind up costing at least 800 bucks by the time it’s been sluiced through the federal budgeting process. Yet, in one plucky little corner of the Secret Service, supervisor David Chaney, dog-handler Greg Stokes, or one of the other nine agents managed to turn the principles ofgovernment procurement on their head. If the same fiscal prudence were applied to the 2011 Obama budget, the $3.598 trillion splurge would have cost just shy of $126 billion. The feds’ half a billion to Solyndra would have been a mere $18 million. The 823-grand GSA conference on government efficiency at the M Resort Spa & Casino would have come in at $28,805.
Chaney-Stokes 2012! Grope . . . and Change! Red lights, not red ink.
What we know so far is this: All eleven Secret Service men and all ten U.S. military personnel staying at the Hotel Caribe are alleged to have had “escorts” in their rooms that night. All of them. The entire team.
T
wenty-one U.S. public servants. Twenty-one Colombian whores. Unless a couple of the senior guys splashed out for the two-girl special. “Some of them were saying they didn’t know they were prostitutes,” explained Congressman Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
“Some are saying they were women at the bar.”
Amazing to hear government agents channeling Dudley Moore in Arthur: “You’re a hooker? I thought I was doing so well.” It turns out U.S. Secret Service agents are the only men who can walk into a Colombian nightclub and not spot the professionals. Are they really the guys you want protecting the president?
Congress is not happy about this. “It was totally wrong to take a foreign national back to a hotel when the president is about to arrive,” said Representative King.
It’s wrong to take a “foreign national” up to the room, but it would have been okay if she’d been from Des Moines? We’re all in favor of outsourcing, but in compliance with Section 27(e)viii of the PATRIOT Act this is the one job Americans will do?
With respect to the congressman, sometimes it helps to step back and consider the biggerpicture. Why were 21 officials of the United States government able to enjoy a night of pleasure with 21 prostitutes, whether “foreign nationals” or all-American? The answer isn’t difficult. Indeed, one retired agent spelled it out: “They just didn’t have anything to do.”
So they did Dania Suarez and her friends instead.
The 21 dedicated public servants jetted in on the so-called car-planes, the big transports flying in the tinted-windowed black Suburbans for the presidential motorcade. The “car-plane” guys show up a few days in advance, but usually two weeks or so after the reallyadvanced advance team has hit the ground. And there was nothing for them to do. There is no reason for them to be there.
So instead they went to the Pleyclub.
As I understand it, the 21 public servants did not technically bill U.S. taxpayers for their “escorts.” But you suckers paid for them to fly to Cartagena, and they were enjoying those women on your time. On foreign trips, aside from the 40 or so armored limousines, there are usually 200 Secret Service agents plus a couple of dozen sniffer dogs. Did the latter take any Colombian bitches back to their kennels? Or are they just the entrée for Obama’s embassy banquet?
“Americans! What do you expect?” The Queen routinely turns down requests from visiting U.S. presidents to reinforce the garden walls and replace the windows of Buckingham Palace — for an overnight stay. When the U.S. was the richest country on earth, the mad excess used to impress in a crude kind of way: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Now it’s the Brokest Nation in History: America hasn’t got it, but still flaunts it. Which is kind of pathetic.
Does more equal better? No. All eleven Secret Service johns had their “security clearances” canceled. That still leaves over 4 million Americans (or about 2 percent of the adult population) with “security clearances,” and, according to the director of national intelligence last October, just under 1.5 million federal employees with “top secret”clearances. Which helps explain why one army private was able singlehandedly to download bazillions of (admittedly mostly worthless) “secrets” for WikiLeaks. Imagine the entire population of New Zealand with security clearances, and the entire population of Philadelphia or Phoenix with “top secret” clearances.
What Were You Thinking? (Oliver North)
| April 20, 2012 | Oliver North
In 2009, Hansen stated that coal is “the largest fossil fuel reservoir of carbon dioxide, it is the dirtiest fuel. Coal is polluting the world’s oceans and streams with mercury, arsenic, and other dangerous chemicals. … The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.”
China is a large physical buyer of gold and what most don't know is the country is now the world's top gold producer.
"Back in 1970, China didn’t even register as one of the top gold producers. The top five producers at the time were South Africa (67 percent), the former Soviet Union (13.7 percent), Canada (5.75 percent), the United States (3.7 percent) and Australia (1.3 percent)," Wall Street Daily reports.
"China’s now the number one producer on the planet at 13.1 percent, followed by Australia at 10 percent, the United States at 8.8 percent, Russia at 7.4 percent and South Africa at only 7 percent. (If you add the former USSR nations together, they still top the list.)"
As paper currencies like the dollar and euro remain weak thanks to loose monetary policies, gold will climb higher for the long-term even if it corrects in the near future.
That means stocks in the companies that mine gold can only rise.
Considering how China continues to import gold, expect prices to keep on climbing.
"Bottom line: Gold stocks will at some point benefit from all of this buying. Right now, they trade at levels that are similar to when gold was under $1,000 per ounce," Wall Street Daily adds. "The real question is not if gold shares will go higher, but when."
Gold bullion has soared from below $300 a troy ounce in 1999 to over $1,600 today, briefly spiking above $1,900 in 2011.
Deep into the 12th year of a historic rally, fans are wondering whether the metal is due for a pause, The Wall Street Journal reported. Some market heavyweights say it's time for a correction, but just for this year, as the metal will still make gains over the longer term.
"It's extremely unusual for any asset in history to move higher for 11 straight years," famed commodities investor and noted gold bull Jim Rogers tells S&A Investor Radio.
"That's why I expect the recent correction in gold to continue."
Bullion bulls also still see potential gains as the world works through its problems, including Europe's debt woes and the Fed's bloated balance sheet, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Central banks also have become big net buyers of gold, with the official sector absorbing 455 metric tons last year, more than at any point since the mid-1960s, according to Thomson Reuters GFMS, which tracks the gold market.
In respect to the Iranian threat, 2012 will be a critical year, Gantz said, adding that "the State of Israel believes that nuclear arms in Iran’s possession are a very bad thing, which the world should stop and Israel should stop."
"We are preparing our plan accordingly," he said.
Israel is the only country in the world facing open destruction threats by another state, which is also producing the means to do carry them out, the army chief said. However, he noted, this does not mean that he will be ordering the army’s Air Force chief to strike Iran "now."
When asked whether Israel faces an existential threat at this time, Gantz said: "The potential exists. At this time, in my estimate, this is not the case."
"I don’t think you will find a point in time where something isn’t happening somewhere in the world," he said. "The level of risk has increased as well. This is not something invented by Benny Gantz. I’m not taking the credit here. I’m simply accelerating all those special operations."
Regarding the likelihood of a war breaking out this year, Gantz said: "Our intelligence assessment asserts that given the strategic reality and instability in the region, the chance of deteriorating to a war is higher than in the past. There are no indications of war, but the chances of the situation deteriorating into one are higher than in the past."
The army chief added that in case of a regional war, the IDF will be able to cope with the rocket threat from Lebanon and from the Gaza Strip.
And yet the more guys on the payroll, the less anyone does. For all the hooker-cavorting among a bored entourage with time on its hands, there was no one to proofread President Obama’s speech. So he stood up in public and attempted to pander to the Latins by referring to the sovereign British territory of the Falkland Islands by the designation of its temporary Argentine usurpers 30 years ago: “Las Malvinas.” Except that his writers got it wrong. So the president of the United States called it “the Maldives,” an entirely different bit of British Commonwealth real estate half a world away in the Indian Ocean. Were the speechwriting staff also face down in the hooker bar? “Jush a minute, baby. Hic. The preshhhiduh wansh a couple rewrites. ‘I call on London to return British Columbia to Colombia.’ Thash should do it. Lesh go back to my room and I’ll show you my prompter.”
It’s not just the entitlements. Everywhere you look in the bloated federal Leviathan, all is waste, all is excess. But the absurd imperial presidency is a good place to start. The next citizen-executive of this republic would be sending a right message were he to halve the motorcade, halve the security detail, halve the hookers.
Otherwise, America’s foreign creditors will start to figure out that another half decade of U.S. spendaholism and they’re likely to wind up like Dania Suarez: You loan the U.S. government $800 billion, and come the due day the treasury secretary reaches in his pocket and says: “So how about we call it 28 bucks even?”
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2012 Mark Steyn
2a)
What Were You Thinking? (Oliver North)
| April 20, 2012 | Oliver North
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WASHINGTON — My dear friend and fellow Marine Joe Foss — a Medal of Honor recipient — would ask me occasionally, "What were you thinking?" The question usually was prompted by my missed shot on a hunt or when he heard me make a confusing comment on radio or television. Given the recent revelations of bad behavior, incompetence, corruption, waste and fraud — and a deluge of mystifying and misleading explanations — the potentates of the press are asking the wrong questions. The American people need to ask our nation's leaders and the masters of the so-called mainstream media, "What were you thinking?" A few recent examples: —The Secret Service scandal. On April 11, security cameras in Cartagena, Colombia, captured images of 11 Secret Service agents and at least 10 U.S. military personnel in the company of prostitutes. Set aside for a moment the lack of moral judgment by the participants or how an "advance team of experts" for the upcoming Summit of the Americas could be ignorant of security cameras. In the aftermath of this incident and an ongoing investigation, the president and likely GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney — also a Secret Service protectee — both have told reporters repeatedly that they still "have confidence" in Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan. "Why?" That ought to be the next question. But that isn't asked. Perhaps the most unusual response to this event came from the lips of Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At an April 16 news conference on the Middle East, the general was asked for his reaction to the caper in Cartagena. His answer was blatantly political: "We let the boss down, because nobody's talking about what went on in Colombia other than this incident." Let "the boss" down? What about potentially catastrophic security breaches, the incredible lack of judgment or even letting down the American people? But those questions aren't asked, either. —Hillary's high jinks. On the evening of April 14, day one of the two-day, 33-nation summit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently decided to take the heat off the Secret Service by performing for the cameras herself. Her antics at Cafe Havana nightclub were reminiscent of government bureaucrats on a taxpayer-funded General Services Administration boondoggle or a sorority gal at a frat party. State Department spokesman Mark Toner dismissed the exhibition, saying: "I can confirm that she did indeed have a very good time and was just enjoying some of the nightlife in Cartagena. ... There's nothing to it." In a subsequent interview on CNN, Clinton laughed and said: "It was a lot of fun. We had a very good time just enjoying beautiful Cartagena." —Offending allies. At the conclusion of the Cartagena summit, during a joint news conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, President Barack Obama was asked by a member of the Latin American press corps about future U.S. policy toward Cuba and the Malvinas. Apparently unwitting to the fact that April marks the 30th anniversary of the bloody fight to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentine invaders, our head of state replied, "In terms of the Maldives or the Falklands — whatever your preferred term — our position on this is that we are going to remain neutral." This had to disappoint our British allies. President Ronald Reagan backed them in the two-month operation — during which they lost more than 250 soldiers, sailors and airmen. Obama's statement also had to stun any student of geography, because the Maldives are an island chain south of India. There was no follow-up question for our Nobel laureate. —Afghanistan. The craziness in Cartagena did serve one purpose for the O-Team. It distracted attention from at least seven nearly simultaneous terror attacks April 15 in Kabul, Jalalabad, Gardez and Pul-e-Alam, the capital of Logar province. U.S. and NATO officials praised the effectiveness of Afghan national security forces for their "effective response" and noted that there were no American or NATO casualties. But Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the attacks were proof of an "intelligence failure for us and especially NATO." Pentagon officials deny this charge but acknowledge there was "very little 'chatter' in advance of the attack." Unfortunately, this admission confirms what nobody seems ready to admit: The fight in the shadows of the Hindu Kush is dogged by inadequate human intelligence. This crucial deficiency will exacerbate the danger to U.S. and NATO troops as they begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan this summer. By the end of the week, even this story was eclipsed by the publication of 2-year-old photos showing U.S. troops posing with the remains of dead suicide bombers. The reaction to these images by senior government officials, from the commander in chief on down, is to express "shock," apologize and promise "to hold those responsible accountable." But events this week indicate that those "in charge" need to ask themselves, "What were we thinking?" And members of the so-called mainstream media ought to remind them all that leadership begins at the top. | |
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3)REBELLION AT NASA AGAINST 'GLOBAL WARMING'
Letter warns 'green' position endangering 'reputation of science itself'
By Kevin DeAnna
Forty-nine highly respected former NASA astronauts, engineers and scientists are fighting back against efforts by top executives to use the federal agency to promote global warming alarmism.
The letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden accuses the agency of endangering “the reputation of science itself” by advocating the “extreme” position that carbon dioxide is the major cause of climate change.
The signatories include seven former Apollo astronauts as well as Chris Kraft, the man more responsible than any other for establishing Mission Control.
They want NASA to “refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases” and contend that the claim “that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change” is “not substantiated.”
The letter has done nothing to stop the efforts of NASA’s most notorious global warming activist, James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a division of NASA.
The day after the letter was sent, Hansen stated in an interview with BBC Scotland that averting global warming was a “great moral issue”equivalent to slavery. He called for a worldwide tax on carbon emissions and advocated a ban on the construction of coal-fired power plants.
As Brian Sussman points out in his explosive new book “Eco-Tyranny,” there is nothing new about these kinds of statements, as Hansen has a long history of extreme claims and advocacy on behalf of large-scale government regulation.
For example, in May 2011, Hansen advocated redistribution of wealth by placing a “flat rising fee on carbon” with the objective of “affect[ing] consumers and chang[ing] lifestyles. People with lavish lifestyles will pay more in increased energy costs … and they will see that their personal decisions make a difference.”
In 2009, Hansen stated that coal is “the largest fossil fuel reservoir of carbon dioxide, it is the dirtiest fuel. Coal is polluting the world’s oceans and streams with mercury, arsenic, and other dangerous chemicals. … The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.”Building on the implied parallel to death camps, Hansen called in 2008 for the CEOs of energy companies that use fossil fuels to be tried for “high crimes against humanity and nature.”
Hansen also has found time to protest and undergo three separate arrests for left-wing causes while still heading up GISS. In June 2009, he was arrested alongside actress Daryl Hannah for protesting mountaintop removal in southern West Virginia. In September 2010, he was arrested again for taking part in a nationwide protest called Appalachia Rising organized by the liberal environmental group the Rainforest Action Network. Finally, in August 2011, Hansen was arrested for protesting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
“James Hansen has a long history of proving himself to be a radical environmentalist with a Ph.D. – who just happens to work for the U.S. government,” Sussman said.
“This is the man charged with keeping the temperature of Mother Earth – and he’s committed to making sure it looks like Mother Earth is always running a fever,” he said.
Sussman points out that Hansen’s efforts are only part of a larger pattern of what he calls “government-sponsored scaremongering.”
The Environmental Protection Agency has a list of frequently asked questions on global warming which states, “Climate change health effects are especially serious for the very young, very old, or for those with heart and respiratory problems.”
It adds, “Climate change will likely increase the number of people suffering from illness and injury due to floods, storms, droughts, and fires, as well as allergies and infectious diseases.”
The EPA has a special site designed for children with the headline “The Earth’s climate is changing, and people’s activities are the main cause.”
However, as Sussman says in “Eco-Tyranny,” the federal government itself is responsible for using flawed information that fuels climate change alarmism.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, are collecting data from thousands fewer temperature reporting stations than they did in 1970. The smaller sample size is compromised by locating the remaining stations in urban areas and not compensating for the localized warming known as the urban heat island effect.
They are also systematically removing data from temperature reporting stations in higher latitudes, higher altitudes and rural areas, creating a false picture of global warming.
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4)The 25 Best Quotes From Thomas Sowell
By John Hawkins
Thomas Sowell is not only one of the finest columnists in the business, he's a prolific author, a brilliant economist, and he has an incomparable knack for simplifying complex concepts that few other human beings can match. Enjoy the distilled wisdom!
25) "Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?"
24) "Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don't need to imagine it. It's called the United States of America."
23) "Four things have almost invariably followed the imposition of controls to keep prices below the level they would reach under supply and demand in a free market: (1) increased use of the product or service whose price is controlled, (2) Reduced supply of the same product or service, (3) quality deterioration, (4) black markets."
22) "What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are given ‘class’ labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept."
21) "There are few talents more richly rewarded with both wealth and power, in countries around the world, than the ability to convince backward people that their problems are caused by other people who are more advanced."
20) "The poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits ever since 1994. You would never learn that from most of the media. Similarly you look at those blacks that have gone on to college or finished college, the incarceration rate is some tiny fraction of what it is among those blacks who have dropped out of high school. So it’s not being black; it’s a way of life. Unfortunately, the way of life is being celebrated not only in rap music, but among the intelligentsia, is a way of life that leads to a lot of very big problems for most people."
19) "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
18) "Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late."
17) "The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from 'society,' rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by 'society'."
16) "No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind."
15) "Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored."
14) "There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs."
13) "Civilization has been aptly called a 'thin crust over a volcano.' The anointed are constantly picking at that crust."
12) "We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did, but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past."
11)” For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.”
10) "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
9) "Intellect is not wisdom."
8)” The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?"
7) "Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history ofreplacing what worked with what sounded good."
6) "Experience trumps brilliance."
5) "The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
4) "One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence."
3) "Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions — and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large."
2) "In short, killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy, so long as the goose does not die before the next election and no one traces the politicians’ fingerprints on the murder weapon."
1) "There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs."
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5 Welfare Spending Up 41 Percent Under Obama
In 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in America, the poverty rate stood at around 19 percent.
Since then, total federal, state, and local spending on anti-poverty programs has amounted to $15 trillion, yet the poverty rate now stands at 15.1 percent, the highest level in nearly a decade.
“Clearly we are doing something wrong,” according to the Cato Institute, which has released a new policy analysis on welfare spending that calls the war on poverty a “failure.”
The federal government will spend more than $668 billion on anti-poverty programs this year, an increase of 41 percent or more than $193 billion since President Barack Obama took office. State and local government expenditures will amount to another $284 billion, bringing the total to nearly $1 trillion — far more than the $685 billion spent on defense.
Federal, state and local governments now spend $20,610 a year for every poor person in the United States, or $61,830 for each poor family of three.
“Given that the poverty line for that family is just $18,530, we should have theoretically wiped out poverty in America many times over,” writes Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute and author of “The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in Civil Society.”
Most welfare programs are means-tested programs providing cash, food, housing, medical care, or other benefits to low-income persons and families, or programs targeted at communities or disadvantaged groups, such as the homeless.
The federal government alone now funds 126 separate and often overlapping programs designed to fight poverty, Tanner points out.
There are 33 housing programs run by four different cabinet departments, 21 programs providing food or food-purchasing assistance administered by three different federal departments and one independent agency, and eight healthcare programs administered by five separate agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services.
The largest welfare program is Medicaid, which provides benefits to 49 million Americans and cost more than $228 billion last year, followed by the food stamps program, with 41 million participants and a price tag of nearly $72 billion. Other programs range from Federal Pell Grants ($41 billion) down to lower-cost programs such as Weatherization Assistance for Low Income Persons ($250 million) and the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program ($20 million).
At least 106 million Americans receive benefits from one or more of these programs. Including entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare and salaries for government employees, more than half of Americans now receive a substantial portion of their income from the government.
“Clearly we are spending more than enough money to have significantly reduced poverty, yet we haven't,” Tanner concludes.
“The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.
“And we actually have a pretty solid idea of the keys to getting out of and staying out of poverty: finish school, do not get pregnant outside marriage, and get a job, any job, and stick with it.”
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6) China's Gold Hoarding Seen Boosting Gold Stocks
Stocks in gold mining companies have lagged behind the price of bullion, but that's going to change thanks to Chinese hoarding of the precious metal, Wall Street Daily reports.
China is a large physical buyer of gold and what most don't know is the country is now the world's top gold producer.
"Back in 1970, China didn’t even register as one of the top gold producers. The top five producers at the time were South Africa (67 percent), the former Soviet Union (13.7 percent), Canada (5.75 percent), the United States (3.7 percent) and Australia (1.3 percent)," Wall Street Daily reports.
"China’s now the number one producer on the planet at 13.1 percent, followed by Australia at 10 percent, the United States at 8.8 percent, Russia at 7.4 percent and South Africa at only 7 percent. (If you add the former USSR nations together, they still top the list.)"
As paper currencies like the dollar and euro remain weak thanks to loose monetary policies, gold will climb higher for the long-term even if it corrects in the near future.
That means stocks in the companies that mine gold can only rise.
Considering how China continues to import gold, expect prices to keep on climbing.
"Bottom line: Gold stocks will at some point benefit from all of this buying. Right now, they trade at levels that are similar to when gold was under $1,000 per ounce," Wall Street Daily adds. "The real question is not if gold shares will go higher, but when."
Gold bullion has soared from below $300 a troy ounce in 1999 to over $1,600 today, briefly spiking above $1,900 in 2011.
Deep into the 12th year of a historic rally, fans are wondering whether the metal is due for a pause, The Wall Street Journal reported. Some market heavyweights say it's time for a correction, but just for this year, as the metal will still make gains over the longer term.
"It's extremely unusual for any asset in history to move higher for 11 straight years," famed commodities investor and noted gold bull Jim Rogers tells S&A Investor Radio.
"That's why I expect the recent correction in gold to continue."
Bullion bulls also still see potential gains as the world works through its problems, including Europe's debt woes and the Fed's bloated balance sheet, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Central banks also have become big net buyers of gold, with the official sector absorbing 455 metric tons last year, more than at any point since the mid-1960s, according to Thomson Reuters GFMS, which tracks the gold market.
© 2012 Moneynews. All rights reserved
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7) Army chief: IDF prepared for Iran strike
IDF ready to attack Tehran’s nuclear facilities if needed, Chief of Staff Benny Gantz says; military constantly engaged in covert, high-risk operations beyond Israel’s borders, he says
By Alex Fishman
Should Israel decide to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, the IDF will be prepared to carry out the mission, Chief of Staff Benny Gantz told Yedioth Ahronoth in remarks published Sunday.
"In principle, we are ready to act," the army chief told the newspaper in a special interview ahead of Israel’s upcoming Independence Day.
In respect to the Iranian threat, 2012 will be a critical year, Gantz said, adding that "the State of Israel believes that nuclear arms in Iran’s possession are a very bad thing, which the world should stop and Israel should stop."
‘Higher chance of war’
During the interview, Gantz also addressed special operations carried out by the IDF beyond Israel’s borders, revealing that the scope of such activities has increased significantly compared to the past.
"I can’t promise no missiles will be landing here. They will be falling; many of them. It won’t be a simple war, neither on the frontlines nor ion the home front,” he said. “However, I don’t advice anyone to test us on this front."
"When (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah comes out of his bunker, he’s concerned – and rightfully so. He saw what happened to Lebanon last time, and it won’t be close to what will happen to Lebanon next time," the army chief said. "I think they understand it well."
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8)In Nothing We Trust
Americans are losing faith in the institutions that made this country great
By Ron Fournier and Sophie Quinton
RALF-FINN HESTOFT
Feeling betrayed: Johnny Whitmire
MUNCIE, Ind.—Johnny Whitmire shuts off his lawn mower and takes a long draw from a water bottle. He sloshes the liquid from cheek to cheek and squirts it between his work boots. He is sweating through his white T-shirt. His jeans are dirty. His middle-aged back hurts like hell. But the calf-high grass is cut, and the weeds are tamed at 1900 W. 10th St., a house that Whitmire and his family once called home. “I’ve decided to keep the place up,” he says, “because I hope to buy it back from the bank.”
Whitmire tells a familiar story of how public and private institutions derailed an American’s dream: In 2000, he bought the $40,000 house with no money down and a $620 monthly mortgage. He made every payment. Then, in the fall of 2010, his partially disabled wife lost her state job. “Governor [Mitch] Daniels slashed the budget, and they looked for any excuse to squeeze people out,” Whitmire says. “We got lost in that shuffle—cut adrift.” The Whitmires couldn’t make their payments anymore.
(PICTURES: How Institutions Are Crumbling)
They applied for a trial loan-modification through an Obama administration program, and when it was granted, their monthly bill fell to $473.87. But, like nearly a million others, the modification was canceled. After charging the lower rate for three months, their mortgage lender reinstated the higher fee and billed the family $1,878.88 in back payments. Whitmire didn’t have that kind of cash and couldn’t get it, so he and his wife filed for bankruptcy. His attorney advised him to live in the house until the bank foreclosed, but “I don’t believe in a free lunch,” Whitmire says. He moved out, leaving the keys on the kitchen table. “I thought the bank should have them.”
A year later, City Hall sent him salt for his wounds: a $300 citation for tall grass at 1900 W. 10th St. Telling the story, he swipes dried grass from his jeans and shakes his head. “The city dinged me for tall weeds at my bank’s house.” After another pull from the water bottle, Whitmire kicks a steel-toed boot into the ground he once owned. “You can’t trust anybody or anything anymore.”
(RELATED: Restoration Calls—Complete Coverage)
Whitmire is an angry man. He is among a group of voters most skeptical of President Obama: noncollege-educated white males. He feels betrayed—not just by Obama, who won his vote in 2008, but by the institutions that were supposed to protect him: his state, which laid off his wife; his government in Washington, which couldn’t rescue homeowners who had played by the rules; his bank, which failed to walk him through the correct paperwork or warn him about a potential mortgage hike; his city, which penalized him for somebody else’s error; and even his employer, a construction company he likes even though he got laid off. “I was middle class for 10 years, but it’s done,” Whitmire says. “I’ve lost my home. I live in a trailer now because of a mortgage company and an incompetent government.”
Whitmire is a story of Muncie, and Muncie is the story of America. In this place—dubbed “Middletown” by early 20th-century sociologists—people have lost faith in their institutions. Government, politics, corporations, the media, organized religion, organized labor, banks, businesses, and other mainstays of a healthy society are failing. It’s not just that the institutions are corrupt or broken; those clichés oversimplify an existential problem: With few notable exceptions, the nation’s onetime social pillars are ill-equipped for the 21st century. Most critically, they are failing to adapt quickly enough for a population buffeted by wrenching economic, technological, and demographic change.
Knock around Muncie for proof: City Hall, like Washington, is petty and polarized, driving down voter engagement. Stodgy mainline churches are losing worshipers in droves. Low-tech and unruly public schools are prompting parents to pull their children out. The city’s once-beloved business class shuttered its factories, leaving a legacy of double-digit unemployment and helplessness. Labor unions once credited with creating the middle class are now often blamed for the demise of industry. Even The Star Press, Muncie’s daily newspaper once venerated for holding locals to account, was gutted after a job-killing merger in 1996 and the sale, a few years later, to media giant Gannett.
(RELATED: Why Muncie Is Middletown and More)
Muncie is a microcosm of a nation whose motto could be, “In Nothing We Trust.” Seven in 10 Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track; eight in 10 are dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed. Only 23 percent have confidence in banks, and just 19 percent have confidence in big business. Less than half the population expresses “a great deal” of confidence in the public-school system or organized religion. “We have lost our gods,” says Laura Hansen, an assistant professor of sociology at Western New England University in Springfield, Mass. “We lost [faith] in the media: Remember Walter Cronkite? We lost it in our culture: You can’t point to a movie star who might inspire us, because we know too much about them. We lost it in politics, because we know too much about politicians’ lives. We’ve lost it—that basic sense of trust and confidence—in everything.”
We’ve been through this before, and Muncie is again instructive. Nearly nine decades ago, sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd moved here to document the transition away from an agrarian economy. Americans were battered by unbridled commercialism, stymied by an incompetent government beholden to special interests, and flustered by new technologies and new media. The Lynds found a loss of faith in social institutions. But, somehow, institutions adapted or gave way to vibrant new ones. The Catholic Church took on poverty, illness, and illiteracy. The Progressive movement, embodied by Theodore Roosevelt, grappled with the social costs of modernization and equipped the government to offset them. Labor unions reined in the corporate excesses of the new economy. Fraternal organizations, a new concept, gave people a sense of community that was lost when knitting circles and barn-raisings died out.
Perhaps the problem is merely cyclical. “To a degree unlike any time since the Lynds’ time, we’ve lost trust in one another and the institutions that are supposed to hold us together,” says James Connolly, director of the Center for Middletown Studies at Ball State University here. Yet unlike that earlier era, vibrant new institutions are not generally springing up to replace the old ones. And even when they do, they don’t always restore Americans’ faith in institutions and each other. Schools are worsening (especially relative to competitors abroad); politicians are limited to small-bore, partisan measures; and corporations’ power over people like Johnny Whitmire is rising. What if, this time, institutions don’t recover—and our faith dies with them?
Yes, frustrated citizens have tried to fill the vacuum. Like-minded “followers” and “friends” feed us news online; people sometimes barter on eBay rather than bow to big corporations; and parents increasingly homeschool their children rather than expose them to failing public schools and unsafe streets. But this is coping, not institutional adaptation. And sociologists say we need the control that institutions provide: It’s how things get done.
When people trust their institutions, they’re better able to solve common problems. Research shows that school principals are much more likely to turn around struggling schools in places where people have a history of working together and getting involved in their children’s education. Communities bonded by friendships formed at church are more likely to vote, volunteer, and perform everyday good deeds like helping someone find a job. And governments find it easier to persuade the public to make sacrifices for the common good when people trust that their political leaders have the community’s best interests at heart. “Institutions—even dysfunctional ones—are why we don’t run amok in the woods,” Hansen says.
Still, no metrics exist to measure life without institutions, because they’ve been around as long as humankind. The first institution was the first family. The tribe was the first community. The first tribe’s leader was the first politician, and its elders were the first legislature. Its guards, the first police force. Its storyteller, a teacher. Humans are coded to create communities, and communities beget institutions.
What if, in the future, they don’t? People could disconnect, refocus inward, and turn away from their social contract. Already, many are losing trust. If society can’t promise benefits for joining it, its members may no longer feel bound to follow its rules. But is the rise of disillusionment inexorable? Can institutions regain their mojo? History offers hope, but Whitmire’s story, and the story of Muncie, say no.
GUTENBERG TO GOOGLE
Beneath a 110-foot Gothic tower, 180 worshippers at High Street Methodist Church scatter across pews that could hold twice that many. A balcony capable of seating hundreds more rings three sides of the church. It is empty. Nattily dressed worshippers crane their necks to watch robed choir members, a cross bearer, and two ministers walk down the main sanctuary aisle. A booming pipe organ marks each step. After an opening prayer, a dozen white-gloved handbell ringers perform “Beneath the Cross of Jesus,” composed by an Englishman in 1881.
Ten or so children are among the worshippers, a couple of them small enough to fit on a parent’s lap, but the vast majority of congregants are middle-aged or older. Pastor N. Dale Mendenhall uses his prayer to ask the Lord to help guide “the best in people of all ages” in the community. “We live in a city struggling to regain its future direction,” he tells them.
Away from his pulpit, Mendenhall confesses that his own downtown church is struggling to regain its direction. The 176-year-old institution is emblematic of a trend in Muncie and America: Mainline churches are losing relevancy and worshippers because they have failed to adapt to the changing needs of their communities. From 1981 to 2011, High Street’s membership dropped 52 percent to 700. The average Sunday attendance declined 27 percent to 379.
That decline reflects the experience of older religious institutions around the country. Those who have left the Catholic Church, for instance, now outnumber those who have joined it 4-to-1, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s 2008 survey. The large Protestant denominations have lost more than a million members in the past decade or so. The most telling statistic may be the number of Americans who declare themselves “unaffiliated” with any church tradition; it has been rising since the 1960s, and it topped 16 percent in 2010, according to Gallup.
The goings-on at Union Chapel Ministries, just a few miles away, help explain why traditionalists are languishing. Sitting on a 40-acre plot, Union Chapel is part of a fast-growing multibillion-dollar religious industry in America that is adapting one of the world’s oldest institutions to fit modern times—by giving congregants a sense of connection many had ceased to feel elsewhere. These so-called mega-churches are led by charismatic pastors with the skill set of corporate marketers; they sell not just the word of God but also the utility of God’s teaching in an era of atomization and economic change. What would Jesus do about long-term unemployment, school bullying, and Facebook? These churches help worshippers figure it out.
Union Chapel’s pastor, Gregg Parris, speaks in phrases you’d expect from an M.B.A. (“I’m in the word business”) or a sociologist (“We’re going from a Gutenberg world to a Google world”). He keeps his sermons simple because “you can’t assume everybody knows the Lord’s Prayer,” and he strives to make the liturgy relevant to life’s challenges. His church offers counseling for depression, anxiety, eating disorders, marriage problems, alcoholism, and sexual abuse. Union Chapel heavily promotes its social clubs to buoy connection-starved people. The services are casual, hip, and focused on middle-class Muncians who feel abandoned amid economic change. “My job,” Parris says in an interview at his office, “is to fill in the gaps where our institutions have failed us.”
After the service, people of all ages gather in the coffee shop and concession area outside the gymnasium, chatting, reading the newspaper, and browsing the bookstores. To be clear: That’s the church coffee shop, the church concession area, the church gymnasium, and the church bookstores. Many in the congregation wear T-shirts and sneakers; no man wears a suit. “They seemed to just take care of their own,” says Nancy Hopper, who joined Union Chapel in 1993, when she grew unhappy with the rural church she had worshipped at. “I like reaching out to the community.”
If Parris’s church is fresh, new, and relevant, John Hunt, the head usher back at High Street, knows how his church is perceived. “Some people think it’s cold and unfriendly,” he says. Mendenhall, too, knows he’s failing to reach people, as are other traditional churches struggling to keep pace with the times. As the 60-year-old Methodist pastor puts it, “Churches are still stuck in the mentality that we just have to fling our doors open, and people will come. That’s not the case anymore. Just look around.”
Traditional churches often cater to people who no longer exist—men and women guaranteed long marriages, many children, and a single job that lasts a lifetime. Today, as people search for moral grounding in an uncertain world, what is more relevant to them, Mendenhall must wonder: choirs or rock bands? Church-basement socials or Starbucks? Bake sales or yoga classes? Missions that serve the poor overseas or those that help the church’s own destitute neighbors?
It’s not that Mendenhall isn’t trying to adapt. He very much wants to draw the same people that Union Chapel serves—or even just to recover some of his own flock. High Street Methodist’s poverty campaign is now focused more on Muncie’s poor than on the needy overseas. It has a nontraditional service with somewhat modern music. Mendenhall has reached out to a downtown-based vocational-education college in hopes of attracting students. Back in his office, he is intrigued to hear about Parris’s coffee shop and wonders if something similar might make his church a gathering spot. But he’s not sure his white-haired church board would go for it. “The way we’ve always done it,” he says with a sigh, “is not going to do it.”
“THE LIGHT GOT DIMMER”
Maranda Whitehead remembers fondly her son Jordan’s first days at the neighborhood public school. He was “excited, happy, thrilled to go to kindergarten,” she says. It was downhill from there. Teachers could barely keep track of the students in their crowded classrooms; they had no money to keep up with modern trends in technology or education; and after the early grades, they taught a rote style focused on the state’s compulsory tests.
“Every year,” Whitehead says of Jordan, “the light got dimmer and dimmer, and finally he hated school.” His joy of learning didn’t return until she enrolled him in the sixth grade at Hoosier Academy, one of many charter schools that have sprung up across Indiana to provide an alternative.
It’s a national trend: Parents are fed up with traditional public schools because they are failing to adapt—or failing outright. The number of charter-school students nationwide has nearly quadrupled over the past decade to more than 1.6 million in the 2009-10 school year. In 2007, the most recent data available, the number of homeschooled students was about 1.5 million, a 76 percent increase since 1999. Many new charter schools cost the state less money than traditional schools and craft school-specific curricula, free from rigid state and district requirements. And although they spring from Indiana’s attempt to create competition for (and, thus, higher quality in) public schools, they also represent a demand-side phenomenon: Parents would not seek alternatives to a healthy public-school system.
Indiana surrendered to the demand in 2001, when its Legislature sanctioned charters. A few years later, it went further and allowed state funding to follow the student. Muncie’s two high schools began hemorrhaging pupils, and the pace is picking up: They have lost more than 17 percent of their enrollment since the 2007-08 school year.
At Hoosier, four days a week, the queue of small sedans, SUVs, and trucks waiting to drop off students forms a wide circle around the parking lot. The academy leases space in the unused wing of a Catholic school on the city’s south side. Under its “blended” model, children go to their classrooms two days a week for face-to-face instruction. Three days a week, they work at home with a parent or other adult while connected electronically to the high-tech school. Teachers and coaches meet at least once a month to review each child’s progress. “Everybody is on the same page all the time,” Whitehead says.
Coordination with parents is a given. “It took me a whole school year to see he wasn’t keeping up” in public school, says Jamie Leffel of her second-grader. Frustrated, she too moved him to Hoosier. What he got there highlights where the public schools have gone wrong. Hoosier students receive a passport to the digital age: Everyone who qualifies for a free or reduced-price lunch is eligible for a free desktop computer and printer, as well as an Internet stipend. Pupils still need to take government-mandated standardized tests, but the academy’s computer-driven metrics allow teachers and parents to track how well the kids are doing in real time. (They record the grade for every assignment, confirm that work is completed on time, and inform teachers that students need special attention when they can’t exceed 80 percent performance after the first few attempts.) It’s a high-tech education for a high-tech world. Parents get a constant stream of e-mails and, therefore, feel more invested. With Hoosier’s approach, “the partnership with the parent and teacher becomes crucial,” says Melissa DeWitt, the academic director of Hoosier Academies, the parent company based in Indianapolis.
Surprisingly, you won’t get an argument from Muncie Community School Superintendent Tim Heller. “If we were doing our job,” he says, “why would parents want to go to charter schools?” Heller worked in Indiana schools, including Muncie, for 32 years before leaving to run a wealthy public-school district in Kentucky. He returned last year to find Muncie’s system a shell of its former self. Years of declining enrollment has strained budgets, Heller said, and violence in the high schools worries administrators and parents. Add a high-profile scandal (a high school principal failed to report a rape allegation) and it’s not surprising that parents are voting with their feet.
In the Bluegrass State, Heller put laptops in the hands of every one of his high school students. But in Muncie, he has been ordered to slash some $4 million (about 8 percent) from the budget. Plans to install wireless Internet are just plans, for now. Teachers can’t offer the kind of real-time metrics that their competitors at Hoosier can.
Heller is challenging his staff to recognize why parents are yanking their kids. He is also cracking down on unruly students and raising academic standards. He plans to convene a meeting of parents who homeschool their children or send them elsewhere. “I want to ask them, ‘What don’t we do that you need us to do?’ ” But he hasn’t reversed any trends yet. And further budget cuts—not an unreasonable expectation as Washington passes debt off to states and municipalities—could reinforce the vicious cycle.
“LET HIM SPEAK!”
The first City Council meeting in 2008 is the stuff of legend. Republican Sharon McShurley had just become Muncie’s first female mayor. (Her margin of victory: 13 votes.) Coming into the session, it was all-out partisan war. Democrats were contesting the election in court. Republicans accused Democratic council member Monte Murphy of voter fraud after rounding up a half dozen witnesses who said that Murphy pressured them to vote Democratic on the absentee ballots he collected. The Democratic-controlled council had vowed to gridlock city government if that’s what it took to consign McShurley to a single term.
The hearing opens and in walks Cary Malchow, a clothing-shop owner bearing political ambitions and what might as well be a lit fuse. He demands that the City Council investigate one of its own. “This city has a member on its council, Monte Murphy, who has been publicly accused of the ultimate misconduct,” Malchow begins.
Bang! Bang! Bang! President Sam Marshall pounds his gavel to protect his fellow Democrat. “Sir, we will not have any …”
But Murphy doesn’t need Marshall’s help. He makes his own defense. Publicly accused? “By who?” More interruptions. “No, wait a minute. He brung up my name. By who?”
Malchow calmly replies that he read about the accusations in the newspaper. Returning to his prepared remarks, the businessman cites a city code allowing for corruption inquiries, before he is cut off again.
“Hey!” Marshall shouts. “We’re going to stop this meeting if this continues …”
Malchow is undeterred. If Murphy consents to an investigation, then he can “prove his innocence,” Malchow says. “By saying no, you’re leaving no doubt in everybody’s mind of a cover-up and that the gentleman is surely guilty.”
At this pronouncement, all hell breaks loose in City Hall. “That’s enough! Marshall shouts, banging the gavel. “That’s enough! That’s enough, sir! You’ve had enough time.”
“No, I haven’t,” Malchow avows.
Marshall rolls up his sleeves in a cartoonish gesture. He looks ready to fight. “You’ve had your three minutes, sir.”
“No, I haven’t,” Malchow says. “We have set standards …”
“Sir!” Marshall yells.
“… for students …”
“Sir!”
“… athletes …”
“Sir!”
“… and coaches and teachers …”
“Get this guy out,” Marshall growls.
McShurley’s crowd of supporters jump to their feet and chant, “Let him speak! Let him speak!” Marshall gets up and declares, “This meeting is over.” He grabs his glasses from the council table and walks away. People are wagging fingers and shouting.
Within hours, the video is on YouTube. Four years later, Democratic and Republican voters remember it with pinched faces and rolled eyes. “And we wonder why people don’t vote in this city?” asks Virginia Nilles, Muncie’s head librarian, the force behind a civic group formed to fill the leadership vacuum at City Hall.
And why should voters trust City Hall? The rookie mayor’s arrogance and Democratic intransigence ensured that McShurley’s term was a disaster. Murphy was convicted of felonious possession of absentee ballots and stripped of his council spot (the charge was later reduced to a misdemeanor). McShurley got revenge against Marshall by laying him off from his city job (he had been a supervisor at the city’s street department while serving as council president).
Over lunch in a downtown restaurant, McShurley looks back on four years of voter discontent and says, “We have ourselves to blame.” In 2008, she had confessed that her election was the result of a less-than-honest campaign: While promising to bring new jobs to the city, she didn’t tell voters that they would have to settle for far less pay and benefits in postindustrial Muncie. “They want $30-an-hour factory jobs, $15-an-hour benefits packages. No continuing education,” a dismissive McShurley told a reporter a few months into her term. “They want it just like their grandparents had it, just like some of their parents had it.”
Four years later, McShurley has little regret. “Why wasn’t I more honest with voters?” she asks. It’s a rhetorical question: “They didn’t want to hear it.” Voters may have lost faith in their leaders, but the leaders, too, have lost faith in the people. McShurley didn’t trust voters to accept the truth in 2007, so she danced around it. It’s no wonder that just 19 percent of the voting-eligible public cast ballots in last year’s mayoral race. And it’s a national problem: After a 50-year decline, just 14 percent of respondents in a 2011 Gallup Poll said that the federal government could be trusted “a great deal.” It’s a vicious cycle. Voters don’t like hard truths; so politicians spin us; so we don’t trust politicians; so politicians pander and lie to us.
In this, too, Muncie’s story is the story of America.
FIGHTING CITY HALL
“I’m here to appeal my weed citation.” Johnny Whitmire’s issue is the third item on the agenda for the Muncie Board of Public Works and Safety. For this official occasion, he wears a clean jean jacket. Despite everything he has been through, he’ll take a chance that government can help. The board meets every Wednesday at 10 a.m. in the City Hall auditorium. A dozen people, mostly city employees, file in as board attorney John Quirk calls the meeting to order. The agenda fills one double-spaced page and hints at nothing special: Old business … Comptroller’s reporter … AT&T bill … Weed Appeal.
Sitting behind an elevated polished-wood dais, Quirk and two other board members look down on Whitmire when his turn comes. Quirk tells Whitmire that the house at 1900 W. 10th is still in Whitmore’s name. “It’s a fairly common practice,” he says. “Citi doesn’t want any liability should anybody get hurt on the property.”
“So I’m liable for a house I don’t live in or own?” Whitmire sputters.
Yes, Quirk says. “I move that we put a $300 lien on the property and waive your fine, Mr. Whitmire.”
“What exactly does that mean?” Whitmire asks.
Quirk explains that the board’s action would require whoever buys the house to pay the weed fee.
“What if I buy it back?” Whitmire wants to know. Despite everything, he still has hopes.
“In that case,” Quirk answers, “keep track of the times you cut the lawn, and we’ll add to our motion a waiver of the lien should you buy the house back from Citi. That sound fair to you?”
“Sounds like a deal to me,” Whitmire agrees.
The board votes unanimously for the motion. Whitmire wanders out of the auditorium. “Oh, my God,” Whitmire says, his eyes wide with a smile. “Something just worked at City Hall.”
Desperate enough to try, Whitmire showed up to fight City Hall at a public meeting attended by few other members of the public. Somehow, after his travails, he thought government would work. Even more miraculously, it did. A low-level city board gave a guy a break. Its members showed that institutions can respond to change and help people after all.
But it’s a small victory for Whitmire. He and his wife are still unemployed. He is no longer eligible for the federal mortgage-relief program. He is bankrupt. His credit is destroyed. And he’s living in a trailer, with no expectation of rejoining the middle class. He has been buffeted, again and again, by forces that never had his interests at heart.
As he strolls out of City Hall and makes plans to cut the grass at 1900 W. 10th St., this man from Middletown still has little reason to believe in the system that took so much from him.
__________________
This story is part of a yearlong series that examines America’s crumbling foundations and how to rebuild them. Find more on the Web at nationaljournal.com/restoration-calls.
Correction: Whitehead says she had a good relationship with public school teachers, contrary to a clause in an early version. It was Leffel who complained about parent-teacher communication.
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