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Links: Focus on the Family’s America Under Obama, more

Published by Colin October 31, 2008 in Current Events. 7 Comments

Focus on the Family Action’s Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America. This hilarious letter basically takes every major problem that could happen short of the apocalypse and blames all of it on Barack Obama. Here are some of the more interesting nuggets:

The Supreme Court in 2011 nullified all Federal Communications Commission restrictions on obscene speech or visual content in radio and television broadcasts. As a result, television programs at all hours of the day contain explicit portrayals of sexual acts.

I didn’t know that the only thing holding back hard-core pornography on the television was the FCC. I guess we all really want to watch porn all day - as this is what these people think the market would ask for, if left to it’s own devices. Thank goodness for the wise, powerful and all-moral FCC.

A Taliban-like oppression has taken over in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of “American sympathizers” have been labeled as traitors, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The number put to death may soon reach the millions.

Leaving Iraq of course will lead to a new holocaust in the country.

President Obama directed U.S. intelligence services to cease all wiretapping of alleged terrorist phone calls unless they first obtained a warrant for each case… Since 2009, terrorist bombs have exploded in two large and two small U.S. cities, killing hundreds, and the entire country is fearful, for no place seems safe.

Oh no! Now government has to get a warrant for wiretaps! Because of this four bombs have gone off - if only we had given the government more of our civil liberties!

In mid-2010, Iran launched a nuclear bomb that exploded in the middle of Tel Aviv, destroying much of that city

Which of these countries will have nukes in 2012: Iran or Israel? Hint: one of them already has them, and has made multiple threats to use them against ther other? Hint: it’s not Iran.

As a result, those evangelical publishers could no longer distribute any of their books through any of these bookstore chains. Any Christian publisher that dares to print works critical of homosexual behavior faces the same fate. As a result, several Christian publishers have gone out of business.

Ahh! Christian publishers, many of which publish heresy anyway, are out of business? How is the church going to make money? Next we’ll find out that president Obama was stealing from the collection plate too?

A coming scandal?

Red Sex, Blue Sex - Why do so many evangelical teen-agers become pregnant?

The George Wallace We Forgot

Socialism, Sarah Palin style:

For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself.

She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269.

A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.”

Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.

LA TImes will not release Video that may show Obama supporting terrorists

The Behavioral Revolution

An Obama speechwriter says she’s voting for McCain…

Not only has this party belittled working people in this campaign from Joe the Plumber to the bitter comments, it has also been part of tearing down two female candidates. At first, certain Democrats and the press called Senator Clinton “dishonest.” They went after her cleavage. They said her experience as First Lady consisted of having tea parties. There was no outrage over “Bros before Hoes” or “Iron My Shirt.” Did Senator Clinton make mistakes? Of course. She’s human.

But here we are about a week out and it’s déjà vu all over again… Governor Palin and I don’t agree on a lot of things, mostly social issues. But I have grown to appreciate the Governor…

I was dead wrong about the surge and thought it would be a disaster. Senator John McCain led when many of us were ready to quit. Yet we march on as if nothing has changed, wedded to an old plan, and that too is a long way from the Democratic Party.

I can no longer justify what this party has done and can’t dismiss the treatment of women and working people as just part of the new kind of politics. It’s wrong and someone has to say that…

Links: This is the libertarians fault!!!!

Published by Colin October 24, 2008 in Current Events. 4 Comments

A Slate.com article blames US “libertarian” policies for the current failing market, arguing for more intervention and stating that the current crisis proves libertarians are wrong. This Reason.com article is offered as a rebuttal.

Iraq Inches Closer to Security Pact With U.S.

The draft also includes provisions on another knotty issue — whether American soldiers would have immunity from Iraqi law. Senior Iraqi officials said the draft language would give Americans immunity from Iraqi law when they were on military operations but would not apply if they were off duty….

Many Iraqi members of Parliament say that the proposed immunity provisions, which the United States supports, are too broad, and that they want American troops to be subject to Iraqi law for all their actions. The Americans say that their troops must have immunity when on military missions….

“The heart of the matter is the jurisdiction over the searching of all cargos that are shipped to Iraq or from Iraq,” said Ali Adeeb, a close ally of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “There is the possibility that the cargo contains weapons that may hurt Iraq, although the American side committed that no weapons of mass destruction would be sent to Iraq.”….

Adding to the volatility, attacks against Christians have increased in the past two weeks and nearly 1,900 Christian families have fled their homes in fear, said Abdul Qadir al-Obaidi, the Iraqi minister of defense.

Palin is the mom in Bobby’s World?

A few weeks ago, the truth was revealed that artificial inflation of certain stocks would eventually hurt the market….and the conspiracy to hide this on Wikipedia.

Bloomberg gets the rule changes to stay in power, voters aren’t happy.

Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof

Gap narrows between rich and poor, but the UK is still bad. And, oddly enough, if you look at the Gini coefficient scores, the US is worse.

Vote al Qaeda, Vote McCain

John Stossel’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics

Published by Colin October 20, 2008 in Politics and Current Events. 1 Comment

Despite being across the pond - I gladly seized an opportunity to watch John Stossel’s latest 20/20 special: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics.

Part one is spent dispelling the general idea that politicians can’t do anything they promise and that people are foolish for trusting them. Stossel quickly moves away from the ticky-tacky Obama/McCain “debate” and demonstrates that both candidates are making promises that they can’t/won’t keep and that it is government itself, despite the good intentions of politicians and their supporters, that is the problem.

Stossel uses a skating rink to demonstrate that order is best achieved “spontaneously” with the mutual self-interest of people slipping into harmony as people desire a) to be free and b) to be safe. He then tries to “plan” the skating rink by making rules and giving orders to the skaters, who subsequently fall, crash and otherwise fail. They no longer have fun either. People acting based on their own decisions and priorities are also the most cooperative and move society forward.

Part two moves into practical applications of this basic premise, starting with the credit crunch. He challenges the idea that many on the left make - that “deregulation” has led to this problem. He brilliantly shows how the past two presidents intervened in the economy to encourage home ownership by people who could never afford to own one - in other words, it was government meddling that blew up the housing market.

But not only did the government create the problem - they now want to solve it by more intervention. The economists he interviews argue that bailouts only encourage and reinforce bad behaviour. It is best that those companies that made poor decisions be allowed to fail.

In the third part, Stossel shows how incompetent government has been at disaster relief. The ninth ward of New Orleans is still in ruins. Many home-owners and others physically cannot rebuild because they are being held back by multiple approval processes. The decrepit ninth ward is highlighted against a nearby neighbourhood which was rebuilt by private charity, from Habitat for Humanity to drivers passing by to Brad Pitt.

Mayor Ray Nagin argued that government was making it easier to build a home. Stossel tests this out by going in to the permit office to get the right authorisation. It took more then ten minutes for the secretary just to list the forms to him. Nagin was unapologetic about the red-tape, arguing that it was necessary to protect historical districts.

In part four, Stossel shows the unintended consequences of McCain-Fiengold and campaign finance laws. He shows how these laws have basically destroyed the possibility for new candidates to run and even for non-candidates to participate in politics - even to just support a ballot measure. He cites a couple women in Colorado who made a couple signs against a local annexation measure and were sued for not establishing the right committee or reporting their expenses.

And for dramatic effect - he shows how both McCain and Obama have circumvented the laws anyway. The money, instead of going directly to politicians, still floods into politics through affiliated groups.

Farm subsidies are attacked by Stossel in part five. The idea that these are going to small family farms is dispelled and it is shown that these subsidies are just being collected by wealthy farmers.

Stossel’s special, like many he has done, is brazenly libertarian and equally attacks the fallacies present in both conservative and left-wing thinking.

Links: Monday Catchup

Published by Colin October 13, 2008 in Current Events. 17 Comments

I blame socialism for last Friday’s lack of links. Here is the make-up version.

Politics
President of NOW’s Los Angeles Chapter endorses Palin

WFB’s son endorses Obama.

Beliefnet presents the Twelve Tribes of American Politics. I don’t fit neatly into any tribe, but if you cornered me I might cop to being a White Bread Protestant.

How it all began (article from 1999)

Where is Joe Six-Pack? Sharon Theimer takes on political stereotyping.

The Buck Stopped Then:

CRITICS of the administration’s Wall Street bailout condemn the waste of taxpayer dollars. But the taxpayers aren’t the weightiest American financial constituency, even in this election year. The dollar is the world’s currency. And it is on the world’s opinion of the dollar that the Treasury’s plan ultimately hangs.

It hangs by a thread, if Monday’s steep drop of the greenback against the euro is any indication. We Americans, constitutionally inattentive to developments in the foreign exchange markets, should be grateful for what we have. That a piece of paper of no intrinsic value should pass for good money the world over is nothing less than a secular miracle. We pay our bills with it. And our creditors not only accept it, they also obligingly invest it in American securities, including our slightly shop-soiled mortgage-backed securities. Every year but one since 1982, this country has consumed much more than it has produced, and it has managed to discharge its debts with the money that it alone can lawfully print.

What the Candidates Believe: A PBS report.

Christianity
Pittsburgh Diocese Joins Anglican Province

The rival to the Bible:

What is probably the oldest known Bible is being digitised, reuniting its scattered parts for the first time since its discovery 160 years ago. It is markedly different from its modern equivalent. What’s left out?
…
Firstly, the Codex contains two extra books in the New Testament.

One is the little-known Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome in the 2nd Century - the other, the Epistle of Barnabas.
…
The Codex - and other early manuscripts - do not mention the ascension of Jesus into heaven, and omit key references to the Resurrection, which the Archbishop of Canterbury has said is essential for Christian belief.

Other differences concern how Jesus behaved. In one passage of the Codex, Jesus is said to be “angry” as he healed a leper, whereas the modern text records him as healing with “compassion”.

Also missing is the story of the woman taken in adultery and about to be stoned - until Jesus rebuked the Pharisees (a Jewish sect), inviting anyone without sin to cast the first stone.

Nor are there words of forgiveness from the cross. Jesus does not say “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”.

Cocktail of Crises II

Published by Colin September 30, 2008 in Essays, Politics and Current Events. 25 Comments

Last time, we covered how there is a definite compounding of crises possible with our crumbling economy and insistence on deploying massive amounts of offensive military mechanisms in various parts of the world. Let’s discuss a few additional factors that might augment this potential possibility.

Civil Liberties
The loss of civil liberties, while traditionally a concern of the hard-right (see Reagan’s 1964 RNC speech) has now become associated with left-leaning groups such as the ACLU and left-wing politicians like Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader. While these people are definitely statists, they are alarmed at the rate in which personal freedoms such as privacy and speech are being eroded - especially in the name of security and saftey.

But conservatives have held on to a few pieces of the civil liberties “pie” - namely, religious liberty and some speech concerns (such as Public University’s creation and interpretation of speech codes).

However, no one seems to realize the fact that civil liberties are not a left/right issue, but an authoritarian/libertarian one. This has led to gradual “victories” by left advocates of freedom limitations on right-wing associated liberty, and vica versa. Now we have conservatives saying that it’s no problem if the government taps your phones, searches your house and interrogates you – if you are proven innocent, the benevolent and kind authorities will not harm you. We have left-wingers saying that they believe in free speech, except the kind that might possibly offend some ethnic, gender or other identity group.

The sum of all of this – the aggregate curtailing of personal freedom – would definitely cause a people to begin active resistance of, say, a bankrupt government being more aggressive in revenue collection (if the economy goes bust) and crime prevention (as terrorists and other enemies begin attacking a poorly defended homeland). With a loss of civil liberties, the government begins to see everyone as some shade of an enemy – as some level of threat against its order. Moreover, as non-criminal activities are criminalized (take drug-use and gun ownership for self-defence) the government begins using it’s depleted resources to lock up otherwise law-abiding people instead of going after legitimate criminals. In other words – increasing the capability and responsibilities of government beyond real crime fighting will lead to more and more real crime. It is basic opportunity cost.

Immigrant Labour
When things go awry in any situation, most people look to blame others first rather than take responsibility. In democratic/collectivist societies, this tends to manifest itself in racism and demonization. This is already happening with regards to Mexican immigrants. People who have done nothing other than seek the best market opportunity for work (even if breaking bad laws) are viewed as leeches and parasites on “American jobs.” Even those who haven’t broken these laws are viewed with suspicion, solely because of the language they speak, the colour of their skin or their culture.

So far, these immigrants and those who empathise with them, have not began to fight back. They have mostly ignored the hostility, and kept working. But how long will the attacks on these people be tolerated?

Also, freedoms are being curtailed because of the immigration “problem” - such as the right of an employer to hire whomever he wants and to offer whatever wage he wants. Many conservatives are supporting increasing the scrutiny of the market because of racism. If it were non-immigrant white people looking for work, they would be heralded as following the American dream – but the American dream is evidentially, not for Mexican immigrants.

A failing economy and increasing unemployment, would only exacerbate this problem. Imagine already high unemployment from an economic collapse, and then thousands of unemployed military personnel returning from a military gone broke – but a lot of low-wage jobs being held by one ethnic group who many people believe has not obeyed the rules. This scenario is Weimar Germany all over again.

Thinking About The Economy

Published by Bryan September 29, 2008 in Religion, Current Events, Philosophy and Theology. 3 Comments

There is one bit of advice given to use by the ancient heathen Greeks, and the the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest; and lending money at interest - what we call investment- is the basis of our whole system.

Now it may not absolutely follow that we are wrong. Some people say that when Moses and Aristotle and the Christians agreed in forbidding interest (or ‘usury’ as they called it), they could not foresee the joint stock company, and were only thinking of the private money lender, and that, therefore, we need not bother about that they said. That is a question I cannot decide on. I am not an economist and I simply do not know whether the investment system is responsible for the state we are in or not. This is where we want the Christian economist. But I should not have been honest if I had not told you that three great civilizations had agreed (or so it seems at first sight) in condemning the very thing on which we have based out whole life.

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

By providence I was re-reading some of Mere Christianity last week, and this section is a good place to start a discussion on Christians and the current economic crisis. Christian responses to what has happened are just beginning to appear. The most notable being The Archbishop of Canterbury . Although the ABC throwing Marx into the mix is bound to stir up some controversy, it is encouraging to see discussion on the issue that goes to actual discussion of how the economy should be set up.

I firmly believe that any response Christians give to a crisis must have both an immediate action attached, and a long term consideration of the situation. Often the Church does the first, but leaves the second.

What do I mean by an immediate action in response to a crisis? I think the end of It’s A Wonderful Life is a great example. A need is discovered, people rally around and do what they can to bring the person out of the immediate situation. I’ve heard that this has happened in this case with some churches offering counseling to people hit by this, and I have no doubt that when people loose their jobs the church will be there to offer financial support and friendship (If it does not drop the name church please). Even Starbucks understands the importance of this when right after they were offering free coffee in the morning to people who worked on Wall Street.

What the church likely won’t be as good at, is offering comment on the economic system as a whole. I don’t mind the church waiting a bit to do this, deal with the immediate concern first, but I fear it just won’t come. I’m glad the ABC has begun this, but where are the other voices? The ABC may be an intelligent man, but he is not an economist. Where are the economists to answer Lewis’ questions? Where are those from within the Church that can offer comment on how the economic system works? Where are they advising Christians how far to enter into it? How much of a role is the sin of greed at fault here and how much was poor decision making?

I think this is yet another example of a place where the church could step up to it’s calling and be involved in bringing God’s kingdom to the world, but instead will choose to continue in irrelevant pursuits (I’m building a growing list). I believe I’ve bemoaned the fact that the church has embraced a dichotomy that separates it from every “non-religious” concern enough that I don’t need to get into why it’s happening or why it’s wrong again, but it still saddens me when I see such an opportunity go to waste.

Ron Paul Throws His Weight Behind the Constitution Party

Published by Colin September 23, 2008 in Religion, Politics and Current Events. 20 Comments

In a somewhat surprising move, Ron Paul has chosen to buck his libertarian roots and endorse the Constitution Party’s Chuck Baldwin for President. In a long, very personal and very revealing piece, Paul makes a couple of observations about this decision and his run at the White House. This one stuck out:

Ironically the most difficult group to recruit has been the evangelicals who supported McCain and his pro-war positions. They have been convinced that they are obligated to initiate preventive war in the Middle East for theological reasons. Fortunately, this is a minority of the Christian community, but our doors remain open to all despite this type of challenge. The point is, new devotees to the freedom philosophy are more likely to come from the left than from those conservatives who have been convinced that God has instructed us to militarize the Middle East.

Paul, like many of us Christians who deeply lament the unbiblical support from our brothers and sisters of offensive war, murder, lying and blasphemy - and those who have sold themselves out to John McCain’s “evil” because it is “less evil” than Barack Obama’s “evil” has decided to embrace a genuinely Christian candidate in Chuck Baldwin. From the pastor himself:

For one thing, a sizeable number of believers allowed President George W. Bush to redefine their Christian principles almost out of existence. They willingly looked the other way while Bush betrayed his word (not to mention the Constitution) and catapulted conservative principles into outer darkness. To the point, that they can now even support someone as liberal as John McCain and still call him a “conservative.”

I will say it straight out: any Christian or conservative who supports John McCain has no principles left worth defending!

…How could Christians sacrifice their principles and convictions so easily? How could they be so willing to surrender their loyalties–both to Christ as the organic Sovereign of this land, and to constitutional government, which is, itself, built on Biblical principles?

…

There it is: countless millions of professing Christians will eagerly abandon their commitment to constitutional government and Biblical principles in order to accommodate a Republican Presidential candidate. In the minds of many Christians, the Republican Party is more important than the U.S. Constitution. It is more important than conservative principles or even Biblical injunctions. In essence, the Republican Party has become an IDOL in the hearts and minds of many professing believers.

So, how can we ask God to bless America when God’s children have set up the groves of idolatry in their hearts? How can we expect God to heal our land when Christian pastors, Sunday School teachers, deacons, ushers, and faithful church members place more loyalty and allegiance in a political party than they do in the very Word and principles of God?

As surely as the pagans of the Old Testament worshipped before the gods of Baal and Ashteroth, many Christians worship before the GOP. They are willing to sacrifice their children to the policies and practices of unscrupulous, evil politicians–as long as they have an “R” behind their names.

We have a major problem in the church, let alone the conservative political movement when so many claim they agree with the authority of Christ and the bible and yet, out of ignorance or stubborn human-centered pride, support policies that are so blatantly and radically unbiblical and unchristian. There is probably more hope with the left’s base, who though dead wrong on principle, at least seem to understand the concept of principle. It may be easier to convince them that their motives, while correct, are not carried out through socialism, wealth-redistribution, pluralism and so called religious and cultural “tolerance.”

The Christian “right” has gone full-circle this decade. What started as an effort to align one of the major parties with a God-fearing agenda has turned into a power struggle to align God-fearing people with a major party agenda. Paul sees that the mainstream of political Christianity has been so caught up in what these false prophets, teachers and experts are proclaiming that it is time to “evangelize” the left.

Realistically, Paul’s positions have generally been closer to the Constitution Party that the hard-line of the Libertarian Party. Paul’s emphasis on Rothbardian/Austrian economics and his opposition to the drug war makes him friends with the Libertarians, but his views on immigration, Christianity and abortion align him more with the Old Right and Constitution Party.

With this endorsement Paul has shown his true colours, even though it will not make a lot of sense to those who supported him from the left. Once again, he has chosen to follow his principles over politics, and pick a hard-core Christian “libertarian-esque” candidate who emphasises those principles which Paul finds most important.

Here is Paul and Baldwin talking in 2007 about Christian/conservative issues.

Cocktail of Crises

Published by Colin September 22, 2008 in General, Essays, Politics, Current Events and Philosophy. 4 Comments

I also thought about titling this post; “At least part of the reason I have chosen to leave the US and obtain other citizenship.” I do not want to rush, like many libertarians and apocalyptic Christians to hasty conclusions that the sky is falling. I don’t think we’re even near that in the civilised world. In fact, I would even argue that the whole thing is being exaggerated and perpetuated mostly by the media, politicians and business which seek to profit of people behaving like chickens with their heads cut off and reloading CNN every two minutes, asking for more government handouts/power and looking for sales in guns, oil, water, food, gas, metal, gold, silver and so on to go up.

However, having said that, I suspect that most people are missing the real crisis - the wider crisis. In the determination to focus on something like gas prices or civil liberties in detail, perhaps how these elements combine and mix in the current climate reveals the nature of the “crisis machine” that is being built. In other words, the bail-outs aren’t really a catastrophic problem in and of themselves, but combine them with say, inflation, lost civil liberties and foreign policy - and now you’ve got a little cocktail being mixed that might do some damage.

The essence of this comes from one of my few favourite quotations by one of my favourite men, Henry Hazlitt:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

So, while various plans drawn up to solve one particular problem might stem the specific leak, these will weaken other-areas in a greater and greater ways. If we continue to pay more than what we are getting on the whole, if we borrow more from ourselves than we gain back in any given solution, then we are gaining momentum on the path to bankruptcy.

I don’t think that any one crisis would really damage the United States, but if crises are continually paid-forward with short term fixes at the expense of the aggregate, we’ll have a huge queue of multi-industrial, multi-dimensional problems bursting the seams of law and order that tie them down.

So I want to look at how some of the following areas have or may, in the future, combine to compound a larger crisis for the US:

Foreign Policy
The Domestic Economy
Immigration
Civil Liberties
Free Speech
Nationalism/Patriotism
Religion

I’m going to do my best now not to try and lose you.

Foreign Policy
Regardless of one’s view on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is clear that we are less liked in the Muslim world today than we were on Sept 10, 2001. Terrorist groups (including non-Islamic ones) have seen their numbers swell. America, regardless of why, has a lot of enemies.

Even if we had the perfect military, intelligence and every move we have made and will make to combat this reality were perfect, the cost would be enormous - probably greater than any military effort that was ever unleashed. To stem everything from active terrorism and resistance in the middle east, to peacekeeping for US interest and allies in numerous other places, to protecting resources and trade partners, to preserving and install US-friendly regimes in places like South America and Eastern Europe would make the kind of scarcity, rationing and planning not seen since the forties.

Again, I am presuming that there is no waste, no bad intelligence, no blow-back and other bugling. Just this effort alone, in one area, might be doable if we had the savings and capital to pay for it.

However, we clearly have no capital and savings. America has been in the red for sometime. What is going to happen when all of these troops, assets and protections are pulled back from the fragile order which they are supporting? Those who have supported a planned, orderly decrease in military intervention for the past few years (heck, even the past decades) have been laughed at in favour of the idea that the current level of empire is a linear, sustainable stronghold. But as Ron Paul said as early as 2003, we will be pulling our empire back - either by planned, orderly and strategic organisation or as a reckless reaction to the bottom line that we no longer can afford it:

Policing the world and nation-building issues are popular campaign targets, yet they are now standard operating procedures. There’s no sign that these programs will be slowed or reversed until either we are stopped by force overseas (which won’t be soon) or we go broke and can no longer afford these grandiose plans for a world empire (which will probably come sooner than later.)

It should now be clear that we are facing this reality. Even those of us who are staunchly anti-war will not deny the fact that there are people out there being held at bay by the military who would otherwise seek to kill Americans. When the military is forced to downsize, we will have left the gates open for these people to come in and sack our country.

The reactionary answer by conservatives (and many democrats) is to rely on the same old argument to beef up the military. But what if there is physically no money to pay for it? We are going to have an increase in terrorism at home and abroad and the accompanying cries by the population for safety in the form of increased government power in exchange for freedom and civil liberties.

Next time: discussion on what the current economic situation reveals, along with the combined problem of immigration and civil liberty erosion.

Public Schools: A battlefront in wealth redistribution

Published by Kenneth Martens September 10, 2008 in General, Politics and Current Events. 11 Comments

In case you haven’t noticed, some pastors and an Illinois state senator have organized a boycott of Chicago public schools. (Meeks leads CPS boycott) The issue is the disparate funding levels between urban and suburban school districts. As part of the boycott, some 2000 Chicago students are attempting to enroll at New Trier High School in the suburbs. They’ll be turned away because they don’t live in the New Trier High School district.

When asked why he was at New Trier, [Chicago public school student] Darius said: “Uh, I forgot.”

But his mother, Aquanetta Jones, had an immediate response: “I’m here today to fight for better education for our children, for more resources, more books, more funding.”

Most of the news coverage has mentioned the boycott and the enrollment stunt at New Trier High School, but hasn’t explained the funding system that the families are protesting. Here’s a roundup of the coverage.

PioneerLocal.com: “The demonstration is organized by State Sen. Rev. James Meeks to shine a spotlight on what he considers to be unfair school funding standards.”
WJBC: “Students boarded buses and headed to New Trier High School’s Northfield campus to protest low levels of school funding.”
Associated Press: “State Sen. James Meeks … is organizing the boycott to draw attention to funding disparities in Illinois public schools.”
Washington Post: “Illinois’ funding system generally gives rural and inner-city schools less to spend per student than suburban schools receive.”
WTHITV: “The students skipped school as part of a protest designed to draw attention to funding disparities in Illinois’ public schools.”

This naturally raises the question: what precisely is this criminally unfair funding system? Good question. The officials at New Trier High School have an answer.

A fact sheet distributed by New Trier Township High School District 203 explained the complicated funding formula in Illinois, which relies heavily on property taxes to support schools. According to the fact sheet, the New Trier school district property wealth per student is $1.125 million compared to $150,000 in Chicago.

Schools with lower property wealth receive a higher proportion of funding from state sources. As a result, according to the New Trier district, its schools get 96 percent of its revenue from local sources compared to 48 percent in Chicago. Conversely, according to New Trier, its district gets only 3 percent of its revenue from the state, while Chicago gets 35 percent from the state.

So the funding system is this: most of the funding comes from property taxes paid by the local community. That is supplemented by state funds. So this whole boycott is because some people think it’s wrong that the New Trier High School community is taxing itself to provide higher quality education than the Chicago public high schools. Clearly this is evil and must be fixed by forcing New Trier High School to send its community’s tax money to Chicago.

It’s nothing but wealth redistribution. This ideology of collectivism is sweeping America. It does not tolerate a community taxing itself to buy something better than a neighboring community has. It views education as an entitlement to be granted and guaranteed by the government, not something provided by families and local communities for their own children.

This boycott is disgraceful and Un-American.

Links: McCain May Be Smarter Than He Looks, Pelosi is An Idiot

Published by Colin August 29, 2008 in Current Events. 6 Comments

Beijing’s Bad Faith Olympics:

To win the right to host these Games, China promised to honor the Olympic ideals of nonviolence, openness to the world and individual expression. Those promises were systematically broken, starting with this spring’s brutal repression in Tibet and continuing on to the ugly farce of inviting its citizens to apply for legal protest permits and then arresting them if they actually tried to do so.

Along the way, government critics were pre-emptively rounded up and jailed, domestic news outlets tightly controlled, foreign journalists denied full access to the Internet and thousands of Beijing’s least telegenic residents were evicted from their homes and out of camera range. On Friday, the Chinese police confirmed that six Americans protesting China’s rule in Tibet had been sentenced to 10 days of detention.

Surely one of the signature events of these Games was the sentencing of two women in their late 70s to “re-education through labor.” Their crime? Applying for permission to protest the inadequate compensation they felt they had received when the government seized their homes years ago for urban redevelopment.

A year ago, the I.O.C. predicted that these Games would be “a force for good” and a spur to human-rights progress. Instead, as Human Rights Watch has reported, they became a catalyst for intensified human-rights abuse.

McCain picks Sarah Palin for VP. More on why I think the pick is gold on Monday.

Nancy Pelosi is an idiot.

The ReDistricting Game

N Korea ‘develops special noodle’

“Health-care workers should not be forced to provide services that violate their own conscience.”

Russia is claiming that the US was involved in Georgia to benefit a presidential candidate

Zeal For Truth