Historic Abandonment of Journalistic Integrity

Michael Shearer and Alec MacGillis, at the Washington Post, are literally stumbling over themselves in building up the $787 billion Obama-Democratic-left's stimulus packages as a feat comparable to that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Obama Scores Early Victory of Historic Proportions":

Twenty-four days into his presidency, Barack Obama recorded last night a legislative achievement of the sort that few of his predecessors achieved at any point in their tenure.

In size and scope, there is almost nothing in history to rival the economic stimulus legislation that Obama shepherded through Congress in just over three weeks. And the result - produced largely without Republican participation - was remarkably similar to the terms Obama's team outlined even before he was inaugurated: a package of tax cuts and spending totaling about $775 billion.

As Obama urged passage of the plan, he and his still-incomplete team demonstrated a single-mindedness that was familiar from the campaign trail. That intensity may have contributed to missteps in other areas, as the president's White House stumbled repeatedly in the vetting of his Cabinet and staff nominees. And high-minded promises of bipartisanship evaporated as Republicans accused the president and his Democratic allies in Congress of the same heavy-handed tactics that Obama, in his campaign, had often demanded be changed.

Missteps in other areas?

I think they mean the total repudiation of the campaign's promises for hope, change, and a new era of responsibility. And the authors are blaming the GOP for abandoning bipartisanship? Republican members of Congress weren't even including in bill-writing and markup, "completely excluded from the process and it was done without Republican input or public oversight."

And people wonder why we've had growing cynicism and declining engagement in the political process for decades? Analysts say the traditional news media is a dinosaur on the way out, and it pains me to say this as a traditionalist supporter of the broadsheet press, but it's frankly impossible to find honest news and analysis nowadays in the mainstream media outlets. It's no longer maddening, it's frightening - and the burial for stories like this one at the Post can't come too soon.

A Post-Auto-Industrial Society

This morning's Wall Street Journal features a front-page report on the progress with the General Motors automotive bailout: "GM to Offer Two Choices: Bankruptcy or More Aid" (the full essay is available here).

GM's basically demanding more money, billions more. The Detroit car manufacturer is "too big to fail," as some argued late last year as the firm headed into possible bankruptcy. The prognosis heading into GM's March 31 deadline for a viable restructuring plan doesn't look good, and those working on various contingencies "say progress has been slowed by the fact the Obama administration has yet to appoint a 'car czar,' as envisioned by the bailout program."

I haven't followed the auto bailout all that closely, just enough to note that I leased a new Honda Civic in December, where I asked, "What Happened to Buy American?" But the latest New York Review has a thought-provoking essay that's worth a look, especially for its intellectual honesty regarding the purposes and rationales for government intervention in the American automobile sector: "Can We Transform the Auto-Industrial Society?"

The author is Emma Rothschild, who is the Director of the Joint Centre for History and Economics at King's College, Cambridge, and the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard University.

Here's this from the essay:

The present and impending disorder of the automobile companies is a reminder, even more than the decline of the housing and banking industries, of the desolation of the Great Depression. It is a reminder, too, of economic history, or of the rise and decline of industrial destinies. When the listing of the "Fortune 500" began in 1955, General Motors was the largest American corporation, and it was one of the three largest, measured in revenues, every year until 2007. GM was the "largest industrial corporation in the world," in its own description of 1989, and it was engaged, at the time, in "the most massive reindustrialization program ever attempted." It was an incarnation of American economic change, as a GM vice-president suggested during the earlier automotive crisis of 1973: "To say that a company that has successfully grown over a period of 65 years—a period marked by two world wars and a major economic depression—will suddenly be unable to adapt to the changing challenge...flies in the face of common sense"; it "denies history."

This next section is particularly interesting for me, having grown up in Southern California, the car-culture capital of the world:

The automobile industry has been one of the losers in the new American economy. US consumers spent less on new automobiles in 2007 than they spent on "brokerage charges and investment counselling"; in 1979, they had spent ten times as much. In 1979, the share of the auto industry in US GDP was more than twice that of the securities and information services industries together; in 2007, it had been reduced to less than a quarter of their share ....

But the auto-industrial society, with its distinctive organization of American space, cities, highways, social entitlement, and energy use, has continued to flourish. Some 90 percent of Americans drove to work in 2007, 76 percent of them alone. Less than 5 percent went to work by public transportation. The people who used public transportation were much more likely than other Americans to be black or poor; they were more likely to be women than men; most of them lived in New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. The states in which population has increased most rapidly—Utah, Arizona, Texas, Nevada —have low population densities, and low rates of public transportation use.

The relative decline of public transport has been attributed to the very long-term preferences of Americans for being alone in cars, or for being free to go anywhere and at any time, or for living without other people in close proximity; to investments in the interstate highway system; and to the enduring patterns of American zoning and land use. But 80 percent of the US population still lives in metropolitan areas, and some 30 percent in the densely populated city centers. The pattern of land use in the expanding cities of the South and West—which have had the most rapid population growth, with very few people per square kilometer—was itself established over the period that has elapsed since the energy crisis of the 1970s. It is a consequence of prices as well as preferences, and of the changing distribution of public expenditure, or public partiality.

I've had my own car since I was 17 years-old. My home is just a couple-of-minutes walking distance from the local Metrolink station, although there's currently no commuter route directly to my college in Long Beach. If there was, I likely would opt for public transportation at least some of the time, but I would always be a car owner, as would the overwhelming number of people I know. So, any shift toward a "post-auto-industrial" society has to be not just predicated on economic and environal considerations and justifications, but on normative-cultural ones as well.

And this is what's interesting about Rothchild's essay. She comes out explicity in favor of a broader social-cultural transformation to a new transportation-infrastructural public order:

An enduring bailout, or a new deal for Detroit ... would be an investment in ending the auto-industrial society of the late twentieth century. This would involve innovation in public transportation, and in the infrastructure that would enable people to work at home or close to home. It would engage the information industries in making public transport more convenient, more enticing, and more secure. It would be open to the sorts of improvements that have been suggested in the expansion of rail and bus transportation in China, Japan, and France, for example, and in India by the information technology services companies. It would be an investment, even, in the old promise of "automotive" freedom, of owning a car but not having to use it, and of being able to go anywhere at any time, in Asia as in America. The improved public transport would be used for routine travel, such as the "work, school, and medical/dental trips" on which public transit use is already concentrated, according to the National Household Travel Survey. The new hybrid vehicles, in a post-auto-industrial society, would be available for the other trips that the survey describes as "family, personal," or "social, recreation, eat meal."

So, the question for us to think about is now that the Democrats have passed the largest economic bailout in American history, what's next?

Rothschild notes that the Obama-Biden campaign's initial energy plan adopted catastrophic language on climate change and energy dependence. But it's increasingly clear that the more dire warnings on anthropomorphic climate change have been hoaxes. Interestingly, Rothschild focuses on the transformation to a post-auto-industrial society as a program that is in essence predicated on the expansion of civil rights and economic equality, as seen above in the discussion of the proportion of black Americans and the poor who rely on public transportation.

And this brings me back to the issue of honesty and integrity.

The Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress, within a month of the accession of the new regime in Washington, have demonstrated that democratic deliberation on the direction of public policy is out. The Obama-Democratic-left wants a redistribution of society's resources but they're not willing to justify it on pragmatic political grounds. The case can be made, easily, for bailing out the states and providing more money for education, health care, unemployment, and other areas hard hit by the deepening recession, and Americans will support that. But the left wants a general transformation of society to a European social-welfare state (if not a Brezhnevite-Soviet command model), and the increasing nationalization of industry - way beyond anything we've seen in the last year's bipartisan financial bailouts - can be seen intuitively as right around the corner. The administration has already included funding for high-speed rail in the "stimulus" boondoggle - and of course transportation enhancement is infrastructure - but so little of the administration's advocacy for greater public spending has been sold in such a way.

The Republicans have an opportunity here. A real stimulus of the economy would be energy deregulation - from Alaska and off-shore drilling to the discovery and exploitation of new supplies, perhaps in the 800 billion barrels of proven shale oil reserves in the Rockies - as well as public-spirited transportation infrastructure-spending focused on explicity non-pork-barrel expenditures that serve to increase economic competitiveness AND facilitate economic opportunity among the traditionally disadvantaged. This is something that GOP partisans should consider, in some variation of public-private balance, using the overarching umbrella-rationale of honesty and transparency in moving this country forward to the next generation of post-industrial society.

A Fundamental Reworking of Our Priorities

This morning's Wall Street Journal cuts right to the chase in their editorial, "1,073 Pages":

Democrats rushed the bill to the floor before Members could even read it, much less have time to broadcast the details so the public could offer its verdict.

So much for Democratic promises of a new era of transparency.

That's exactly what Democrats do not want, transparency. What they do want is a wholesale transformation of American life. In response to the notion that the bill was smaller than Democrats had hoped, Charles Lemos at MyDD comes clean on the truth of what's up on the socialist left:

The awful truth is that the economy will continue to shed jobs and 2009 will be marked by a painful contraction of the global economy. The problem is a systemic one and it cannot be cured by fiscal stimulus or even shock therapy. A fundamental reworking of our economic priorities is in order. We need to rethink globalization and unregulated free markets. We have to tackle the world that securitization built, a financial system run amok.

Liberaltarianism and Intellectual Dishonesty

Robert Stacy McCain has proved once again that he's one of the most important conservative writers working today.

In "The Luxury of 'Liberaltarianism'," Robert mercilessly pulls the mask off the alliance between leftists and libertarians, which I've long thought has been one of the most intellectually bankrupt and ideologically decrepit marriages in recent political history. Here's the key passage attacking "liberaltarianism":

The problem with this concept was never really on the part of liberals, except insofar as they either (a) misunderstood libertarianism, or (b) simply lied about their openness to libertarian ideas. Confusion and deceit among liberals is a given. But the liberals always knew what they wanted from such a transaction: Elect more Democrats.

What did the libertarians want from the transaction? It is here that the ridiculous folly of the enterprise is found. Most of the Will Wilkinson types are intellectuals who are embarrassed by what Hunter S. Thompson called the "Rotarian" instincts of the Republican Party. That flag-waving God-mom-and-apple-pie stuff just doesn't light a fire under the American intellectual class, which is not now, nor has it ever been, enamored of religion, patriotism and "family values."

As a political impulse, the sort of libertarianism that scoffs at creationism and traditional marriage wields limited influence, because it appeals chiefly to a dissenting sect of the intelligentsia. It's a sort of free-market heresy of progressivism, with no significant popular following nor any real prospect of gaining one, because most Ordinary Americans who strongly believe in economic freedom are deeply traditionalist. And most anti-traditionalists - the feminists, the gay militants, the "world peace" utopians - are deeply committed to the statist economic vision of the Democratic Party.

There's much more at the link, and I can't provide much value-added to the essay. My point here is to flesh out a little more the fundamental pathology of liberaltarianism, which is intellectual dishonesty.

My point of departure, as readers might have guessed, is Mark Thompson and his blogging buddies at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. Thompson's a self-proclaimed libertarian, and his cohorts at the blog are all over each other with intellectual glad-handing and backslapping on their bright ideas on atheism, gay marriage, humanitarian intervention, neoconservativism, and God knows what else. This cabal might well be aspiring to develop some newfangled "postmodern conservatism," but it's really all the same, as far as I can see.

An animating force for the paradigm seems to be the resistance to tradition and universal morality. This can be seen in the excursions on atheism at the blog, where we see commentary suggesting that since there's no possibility for the falsification of God's existence, those of religoius faith are essentially "lunatics" for proposing an alternative theory of evolution in Intelligent Design. Or we can see this in the virtually unhinged attacks on neoconservatives and the war in Iraq, where E.D. Kain excoriates the Bush administration for "invading countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan in order to democratize them ..." Never mind that the origins of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq emerged out of vastly different contexts - with varying methodologies of strategic justification - the overall animus toward the forward use of state power places this "libertarian-progressive" agenda firmly in the nihilist camp of the "world peace" utopians Robert Stacy McCain mentions above.

But what's especially bothersome about these folks is the confused intellectualism on questions of moral right. It's almost stomach-churning to read E.D. Kain's comments on Israel following this week's election: "Israel, once lively with the dream of the original idealists who founded it, has over the years become increasingly militarized, entrenched, and anti-Democratic." This is not much different from the commentary on Israel one finds at the neo-Stalinist Firedoglake. E.D. Kain, of course, has problems with intellectual integrity, as I've already noted, and he joins Mark Thompson in a left-libertarian hall of shame on that score.

It should be no surprise that these folks find inspiration in the ravings of Andrew Sullivan, whose recent libertarian strain led him to suggest that, "Yes, Michael Phelps took a few hits from a bong at a party ... does anyone think that smoking pot would give him an unfair advantage in the pool? Please. When on earth are we going to grow up as a culture?" I guess "growing up" as a culture would mean that the majority of Americans would have to kowtow to the radical libertarian demands for same-sex marriage, which is a big agenda for the "young turks" of the right for whom "the real respectability of a solid argument is preferable to the worthless respectability one gets" by advocating for "more humane" positions on some of the most hot-button social issues of the day.

There is, in sum, a pure cowardice to liberaltarianism that's frankly revolting. But more than that, there's a fundamental ideological incoherence, if not outright stupidity. Scott Payne writes that he's moved "to question the overall usefulness of political labels ... Is anyone ever really “conservative” or “liberal” or “libertarian” all the time, ad infinitum?" Perhaps it never occurred to Scott that to be ideological is by definition to evince a consistent or coherent pattern of beliefs across a range of political issues. If one is not coherent in such a way, it makes little sense to make the case for a new ideological paradigm, for at any time when inconvenient facts or uncomfortable moral truths intrude upon the groundings of a particulary ideological framework, one could simply jettison any pretension of intellectual consistenty, not to mention moral right.

And in fact, that's pretty much what these folks are doing. As Victor Davis Hanson argued last week with reference to the hysterical ideological jockeying of Andrew Sullivan:

I am absolutely baffled how and why someone like this can continue to be taken seriously: for weeks he peddled vicious, absolutely false rumors that Sarah Palin did not deliver her recent child. On the eve of Iraq, (he now seems to suggest that he was brainwashed by, yes, those sneaky neo-cons), he blathered on with blood and guts rhetoric, mixed with fawning references to Bush, and embraced apocalyptic threats, including the advocacy of using nuclear weapons against Saddam should the anthrax attacks be connected to him. He seems not merely to support any incumbent President, but to deify them, and can go from encomia about the rightwing Bush to praise of leftwing Obama without thought of contradiction. In the summer before 9/11 he was in the major news outlets, trying to save his career after accused (accurately as he confirmed) of trafficking anonymously in the sexual want ads as an HIV-positive would-be participant in the unmentionable. (In other words, someone who was caught in a well-publicized scandal about which he confirmed its main details, without much sensitivity to human fraility, helped to spread false information about a potential VP designed to ruin her reputation.) At some point, one would think such a suspect individual would have been ostracized by sane people—or indeed perhaps he already has.

This seems to be common among liberaltarians, or postmodern conservatives, however we might identify them. E.D. Kain gave the finger to a deep-bench of neoconservative writers whom he'd asked for analytical contributions - at no charge - when he deleted his online magazine, "NeoConstant," without the decency of a courtesy notification. Mark Thompson has the gall to applaud the strategic rationality of Hamas (with an obligatory attack on Israeli's actions as "self-defeating"), and then when questioned about his argument, he cowardly throws his hands up and pleads that "I honestly don't know - or pretend to know - the answer to the situation ..."

There are a lot more issues here to be hashed out (and certainly genuine libertarian ideology may have multiple strains). But in my view, it's frankly inconceivable in terms of developing a coherent ideology to see libertarian thinkers align with nihilist antiwar leftists in opposition to a forward-based and morally-robust American foreign policy, and then watch these same wannabe ideologues align with the neo-Stalinist forces of International ANSWER in protesting - whether on the street or online - the political and moral preferences of a majority of Californians who exercized their basic political rights to protect marriage traditionalism through the interest group-system and the ballot box.

Observing and monitoring the program of this unholy alliance of left-libertarianism has truly been one of the most eye-opening, and deeply troubling, experiences of my political lifetime.

Deficits and Deceit: Barack Obama's Stimulus

Andrew Sullivan, responding to Jim Manzi, goes off on the GOP in his latest hissy fit, "If The Right Were Intellectually Honest ...":

The GOP has passed what amounts to a spending and tax-cutting and borrowing stimulus package every year since George W. Bush came to office. They have added tens of trillions to future liabilities and they turned a surplus into a trillion dollar deficit - all in a time of growth. They then pick the one moment when demand is collapsing in an alarming spiral to argue that fiscal conservatism is non-negotiable. I mean: seriously.

The bad faith and refusal to be accountable for their own conduct for the last eight years is simply inescapable. There is no reason for the GOP to have done what they have done for the last eight years and to say what they are saying now except pure, cynical partisanship, and a desire to wound and damage the new presidency. The rest is transparent cant.

Sullivan is literally the last person in American politics who should be lecturing others on intellectual honesty. As Fausta notes today, "I stopped reading Sully a while ago when I got overwhelmed by his rhetoric. Simple as that ... His writing has become more bizarre with time, particularly when it comes to his shameful and embarrasing attacks on Sarah Palin’s children."

As for the Democrats and the stimulus, not only is Sullivan hypcritical, he's disastrously wrong, as the Wall Street Journal indicates:

The bill will mark the largest single-year increase in domestic federal spending since World War II; it will send the budget deficit to heights not seen in 60 years; and it will establish a new and much higher spending baseline for years to come. Combine this new spending, and the borrowing it will require, with the trillions of dollars still needed for the banking system, and we are about to test the outer limits of our national balance sheet.

The editors are actually hammering the "three amigos" of GOP bipartisanship, Senators Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Arlen Specter.

But the larger message here is Democratic hypocrisy and fundamental dishonesty. The last few weeks have seen this country's most sustained political fearmonering campaign in history. Where FDR said we have nothing to fear but fear itself, Barack Obama deliberately sows fears to hoodwink the public, stifle dissent, and bludgeon the opposition. It's amazing, but in less than a month, the most severe warnings from last year against Democratic-socialist authoritarianism are coming true. I know many folks on the right were willing to give the new president the benefit of the doubt, myself included. The crisis is real, folks readily acknowledged, and calls for post-partisan transformation are endlessly attractive, like a leggy brunette in a mini-skirt on a Friday night. But any inkling of bipartisanship long ago went out the window with the appointment of Rahm "The Knife" Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff (and his erswhile colleagues in the Democratic majority).

The news this week shows that Judd Gregg's withdrawal as treasury secretary-designee follows his being duped into joining the administration as a cover for bipartisan comity on economic policy, and the realization that the White House was in fact pushing a lie on seeking cooperation across the aisle (see William Kristol on Rahm's Census Burear power grab, for example). Indeed, amid renewed calls to repeal the Bush tax cuts, it won't be long until we see the Democrats foisting off new rounds of government expansion, what James Pethokoukis calls "Son of Stimulus," in the months and years ahead of Democratic-socialist government.

I'm sure Andrew Sullivan's down with that.

**********

UPDATE: I just found Dan McLaughlin essay, "Barack Obama’s Gift To Conservatives," which provides a nice affirmation of Pethokoukis' point on the growth of Democratic-socialism:

Obama and the Democrats have now committed themselves irrevocably to massive growth in government spending, and the odds are that they are not done there, as we are likely to see the ghosts of economic liberalism past and of Eurosocialism present come knocking: more marginal tax hikes, a government takeover of health care, protectionism, massive new regulations, measures to tip the labor-management balance towards unions, restrictions on energy production, you name it. No serious adult can believe that any of this will help the economy; Obama, by always talking about “saving” rather than creating jobs, seems to imply that he, too, recognizes that he can’t promise any improvements. Indeed, liberal economic policy has never been about enabling growth so much as assuming it will happen and fighting over how to divide the spoils. Republicans and conservatives can feel secure in their opposition to these economic policies because we know they don’t work.

So there you have it: Obama and the Democrats, by ramming the ’stimulus’ bill through on a party-line basis and bulldozing Republican opposition, have taken ownership of old-time Big Government liberalism; they have surrendered to Republicans the very issues that divided the GOP and attracted moderate swing voters to the Democratic banner; they have energized and galvanized their opponents; they have discarded the pretense of bipartisanship; and they have, in the end, lashed themselves to the mast of policies that are proven not to work. The only thing the stimulus bill will stimulate is conservatism.

Democrats Ram Through Stimulus in House Vote

GOP Minority Leader John Boehner gave a great speech today on the floor of the House of Representatives: "Eleven-hundred pages and not one member of this body has read it, not one" (see 4:45 minutes at the video). Boehner then slammed the bill down on the floor of the chamber! CNN replayed this clip a half-dozen times while reporting on the vote this morning:

The New York Times has the story:

The House approved a $787 billion economic stimulus package Friday afternoon, with Democrats successfully promoting it as a boost for middle-class Americans and Republicans countering in vain that it will only stimulate wasteful government spending.

The vote was 246 to 183, reflecting the Democrats’ considerable majority in the House and the Republicans’ deep dissatisfaction with the measure, whose estimated price tag has fluctuated daily and was finally placed at $787 billion on Friday. Not a single Republican voted in favor of the bill ....

"After all the debate, this legislation can be summed up in one word: Jobs," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said. "The American people need action and they need action now."

But Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, lamented that a bill that was supposed to be about “jobs, jobs, jobs” had turned into one that was about “spending, spending, spending.”

“We owe it to the people to get this bill right,” Mr. Boehner said.

As CNN reports, "the written version of the legislation wasn't available for lawmakers to view until around 11 p.m. Thursday." Indeed, as Nina Easton points out, the Democrats don't want debate and deliberation, they want speed:

There is a breadth and breathlessness to these under-takings, a frenzy of policymaking that will shape the contours of America's economic future. Top Obama advisors who talked (often as they walked) with Fortune in early February put a premium on speed - speed to catch the right moment to turn around a deepening recession, speed to take advantage of this moment of crisis to put in place a Democratic vision of government's role, speed to pass major legislation while the President is riding high in the polls.

Still Crying Wolf? Democrats Reviving Fairness Doctrine

Last November Patrick Ruffini wrote a provocative post entitled, "Crying Wolf on the Fairness Doctrine." Ruffini warned that conservatives were missing the big picture and wasting time and effort focusing on the left's interest in restoring regulation of political speech on the airwaves:

Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but liberals are unlikely to upset the apple cart with alternative media ... The reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine went nowhere when Rush was on the rise in 1993, and it will go nowhere next year or the year, especially with conservative talk radio no longer the center of the universe.

So, why does it bother me that some people focus on the issue?

First off, even with the proliferation of media, there is only so much bandwidth in the media ecosystem for conservative opposition messages. Do you really want to waste it on a nothing-burger like the Fairness Doctrine? There are enough legitimate threats - endless bailouts, runaway deficit spending, nationalized health care, card check - that I don't think we can afford to throw away our limited political capital on a non-issue.

Well, considering the Democratic-left is on the verge of passing its $787 billion economic stimulus package (the House voted on straight party lines to approve the measure, which now goes to the Senate for a final vote), it's worth remember that so far this year talk radio - and Rush Limbaugh in particular - has already been extremely effective in leading conservative oppostion to the Obama administration's shift to state socialism. We're already seeing radical leftists attacking the GOP as "Talibanized Republicans," and that kind of language is certainly a precursor to legislative efforts to defeat the right's "insurgency" against Democratic fiscal profligacy and moral bankruptcy. Indeed, as CNN reports, plans to shut down right-wing criticism of the Democratic regime are building steam:

More and more Democrats in Congress are calling for action that Republicans warn could muzzle right-wing talk radio.

Representative Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from New York is the latest to say he wants to bring back the "Fairness Doctrine," a federal regulation scrapped in 1987 that would require broadcasters to present opposing views on public issues.

"I think the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated," Hinchey told CNNRadio. Hinchey says he could make it part of a bill he plans to introduce later this year overhauling radio and t-v ownership laws.

Listen: Hinchey says he wants to make talk-radio more fair.

Democratic Senators Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Tom Harkin of Iowa added their voices recently to those calling for a return of the regulation.

I know personally that leftists are mental incompetents who are eternal impotent from competing in the marketplace of ideas. Instead, they resort to fearmongering, intimidation, and threats of legal action to silence Americans of good moral standing from lifting the veil of Democratic totalitarianism. "Gird your loins, people."

The Myth of Democratic-Stimulus Popularity

One of the most common left-wing memes over the last couple of weeks holds that Republicans are "shooting themselves in the foot" in opposing the "a popular initiative backed by a popular congress and a Democratic congressional leadership that, while not particular popular, is still more popular than they are" (via Memeorandum).

I'm not exactly sure what goes on in the minds of radical leftists. No doubt the multi-sensorial elation of the Democrats' endorphinic triumph in November has neutralized the brain's regular neural processes of reasoning for some of these folks. Or, more simply, hubristic totalitarianism by doctrine systematically ignores evidence that repudiates the hegemonic party line of the hard-left Democratic forces.

For example, Rasmussen reported Wednesday that "When it comes to the nation’s economic issues, 67% of U.S. voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress." Well, so much for the popularity of the "Democratic congressional leadership." Indeed, as Rasmussen continues, "The new Congress fares worse on this question that the previous Congress."

And how much more popular are the Democrats than their Republican opponents? Not at all, actually, as Michael Barone points out, "Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that Democrats are currently ahead of Republicans by only 40 percent to 39 percent. Given that this generic ballot question over the years has tended to understate Republicans' performances in actual elections, one gathers that if the 2010 election for House seats were held today, Republicans would win or come close to winning a majority of seats—which is to say, they would gain about 40 seats."

On the Democratic economic program, polls have found consistent reservations with the economic stimulus package. In fact, support has been dropping like a rock as the bill's true characterization as an interest group pork-barrel spending boondoggle has taken hold in the popular consciousness.

CBS News last week reported a bare majority supporting the proposal, and the trend line was going down: "Slightly more than half the country approves of President Obama's $800 billion-plus stimulus package, a new CBS News poll finds. But support for the bill has fallen 12 points since January, and nearly half of those surveyed do not believe it will shorten the recession."

What's interesting (and certainly problematic for the Democrats, who have mounted their recovery program under a veil of stealth), is that the more people learn about the plan, the less they like it, as Pew notes: "Those who have heard a lot about the plan express the most skepticism, with 41% saying it is a bad idea compared with 28% of those who have heard only a little. This stands in contrast to the balance of opinion a month ago, when people who had heard a lot about the plan were more likely to back it than those who had heard only a little."

Leftists will cite generic poll findings, like Gallup's, that indicate a broad public backing for the measure, but these results are completely partisan, and backing for the measure among political independents "is totally flat."

Meanwhile, a campaign of political vilification is heating up on the left in the wake of Senator Judd Gregg's withdrawal as President Obama's treasury secretary-designee. Daily Kos is leading the smearing chorus: "Earlier this week we learned that the Republican Party has embraced the tactics of the Taliban, and today the insurgents have adopted another word associated with terrorists: they are "emboldened." Why? Because Judd Gregg changed his mind about heading the Commerce Department."

Apparently, the euphoria of the "Obama Kool-Aid" is wearing off and the nihilist left is reduced to equating U.S. senators of the Repubican Party with the kind of terrorist barbarians who have killed thousands of Americans over the last decade.

Thus, behold the fundamental nature of corruption and dishonesty that is the bailiwick of today's Democratic-left.

Fair Test and the George Soros Agenda

Mary Grabar, at CNS News, offers an insightful examination of how the radical left infiltrates and undermines America's educational institutions:

If one were to judge by the number of times the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, more commonly known as Fair Test, has been quoted in reference to test-optional college admissions policies, one might conclude that this organization is the nation’s preeminent authority on the issue. Seeing a quotation from one of the group’s staff in publications ranging from USA Today to the Chronicle of Higher Education is nearly as predictable as the nostrum about death and taxes.

College admissions professionals also pay homage to Fair Test. The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) encouraged its members to consider Fair Test suggestions like “‘examin[ing] whether first-year grade point average is too narrow a criteria for evaluating the utility of standardized admission tests,” when its commission on standardized testing issued its report on the matter last fall.

The issue of college admissions has significant academic and economic importance. One presumes citations on such matters would be reserved for learned individuals and organizations with considered and scholarly perspectives bolstered by data and rigorous analysis. But a closer inspection of Fair Test’s staff credentials and finances raises significant questions about the organization’s bona fides and legitimacy.

When asked about funding sources for Fair Test, the group’s public education director, Robert Schaeffer, acknowledges support from the Ford Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Rockefeller Family Fund.

But curiously absent from Schaeffer’s recitation of financial backers is George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire who has bankrolled such notorious projects as MoveOn.org and a plethora of other left-wing causes and politicians. Grant records from Soros’ New York City-based Open Society Institute reveal that Fair Test has received $165,000 from Soros’ Institute since 2004.

Fair Test also lists among its sponsors the Woods Fund of Chicago, which includes among its board membership William Ayers, the domestic terrorist who, as a member of the radical Weather Underground, played a role in the bombing of New York City police headquarters in 1970; the bombing of the U.S. Capitol in 1971; and the 1972 bombing of the Pentagon.

The grant records and other proceedings of the Woods Fund have remained elusive since the disclosure in 2008 of Ayers’ dealings with President Barack Obama during their time together on the fund’s board. To this day, the extent of support for Fair Test from Ayers or the Woods Fund remains unknown.

As for Schaeffer himself, his role with Fair Test is not entirely clear. Schaeffer is often referred to as Fair Test’s “public education director,” and he is the group’s most frequent spokesperson. But tax records, corporate documents and other materials paint a more muddled picture. As recently as September 2008, the left-leaning Ploughshares Fund listed Schaeffer as president of Public Policy Communications, a Sanibel, Florida-based public relations firm.

Schaeffer’s firm describes itself as a provider of “strategic communications for progressive causes, candidates, and socially-responsible businesses” yet lists no expertise in matters related to higher education or college admissions policy. Schaeffer’s clients of late include International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Families Against Incinerator Risk and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

To get a feeling for the agenda that Soros, Ayers, and Fair Test are promoting, be sure to check out Andrew McCarthy's piece, "Why Won’t Obama Talk About Columbia?"

Boycotting Juan Williams

I'm seeing a pattern here, from the local to the national level, with the increasing intolerance of any speech that's critical of minorities and leftists.

Last night I reported on the backlash against Lloyd Carter, the Fresno activist and state deputy attorney general who suggested that illegal immigrants "turn to lives of crime." As I noted earlier, a great many of them do.

Now today we have a backlash against NPR senior analyst Juan Williams, who is also a contributor to Fox News, for his comments comparing First Lady Michelle Obama to 1960s black nationalist Stokely Charmichael.

This letter to the omsbudsman is particular telling of the left's response to legitimate political commentary and criticism:

I am concerned about the objectivity Juan Williams brings to his news analysis," wrote Alison Fowler. "He has made statements on Fox News regarding Michelle Obama that appear to paint her as an angry Black Nationalist without any basis in fact. Despite the fact that these statements were not made on NPR, they undermine his credibility as an impartial news analyst on your network."

As we've seen when any conservative group expresses an opinion that goes against the prevailing left-wing orthodoxy, outraged leftists demand a boycott:

NPR needs to stop using Juan Williams. When Bill O Reilly has to defend Michelle Obama from Williams' comments he's gone way over the edge. I encourage NPR listeners to boycott NPR until they take action to disassociate themselves from Williams. Don't renew your membership until he's gone.

Some of the comments at NPR are fair to Williams, but it's clear that far-left wing opinion wants to stifle any criticism of the left, its programs, and its entitlement mentality.

Can the "fairness doctrine" be far behind?

She Might Need a Lot of Lovin' But She Don't Need You...

Until I'm back online tonight, please enjoy Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Listen to Her Heart":

The End of the Private Sector?

There are some reports that government jobs have become the most attractive employment opportunities in the current economic downturn. Indeed, it's gotten to the point that the Washington, D.C., public sector - Congress and the executive branch - has become the primary agent of job creation in the United States, either directly or indirectly:

Big government is walking away as the knock-out winner over the private sector in the latest financial crisis. Washington spinmeisters have placed the blame for the crisis on too much capitalism and too little regulation, with no blame left over for Washington's own bad regulatory, monetary and tax policies.

The solution offered by big government is even bigger government. If unchecked, the Washington "fix" for the financial crisis would create its biggest power expansion since the New Deal.

My thoughts were drawn to this question of government employment and economic survival after reading this post at Incertus:

I'm actually starting to get offended by the rhetoric about how we need private-sector, not public-sector, jobs from whatever stimulus plan we hatch.

First of all, jobs are jobs and we need them, so let's get them all "stimulated" and into action. But secondly, can I just say that the only people I know who are secure in their jobs are people with government jobs? My friends, family, and students working for private companies or for themselves are getting hosed. Those of us working for the county, state, and country are relatively secure.

So why would private sector jobs be, in these uncertain times, preferable to public sector ones?

The sheer ignorance in this essay is astounding. No one dismisses the deep economic dislocation facing the country. But this idea that we don't need "private sector jobs" and that "friends, family, and students" are getting "hosed" by private employers is simply astounding.

I'm reminded of the recent essay by Stephen Moore at the Wall Street Journal, "'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years," where he suggests the current economic crisis is demonstrating the profound wisdom and insight of novelist Ayn Rand.

Note this passage Moore cites in particular:

One memorable moment in "Atlas" occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:

Galt: "You want me to be Economic Dictator?"

Mr. Thompson: "Yes!"

"And you'll obey any order I give?"

"Implicitly!"

"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."

"Oh no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees?"

"Fire your government employees."

"Oh, no!"

Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax "for purposes of fairness" as Barack Obama puts it.

""Oh, no!" We can't get rid of those government employees! Otherwise they might get "hosed" by the endlessly greedy capitalist roaders! AAAHHH!!!!

This economy's going to come back in the next year or two, but it won't because of Barack Obama and the Democrats created more "public sector jobs." At some point the left's socialist-regulatory state will kill the economy altogether and Rand's vision of economic calamity and social pandemonium won't be fiction.

But don't tell that to the radical leftists attacking Rand's philosophies. Nope, the more government the better - that's the ticket to prosperity!

See also, Tigerhawk, "Is it Time to Re-Read Atlas Shrugged?"

A 12-Year-Old Pro-Lifer Speaks

Via Robert Stacy McCain, "A 12-year-old pro-lifer speaks":

Is this young girl too young to discuss controversial political issues? Dr. Melissa Clouthier thinks so.

I just love this young one's erudition. Good for her!

Abortion Industry: "Too Many" Black Babies

Here's one of the sickest example of abortion extremism I've ever seen. Planned Parenthood of Ohio agreed to accept financial contributions on the condition that the money be used to fund abortions of black babies (link):

Planned Parenthood of Central Ohio confirmed to Cybercast News Service that the telephone conversation with a presumed donor occurred in mid-summer 2007, adding that it was not the policy of Planned Parenthood to accept donations specifically to underwrite abortions among minority women.

James O' Keefe, a first-year law student and an advisor for the The Advocate, made the telephone call posing as a potential donor to Planned Parenthood of Ohio.

The tape begins with a portion of the call in which O'Keefe confirms the location of the Planned Parenthood facility in Columbus, Ohio. According to Lila Rose, the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and a sophomore at UCLA, the tape then cuts to the relevant portion of the call in which O'Keefe offers a donation:

Planned Parenthood:"Planned Parenthood Administration, this is Lisa."
O'Keefe:"Hi. I am interested in making a donation today."
Planned Parenthood:"Let me put you through to Tim in our development office."
O'Keefe:"Is there anyone I can speak to now?"
Planned Parenthood:"Me."
O'Keefe: "Who am I speaking with now?"
Planned Parenthood: "My name is Lisa Hutton."
O'Keefe: "Lisa, what is your position?"
Planned Parenthood: "Administrative assistant."
O'Keefe: "When I underwrite an abortion, does that apply to minorities too?"
Planned Parenthood: "If you specifically want to underwrite it for a minority person, you can target it that way. You can specify that that's how you want it spent."
O'Keefe: "Okay, yeah, because there's definitely way too may black people in Ohio. So, I'm just trying to do my part."
Planned Parenthood: "Hmm. Okay, whatever."
O'Keefe: "Blacks especially need abortions too. So, that's what I'm trying to do."
Planned Parenthood: "Well, for whatever reason, we'll accept the money."
O'Keefe:"Great, Thank You."
Planned Parenthood:"Mmmm, hmmm."

Via Hot Air.

Lloyd Carter, Fresno Activist, Sparks Farmworker Controversy

Well, I'm glad I'm not personally involved in this classic case study of politically-correct totalitarianism.

It turns out that Lloyd Carter, a Fresno-area activist, has resigned from his positions on a couple of Central Valley environmental-conservation organizations amid a backlash to comments he made regarding illegal immigrants. The Fresno Bee has the story:

A deputy attorney general and environmental activist whose comments about farmworkers sparked a protest rally Monday has resigned from the board of the California Water Impact Network.

Mike Jackson, who serves on the same board, said Lloyd Carter submitted his resignation during a conference call among board members Monday morning.

"His statement is not us, and he was speaking for us," Jackson said. "We thought we had to take some steps."

Carter's comments were made to a KMPH (Channel 26) reporter before a debate on water policy at California State University, Fresno, on Wednesday.

Carter said farmworkers who would lose jobs if west-side Valley farmers don't receive water from the California Delta this year are "not even American citizens for starters. Do you think we should employ illegal aliens?"

He also said the children of farmworkers are among the least-educated people in the southwest corner of the Valley. "They turn to lives of crime. They go on welfare. They get into drug trafficking and they join gangs."

Carter said Monday afternoon, "I've apologized. I don't know what else people want from me. People who know me know I'm not a racist."

Carter issued a written apology on his Web site, www.lloydgcarter.com.

An apology also was broadcast on Channel 26.

"My comments were directed at the exploitation of farmworkers in the southwest corner of the Valley, which is the poorest place in America," Carter's apology reads in part.

"I now realize I made a terrible mistake in the way I expressed myself and I humbly apologize to all who were offended," he wrote.

The California Water Impact Network has issued apologies for Carter's comments, Jackson said. "We're very, very sorry and are busy apologizing -- as is Lloyd -- to everything that moves."

Jackson said he doesn't know why Carter made the comments.

"There is nothing in Lloyd Carter's career, background or experience that explains what he was trying to say. We don't believe he has any of those feelings," Jackson said.

Carter is a deputy attorney general in the criminal division of the California Attorney General's Office and is a former Fresno Bee reporter.

He serves on the boards of California Save Our Streams Council and Revive The San Joaquin, and he is a director of the Underground Gardens Conservancy, a preservation group for the Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno.

About 250 farmworkers, farmers, politicians and community activists attended the rally in front of Fresno City Hall. Some called for Carter's resignation.

There's more at the link.

Readers can read Lloyd's apology, posted at his blog, here.

I'm looking over the offending comments at the Fresno Bee piece again, and for the most part, Lloyd's crime is that his statements were raw, sweeping stereotypes posed off-the-cuff, rather than in a more appropriate context, like a scholarly panel debating the issues or in an article backed by evidence.

Certainly, it's unexceptional to suggest that children of farmworkers "turn to lives of crime." Quite a few do, as Heather MacDonald has shown in her research, "The Immigrant Gang Plague." Indeed, in another essay, MacDonald notes that:

Arizona and California lawmakers want to free taxpayers from the nearly $1 billion a year burden of detaining illegal criminals—and the even costlier burden of detaining those illegals’ children. In Fresno, now 45 percent Hispanic, 20 percent of the county jail inmates are illegal immigrants, as are about one-quarter of emergency-room patients. No wonder Fresno’s mayor called in November 2005 for securing the border.

And here's Victor Davis Hanson, a Fresno farmer himself who knows a thing or two about these issues:

For many professors, politicians, and columnists, the gangs, increased crime, and crowded jails that often result from massive illegal immigration and open borders are not daily concerns, but rather stereotypes hysterically evoked by paranoid and unenlightened others in places like Bakersfield and Laredo.

So, what is the truth on illegal immigration?

Simple. Millions of fair-minded white, African-, Mexican- and Asian-Americans fear that we are not assimilating millions of aliens from south of the border as fast as they are crossing illegally from Mexico.

In the frontline American southwest, entire apartheid communities and enclaves within cities have sprung up whose distinct language, culture, and routines are beginning to resemble more the tense divides in the Balkans or Middle East than the traditional melting pot of multiracial America.

Concern over this inevitable slowdown in integration and assimilation is neither racist nor nativist. It grows out of real worry that when millions of impoverished arrive in mass without legality, education, and the ability to speak English, costly social problems follow that will not be offset by the transitory economic benefits cheap wages may provide.

I'll update when I have more information.

**********

Photo Credit: "About 250 people attended a rally Monday in front of Fresno City Hall. Some called for the resignation of Lloyd Carter, a deputy state attorney general and environmental activist whose comments about farmworkers sparked the protest," Fresno Bee.

Gay Marriage Conservative Tokenism

The Colorado Independent posted a muckraking essay today smearing Focus on the Family for its purported $727,000 in contributions to the Yes on 8 campaign in California: "Focus on the Family Vastly Outpaced Mormon Spending on Proposition 8."

Commenting on the piece (with its scandalous aspersions to alleged Mormon extremists), I saw a new term of repudiation at Pam Spaulding's: "the fundievangelical movement." Spaulding also attacks Focus on the Family as an "evil, Bible-beating, anti-gay organization."

All that for exercising First Amendment rights through the political process? Of course, Spaulding applauded the Stalinist intimidation tactics of the No on H8 activists who are mapping the names and ZIP codes of financial backers of the California initiative, so she's consistent in her totalitarianism.

But what about the "young turks" at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen? You wouldn't think a bunch of rising intellectuals would stoop to Pam Spaulding's level of rank demonization, right?

Well, think again:

The true driving power behind the anti-gay marriage movement resides in a community with many names. For the sake of simplicity I’ll return to the tried and true Religious Right (and the Religious Right’s red headed stepchildren, the Mormons).

Couching their anti-gay agenda in Christian dogma, the Religious Right has been successful in essentially swimming up stream against the march towards equality for homosexuals. While homosexuality is enjoying more social acceptance now than during any other period in American history, the Religious Right is also enjoying successes in actively inhibiting homosexual rights, enacting constitutional gay marriage bans in a number of states.

This would seem counter-intuitive at first, after all, if gays are moving up in the world, how is it that they are suffering setbacks on things like their right to marry?

This extraordinary piece continues with this eye-opening proposal:

What makes a marriage sacred? That answer is different for many people. People of faith are likely to reply that the sanctity of their marriage is divined from the authority of their God. For those who are without faith, they are more apt to say that the sanctity of the marriage resides in the marriage itself, and the common union between the two partners involved. Further, of the faithful, the devout churchgoers may say that their unity is blessed by their God through their church, while those who are of faith but skeptical of organized religion may decide that the church does not bestow that happy blessing, but God gives it to them anyway.

The point that I’m getting at is that in a country where everyone is free to choose what they believe, the sanctity of marriage is something that is not universal, but is instead unique to the situation. I have a coworker that feels that God blesses both his marriage and mine. I personally believe that God has nothing to do with it, and the sanctity of my marriage comes from the fact that my wife and I are stubbornly attached to each other.

The solution? Simple. Abolish all marriage.

Abolish all marriage? Okay, let's just overturn thousands of years of social custom for the sake of the self-proclaimed "right" of a tiny oppositional minority of the population to be married

But I've dissected the left's gay marriage totalitarianism every which way since last November. What interests me here is that the proprietors of Ordinary Gentlemen are ostensibly conservatives. Yep, these folks are supposedly among the "young turks" Robert Stacy McCain identifies in his essay, Young Turks and Gay Marriage." Or, as Helen Rittelmeyer puts it:

I would add ... that support for same-sex marriage has become a mark, not only of defeatism, but of self-conscious tokenism among young conservatives. Being publicly pro-SSM is the quickest way for a young journalist to signal that he's one of the right-wingers it's okay to like. Haven't they heard that it's better to be feared than loved? Or, to put it less glibly, the real respectability of a solid argument is preferable to the worthless respectability one gets by being on the Harmless Right.

It's an interesting demographic, this young, harmless conservative tokenism, except I don't think these folks are all that harmless. Their effluence just works to feed progressive bull to the media's Obamatons. Besides, as cowardly as these folks are, their musings chum the waters for more dangerous folks like RAWMUSCLEGLUTES.

The bulk of the guys at Ordinary Gentlemen are supposedly of Burkean persuasions and libertarian leanings (Kyle Moore, the author of the abolish marriage proposal above, is liberal). But a regular reading of the posts shows little deviation from the godless licentiousness seen on the nihilist left - indeed, these guys are pretty much atheists through and through. For all the long-winded "intellectual" dialog, the page offers mostly unexceptional commentary, the type that's routinely available on any number of the more tasteless blogs found across the netroots fever swamps. The Ordinary Gents are all into bashing neoconservatives and excoriating pro-lifers. The blog's mission is to encourage "internal" debate, but frankly that sound a bit incestuous, and with the public's Obamessianism already starting to fade, this league's honeymoon likely winding down as well.

Suleman Octuplets Could Cost Taxpayers Millions

Via the Los Angeles Times:

Nadya Suleman has 14 children, including newborn octuplets. She has no job, no income and owes $50,000 in student loans.

Still, the 33-year-old Whittier woman said she's confident that she can afford to raise her huge family, insisting she can do it without welfare. In an interview Tuesday with NBC, she said she could use student loans to make ends meet until she finishes graduate school and gets a job.

But Suleman faces what are likely to be millions of dollars in medical bills alone, and it's increasingly likely that taxpayers will foot many of those bills.

Her family is eligible for large sums of public assistance money. Even before she gave birth to the octuplets Jan. 26, Suleman was receiving $490 in monthly food stamps, and three of her children were receiving federal supplemental security income because they are disabled.

Lowell Kepke, a spokesman for the San Francisco office of the Social Security Administration, said that a single parent with no income qualifies for up to $793 a month for each child with a physical or mental condition that results in "marked or severe functional limitations." That money is used for support and maintenance of the family, and Suleman would not be required to specifically account for how it is spent.

If Suleman's disabled children received the maximum payment, she would get nearly $2,900 a month in state and federal assistance, including the food stamps.

I will never discount the miracle of life that is God's gift of the octuplets. But I'm having a really hard time seeing how the sense of responsibility of the mother and the fertility specialists just disappeared. The most important decision when thinking about bringing a child into the world is how the family will pay the costs, from prenatal care to delivery and hospital expenses, and then, of course, for the rest of a safe, secure, and healthy life. I don't believe Nadya Suleman is completely in her right mind when she suggests she'll soon be fully be able to care for these children without any outside/public support whatsoever (as she claims at the piece).

I think this is more than a deeply troubling issue at the individual psychological level. There's a social breakdown here along the way, in terms of expectations, medical guidance and advisement, and of a social welfare system that enables such extreme childbearing decisions altogether.

I pray these children have a good life. The first photos of the octuplets are here.

Jeremy Lusk, 1984-2009

While reading the newspaper this afternoon, I came across the Los Angeles Times obituary for Jeremy Lusk, 24, who died yesterday from injuries sustained at a freestyle motocross competition on Saturday:

Jeremy Lusk, star of a daredevil sport known as freestyle motocross and a popular action sports hero, died early Tuesday from head injuries suffered during a crash Saturday at a competition in San Jose, Costa Rica. He was 24.

Lusk, a Temecula resident, had been in a medically induced coma, with swelling of the brain, at Calderon Guardia Hospital in San Jose. A spokesman at the hospital said he suffered severe brain damage and a possible spinal cord injury.

Nicknamed "Pitbull" because of his tenacity on a motorcycle, Lusk was injured after failing to fully rotate a back-flip variation while soaring over a 100-foot jump.

He slammed headfirst into the dirt on the landing ramp's down-slope. It was reminiscent of a similar crash he endured while attempting the same trick during the 2007 X Games at the Home Depot Center in Carson, but Lusk walked away from that incident.

The trick involves extending the body away from the motorcycle and grabbing the seat as the motorcycle is upside down, then pulling back aboard as the motorcycle is righted before landing. Lusk clearly had trouble getting back on the seat, and some witnesses said swirling winds within San Jose's Ricardo Saprissa Stadium may have been a factor.

Despite the danger associated with freestyle motocross, Lusk is believed to be the first pro rider to have died from injuries suffered in an FMX contest, though several have incurred serious injuries.

Lusk, who was born in San Diego in 1984 and had been riding motorcycles since he was 3, turned pro at 19. He was coming off his most successful year.

The rest of the obituary is here. Video courtesy of Bitten and Bound.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the Lusk family.

Progressive Redistribution Stimulus

Matthew Yglesias, commenting on Brink Lindsey's new policy paper, "Paul Krugman's Nostalgianomics: Economic Policies, Social Norms, and Income Inequality," reveals the underlying redistributionist goals of Democratic fiscal and social policy:

... the generic “progressive” idea is that we should have a more progressive tax code that spends more money on egalitarian social welfare programs. That’s not a return to the 1950s. It’s an effort to ensure that the gains of the past 30 years worth of policy shifts are spread more equitably ... In principle, the pie could be redistributed (through tax-and-transfer or tax-and-service) such that everyone winds up with more pie than they had before ... rather than giving huge additional pie slices to the richest people.

While Yglesias' analysis focuses on the income gaps resulting from information-driven technological change, it's interesting how this idea of "more money on egalitarian social welfare programs" is essentially the foundation for the Obama administration's $800-plus billion stimulus plan.

As Michael Hiltzik notes at today's Los Angeles Times, " the federal government moved forward Tuesday on the most ambitious economic recovery plan since the Great Depression." Whereas Hiltzik's point of departure is Franklin Roosevelt (who was regulatory and stimulatory) the left's is Lyndon Johnson (who was paternalistic and redistributionist). A quick perusal of the House Appropriations Committee's press release, "Summary: American Recovery and Reinvestment," clearly indicates that economic stimulus and market rebuilding are side notes underlying the big government rationale at the heart of the program. The legislation is loaded with social spending on child development, health care appropriations, Indian affairs, education (including Head Start), not to mention energy and the environment and a range of other expenditures of varying degrees of logical relation to the immediate goal of "budgetary stimulus."

All of these things are ostensibly good and needed initiatives. But for Democrats to continually use the economic crisis and catastrophic fearmongering to justify movement toward the party's larger state-socialist redistributionist agenda is fundamentally dishonest and it violates the trust of the American people.

We know what the Democrats want from government. It's be nice if they'd have a little more integrity in selling their economic program for what it really is.

Britain Capitulates to Muslim Extremism

Geert Wilders, the Dutch filmmaker and parliamentarian, has been banned from entering the United Kingdom by British authorities, who cited his presence a serious threat to society. Wilders was scheduled to show his film, Fitna, to the House of Lords.

Lord Nazir Ahmed, the first Muslim life peer in Britain's upper chamber, threatened to bring a mob of 10,000 Islamists to storm the Parliament.

Melanie Phillips puts things into perspective:

So let’s get this straight. The British government allows people to march through British streets screaming support for Hamas, it allows Hizb ut Tahrir to recruit on campus for the jihad against Britain and the west, it takes no action against a Muslim peer who threatens mass intimidation of Parliament, but it bans from the country a member of parliament of a European democracy who wishes to address the British Parliament on the threat to life and liberty in the west from religious fascism.

It is he, not them, who is considered a ‘serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society’. Why? Because the result of this stand for life and liberty against those who would destroy them might be an attack by violent thugs. The response is not to face down such a threat of violence but to capitulate to it instead.

It was the same reasoning that led the police on those pro-Hamas marches to confiscate the Israeli flag, on the grounds that it would provoke violence, while those screaming support for genocide and incitement against the Jews were allowed to do so. The reasoning was that the Israeli flag might provoke thuggery while the genocidal incitement would not. So those actually promoting aggression were allowed to do so while those who threatened no-one at all were repressed. And now a Dutch politician who doesn’t threaten anyone is banned for telling unpalatable truths about those who do; while those who threaten life and liberty find that the more they do so, the more the British government will do exactly what they want, in the interests of ‘community harmony’.

Wilders is a controversial politician, to be sure. But this is another fateful and defining issue for Britain’s governing class as it continues to sleepwalk into cultural suicide. If British MPs do not raise hell about this banning order, if they go along with this spinelessness, if they fail to stand up for the principle that the British Parliament of all places must be free to hear what a fellow democratically elected politician has to say about one of the most difficult and urgent issues of our time, if they fail to hold the line against the threat of violence but capitulate to it instead, they will be signalling that Britain is no longer the cradle of freedom and democracy but its graveyard.