Since black people commit a disproportionate amount of crime and murders relative to their population it is little wonder people are a bit up tight when they see a black person, and particularly a hooded black teenager, at night. Even Jesse Jackson admitted to being up tight when he knows he is being followed by black youth and made such a comment several years ago.
The press and media ,once again, abdicated their responsibility to report in an unvarnished manner an resorted to bias but Bill Whittle whittles his way to facts that put a different slant on matters:
Click on: "http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Now that Trayvon is no longer with us, it would be interesting to learn whether the neighborhood burglaries, where Zimmerman lived and patroled, have subsided.
As for myself, having spent a week at the beach I now could be Obama's son. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Talk about being scared! Some Democrats are frightened by Obama. Not because he is black but because of what he is doing to our nation's health care and their political chances of re-election.
The Constitution requires the president to execute laws faithfully but Obama does not believe the constitution has relevance so he just unilaterally decided to extend the implementation of his own creation.
The way to get rid of bad laws is to enforce them and Republicans should be screaming that Obama's "Affordable Health Care Act" be enacted immediately! (See 2 below.)
The OBAMA motto: We've got what it takes, to take what you've got!
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Mort Zuckerman just cannot see or find that marvelous recovery. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Not to beat an issue to death but our friend Whittle from PJTV.Com makes some telling points: "
"Guns are a lot like parachutes. If you need one and don't have one, you'll probably
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More from Afghanistan! (See 4 below.)
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Finally, this is the America I grew up in and yes, not as sophisticated but a lot nicer place in many ways. Simpler, less complex, more united, no PC'ism's . True, we had our problems and prejudices and blacks were subjugated to second class status and segregated and this was a blight which we took far too long to overcome.
We have made progress in many areas but we now have half our population on food stamps, deserved or not, racial prejudice has resurfaced because our black president keeps playing race cards, more than half the nation pays no direct taxes and millions, who would like a job, cannot find one that fits their skill level and the world no longer believes America is the same nation it was nor is likely to provide the leadership it has since post WW 2.
Here are 48 years of Norman Rockwell's famous painting of "People's Expressions."How many of us "old-timers" can remember these "early to mid-fifties" Norman Rockwell paintings? Just sit back, reminisce
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Detroit a combined tragedy of corrupt, predominantly Democrat, politicians, thuggish greedy, yes greedy,labor leaders and out sized greedy, yes greedy, labor demands , and inept corporate executives who succumbed to market place and government pressure because the deck was legislatively stacked against them.
Then Obama came along and saved Detroit, the auto industry and killed bin Laden. So what happened? (See 5 below.)
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Dick
1)Is This Still America?
Thomas Sowell
There are no winners in the trial of George Zimmerman. The only question is whether the damage that has been done has been transient or irreparable.
Legally speaking, Zimmerman has won his freedom. But he can still be sued in a civil case, and he will probably never be safe to live his life in peace, as he could have before this case made him the focus of national attention and orchestrated hate.
More important than the fate of George Zimmerman, however, is the fate of the American justice system and of the public's faith in that system and their country. People who have increasingly asked, during the lawlessness of the Obama administration, "Is this still America?" may feel some measure of relief.
But the very fact that this case was brought in the first place, in an absence of serious evidence -- which became painfully more obvious as the prosecution strained to try to come up with anything worthy of a murder trial -- will be of limited encouragement as to how long this will remain America.
The political perversion of the criminal justice system began early and at the top, with the President of the United States. Unlike other public officials who decline to comment on criminal cases that have not yet been tried in court, Barack Obama chose to say, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."
It was a clever way to play the race card, as he had done before, when Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard was arrested.
But it did not stop there. After the local police in Florida found insufficient evidence to ask for Zimmerman to be prosecuted, the Obama administration sent Justice Department investigators to Sanford, Florida, and also used the taxpayers' money to finance local activists who agitated for Zimmerman to be arrested.
Political intervention did not end with the federal government. The city manager in Sanford intervened to prevent the usual police procedures from being followed.
When the question arose of identifying the voice of whoever was calling for help during the confrontation between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, the normal police procedure would have been to let individuals hear the recording separately, rather than have a whole family hear it together.
If you want to get each individual's honest opinion, you don't want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.
When the city manager took this out of the hands of the police, and had Trayvon Martin's family, plus Rachel Jeantel, all hear the recording together, that's politics, not law.
This was just one of the ways that this case looked like something out of "Alice in Wonderland." Both in the courtroom and in the media, educated and apparently intelligent people repeatedly said things that they seemed sincerely, and even fervently, to believe, but which were unprovable and often even unknowable.
In addition, the testimonies of the prosecution's witness after witness undermined its own case. Some critics faulted the attorneys. But the prosecutors had to work with what they had, and they had no hard evidence that would back up a murder charge or even a manslaughter charge.
You don't send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like "shooting an unarmed child," when that "child" was beating him bloody.
The jury indicated, early on as their deliberations began, that they wanted to compare hard evidence, when they asked for a complete list of the testimony on both sides.
Once the issue boiled down to hard, provable facts, the prosecutors' loud histrionic assertions and sweeping innuendos were just not going to cut it.
Nor was repeatedly calling Zimmerman a liar effective, especially when the prosecution misquoted what Zimmerman said, as an examination of the record would show.
The only real heroes in this trial were the jurors. They showed that this is still America -- at least for now -- despite politicians who try to cheapen or corrupt the law, as if this were some banana republic. Some are already calling for a federal indictment of George Zimmerman, after he has been acquitted.
Will this still be America then?
1a) Subject: What is Racism --
As Americans we should each and everyone of be touched and hurt and outraged by thought of this.
I am so sorry for all of issues of mankind that they have put upon themselves.
You won't recognize me. My name was Antonio West and I was the 13-month old child who was shot at point blank range by two teens who were attempting to rob my mother, who was also shot. A Grand Jury of my mommy's peers from Brunswick GA determined the teens who murdered me will not face the death penalty...too bad I was given a death sentence for being innocent and defenseless.
My family made the mistake of being white in a 73% non-white neighborhood, but my murder was not ruled a Hate Crime. Nor did President Obama take so much as a single moment to acknowledge my murder.
I am one of the youngest murder victims in our great Nation's history, but the media doesn't care to cover the story of my tragic demise, President Obama has no children who could possibly look like me - so he doesn't care and the media doesn't care because my story is not interesting enough to bring them ratings so they can sell commercial time slots.
There is not a white equivalent of Al Sharpton because if there was he would be declared racist, so there is no one rushing to Brunswick GA to demand justice for me. There is no White Panther party to put a bounty on the lives of those who murdered me. I have no voice, I have no representation and unlike those who shot me in the face while I sat innocently in my stroller - I no longer have my life.
So while you are seeking justice for Treyvon, please remember to seek justice for me too. Tell your friends about me, tell you families, get tee shirts with my face on them and make the world pay attention, just like you did for Treyvon.
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2)A Health Scare for Democrats
This week, a notable number of Democrats in Congress voted against core provisions of the president's signature health legislation.
- By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
What if waking up is more terrifying than the nightmare?
Democrats for three years have comforted themselves with the thought that 2014 would be the year they broke free of the ObamaCare night sweats. Their political washout in 2010, their failure to take back the House last year, all was the result of their having to defend a law that had yet to take effect. Once the law was up and running, Americans would wake up to its benefits. Or so they believed.
Instead, it is Democrats who are waking up—to a horror film. Every morning brings fresh news of terror: missing deadlines, programs running of money, premiums set to soar, flailing technical implementation. And this week Republicans nimbly forced them to choose between abandoning core provisions of the bill or renewing ownership of what may prove to be one of the biggest political liabilities in decades.
What makes this story line particularly horrifying for Democrats is that it is happening despite their best-laid plans. The architects of ObamaCare wrote its timeline with politics in mind. The law's most popular freebies—the bar on pre-existing conditions, parental coverage for children up to age 26—went into effect quickly to give the party some immediate credit. The law's more unpleasant provisions and trickier technical components were slated to begin ramping up in 2013—a non-election year. That way Democrats could get past any hiccups and start handing out subsidies in time for the next midterm election. Nobody counted on the hiccups turning into cardiac arrest.
In happier times . . .
Self-serving, because the White House's biggest fear is that Democrats will begin to desert this effort. After all, growing numbers of congressional Democrats do not really own ObamaCare in the purest sense. Many of those who voted for the law have retired or been defeated. Their successors have far less allegiance to it.
Recently elected Senate Democrats have enthusiastically joined efforts to kill portions of the law, such as the medical-device tax, the better to suggest to angry constituents that they are "flexible" about "fixing" it. Recent Democratic candidates are harsher. Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who ran in May's special House election in South Carolina, declared ObamaCare "extremely problematic, it is expensive, it is a $500 billion [higher] cost than we originally anticipated, it's cutting into Medicare benefits and it's having companies lay off their employees because they are worried about the cost of it." She finished: "It needs an enormous fix." This was a call for repeal in everything but name.
Alison Lundergan Grimes, who recently declared against Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, declined to even voice support of the health law. At the event announcing her candidacy, the second question was about her support of ObamaCare. Her response was nearly incoherent: "I will tell you, regardless of the vote that is issued in this race, we cannot change who our president is. But we can change who we have in Washington representing Kentuckians." With that, she ended the event.
This fading enthusiasm for the law explains why House Republicans this week held votes requiring Democrats to declare themselves on the questions of delaying both the employer mandate and the individual mandate. The White House was forced to issue a bipolar statement, in which it vowed to veto a bill that codifies its own plans to delay the employer mandate until 2015.
Then there were House Democrats. In the end, 35 felt pressured to vote with nearly every Republican to push off the employer mandate for a year. Another 22 voted with the GOP to similarly forestall the individual mandate.
This was a huge break with the White House, the first time a notable number of Democrats have voted against core provisions of ObamaCare. In that regard, it was also a psychological break, one that lays the potential groundwork for a bipartisan coalition to defund or repeal the law, if things continue to deteriorate. This is what the White House truly fears.
Democrats who voted against the delays have renewed their ownership of the law. And they will own the political fallout next year as voters struggle with mandates, soaring prices and plan disruptions.
The Republicans are newly re-energized to run on this issue. Any seats they pick up in the House or Senate next year mean more votes for repealing the law.
Whether Democrats voted for or against this week's delays, they were helping the ultimate cause of weakening the law. This is the political predicament Mr. Obama has put his party in, thanks to a rushed, misguided, deeply flawed and unpopular health policy. And it looks like the trouble is only beginning.
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3)A Jobless Recovery Is a Phony Recovery
More people have left the workforce than got a new job during the recovery—by a factor of nearly three
By MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN
In recent months, Americans have heard reports out of Washington and in the media that the economy is looking up—that recovery from the Great Recession is gathering steam. If only it were true. The longest and worst recession since the end of World War II has been marked by the weakest recovery from any U.S. recession in that same period.
The jobless nature of the recovery is particularly unsettling. In June, the government's Household Survey reported that since the start of the year, the number of people with jobs increased by 753,000—but there are jobs and then there are "jobs." No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time. The survey also reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000, while part-time jobs soared by 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000—three million more part-time positions than when the recession began at the end of 2007.
That's just for starters. The survey includes part-time workers who want full-time work but can't get it, as well as those who want to work but have stopped looking. That puts the real unemployment rate for June at 14.3%, up from 13.8% in May.
The 7.6% unemployment figure so common in headlines these days is utterly misleading. An estimated 22 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed; they are virtually invisible and mostly excluded from unemployment calculations that garner headlines.
At this stage of an expansion you would expect the number of part-time jobs to be declining, as companies would be doing more full-time hiring. Not this time. In the long misery of this post-recession period, we have an extraordinary situation: Americans by the millions are in part-time work because there are no other employment opportunities as businesses increase their reliance on independent contractors and part-time, temporary and seasonal employees.
Even the federal government payroll is turning to part-timers: In June 2012, 58,000 federal workers were part-timers. This year it's 148,000, and we still don't know how the budget sequester will play out, for many agencies have resorted to furloughs rather than layoffs.
The latest unemployment report was as underwhelming as the Household Survey. The biggest gains in June came from leisure and hospitality industries, including hotels and fast-food restaurants. Of the 195,000 new payroll jobs, 75,000 were in restaurants and bars, where the average weekly paycheck is about $351, less than half the average for all other private industries. Not to mention that these positions offer fewer hours, especially in the restaurant world, which has averaged 26.1 hours per week versus 34.5 hours for all private employers.
ObamaCare is partially to blame. The health-insurance law requires employers with more than 50 workers to provide health insurance or pay a $2,000 penalty per worker. Under the law, a full-time job is defined as 30 hours a week, so businesses, especially smaller ones, have an incentive to bring on more part-time workers.
Little wonder that earlier this month the Obama administration announced it is postponing the employer mandate until 2015, undoubtedly to see if the delay will encourage more full-time hiring. But thousands of small businesses have been capping employment at 30 hours and not hiring more than 50 full-timers, and the businesses are unlikely to suddenly change that approach just because they received a 12-month reprieve.
These businesses' hesitation to hire is part of a larger caution among employers unsure about the direction of government policy—and which has helped contribute to chronic long-term unemployment that shows no sign of easing. Unlike those who lose a job and then find another one in a matter of weeks or months, fully a third of the currently unemployed have been out of work for more than six months. As they remain out of the workforce, their skills deteriorating, the likelihood rises that they will be seen as permanently unemployable. With each passing month of bleak job news, the possibility increases of a structural unemployment problem in the U.S. such as Europe experienced in the 1980s.
That brings us to a stunning fact about the jobless recovery: The measure of those adults who can work and have jobs, known as the civilian workforce-participation rate, is currently 63.5%—a drop of 2.2% since the recession ended. Such a decline amid a supposedly expanding economy has never happened after previous recessions. Another statistic that underscores why this is such a dysfunctional labor market is that the number of people leaving the workforce during this economic recovery has actually outpaced the number of people finding a new job by a factor of nearly three.
What the country clearly needs are policies that will encourage the modernization of America's capital stock, where investment in modern production has plunged to the lowest levels in decades. Policies should also be targeted to nourish high-tech industries, which will in turn inspire the design and manufacture of products in the U.S. where they would be closer to the American market, spurring more hiring. This means preparing a skilled workforce, especially engineers suitable to work in manufacturing, and increasing the number of visas available to foreign graduate students in the hard sciences—who are now forced to leave America and who then work for foreign competitors.
Similarly, patent-application processing must be streamlined: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office should be a channel for innovation, but instead has for too long been and an impediment to the swift introduction of new ideas. Finally, the country should engage in a major infrastructure program to improve airports as America once did for railroads and highways. Air cargo and air travel are linchpins of the economy, yet air-traffic-control technology is stuck in the last century.
It is imperative that the U.S. focus on innovative and creative policies. Otherwise, the five-year crisis in employment will continue even when the economy seems to be recovering. Without such a focus, millions of American families whose breadwinners are unemployed or underemployed will remain dispiriting and apprehensive about the future, especially the young who are entering the workforce. The country needs a real recovery, not a phony one.
Mr. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report.
3a)Growth Estimates in US Too Optimistic
Is this a case of rose-colored glasses or is the recovery being touted in the United States real? That seems to be the 64 million dollar question these days. I will let you be the judge.
The jobless nature of the recovery is particularly unsettling. In June, the government's Household Survey reported that since the start of the year, the number of people with jobs increased by 753,000—but there are jobs and then there are "jobs." No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time. The survey also reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000, while part-time jobs soared by 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000—three million more part-time positions than when the recession began at the end of 2007.
That's just for starters. The survey includes part-time workers who want full-time work but can't get it, as well as those who want to work but have stopped looking. That puts the real unemployment rate for June at 14.3%, up from 13.8% in May.
The 7.6% unemployment figure so common in headlines these days is utterly misleading. An estimated 22 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed; they are virtually invisible and mostly excluded from unemployment calculations that garner headlines.
At this stage of an expansion you would expect the number of part-time jobs to be declining, as companies would be doing more full-time hiring. Not this time. In the long misery of this post-recession period, we have an extraordinary situation: Americans by the millions are in part-time work because there are no other employment opportunities as businesses increase their reliance on independent contractors and part-time, temporary and seasonal employees.
Even the federal government payroll is turning to part-timers: In June 2012, 58,000 federal workers were part-timers. This year it's 148,000, and we still don't know how the budget sequester will play out, for many agencies have resorted to furloughs rather than layoffs.
The latest unemployment report was as underwhelming as the Household Survey. The biggest gains in June came from leisure and hospitality industries, including hotels and fast-food restaurants. Of the 195,000 new payroll jobs, 75,000 were in restaurants and bars, where the average weekly paycheck is about $351, less than half the average for all other private industries. Not to mention that these positions offer fewer hours, especially in the restaurant world, which has averaged 26.1 hours per week versus 34.5 hours for all private employers.
CloseWhat's going on? The fundamentals surely reflect the feebleness of the macroeconomic recovery that began roughly four years ago, as seen in an average gross domestic product growth rate annualized over the past 15 quarters at a miserable 2%. That's the weakest GDP growth since World War II. Over a similar period in previous recessions, growth averaged 4.1%. During the fourth quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013, the GDP growth rate dropped below 2%. This anemic growth is all we have to show for the greatest fiscal and monetary stimuli in 75 years, with fiscal deficits of over 10% of GDP for four consecutive years. The misery is not going to end soon.
ObamaCare is partially to blame. The health-insurance law requires employers with more than 50 workers to provide health insurance or pay a $2,000 penalty per worker. Under the law, a full-time job is defined as 30 hours a week, so businesses, especially smaller ones, have an incentive to bring on more part-time workers.
Little wonder that earlier this month the Obama administration announced it is postponing the employer mandate until 2015, undoubtedly to see if the delay will encourage more full-time hiring. But thousands of small businesses have been capping employment at 30 hours and not hiring more than 50 full-timers, and the businesses are unlikely to suddenly change that approach just because they received a 12-month reprieve.
These businesses' hesitation to hire is part of a larger caution among employers unsure about the direction of government policy—and which has helped contribute to chronic long-term unemployment that shows no sign of easing. Unlike those who lose a job and then find another one in a matter of weeks or months, fully a third of the currently unemployed have been out of work for more than six months. As they remain out of the workforce, their skills deteriorating, the likelihood rises that they will be seen as permanently unemployable. With each passing month of bleak job news, the possibility increases of a structural unemployment problem in the U.S. such as Europe experienced in the 1980s.
That brings us to a stunning fact about the jobless recovery: The measure of those adults who can work and have jobs, known as the civilian workforce-participation rate, is currently 63.5%—a drop of 2.2% since the recession ended. Such a decline amid a supposedly expanding economy has never happened after previous recessions. Another statistic that underscores why this is such a dysfunctional labor market is that the number of people leaving the workforce during this economic recovery has actually outpaced the number of people finding a new job by a factor of nearly three.
What the country clearly needs are policies that will encourage the modernization of America's capital stock, where investment in modern production has plunged to the lowest levels in decades. Policies should also be targeted to nourish high-tech industries, which will in turn inspire the design and manufacture of products in the U.S. where they would be closer to the American market, spurring more hiring. This means preparing a skilled workforce, especially engineers suitable to work in manufacturing, and increasing the number of visas available to foreign graduate students in the hard sciences—who are now forced to leave America and who then work for foreign competitors.
Similarly, patent-application processing must be streamlined: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office should be a channel for innovation, but instead has for too long been and an impediment to the swift introduction of new ideas. Finally, the country should engage in a major infrastructure program to improve airports as America once did for railroads and highways. Air cargo and air travel are linchpins of the economy, yet air-traffic-control technology is stuck in the last century.
It is imperative that the U.S. focus on innovative and creative policies. Otherwise, the five-year crisis in employment will continue even when the economy seems to be recovering. Without such a focus, millions of American families whose breadwinners are unemployed or underemployed will remain dispiriting and apprehensive about the future, especially the young who are entering the workforce. The country needs a real recovery, not a phony one.
Mr. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report.
3a)Growth Estimates in US Too Optimistic
By Ashish Advani
Is this a case of rose-colored glasses or is the recovery being touted in the United States real? That seems to be the 64 million dollar question these days. I will let you be the judge.
The first cause of the "recovery" in the United States is the rosy jobs numbers. This month we had 195,000 plus a revision of 70,000 for past two months. For May and June, the numbers were 165,000 and 150,000. So all in all, we have three robust months totaling 580,000 jobs.
Now let's deduct the fake jobs number (in the past I have written to you about the birth death rate model), which for the past three months was 530,000. So we really had jobs growth of 50,000 over three months. Now let's also deduct the fact that we lost 240,000 permanent jobs and gained 360,000 temporary jobs. The jobs leading to recovery does not look so rosy now does it?
The next pillar of growth being touted around is the so-called recovery in the housing markets. I concede that the housing prices nationwide are going up. But that is about the only credible fact in this recovery story. What supports this growth other than pure optimism or hope? The savings rate in America is actually declining and credit/debt per households is increasing again.
The myth that more jobs are being created and will lead to the affordability factor going up has been busted above. Now to put a kiss of death on this recovery story is the fact that the 10-year rate (which is what mortgage companies base their mortgage rates on) has shot up from 1.5 percent to 2.75 percent in the past two months. So 30-year mortgage rates are approaching 4.6 or 4.7 percent. As this number goes past 5 percent, we will see an end to the housing recovery.
Corporate profits continue to climb and the average worker continues to suffer. These are the lucky ones to have a job. The real unemployment rate in the United States is nearer 23 percent rather than the 7.6 percent that is being published. So the average hourly wage rate is not really increasing as well as the jobs (at least the quality of jobs) are not really impressive.
So Wall Street is happy, but no one else is.
As large as the United States is in terms of its economy, it cannot go at the growth story alone. It needs to have growth in tandem with its largest trading partners. So let's look around the world, shall we?
I am in Europe for two weeks. I am seeing nothing but stagnation so far. Poland is barely hanging on. France is in steep decline; PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) are already very weak. You can add Cyprus to that now. Other than Germany, no country is really growing. Moving around the world, China is decelerating, which questions the growth of Australia, New Zealand and the likes of Singapore and Korea. India is in a dismal state too. Japan is inflating its central bank balance sheet, but not much else.
So if all countries that matter are flat or declining, what hope does the United States have of going it alone and making strides in sustained growth rates? As my mentor says, "The hopes for a sustained U.S. recovery are slim to none, and slim just left town."
I am not sure about you, but I am not buying into this recovery and the trade I would consider is going long on 10-year bonds. The panic will set in late this summer and at that point, Treasury prices will soar, leading to a collapse of the 10-year yields.
Of course this current insanity might continue for some time and so you need a steely resolve to jump in to this contrarian trade now. In my opinion this trade will pay rich dividends by the end of summer.
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4)Dear Friends and Family,
I have been here now for over 3 weeks and the night shift isn’t getting any better…but it isn’t getting any worse. That’s the good news. It’s been a very slow week for news after last week’s “zero option” bomb put out by the White House. It has triggered a lot of debate in the media about U.S. troop strengths as we move past 2014. I don’t remember if I mentioned this but after 2014, Operation Enduring Freedom becomes Operation Resolute Support. Of course that doesn’t mean anything if we pull out because most of the NATO coalition will depart with us. It’s is more of a bargaining chip for the U.S. and NATO forces to put Afghan President Hamid Karzai on notice that his time as president ends in 2014, elections will be held, and they need us more than we need them. Saying that, having a strategic base in the heart of the Western Asia is a plus and China and Russia don’t want that for the long term. But for most of us, its handled at a far higher level than any of us.
The other big stories of the week from here where the $34 million Marine HQs that was built in the Helmand Province that the Marines and Army, didn’t want, and didn’t need. It was a look at how once a program or contract has been awarded, it is very difficult to turn off. At the same base also was a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) (who did the report on the $34 million HQ) for using burn pits to discard of paper and other burnable food scraps etc versus using the incinerators, of which they have 4 but only 2 operational. The same SIGAR, as well as, Congress hammered the Pentagon for spending a boatload of money buying Russian helicopters for the Afghan Air Force. I will defend the Pentagon on this one. The Russian helicopters are less difficult to fly and maintain than the U.S. choppers. Plus, the limited personnel available to fly the aircraft, makes it more difficult for them to transition to the U.S aircraft, especially in light of the fact they have been flying the Russian aircraft for years.
Last week I was in the news for ISAF. And while I could pretend it had a great influence over the Washington, DC crowd or the blogasphere, I’m sure it didn’t. The Washington Free Beacon, a paper that is out of DC and wasn’t there when I worked in DC sent ISAF a media inquiry on the role of citizens in fighting back against the Taliban. (Side note: it was explained to me that Taliban is a derivative of Talib or student and An or of Islam thus the Taliban are students of Islam.) I’m sure you all are quaking at the opportunity of reading the article, and the one repurposed by the Khaama Press in Afghanistan. The purpose of telling you all this was that I really didn’t talk to anyone but was asked to respond to an email, using the approved talking points, an next thing you know it’s in the paper. But for you that aren’t knowledgeable on what is going on here, it’s a pretty good story about how the folks of Afghanistan are pushing back on the Taliban. Below are the hyperlinks to both stories.
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5)
By Jonathon Tobin - COMMENTARY
The news that the city of Detroit is declaring bankruptcy may not surprise many observers who were aware of how economic decline, shrinking population, the burden of huge public employee contracts and political corruption was leading inevitably to this outcome. But it might come as something of a shock to the vast majority of Americans whose only thoughts about the subject prior to today were framed by the demagoguery on the issue that came from President Obama’s reelection campaign. As we all recall, Democrats spent a good deal of 2012 telling us that “General Motors is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead” and hounding Mitt Romney for saying that Detroit would be better off going bankrupt rather than being bailed out by the federal government. But yesterday we learned that all the sunny talk about what Obama had accomplished did nothing to save the city.
Of course, Democrats will say that when they were talking about “Detroit” last year, they were just using the word as shorthand for the automobile industry and not referring to the Motor City itself. But the memory of the way the president pounded Romney on the issue should do more than point out Obama’s hypocrisy. The collapse of what was once one of America’s great cities should also inform us about the way the liberal project is dooming municipal and state governments around the country as well as Washington to a sea of debt that cannot be sustained. Detroit isn’t just the most spectacular example of urban blight. It’s the poster child for the consequences of liberal governance.
Some liberals are telling us today that Detroit’s experience is so unique that what has happened there can’t be compared to any other city’s problems. It’s true that there is no more absolute example of urban collapse. But Detroit isn’t the only place where the decline of labor-intensive manufacturing and white flight caused a collapse. While other large cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, underwent crises that were met and overcome in the last generation before undergoing revivals, Detroit has been going downhill for more than 60 years. While Detroit had particular problems that may not have been faced elsewhere, the basic conundrum is not unique. But rather than face up to the need to change the old liberal formula of expanding government and letting corruption go unchecked, this bastion of liberalism refused to alter its course. Decades after leaders like Ed Rendell and Rudy Giuliani showed how it was possible to govern places that were thought ungovernable, Detroit continued acting as if the old boodle theory of politics could continue as mayors as well as other politicians were involved in criminal conspiracies rather than reform.
The lesson here is that a government that continued to overpromise and create unfunded liabilities to please political constituencies cannot survive indefinitely. And that goes straight to the glaring problem that was the foundation of President Obama’s false boasts about “saving Detroit” that caused Romney so much trouble last fall.
Detroit’s bankruptcy shows that federal bailouts for industries can’t solve all the country’s problems, especially when cities are sinking under the weight of generous municipal contracts for public employees. It’s true that many other cities that are facing shortfalls because of debts they’ve signed off on to pay off unions are working better than Detroit, where 40 percent of the street lights don’t work and it takes nearly an hour for police to arrive at an average high-priority emergency.
But unless the power of unions to bankrupt municipalities and state governments is cut back—much as Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie have tried to do—everywhere, Detroit won’t be the last city to go bankrupt. The accumulation of debt to pay off the promises made by liberals is a problem that threatens cities all over the country, even some that are seemingly in much better shape than Detroit.
The Obama paradigm of building more entitlements like ObamaCare and throwing federal money at regional problems is based on the liberal assumption that the government piper will never have to be paid. Democrats have blasted their Republican counterparts as heartless Tea Party extremists and obstructionists for refusing to play along and let the system go on as it has for decades building debts that can’t ever be met. But unless someone or some group is able to enact real change, Detroit is America’s future, not, as some are telling us, an exception to the rule.
This week we got a wake up call that tells us that Obama didn’t save Detroit from bankruptcy. He is merely one more in a string of liberal enablers that helped create the situation there that may well be replicated elsewhere eventually, even in cities that are not in as dire straits today as Detroit is. It’s time for America to sober up and realize that without government reform based on the end of liberal illusions, Detroit will become a metaphor for how America became like Greece: bankrupt, corrupt, and a shadow of its past faded glories.
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