Friday,
March 11 2005
ANOTHER JUDICIAL ASSAULT ON FREE SPEECH: This
is so depressing:
PHOENIX
- There's nothing illegal about the state's giving more money
to publicly funded candidates when their privately financed
foes spend more, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Earl Carroll threw out a lawsuit filed by
Matt Salmon, who ran for governor in 2002 as a Republican and
said it is illegal for the state to equalize funding among candidates.
Carroll said the government can adopt rules designed to abolish
even the appearance of corruption in the political process...
The
lawsuit challenged two related elements of the law.
One gives more money to publicly funded candidates when privately
financed foes raise additional donations. Keller argued that
federal courts preclude the state from equalizing funding for
candidates.
The other provides additional money to publicly financed candidates
when independent groups take out ads attacking them or supporting
their privately funded foes. Independent expenditures
made on behalf of the publicly funded candidate are not considered.
(emphasis added)
So, if you're
a publicly funded candidate running against a privately funded
opponent, the government is going to step in with tax payer money
and "equalize" expenditures in the race, even if those
expenditures come from an independent group.
But if it's
the other way around and a privately funded candidate is attacked
by a 527 (like Moveon.org, for example) to the benefit of a publicly
funded candidate, it's just 'tough luck'. In what alternate universe
would anyone consider this Constitutional?
TUNING
UP FOR 2008: The Dems' 2008 dream ticket is shaping up
nicely. Hillary is busy building
her machine, and Obama is out honing
his attack skills.
HOW
WILL THE LEFT RESPOND?: Will there be rallies for academic
freedom and self-righteous lectures about protecting one's freedom
of speech over the
allegedly offensive remarks of this professor just a few miles
down the road from CU?
And will
Colorado State follow in the cowardly footsteps of its sister
school and just pay
the guy off to make him go away? Who knows, if CU goes ahead
with the Churchill deal this could be the beginning of an exciting
new trend in academia. Say something insane or bigoted and then
cash out and head to the Bahamas. Dammit Larry Summers, get off
your belly and call your lawyer.
A
FRIEND OF BILL: In other moderately random political
news, Bill Janklow recently placed
a bunch of ads in newspapers across South Dakota in praise
of Tom Daschle.
THE
SOCIAL SECURITY QUESTION: Steven Thomma asks whether
the Democrats can
beat something with nothing.
DEPRESSING
STAT OF THE DAY: From the National
Center for Health Statistics:
Death
By Race (2002)
Total Number of White Deaths: 2,102,589
White Death by Homicide: 8,685 (0.4%)
Cause of Death Rank: 20
Total Number
of Black Deaths: 290,051
Black Death by Homicide: 8,287 (2.9%)
Cause of Death Rank: 6
According
to the Bureau
of Justice Statistics, in 2002 blacks were 6 times more likely
to be murdered and 7 times more likely to commit murder than whites.
There is
one piece of good news, though. The homicide rate of African-American
children under five reached its lowest
point ever in 2002. - T. Bevan 1:32 pm Link
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Thursday,
March 10 2005
MR. REICH'S DEPENDENCY: Two very revealing bits from
Robert
Reich's argument this morning against reforming Social Security.
Here's the first:
Under
the Bush plan, future Social Security payments for our two boys
— now ages 20 and 23 — would be cut by whatever
amount they divert from their payroll taxes into private accounts.
(Actually, it would be an even bigger amount — that amount
adjusted upward for inflation plus 3% interest a year, just
as though the government has lent them the money and demands
repayment when it comes time for them to retire.)
That
means that if the boys have bad luck in the stock market, they
might be out of luck, period. Social Security won't be there
to cushion them against poverty in old age.
The vital
omission here - one which Democrats have been making since the
Social Security debate began - is that no one is obligated to
do anything under Bush's plan. Those who have anxiety over the
idea of a personal account or worry they may end up worse off
down the road (however unlikely that might be) can simply stick
with the current system.
Here is reveal
number two:
There
should be no generational divide on Social Security. It's a
good deal for everyone. I want our boys to be able to depend
on Social Security when they retire, just as their grandparents
and great-grandparents relied on it — and just
as I'll depend on it in a few years.(emphasis added)
I don't believe
Robert Reich is a tremendously wealthy man, but he's certainly
not a poor one either. To claim that he will be "depending"
on checks from Social Security to help sustain his retirement
probably falls somewhere between a good-sized embellishment and
a flat-out lie.
So why does
Reich portray himself as someone who will be in need of Social
Security even though he could probably get along just fine without
it? One reason is to establish a sense of solidarity with readers
("we're all in this together") and another is to convince
readers that dependence on Social Security is desirable ("it's
a good deal for everyone").
Remember,
in the lexicon of the left "dependent" and "reliant"
aren't dirty words - unless they're attached to the prefix "self."
Instead, dependence on government is something the left tries
to cultivate because government is the tool by which liberals
can mete out programs designed to achieve "social justice."
Social Security represents one of the largest and most long standing
tethers of dependency Americans have to the federal government.
Obviously,
the details of how Social Security reform is structured are important.
But if you throw out all the noise, the ever-changing numbers
and the manipulated projections, the Social Security debate boils
down to one that is fundamentally about government dependency
versus individual freedom. Should people have the right (feel
free to substitute the word "option" or "freedom")
to have more control over and make decisions about how a small
portion of the tax they pay is invested for their future retirement?
The only reason the average American worker would answer "no"
to this question is if they've been sufficiently frightened into
believing that the government can make better decisions for them
than they can make for themselves. - T. Bevan 11:32 am
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Tuesday,
March 8 2005
THE ARAB STREET RISES - WITH WOMEN: Given that today
is International
Women's Day it's probably appropriate to focus on the plight
of women in the Arab world. As I
mentioned last week, there have been some encouraging signs
of late, one of which was Prince Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia
declaring to Newsweek that "women are more sensible voters
than men."
In
Kuwait yesterday more than 500
women took to the streets demanding the right to vote. Despite
being some of the most well-educated and (as you can see from
the picture to the right) liberal women in the Arab world, they
are still denied the franchise and the right to stand for office.
The battle
these women are fighting is one they've come close to winning
before. Back
in 1999 Kuwaiti Emir Sheik Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah issued
an order giving women the right to vote, but after being approved
by the Kuwaiti cabinet that order was subsequently struck down
by Islamists in parliament.
Now
the hardliners
are at it again, declaring at a rally the other day that ""based
on Islamic sharia law, women have no political rights." This
time, however, the Kuwaiti Prime Minister is threatening to dissolve
parliament if the suffrage bill is blocked.
In addition
to lacking political rights, we in the West have little understanding
of the sort of discrimination women in the Arab world endure on
a daily basis. Here is a glimpse from a striking personal account
that appeared in the Yemeni
Observer last month.
"How
does it happen then, that I—as well as every Yemeni woman
I have spoken to—am constantly harassed when men should
not even be looking at me? Every single day in Sana’a
I suffer horrendous verbal abuse. Often I suffer physical abuse.
It
seems illogical to me that the gender that is stared at, ogled,
harassed, molested or even spat upon in wholly unprovoked attacks
is expected to cover with the sole intention of preventing these
occurrences, while the harassment—the crime—is taken
as a cultural normality.
I have
been to over forty countries on six continents and have lived
in many of them, but before I came here I had no idea there
existed a country with so little respect for others. Never have
I felt as defeated as I have in this country. I have to force
myself to leave my home every day, as I know there will be the
inevitable barrage of abuse from the moment I leave the house."
Of course
there is the issue of domestic violence as well. Many
have argued, quite convincingly in my opinion, that domestic
violence is expressly permitted by the Koran and thus tolerated
(and perhaps in some places encouraged) in parts of the Arab world.
Thanks
to courageous women like former Saudi journalist Rania
al-Baz who was beaten to within an inch of her life by her
husband and lived to tell the world about it, the cultural acceptance
of such hideous behavior is becoming more widely publicized and,
hopefully, much less prevalent.
The revolution
we're seeing in the Middle East contains many facets. Progress
for the rights of Arab women is perhaps one of the most important
and least appreciated parts of the story. It
shouldn't be overlooked. - T. Bevan 9:32 am Link
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Monday,
March 7 2005
THE VISION THING: In an otherwise thoughtfully argued
piece, Fareed Zakaria claims that Bush's
Middle East 'vision thing' is a product of his ignorance:
"Bush's
capacity to imagine a different Middle East may actually be
related to his relative ignorance of the region. Had he traveled
to the Middle East and seen its many dysfunctions, he might
have been disheartened. Freed from looking at the day-to-day
realities, Bush maintained a vision of what the region could
look like."
Personally,
I think it was the sight of two fully loaded jetliners disappearing
into the sides of the twin towers that drove Bush's "capacity
to imagine a different Middle East," not some speculative
assertion that he didn't have a clue about what was happening
on the ground in the Arab world.
Still, Zakaria's
point may help explain why some liberals from the newly self-styled
"reality-based
community" have never quite been able to get their heads
wrapped around a push for democracy in the region.
EXPORTING
NONSENSE: One thing I've noticed from spending a lot
of time on the international op-ed pages recently is that some
of the worst anti-American sentiment you'll find doesn't come
from the native columnists but from "special" guest
contributors from America. More often than not these people hail
from the academic left.
One of the
worst examples I've seen is this
piece by Joseph P. Lawrence, Professor of Philosophy from
Holy Cross, appearing last month in the Turkish newspaper Zaman.
The article is an abomination and a tour de force of moral relativism.
In addition to calling the pursuit of a protective missile defense
system "demonic" and "beyond even the wildest fantasy
of Hitler", Lawrence peddles this absurdity:
Freedom,
we must remember, is nothing if it is not the possibility of
both good and evil. How else can one defend God in the shadow
of Auschwitz but in that most traditional manner: He has left
us free? As ardently as we desire to destroy the tyrant, God
has let him be. To conduct lives that reflect the goodness of
God requires the fulfillment of an unattainable imperative:
"love thy enemy." For that reason alone, no earthly
power has a right to invoke the authority of God. Indeed, what
is that invocation other than the proof that evil can become
real, regardless of whether its face is that of some foreign
Ayatollah or of the President of the United States of America?
We have been warned to beware of the false messiah. It is a
warning we should take seriously.
Is it any
wonder America has such a difficult time battling world opinion
when some of our own citizens are busy helping to export this
kind of nonsense around the globe?
STONECIPHER'S KERIK PROBLEM: First Bernie Kerik pulled
his nomination to be Homeland Security Chief because of a nanny
problem that had nothing to do with a nanny. Now the The
Washington Post reports that Harry Stonecipher, the CEO of
Boeing, has been forced to resign due to an affair with a female
employee that was "inconsistent" with the company's
code of conduct. Except, as the Post notes:
"The
investigation determined the relationship was consensual and
had no effect on the conduct of the company's business,"
according to the statement. The woman, the statement said, did
not report directly to Stonecipher.
However,
"the Board concluded that the facts reflected poorly on
Harry's judgment and would impair his ability to lead the company,"
Platt said in the statement.
In
a conference call with analysts and reporters, Platt said the
affair lasted a few weeks after the first of the year. The affair
itself was not a violation of the company's code of conduct
and the internal investigation did not find Stonecipher influenced
the female employee's career or salary, he said. Nor was the
female asked to resign.
But
the investigation, which included correspondence between the
two, did show that Stonecipher showed poor judgment in a way
that could cause embarrassment to the company, Platt said.
A consensual
affair that didn't violate company policy and didn't include harassment?
Stonecipher is married, so obviously he's a cad. Still, Boeing
is either setting a new standard by delving into and making moral
judgments about the personal lives of its executives or this is
a convenient excuse to toss Stonecipher overboard for some other
reason.
SOME
BRIEF FUN AT TPM'S EXPENSE: I simply cannot resist. Josh
Marshall - you know: the intellectual lefty with a knack for writing
and once the proprietor of a blog that wasn't stupendously single-minded
and soporific - gets
back to his roots this morning with an interesting discussion
of Joe Klein hitting Paul Krugman upside the head yesterday (metaphorically
speaking) on Meet
the Press.
However,
a mere 582 words into the post Josh writes, "I want to leave
the longer discussion of this issue to another post. But just
to briefly describe what I'm getting at...."
One thousand
seventy-one (1,071) words later I was not only questioning Josh's
commitment to brevity, I was thoroughly dreading a "longer
discussion of this issue." - T. Bevan 2:32 pm Link
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