Saturday, May 5, 2018

Wished Carlin Could Have Lived Forever. Ken Langone and Capitalism. Muslim Trojan Camel? Iran Boxed In? Two Op Eds In Support Of My Concerns.


I loved Carlin.  It is a shame he died. I wanted him to live forever.

Modern Euphemisms
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I served on Bush 41's national finance committee when he ran the first time with Langone and also came to know him as one of the financial backers of Home Depot. (See 1 below.)

Argentina raises interest rates to 40% Isn't socialism great?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Radical Muslim organization petitions Congress. They are within  their constitutional right to petition Congress.  A Trojan Camel? (See 2 and 2a below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Iran wants to strike back at Israel, which has been humiliating them, but does not know how without potentially angering Russia etc. (See 3 and 3a below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Two articles in support of the dangers of what I been claiming. (See 4 and 4a below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Defying the odds: http://www.aish.com/h/iid/Israel-Defying-the-Odds.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1) Ken Langone Wants You to Know He Loves Capitalism


Alarmed by what he views as some young people’s tilt toward socialism, the Home Depot co-founder has written a book defending capitalism

When Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone saw Sen. Bernie Sanders’s rallies on TV during the 2016 presidential campaign, he was shocked by the number of young people there. It troubled him that they were so enthusiastic for higher taxes and spending and an expanded government role in health care, child care and higher education. “If these kids are moving up in our system now, we’re in trouble,” he recalls thinking.

Mr. Langone decided that capitalism needed a full-throated defense. To make the case, he has written a book, part memoir and part free-market manifesto, called “I Love Capitalism.”

Mr. Langone, 82, sees himself as a capitalist success story. The Long Island-born son of first-generation Italian-Americans, he co-founded Home Depot in 1978 and has sold other companies he helped to found for hundreds of millions of dollars, serving along the way on such high-profile corporate boards as General Electric and Yum Brands . Forbes estimates that his net worth is over $3 billion.

“Show me where the silver spoon was in my mouth,” he writes. “I’ve got to argue profoundly and passionately: I’m the American Dream.”

His book recounts his rise from modest roots. His father was a plumber and his mother a cafeteria worker. Mr. Langone worked odd jobs during high school, caddying and digging ditches. With savings and his parents’ help, he attended Bucknell University, where he majored in economics and political science.

After graduating, he sought work on Wall Street, but he says that his blue-collar Italian background prevented him from landing a job at the top firms. Instead he took an analyst job in the investment department at Equitable Life Insurance Society, an insurance firm, while serving in the Army and going to business school at night.

He held out hope of working on Wall Street and eventually landed a sales job at a small firm called R.W. Pressprich. The first initial public offering he worked on was Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems. He worked his way up to become president at R.W. Pressprich, then left in 1974 to start his own investment firm, Invemed Associates.

Through Invemed, he helped to finance and co-found Home Depot. It went public in 1981. Today it is one of the country’s largest retailers, with over 400,000 employees and a market capitalization of over $210 billion. He remains one of the company’s largest shareholders.

Those successes have fueled his belief in capitalism. Private ownership incentivizes people to create businesses that then grow and create jobs for others, he argues. “When capitalism works the way it should, it works for everybody,” he writes.

He worries that some young people think that the U.S. “should be headed, toward something that, in my mind, resembles socialism: Guaranteed income. Free college tuition. Single-payer health care,” he writes. “I disagree. Strongly.” He argues that such policies discourage people from bettering themselves. “I disagree with socialism not (as you might believe) because I’m a rich guy trying to hold on to my money,” he writes. “I disagree because socialism is based on the false notion that we should all be exactly equal in every single way.”

He does believe that income inequality is a problem in the U.S., but he doesn’t blame capitalism. “I don’t have a magic solution,” he says. While he’s supported Home Depot’s practice of paying above the minimum wage, he’s not sure the law should raise it for all employers. “I do know that nobody can live on $20,000 a year,” he writes. “But I worry that mandating a higher minimum might hurt the people you want to try to help: the more you increase the costs of any factor of production, the more incentive you give owners to figure out a way to change that factor of production,” and possibly automate it, cutting jobs.

And he welcomes at least some role for government. “You need cops, you need the military, and you need infrastructure,” he says. He also believes that capitalism’s beneficiaries should give back, and that it’s a failing when they don’t. He estimates that he spends 70% of his time on philanthropy now. New York University’s Medical Center bears his and his wife’s names after they gave it $200 million in 2008.

His strong belief in capitalist rewards famously drew fire back in 2003 for his role while head of the New York Stock Exchange’s compensation committee in awarding former NYSE chief Richard Grasso a $140 million pay package. Then and now, Mr. Langone stands by his decision. “Dick Grasso, who’d begun as a unionized clerk, had the motivation to stay on and become president of the NYSE and in 1995 be elected chairman and CEO,” he writes. “He was compensated appropriately, and his pension grew proportionally.”

Today, Mr. Langone lives with his wife, Elaine, on Long Island and has homes in Manhattan, North Carolina and Florida. He spends his down time playing golf, reading and doing investment analysis, which he considers exciting enough to be a hobby.

He says he still enjoys simple pleasures—among his favorite foods are bagels, pasta and meatloaf—but acknowledges, “I like all the trappings of success absolutely.”

“I have custom-made suits and airplanes, and I have businesses... and I have guys that make paintings for me,” he says, pointing to a LeRoy Neiman painting of the New York Stock Exchange on his conference room’s wall. “But I’d also like to think if it didn’t happen, I’d still be OK.”

Write to Alexandra Wolfe at alexandra.wolfe@wsj.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) Islamists With Ties To Terror Lobby Congress
by Cynthia Farahat
FrontPage Magazine

For the past three years, Islamists with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist groups have come to Capitol Hill to lobby members of Congress on National Muslim Advocacy Day, an annual event organized by Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO). At last year’s lobby day, according to the Muslim Advocacy Day website, almost 400 participants visited congressional offices.
have now published a detailed report at the Middle East Forum that profiles the Islamist activists and officials involved with this lobbying effort, and who have previously met with members of Congress and their staffers. Some of these officials are directly linked to terrorists. Others have invited prominent Islamist extremists into American mosques: providing venues for them to spread their message of hate; funneling money to their networks; and using social media to publicize and encourage their activities. 
Some examples of these prominent terror-linked Islamist leaders who have participated in Muslim Advocacy Day include:
1. Oussama Jammal is the secretary general of US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a coalition of American-Muslim organizations that hosts the Muslim Adovcacy Day. Jammal is also the director of the Muslim American Society - Public Affairs and Civic Engagement (MAS-PACE), a division of the Muslim American Society (MAS), which has been identified in court testimony as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood. 
Jammal is also the vice president of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview. In 2003, Jammal raised $50,000 at a Mosque Foundation prayer service for terrorist operative Sami al-Arian, the then-North American representative of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. 
Under Jamaal’s leadership, in 2012, the Mosque Foundation hosted an official delegation of al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya (JI), the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The delegation included JI officials who are in direct communication with Hamas and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
The Mosque Foundation has also invited Jordanian Islamist Amjad Qourshah to give sermons at its mosque. Qourshah was imprisoned in Jordan in 2016 for promoting jihadist propaganda. In his lectures, Qourshah has defended ISIS members as “decent men.”
2. Mazen Mokhtar is a USCMO board member, the executive director of the Muslim American Society (MAS), and an organizer of Muslim Advocacy Day. In August 2004, the U.S. government accused Mokhtar of fundraising for al-Qaeda. Mokhtar allegedly operated a mirror site of al-Qaeda’s www.azzam.com, which solicited funds and recruits for the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Chechen terror groups. Mokhtar’s site was used as a backup for Azzam.com when it was shut down after 9/11. The website was also affiliated with a Chechen terror group – the Islamic Army of the Caucasus, and its field commander, Shamil Basayev, who masterminded the Beslan school massacre in Russia, during which 334 people—including 186 children—were murdered. 
Mokhtar was arrested in 2007 and charged with tax fraud, which investigators hoped to use as an entry point for further terrorism charges. But in 2008, the then-US Attorney Chris Christie inexplicably dropped the charges without explanation. Today, Mokhtar continues to raise funds for Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA)—an organization accused of links to Hamas.
3. Yahya Almontaser is an Islamist activist for the Egyptian Americans for Freedom and Justice (EAFAJ), a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate based in the US. Almontaser is a self-proclaimed member of the Muslim Brotherhood. 
On his Facebook page, Almontaser spent several years regularly corresponding with Mohamed Sayed Taha, a self-described ISIS terrorist who is currently incarcerated in military prison in Egypt for trying to bomb the Police Academy in Cairo. Taha referred to Almontaser as “ustadhi”, which means “my mentor” or “my teacher” in Arabic. In return, Almontaser praised Taha’s jihadist ambitions.
Last April, the Egyptian newspaper Dostor published case documents relating to Egypt’s most famous ISIS case, known as “Qadiat Da‘ish al-Kubra,” (the Big ISIS Case). According to the documents, 170 convicted terrorists were arrested for various ISIS-related terrorist attacks and activities, including fighting in Syria and Sinai, and an attempt to bomb the Egyptian police academy. According to the article, Mohamed Sayed Taha’s name appears among those arrested in the “Beni Suef ISIS terrorist cell.” 
---
These are just three examples of Islamists with connections to terrorist operatives who have been lobbying Congress under the guise of a Muslim Advocacy Day. Further examples are provided in my report.

Congressional offices must refuse all meetings with these Islamist organizations and operatives, pending a full investigation into these groups ties to extremism and terror.
Around the world, Muslim Brotherhood members have founded some of the most destructive Sunni terrorist groups. Today, the Brotherhood continues to be a wellspring of terrorism and extremism. Lawmakers meet with Islamists under the naive impression that these operatives and their extremism represent the views of ordinary American Muslims. Until the US acknowledges this reality and designates the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, Washington will be unable to counter Islamist terror effectively and will continue to welcome extremists into the heart of our nation’s capital.
Cynthia Farahat is a fellow at the Middle East Forum

2a) Report Exposes Connections Between “Muslim Advocacy Day” and Terror Operatives
News from the Middle East Forum

PHILADELPHIA – May 4, 2018 – A Middle East Forum report, Islamists with Direct Ties to Terrorists Lobby Congress, written by Egyptian specialist Cynthia Farahat, has uncovered troubling connections between organizers and delegates of the annual Muslim Advocacy Day in the U.S. Capitol and prominent terror operatives. For the full report, click here; and for an exposé of the organizers linked to terror groups, click here.
Muslim Advocacy Day will be held this year on May 7-8. The Middle East Forum (MEF) will hold a panel discussion on Wednesday May 9, from 2:00-3:30 pm at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center - with four experts to discuss the report and the day’s extremist origins. They will explain how Islamist movements have falsely, but successfully presented themselves as the political representatives of America’s Muslims.
Some of the officials profiled by Farahat are found to have direct links to convicted terrorists. Others have invited prominent Islamist extremists into American mosques, providing them with venues to spread their message of hate, using social media to publicize and encourage their activities.
For example, Yahya Almontaser, is a representative of Egyptian Americans for Freedom and Justice (EAFAJ), a prominent Muslim Brotherhood-connected organization. Farahat found that Almontaser spent several years regularly corresponding with Mohamed Sayed Taha, who is currently imprisoned in Egypt following his conviction for involvement in an ISIS plot to bomb a Cairo police station.
Farahat notes: “Islamists with direct ties to terrorism are walking the halls of Congress. Treating Islamists as American Islam’s rightful leaders threatens America's national security, legitimizes extremism, and discourages the voices of moderate American Muslims.”
At the event, MEF President Daniel Pipes, a veteran of five presidential administrations and historian, will moderate a panel of speakers:
  • MEF Fellow Cynthia Farahat, an Egyptian dissident who has spent her life opposing radical Islam;
  • MEF Fellow Tarek Fatah, a weekly columnist at the Toronto Sun and the author of two award-winning books, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State and The Jew is Not My Enemy; and
  • Sam Westrop, director of MEF’s Islamist Watch project.
Comments Fatah: “Islamists lobbying the Congress is deeply troubling considering the fact that most U.S. lawmakers are ill-equipped to see through the burka of deception Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups deploy to disguise their contempt for Western Civilization.” He adds: “As a pre-requisite to meeting any Islamist group, members of Congress should demand that groups such as CAIR denounce the doctrine of Armed Jihad; renounce polygamy, the burka, FGM and Sharia as medieval constructs that are an affront to the U.S. Constitution.”
MEF calls on Congressional offices to refuse all meetings with these Islamist organizations and operatives, pending a full investigation into their ties to extremism and terror.
MEF also urges members of the public to contact their member of Congress and urge that they refuse to meet with these Islamists. Find contact information for your representatives by clicking here.

The Middle East Forum promotes American interests through activist, intellectual, and philanthropic efforts.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)

Iran Wants To Retaliate Against Israel, But How?

by Seth Frantzman
Syrian dictator Bashar Assad met with Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of the Iranian parliament’s Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security,on Monday
They seemed cheerful as rumors mounted that Iran would retaliate for air strikes in Syria that have allegedly killed Iranian personnel.
In early April, Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that “Israel’s crimes will not remain unanswered.” 
Syrian army sources have also indicated that there would be retaliation against Israel for US strikes in April. Iran is now humiliated, but it has a problem. Its options to retaliate are actually quite limited.
DanShapirotweet.png
Despite its influence and power in the region, Iran’s assets are spread thin and do not involve the ability to confront Israel in a conventional way. Its air and naval forces are no match for Israel’s.

But Iran is also constrained by two other problems.

Firstly, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron about preserving the Iran nuclear deal on Sunday. US President Donald Trump is looking at a May 12 deadline to recertify the deal, but any retaliation by Iran can ruin any chances of keeping the deal in place.

Secondly, Lebanese elections are set to take place on May 6 and Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, is trying to seek more seats in the parliament. Therefore, Iran must be careful because any retaliation could also impact its allies in the larger regional context.

Missiles

Amos Yadlin and Avner Golov argued in a 2013 paper that an Iranian missile attack constitutes the “main threat” against Israel. In 2018, this could now include the firing of missiles from Syria.

But this has been hampered by repeated air strikes on these missiles. For instance, the Hama strike on Sunday allegedly destroyed numerous ground-to-ground missiles.

Iran also has drones in Syria. One of them entered Israeli air space in February, provoking a major response against their launch site at the T4 airbase. So Iran’s drone operators in Syria have also suffered losses, degrading their drone retaliation ability.

Striking at Jewish and Israeli sites abroad

Iran can, however, reticulate by striking at Israeli and Jewish sites abroad. Yadlin and Golov point to the “attacks in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 against the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA Jewish Center” as examples of Iran attacking Israel through sites outside the country.

Iran’s proxies, such as Hezbollah, have also previously targeted Israelis abroad, such as in the Burgas bombing in 2012 in Bulgaria. There have also been arrests of Hezbollah networks in Cyprus in 2012 and 2015 and an Iranian-sponsored attack on Israeli diplomats in India and Thailand in 2012.

Strike at Israeli and Western allies

Iran tends to view the US, Israel and US allies, such as Saudi Arabia, as part of the same list of enemies.

In Khamenei’s speech on Monday, he alleged that the US has a “plan to provoke some ignorant governments in our own region to confront the Islamic Republic. If these government officials gain some wisdom they won’t confront the Islamic Republic, but if they stand against Iran, they will certainly suffer defeat.” He also called on the US to leave the region.

After the Hama explosions on Sunday night, many pro-Syrian regime accounts pointed to the US as the culprit, even producing maps that showed the missiles flying from Tanf on the Jordanian border and claiming that nine missiles had killed 18 Iranian servicemen.
It is clear that Iran wanted to tie the US to the strikes. This would indicate that it was paving the way for possible retaliation against US interests as well.

Rouhani also told Macron that Trump’s words and threats were violating the Iran deal.

Thus, Tehran is paving the way to claim that it is a victim of the US and Israel and giving itself the permission to attack different targets.

Harassing the US in Syria

But the question remains: How can an attack manifest itself?

On Sunday, pro-regime forces attacked the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces near the Euphrates River.
Was that a probing attack? Could Iran’s proxies harass US interests in eastern or southern Syria? Might they seek to cause trouble in the Persian Gulf?

The Iranian octopus across the Middle East has numerous allies and networks, but no single one of them is very powerful. For instance, in Iraq there are large numbers of militias that support Iran. Together they are a large force, but their ability to do much against US interests there is limited. And any large attacks by them would risk angering the local government that supports them.

The same is true in Lebanon. Any major act by Hezbollah brings the risk of its destruction by Lebanon and of its enemies using it as an excuse to encourage its destruction.

Tehran’s risks

In Syria, Iran knows that it risks alienating Russia if it stirs up trouble with Israel.

Every Iranian base in Syria has essentially led to air strikes in Syria, destabilizing the regime and making it look weak.

Russia’s main interest is the survival of the Assad regime. So Iran is undermining the very regime it pretends to support. Russia doesn’t want to be provoked into a showdown with Israel because of the ayatollah’s hubris. Iran has received messages in the past that more bases or provocations or attacks against Israel may result in the Assad regime suffering grievously.

How much can Iran risk? How much are its proxies willing to risk?

This is the deadly calculation Tehran must make before it can make any move toward retaliation.

 
Seth Frantzman is a writing fellow at the Middle East Forum


3a)

Report: Iran planning to launch a barrage of missiles against Israel

By JPOST.COM STAFF, ANNA AHRONHEIM

 Military analyst Roni Daniel said the intelligence suggested Iran would use Shiite militias already deployed in Syria, along with experts from Hezbollah.

Iran is preparing a barrage of missiles to launch against Israeli military positions from Syrian territory, Hebrew media reported Sunday, citing defense officials.

Iran plans to avenge alleged Israeli strikes on its bases in Syria, Ma'ariv defense analyst Alon Ben David said, by targeting military targets in northern Israel.

As of now, Israel is not "on the eve of war against Iran," he said, "but the Iranians do want revenge for their losses.”

Iran plans to use Shiite militias already deployed in Syria along with experts from Hezbollah, according to Channel 2 News military analyst Roni Daniel. The proxies would be overseen by general Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps abroad.

Tensions have risen dramatically between the two arch-enemies following the infiltration of a Iranian drone into northern Israel, which the IDF says was armed and on a sabotage attack mission against the Jewish State.

Israel is said to have been preparing for a direct attack from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps since mid-April in response to a strike allegedly carried out by the Jewish state against an Iranian operated airbase in Syria which killed seven IRGC soldiers.

A senior IDF official confirmed to The New York Times in late April that Israel was behind the attack, stating that the February incident “opened a new period” between the Jewish state and the Islamic Republic.

Following the strike, Ali Akbar Velayati, the top aid to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, warned Israel “should be waiting for a powerful response” to the strike on the airfield, saying "it will not remain unanswered.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
4) Homogeneous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty

By Mitchell Langbert


In this article I offer new evidence about something readers of Academic Questions already know: The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample are Republican free—having zero Republicans. The political registration in most of the remaining 61 percent, with a few important exceptions, is slightly more than zero percent but nevertheless absurdly skewed against Republican affiliation and in favor of Democratic affiliation. Thus, 78.2 percent of the academic departments in my sample have either zero Republicans, or so few as to make no difference.
My sample of 8,688 tenure track, Ph.D.–holding professors from fifty-one of the sixty-six top ranked liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News 2017 report consists of 5,197, or 59.8 percent, who are registered either Republican or Democrat. The mean Democratic-to-Republican ratio (D:R) across the sample is 10.4:1, but because of an anomaly in the definition of what constitutes a liberal arts college in the U.S. News survey, I include two military colleges, West Point and Annapolis.1 If these are excluded, the D:R ratio is a whopping 12.7:1.
Why Political Homogeneity Is Troubling
Political homogeneity is problematic because it biases research and teaching and reduces academic credibility. In a recent book on social psychology, The Politics of Social Psychology edited by Jarret T. Crawford and Lee Jussim, Mark J. Brandt and Anna Katarina Spälti, show that because of left-wing bias, psychologists are far more likely to study the character and evolution of individuals on the Right than individuals on the Left.2 Inevitably affecting the quality of this research, though, George Yancey found that sociologists prefer not to work with fundamentalists, evangelicals, National Rifle Association members, and Republicans.3 Even though more Americans are conservative than liberal, academic psychologists’ biases cause them to believe that conservatism is deviant. In the study of gender, Charlotta Stern finds that the ideological presumptions in sociology prevent any but the no-differences-between-genders assumptions of left-leaning sociologists from making serious research inroads. So pervasive is the lack of balance in academia that more than 1,000 professors and graduate students have started Heterodox Academy, an organization committed to increasing “viewpoint diversity” in higher education.4The end result is that objective science becomes problematic, and where research is problematic, teaching is more so.
The Nonconforming Few
A few liberal arts colleges are outliers and do not conform to the standard liberal slant. One, Thomas Aquinas, has thirty-three full-time faculty and all are Republican. The two military colleges in my sample, West Point and Annapolis, have D:R ratios of 1.3:1 and 2.3:1. Although it is debatable whether military colleges are liberal arts colleges, U.S. News’s inclusion of them in the liberal arts category is fortuitous because they offer evidence that when colleges provide supportive environments, intellectual diversity is achievable. There are other exceptions, such as Claremont McKenna, which adopted a viewpoint diversity strategy early in its history, and Kenyon, which is one of a few of the top-ranked liberal arts colleges located in a predominantly Republican state and which did not become coed until 1969.
Thomas Aquinas and St. John’s, another college with above average Republican representation, have emphasized interdisciplinary teaching and downplayed the publish or perish imperative, which Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern have argued contributes to left-oriented groupthink.5 The exceptions to the Democratic-only rule indicate that institutional factors and discrimination might be key reasons for political homogeneity in the liberal arts colleges.
Trend toward Homogeneity
Noah Carl shows that in Britain the trend has been toward increasing leftward affiliation.6 The same has been true in the U.S. More than a decade ago, Stanley Rothman and colleagues provided evidence that while 39 percent of the professoriate on average described itself as Left in 1984, 72 percent did so in 1999. They find a national average D:R ratio of 4.5:1.7 More recently, Anthony J. Quain, Daniel B. Klein, and I find D:R ratios of 11.5:1 in the social science departments of highly ranked national universities.8 This study finds a D:R ratio of 10.4:1 across all liberal arts departments if the military colleges are included and 12.7:1 if the military colleges are excluded.
Data
The fifty-one institutions in this study are among the top sixty-six-ranked U.S. News and World Report national liberal arts colleges for 2017. The data are limited to the fifty-one colleges located in twelve states that host at least one of the top sixty-six colleges and that make voter registration information public.9 One college, the United States Air Force Academy, does not provide a full faculty list online and refused to comply with my Freedom of Information Act request for a complete faculty list.
To obtain data, I consulted the online website of each college and identified the full-time, Ph.D.–holding professors in each department. I limited the sample to full-time, Ph.D.–holding tenure-track faculty who are identified as full, associate, or assistant professors. Thus, I omitted short-term-contract, adjunct, visiting, and emeritus professors. A research assistant helped with the Pennsylvania colleges.
I began work in February 2017 and finished in September 2017. The sample, which includes individuals not registered, amounts to 8,688 professors in fifty-one institutions. In three institutions, St. John’s, Thomas Aquinas, and Sarah Lawrence, I was unable to determine academic ranks, so ranks are missing. In St. John’s and Thomas Aquinas I was unable to determine fields of specialization, so the academic field was omitted from these two colleges.
Nonregistration
Not all professors register to vote. In 2016, Quain, Klein, and I find that 29.7 percent of our sample of professors at top-tier social science departments were unregistered, but that 15.7 percent of this group were so classified because the presence of other people with the same name on voter registration rolls made determining registration impossible. 10 In this study, I find that a lower proportion—23.4 percent— of the sample is unregistered.
It is not possible to accurately measure the political affiliations of professors registered as “independent,” “no affiliation,” or “other,” whom I lumped together in a category I called “No Party” or “NP.” Since Gallup found in 2014 that 47 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of Republicans say that a third party is needed, there seems little reason to believe that one party or ideology is more strongly associated with non-affiliation. 11 There is suspicion of the two-party system on both Left and Right.
I needed to make a number of judgment calls with respect to the assignment of faculty to neighboring fields. For instance, I assigned biologically oriented neuroscience faculty to biology and psychologically oriented neuroscience faculty to psychology. I aggregated the studies fields (gender studies, Africana studies) into one category, which I call “interdisciplinary studies.” As well, I aggregated the professional fields (accounting, business, nursing) into one category called “professional.”
Only 101 professors in the sample are registered with minor parties. Since they are only 1.2 percent of the sample of 8,688 professors, I omitted them from most of the analyses.
Findings

D:R Ratios by Field
Figure illustrates the sharp differences across the departments or fields in the liberal arts colleges. The D:R ratios range from 1.6:1 for engineering to 56:0 and 108:0 for communications and interdisciplinary studies.
Figure 1
Number of Democratic Faculty Members for Every Republican in 25 Academic Fields
The STEM subjects, such as chemistry, economics, mathematics, and physics, have lower D:R ratios than the social sciences and humanities. The highest D:R ratio of all is for the most ideological field: interdisciplinary studies. I could not find a single Republican with an exclusive appointment to fields like gender studies, Africana studies, and peace studies. As Fabio Rojas describes with respect to Africana or Black studies, these fields had their roots in ideologically motivated political movements that crystallized in the 1960s and 1970s.12
Figure gives a picture of how the broad liberal arts fields compare with respect to political affiliation. The professional field has the least extreme (but still unbalanced) D:R ratio while ideologically rooted interdisciplinary studies has the most extreme. The hard sciences are more balanced than the social sciences and the humanities.
Figure 2
Number of Democratic Faculty Members for Every Republican in Five Broad Fields
D:R Ratios by College
Table lists the Democratic-to-Republican ratio of each college in the sample. I could not find any full-time, Republican-registered faculty at Bryn Mawr and Soka, and I could not find any full-time, Democratic-registered faculty at Thomas Aquinas. For example, I identified 254 full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors at Williams. Of these, 132 are registered Democratic, and one is registered Republican, so the D:R ratio is 132:1. Since not all colleges offer all fields, the ratios are influenced by the majors offered and by demographic factors, such as the proportion of the faculty that is female.
In order to get a sense of how far away from employing zero Republicans the colleges are, I performed t-tests to determine the number of colleges for which zero falls within the margin of error from the observed proportion of Republicans.13In other words, I wanted to determine the number of colleges for which the proportion of Republicans is not statistically different from zero. For fifteen of the colleges, zero falls within the margin of error, so the proportion of Republicans can be said to not significantly differ from zero. In an additional five colleges, the lower confidence interval just equals zero at three decimal digits. Thus, for twenty of fifty-one colleges, or 39.2 percent, the proportion of Republicans does not significantly differ from zero.
Table 1 D:R Rations by College
Table gives the raw numbers from which I computed the D:R ratios by college. Thomas Aquinas and St. John’s College rely on an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach and do not indicate departments. I found 808 departments that do not employ a single Republican, and I found only 225 departments that do. Thus, 78.2 percent of departments do not employ a single Republican while 21.8 percent do.
Gender and Political Homogeneity
Figure shows that the D:R ratios among the elite liberal arts faculty are 20.8:1 for females and 7.2:1 for males. When the two military colleges are excluded, the ratios are 25.2:1 for females and 8.7:1 for males. Langbert, Quain, and Klein find a similar gender imbalance in elite research universities: 24.8:1 for females and 9.0:1 for males.14
Figure 3
Number of Democratic Faculty Members for Every Republican by Gender
U.S. News Rank and Homogeneity
Since the days of C.B. Spaulding and H.A. Turner, Burton R. Clark, and Everett Carll Ladd Jr. and Seymour Martin Lipset, researchers have noticed that elite colleges have tended to lean left.15 In this sample, when I exclude the two military colleges and break the remaining ones into quartile tiers based on U.S. News rank, that pattern is sustained (see Figure 4).
Figure 4
Number of Democratic Faculty Members for Every Republican by US News Rank (49 Non-military Colleges)
Region and Homogeneity
Samuel J. Abrams has pointed out that colleges in New England tend to lean further to the left than other colleges.16 Figure shows the D:R ratios for the non-military colleges in five sets of states: New England and New York (NE); Pennsylvania and Maryland; California and Colorado; Kentucky and North Carolina; and Ohio and Iowa. As Abrams predicts, the ratio is highest in New York and New England
Figure 5
Number of Democratic Faculty Members for Every Republican by Region (49 Non-military Colleges)
Given regional differences, it seems likely that state political variables will be associated with faculty political affiliation, yet little work has been done in this regard. Public choice theory predicts that compact organizations like colleges and academic fields will function effectively as lobbies.17 David A. Tandberg suggests that both state government control and state mass opinion might influence political attitudes in higher education.18 Tandberg cites research indicating that the governor is the most important influence on higher education policy.
I used two measures: the Cato Institute ratings of governors and the Gallup ratings of state politics for 2016–2017.19 The Gallup ratings indicate whether public opinion in the state is strongly Democratic or Republican, leans Democratic or Republican, or is competitive. For the Cato measure I took the mean of their 2010 and 2016 rankings because a number of gubernatorial administrations have recently changed.
Figure 6 shows that there are significant associations between (a) Gallup ratings of public opinion and Cato governor ratings and (b) faculty partisan affiliation. In Gallup Republican states, the D:R ratio is 6.6:1 while in Gallup Democratic states the ratio is 15.8:1. In states with Cato governor ranking above 50, indicating a relatively free market orientation, the ratio is 7.4:1 while in states with Cato rankings below 50, the Democratic-to-Republican ratio is 15.4:1. These differences are statistically significant.
Figure 6
Number of Democratic Faculty Members for Every Republican by Politics of State (49 Non-military Colleges)
Conclusion
In this paper I find that D:R ratios among fifty-one of the top sixty-six U.S. News-ranked colleges average 10.4:1., Excluding Annapolis and West Point raises the ratio to 12.7:1. This compares with a national D:R ratio of 1.6:1 for people who have some graduate school experience. 
Some STEM fields come close to the baseline national average of 1.6:1; potentially ideologically linked fields, especially the interdisciplinary studies fields, do not. Thus, the D:R ratio for engineering is 1.6:1 while for the interdisciplinary studies fields it is 108:0.
Institutional factors at the state government level as well as at the individual college level may play some causal role. Professors in more Democratic states, especially in New York and New England, are more often affiliated with the Democratic Party than in other states.
Since the 1960s, a few liberal arts colleges have not conformed to the homogenizing trend, and these demonstrate that institutional characteristics, at a minimum, contribute to faculty political affiliation in liberal arts colleges. Thomas Aquinas is all Republican, and the two military colleges in my sample, West Point and Annapolis, have D:R ratios of 1.3:1 and 2.3:1. Studies that focus on grand means ignore the association of affiliation rates with institutional characteristics.
These findings suggest important implications for research and policy. For research, a coherent causal model of the imbalance in political affiliation in colleges requires that statistical models integrate institutional effects with individual faculty characteristics. For policy, if political homogeneity is embedded in college culture, attempting to reform colleges by changing their cultures seems a very tall order. The solution to viewpoint homogeneity may lie in establishing new colleges from the ground up, rather than in reforming existing ones.

Mitchell Langbert is associate professor of business management at Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY 11210; MLangbert@HVC.RR.com. The author thanks the Searle Freedom Trust for its financial support, Brooklyn College for a year of faculty leave, and Glenda R. McGee for research assistance. The author also thanks James Dalton, Ward Elliott, Bruce Fleming, J. Philip Gleason, Lee Jussim, Daniel B. Klein, and David O’Brien for institutional background and other information. 

Footnotes:
1 David W. Breneman “Are We Losing Our Liberal Arts Colleges?” AAHE Bulletin 43, no. 2 (October 1990): 3–6, available at http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED339260.pdf) defines liberal arts colleges as residential colleges that award the B.A. degree, enroll full-time students between 18 and 24, enroll fewer than 2,500 students, and limit the number of majors to twenty in the arts and sciences. In contrast, Robert Morse, Eric Brooks, and Matt Mason, in “How U.S. News Calculated the 2018 Best Colleges Rankings,” U.S. News and World Report, September 11, 2017, https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings, define liberal arts colleges as colleges that focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education and award at least 50 percent of their degrees in arts and sciences.
2 Mark J. Brandt and Anna Katarina Spälti, “Norms and Explanations in Social and Political Psychology,” in Jarret T. Crawford and Lee Jussim, eds. The Politics of Social Psychology (New York: Routledge, 2018).
3 Lydia Saad, “U.S. Conservatives Outnumber Liberals by Narrowing Margin,” Gallup News, January 3, 2017, http://news.gallup.com/poll/201152/conservative-liberal-gap-continues-narrow-tuesday.aspx; Charlotta Stern, “Does Political Ideology Hinder Insights on Gender and Labor Markets?” in Jarret T. Crawford and Lee Jussim, eds. The Politics of Social Psychology (New York: Routledge, 2018); George Yancey, Compromising Scholarship: Religious and Political Bias in American Higher Education (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017).
4 Heterodox Academy. “The Problem.” Heterodoxacademy.orghttps://heterodoxacademy.org/the-problem/
5 Thomas Aquinas College, “A Liberating Education.” https://thomasaquinas.edu/a-liberating- education/liberating-education”; St. John’s College, “Undergraduate Program,” https://www.sjc. edu/academic-programs/undergraduate; Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern, “Groupthink in Academia: Majoritarian Departmental Politics and the Professional Pyramid,” in Robert Maranto, Richard E. Redding, and Frederick M. Hess, eds., The Politically  Correct  University:  Problems,  Scope, and Reform (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2009): 79–98.
6 Noah Carl, “Lackademia: Why Do Academics Lean Left?,” Briefing Paper. Adam Smith Institute, March 2, 2017, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56eddde762cd9413e151ac92/t/58b5a7cd03596ec6631d8b8a/1488299985267/Left+Wing+Bias+Paper.pdf.
7 Stanley Rothman, S. Robert Lichter, and Neil Nevitte, “Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty,” The Forum 3, no. 1 (2005), http://www.conservativecriminology.com/uploads/5/6/1/7/56173731/rothman_et_al.pdf.
8 Mitchell Langbert, Anthony J. Quain, and Daniel B. Klein, “Faculty Voter Registration in Economics, History, Journalism, Law, and Psychology,” Econ Journal Watch 13, no. 3 (September 2016): 422–51, https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications- law-and-psychology.
9 Of the 2017 top sixty-six U.S. News-ranked liberal arts colleges, fourteen are located in states that do not release voter registration data.
10 Langbert et al., “Faculty Voter Registration.”
11 Jeffrey M. Jones, “GOP Maintains Edge in State Party Affiliation in 2016,” GallupNews, January 30, 2017, http://news.gallup.com/poll/203117/gop-maintains-edge-state-party-affiliation-2016.aspx.
12 Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
13 Robert L. Winkler and William L. Hays, Statistics: Probability, Inference, and Decision, Second Edition (New York: Harcourt School, 1975).
14 Langbert et al., “Faculty Voter Registration.”
15 C.B. Spaulding and H.A. Turner, “Political Orientation and Field of Specialization among College Professors,” Sociology of Education 41:3 (1968), 247–62; Burton R. Clark, The Distinctive College: Antioch, Reed, and Swarthmore (London, UK: Routledge Publishers, 1992); Everett Carll Ladd Jr. and Seymour Martin Lipset, The Divided Academy: Professors and Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975).
16 Samuel J. Abrams, “There Are Conservative Professors. Just Not in These States,” New York Times, Sunday Review, July 1, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/there-are-conservative-professors-just-not-in-these-states.html.
17 Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).
18 David A. Tandberg, “Politics, Interest Groups and State Funding of Public Higher Education,” Research in Higher Education 51: 416–50 (2010).
19 Chris Edwards, “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors: 2010,” Policy Analysis 668, White Paper, September 30, 2010 (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2010), https://object.cato.org/pubs/pas/PA668. pdfFiscal Policy Report Card on AmericaGovernors 2016, October 5, 2016 (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2016), https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/edwards_report_card_on_govs_20161004.pdf; Jeffrey M. Jones, “GOP Maintains Edge in State Party Affiliation in 2016.”

4a)  The Danger of Constant Impeachment Talk


Calls to remove a president have become a regular feature of American politics over the past two decades, making it harder to achieve if truly needed

By  Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz
The 2016 presidential election was the first campaign in American history marked by credible threats of impeachment against whoever won. This was partly because both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had long been shadowed by charges of corruption, criminality and conspiracy. But it also reflected a more unnerving development: the emergence of a permanent presidential impeachment campaign.
Since the failed effort to oust President Bill Clinton two decades ago, calls to remove the president have become standard fare in American politics. In a stark break from the past, a whole generation has come to view impeachment talk as an ordinary feature of our partisan civil war, in which nothing is sacred and the Constitution has been weaponized.
This degradation of presidential impeachment is dangerous. It has trapped the American people in a massive “boy-who-cried-wolf” dilemma. It has turbocharged the forces of partisan dysfunction and democratic decline. And most perversely, it has left presidents freer to abuse their power. To reverse this damaging shift, we must all find our way to a more rational understanding of impeachment’s appropriate role in our constitutional order.
You wouldn’t know it from watching cable news today, but impeachment played a marginal role for most of American history. Despite quixotic calls to remove a few early presidents, savvy politicians soon realized that impeachment was “little better than a tale to amuse, like Utopia, or Swift’s flying island,” as Sen. George Bibb of Kentucky remarked after the Senate voted to censure President Andrew Jackson in 1834. Assembling a majority of the House to impeach, and two-thirds of the Senate to convict, was simply too difficult in a world of organized political parties (which the Constitution’s framers did not anticipate).
So things stood for over a century. Impeachment was banished to the political hinterlands, where it became the province of cranks, radicals and angry mobs. With only a handful of fleeting exceptions, respectable politicians avoided the subject.An even more wary view of the removal power emerged after 1868, when the Senate narrowly acquitted President Andrew Johnson on articles of impeachment. Although Johnson’s overt campaign to sabotage Congress’s plan for Reconstruction would have provided legitimate grounds for his removal, it soon became fashionable to condemn his trial as hopelessly partisan. To many, the impeachment power seemed tarnished and disreputable.
President Richard Nixon announces his resignation on Aug. 8, 1974, days after articles of impeachment were passed by the House Judiciary Committee and sent on for a vote by the full House of Representatives.
President Richard Nixon announces his resignation on Aug. 8, 1974, days after articles of impeachment were passed by the House Judiciary Committee and sent on for a vote by the full House of Representatives. PHOTO: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
Then came President Richard Nixon, who brought impeachment roaring back to life and ultimately resigned in 1974 to avoid it. The Watergate scandal and its aftermath were traumatic for the country, however. For two decades afterward, references to impeachment remained rare. The subject briefly surfaced over President Ronald Reagan’s role in the Iran-Contra scandal, and President George H.W. Bush faced a frivolous call for impeachment after he launched the Persian Gulf War. But even amid intense disagreements, partisan threats to oust the president were largely out of bounds.
The impeachment of Bill Clinton broke that dam. In 1998, Republicans sought his removal for perjury and obstruction of justice relating to investigations of his extramarital sexual relationships. Born of partisan spite in the House, and rejected on partisan lines in the Senate, the case against Mr. Clinton accelerated the most poisonous trends in our political system. During the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, their most aggressive foes invoked impeachment to inflame their political bases and to signal unyielding opposition. Allies of Messrs. Bush and Obama, in turn, used these threats to raise funds and condemn the other party as extreme. Six years into each presidency, over 30% of the public supported impeachment.
President Trump’s political opponents are quick to frame their disagreements with him in terms of impeachment. His supporters, in turn, are quick to dismiss even legitimate discussion of presidential wrongdoing as a partisan conspiracy. With our senses dulled by a surfeit of impeachment talk, the nation may find it especially difficult to remove a tyrannical president when doing so is truly necessary.
President Bill Clinton, accompanied by first lady Hillary Clinton, vows to complete his term after a Dec. 19, 1998 impeachment vote in Congress. The Senate acquitted him, but the political floodgates opened for permanent impeachment rhetoric.
President Bill Clinton, accompanied by first lady Hillary Clinton, vows to complete his term after a Dec. 19, 1998 impeachment vote in Congress. The Senate acquitted him, but the political floodgates opened for permanent impeachment rhetoric. PHOTO: SUSAN WALSH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Don’t get us wrong: Sometimes impeachment talk is essential. When a president approaches the outer limits of his power, inspires doubt concerning his mental fitness or adopts bizarre positions on matters of great importance, demands for his removal can function as an early warning system. They can also generate corrective political energies and invigorate other constitutional checks and balances. There are even times when impeachment hearings or full-blown proceedings are called for. Although key facts remain shrouded, it’s possible that Mr. Trump has created those circumstances.
Unrestrained impeachment rhetoric may even make it easier for a president to abuse his power. As threats of removal motivate a president’s base to rally around him, he may worry less about political pushback from his own ranks. And as some Democrats have warned, the president’s opponents may suffer at the polls if they are seen as standing only for the negative step of impeachment.But the steady barrage of impeachment talk from both parties has pushed our politics toward destabilizing extremes. Some of the president’s opponents seem to view every skirmish as a battle in their war to depose a tyrant, while some of his allies treat every rebuke as a threat to his survival. Because the stakes are so high, fixating on impeachment reinforces our most harmful tribal tendencies.
Since the late 1990s, the permanent impeachment campaign has done great harm to our politics. It’s time to restore a saner and more reflective view of the impeachment power. The fate of our democracy may depend on it.



 


No comments: