Congress: STOP FUNDING MARXISM AT PBS and NPR!!

The Posh Left with its government funds added to those of billionare Marxist, George Soros and other AntiAmerican lefty donors  contaminate   American Institutions whereever possible with their One Party Government   Marxist  schemes to manage American life.

The American taxpayer shouldn’t have a single dollar stripped from its earnings  to support this empire  of Political Correctness bigotry.

The New York Times, being Marxist oriented as its management is,  offers the following article by Elizabeth Jensen, headlined, Public Broadcasting  Faces New Threat in Federal Budget.  Let’s see what the “mean spirited” Republicans are threatening:

“With the new Congress, Republicans again have made public broadcasting a target for cuts, and the petitions and on-air appeals are back. This time, however, even a recent Capitol appearance by Arthur, the booking-loving aardvark, may not be enough to fully stave off a reduction in financing.

Mike Riksen, NPR’s vice president of policy and representation, told member stations in January that a confluence of events — the growing deficit, questions about the role of the government in media, budget concerns on both sides of the political isle and in both houses, objections to a perceived left-wing bias — had created “the most determined, organized and sophisticated challenge to federal funding for public radio — ever.”

Underscoring that assessment, on Feb. 19, the House approved a bill for 2011 that cut all financing for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the year 2013, the first time in recent memory that such a zeroing-out measure passed a vote.

Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas, said recently on “The Diane Rehm Show” on NPR that public broadcasting’s audience, “I think, are discerning viewers who understand frankly, we’ve got ourselves in a mess as a nation fiscally and that we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.”

Even moderate Republicans who once were reliable backers of federal financing for public broadcasting have offered little support. Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, a Democrat who is co-chairman of the Public Broadcasting Caucus, said in an interview that “this is the first time I’ve been unable to find a Republican to co-sign a letter with me just laying out the concerns.”

The Democratic-controlled Senate is certain to push back this week, and President Obama has already proposed a 2012 fiscal year budget that includes a $6 million increase to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s basic appropriation, for a total of $451 million. But a collective $75.8 million for other public media initiatives, like the Department of Education’s Ready to Learn program, was eliminated from the president’s budget. House Republicans, meanwhile, have already proposed a handful of other bills to eliminate or reduce financing.

Among those leading the fight to preserve financing are Patricia S. Harrison, the corporation’s president and chief executive, and Patrick Butler, the new president and chief executive at the Association of Public Television Stations.

Ms. Harrison, a former State Department appointee and former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, was assailed by liberals when she was named in 2005 by Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who was board chairman at the time and had been pushing NPR and PBS to add more conservative voices to their lineup. At the time, the media advocacy group Free Press said her “close ties to the leadership of the Republican Party represent a new low in public broadcasting history.”

But in the intervening years, Ms. Harrison has silenced some critics by financing such partisan-neutral efforts as the oral history program StoryCorps, regional reporting projects based at public radio and television stations, and a major coming initiative to reduce the number of high school dropouts. “I never would have taken this job if I hadn’t been willing to fight for public media,” she said in an interview.

One of Free Press’s founders, Josh Silver, said in a telephone interview, “The public interest community has been pleasantly surprised by what a fierce defender of public broadcasting she has been over the years, and an innovator.”

In a recent media blitz — corporation officials are officially prohibited from lobbying, but not from making the case for public broadcasting — Ms. Harrison said that the late management guru Peter Drucker would approve of public broadcasters’ frugal ways. She cited her experience running a small business as evidence that it was possible to cut too deeply, and equated public broadcasting to the Statue of Liberty, noting that even if Americans did not always visit, they wanted to know that it was there.

“It’s not always about numbers,” she said.

With 96 new House members and 20 new senators, Mr. Butler and Ms. Harrison say their biggest challenge is educating Congress. Mr. Butler, who began his job in January, had his duties expanded two weeks ago when the Association of Public Television Stations and NPR merged their lobbying efforts to create the Public Media Association.

To help with its efforts among legislators, the association has hired two Republican lobbyists. Nonetheless, Mr. Butler says his goal “is to make public broadcasting as American as apple pie,” adding that “I don’t want to make this a Democrat and Republican issue.”

The fight over financing is likely to play out over the coming year, depending on how quickly Congress passes the 2011 budget and takes up the 2012 budget.

“I do believe in their heart of hearts they know it’s a value and they know by getting rid of public media it’s not going to make one iota’s difference in the deficit, it’s not going to create jobs, it’s going to kills jobs,” Ms. Harrison said. “I’m not irrationally exuberant, but I’m measuredly optimistic.”

Mr. Blumenauer predicted that when the budget process was finished, “there may be some modest cut although the majority of the funding will be in place.”

Gloomier assessments have speculated that broadcasters could lose as much as $100 million, or slightly less than 25 percent of what the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which disburses the money to public radio and television stations, received in the current fiscal year.

Paula A. Kerger, the president and chief executive of PBS, said that her organization had been fashioning various budget options to account for many possibilities. Under some, she said, initiatives she declined to name would be scaled back, but children’s programming would probably be exempt.

Broadcasters are willing to take their lumps, Mr. Butler said. “We are not opposed to tightening belts here,” he said, but added that cuts should be “something proportionate with what other people are being asked to do.”

Rand Paul On the Witness Stand at the Lefty David Letterman Show

Rand Paul appeared on Lefty TV the other night.      Marxist David Letterman was the host on this particular  show which advertises David’s name.   Mr. Letterman asked  Republican Senator Rand Paul  a number of questions about what Republicans are up to.  “What do you Republicans stand for?”  

I am not a fan of Rand Paul’s dad, Ron Paul, except that on most items of American life we do agree.   I believe he is a libertarian extremist.   I supported Rand Paul in his Tea Party backed effort to win the Kentucky Senate seat last November.   I viewed him as his dad’s clone, however.

The video below is a masterpiece as a piece of art.   Some things in life are best learned through art.  Here in this video is the battle between today’s American Left and the America Right….in about a ten minute lesson.

The left…..David Letterman, incurious and  ignorant but  not stupid, narrow in experience yet  successful, old but  unwise, wealthy but not educated, and vocal  without knowledge.  He’s governed by feelings, not thought.

David Letterman is the model American Lefty of our day.

How would Rand Paul appear on this particular stage…..a crank like his Dad?   As a strident libertarian. sour and angry?

View Rand Paul’s battle with wealthy posh, empty headed, popular Lefty, skilled talker, star David Letterman by clicking here: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWaIKIxtNi4      

How do you think Rand Paul did?    Did I describe David Letterman’s habits well?

I thought Rand Paul gave as clear and thoughtful a response explaining  the fiscal issues dividing the David Lettermans and their Marxist Obamas from today’s conservative view of what should be valued in America.

The Marxism of the Jill Burcums, the Lori Sturdevants and the Minneapolis StarTribune

I have resubscribed to the Minneapolis StarTribune now for about a month.  For years it has been  a source of Leftwing bigotry and  programmed ignorance reflecting the shadowy education the modern American twenty year old perpetual teenager receives at the University of Minnesota and all the junior high schools for twenty year olds around called, “colleges”. 

These people,  at the StarTribune  worship Marxism, the  one party religious and state dictatorship to be ‘as one’  with  their own  one Party dictatorship reflected on the pages of the StarTribune.  Marxists seek harmony. 

It is a publication in a community in a state pretty much  like the newsprint of most of the other 57 states president Obama visited during his campaign to present  his Marxist one Party government for America to the World. 

Obama-Pelosi-Reid Progressives progressed to add on $5,000,000,000,000 to the nation’s debt in two years of rule.  Democrats leading state governments (and many Republican tag-along-spenders) have plunged the Progressive states into $12,000,000,000,000 debt over the past decade or so, and many Democrat fifedoms such as New Jersey, New York, California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and many other “blue states”, are facing bankruptcy.

“Progressives”, Democrats everywhere want to spend more money fixing their fix.  They cannot survive on the American political stage without bribing for votes especially from those in their corral, dead or alive. 

Therein lies the battle in Wisconsin between the  corrupt government union thugs and their teachers of Wisconsin young, and the people who believe in representative government.

In yesterday’s Sunday “Strib”,  the most dramatic section visually is headlined, “OPINION EXCHANGE”…..in true Marxist tradition, there is pretense  to exchange opinion.  All four of the ‘opinion’ pages are devoted to defend the teachermobs in Wisconsin.

Of twenty columns in this Marxist view of   “OPINION EXCHANGE”, one is devoted to the writings of a bona fide, conservative, Katherine Kersten,  a some time opinion columnist, the one the Strib entertains to hire for ‘balance’. 

In letters almost as big as “OPINION EXCHANGE” is the headline underneath it,  stretching across the entire page,”Will Wisconsin be the GOP’s  ‘overreach’ moment?”….with pundit, jill burcum, editorial writer, writing.   Here is what she writes:

“With the fight over collective bargaining stretching into its third week, the colorful ground war waged by protesters at Wisconsin’s State Cap;itol continues to take center stage.  But it’s the air war – the barrage of TV ads for and against Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting bill – that tells the real story about the Badger State battle and the implications for those elsewhere watching it unfold.   Walker who is just months into his first term, has proposed broad collective bargaining restrictions on most public employees, as well as  reasonable benefit cuts.  Stung by his surprise attack and by his refusal to compromise even after unions agreed to concessions, the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO is striking back with ads imploring the state to support public workers’ bargaining rights.  An equally unavoidable ad from the Wisconsin Club for Growth urges families to support Walker and protect the state against “special interest” protesters.  Never mind that the Club for Growth nationally is an ultra-rich special interest itself.”

(She continues pilloring Republican Governor Walker for alleged conspiracies with billionaires…and “other hardliners”.  She  saves a few paragraphs in the last of her four column essay, but trumps the pair with a quote from Joe Helm, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, “A sleeping giant has been awakened.”    Ms. Burcum writes:  “…anti-collective bargaining bills in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states really are  an existential threat to many government workers’ unions.”   At nearly the last paragraph of her piece called “GOP overreach moment”, she adds, “The Wisconsin bill wouldn’t completely strip most public workers of collective bargaining (police and firefighters are exempted) but would limit the process to wages, increases beyond certain levels would require a public referendums.”   

How dare Republicans put a bit of democracy into this process!  How dare they!!

Designers for this “OPINION EXCHANGE” page set aside 1/3 of the page into  full newsprint color showing the teachers and their mobster union allies waving signs, “STOP THE WAR ON WORKERS”.

The bottom third of the page is devoted to Lefting columnist regular at the Strib, Lori Sturdevant, and ‘occasional’ regular, “nationally acclaimed public-sector scholar, Paul C. Light.”   Mr. Light’s ‘credentials’ go further….”a professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, is a former associate dean of the newly renamed Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.”   (Where do you think his ‘prejudices’ will be?)

Lori Sturdevant began this opinion piece with deep feminine feelings: “Say you’re a bright college student who wants a career that makes a difference.  You’ve thought about teaching or social work that helps the poor”.

Notice Ms. Studevant’s college feminist Marxist bigotry…..’bright’ college student…..”a career that makes a difference”…..”You’ve thought about teaching or social work that helps the poor”.   

It is likely Ms. Studevant was not born to be stupid.   She learned stupidity along the way….at university, is my guess, where she learned her Marxism. 

It is likely that it will never occur to the colleged  Ms. Sturdevant Marxists, that the quickest and best way for the poor to ‘unpoor’ themselves is to get a job or if they are still young enough,   learn skills which might make them hireable for a job.   But, then the Sturdevant-Marxists have taxed countless  job creator businesses  out of their neighborhoods and country, haven’t they?

Marxists are good at telling others to help the poor.   The are not good at helping the poor themselves.  They are the best at expanding government  to run citizen lives. 

 Marxists are also  noted for their generous sanctimony.  It goes with  religions.  

Lori Sturdevant and Jill Burcum are  Marxists.   They were  either never taught American principles, but  have come to reject them.

From my life’s experience, I have found that there are fewer poor in a world of free enterprise in which the American dream is alive and well….the dream as guide that no matter who you are, the color of your skin, accent of your tongue, how rich or how poor, how fat or how thin, smoker or non-smoker, tall or short, whether you are a bitter, frustrated Marxist at our  universities’s departments of sociology or education, a therapist on drugs, or a happy landscape gardener, you are entitled to little beyond what you have earned honestly  from the efforts of your body and mind and your  strengths and the examples your family and education and life’s experiences  have provided.   For  the nation’s Christian past has taught the American the value and strength of  personal “charity” to assist those in need to exit the world of poverty, not to expand it.

The Sturdevants and Burcums of  today’s American world   run America.  They are the Establishment…..the college educated who know nearly nothing beyond its ‘narrows’.   They are Marxist trained and Marxist thinking….no matter how loud they deny it.   They are flakes, not  liars.    Ms.  Sturdevant most certainly  loves the thought of helping the poor, the worker, and will tell others  to vote for such thoughts.  She, and her fellow Marxists do have some moral scruples.   She went to college where she never learned how to expand them and direct them truthfully.  Her implication is that we conservatives are a different breed, a meaner breed of animal.  That is universal among this Establishment.   Without this poison, Progressive-Marxist Obama would never have been elected president.  The Democratic Party of Harry Truman and Hubert Humphrey would still be alive today.

Today’s Establishment makes excuses for Labor thugs taking over and occuping the Wisconsin State capitol for weeks.   How would Marxist Sturdevant and Marxist Burcum write if the Tea Party had occupied the capitol for just a  day?    Do you think the 50 and 60 year old Sarah Palin fans would behave as these union thugs-Wisconsin teachers conduct themselves…as bullying thugs?

I write my little blog from a conservative viewpoint.  I admit it…..The Strib lies, pretending it is a balanced, fairminded  look into the American way.  

My American conservative world still believes that government should be representative of the people and be based on Law rather than Man.

The Sturdevant Marxists of today believe Man should rule America, not the Constitution and its rules of law.  I believe in personal liberty and smaller government control.   The Sturdevants prefer security and big government rule.   Therein lies the rub.

Stratfor Intelligence: “Jihadist Opportunities in Libya”

Stratfor Intelligence is likely the best source for the public to find the most reliable, accurate and politically free information about the world around us where they score their ‘intelligence’.   Please check out opportunities for you readers to receive its service.   Dennis Prager has interviewed founder George Stratfor on a number of occasions on his Radio Show.

The following is an article by Scott Stewart from Stratfor Intelligence:

Militant Islamists, and specifically the subset of militant Islamists we refer to as jihadists, have long sought to overthrow regimes in the Muslim world. With the sole exception of Afghanistan, they have failed, and even the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan was really more a matter of establishing a polity amid a power vacuum than the true overthrow of a coherent regime. The brief rule of the Supreme Islamic Courts Council in Somalia also occurred amid a similarly chaotic environment and a vacuum of authority.

However, even though jihadists have not been successful in overthrowing governments, they are still viewed as a threat by regimes in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. In response to this threat, these regimes have dealt quite harshly with the jihadists, and strong crackdowns combined with other programs have served to keep the jihadists largely in check.

As we watch the situation unfold in Libya, there are concerns that unlike Tunisia and Egypt, the uprising in Libya might result not only in a change of ruler but also in a change of regime and perhaps even a collapse of the state. In Egypt and Tunisia, strong military regimes were able to ensure stability after the departure of a long-reigning president. By contrast, in Libya, longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi has deliberately kept his military and security forces fractured and weak and thereby dependent on him. Consequently, there may not be an institution to step in and replace Gadhafi should he fall. This means energy-rich Libya could spiral into chaos, the ideal environment for jihadists to flourish, as demonstrated by Somalia and Afghanistan.

Because of this, it seems an appropriate time to once again examine the dynamic of jihadism in Libya.

A Long History

 

Libyans have long participated in militant operations in places like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Iraq. After leaving Afghanistan in the early 1990s, a sizable group of Libyan jihadists returned home and launched a militant campaign aimed at toppling Gadhafi, whom they considered an infidel. The group began calling itself the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in 1995, and carried out a low-level insurgency that included assassination attempts against Gadhafi and attacks against military and police patrols.

(click here to enlarge image)

(click here to enlarge image)

 

Gadhafi responded with an iron fist, essentially imposing martial law in the Islamist militant strongholds of Darnah and Benghazi and the towns of Ras al-Helal and al-Qubbah in the Jabal al-Akhdar region. After a series of military crackdowns, Gadhafi gained the upper hand in dealing with his Islamist militant opponents, and the insurgency tapered off by the end of the 1990s. Many LIFG members fled the country in the face of the government crackdown and a number of them ended up finding refuge with groups like al Qaeda in places such as Afghanistan.

While the continued participation of Libyan men in fighting on far-flung battlefields was not expressly encouraged by the Libyan government, it was tacitly permitted. The Gadhafi regime, like other countries in the region, saw exporting jihadists as a way to rid itself of potential problems. Every jihadist who died overseas was one less the government had to worry about. This policy did not take into account the concept of “tactical Darwinism,” which means that while the United States and its coalition partners will kill many fighters, those who survive are apt to be strong and cunning. The weak and incompetent have been weeded out, leaving a core of hardened, competent militants. These survivors have learned tactics for survival in the face of superior firepower and have learned to manufacture and effectively employ new types of highly effective improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

In a Nov. 3, 2007, audio message, al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri reported that the LIFG had formally joined the al Qaeda network. This statement came as no real surprise, given that members of the group have long been close to al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden. Moreover, the core al Qaeda group has long had a large number of Libyan cadre in its senior ranks, including men such as Abu Yahya al-Libi, Anas al-Libi, Abu Faraj al-Libi (who reportedly is being held by U.S. forces at Guantanamo Bay) and Abu Laith al-Libi, who was killed in a January 2008 unmanned aerial vehicle strike in Pakistan.

The scope of Libyan participation in jihadist efforts in Iraq became readily apparent with the September 2007 seizure of a large batch of personnel files from an al Qaeda safe house in the Iraqi city of Sinjar. The Sinjar files were only a small cross-section of all the fighters traveling to Iraq to fight with the jihadists, but they did provide a very interesting snapshot. Of the 595 personnel files recovered, 112 of them were of Libyans. This number is smaller than the 244 Saudi citizens represented in the cache, but when one considers the overall size of the population of the two countries, the Libyan contingent represented a far larger percentage on a per capita basis. The Sinjar files suggested that a proportionally higher percentage of Libyans was engaged in the fighting in Iraq than their brethren from other countries in the region.

Another interesting difference was noted in the job-description section of the Sinjar files. Of those Libyan men who listed their intended occupation in Iraq, 85 percent of them listed it as suicide bomber and only 13 percent listed fighter. By way of comparison, only 50 percent of the Saudis listed their occupation as suicide bomber. This indicates that the Libyans tended to be more radical than their Saudi counterparts. Moroccans appeared to be the most radical, with more than 91 percent of them apparently desiring to become suicide bombers.

The Libyan government’s security apparatus carefully monitored those Libyans who passed through the crucible of fighting on the battlefield in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and then returned to Libya. Tripoli took a carrot-and-stick approach to the group similar to that implemented by the Saudi regime. As a result, the LIFG and other jihadists were unable to pose a serious threat to the Gadhafi regime, and have remained very quiet in recent years. In fact, they were for the most part demobilized and rehabilitated.

Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, oversaw the program to rehabilitate LIFG militants, which his personal charity managed. The regime’s continued concern over the LIFG was clearly demonstrated early on in the unrest when it announced that it would continue the scheduled release from custody of LIFG fighters.

The Sinjar reports also reflected that more than 60 percent of the Libyan fighters had listed their home city as Darnah and almost 24 percent had come from Benghazi. These two cities are in Libya’s east and happen to be places where some of the most intense anti-Gadhafi protests have occurred in recent days. Arms depots have been looted in both cities, and we have seen reports that at least some of those doing the looting appeared to have been organized Islamists.

A U.S. State Department cable drafted in Tripoli in June 2008 made available by WikiLeaks talked about this strain of radicalism in Libya’s east. The cable, titled “Die Hard in Derna,” was written several months after the release of the report on the Sinjar files. Derna is an alternative transliteration of Darnah, and “Die Hard” was a reference to the Bruce Willis character in the Die Hard movie series, who always proved hard for the villains to kill. The author of the cable, the U.S. Embassy’s political and economic officer, noted that many of the Libyan fighters who returned from fighting in transnational jihad battlefields liked to settle in places like Darnah due to the relative weakness of the security apparatus there. The author of the cable also noted his belief that the presence of these older fighters was having an influence on the younger men of the region who were becoming radicalized, and the result was that Darnah had become “a wellspring of foreign fighters in Iraq.” He also noted that some 60-70 percent of the young men in the region were unemployed or underemployed.

Finally, the author opined that many of these men were viewing the fight in Iraq as a way to attack the United States, which they saw as supporting the Libyan regime in recent years. This is a concept jihadists refer to as attacking the far enemy and seems to indicate an acceptance of the transnational version of jihadist ideology — as does the travel of men to Iraq to fight and the apparent willingness of Libyans to serve as suicide bombers.

Trouble on the Horizon?

 

This deep streak of radicalism in eastern Libya brings us back to the beginning. While it seems unlikely at this point that the jihadists could somehow gain control of Libya, if Gadhafi falls and there is a period of chaos in Libya, these militants may find themselves with far more operating space inside the country than they have experienced in decades. If the regime does not fall and there is civil war between the eastern and western parts of the country, they could likewise find a great deal of operational space amid the chaos. Even if Gadhafi, or an entity that replaces him, is able to restore order, due to the opportunity the jihadists have had to loot military arms depots, they have suddenly found themselves more heavily armed than they have ever been inside their home country. And these heavily armed jihadists could pose a substantial threat of the kind that Libya has avoided in recent years.

Given this window of opportunity, the LIFG could decide to become operational again, especially if the regime they have made their deal with unexpectedly disappears. However, even should the LIFG decide to remain out of the jihad business as an organization, there is a distinct possibility that it could splinter and that the more radical individuals could cluster together to create a new group or groups that would seek to take advantage of this suddenly more permissive operational environment. Of course, there are also jihadists in Libya unaffiliated with LIFG and not bound by the organization’s agreements with the regime.

The looting of the arms depots in Libya is also reminiscent of the looting witnessed in Iraq following the dissolution of the Iraqi army in the face of the U.S. invasion in 2003. That ordnance not only was used in thousands of armed assaults and indirect fire attacks with rockets and mortars, but many of the mortar and artillery rounds were used to fashion powerful IEDs. This concept of making and employing IEDs from military ordnance will not be foreign to the Libyans who have returned from Iraq (or Afghanistan, for that matter).

This bodes ill for foreign interests in Libya, where they have not had the same security concerns in recent years that they have had in Algeria or Yemen. If the Libyans truly buy into the concept of targeting the far enemy that supports the state, it would not be out of the realm of possibility for them to begin to attack multinational oil companies, foreign diplomatic facilities and even foreign companies and hotels.

While Seif al-Islam, who certainly has political motives to hype such a threat, has mentioned this possibility, so have the governments of Egypt and Italy. Should Libya become chaotic and the jihadists become able to establish an operational base amid the chaos, Egypt and Italy will have to be concerned about not only refugee problems but also the potential spillover of jihadists. Certainly, at the very least the weapons looted in Libya could easily be sold or given to jihadists in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, turning militancy in Libya into a larger regional problem. In a worst-case scenario, if Libya experiences a vacuum of power, it could become the next Iraq or Pakistan, a gathering place for jihadists from around the region and the world. The country did serve as such a base for a wide array of Marxist and rejectionist terrorists and militants in the 1970s and 1980s.

It will be very important to keep a focus on Libya in the coming days and weeks — not just to see what happens to the regime but also to look for indicators of the jihadists testing their wings.

Read more: Jihadist Opportunities in Libya | STRATFOR

Public Unions and the Socialist Utopia

by Robert Tracinski….printed at RealClearPolitics:

“The Democratic lawmakers who have gone on the lam in Wisconsin and Indiana-and who knows where else next-are exhibiting a literal fight-or-flight response, the reaction of an animal facing a threat to its very existence.

Why? Because it is a threat to their existence. The battle of Wisconsin is about the viability of the Democratic Party, and more: it is about the viability of the basic social ideal of the left.

It is a matter of survival for Democrats in an immediate, practical sense. As Michael Barone explains, the government employees’ unions are a mechanism for siphoning taxpayer dollars into the campaigns of Democratic politicians.

But there is something deeper here than just favor-selling and vote-buying. There is something that almost amounts to a twisted idealism in the Democrats’ crusade. They are fighting, not just to preserve their special privileges, but to preserve a social ideal. Or rather, they are fighting to maintain the illusion that their ideal system is benevolent and sustainable.

Unionized public-sector employment is the distilled essence of the left’s moral ideal. No one has to worry about making a profit. Generous health-care and retirement benefits are provided to everyone by the government. Comfortable pay is mandated by legislative fiat. The work rules are militantly egalitarian: pay, promotion, and job security are almost totally independent of actual job performance. And because everyone works for the government, they never have to worry that their employer will go out of business.

In short, public employment is an idealized socialist economy in miniature, including its political aspect: the grateful recipients of government largesse provide money and organizational support to re-elect the politicians who shower them with all of these benefits.

Put it all together, and you have the Democrats’ version of utopia. In the larger American culture of Tea Parties, bond vigilantes, and rugged individualists, Democrats feel they are constantly on the defensive. But within the little subculture of unionized government employees, all is right with the world, and everything seems to work the way it is supposed to.

This cozy little world has been described as a system that grants special privileges to a few, which is particularly rankling in the current stagnant economy, when private sector workers acutely feel the difference. But I think this misses the point. The point is that this is how the left thinks everyone should live and work. It is their version of a model society.

Every political movement needs models. It needs a real-world example to demonstrate how its ideal works and that it works.

And there’s the rub. The left is running low on utopias.

The failure of Communism-and the spectacular success of capitalism, particularly in bringing wealth to what used to be called the “Third World”-deprived the left of one utopia. So they fell back on the European welfare state, smugly assuring Americans that we would be so much better off if we were more like our cousins across the Atlantic. But the Great Recession has triggered a sovereign debt crisis across Europe. It turned out that the continent’s welfare states were borrowing money to paper over the fact that they have committed themselves to benefits more generous than they can ever hope to pay for.

In America, the ideological crisis of the left is taking a slightly different form. Here, the left has set up its utopias by carving out, within a wider capitalist culture, little islands where its ideals hold sway. Old age is one of those islands, where everyone has been promised the socialist dreams of a guaranteed income and unlimited free health care. Public employment is another.

Now the left is panicking as these experiments in American socialism implode.

On the national level, it has become clear that the old-age welfare state of Social Security and Medicare is driving the federal government into permanent trillion-dollar deficits and a ruinous debt load. Even President Obama acknowledged, in his State of the Union address, that these programs are the real drivers of runaway debt-just before he refused to consider any changes to them. You see how hard it is for the Democrats to give up on their utopias.

On the state level, public employment promises the full socialist ideal to a small minority-paid for with tax money looted from a larger, productive private economy. But the socialist utopia of public employment has crossed the Thatcher Line: the point at which, as the Iron Lady used to warn, you run out of other people’s money.

The current crisis exposes more than just the financial unsustainability of these programs. It exposes their moral unsustainability. It exposes the fact that the generosity of these welfare-state enclaves can only be sustained by forcing everyone else to perform forced labor to pay for the benefits of a privileged few.

This is why the left is treating any attempt to fundamentally reform the public workers’ paradise as an existential crisis. This is why they are reacting with the most extreme measures short of outright insurrection. When Democratic lawmakers flee the state in order to deprive their legislatures of the quorum necessary to vote, they are declaring that they would rather have no legislature than allow voting on any bill that would break the power of the unions.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty describes these legislative walk-outs as “small-scale, temporary secessions.” The analogy is exact. One hundred and fifty years ago, Southern slaveholders realized that the political balance of the nation had tipped against them, that they could no longer hope to win the political argument for their system. Faced with a federal government in which they were out-voted, they decided that they would rather have no federal government at all. The Democrats’ current cause may not be as repugnant-holding human beings as chattel is a unique evil-but it has something of the same character of irrational, belligerent denial. More than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left is still trying to pretend that socialism is plausible as an economic system.

The Democrats are fleeing from a lot more than their jobs as state legislators. They are fleeing from the cold, hard reality of the financial and moral unsustainability of their ideal.”

Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual Activist and TIADaily.com.

Teachers Who Become Union Thugs Must Be Fired!

If you’ve been a viewer of the Fox News Channel over the past week and a half and have paid attention to its coverage of the standoff between Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic members of the state Senate, you may have noticed the protest that has ensued in Madison, Wisc. has been less than hospitable to the cable news channel’s reporters.

On Saturday night’s broadcast of “Geraldo at Large,” Fox News correspondent Mike Tobin took some critical shots at protesters attempting to shout down and disrupt his broadcast. He told host Geraldo Rivera he has observed hate and an effort to shut out other viewpoints.

“One thing I think should make clear – the people coming after us from every live shot here, these people hate,” Tobin said. “These are people who don’t respect diverse viewpoints. In fact, they’re so afraid I’ll present a diverse viewpoint, that’s why they try to heckle me and shut down every live shot. They’ve made it clear, that what they want to make it harder for me to do my job. They are proud of that when they disrupt a live shot, when they really trample over the First Amendment rights or the First Amendment’s obligations of a reporter. Now, I am not saying that’s all of the people. Those are the people that come here and heckle and try to disrupt things. I look in their eyes – there is hate in their eyes. They don’t want to hear any kind of viewpoint that is different from their own. That’s why they do what they do.”

Rivera explained Tobin’s report was troubling, especially since Madison is the home of the University of Wisconsin, where one might think that in a university setting people would be more receptive to other points of view.

“And the sickest thing is many go to the University of Wisconsin there or are affiliated as teachers or some other positions with the university, supposedly a liberal bastion committed to the Bill of Rights and the United States,” Rivera said. “And yet, they are using bullying tactics on the one hand and then this gross interruptions of a reporter trying to do his job.”

Watch:

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/02/27/fox-news-correspondent-on-disruptive-wisconsin-protesters-there-is-hate-in-their-eyes/#ixzz1FCyd0g4R

He’s The Best Candidate to Return America to American Principles in 2012?

He is the antiObama, the one person who will recapture American from Obama’s Progressive Marxism!

Does America really want to put up with Obama another 4 years?   This incessant equivocator, vacuous perpetual law school student, this antiAmerican who disdains the nation’s Law of the Land, refuses to defend our borders from invasions, violator of the basic American principle of E Pluribus Unum, the 22 year parishoner of Jeremiah “Goddamn America” Wright’s Chicago ‘church’ of hate, the Progressive-Marxist critic of the nation he leads and toady of Unions, but wears a suit and talks and talks and talks, but no one know who he is except that he believes in Marxist sized government.

Click here for a few minutes of interview with an American you and all America can be proud of:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/02/27/gov_christie_collective_bargaining_rights_are_not_a_given.html

Roger Kimball Sizes Up the Petulant-Children Democrats of Wisconsin

They are almost three feet tall and make a lot of noise  and spit and swear a lot.  They are teachers, university professors and students who thug right along with the Union and its teachers……ghr

Roger wrote the following at Pajamas Media:

“So, Indiana House Democrats, inspired by Democratic senators in Wisconsin, have adopted the petulant child from of democracy.  One paper called their action an “exodus.” I call it a gross abdication of responsibility and a slap in the face of the people who entrusted them with the conduct of their public affairs. What lessons can we draw from the behavior of these truant lawmakers? One important lesson is this: that they view democracy as a game worth playing only when they get to call the shots.  They are happy to sit down and do business just so long as they get their way. If they do not get their way, their recourse is not the time-honored democratic strategies of debate, persuasion, and compromise. No, their response is to take their votes and go home — or to Illinois, whichever is safer.

As I say, this is a gross abdication of responsibility. To try and comprehend just how gross an abdication it is, imagine if a state’s Republican lawmakers were to embark on such  anti-parliamentarian hijinks. What righteous indignation would pour forth from the organs of the fourth estate to deplore that violation of duty! And the indignation would be justified.

The MSM  has been fairly muted in its criticism of this sabotage of the democratic process. The public at large, however,  seems alternately astonished and disgusted. The cry goes around the neighborhood: Why are we paying these clowns? We just elected a governor who campaigned precisely on these fiscal measures and now the remaining Democrats, knowing full well what the governor was going to propose, leave in a snit. When President Obama was elected in 2008, he warned his opponents that “elections have consequences.” But when an election goes the other way, the response of the Democrats is to do everything possible to avoid the consequences of the election.

Of course, the extremity of the Democratic response in Wisconsin is a function of the extremity of the situation they suddenly find themselves in.  I say this by way of explanation, not exculpation.  As even ideologues such as E. J. Dionne acknowledge, the tea party movement did not only help determine the results in many elections across the country in November, it is well on its way to fundamentally changing the nature of political debate in the country. In a word, the Great Symbiosis between government workers and the government is unraveling. For decades, government workers at all levels — teachers, clerks and other bureaucrats, police and firemen — have extracted unsustainable promises from the politicians their unions have elected. The politicians, in turn, have gladly helped themselves to more and more of your money in order to reward their real constituents — not the public, which only furnishes the money, but the unions, which consume it.

This corrupt and unsustainable pas de deux has continued for as long as it did only because the mighty engine of American capitalism managed, despite the best efforts of the Left to hobble it, to furnish a dynamic and growing economy. We see now how much of that economic vibrancy was based on the seductive illusion of debt. (Debt, by the way, is an amazing invention. In almost every way, it looks exactly like cash. You can spend it, invest it, leverage it. The one difference — but what a difference! — is that, sooner or later, you have to pay it back.)

Well, the party is over now. It doesn’t matter that certain Democratic politicians are still there on the dance floor with certain dead-enders from the public sector, you know, the sad people who compare Governor Walker to Hitler, Hosni Mubarak, and Mussolini. The music’s stopped and the lights have been raised.  The responsible people are getting their coats and going home.  Those left inside are partly dangerous, partly pathetic. Old Arab proverb: the dog is barking, but the caravan has moved on.”

3M Chief Warns Obama Over Business Regulations

From my distance far away from the dark wordings of the Obama gang in   Washington DC,  I don’t think that this president Progressive Marxist is particularly interested in what the head of 3M has to say.  

By the way I wonder if my Minnesota readers know what 3M stands for……????

Answer:   “Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing”  which was ‘born’ here in the North Star State and stayed headquartered here as long as it could before it fled to Austin, Texas about a generation ago.   Democrat Party’s Minnesota taxes finally drained the corporation enough for it to find a life elsewhere.  

This article was found at Drudge Reports  originally published at Financial Times and written by Hal Weitzman.

“The head of one of the US’s biggest industrial groups has launched a scathing attack on Barack Obama’s attempts to repair relations with companies, dubbing him “anti-business”.

Manufacturers could shift production out of the US to Canada or Mexico as a result, warned George Buckley, chief executive and chairman of 3M.

“I judge people by their feet, not their mouth,” he told the Financial Times. “We know what his instincts are – they are Robin Hood-esque. He is anti-business.”

The Obama administration has struck a more conciliatory tone towards business since the Democratic defeat in November’s midterm elections.

Last month, the president created a jobs and competitiveness council, chaired by Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive of GE, and including chief executives such as American Express’s Kenneth Chenault, DuPont’s Ellen Kullman, Antonio Perez of Kodak and Southwest Airlines’ Gary Kelly. Mr Obama also convened a meeting this month with technology chief executives, including Steve Jobs of Apple, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

Mr Buckley, who has run the diversified manufacturer since 2005, said: “There is a sense among companies that this is a difficult place to do business. It is about regulation, taxation, seemingly anti-business policies in Washington, attitudes towards science.”

He added: “Politicians forget that business has choice. We’re not indentured servants and we will do business where it’s good and friendly. If it’s hostile, incrementally, things will slip away. We’ve got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada and Mexico – which tend to be pro-business – or America.”

The 3M chief also criticised US immigration policy, saying the difficulty of obtaining visas was forcing companies to move research and development overseas. “About 68 per cent of our science PhD candidates are from outside the US,” he said. “Many want to stay here afterwards but we’re not allowed as many visas as we would like.”

“We are now exporting science overseas to China, India, Germany, building labs there. There’s a good strategic reason for it, but we also have no choice – if we can’t get the people here and we’re competing with the people there, we have no choice but to do it locally.”

Mr Buckley struck a gloomy note on the US economy. “The macro numbers seem to be improving but when we look at the micro numbers – at what’s going on in housing, automotive, in manufacturing in general – it’s hard to get enthusiastic about it,” he said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.”

It’s Basically Over for Anglos…..Demographer

Texas demographer: ‘It’s basically over for Anglos’     at Texas Politics, pulished at Drudge Report

Looking at population projections for Texas, demographer Steve Murdock concludes: “It’s basically over for Anglos.”

Two of every three Texas children are now non-Anglo and the trend line will become even more pronounced in the future, said Murdock, former U.S. Census Bureau director and now director of the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice University.

Steve Murdock

Today’s Texas population can be divided into two groups, he said. One is an old and aging Anglo and the other is young and minority. Between 2000 and 2040, the state’s public school enrollment will see a 15 percent decline in Anglo children while Hispanic children will make up a 213 percent increase, he said.

The state’s largest county – Harris – will shed Anglos throughout the coming decades. By 2040, Harris County will have about 516, 000 fewer Anglos than lived in the Houston area in 2000, while the number of Hispanics will increase by 2.5 million during the same period, Murdock said. The projection assumes a net migration rate equal to one-half of 1990-2000.

Most of the state’s population growth is natural, Murdock told the House Mexican American Legislative Caucus today. About 22 percent of the growth comes from people moving to Texas from other states.

About 6 percent of the state’s population is not documented, he said.

B y 2040, only 20 percent of the state’s public school enrollment will be Anglo, he said. Last year, non-Hispanic white children made up 33.3 percent of the state’s 4.8 million public school enrollment.

Of the state’s 254 counties, 79 recorded declining population during the past 20 years. All are rural. An additional 30 Texas counties, he said, would have also lost population had they not experienced Hispanic growth.

The state’s future looks bleak assuming the current trend line does not change because education and income levels for Hispanics lag considerably behind Anglos, he said.

Unless the trend line changes, 30 percent of the state’s labor force will not have even a high school diploma by 2040, he said. And the average household income will be about $6,500 lower than it was in 2000. That figure is not inflation adjusted so it will be worse than what it sounds.

“It’s a terrible situation that you are in. I am worried,” Murdock said.

Comment:   For a generation now  the knucklehead Party which Obama now leads has abandoned the over two century rule of American culture, E Pluribus Unum….and its reponsibilities.   I had turned instead  to stir the poisonous cauldron of racism, hate  and protectionism for its victimhood constituencies  bribed for votes, the feminists, blacks, gays and lesbians, Jews, always the union workers, and more recently the illegals from Mexico. 

It has been a long time since the Democrat Party has represented interests which are good for the country.   Marxists don’t support democracies.   They support Marxism.