Red Chinese Dictatorship and American Labor Thug, Andy Stern, Born of the Same Spore?

Andy Stern: In praise of Communist China

 by Rick Moran    at the American Thinker:

“Oh, the irony! If former SEIU Thug-in-chief Andy Stern tried to set up a union independent of the Chinese government, he would be thrown in prison for a very long time.

And yet, here he is on the pages of the (just whisper it, Andy) WALL STREET Journal, praising the Chinese “model” (whatever that is) and gloating over the “death” of free market capitalism:

The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model-so successful in the 20th century-is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century. In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA’s results-a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1%-are pathetic.

This should motivate leaders to rethink, rather than double down on an empirically failing free-market extremism. As painful and humbling as it may be, America needs to do what a once-dominant business or sports team would do when the tide turns: study the ingredients of its competitors’ success.

While we debate, Team China rolls on. Our delegation witnessed China’s people-oriented development in Chongqing, a city of 32 million in Western China, which is led by an aggressive and popular Communist Party leader-Bo Xilai. A skyline of cranes are building roughly 1.5 million square feet of usable floor space daily-including, our delegation was told, 700,000 units of public housing annually.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government can boast that it has established in Western China an economic zone for cloud computing and automotive and aerospace production resulting in 12.5% annual growth and 49% growth in annual tax revenue, with wages rising more than 10% a year.

For those of us who love this country and believe America has every asset it needs to remain the No. 1 economic engine of the world, it is troubling that we have no plan-and substitute a demonization of government and worship of the free market at a historical moment that requires a rethinking of both those beliefs.

Of course China has a “plan” – that’s what Communists do. They can dictate where to invest, who wins and who loses – and the only way you’re going to win is if you join the Communist party. There is no freedom of action, little entrepreneurship (the hoops they make you jump through to start a business in China are mind boggling), and a regimented labor force who can’t strike, can’t lobby for worker safety (the coal mining safety record is appalling), and are forced to take what the government gives them and like it.

Andy Stern is an idiot. And this proves it:

As this was happening, I was part of a U.S.-China dialogue-a trip organized by the China-United States Exchange Foundation and the Center for American Progress-with high-ranking Chinese government officials, both past and present. For me, the tension resulting from the chorus of American criticism paled in significance compared to reading the emerging outline of China’s 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection-all while promoting social equity and rural development.

“Social equity???” In a Communist country?That is so far down the list of goals for the Chinese government it’s damn near invisible. Only a moronic liberal, eager to believe anything told him by hosts who take full advantage of the mindless naivete of their guests could possibly be fooled by such utter nonsense.

I don’t know whether Stern realizes what an ass he is making of himself by believing that you can actually “plan” 7% growth over 5 years. And there is so much that Stern isn’t including in this hymn to central planning that it is simply outrageous to take what he’s saying here without a huge grain of salt.

China is building 6 million homes because they don’t have enough housing for its workers. That’s because previous 5 year plans failed to account for such. They are investing in “renewable energy” largely because they have the most polluted cities on the planet.  Recall the Olympics where the IOC almost refused to allow the marathon to be run because of the choking smog that covered Beijing. Nasty air and water due to government carelessness and neglect is a fact of life in China. For them, developing an alternative to coal is a matter of life and death.

The Chinese can manufacture all they want because they can pay their workers anything they wish. No mention by the former labor leader about the low wages being paid Chinese workers and why it’s against the law to agitate for more.

Stern has been taken in by the usual blather from Communists about how great they’re doing. Andy evidently hasn’t been paying much attention to what’s happening in the world lately. This from the LA Times 3 days ago:

Backed by data showing a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy, doomsayers have taken center stage. Unbridled optimism has given way to fears over widening cracks in the Chinese economic miracle.

The gloomy sentiment has spilled into financial markets, whose investors have been running for the exits.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises index, which tracks the stock performance of major mainland companies listed in Hong Kong, is down 26% this year , making it the worst-performing market gauge in Asia.

The practice of short-selling — betting that a stock will fall in value — has become so pervasive among traders of Chinese equities that analysts at French banking firm Societe Generale deemed China the “world’s most crowded short.” For instance, nearly a third of the shares of China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd. were shorted in August and September, signaling doubts about the prospects of China’s largest property developer.

“There’s growing sentiment that the Chinese story doesn’t make sense,” said Chang, who is now invited to investor conferences and remains convinced of a looming crash.

Bears like Chang see slowing GDP growth, rising public debt and stubbornly high inflation as evidence China’s problems are about to get bigger.

What about those 6 million homes the Chinese are going to build, Andy?

Now China’s housing bubble is deflating. Home prices reversed in October for the second consecutive month as cash-strapped developers became desperate to unload homes. An index of 35 major cities showed 29 had experienced a decline in sales from a year ago; sales plunged more than 50% in six of them, including Beijing.

The Chinese government says it’s all part of the plan. After loosening the credit spigot during the financial crisis to keep the economy humming, it’s now tightening lending and clamping down on speculators.

But critics said the damage has been done. Behind China’s gleaming new high-rises, freeways and bullet trains, the bears see ghost towns, empty roads and superfluous rail lines. Public debt has exploded, raising fears of an overload that could weigh on China’s economy.

Sure, China can build 6 million homes. It’s just that no one will be able to buy them.

Finally, what about the “99%?”

The global economy would benefit if China could rebalance its economy so that its 1.3 billion citizens started spending more. But they can’t because China has structured its economy to favor big businesses over consumers.

Beijing does this by keeping its currency, the yuan, artificially weak. That benefits exporters by making Chinese goods cheap. But a weak yuan fuels inflation at home and makes imported goods expensive. Authorities also keep interest rates low so that state-owned companies get cheap loans. But that means depositors earn puny returns.

It all adds up to less money in the pockets of consumers, said Peking University economist Michael Pettis.

So what system is going to end up on the dustbin of history?”

 Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/andy_stern_in_praise_of_communist_china.html#ixzz1fK6nZBYA

Obamaman Andy Stern Shares His Marxist Envy of the Glories of Red China’s Economic Model

China’s Superior Economic Model

The free-market fundamentalist economic model

is being thrown onto the trash heap of history.

by Andy Stern,   former  president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

“Andy Grove, the founder and chairman of Intel, provocatively wrote in Businessweek last year that, “Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best of all economic systems—the freer the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better.”

The past few weeks have proven Mr. Grove’s point, as our relations with China, and that country’s impact on America’s future, came to the forefront of American politics. Our inert Senate, while preparing for the super committee to fail, crossed the normally insurmountable political divide to pass legislation to address China’s currency manipulation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama all weighed in with their views—ranging from warnings that China must “end unfair discrimination” (Mrs. Clinton) to complaints that the U.S. has “been played like a fiddle” (Mr. Romney) and that China needs to stop “gaming” the international system (Mr. Obama).

As this was happening, I was part of a U.S.-China dialogue—a trip organized by the China-United States Exchange Foundation and the Center for American Progress—with high-ranking Chinese government officials, both past and present. For me, the tension resulting from the chorus of American criticism paled in significance compared to reading the emerging outline of China’s 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection—all while promoting social equity and rural development.

Some Americans are drawing lessons from this. Last month, the China Daily quoted Orville Schell, who directs the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, as saying: “I think we have come to realize the ability to plan is exactly what is missing in America.” The article also noted that Robert Engle, who won a Nobel Prize in 2003 for economics, has said that while China is making five-year plans for the next generation, Americans are planning only for the next election.

The world has been made “flat” by the technological miracles of Andy Grove, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. This has forced all institutions to confront what is clearly the third economic revolution in world history. The Agricultural Revolution was a roughly 3,000-year transition, the Industrial Revolution lasted 300 years, and this technology-led Global Revolution will take only 30-odd years. No single generation has witnessed so much change in a single lifetime.

The current debates about China’s currency, the trade imbalance, our debt and China’s excessive use of pirated American intellectual property are evidence that the Global Revolution—coupled with Deng Xiaoping’s government-led, growth-oriented reforms—has created the planet’s second-largest economy. It’s on a clear trajectory to knock America off its perch by 2025.

As Andy Grove so presciently articulated in the July 1, 2010, issue of Businessweek, the economies of China, Singapore, Germany, Brazil and India have demonstrated “that a plan for job creation must be the number-one objective of state economic policy; and that the government must play a strategic role in setting the priorities and arraying the forces of organization necessary to achieve this goal.”

The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model—so successful in the 20th century—is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century. In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA’s results—a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1%—are pathetic.

This should motivate leaders to rethink, rather than double down on an empirically failing free-market extremism. As painful and humbling as it may be, America needs to do what a once-dominant business or sports team would do when the tide turns: study the ingredients of its competitors’ success.

While we debate, Team China rolls on. Our delegation witnessed China’s people-oriented development in Chongqing, a city of 32 million in Western China, which is led by an aggressive and popular Communist Party leader—Bo Xilai. A skyline of cranes are building roughly 1.5 million square feet of usable floor space daily—including, our delegation was told, 700,000 units of public housing annually.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government can boast that it has established in Western China an economic zone for cloud computing and automotive and aerospace production resulting in 12.5% annual growth and 49% growth in annual tax revenue, with wages rising more than 10% a year.

For those of us who love this country and believe America has every asset it needs to remain the No. 1 economic engine of the world, it is troubling that we have no plan—and substitute a demonization of government and worship of the free market at a historical moment that requires a rethinking of both those beliefs.

America needs to embrace a plan for growth and innovation, with a streamlined government as a partner with the private sector. Economic revolutions require institutions to change and maybe make history, because if they stick to the status quo they soon become history. Our great country, which sparked and wants to lead this global revolution, needs a forward looking, long-term economic plan.

The imperative for change is simple. As Andy Grove pointed out: “If we want to remain a leading economy, we change on our own, or change will continue to be forced upon us.”

Mr. Stern was president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Rebuilding Infrastructure Problems

Infrastructure Funding: Taking the Wrong Path

from the National Center for Policy Analysis….

“A recent American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) report estimated the United States will need to spend $2.2 trillion over the next few years to bring the country’s infrastructure to acceptable levels.  A $2 trillion projected estimate for infrastructure sounds daunting, but it is important to examine what planners consider “infrastructure,” says Peter Swanson, a Hatton W. Sumners Scholar at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Traditionally, infrastructure spending included highways, railroads, bridges and waterways.  Infrastructure now encompasses public parks and recreation, schools, and high-speed rail and transit projects.  Public transit is often inefficient, underutilized and subject to cost overruns.  Yet the ASCE Report Card includes these items as investment needs, rather than optional amenities.  For example:

• The $2.2 trillion in infrastructure spending needs outlined in the civil engineers’ report card includes $63 billion for improvements along highly questionable Amtrak routes as well as railways that carry freight.
• The total also includes $160 billion for schools and $85 billion for parks and recreation.
• In addition, there is $265 billion for public transit bus and light-rail projects.

Although there has been a push by the federal government to increase federal infrastructure investment, states and localities account for the lion’s share of the spending.  Consider:

• Federal spending represented only 23 percent of total public spending on infrastructure in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office report.
• Of this 23 percent, just 7 percent went toward operating and maintenance expenses for already established infrastructure.
• The other 16 percent was capital funding for new projects.

The United States has the capability to address the country’s infrastructure issues, but there is only a loose connection between federal spending and improvements in public infrastructure because of misguided federal policies.  Typically, the federal government offers seed funding to states to initiate capital spending projects, but leaves the states to complete and maintain them.  As a result, state and local governments are encouraged to spend money on projects that may be a lower priority than projects initiated and funded locally.”

Source: Peter Swanson, “Infrastructure Funding: Taking the Wrong Path,” National Center for Policy Analysis, December 1, 2011.

For text:

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba760

For more on Tax and Spending Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=25

Will the U.S. Supreme Court Continue its Lefty Racism?

The unintended consequences

 of racial preferences

                                  by George Will    at   the Washington Post:

In the 1978 Bakke case concerning preferences in a medical school’s admissions, Justice Lewis Powell, the swing vote on a fractured court, wrote that institutions of higher education have a First Amendment right — academic freedom — to use race as one “plus” factor when shaping student bodies to achieve viewpoint diversity. Thus began the “educational benefits” exception to the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

But benefits to whom? For 33 years, the court has been entangled in a thicket of preferences that are not remedial and hence not temporary. Preferences as recompense for past discrimination must eventually become implausible, but the diversity rationale for preferences never expires.

Liberals would never stoop to stereotyping, but they say minorities necessarily make distinctive — stereotypical? — contributions to viewpoint diversity, conferring benefits on campus culture forever. And minorities admitted to elite universities and professional schools supposedly serve the compelling goal of enlarging the minority component of the middle class and professions.

But what if many of the minorities used in this process are injured by it? Abundant research says they are, as two amicus curiae briefs demonstrate in urging the court to take the Texas case.

In 2003, when the court ruled on two cases arising from University of Michigan undergraduate and law school racial-preference policies, the court contributed more confusion than clarity. It struck down the undergraduate policies as too mechanistic in emphasizing race but upheld the law school’s pursuit of educational benefits from a “critical mass” of certain approved minorities.

The details of the Texas policies are less important than what social science says about the likely consequences of such policies. A brief submitted by UCLA law professor Richard Sander and legal analyst Stuart Taylor argues that voluminous research refutes the legal premise for such racial classifications: They benefit relatively powerless minorities.

“Academic mismatch” causes many students who are admitted under a substantial preference based on race, but who possess weaker academic skills, to fall behind. The consequences include especially high attrition rates from the sciences, and self-segregation in less-demanding classes, thereby reducing classroom diversity. Blacks are significantly more integrated across the University of California system than they were before the state eliminated racial preferences in 1996, thereby discouraging enrollment of underprepared minorities in the more elite institutions.

Sander and Taylor report: “Research suggests a similar pattern nationally; scholars have found that the use of large racial preferences by elite colleges has the effect of reducing diversity at second-tier schools.” Another study showed that even if eliminating racial preferences in law schools would mean 21 percent fewer black matriculants, there would still be no reduction in the number of blacks who graduate and pass the bar exam.

 

Buying PROGRESSIVE INSURANCE seems to be Buying MARXISM for America

What Every American Should Know about Progressive Insurance!

 

 

PROGRESSIVE  INSURANCE is  owned by Peter Lewis: Who is he?  Read  this…

You’ve seen and smiled at the Progressive Insurance TV commercials.  Well,  as Paul Harvey would say, you’re about to learn the rest of the story:

 

PROGRESSIVE  AUTO INSURANCE

You know their TV commercials, the ones  featuring the ditsy actress all dressed in  white.  What you might not know is that the  Chairman of Progressive is Peter Lewis, one of  the major funders of leftist causes in America .. 

Between  2001 and 2003, Lewis funneled $15 million to the  ACLU, the group most responsible for destroying  what’s left of Americas Judeo-Christian  heritage.  

Lewis  also gave $12.5 million to MoveOn.org and America Coming Together, two key propaganda arms of the socialist left.

His  funding for these groups was conditional on matching contributions from George Soros, the  America-hating socialist who is the chief financier of the Obama political machine. 

Lewis  made a fortune as a result of capitalism, but  now finances a progressive movement that threatens to destroy the American free enterprise system that is targeting television shows on Fox News. 

   Peter Lewis is making a fortune off of conservative Americans (who buy his auto insurance) that he applies to dismantle the very system that made him wealthy.  He’s banking on no one finding out who he is, so, STOP buying  Progressive Insurance and pass this information on to all your friends..

Chairman Lewis’ gift helps the ACLU promote their anti-Christmas agenda such as:

·        Removing nativity scenes from public property

·        Banning songs such as Silent Night from schools

·        Refusing to allow students to write about the Christian aspect of Christmas in school projects

·        Renaming Christmas break Winter break

·        Refusing to allow a city sponsored Christmas parade to be called a Christmas parade

·        Not allowing a Christmas tree in a public school

·        Renaming a Christmas tree displayed on public property a Holiday tree

In addition to their war on Christmas, the ACLU uses gifts like that from Chairman Lewis to:

·        Sue states to force them to legalize homosexual marriage

·        Force libraries to remove porn filters from their computers

·        Sue the Boy Scouts to force them to accept homosexuals as scout leaders

·        Help legalize child pornography

·        Legalize live sex acts in bars in Oregon

·        Protect the North American Man Boy Love Association whose motto is “sex by eight or it is too late”

·        Censor student led prayer at graduation

·        Remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance

·        Remove “In God We Trust” on our currency

 Verify at http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/peterlewis.asp or http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/a/aclu-lewis.htm 

All of a sudden I don’t care for their “funny commercials

 

JUST SAY NO TO PROGRESSIVE INSURANCE…….SAY NO TO PROGRESSIVISM EVERYWHERE

 

The above notice was sent in by Bruce Taber.

 

 

An Old Father’s Pride Regarding an Email from a Son

I received the following email which had passed through one of my son’s network of email conversants.   It made me extra proud that he recognized the majesty in this Thomas Jefferson and appreciated his contributions to America  as much as I have,  by forwarding  this email to me.   I do  not know the origin of the email:

“It’s to bad we don’t have someone like Jefferson running our nation, wither
Dem. or Rep.. What he said so many years ago is all coming true and that is
really sad,

This is amazing. There are two parts. Be sure to read the 2nd part (in
RED).
Thomas Jefferson was a very remarkable man who started learning very early
in life and never stopped.
At 5, began studying under his cousin’s tutor.
At 9, studied Latin, Greek and French.
At 14, studied classical literature and additional languages.
At 16, entered the College of William and Mary.
At 19, studied Law for 5 years starting under George Wythe.
At 23, started his own law practice.
At 25, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses.
At 31, wrote the widely circulated “Summary View of the Rights of British
America ” and retired from his law practice.
At 32, was a Delegate to the Second Continental Congress.
At 33, wrote the Declaration of Independence .
At 33, took three years to revise Virginia ?s legal code and wrote a Public
Education bill and a statute for Religious Freedom.
At 36, was elected the second Governor of Virginia succeeding Patrick Henry.
At 40, served in Congress for two years.
At 41, was the American minister to France and negotiated commercial
treaties with European nations along with Ben Franklin and John Adams.
At 46, served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington.
At 53, served as Vice President and was elected president of the American
Philosophical Society.
At 55, drafted the Kentucky Resolutions and became the active head of
Republican Party.
At 57, was elected the third president of the United States .
At 60, obtained the Louisiana Purchase doubling the nation’s size.
At 61, was elected to a second term as President.
At 65, retired to Monticello .
At 80, helped President Monroe shape the Monroe Doctrine.
At 81, almost single-handedly created the University of Virginia and served
as its first president.
At 83, died on the 50th anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of
Independence along with John Adams.

 Thomas Jefferson knew because he himself
studied the previous failed attempts at government. He understood actual
history, the nature of God, his laws and the nature of man. That happens to
be way more than what most understand today. Jefferson really knew his
stuff. A voice from the past to lead us in the future:

John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the
brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement: “This is
perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in
the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall
become as corrupt as Europe .” — Thomas Jefferson “The democracy will cease
to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to
those who would not.”
-

- Thomas Jefferson
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A
principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government
from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of
them.” — Thomas Jefferson “My reading of history convinces me that most bad
government results from too much government.” — Thomas Jefferson “No free
man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” — Thomas Jefferson “The
strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms
is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

– Thomas Jefferson
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants.” — Thomas Jefferson “To compel a man to subsidize
with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is
sinful and tyrannical.”

Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties
than standing armies.
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of
their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and
corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of
all property – until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their
fathers conquered.”

I wish we could get this out to everyone.
I’m doing my part. Please do yours.

Comment:  This son is a part owner of Masterpiece Landscaping, Ltd.   He is a talented landscape garden artist running a  small business during these difficult economic times.   He plays pool,  belongs to the NRA, and hunts and fishes  feverishly.   He and his family are all salt of the Earth folks tied to the Minnesota soil.   

I enjoy becoming a member-recipient of his political news emails. 

 Unfortunately, my daughter is an Obama gal.   She never explains why.   It is an hysterical thing.  She knows nothing about Marxism or anything political, but she loves Obama.  Democrats make her leg tingle.   She teaches ballet in New York City.  

Take it or leave it, you love them all anyway.

More ‘More Sleaze than Dirt’ at the New York Times

(The following article was written by James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal:

Turn It Up Lauder

For sheer hypocrisy masquerading as journalism, it’s hard to come up with as bald an example as the 3,000-word attack on Ronald S. Lauder that ran Sunday on the front-page of the New York Times,” writes Ira Stoll of the New York Sun. The gist of that Times pieceas Stoll sums it up, is that “Mr. Lauder is the poster boy for ‘how the wealthy take advantage of the system’ through what the Times calls, disapprovingly, ‘tax avoidance techniques.’ ”

“What’s really galling,” Stoll writes, “is that in nearly every instance, the ‘tax avoidance techniques’ and other supposed sins for which the Times mauls Mr. Lauder are also engaged in by the family that owns the New York Times. Here’s a very abbreviated summary:

The Times complains of Mr. Lauder that, “His vast holdings . . . are organized in a labyrinth of trusts, limited liability corporations and holding companies, some of which his lawyers acknowledge are intended for tax purposes.”

The Times family has trusts, too, just like Ronald Lauder! It also has a limited liability company–Marujupu LLC, named for Marian, Ruth, Judith, and “Punch” Sulzberger.

The Times complains that Lauder’s television company “maintains an official headquarters in the tax haven of Bermuda, where it does not operate any stations.” The Times doesn’t mention that Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, of which longtime Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger was a longtime trustee, gets its insurance through captive insurance companies part-owned by the hospital that were incorporated in Bermuda and the Barbados (where Mount Sinai does not operate any hospitals) in 1982 and 1986.

The Times complains about Mr. Lauder’s charitable giving. But it makes no mention of the Sulzberger Foundation, Inc., a tax-exempt private foundation headquartered at the same address as the New York Times Company. The foundation’s latest tax return shows it with assets of $35 million and reports that it paid Marujupu LLC a $440,387 “management fee.”

There’s much more, but you get the idea. Of course, under the First Amendment the Times has every right to criticize Lauder, and to be as hypocritical as it wants in doing so. But if you want to experience a whole other level of gall, remember that the Times also argues that “media companies” should have a government-enforced monopoly on free expression.

German Ethic Still Producing Wealth….and may God Bless Them

Blame It on Berlin

The euro bailout caucus wants the Germans to write a blank check.

Editorial from the Wall Street Journal

“Which century is this anyway? We ask because elite opinion is once again blaming Germany for ruining the rest of Europe, if not the entire world economy. All that’s missing are references to the Kaiser or Herr Schicklgruber, but we hope the Germans don’t fall for this global guilt trip.

Berlin’s alleged sin is its reluctance to write a blank check to save the euro—either by underwriting a new euro-zone fiscal union, or granting permission for the European Central Bank to buy trillions in sovereign debt. The chant comes in unison from the debtor nations themselves, the bailout caucus in Brussels, an Obama White House concerned about its re-election, and liberal pundits worried that their welfare-state economic model is under assault. Like the “rich” in America who must pay their “fair share,” the Germans are supposed to pay up to save a united Europe.

The reality is that the Germans—along with the Dutch and the Finns—are the rare Europeans who understand that saving the euro requires more than a blank check. It requires a new political commitment to better economic policy. Chancellor Angela Merkel and her cabinet are as euro-centric as the French, but they realize that money alone won’t solve Europe’s more fundamental debt and growth problem.

It’s certainly true that the Germans have benefited from the euro, which is one reason they want to preserve it. Their exports have flourished, often to other European countries, thanks to a stable currency and free-trade zone. But one reason for their relative economic success is that Germany is a rare European country that used the early years of the euro to reform its labor markets and improve fiscal policies. While the Greeks and Italians used their years of near-German borrowing rates to live beyond their means, the Bavarians became more competitive.

Until the crisis hit Italy, the rest of Europe still didn’t think it had a problem. Politicians said the markets were acting in predatory fashion, rather than sensibly recalibrating the risk of sovereign default. Even now, 18 months into this euro mess, only the recent jump in sovereign bond yields has caused Italy and France to realize they have to shape up.

Europe’s original sin in this crisis was not letting Greece default, remaining in the euro but shrinking its debt load as it reformed its economy. The example would have sent a useful message of discipline to countries and creditors alike. The fear at the time was that a default would spread the contagion of higher bond rates, but those rates have soared despite the bailouts of Greece and Portugal.

By now the policy choices are more painful. One option is to let the euro zone break up, one country at a time or all at once, but the costs of dissolution would be very high. At best it would mean a deep recession, as debts and contracts were recalculated in national currencies, and savers and investors fled to the safest havens. This is something no one but doctrinaire devaluationists should want.

The second option is the blank check, starting with the ECB printing trillions in euros to buy up sovereign debt. This might crush bond yields, at least for a while, but the minute those yields fall the pressure for economic reform will also ease.

Meanwhile, the ECB will have sacrificed its independence under political duress, while gambling that printing trillions of euros won’t lead to inflation down the road. This would be a short-term palliative to get the French and Americans past the next election.

The third option, and the one the Germans seem to prefer, is a closer fiscal union across the euro zone with stricter rules on debt and deficits. This is the essence of the tentative Franco-German plan leaked over the weekend. In return for issuing euro bonds or perhaps granting countries access to ECB bond purchases, Germany would require those nations to live by German-approved fiscal rules. This has the virtue of distinguishing between countries that follow the rules and those that don’t, enforcing good behavior with carrots and bad with sticks.

This is better than the other options, but it too is no panacea. Germany isn’t about to send the Wehrmacht to Rome or Athens to enforce fiscal policy. So enforcement would still largely depend on the political will of the countries themselves. Such debt and deficit rules could also be counterproductive if they led to growth-killing tax increases instead of spending cuts and entitlement reforms.

It’s no accident that Ireland, with its 12.5% corporate tax rate that has attracted export businesses, is climbing out of its debt hole faster than are Portugal, Spain or Greece. Any new fiscal rules need to allow for tax and labor-policy competition.

The tragedy is that the euro-zone countries failed to abide by their original fiscal rules, a failure that has brought them to this unhappy pass. The Brussels-Washington bailout caucus now wants to extend the damage to monetary policy by printing more euros and worrying about the consequences later.

In opposing that option, the Germans are said to be imposing their Prussian morality on everyone else. But without reforms, the countries of southern Europe will never pull out of their downward debt spiral. The Germans are at least telling the truth.”