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cost Romney the election:
Romney said, "When I'm elected, I will put Americans back to work,"
and 51% said, "Screw That!!""We have met the enemy, and he is us!" - Pogo
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Analyzing Egypt. (See 1 below.)
And when it comes to Israel what is new? (See 1a below.)
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A party out of power and leaderless resembles mercury which easily separates as individual voices emerge. This is what Obama is banking on so he can emasculate Republicans come the next election or, at the very least, assist them in their own self-destruction.
Having lost the cultural war the question for Conservatives is do they have a roll to play in a progressive world? If so what is it and how can they be effective at orchestrating same?
Conservatives have a philosophy of balance based on the proven belief there is always a price to pay when you begin to think there is a free lunch. The price may not become readily evident. It may take decades before the erosion reveals itself.
In the case of America, as with other nations that have gone before, the government's ability to tax gives leverage over individual freedom. You cannot tax the fruits of one's labor and still leave the individual whole. Something is lost/crushed in the translation and transaction and it generally is that precious word - freedom.
As government takes through taxation (this also includes the silent and most pernicious of taking -inflation) and transfers that which is taken to others, powerful constituencies are formed and as they are cultivated their appetite and demands grow. The act of taxing and transference becomes a self fulfilling fact and in the process the nation and its productive citizens are weakened and the moral fiber of the society is eventually destroyed.
Lamentably, this is where, I believe, we now are and all it takes to close the lock is a leader hell bent on driving a stake through the heart of what made the nation and its people exceptional and great. Obama is a clever and an effective political Rasputin. His technique of pitting citizen against citizen, creating division, and racial discord have proven effective. Obama's lust for power, his uncontrolled appetite for spending plays well as the takers and freeloaders exceed the creative. As self-interest voting dominates the true interests of the nation become secondary.
How long Republicans or true conservatives remain in the wilderness is unknown. If Obama's radical policies cripple the nation and bring havoc to his constituents perhaps an opening might create another Reagan like opportunity. The risk is that there might not be much left to save and the task could become insurmountable.
While domestic implosion occurs, events beyond also are having an increasingly negative effect. Particularly is this so when our nation's leadership is not up to the myriad of challenges. Once again, I see Obama's naivety troubling, Events are overtaking America at a time when we have lost influence to moderate or even control them. The Middle East is in upheaval, our influence and power is waning and Obama seems dangerously willing to abdicate national policy to the feckless and amoral U.N. We are stymied by Russia and China and the administration remains clueless to respond beyond failed re-set nonsense.
Obama's reckless spending on entitlements and implementation of crippling policy initiatives and strangling rules and regulations is mis-guided. Obama's actions simply serve to further burden our abilities to protect our vital interests.
As government grows the private sector becomes more Gulliver like - increasingly subservient to the Lilliputian bureaucrats and their voracious appetite for imposing control over otherwise free(er) markets.
In four years the face of America has changed significantly and I suspect four more years of such unbridled incompetence could make the America I knew unrecognizable. Unless something amazing occurs I do not believe the Republican Party will have much influence in determining and/or altering the direction in which our nation is heading and being led.
What happened earlier in Wisconsin and yesterday in Michigan reveal there is an undercurrent of reaction but has it come too late - is the horse of a Socialistic economy and obeisant society too far gone to be re-barned?
When the press and media are pre-disposed to support Obama and his inanities a further roadblock emerges for the more restrained and rational voice.
I have no answers or remedy but I do believe you must stay true to your calling and philosophy, you must not waiver or stray and if that means going down to defeat so be it. In time an opportunity will come your way and for those who stayed the course the prospects should prove favorable.
All I can say is stay tuned.
(Peter Berkowitz, to the best of my knowledge, is un-related.) (See 2, 2a, 2b and 2c below.)
Forbes Magazine , Dec. 24 issue , has an interesting article on Koch Industries and the two brothers who run it. PP 84 -PP 96. The Koch brothers are a thorn in the side of progressives because they are independent thinkers and totally conservative in their political views even to the point of being libertarian at times.
I commend it to anyone who wants greater insight into these remarkable industrialists.
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| WHAT'S NEW ON PJTV.Com | |
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The national debt is a ticking time bomb, and the government keeps on spending. Is President Obama deliberately attempting to destroy America’s economy? Hear from Bill Whittle, Stephen Green and Scott Ott, and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Bill Whittle talks with author Evan Sayet about his new book, “The KinderGarden of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks.” Sayet highlights the desire for indiscriminateness as a key to understanding modern liberals, and he delves into what they think and why they think it. Watch this interview to hear more about modern liberals from the funny and insightful Evan Sayet.
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Interesting turn of events? These munitions could be very effective in Gaza against the tunnels of weapons storage in the Philadelphia Corridor.
They could also be effective in taking out Iranian electrical facilities, crippling runways and munitions stored for the benefit of Revolutionary Guard units. (See 3 below.)
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Hooray for California! Rename the state Egregious! (See 4 below.)
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Is America soon to become a cloneof France? (See 5 below.)
Dick
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1)Analyzing Egypt
by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
With the upcoming referendum to begin on Saturday in Egypt (already taking place in embassies abroad) for the draft constitution that is primarily the work of Islamists from both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist factions, it is worth bearing the following issues in mind:
The Military: For all intents and purposes, the Egyptian military is interested in keeping its distance from politics, safeguarding its interests in the country's economy and maintaining a degree of autonomy from civilian government control.
The recent call for dialogue between President Mohammed Morsi and the opposition by the head of Egypt's armed forces -- Abdul Fatah al-Sissi -- which was welcomed by opposition leader Amr Moussa but has led to nothing practical yet, amounts to no more than an urge for calm in the face of rival rallies for and against the upcoming referendum. It does not signal a renewed desire for Egyptian military involvement in politics.
While the military, under former Supreme Council (SCAF) head Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, did wish to contain the Brotherhood, the fact is that the balance of power decisively shifted with Morsi's election and his dismissal of Tantawi in August, with Sissi being promoted in Tantawi's place.
It is a mistake to see the military as a bastion of Egyptian secularism at this point. What matters for the military now is that Morsi is not going to interfere with its economic holdings in industry and agriculture; further, as Eric Trager and Robert Satloff note, the draft constitution placates the military with a number of clauses that grant the military oversight over its budget, war policy, the appointment of the Defense Minister, and its own independent judiciary.
Islamist Vigilantes: Besides the desire to keep aloof of politics, the military is also aware -- along with the police -- of the implications of being associated with the deaths or injuries of rival protesters in the current wave of rallies and counter-rallies.
In the context of this security-force vacuum, Islamist vigilantes are simply filling the gap, with some 140 people being "arrested" by them in clashes last week. Indeed, the Der Spiegel article's summary point that "eyewitness reports suggest that the police tolerated the attacks" makes perfect sense in light of this development.
Various non-Islamist political figures have also accused street thugs from the Muslim Brotherhood in Alexandria and Cairo. In the case of Alexandria, one should note the belligerent Salafist rhetoric, which may point to Salafist responsibility in particular for violent attacks on political opponents. This is not to say that there has been no violence from the opposition, but the opposition is not setting up its own vigilantes.
The Rescinding of the November 22 Decree: Many commentators have interpreted Morsi's rescinding of the November 22 constitutional decree that granted him de facto dictatorial powers as a sign of genuine compromise owing to the pressure of opposition protests and violent unrest. Morsi's move is no such thing.
The decree was designed in the first place to hasten the process of finishing the draft constitution and putting it to referendum, sidelining the judiciary and the non-Islamist opposition in the process, with all actions in the interim between the passing and rescinding of the decree remaining beyond judicial review, together with the new prosecutor general appointed by Morsi keeping his position.
The rescinding of the decree comes in such a way that there is nothing to stop the referendum from going ahead on Saturday -- something that is also indicated by an announcement on the part of the State Council's Administrative Court that it cannot overrule Morsi's decision and insistence on holding the referendum this Saturday because doing so would infringe on the president's sovereignty.
The Draft Constitution: The best overview of its Islamist nature is given by this Associated Press report, which notes that "the charter not only makes Muslim clerics the arbiters for many civil rights, it also could give a constitutional basis for citizens to set up Saudi-style 'religious police' to monitor morals and enforce segregation of the sexes, imposition of Islamic dress codes and even harsh punishments for adultery and theft -- regardless of what laws on the books say."
Indeed, one Salafist member of the Constituent Assembly, Yasser Borhami, boasted of how the secularists and Christians who had quit the panel over the drafting of the constitution had been persuaded to "allow a number of crucial clauses that solidified Shariah, either because of bargaining or because they didn't realize the articles' significance."
Morsi and Economics: Writing in the Atlantic, Soner Cagaptay aims to portray a contrast between Turkey and emerging Islamist-led governments in the Arab world. In Turkey, Soner claims, "Islamization is taking place within the constraints of pre-existing and institutionalized Westernization," and one supposed aspect of this phenomenon is "Turkey's embrace of liberal economics."
On the contrary, Soner's view is off-base. Islamist ideology outside a secular and Westernized framework and embracing neo-liberal economic policies are by no means mutually exclusive. Morsi's proposed tax hikes, which he postponed at the start of this week, as part of a plan to secure an IMF loan fit in very well to a neo-liberal approach in the efforts to rescue Egypt from its economic crisis.
While one can interpret the postponement of the increases in taxation as a sign of government indecision on how to deal with the economic crisis, it is more likely that Morsi will simply reinstate the tax hikes soon after the constitutional referendum is approved, since he has realized that introducing them, which he knows will be unpopular, at this moment would give a means for the opposition to attract significant further support.
Indeed, it is clear that Morsi's economic plans, which have included a decree (passed while the November 22 constitutional decree was in force, hence it is beyond legal challenge now) to increase government control over trade unions, are of grave concern to independent labor unions, many of which are concentrated in the industrial city of Mahalla.
Mahalla was the site of the protests that sparked the 2008 general strike in Egypt and has now seen workers throw out the head of the local city council and declare autonomy from the "Ikhwani state," under the guise of the "Independent Republic of Greater Mahalla" (hat-tip: Ben Jefferies in Cairo for first drawing this development to my attention).
Of course, opposition in Mahalla to Morsi's 22 November decree and the Brotherhood's Islamist ideology played a role in this autonomy declaration too, but in this context, one should also note the clear tensionsbetween Tunisia's labor unions and the Islamist-led government that has plans for a neo-liberal economic approach. In Tunisia, Islamist vigilantes have attacked the headquarters of the country's main trade union: the UGTT.
Voting in the Constitutional Referendum and the Future: To conclude, while both the Islamist factions and their rivals have rallied significant numbers of people in support of and in opposition to the draft respectively, it should not be inferred that the vote will be split 50-50 in the referendum on Saturday. Rather, it is more likely that the referendum will see a majority vote in favor of the constitution.
The fact that the voting in the presidential race was almost split 50-50 does not indicate that the country is equally divided between Islamists and non-Islamists. In the circumstances immediately leading up to the run-off between Morsi and Ahmed Shafik, it is clear that many Islamists would have believed the election would ultimately be rigged in the latter's favor, and so would not have turned up to vote.
Despite the call by the main opposition organizations to vote "No" in the referendum (in turn, despite the announcement by the Judges Club that most judges will boycott the referendum, advisers to Morsi claim they have enough judicial officials to oversee the voting), it is clear that this decision has finally come in the circumstances of deep division and indecision within opposition forces as to whether to boycott the referendum or take part in the voting.
The notion of boycotting -- now declared by the National Salvation Front to be conditional -- illustrates the severe doubts within the opposition as to whether the draft constitution can be turned down.
Since the referendum will likely approve the constitution, there should be new parliamentary elections within two months, which will probably be dominated by Islamist factions as well. Even so, instability with street clashes, rival rallies, and outbreaks of violence will remain a staple of Egypt's political landscape.
Further, this unrest will not be limited to discontent with Islamist majoritarianism, but will also entail issues such as the tax hikes and Egypt's potential shift to net importer of natural gas. The superior position of the Islamist factions is unlikely to be overthrown in the near future, but one should not discount a descent into anarchy over the course of ten years or so.
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University.
1a) European Union Policy of Hypocrisy
By Eli E. Hertz
Applying Double Standards by Requiring of Israel a Behavior Not Expected or Demanded of any Other Democratic Nation
The leniency with which the European Union (EU) judges Palestinians’ reforms compared to the strictness of EU demands for reform by the Turks reveal Europeans’ duplicity and lack of integrity, and should disqualify the European Union from playing any significant role in the Middle East peace process, under the guise of being an honest broker.
EU hypocrisy is undoubtedly noticed when one examines and compares the own benchmarks of the EU as applied to a country-candidate [for example Turkey] waiting to join the European Union on the one-hand, and the benchmarks the EU is applying toward the Palestinians who seek to have a state, on the other hand.
European yardsticks for Palestinians, a hostile society, joining the Family of Nations amounts to praise for fabricated non-existent reforms and calls to drop the required incremental progressfrom the Roadmap. An end to violence and democratic reform that Palestinians have not even begun is tolerable. All of this in order to forge the way for immediate establishment of a Palestinian state, one which will endanger the very survival of a free and democratic Israel.
The historic decision of the European Commission in mid-December 2004 that Turkey is nowready to begin full negotiations on joining the European Union is an excellent opportunity to benchmark the way Europeans, members of the quartet, judge Turks, and how they judge Palestinians.
Keep in mind the goals and the ramifications of each: The Turks’ goal is membership in the European Union – a political union that the Europeans already say will have an iron-cladreversibility clause for Turkey if it fails to live up to its promises.
The Palestinians’ goal is sovereignty as a State – status for which there is no reversibilitymechanism if Palestine turns into a rogue state. Logically, the yardsticks of judging readinessshould be at least equal, if not more stringent for Palestinians, a society that consciously and purposely sacrifices its own youth for political gain and tactical advantage, with a leadership that champions and praises suicide bombers.
For 50 years – since 1963, Turkey has knocked on Europe’s door requesting membership in the EU. The Europeans, however, have been in no rush to invite a Muslim country into their midst, even if it is the most westernized and most democratic Muslim country in the Middle East. Although Turkey is already a strategic partner in NATO and some 4 million of its citizens are peaceful and productive guest workers in Europe, these facts seem not to persuade the European Union. Only 36 years later, in 1999, was Turkey accepted as a candidate , with no timeframe for actual negotiations. At the close of 2004, after five years of far-reaching Turkish constitutional and legal reform, the EU concluded that Turkey had reached a point where negotiations could even commence “under certain conditions.”But it is far too premature to break out the champagne.
Negotiations are expected to take ten to fifteen years, and even then “the outcome is not a foregone conclusion,” declared Romano Prodi, then President of the European Commission.
The first yardstick for progress is to meet the Copenhagen Political Criteria adopted in June 1993 by the EU, which states:
Olli Rehn, then the member of the European Commission responsible for EU Enlargement, made it clear in an address to the European Parliament that there are no ‘discounts’ for Turkey.
The fundamental freedoms Rehn cites include “women’s rights, trade union rights, minority rights, and problems faced by non-Muslim religious communities” and “consolidation and broadening” of legal reforms including “alignment of law enforcement and judicial practice with the spirit of the reforms” and a host of other demands. In fact, Europe demands a complete ‘makeover,’ from women’s rights to recycling of trash.
Like Turkey’s appeal for EU membership, realization of Palestinian aspirations was supposed to be performance-based. The timetable embedded in the Oslo Accords for establishment of limited Palestinian self-determination – internal self-rule – was five years (envisioned to be consummated in 1999). The Oslo Process hinged on the Palestinian leadership abandoning armed struggle and negotiating an end to the conflict, and establishing the infrastructure for enlightened self-rule. This proviso was never met. The latest scheme – the three-phase Roadmap plan adopted by the Quartet in May 2003 – speaks of full independence for Palestinians within three years (envisioned by 2005). Stage II, which supported establishment of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty within a 6 month period hinged on compliancewith Stage I, which demands “unconditional stoppage of violence” and steps towards comprehensive reform of the Palestinian Authority.
Romano Prodi’s plea for:
“Profound reflection and clear precautions” in Europe, saying it is imperative for Europeans to prevent Turks from “weakening the structure we have been building for over 50 years.”
The same sensitivity and prudence that the EU takes toward the Turks, and their effect on European safety and stability is hardly evidenced when it comes to dangers that the Palestinians pose towards weakening the structure that Israel has built for nearly 64 years, a structure that has propelled it from the “developing nation” status it held in the early 1950s, to membership among the “important emerging economies” today.
Turks have been scrutinized by the EU to evaluate Turkey’s readiness for membership in the European Union – that is, its ability to live side-by-side with England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and other EU members without Turks being a detriment to their neighbors. Parallel to this process, the EU has been evaluating the Palestinian Authority’s readiness for statehood – that is, Palestinians’ ability to live side-by-side with Israel without being jeopardy to their neighbor. While the goals are different, the EU has declared in both cases that the realization of the two goals both require the respective Middle Eastern society to undergo far-reaching reform, to adopt western values and western standards of conduct.
2)Henninger: Who Speaks for the GOP?
Republicans are failing to define their party's purpose during the fiscal-cliff talks.
After the presidential election, the biggest question out there is: What should the Republican Party stand for? The fiscal cliff, no matter the result, was an instant opportunity to elevate the party's basic beliefs. Instead the GOP is disappearing beneath waves of Beltway process.
John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have worked hard to keep their thumbs stuck in the dam of rising tax rates. Still, the fiscal cliff is looking more each day like an inside-the-Beltway CYA operation. Does anyone in the country beyond the halls of Congress and media specialists have any idea what these people are doing?
The Republicans' rote rationale for this sorry state is four words: We have no leverage. We lost the presidential vote. We only control the House. By law, the Bush tax rates will rise for everyone Jan. 1. The default strategy is: Survive. Give Barack Obama some version of the soak-the-rich revenue-raising he ran on, get past the cliff and regroup in 2013. Not a very happy New Year, but that's the best we can get.
This sad argument is not ridiculous.
Only a newborn babe in the Washington woods would think the congressional Republicans' leverage with the president is much more than zero. It'd be nice to think this is all a grim fairy tale and that come New Year's Eve, Prince John of Cincinnati will turn dross into gold. No, Virginia. Republicans lost the election.
But does that mean Republicans have to help Barack Obama dismantle their party by letting its most basic conservative principles disappear into the Beltway's smoke and mirrors? That is what's happening now.
Where is the Big Picture? Why is it not possible for John Boehner or anyone else in this party to articulate for the dumbstruck public watching these dreadful cliff negotiations what the Republican Party stands for? Who speaks for the GOP?
No end of people keep saying of the Republicans that "they" should do this or "they" should do that. Who's "they"? It is no one. With the Republicans, there's no "they" there.
Barack Obama is controlling the cliff narrative now because the GOP has no one whose job is counter-narrative. Mr. Obama this week was recycling campaign speeches about the middle class at the Daimler Detroit diesel plant while the GOP has been a Babel of Beltway voices. Don't any of these senators go to church on Sunday morning, rather than running around television punching the "entitlement crisis" card?
The GOP's postelection angst is no excuse for failing to define the party more clearly during the cliff crucible. No one's looking for a speech on Hispanic outreach or the anxieties of single white women. None of that post-Romney hand-wringing is relevant to what's at issue in the fiscal-cliff talks.
One issue sits at the center of all this: the Size of Government. Yes, the arcane detail is unavoidable. But what mere voters want to know is whether this means the government or the private sector is going to lead and shape the U.S. economy for a generation. Is "preserving the safety net" now the single most important existential reality in the life of every U.S. citizen, as in Europe, or is the core American idea still about something more exciting than that?
Republicans do have answers and can deliver them eloquently.
Recall Mitch Daniels's well-received response in January to the State of the Union. Speaker Boehner himself, in a speech last year to the Economic Club of New York, had the wit to enlist the support of a pro-growth president when the Democratic Party still understood growth:
"It was before this very club in 1962 that President John F. Kennedy said the following: 'Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our [needs] keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget—just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits.'"
John Boehner has his hands full dealing with the phantom of the White House. A House speaker's primary job has always been herding the congressional cats rather than publicly defending principles. But in the absence of a compelling conservative voice, the party is defaulting to a chaos of voices. They are letting their despondent supporters in the country sink deeper than they were the night of the election. They're going to leave a deep philosophical hole for every candidate in 2014 and any conceivable presidential candidate in 2016.
The GOP needs a person of stature and credibility to provide the public with a clear sense of the Republican purpose, no matter the negotiation's outcome. If people start talking about that person and the presidency, so be it. A cliff is no place to look shy, timid or lost.
2a)What Obama Is Really Bargaining For
If the GOP caves on taxes, the hope is for an intraparty civil war and loss of the House in 2014.
By KARL ROVE
As the country waits to see if Washington avoids plummeting over the "fiscal cliff," let's consider what President Obama's demands reveal about his motivations.
Mr. Obama wants more revenues, lots more. He's asking for $1.6 trillion over the coming decade, twice as much as he had tentatively agreed to with House SpeakerJohn Boehner this summer (until the president blew up the deal by demanding more).
According to a CNNMoney.com report this month, a sizable chunk of his current demand, some $200 billion, is for short-term spending on measures such as the extension of unemployment insurance benefits, infrastructure projects and the extension of the payroll tax holiday. The president also wants authority to unilaterally decide how much money the government borrows.
The tax increases and stimulus spending are similar to the budget he submitted early this year to Congress—a budget that was unanimously rejected. Nor will Congress surrender its right to set the debt ceiling.
So why ask for these things? Part of the explanation is ideological. The president does want to expand government's size, cost and reach in order to, in his words, "transform" America.
Mr. Obama's strategy is also partly political. The obvious budget deal is to agree to the GOP offer to raise revenues by closing tax loopholes and capping deductions and exemptions, while keeping the current tax rates. This is what Mr. Obama's deficit-reduction commission, aka Simpson-Bowles, recommended in December 2010, and Mr. Obama endorsed a cap on deductions last year to pay for a stimulus bill.
But the president is now less interested in raising revenues than in raising marginal tax rates on top earners. He apparently believes that Republicans, in a weakened state and defending an unpopular position, might buckle on a central GOP tenet, opposition to any increase in marginal rates. That might kick off a Republican civil war, resulting in divisive party primaries in 2014 that leave the president's opposition even more weakened and produce more subpar candidates like this year's Republican Senate candidates in Indiana and Missouri.
This brings us to Mr. Obama's real goal: having Democrats recapture the House in 2014 and once again stave off losses in the Senate.
Mr. Obama may be right that he can pit Republicans against Republicans, and there is a certain political logic to making this a priority—if you are the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Still, the strategy will probably fall short, and it could cause him significant collateral damage.
Republicans will be the majority in the House of Representatives at least for the next two years. The president's actions now will make future cooperation more difficult. The less Mr. Obama achieves in the next two years, the more his party suffers in 2014 and perhaps in 2016.
Moreover, it is likely that the GOP will retain and even grow its House majority in 2014. Since 1938, the incumbent president's party has lost an average of 33 House seats and seven Senate seats in the midterm following a re-election.
It is not just history that suggests that the president's strategy for 2014 is a stretch. There are five Democratic representatives whose districts were carried by Mitt Romney and 39 other House Democrats re-elected with less than 55% of the vote. Seven of the 20 Democratic senators up next time are in states Mr. Romney won, six of which he carried by double digits.
To get things done, Mr. Obama needs both the House speaker and the Senate minority leader to be strong partners who can deliver on a deal when it is negotiated, even if they are of the opposite party. If Mr. Obama is successful in weakening Speaker Boehner, then it will be more difficult to get legislation like comprehensive immigration reform brought to his desk. On the other hand, the president may prefer to have immigration as an issue, not an accomplishment.
Mr. Obama's shortness of vision is puzzling. Ten years from now, what will be more important—that he raised marginal income-tax rates on the wealthy, or that he struck a bargain with new revenues and spending cuts that put America on the road to fiscal health and avoided a damaging crisis? The question answers itself. Or does increasing taxes on the top 2% really mean that much to the president?
Mr. Obama has less than two years before the window for serious legislative action comes to a close. All his bludgeoning of House Republicans to raise marginal rates may well appeal to his political instincts. But when the animating force for a president is humiliating the opposition rather than working with them, bad things usually come to pass.
2b)Conservative Survival in a Progressive Age
Consequently, the U.S. federal government will continue to provide a social safety net, regulate the economy, and shoulder a substantial share of responsibility for safeguarding the social and economic bases of political equality. All signs are that a large majority of Americans will want it to continue to do so.
That fear makes companies start firing their workers. Other firms see less demand as a result, and they start doing the same thing, Kotlikoff says.
This collective freak-out then creates the hysterical economy.
The government would do well to address our budget problems, Kotlikoff says.
A key issue is the $222 trillion fiscal gap between projected future government spending and tax revenue.
“[I]f we want to panic, there is something real to panic about,” he writes. “It’s the fiscal abyss, not the fiscal cliff.”
It would be better if Washington stopped scaring the public about the cliff and instead provided real leadership on the budget issue, Kotlikoff says.
Average Americans too are critical of the government’s approach to the cliff.
"Somebody's gotta have some smarts," 63-year-old New Hampshire business owner John Pfeifle told The Associated Press. He’s displeased that both President Barack Obama and House Republicans appear to be willing to jump off the cliff.
"I have no faith at all they'll do the right thing," he said of Congress.
2b)Conservative Survival in a Progressive Age
Big government and the social revolution are here to stay. The conservative role is to shape both for the better.
By PETER BERKOWITZ
Political moderation is a maligned virtue. Yet it has been central to American constitutionalism and modern conservatism. Such moderation is essential today to the renewal of a conservatism devoted to the principles of liberty inscribed in the Constitution—and around which both social conservatives and libertarians can rally.
"It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good," observed James Madison in Federalist No. 37. The challenge, Madison went on to explain, is more sobering still because the spirit of moderation "is more apt to be diminished than promoted by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it."
In a similar spirit, and in the years that Americans were declaring independence and launching a remarkable experiment in self-government, Edmund Burke sought to conserve in Great Britain the conditions under which liberty flourished. To this end, Burke exposed the error of depending on abstract theory for guidance in practical affairs. He taught the supremacy in political life of prudence, or the judgment born of experience, bound up with circumstances and bred in action. He maintained that good policy and laws must be fitted to the people's morals, sentiments and opinions. He demonstrated that in politics the imperfections of human nature must be taken into account even as virtue and the institutions of civil society that sustain it must be cultivated. And he showed that political moderation frequently counsels rejecting the path of least resistance and is sometimes exercised in defending principle against majority opinion.
Madison's words and example and Burke's words and example are as pertinent in our time as they were in their own. Conservatives should heed them as they come to grips with two entrenched realities that pose genuine challenges to liberty, and whose prudent management is critical to the nation's well-being.
The first entrenched reality is that big government is here to stay. This is particularly important for libertarians to absorb. Over the last two hundred years, society and the economy in advanced industrial nations have undergone dramatic transformations. And for three-quarters of a century, the New Deal settlement has been reshaping Americans' expectations about the nation-state's reach and role.
Consequently, the U.S. federal government will continue to provide a social safety net, regulate the economy, and shoulder a substantial share of responsibility for safeguarding the social and economic bases of political equality. All signs are that a large majority of Americans will want it to continue to do so.
In these circumstances, conservatives must redouble their efforts to reform sloppy and incompetent government and resist government's inherent expansionist tendencies and progressivism's reflexive leveling proclivities. But to undertake to dismantle or even substantially roll back the welfare and regulatory state reflects a distinctly unconservative refusal to ground political goals in political realities.
Conservatives can and should focus on restraining spending, reducing regulation, reforming the tax code, and generally reining in our sprawling federal government. But conservatives should retire misleading talk of small government. Instead, they should think and speak in terms of limited government.
The second entrenched reality, this one testing social conservatives, is the sexual revolution, perhaps the greatest social revolution in human history. The invention, and popularization in the mid-1960s, of the birth control pill—a cheap, convenient and effective way to prevent pregnancy—meant that for the first time in human history, women could have sex and reliably control reproduction. This greatly enhanced their ability to enter the workforce and pursue careers. It also transformed romance, reshaped the family and refashioned marriage.
Brides may still wed in virginal white, bride and groom may still promise to love and cherish for better or for worse and until death do them part, and one or more children may still lie in the future for many married couples. Nevertheless, 90% of Americans engage in premarital sex, cohabitation before marriage is common, and out-of-wedlock births are substantial.
Divorce, while emotionally searing, is no longer unusual, legally difficult or socially stigmatizing. Children, once the core reason for getting married, have become optional. Civil unions for gays and lesbians have acquired majority support and same-sex marriage is not far behind.
These profoundly transformed circumstances do not oblige social conservatives to alter their fundamental convictions. They should continue to make the case for the traditional understanding of marriage with children at the center, both for its intrinsic human rewards and for the benefits a married father and mother bring to rearing children. They should back family-friendly public policy and seek, within the democratic process, to persuade fellow citizens to adopt socially conservative views and vote for candidates devoted to them.
Yet given the enormous changes over the last 50 years in the U.S. concerning the ways individuals conduct their romantic lives, view marriage, and think about the family—and with a view to the enduring imperatives of limited government—social conservatives should refrain from attempting to use the federal government to enforce the traditional understanding of sex, marriage and the family. They can remain true to their principles even as they adjust their expectations of what can be achieved through democratic politics, and renew their appreciation of the limits that American constitutional government imposes on regulating citizens' private lives.
Some conservatives worry that giving any ground—in regard to the welfare and regulatory state, the sexual revolution, or both—is tantamount to sanctifying a progressive status quo. That is to mistake a danger for a destiny. Seeing circumstances as they are is a precondition for preserving one's principles and effectively translating them into viable reforms.
Even under the shadow of big government and in the wake of the sexual revolution, both libertarians and social conservatives, consistent with their most deeply held beliefs, can and should affirm the dignity of the person and the inseparability of human dignity from individual freedom and self-government. They can and should affirm the dependence of individual freedom and self-government on a thriving civil society, and the paramount importance the Constitution places on maintaining a political framework that secures liberty by limiting government.
So counsels constitutional conservatism well understood.
Mr. Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government and Political Moderation," forthcoming from the Hoover Institution Press in February. This op-ed is adapted from the book's conclusion.
2c)The widespread panic over the fiscal cliff has given us a “hysterical economy,” says Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff.
“You’re an employer. Every day you hear ‘the economy’s going over a fiscal cliff. Tax hikes and spending cuts will kill the economy,’” he writes on Forbes.com.That fear makes companies start firing their workers. Other firms see less demand as a result, and they start doing the same thing, Kotlikoff says.
This collective freak-out then creates the hysterical economy.
The government would do well to address our budget problems, Kotlikoff says.
A key issue is the $222 trillion fiscal gap between projected future government spending and tax revenue.
“[I]f we want to panic, there is something real to panic about,” he writes. “It’s the fiscal abyss, not the fiscal cliff.”
It would be better if Washington stopped scaring the public about the cliff and instead provided real leadership on the budget issue, Kotlikoff says.
Average Americans too are critical of the government’s approach to the cliff.
"Somebody's gotta have some smarts," 63-year-old New Hampshire business owner John Pfeifle told The Associated Press. He’s displeased that both President Barack Obama and House Republicans appear to be willing to jump off the cliff.
"I have no faith at all they'll do the right thing," he said of Congress.
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3)
Iron Dome in action (Photo: AFP)
US to give Israel thousands of 'bunker-buster' bombs
By Kenneth Katzman -
The Pentagon has appealed to Congress in a bid to increase the United States' military aid to Israel by $647 million, Ynet learned Tuesday.
According to a Bloomberg report, in wake of Operation Pillar of Defense, the Pentagon wants to arm the IDF with a tail kit system used to convert free-fall bombs into satellite-guided ordnance, as well as with missiles that can be mounted on F-15 and F-16 fighter jets and are capable of penetrating underground or fortified targets.
The military aid includes 1,725 JDAM tail kits together with BLU-109 bombs, also dubbed “bunker-buster” and weighing in at more than 900kg. According to the Bloomsberg report, the bombs are intended to “defeat an enemy’s most critical and hardened targets such as protected weapons storage sites, and penetrate as much as six feet of reinforced concrete.”
According to Jeff White, a military analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the aid package is partly motivated by Washington's desire to assist Israel in replenishing its munitions stockpile which was diluted following November's campaign against Gaza Strip's terror groups.
Iron Dome in action (Photo: AFP)
During the campaign , Israel dropped numerous bombs on Gaza in an attempt to halt rocket and missile fire. The IDF also targeted smuggling tunnels, rocket firing pits, weapon mills and munitions warehouses.
“Hamas and the other groups had lots of underground targets that were attacked,” White said, further speculating that the additional weapons “”Could be an effort to give the Israeli Air Force a capability for more extended or more extensive air campaigns than before.”
However, he was quick to add that the weapons are “Not suitable for the really deep underground facilities,” but rather for command posts, shelters and air defense facilities.
Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst for the Congressional Research Service, said that the move “Does not appear intended to transfer any new capability that Israel could use against the most hardened sites of Iran’s nuclear program,” located deep underground under many layers of fortified concrete.
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4)$822,000 Worker Shows California Leads U.S. Pay Giveaway
By - Dec 11, 2012
Nine years ago, California Democrat Gray Davis became the first U.S. governor in 82 years to be recalled by voters. The state’s 20 million taxpayers still bear the cost of his four years and 10 months on the job.
Davis escalated salaries and benefits for 164,000 state workers, including a 34 percent raise for prison guards, the first of a series of steps in which he and successors saddled California with a legacy of dysfunction. Today, the state’s highest-paid employees make far more than comparable workers elsewhere in almost all job and wage categories, from public safety to health care, base pay to overtime.
Payroll data compiled by Bloomberg on 1.4 million public employees in the 12 most populous states show that California has set a pattern of lax management, inefficient operations and out-of-control costs. From coast to coast, states are cutting funding for schools, public safety and the poor as they struggle with fallout left by politicians who made pay-and-pension promises that taxpayers couldn’t afford.
“It was completely avoidable,” said David Crane, a public-policy lecturer at Stanford University.
America's Great Payroll Giveaway: a Six-Part Series
- Part 1: In Race to Spend More, California Leads
- Part 2: A Bidding War for Prison Psychiatrists
- Part 3: Pension Funds Make Managers Rich
- Friday: Retirement Bonanzas
- Monday: Top Paid Cops
- Tuesday: Poorer Schools, Richer Pay
“All it took was for political leaders to think more about the general population and the future, rather than their political futures,” said Crane, a Democrat who worked as an economic adviser to former GovernorArnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. “Citizens should be mad as hell, and they shouldn’t take it anymore.”
Billions Short
Across the U.S., such compensation policies have contributed to state budget shortfalls of $500 billion in the past four years and prompted some governors, including Republican Scott Walker of Wisconsin, to strip most government employees of collective-bargaining rights and take other steps to limit payroll spending.
In California, Governor Jerry Brown hasn’t curbed overtime expenses that lead the 12 largest states or limited payments for accumulated vacation time that allowed one employee to collect $609,000 at retirement in 2011. The 74-year-old Democrat has continued requiring workers to take an unpaid day off each month, which could burden the state with new costs in the future.
Last year, Brown waived a cap on accrued leave for prison guards while granting them additional paid days off. California’s liability for the unused leave of its state workers has more than doubled in eight years, to$3.9 billion in 2011, from $1.4 billion in 2003, according to the state’s annual financial reports.
‘It’s Outrageous’
“It’s outrageous what public employees in California receive in compensation and benefits,” said Lanny Ebenstein, who heads the California Center for Public Policy, a Santa Barbara-based research institution critical of public payrolls.
“Until public employee compensation and benefits are brought in line, there will be no answer to the fiscal shortfalls that California governments at every level face,” he said.
Among the largest states, almost every category of worker has participated in the pay bonanza. Britt Harris, chief investment officer at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, last year collected $1 million -- including his $480,000 salary and two years of bonuses -- more than four times what Republican GovernorRick Perry received. Pension managers in Ohio and Virginia made up to $678,000 and $660,000, respectively, according to the data, which Bloomberg obtained using public- record requests. In an interview, Harris said public pension pay must be competitive with the private sector to attract top investment talent.
Psychiatrists Lead
Psychiatrists were among the highest-paid employees in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey, with total compensation $270,000 to $327,000 for top earners. State police officers in Pennsylvania collected checks as big as $190,000 for unused vacation and personal leave as they retired young enough to start second careers, while Virginia paid active officers as much as $109,000 in overtime alone, the data show.
The numbers are even larger in California, where a state psychiatrist was paid $822,000, a highway patrol officer collected $484,000 in pay and pension benefits and 17 employees got checks of more than $200,000 for unused vacation and leave. The best-paid staff in other states earned far less for the same work, according to the data.
Rising employee expenses are crowding out other priorities for state and local governments and draining resources for college tuition, health care, public safety, schools and other services, Schwarzenegger said in an e-mailed response to questions.
Salaries, Retirement
“California spends most of its money on salaries, retirement payments, health care benefits for government workers, and other compensation,” said Schwarzenegger, 65, who replaced Davis as governor. “State revenues are up more than 50 percent over the past 10 years, but still we’ve had to cut spending on services because so much of that revenue increase went to increases in compensation and benefits.”
Brown, who granted state workers collective-bargaining rights during his first tenure as governor more than three decades ago, has reduced pension costs for new employees while leaving most retirement benefits for current workers intact.
Last year, to balance the budget, he used a policy set by Schwarzenegger, his predecessor, to save $400 million through the forced monthly day off. He persuaded voters to back a tax increase, imposed a hiring freeze as his predecessors did and told as many as 26,000 prison employees they might lose their jobs as thousands of criminals are shifted to county jails.
Inherited Problems
“Governor Brown is busy fixing the many problems that he inherited from past administrations,” said Gareth Lacy, a spokesman for the governor. “California’s $26 billion budget deficit, and the decades-old structural imbalance, was eliminated in large part by cutting waste and slashing costs. The governor also achieved historic reforms to public pensions and workers’ compensation that will save the state billions of dollars.”
Former governor Davis, in a telephone interview, said he now thinks state employee compensation is too high.
“I find it offensive that people who work for the state try to turn around and abuse the state through inflated overtime claims and lump-sum payouts,” Davis said. “We have high salaries, they have to come down. There was a time when we could afford them, but we can’t now.”
Brown, who took office in January 2011, had plenty of incentive to crack down. The per-worker costs of delivering services in California vastly exceed those even in New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Ohio, where unions have the same right to bargain collectively for the best pay packages, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Sinking Schools
The result isn’t only a heavier burden on California taxpayers. As higher expenses competed for fewer dollars, per- pupil funding of the state’s public schools dropped to 35th nationally in 2009-2010 from 22nd in 2001-2002. Californians have endured recurring budget deficits throughout the past decade and now face the country’s highest debt and Standard & Poor’s lowest credit rating for a U.S. state.
The story of one prison psychiatrist shows how pay largesse has spread.
Mohammad Safi, graduate of a medical school in Afghanistan, collected $822,302 last year, up from $90,682 when he started in 2006, the data show. Safi was placed on administrative leave in July and is under investigation by the Department of State Hospitals, formerly the Department of Mental Health.
Long Hours
The doctor was paid for an average of almost 17 hours each day, including on-call time and Saturdays and Sundays, although he did take time off, said David O’Brien, a spokesman for the department. In a brief interview outside his home in Newark, California, Safi said he’d been placed on leave for working too many hours and declined to comment further. An increase in the number of beds at the facility where Safi worked forced him to cover more shifts, and he was allowed to do some of the work from home, said his lawyer, Ed Caden.
Safi and other psychiatrists employed by the state benefited from what amounted to a 2007 bidding war between California’s prisons and mental health departments, after a series of federal court orders forced the state to improve its inmate care. Higher pay in the prison system was matched by mental health, and as psychiatrists followed larger salaries, the state’s cost to provide the care soared.
Last year, 16 psychiatrists on California’s payroll, including Safi, made more than $400,000. Only one did in any other state in the data compiled by Bloomberg, a doctor in Texas. Safi earned more than twice as much as any state psychiatrist elsewhere, the data show.
Accumulated Vacation
The disparity with other states is also evident in payments for accumulated vacation time when employees leave public service. No other state covered by the data compiled by Bloomberg paid a worker more than $200,000 for accrued leave last year, while 17 people got such payments in California. There were 240 employees who received at least $100,000 in California, compared with 42 in the other 11 states, the data show. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie calls such payments “boat checks” because they can be large enough to buy a yacht.
Topping the list was $608,821 paid to psychiatrist Gertrudis Agcaoili, 79, who retired last year from the Napa state mental hospital after a 30-year career. Agcaoili said in a telephone interview that it was her right to take the payment.
‘Against Rules’
“Those payouts are payouts of accumulated salary that it’s against the rules to allow people to accumulate, and it shouldn’t have been done, and shouldn’t be done,” said Marty Morgenstern, California’s labor secretary, who served as state personnel director under Davis. “They didn’t accumulate that kind of leave time in one year. It’s something that went on and on.”
Lacy, the governor’s spokesman, said hiring freezes and furloughs, or the unpaid time Schwarzenegger forced employees to take, combined to inflate accruals of vacation and leave. Lacy said the expiration of Brown’s version of the furloughs at the end of June will help reduce the balances.
Employees are told they must take unpaid furlough days before using paid vacation. That has boosted the backlog of unused leave, especially at agencies with round-the-clock operations.
Read Bloomberg's full reporting
Other states have taken steps to limit vacation payouts. New Jersey caps checks for departing state employees at $15,000, and New York limits payment of accrued time to 30 vacation days. Most New York employees may accrue 200 sick days, which can be used to offset retiree health-care premiums.
Overtime Millions
California also leads in overtime expenses, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Last year, it paid $964 million in overtime to 110,000 workers, an average of $8,741 per employee. That was more than twice the $415 million New York paid in overtime to 80,000 staff members, for an average of $5,199, and almost as much as all the other states in the database combined. In Georgia, total overtime for 8,935 workers last year was $12.3 million, an average $1,378.
California employees generally make at least 1.5 times their regular pay to work overtime. The state’s overtime costs show mismanagement by the officials who run state departments, said former Georgia Governor Roy E. Barnes, a Democrat.
“Government is no different from business; you have to have good leaders,” Barnes said in a telephone interview. “When you have somebody having that amount of overtime, then there’s not good management control, there’s not good leadership.”
Highway Patrol
The California Highway Patrol, whose brown-and-tan uniforms and weekly adventures in the 1970s and 1980s lit up television screens in the series “CHiPs,” also boasts leading pay and benefits.
The best-paid among the patrol’s sworn and uniformed employees make far more than those in other states, with overtime and lump-sum payouts that enlarge earnings, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Former division chief Jeff Talbott retired last year from the California Highway Patrol as the best-paid trooper in the 12 largest U.S. states, with $483,581 in salary, pension and other compensation.
Talbott declined a request to be interviewed.
While California’s cost of living and relatively high private-sector pay account for some of the disparities in public payrolls, special circumstances in the Golden State combined to drive wages and benefits to levels far beyond other states, data show.
‘Arduous Duty’
Unions pressed for every perk they could squeeze out of governors and their department managers -- including “arduous- duty” pay for office workers and special bonuses for call- center employees “in recognition of the complex workload and level and knowledge required to receive and respond to consumer calls,” state documents show.
Most public employees aren’t overpaid, and differences in compensation can be tied to regional labor markets, whether some states prefer delivering services at the local level and whether they have adequate staffing, said Steven Kreisberg, director of collective bargaining for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
“I don’t think there’s this kind of huge disparity as if somehow they’re being overpaid and taking advantage of the systems,” Kreisberg said in a telephone interview from Washington. “This is earned money.”
California has one of the leanest public workforces in the country in terms of the number of state employees per resident, said Lacy, Brown’s spokesman. Measuring the payroll of its state workers per capita, excluding university employees, California ranks third-highest among the 12 largest states, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and the U.S. Census Bureau.
The California payroll totals reflected in the Bloomberg data have their roots in wage negotiations carried out during Davis’s time as governor.
Pension Limits
One of the first goals of state employee unions when Davis took over in 1999 after 16 years of Republican governors was to unwind curbs on pensions put in place by Governor Pete Wilson in 1991. Workers also wanted broad wage increases.
Unions persuaded the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to sponsor legislation called Senate Bill 400, which sweetened state and local pensions and gave retroactive increases for tens of thousands of retirees. Highway-patrol officers were granted the right to retire after 30 years of service with 90 percent of their top salaries, a benefit that was copied by police agencies across the state.
California’s annual payment toward pension obligations ballooned to $3.7 billion in the current fiscal year from $300 million when the bill was enacted. Some cities that adopted the highway-patrol pension plan later cited those costs for contributing to their bankruptcy filings.
Pay Increases
Davis and the Legislature also agreed to labor contracts that gave 164,000 state workers pay increases of 4 percent in 1999 and again in 2000. Those contracts cost the state an extra $1.3 billion within a year, according to the state’s independent Legislative Analyst’s Office.
There were more to come.
After technology stocks plummeted in 2000, cutting tax revenue, Davis asked state workers to postpone additional raises.
In lieu of immediate increases, Davis and the California Legislature agreed to link highway patrol pay to anaverage of the five biggest law enforcement agencies in the state. The result: escalating raises that came due after Davis left office. Officers’ pay rose 2.7 percent in fiscal 2004, 12.1 percent in fiscal 2005 and 5.6 percent and 5.7 percent in the following years, according the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Aiding Recruitment
The pay boosts were needed to help bring more officers to the agency at a time it couldn’t fill all its cadet positions, said Jon Hamm, chief executive officer of the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, the union for CHP officers.
“At the time we accomplished our biggest gains, I actually felt I was losing the recruitment war,” Hamm said in an e- mailed statement. “I think it is clear that when our biggest gains were negotiated I did not feel they were ‘excessive;’ in fact, almost the opposite was true.”
The wage increases help explain disparities in the data compiled by Bloomberg in which many California highway patrol officers now earn much more than counterparts in other states. For example, 45 California officers earned at least $200,000 in 2011, compared with nine in other states -- five in Pennsylvania and four in Illinois, according to the data. While more than 5,000 California troopers made $100,000 or more in 2011, only three in North Carolina did, the data show.
Guards Follow
The pay deal for the California Highway Patrol got the attention of the state’s politically potent prison guards’ union, which successfully lobbied to have its compensation tied to that of state troopers.
The result was a pay increase of more than 30 percent for members of the union over the five-year contract. The state’s auditor, Elaine Howle, in July 2002 estimated the contract cost taxpayers an extra $500 million a year.
The prison guards’ union gave Davis more than $3 million for his various elections, including $250,000 a few weeks after the pay increase was negotiated, campaign records show.
California had almost 11,000 workers in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation who made $100,000 or more in 2011, and about 900 prison employees earning more than $200,000 a year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. New York had none. Its top-paid officer is a sergeant at Sing Sing Correctional Facility who made $170,000 last year.
Deficit Balloons
Davis had taken office in 1999 with a $12 billion budget surplus. Four years later, he began his second term by reporting a $35 billion budget deficit -- about $1,000 for every man, woman and child in the state.
Davis was recalled in October 2003 amid criticism of the deficit, his handling of an energy crisis that saw power prices soar and political contributions from public-employee unions, technology companies and others.
After Davis left, lawsuits over the quality of care for prison inmates and patients of state mental-health hospitals rapidly elevated pay for doctors, dentists, nurses and psychiatrists.
In 2005 and the years that followed, a federal court took over prison health care and took steps that included reducing the time inmates had to wait for treatment.
That, combined with a crowded prison population, increased the workload and demand for nurses even as a shortage nationwide left the state with vacancies.
Union Rules
Union-negotiated rules required state departments to handle the extra work by offering overtime to California nurses before bringing in contract nurses from private companies. The requirement led to a greater reliance on overtime for nursing in California than in any other state, one that persists to this day.
Nurses in California last year made $673 million in total pay, including $103 million in overtime, or 15.3 percent. By contrast, those in New York made $561 million in total pay, of which almost $40 million was in overtime, or 7.1 percent.
Forty-two nurses in California’s prisons and mental hospitals have reaped especially rich overtime payouts. They made an average of $1.3 million each during the seven years, including $674,000 in overtime.
The highest-paid nurse in the seven years was Lina Manglicmot, who worked at a state prison in Soledad, about 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of San Francisco. She collected $1.7 million from 2005 through 2011, including $1 million in overtime, the data show. Manglicmot declined to comment.
Wage Concessions
Curbing the compensation of California employees eluded Schwarzenegger through two terms as he tried to pry wage concessions back from their unions.
In 2009, he responded to a growing financial crisis by imposing furloughs, or a mandatory unpaid day off each month, for all state workers. The forced time off later grew to three days a month.
Furloughs depressed regular wages while increasing overtime compensation for employees, such as prison guards, who had to work through them. The first six months of the furloughs, for instance, cost California $52 million in accrued vacation time for prison guards alone, according to findings by the state Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes.
The furloughs led to backlogs of vacation time for other state workers as well, in violation of state rules. California stipulates that workers shouldn’t accumulate more than 640 hours of vacation or personal leave.
Forced Furloughs
“Furloughs were never meant to solve the state’s structural budget problem or save money in the long run,” Schwarzenegger said. “We had to do what was necessary to keep paying the bills and keep the lights on.”
More than 111,000 government employees working for the 12 most populous states collected $710 million in leave payouts last year, the data show. California workers accounted for almost 40 percent and have collected about $1.4 billion since 2005. The payouts have more than doubled in California in the past seven years.
“Those kinds of payments, they are absolutely inappropriate and we are doing everything we can to make sure it doesn’t recur,” said Morgenstern, the state’s labor secretary.
Public employee unions have made some concessions at the bargaining table, such as contributing as much as 5 percent more of their earnings toward pensions, and forgoing overtime pay for some holidays. State worker furloughs under Schwarzenegger amounted to a 15 percent pay cut; under Brown, they’ve been about 5 percent.
Yet the legacy of California’s collective bargaining, budget battles and court struggles over inmate care continue to elevate its payroll, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Allowing that to happen was a mistake, and taxpayers will be dealing with it for years, said Bob Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles.
“The labor unions really called in their chits, and Davis went along with it,” Stern said by telephone. “In hindsight, they should not have done it, because they made future generations pay for the benefits they approved.”
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5)How Socialism Has Doomed France
By William Sullivan
The French government is wringing its hands in frustration about how to deal with wealthy French nationals who are expatriating to avoid France's crushing new tax hikes.
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5)How Socialism Has Doomed France
By William Sullivan
The French government is wringing its hands in frustration about how to deal with wealthy French nationals who are expatriating to avoid France's crushing new tax hikes.
World-renowned actor Gérard Depardieu, for example, has recently decided to take up residence just across the Belgian border to avoid the tax penalty he would incur by remaining in France. This is merely an allegation at this point, of course, but it seems a safe guess that Depardieu has noticed French politicians' distaste for the wealthy -- which is not a feat of consciousness, considering that the new socialist president François Hollande has famously quipped, "I don't like the rich" while campaigning on promises to "tax annual income of more than one million euros per year at 75 percent."
It's just the latest of many black eyes for France's new administration. France's richest man, Bernard Arnault, has applied for Belgian citizenship, and according to The Telegraph, "among Mr. Depardieu's new neighbors in the village of Nechin will be members of the Mulliez family, who own the Auchan supermarket chain." And for months now, wealthy French families have been buying real estate in England, thanks in part to British Prime Minister David Cameron's shrewd marketing. Seeking to poach tax revenue from France, he has promised successful French families and businesses that the U.K. will "roll out the red carpet" in welcoming them. Understandably, they find that message a tad more attractive than Hollande's.
This presents problems for French socialists beyond the immediate loss of revenue which would finance their proposed top-down redistribution. There is also the issue of image. After all, convincing the world that France's socialist government is successful is a pretty tough sell when the successful want absolutely nothing to do with it.
It is no coincidence that those who would be required to finance a Utopian redistribution of wealth are rarely supporters of implementing such a model. John Locke observed that natural laws exist, independent of any system of government, and among these are not only the individual's fundamental right to life and liberty, but also a right to "property," which can be described as the product of a person's labor and enterprise.
Most Westerners would say that they accept this assumption in theory, but due to a curious caveat in human nature, many only limitedly accept it in practice. An individual will typically be far more concerned with the preservation of this natural right to "property" when it is his own "property" that is targeted for seizure. The Occupier of Zuccotti Park, for example, may find it a travesty that a homeless man steals his wallet to subsidize a livelihood, but when a homeless man has his livelihood subsidized by someone else's wallet in a transaction brokered by the government, the incident somehow becomes noble and necessary.
It is the tragic flaw by which the grand ambition of socialism has always failed, and will always fail. Human nature resists any attempt to seize one's property beyond what he would willingly give. This is the very basis of the social contract between a free man and a just government. A man chooses to take part. If that social contract is amended to be uniquely biased against his right to property, absent his consent, he may rightfully exercise his right to liberty and seek avenues to establish a new contract with a government, either by revolution or, more commonly today, expatriation.
France lacked the foresight to anticipate this natural outcome, which poses a massive problem for the country's future. In a sense, the fate of the nation is tied to the outcome of its redistributive endeavors. And so, France finds itself it the distinctive, though not unique, situation where left-wing socialism and far-right nationalism have become symbiotic bedfellows.
Therefore, these wealthy individuals, who have the audacity to abscond with their own property that the government has decided belongs to the collective, are being vilified from all angles. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault stirs the anger of the socialism-loving French people by reminding them that "[w]e cannot fight poverty if those with the most, and sometimes with a lot, do not show solidarity and a bit of generosity." Consumption minister Benoit Hamon called the move by Depardieu, in particular, "anti-patriotic." Ever the tolerant ideologues, voices of the French left have kindly commented on Depardieu's personal choice by labeling him a "drunken, obese petit-bourgeois reactionary." And right-wing nationalists aren't letting the leftists poke all the fun, as National Front leader Marine Le Pen said that wealthy exiles like Depardieu just want to "have their cake and eat it," a phrase which arouses a particularly clever subtext in terms of the history of French nationalism.
Thankfully, Mr. Depardieu doesn't have a guillotine in his future. The ol' blade of French social justice is a bit grotesque for modern sensibilities, having recently been retired and all. (However, I absolutely anticipate French bloggers and upcoming political cartoons to make use of its symbolic value in calling for these greedy villains' heads.) But punishments for expatriation are being offered, including the threat to strip these rich defectors of their French citizenship if they refuse to pay the required tribute to their motherland. I expect that these punishments will only become more creative and painful as expatriation creates an increasingly large shortfall in the redistributive pot.
France is now presented with a choice, and frankly, it is not so dissimilar to our own, considering that Barack Obama's vision for America mirrors (though currently to a lesser extent) that of Hollande. France can continue on its projected path to discriminately seize substantially more property from the wealthy, and watch as its most successful producers leave the country with their ample resources, leaving an impossible burden upon the middle class to finance the collective welfare. Or it can continue on that same projected path, but choose to do what socialist governments have historically done when confronted with selfish well-to-dos who refuse to finance a collectivist paradise for the ne'er-do-wells. They can institute rigid policy to punish the wealthy brigands for their insolence and confiscate the demanded tribute by any means necessary -- and it will be presented as necessary, as the survival of France will depend on it.
At any rate, either path leads to failure in terms of freedom and prosperity. This is a fate that France now seems doomed to suffer.
France could, of course, take the third way, and abandon the foolish endeavor to redistribute its way to Utopia. But I harbor little hope for that, at least with the current administration -- on that side of the pond or this one.
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