Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Out shopping last weekend for some new patriotic apparel. My wife used to work at Kohl's, so every June I pick up some new gear in preparation for Fourth of July. Great for tea parties as well:
Everyone knows President Obama takes average Americans for suckers, but does he have to be to transparently obvious about it?
Here's his Saturday address below, on the new financial regulation bill in Congress. And get this: The White House homepage notes that the bill "creates a resolution authority to wind down firms whose collapse would threaten the entire financial system." And the president says "we'll create what's called a resolution authority that will help wind down firms whose collapse threatens our entire financial system." But then Obama sums that up by claiming, "Put simply, we'll end the days of taxpayer bailouts..."
Republicans warned it could restrict access to credit and enshrine the idea that the government won't allow big firms to fail.
In a bid to address the causes of 2008's market collapse, the bill gives regulators power to constrain the activities of big banks, including forcing them to divest certain operations and to hold more money to protect against losses.
If those buffers don't work, the government would have the power to seize and liquidate a failing financial company that poses a threat to the broader economy.
Sounds like this won't be the "end of financial bailouts" after all.
Well, I really enjoyed the two and a half years I spent here, and I'm constantly confused as to why mentions of my name lead to a lot of schoolyard insults. I really can't figure out why they do it -- lack of fulfillment seems like a good enough theory. After all, I'm here, and they're where I left them in 2008.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to return to my rewarding job and large circle of friends. I don't know how my ego will ever recover...
But big boy Scotty Lame-ieux thinks old Weigel is just the cat's meow:
I haven’t seen anybody raise any objections to Weigel's excellent reporting, and if his reporting is good what he says about people on a private listserv is completely irrelevant...
Uh huh.
That Weigel thought Matt Drudge should burn to death in self-immolation is no big deal. It's all of those awful "whiney" Republicans who're to blame.
The Washington Post holds out Weigel as their reporter of choice to cover conservatives and Republicans. Weigel spends all his time going to conservative and Republican events and claiming to be an objective reporter there to cover them fairly. In between these events Weigel goes online and vents on JournoList to 400 other journalists — many who claim to be of the “objective” variety — about just how much he hates those “ratfucker” (his word) conservatives and Republicans. All of the other journalists in the know about this fraud just sit tight and let the fraud continue. Are these the “basic journalistic norms” that those on JournoList are upholding? The reporters on JournoList owe their readers an explanation.
"It would be good to top this tour - which is already out there - with something nobody has done before, using dead bodies as part of a gig."
No one’s fed baby seals onstage into a Cuisinart blender either, but that doesn’t mean it has to be done. The idea of using laminated corpses as stage props is probably a line we didn’t need to cross, because Gaga will have to top that next tour, possibly by gassing members of her adoring audience. She’ll call it youth-anizing!
This fits in with the entire national trend on how politics is now “discussed” right down the line. It’s sheer demonization — stemming from a growing belief that if you say something angrily enough and discredit those on the other side of an argument you win the argument. Proof, schmoof.
Outrageous is an understatement — but the way politics is trending these days Brewer will likely be rewarded with re-election.
Yeah.
She should be "rewarded with reelection":
But let's be honest. Drug trafficking is out of control, and Gandelman should know better than to categorically reject Gov. Brewer's statement, and of course the governor's staff has already issued a clarification, saying there may have been some "missteps." And thus as one of Gandelman's own commenters suggests:
... the way I read the governor's statement as clarified is that she is saying that most of the human smuggling into the US is controlled by Mexican drug cartels and that these cartels press "a lot" (which is different than most) of people into service as drug mules. That's the literal interpretation of what she and her office said.
Mexican DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] continue to represent the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States. Mexican DTOs, already the predominant wholesale suppliers of illicit drugs in the United States, are gaining even greater strength in eastern drug markets where Colombian DTO strength is diminishing. The extent of Mexican DTO influence over domestic drug trafficking was evidenced in several ways in 2009. For example:
•Mexican DTOs were the only DTOs operating in every region of the country.
•Mexican DTOs increased their cooperation with U.S.-based street and prison gangs to distribute drugs. In many areas, these gangs were using their alliances with Mexican DTOs to facilitate an expansion of their midlevel and retail drug distribution operations into more rural and suburban areas.
•In 2009, midlevel and retail drug distribution in the United States was dominated by more than 900,000 criminally active gang members representing approximately 20,000 street gangs in more than 2,500 cities.
•Mexican DTOs increased the flow of several drugs (heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana) into the United States, primarily because they increased production of those drugs in Mexico.
•Drugs smuggled into the United States by Mexican DTOs usually are transported in private or commercial vehicles; however, Mexican DTOs also use cross-border tunnels, subterranean passageways, and low-flying small or ultralight aircraft to move drugs from Mexico into the United States.
•Mexican DTOs smuggled bulk cash drug proceeds totaling tens of billions of dollars from the United States through the Southwest Border and into Mexico. Much of the bulk cash (millions each week) was consolidated by the DTOs in several key areas, including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and North Carolina, where it was prepared for transport to the U.S.-Mexico border and then smuggled into Mexico.
•According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Mexican DTO members or associates acquire thousands of weapons each year in Arizona, California, and Texas and smuggle them across the border to Mexico.
Still, anything Gov. Jan Brewer says will "ignite controversy." As long as any official speaks bluntly and honestly about the crisis, media types will repudiate those remarks as extremist.
While driving to work the other day, westbound on the 22 Freeway, I noticed a big Chevy pickup getting on the road, merging over quite aggressively, pushing toward the carpool lane. The owner had painted a large sports slogan in the back window: #1 Mexico #1 Lakers. The driver was kinda pissed as he was unable to cut me off and get over to the unoccupied diamond lane. I noticed he was a young Hispanic guy, and he glared back at me with some pretty typical machismo. But it was that painted slogan on the back that got me to thinking: Yeah, the dude liked the Lakers, but if the U.S. and Mexico made it to the World Cup finals, no doubt this homie'd be rooting for the Mexican team.
So lo and behold, here's a pic of this morning's hard-copy Los Angeles Times, with the headline, "Mexican Flags Wave Again" --- and as the dude below looks like a gang-banger, not sure if that's the message LAT was hoping to send. Plus, checking at the website we find the headline, "World Cup Brings Mexican Flags back to Streets of Los Angeles," with a different picture at the link.
Actually, the Times badly overstates the decline of Mexican flags at the radical left's pro-amnesty rallies. And just drive around L.A. on Cinco de Mayo and you know what I'm talkin' about, yo!
Of course, the Times interviews Mexico fans who claim that soccer is different, "strictly cultural," says Miguel Haro at the piece.
You must understand how bitter of rivals Mexico and the USA are in the sport to know that rooting for both them, even when they don’t play each other, doesn’t make sense. Both teams are hated rivals. You wouldn’t be a fan of both Barcelona and Real Madrid, so why is it okay in this situation? The matches are derbies: fights break out both on the field and on the pitch, smack is talked in the press, and when one team loses, it is devastation just because of who they lost to instead of having lost 3 points. There is historical significance in the rivalry, such as the USA knocking Mexico out in the 2002 World Cup and Mexico raping the USA 0-5 last July then 2-1 again a month later. Our supporters usually don’t get along either. We have some bad Mexico fans, but many of the USA fans that I have encountered are racist and very uninformed about the sport (watching so much MLS does that to you). And I’ll state again, Mexico does have bad fans as well. Every team does. But I don’t fit in with the USA fans at all, and I’m fine with that.
Sorry - I meant the annual leftwing/progressive riot-masquerading-as-political-protest known as the G-20 summit in Toronto. The police have had to practically institute martial law in an effort to deter and prevent the widespread rioting and destruction that these leftwing thugs bring to whatever city the descend upon.
And check the communist organization page at the Toronto Community Mobilization Network. It's all about "environmental justice" and "migrant rights," and, well, you know: workers of the world, blah, blah ...
And since it's Friday, let's celebrate with some babe blogging. Here's Bethany Dempsey, wife of U.S. soccer player Clint Dempsey, at Sports Illustrated:
I never trust the estimates of impending fish population collapse, considering how little respect for truth environmentalists so eminently demonstrate. Still, this article's pretty interesting. At NYT, "Tuna's End":
THERE ARE TWO reasons that a mere fish should have inspired such a high-strung confrontation reminiscent of Greenpeace’s early days as a defender of whales. The first stems from fish enthusiasts who have for many years recognized the particular qualities of bluefin tuna — qualities that were they land-based creatures would establish them indisputably as “wildlife” and not just another “seafood” we eat without remorse. Not only is the bluefin’s dense, distinctly beefy musculature supremely appropriate for traversing the ocean’s breadth, but the animal also has attributes that make its evolutionary appearance seem almost deus ex machina, or rather machina ex deo — a machine from God. How else could a fish develop a sextantlike “pineal window” in the top of its head that scientists say enables it to navigate over thousands of miles? How else could a fish develop a propulsion system whereby a whip-thin crescent tail vibrates at fantastic speeds, shooting the bluefin forward at speeds that can reach 40 miles an hour? And how else would a fish appear within a mostly coldblooded phylum that can use its metabolic heat to raise its body temperature far above that of the surrounding water, allowing it to traverse the frigid seas of the subarctic?
It's something alright, for these ads to be flushed down the memory hole. Also interesting is to watch how the useful stooges, MoveOn's Eli Pariser and Daily Kos founder Markos Moultisas, not only defend the ad, but demonize General Petraeus as a liar and the U.S. mission in Iraq as a lost cause. Couldn't have been more wrong, and of course these are the same creeps who want a cut-and-run from Afghanistan. This is your Democratic Party establishment. And amazing how President Obama, who was the biggest anti-war candidate throughout 2007, has now placed Petraeus in charge after leading the opportunistic attacks on Iraq earlier. A strange world, indeed:
Large-scale demonstrations against Israel regularly appear in Arab cities all over the country, where it is not infrequent to hear the cries of “Death to the Jews” and where pictures of terrorist leaders from Hamas and Hizbullah are prominently displayed. These phenomena are a clear indication that a conflict between two peoples is the cause of friction.
The solution lies not in appeasing the maximalist territorial demands of the Palestinians, but in truly creating “two states for two peoples.”
The current demands from some in the international community are to create a homogeneous pure Palestinian state and a binational state in Israel. This becomes the one-and-a-half to half state solution. For lasting peace and security we need to create true political division between Arabs and Jews, with each enjoying self-determination.
Therefore, for a lasting and fair solution, there needs to be an exchange of populated territories to create two largely homogeneous states, one Jewish Israeli and the other Arab Palestinian. Of course, this is not to preclude that minorities will remain in either state where they will receive full civil rights.
There will be no so-called Palestinian right of return.
Just as the Jewish refugees from Arab lands found a solution in Israel, so too Palestinian refugees will only be incorporated into a Palestinian state. This state needs to be demilitarized and Israel will need to retain a presence on its borders to ensure no smuggling of arms. In my opinion, these need to be our red lines.
We have seen that history is moving away from attempts to accommodate competing national aspirations in a single state. The former Yugoslavia was broken up into many separate states. Czechoslovakia was split into two, and even in Belgium there are strong voices who wish to see that nation broken into separate Walloon and Flemish territories. The precedent of creating new states based on ethnic, national and even religious boundaries has been established in the international community and is becoming the trend.
With all the difficulties involved, this is the only solution that ensures long-term stability in the region.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is telling President Barack Obama that she's anxious for details on how his administration's plans to tighten border security will apply to Arizona.
Brewer tells Obama in a letter released Thursday that she'd like specifics on National Guard deployments and other steps to be taken in Arizona before a planned Monday visit to Phoenix by Obama administration officials to discuss his plans.
The meeting is an outgrowth of Brewer's June 3 visit to the White House where she and Obama discussed border security and immigration.
The Republican governor also renews her invitation to have the Democratic president visit the U.S.-Mexico border to get a firsthand look at conditions. And she says lunch would be on her.
At NYT, "Lose a General, Win a War." Not enough heads roll at the top level of the military, apparently:
Back in World War II, the Army had no qualms about letting officers go; at least 16 of the 155 generals who commanded divisions in combat during the war were relieved while in combat. George Marshall, the nation’s top general, felt that a willingness to fire subordinates was a requirement of leadership. He once described Gen. Hap Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, as a fine man, but one who “didn’t have the nerve to get rid of men not worth a damn.”
Marshall had plenty of nerve: in 1940 and ’41, as war loomed, he forced into retirement several hundred officers he deemed too old and slow to be effective. When the commandant at Leavenworth, Brig. Gen. Charles Bundel, told him that updating the complete set of Army training manuals would take 18 months, Marshall offered him three months, and then four months, to do the job. It can’t be done, Bundel twice responded.
“You be very careful about that,” Marshall told him in a telephone conversation.
“No, it can’t be done,” Bundel repeated.
“I’m sorry, then you are relieved,” Marshall said.
About a year ago, I wrote a post called "What's Up With David Weigel?" That was when Weigel was writing at the Washington Independent, a far-left online newspaper.
It was a speculative post, but as I conclude about Weigel, "Folks need to be careful about their allegiances."
So now it turns out that Weigel's gotten himself into a bit of a jam. He's a contributor to the left wing press collective, "JournoList" (founded by hard-lefty Ezra Klein), and some his own intemperate e-mails published there have been made public. The problem's not so much what he wrote, but where. As Will Collierpoints out:
Weigel's personality aside, the fact that he's a contributing member of Klein's liberal propaganda-coordination clique should have been disclosed from the very beginning of Weigel's "reporting" on conservatives. It says nothing good about either Weigel or his bosses at the WaPo that none of the above thought Weigel's membership in a glorified version of Media Matters would be something worth notifying readers about.
I've given Weigel the benefit of the doubt in the past, largely because Robert Stacy McCain has vouched for him. But no more. If you're mostly hanging out with lefties (which is what a wrote about a year ago) you're mostly going to echo left-wing talking points. On occasion Weigel's bucked the stereotype, but I think this episode pretty much destroys what little credibility among those on the right who might otherwise have trusted him.
ADDED: I almost spoke too soon. If Wonkette's going to bat for Weigel ... well, the cat's really out of the bag.
The lack of a $15 fishing license cost the Citation $912,825, not to mention first place and a spot in the record books in the 52nd annual Big Rock Blue Marlin Fishing Tournament.
Ouch? You bet so.
“It hurts,” said angler Andy Thomossan, who caught a record 883-pound blue marlin Monday that he and everyone else bet would win the $1.66 million tournament. “No record. No money. No fish. No nothing. Yep, it’s a nice ending to the story, isn’t it?”
Not for Thomossan and Co.
The Citation’s victory was initially put on hold Saturday night during the awards banquet and a day later erased by Big Rock officials because a crew member didn’t have a fishing license, said Thomossan, 63, who lives in Richmond, Va.
The former Beatle predicted in an interview that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico might expedite a move to cleaner, renewable energy sources in the world.
Sir Paul could have stopped while he was ahead, but McCartney went on to compare people who don't believe in global warming to "those who don't believe there was a Holocaust."
"Sadly we need disasters like this to show people," McCartney said in an exclusive interview with The Sun. "Some people don't believe in climate warning -- like those who don't believe there was a Holocaust."
McCartney continued, "But the facts indicate that there's something going on and we've got to be aware of it if we want our kids to inherit a decent world, not a complete nightmare of a planet -- clean, renewable energy is for starters."
Check Henry Olsen, at National Affairs, "Populism, American Style." Olsen contrasts the millenarian populism of modern totalitarian regimes to the historically moderate populism of the American case:
American populism shares with its classical cousin the use of heated rhetoric against an unjust "other," and the idea that popular control of the state is essential to the restoration of justice. But it breaks from the classical model in three significant respects.
First, successful populist movements tend to characterize the American people not as helpless victims, but as honest folk dispossessed of their right to achieve prosperity and happiness through self-improvement and hard work. As such, American populists seek not a charismatic leader who will bring them order and justice, but rather a re-opening of the avenues to self-advancement and self-reliance.
Second, the "other" in American populism tends not to be vilified as an implacable enemy without rights. Instead, he is an adversary: one who might be corrupt or acting unjustly at the moment, but still a fellow citizen who retains his basic American goodness, is capable of redemption, and is secure in his rights. Despite some reckless accusations to the contrary, today's populist movement seems no different on this front.
Third and most important, effective American populists generally do not seek to take the enemy's property to redistribute it to the people....
This passage might raise an eyebrow for folks today looking for lessons from the past:
In the '60s, many Americans grew uneasy with the course the country seemed to be taking, both politically and socially. The America of farms and small towns was giving way to a nation of suburbs; the growth of large corporations, the rise of television, and the sharp increase in internal mobility were eroding the cohesiveness of local communities. Accompanying these changes was the growth of the national government, which had continued apace even under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower. Despite increasing affluence and relative peace abroad, an ever-larger number of Americans felt their country was becoming unrecognizable — and they wanted to take it back.
So it was that intellectual conservatism and popular anxiety joined forces in Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign to create a crude populism of the right. But despite what would appear to have been a favorable political climate, this amalgam proved dismally unpopular. While the rhetoric of Goldwater's campaign was generally fairly measured, that of his backers was too often not. Much like the Populist farmers in the late 1890s, Goldwater's supporters felt themselves to be oppressed. Many railed against elites, sometimes crossing the line from battling an adversary to assaulting an enemy; they argued, for instance, that there was a conscious conspiracy between business, government, and intellectuals to end American freedom and to yield to communist ambitions at home and abroad ....
Ronald Reagan, then an increasingly political Hollywood actor, entered the fray near the end of the campaign with a nationally televised speech on Goldwater's behalf. Casting the election as a choice between "up or down — up to man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism," Reagan accused incumbent president Lyndon Johnson of spreading socialism. Johnson's administration, Reagan said, was seeking to "trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state" and engaging in "appeasement" with our enemies. Noting that he was a former Democrat, Reagan closed with a conscious invocation of Franklin Roosevelt: "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness." The movie star's message roused the faithful, but fell flat among the voting masses.
Goldwater's crushing defeat seemed to all but the most die-hard conservatives to be the death knell of this nascent movement. Viewed against the backdrop of American political history, it is not hard to see why Goldwater lost: The tone and ideas of some of his extreme backers were viewed as odd and frightening by most voters ....
But check this passage on the prospect for upcoming elections:
Those who believe that the aggressive, angry pitch of the Tea Partiers' rhetoric will automatically alienate independent voters should think again. As we have seen, successful populist movements define adversaries in stark and often abrasive terms. Skilled political leaders in a democracy — figures like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan — know what pundits and academics often overlook: that they must move the heart before they can persuade the mind. In our modern mass democracy especially, this often requires a simple narrative: an easily identifiable "good" hero, a "bad" villain, and an unambiguous moral arc — one that shows how society can be redeemed from its current, fallen state, and how average Americans can flourish under the reformed regime. Such an appeal obviously requires sharp rhetoric and clear divisions.
Critics of the Tea Partiers and other conservative populists are right, however, in their concerns that aggressive rhetoric can go too far. William Jennings Bryan lost because he painted a portrait of his time that voters didn't recognize, and because he made a majority afraid. Some libertarian populists, with their rejection of every facet of the modern welfare state, are likely to do the same — because even this center-right nation does not want to see the welfare state dismantled. And just as some of Barry Goldwater's supporters tainted his campaign with their accusations of communist conspiracies reaching even to the presidency, the conspiracy theorists who insist that President Obama was not born in America risk damaging conservative populism today.
Sound statements.
A skilled conservative/libertarian might do well to ponder them as we head into 2012's "invisible primary," which launches almost as soon as the votes from this November midterms are counted. But who might be that skilled, that is, "Reaganesque"?
Lot's of people have a blog, does that make them bloggers?
I don't think so. Bloggers have, as their primary focus, blogging. They specialize in the sort of short-form journalism and commentary that is blogging. Most of the people on the list started blogging but to call them bloggers now would be to strain the definition of the word.
Maybe the blogging world has so transformed that the people listed should be called New Journalists. I don't know. Just because someone hasn't attended J-School does not mean that they're not journalists. And just because they work at the Weekly Standard, or National Review Online, or some other paid conservative online weekly doesn't, by definition, make them non-journalists.
I'm just posting the conclusion, so be sure to RTWT:
McChrystal shouldn’t have given that interview. But whether or not he is sacked will make little difference to the real issue here. For what the article has confirmed is that the American prosecution of the Afghanistan war is flawed, chaotic, and incompetent and will hit the buffers unless someone gets a grip. And that means fighting this war as if it really is a war and not a ‘nation-building’ exercise; and saying unequivocally that America is there for as long as it takes because, however awful and bloody this conflict is, the alternative – a jihadi-boosting defeat for the west and the Talebanisation of Pakistan – is infinitely worse.
RELATED: For once, a decent editorial at the Los Angeles Times, from yesterday:
Unfortunately, McChrystal's remarks are distracting attention from the graver question of whether this country's increasingly costly involvement in Afghanistan is stabilizing that country and neutralizing the threat posed by terrorists to the United States. The best reason to bring McChrystal home for consultations Wednesday is not to upbraid him about his loose tongue; it's to press him on whether the strategy he sold the president is working.
Holding off again on the SoCal punk roundups for a bit. Haven't seen ace commenter Kreiz for a while, so maybe some vintage Rod Stewart will bring back out a bit. Enjoy Stewart and The Faces, "You Wear It Well" and "Maggie May":
Americans are more pessimistic about the state of the country and less confident in President Barack Obama's leadership than at any point since Mr. Obama entered the White House, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
The survey also shows grave and growing concerns about the Gulf oil spill, with overwhelming majorities of adults favoring stronger regulation of the oil industry and believing that the spill will affect the nation's economy and environment.
Sixty-two percent of adults in the survey feel the country is on the wrong track, the highest level since before the 2008 election. Just one-third think the economy will get better over the next year, a 7-point drop from a month ago and the low point of Mr. Obama's tenure.
Amid anxiety over the nation's course, support for Mr. Obama and other incumbents is eroding. For the first time, more people disapprove of Mr. Obama's job performance than approve. And 57% of voters would prefer to elect a new person to Congress than re-elect their local representatives, the highest share in 18 years.
The results show "a really ugly mood and an unhappy electorate," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with GOP pollster Bill McInturff. "The voters, I think, are just looking for change, and that means bad news for incumbents and in particular for the Democrats."
Leaders of the international Rock'n'Roll community voiced their outrage today over the news that one of their own, who they always thought was a dependable degenerate extraordinaire, turned out to be a double agent, possibly working for the Reactionary Conservative Cabal Internationale.
Sir Elton John, who had been recently put on probation for singing at Rush Limbaugh's wedding, violated his parole and defied the progressive community by flying to Israel, where he played Thursday night to a crowd of 50,000 screaming occupiers of Palestine at a Tel Aviv stadium, thus breaking the international blockade aimed at sensory deprivation and cultural disorientation of the Zionist entity.
While the more disciplined rockers like Carlos Santana, Elvis Costello, and The Pixies obediently canceled their concerts for Jews in compliance with the above directive, the soon-to-be ex-star Elton John told the Zionist audience those cancellations "ain't gonna stop me from playing here, baby." According to one informant, "non-person John then put on sunglasses of the color of the Israeli flag, and aggravated his treasonous rhetoric by adding, 'We do not cherry-pick our consciences,' before hitting the opening chords of his 1972 hit 'Crocodile Rock.'"
It turns out that Ms. Davies has "introduced two bills in the House of Commons to change the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to prohibit discrimination against a person based on their social condition."
This bill would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of social condition. In doing so it would protect from discrimination people who are experiencing social or economic disadvantage, such as adequate housing, homelessness, source of income, occupation, level of education, poverty, or any similar circumstance. As the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation and many other organizations have pointed out, a person's standing in society is often determined by his or her occupation, income, education level or family background.
Legislation such as this is a grave danger to a free society, grave danger to morals, ethics and commonsense ... they want to eradicate personal reponsibility and place the burden on the fabric of society.
Maywood's $10.1-million general fund budget has a deficit of at least $450,000, officials said. Beyond that, the city has been unable to obtain insurance because of a history of lawsuits, many involving its Police Department, which also patrols Cudahy. Operating without insurance would make even routine government services highly risky.
"We're limited on our choices and limited on what we can do," Councilman Felipe Aguirre said. "We don't want to file for bankruptcy. We don't want to disappear as a city."
Aguirre said filing for bankruptcy was not an option for Maywood because its problems were related specifically to insurance coverage and not cash flow.
But during a contentious City Council meeting that stretched late into Monday night, opponents of the plan accused council members of managing the city incompetently by failing to maintain the city's insurance coverage.
"You single-handedly destroyed the city," Lizeth Sandoval, the city treasurer, told the City Council ....
The action is yet another blow for the predominantly Latino city of 45,000 residents densely packed into about 1.2 square miles in the heavily industrial southeast part of Los Angeles County. Officials estimate about half the city's residents are illegal immigrants.
Maywood has had a contentious history for years. In the last decade, shouting matches have erupted during council meetings, election campaigns have been marked by political hit pieces, and even an accusation was made that a city clerk tried to have a councilman killed.
The Police Department has been the focus of troubles as well. Four years ago, the department faced a political outcry when it began running checkpoints that resulted in hundreds of cars being taken away from unlicensed illegal immigrants. Critics charged the checkpoints were an attempt to make money off Maywood's large illegal immigrant population.
The checkpoint sparked a political movement that brought a new council that was more sympathetic to illegal immigrants. But Maywood was back in the headlines when it declared itself a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants, making the town a target of conservative talk radio and TV news shows.
And at KTLA, "City of Maywood is on the verge of complete financial collapse":
A majority of Americans disapprove of the way President Barack Obama is handling the oil spill off the Gulf Coast, but a majority of Americans also said BP hasn’t done enough to stop the spill.
Some 69% said BP has done less — or much less — than what should be expected of the oil company. However, Americans don’t think much of the president, Congress, or the federal government’s response, either.
President Barack Obama is briefed on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico aboard Air Force One en route to New Orleans, La., Sunday, May 2, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama listens to Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, right, during a briefing on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, aboard Air Force One en route to New Orleans, La., Sunday, May 2, 2010. Also participating in the meeting are, from left, John Brennan, assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism, Carol Browner, assistant to the President for energy and climate change, and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen, left, who is serving as the National Incident Commander, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, right, brief President Barack Obama about the situation along the Gulf Coast following the BP oil spill, at the Coast Guard Venice Center, in Venice, La., Sunday, May 2, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama, National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, and Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph look at the effect the BP oil spill has had on Fourchon Beach in Port Fourchon, La., May 28, 2010. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)
One of the Presidential helicopters flies over southern Louisiana as President Barack Obama returns to New Orleans after visiting Grand Isle, May 28, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy
President Obama removed Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as commander of American forces in Afghanistan on Wednesday, and tapped as his replacement the general’s boss, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of the 2007 surge in Iraq.
Mr. Obama, standing with General Petraeus and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the White House Rose Garden to underline the continuity and solidity of his Afghan policy, said that he had regretfully accepted General McChrystal’s resignation.
He said he had done so not out of personal insult, but because a magazine article featuring contemptuous quotes from the general and his staff about senior administration officials had not met standards of behavior for a commanding general, and threatened to undermine civilian control of the military.
“War is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general or president,” Mr. Obama said. “As difficult as it is to lose General McChrystal, I believe it is the right decision for national security.”
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