Stephens: To the Class of 2012

Attention graduates: Tone down your egos, shape up your minds.

By BRET STEPHENS

Dear Class of 2012:

Allow me to be the first one not to congratulate you. Through exertions that—let’s be honest—were probably less than heroic, most of you have spent the last few years getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased degree. Now you’re entering a lousy economy, courtesy of the very president whom you, as freshmen, voted for with such enthusiasm. Please spare us the self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with your parents. They’re the ones who spent a fortune on your education only to get you back— return-to-sender, forwarding address unknown.

No doubt some of you have overcome real hardships or taken real degrees. A couple of years ago I hired a summer intern from West Point. She came to the office directly from weeks of field exercises in which she kept a bulletproof vest on at all times, even while sleeping. She writes brilliantly and is as self-effacing as she is accomplished. Now she’s in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.

If you’re like that intern, please feel free to feel sorry for yourself. Just remember she doesn’t.

Unfortunately, dear graduates, chances are you’re nothing like her. And since you’re no longer children, at least officially, it’s time someone tells you the facts of life. The other facts.

Fact One is that, in our “knowledge-based” economy, knowledge counts. Yet here you are, probably the least knowledgeable graduating class in history.

A few months ago, I interviewed a young man with an astonishingly high GPA from an Ivy League university and aspirations to write about Middle East politics. We got on the subject of the Suez Crisis of 1956. He was vaguely familiar with it. But he didn’t know who was president of the United States in 1956. And he didn’t know who succeeded that president.

Pop quiz, Class of ‘12: Do you?

Many of you have been reared on the cliché that the purpose of education isn’t to stuff your head with facts but to teach you how to think. Wrong. I routinely interview college students, mostly from top schools, and I notice that their brains are like old maps, with lots of blank spaces for the uncharted terrain. It’s not that they lack for motivation or IQ. It’s that they can’t connect the dots when they don’t know where the dots are in the first place.

Now to Fact Two: Your competition is global. Shape up. Don’t end your days like a man I met a few weeks ago in Florida, complaining that Richard Nixon had caused his New York City business to fail by opening up China.

In places like Ireland, France, India and Spain, your most talented and ambitious peers are graduating into economies even more depressed than America’s. Unlike you, they probably speak several languages. They may also have a degree in a hard science or engineering—skills that transfer easily to the more remunerative jobs in investment banks or global consultancies.

I know a lot of people like this from my neighborhood in New York City, and it’s a good thing they’re so well-mannered because otherwise they’d be eating our lunch. But if things continue as they are, they might soon be eating yours.

Which reminds me of Fact Three: Your prospective employers can smell BS from miles away. And most of you don’t even know how badly you stink.

When did puffery become the American way? Probably around the time Norman Mailer came out with “Advertisements for Myself.” But at least that was in the service of provoking an establishment that liked to cultivate an ideal of emotional restraint and public reserve.

To read through your CVs, dear graduates, is to be assaulted by endless Advertisements for Myself. Here you are, 21 or 22 years old, claiming to have accomplished feats in past summer internships or at your school newspaper that would be hard to credit in a biography of Walter Lippmann or Ernie Pyle.

If you’re not too bright, you may think this kind of nonsense goes undetected; if you’re a little brighter, you probably figure everyone does it so you must as well.

But the best of you don’t do this kind of thing at all. You have an innate sense of modesty. You’re confident that your résumé needs no embellishment. You understand that less is more.

In other words, you’re probably capable of thinking for yourself. And here’s Fact Four: There will always be a market for people who can do that.

In every generation there’s a strong tendency for everyone to think like everyone else. But your generation has an especially bad case, because your mass conformism is masked by the appearance of mass nonconformism. It’s a point I learned from my West Point intern, when I asked her what it was like to lead such a uniformed existence.

Her answer stayed with me: Wearing a uniform, she said, helped her figure out what it was that really distinguished her as an individual.

Now she’s a second lieutenant, leading a life of meaning and honor, figuring out how to Think Different for the sake of a cause that counts. Not many of you will be able to follow in her precise footsteps, nor do you need to do so. But if you can just manage to tone down your egos, shape up your minds, and think unfashionable thoughts, you just might be able to do something worthy with your lives. And even get a job. Good luck!

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I guess he thinks this is different from surrendering to the enemy, the same enemy killing our best & brightest kids, those willingly taking-up arms to defend an America whose leader is freeing their mortal enemies to come and kill them again.

It isn’t.

It’s surrender in all but name. And our willingness - on the part of our civilian AND our military leaders - to give these enemies another shot at killing our troops, is disgusting.

Did we parole Germans in WW2? No.

Did we parole Imperial Japanese soldiers? No.

So we are paroling Jihadis… because…?

“Despicable” is too weak a word to describe a combat general who would allow his troops to be put at-risk by his commander in chief, who would willingly send into battle men he was ordering to risk their lives to kill and/or capture those trying to kill them… and then free these mortal enemies on the promise not to engage in further hostilities.

“Naive” and “stupid” are the most generous terms to describe our civilian leadership of our armed forces at this time; “Enemies” is the correct term.

Not surprisingly, the Obama Administration knows nothing of the rules of war - or of our own military training and the expectations and demands we put on our own warriors.

The technical term for the release of a POW on a promise to refrain from further hostilities against his captors is, “battlefield parole,” and ALL of our military personnel are trained NOT to accept it, regardless of what is occurring to them in their captivity. Yet now we give our mortal enemies three hots & a cot, medical care, cultural food, playtime, books… and now we parole them, too.

Insanity.

Here is Part III of The American Fighting Man’s Code of Conduct:

“If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.”

This is REQUIRED knowledge at all service academies and in Basic Training in all services.

So we train our guys - drum it into them during Basic Training and ongoing training throughout their careers - NOT to accept what Obama has freely offered our enemies.

What kind of “leadership” is this?

If our military leaders still had ANY honor, they would quit rather than accept for our enemies a parole they require their own men to reject.

If we REQUIRE our men to reject parole, then how can we engage in parole for our enemies?

How can Obama’s order to our military to extend parole to our enemies when we preclude it for our own men (and will and have put on-trial our own soldiers in past wars for accepting it) even be a legal order? Didn’t we address the issue of “my commander ordered it” with Lt. Calley and My Lai in Vietnam? Haven’t we trod this ground already?

And I’m not even talking about the Koranic requirement to lie to your enemies if doing so advances the cause of islam and jihad.

If my son were killed by a paroled jihadi, I’d start at the top of the chain of command and work my way down as far as I got. What are they going to do? Take away my son? And any parent who does NOT do so should be ashamed of himself/herself.

And any battlefield commander willingly sending into combat men to kill and to die, when he knows those captured will be released to attack his men again is not a man, not a leader of men, and certainly not a warrior.

He is a despicable excuse for a human being.

Why the military has chosen to become a Palace Guard, deploying at the whim of the Executive, whoever he is, of whatever party, rather than the defender of the Constitution they are Constitutionally required to be, is beyond me. And, No, the fact that the President is the Commander in Chief is not relevant. A force can be commanded ONLY after it has been DEPLOYED, and ONLY Congress can deploy American forces into combat.

And don’t forget, Al Qaeda currently has an American in captivity, promising to kill him if their demands are not met. And Obama stands by his we-don’t-negotiate-with-terrorist stance…. as he frees Taliban killers.

Obviously the operative Obama model is: Free anti-Americans, the more violent and the more American soldiers and Marines they have killed, the better, but let American captives stay and rot or be beheaded by these Dark Ages barbarians we are for unknown reasons fighting as equals in an exchange of bullets, wasting American lives rather than just nuking them as they so richly deserve.

Why is it so difficult for people to understand Obama is the enemy?

Every country that rejected Keynes exited the Depression years before America; it isn’t as though no one knows what these policies always result in: A worse economy and more central government control over the citizens; what do you think Obama’s goal is? He’s a smart guy; he KNOWS what Keynes always results in: economic destruction.

Using the same Keynesian policies FDR used to prolong the Depression, Obama has nuked our economy and our kids’ futures with the highest youth unemployment EVER and the highest sustained unemployment EVER, and debt as far as the eye can see.

Now he is telling our fighting me to go and fight and kill and die for a war he does not want to win and is doing everything within his power to lose - and if the deaths of more American warriors help him lose more quickly, that’s just fine with him.

At home he is dividing us by race and gender and class and nationality - turning the ages-old ‘melting pot’ on its head as he destroys what America has always been… and he is doing all of this to retain power he uses un- and anti-constitutionally.

Obama IS THE ENEMY.

Obama - and his entire anti-freedom, anti-liberty, anti-Western, anti-American ideology MUST GO…

… or freedom WILL go.

Your choice, Voter, what’s it going to be? A free America based on the Constitution and Rule of Law? Or a dictatorship by Obama?

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On the other hand, if you recognize that the table below represents utter destruction of lives, hopes, families and dreams, and that, yes, this IS Obama’s fault, then you should vote for Romney, whether you agree with him on everything or not. (The economy inherited by Reagan from Carter(D), BTW, was worse than what Obama inherited from Bush - higher unemployment, worse prime interest rate, higher inflation. It is only conceit that allows Obama and his sycophantic media to continue to proclaim ‘the worst since the Great Depression,’ which these same policies made worse, as well.)

Remember, it isn’t as though Obama and his team did not know this economic disaster would result from his policies. FDR used these same Keynesian policies in the Depression, and created the same result. Every nation ignoring Keynes exited the Depression years before America did. These policies - Keynes - used by FDR and Obama ALWAYS result in economic destruction. Doesn’t matter if you agree with that statement any more than if you agree with gravity.

Here’s your change!

Just take this last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation’s history. Over 27 times as fast. Metaphorically speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the left lane.
27 times faster, it would be doing 7,555 MPH!

Sources:
(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration;

(2) Wall Street Journal;

(3) Bureau of Labor Statistics;

(4) Census Bureau;

(5) USDA;

(6) U.S. Dept. Of Labor;

(7) FHFA;

(8) Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller;

(9) RealtyTrac;

(10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ;

(11) The Conference Board;

(12) FDIC;

(13) Federal Reserve;

(14) U.S. Treasury

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Do Republicans, in their love of the military, just keep on fighting regardless of any semblance of reason… just because we ARE fighting? Do Democrats just reflexively run-away from a fight – any fight? I don’t really care right now with regard to Afghanistan. We seem to be at the point reached by Colonel David Hackworth, one of America’s most decorated soldiers, when he threw-up his hands in Vietnam and said he’d never allow HIS son to fight there.

A muslim zealot used Afghanistan to attack America. The then-government, which we had long ignored, refused to give him up. So we attacked them and put bin laden on the run. Capturing or killing bin laden was our original goal. Done.

The conceit that we can, in historic terms, instantly make post-Enlightenment Westerners out of arguably the most tribal, illiterate and backward people on the planet is and always has been absurd. (And my brother taught physics in the University of Kabul in 1977, so I have some idea of what I speak.) If it remains our conceit that we can overturn the Koran and its teachings on women, liberty, freedom, law, reason, etc., and if this conceit is why we continue to waste Western lives (and there is NOTHING in the entire muslim world worth the life of one single Westerner, let alone one American), then we are crazy. And I am not some whacky leftist- I went to school at USAFA during Vietnam.

It is not and cannot be America’s role to force the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Reason, the Information Age, or any other idea down the throats of people killing one another – and their own daughters – for a thousands years based on some tribal mythology.

Had we understood history, and that limited war NEVER works, and total war almost always does (who was a better American military and economic ally: Japan or Germany in 1965, or Vietnam in 1995?). Had we truly understood history and our role as a Great Power, when bin laden was in Tora Bora – no farms or families or cities within tens of miles – we would have removed the entire top of the range with a couple of nuclear weapons, destroying bin laden and ensuring the world understood America was not playing-around, that we take freedom and peace seriously, this would have been over thousands of irreplaceable American lives ago.

Instead, we decided, again, and again incorrectly, that limited war would convince these medieval warriors that our toys were so cool they could never possibly win, when, of course, it is the will to win that wins wars, not cool toys. And of course they now are winning, or have won… because they, unlike we, have the will to do so.

War is policy, not a manhood measurement. The Left hates ramification and consequences of actions, so no longer willingly goes to war for ANY reason (though wars entered under Democrat presidents account for 98% of all American KIA since 1812), and the GOP hates to stop fighting, seeing it as somehow more patriotic to keep throwing-away the lives not only of our best & brightest, but of the children those best & brightest will never have… just because we find ourselves on the field of combat.

It is time to quit the field in Afghanistan, or to destroy the enemy. Stop wasting lives. If they attack us again, nuke them. If they don’t, but continue treating women as worthless, that’s THEIR problem, not mine, and certainly not my son’s.

And if you don’t like the way they treat their women, don’t pretend you’re a “multicultural” person. But recognize this: It’s THEIR problem.

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Some of you know I grew-up spending part of my summers at a working ranch / summer camp in the California Sierra Nevada mountains.

I was slopping hogs at 10 years old. This involved putting all the un-eaten food from 100 people into a few 5-gal buckets three times a day, placing those buckets on the ends of a long pole over your shoulders, and walking with a bud (with the same setup) a few hundred yards from the Ranch House to the pig pen. This was a heavy load for a 10-yr-old. Then we stepped into the pen, whacked the pigs with a stick to push them away, and poured the slop into their trough – while trying NOT to get pushed down into the mud & run-over by a half-dozen hungry pigs. This, of course, involved working as an under-18-yr-old in the yard with animals. No-can-do under Hilda Solis and the Obama Admin.

Over the next five years (I went there until I was 15) I graduated to the cows (while still feeding the pigs every chance I got). The counselors (over 18, thank goodness!!) got a couple of cows into their milking stalls to be hand-milked. Another Camper and I, both rising early to get onto the (very popular) “Chore Crew” for the week (chores were assigned for a week; camp went for 2-week sessions) would pour a #10 can of grain into the trough in front of each cow to give her something to do while being milked. While the counselor was milking her we’d cart & fork a few bales of alfalfa to the milk calves (future milk cows) and the weaner calves (calves being weaned… future table beef) and feed them. And practice roping the calves so we’d know how to use a rope when we got older.This meant working in the lot with stock, another no-no under Hilda Solis and Obama. We also fed chickens and collected eggs.

I also learned to saddle horses & ride (working in the stockyard), rope calves (ditto), separate calves from cows for branding (same), and harness and hitch a horse to a cart and drive the cart. No. No. No. And no.

For two summers in college I worked at this ranch camp, the second summer staying-on after camp closed around Labor Day, working from dark-to-dark until just before Thanksgiving driving a dozer helping finish the years-under-construction dam and making a lake - and doing all the ranch chores… As a counselor I taught rock climbing, but my ranch chores remained…  I milked the cows, butchered the beeves (and pigs, and chickens), fixed fences, rode horses, roped calves, branded calves, drove cattle from one field to another, separated calves from cows for branding, etc. Thanks goodness I was over 18 by then!

These were – easily – among the best times I had growing-up. In fact, I continued going up to “The Ranch” until I was 50 – every Fall for the Roundup  – riding, roping, branding cows, and butchering the hogs – and bringing home fresh pork. The boss (the son of the man who started it and ran it when I was a kid) and I then had a falling-out that had been a long time coming, but which also unfortunately meant my kids didn’t have this fun when they were growing, and I no longer get to ride through the Sierras with a good horse under me and rope a running calf. Too bad. Among the best times in my life.)

But – the point is – I was expected to do chores as a kid on this ranch (at home, too, but Obama hasn’t outlawed that – yet.)

My folks paid - for them - serious coin for me to go to this camp – and I had to work my butt off there sometimes. We also built an earth-fill dam, raked weeds (stinging nettles among them), collected firewood cut and split by counselors and carried to the truck by us kids (ranch chores!!), swept the drive and the Rose Arbor daily, saddled and unsadlled our own horses, had inspection at our (outdoor) bunks to keep clean and worked in the (2-acre) kitchen garden weeding, picking and snapping beans, cutting lettuce and squash, picking corn for dinner, etc. We grew and raised much of what we ate. It was a WORKING ranch AND a summer camp back then.

But we also slept outside under the stars, swam in a spring-fed pool (for which I helped make and lay the decking tiles as a kid), learned to ride and saddle horses, ate great fresh food prepared by an excellent kitchen staff,  hiked & rode in the Sierras, played outdoor games, sang each evening as the boss played his guitar (he’s a great guitar player, too), did talent shows, and had GREAT, FUN, TIRING days – every day for weeks at a time.

But now that we have the tyrant party in charge, evidently if you are under 18 you are not allowed to work with stock, or in a stockyard anymore.

No slopping the hogs… who will do that? No feeding the chickens or collecting eggs… who will do that? No milking cows – well, actually the boss, ardent anti-capitalist & seriously liberal Democrat that he is, stopped milking cows years ago, deciding that the cost of alfalfa over the winter was more than what he could BUY milk for, keeping more of his profit… and taking most of the “ranch” out of the “ranch camp.” Feeding cows, milking cows, moving calves, etc., already had succumbed to a choice of profit over the entire IDEA of a working ranch camp… and he BUYS milk in-town now (a 90-min drive each way — think of the carbon footprint.. OMG!!!) …  but I digress. Heck, he may even be buying his BEEF for all I know by now…

Anyway, IF this camp is still in business with the Obama-extended recession (private summer camp nowadays is a very upper-middle-class activity pretty much reliant on the 1% and disposable income, most of which Obama has rid the nation of for anyone not making several hundred thousand dollars a year – MINIMUM - remember, this is California we’re discussing, and this camp is a few thousands bucks per session (was a few hundred back in the day…), and non-recovery, via Obama’s implementation of the same Keynesian policies that prolonged the Great Depression by several years (all European nations that ignored Keynes were out of the Depression YEARS before America exited.. shhh.. don’t tell Krugman or Bernanke!), then these new Obama regulations will drive this ranch camp OUT of business. (It is not Congress legislating, but the Obama Administration regulating the Family Farm out of existence with these policies… with no kids learning hard work, who will farm in the future? No one. Read the linked article.)

But, hey, you get the government for which you vote, and these owners ALWAYS vote Dem, so if Obama has put them out of business with his economic policies… or is about to put them out of business with his you-can’t-work-with-stock-if-you’re-under-18 policies (which means ALL the work will have to be done by paid adults rather than much by paying kids – kinda reverses the profit-loss picture for the camp), then that’s what they voted for.

Too bad – I had the best times of my life up there for 40 years… And with the experiences there I was able to work a Dude Ranch in the Rockies one summer as an adult (on vacation from IBM), saddling & unsaddling tens of horses twice a day and riding good horses through the Wind River Mountains for weeks at a time. Best weeks I ever spent (this is where the ending of my book China Rising came from, by the way; you should read it!) … and all these great times in the Sierras and Rockies, because of the Ranch Camp and the way it was run when I was a kid…

But… children working on farm & ranch chores, and being held responsible for getting them done well and on-time, develops personal responsibility. Can’t have children developing personal responsibility, I guess – they’d wind-up voting for Republicans, those mean capitalist bastards.

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We are going to have several proposals to raise our taxes on the upcoming ballot. The government, of course (run by Dems) wants to raise our taxes. This of course will cause more upper-middle class voters, families, workers and job creators to leave CA, making our fiscal problems even worse than when Dems first began destroying the state.

Here’s my answer:

I don’t know that we won’t vote it down. Not even sure of the current poll standings. Actually we usually do vote-down tax increases.

Why are CA voters this dumb? Have you looked at our schools? Educated people (not overeducated or overtrained people) don’t vote for Dems. People being (i.e. not yet-) educated (students) and uneducated (poor, inner city, dropouts, welfare queens, etc.) are the Dem base. And fraudulent voters - Republicans always have to win by larger than the margin of cheat, because Dems ALWAYS cheat. Always. They cannot with without cheating. This is why they are against voter-ID laws. JFK cheated. Gore tried to cheat and didn’t cheat big enough. Franken cheated. It looks like Obama cheated - evidently IN and one other state would not have had him on the ballot save for a whole lotta invalid signatures that now are just coming to light.

Here’s the deal on CA voters. We have about 58 counties. The ones on the coast and surrounding the major metros are blue. That’s about 10-12. The counties inland - east - of LA and north of the Mexican border are blue. Sacrademento is blue for obvious reasons. The counties near Reno are blue because it’s great country and you have to be rich to live there - usually to the point where you don’t work anymore. The rest of the state is Red; about 40+ counties.

Coastal counties are blue for three reasons - they are the major metros and you need to be fairly rich (or on welfare and living in a minority ghetto)  to live there and most schools are there - and students are stupid. CA metros have large quantities of minority voters who are on welfare and vote for whoever gives them the biggest check, with zero thought of who provides them the opportunity to get educated and earn their own living. They vote Blue. The counties within a few days’ walk of Mexico are primarily desert, so sparsely populated, but large on Hispanic voters, so vote Blue. Rich folks in SF and the surrounding counties pretend that everyone is the same the world over if just given the chance (i.e. they are historically stupid) and so vote Blue. The counties who work hard for a living - all the serious ag counties, oil & mining (hard workers, self-reliant) - and who don’t rely on welfare - fewer minority voters, and have fewer PhDs (overtrained louts) vote Red.

But I think there’s another reason we are Blue. Our legal-age-white voting population is very largely Boomer. I think we all develop our ideas about politics (and the economy) when we are teenagers. (When you think of the increase in gas, do you automatically say - when I started driving gas was 35 cents? I do - and that was in 1971.) What was the primary motivator for teen voters in the late 1960s and early 1970s? Vietnam. So LOTS of Boomers became Dems because of Vietnam - and have never re-thought that choice. And the MSM played Vietnam as Nixon’s war starting in January 1969. Skip that it was JFK (D) who got us in there - against the advice of Ike (R), skip that it was LBJ (D) who escalated it and refused to win. When Nixon started bombing the crap outta Hanoi, and mining Haiphong Harbor (where ammo, guns & missiles were off-loaded from China), the kiddies got their panties in a wad and decided we needed to surrender. So we did. But ever since the GOP has been called the War Party by idiot Boomer lefties. This is ahistorical nonsense, but it was the way it was when they began voting - so they still vote that way.

The radio ads leading-up to the election will be full of teachers and PTA folks yammering that we have to have more taxes for better schools. This is pure unadulterated BS - Dems have run our schools since 1945 - if they wanted better schools, we’d have better schools. But educated people don’t vote for Dems, so they know they can’t really improve the schools without losing their voter base. What other reason is there for Dems to own all major metro schools in the US for 65 years and have them worse than when they took them over other than to keep them crappy - to keep themselves in power? You think it’s coincidence that all major metro school councils are Dem and all major metro schools are failures? It isn’t. Dems destroy everything they touch. Look @ Detroit.

When I was still at IBM I was in a sales branch selling to LAUSD and other school systems. I spent about 3 days debugging and fixing a Local Area Network problem at Crenshaw High School, in the classroom all day long. This is serious South Central Los Angeles. I listened to the teacher of a history class tell the kids they’d all get extra credit for listening to Louis Farrakhan speak that weekend. I never saw any serious studying or lecturing taking place. I listened to kids in the hall ask other kids why they were “acting white” by taking home textbooks to study to try to get good grades and get ahead - constant peer pressure to fail - or minimum not to get better. This is the message of that community and its “leaders” like sharpton and jackson and others: Don’t try to get ahead. Why do you think that is? Because if they educate themselves and develop personal responsibility to get better, they’ll show the rest of the community the only thing holding them back from success is themselves; they’ll become voters for personal responsibility - Conservatives. And we can’t have the Dem establishment supporting that - because they’ll no longer vote for dems.

And dems don’t think the purpose of schools is education anyway - the purpose is jobs for government union members.

If the tax increases don’t pass Brown will start shutting down parks and libraries and stuff people like in order to blackmail them to paying more taxes to pay union bennies for the public sector unions who are bankrupting the state ever since he legalized public sector unions via the Dills Act in 1977 last time he was governor. Then he’ll pay the union pension and healthcare bennies, they’ll vote for more Dems, who will do it again, etc., etc., until we are recognized as being bankrupt (we already ARE bankrupt, we just refuse to recognize it). And then we’ll look like Greece, with lazy-ass welfare voters rioting for more money, and the smart money and people fleeing the state (which already is happening), leading to a downward spiral and disaster for what was once the most prosperous and best place to live in the nation… all because of Progressive policies.

Never another Democrat. Never.

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For example, if Catholic bishops decide to close charitable operations rather than compromise their beliefs, the impact would be greatest on those most in need:

• The loss of $100 billion in healthcare costs now covered by church hospitals

• The loss of one-seventh of all U.S. hospital beds, about 120,000 existing beds

• The loss of more than 400 health centers and 1,500 specialized homes

• The loss of more than 500,000 jobs

Government-run health care might win, but many of these facilities provide care to the poor, especially the urban poor, and those in rural areas who have limited healthcare options.

This is one more way ObamaCare is a disaster.

A friend, on reading this, suggested the following:

It would be exciting if the Catholics announced the closure of 1 health center per week until the policy is changed.  Each week they could count down the number of sites remaining, and count up the number of people put out of jobs, the number of beds lost, and the number of patients left un-served because of the objectionable government intrusion into religious practices.

I countered with:

They SHOULD start with all the Catholic hospitals, schools, adoption centers and charities in San Francisco (Pelosi), NV (Reid) and Chicago, and then prioritize all the rest based on the vote of their Representative and/or Senator.

In fact, you should google the appropriate Catholic leader in the US and make that recommendation.

Anyone interested in moving this forward in the Church here in the US ought to have at it.

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Why is CA so broke?

And it is $35B or $117B in debt? The $35B number comes from a guy who publishes the CA newsletter I linked to. In GOP circles (I met him @ a GOP meeting) he’s referred to as ‘Dr Doom’. But the $117B number came from a think-tank - also linked… not sure it really matters any more than it matters if the hole for your coffin is 3′, 6′ or 12′ deep - you’re still dead.

Why? In 1977 Governor Brown - last time we hired this idiot - legalized public sector unions by signing the Dills Act. Before then - no deficit. Since then - deficit. That’s why what Gov Walker and Gov Daniels are doing and have done is so important. Public sector unions in non-Right-to-Work states force everyone in that public sector (cops, teachers, firemen, prison guards, etc.) to join the union. Then union dues automatically are withheld by the State (who writes the paycheck). The dues then goes right into the Union political action committee, which immediately bankrolls Democrat politicians, who then give the unions a raise and a better pension and better healthcare in order to get their votes. Then the unions campaign for the Dem politicians, the union members vote them in to office, they give the union a raise… etc., Vicious cycle. Our prison guards make over $100K; high school grads… and in CA that’s not saying much…. $100K. We have over 100,000 public sector employees with pensions of over $100K. I’ll never have a $100K pension. And I have to put my kids through school - AND theirs…. And I can get fired if my work is not merit-worthy, and laid-off if my company goes bankrupt, and I have worked for three startups in my career, one of which did go bankrupt and I was laid off, in addition to being laid-off by IBM after 16 years there when they decided to stop focusing on my industry - digital content (movies and music) at the studio level.

States going bankrupt is purely because of public sector unions, and public sector unions are purely about corruption and vote-buying. Remember - what Scott Walker did was not reject public sector unions - he prohibited automatic dues withholding by the state, making the union voluntary. THAT is why there’s a recall against him and THAT is why they are trying their best to defeat him. In the private sector, unionism is down to around 7%. No reason to think, with RTW (right-to-work) laws and no state withholding of public sector dues, that public sector unions would be any higher than 7%, right? The unions leaders LIKE being millionaires without having to work. That’s what they are fighting for. They certainly have done nothing to protect jobs… especially of women, who have lost 93% of the jobs lost in this recession… but will still vote Dem….

Public sector employees already have Civil Service protecting jobs. Unionism in the public sector is pure corruption. It’s not about tenure or working conditions or hours. It’s pure corruption. Even FDR was against public sector unions, understanding it was pure corruption. But JFK figured out the withholding pass-through of public dues to Dem pols and so made it legal, through an Executive Order overturning the Federal ban on public unions (so much for democracy). Then various state government Dem pols figured it out and today states are going bankrupt all over the place. And it is purely 100% about public sector employees and the corruption of state withholding of union dues to fund Dem politicians. Christie going after public sector unions, Daniels going RTW, Walker ending automatic dues withholding are not sexy, but they arguably are the most important political battles going on in America. It’s nothing more nor less than taxpayer funding of the Democrat Party. So you donate to the GOP because you like their policies, but you also support the DNC through taxes paid for public sector employees - even though you may disagree with their policies. This also is why Obama has increased public sector jobs during the recession while those of us paying the bills are losing jobs by the millions - public sector employees vote Dem. It’s all about power.

See - Democrats cannot win any more on ideas. They have not had a new idea since 1932. Take a look at the recession that Obama and Pelosi have extended and turned into a near-Depression. How did they do that? Well, they inherited a mess (and I’m not going to go into how it was created, but it started with CRA and equal outcomes but then both sides helped it along.) Once in a ditch, what did Dems do? They implemented Keynesian stimulus programs. Just as did FDR. What happened when FDR did this, spent tons (literally) of money? Well, 1937 was the year his Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, told FDR, “We have spent more money than anyone has ever spent and nothing is working.” 1937 also was the year the NY Times labelled “a depression within the Depression.” We are talking four YEARS into FDR’s administration… four YEARS of Keynesian stimulus. The poor performance of the economy was a result of these same Keynesian policies - same ones Krugman swears by and that Obama and Pelosi and Reid have doubled-down on. And the result has been exactly the same: extending the Depression - and concentrating more power in DC. Every european nation not stupid enough to follow Keynes exited the Depression YEARS before America did. By using Keynes’ stimulus policy, FDR extended and made worse a bad economic situation - the same thing Obama and Pelosi have done. But he did concentrate more power in DC, as has Obama  - his goal - and the goal of today’s Democrats.

But the Obama/Pelosi/Reid recession really is worse than what FDR did - so far. FDR did not buy major sectors of the economy or just give money to union voters (see above), which is all Obama has done. He understands that enriching union voters and unions enriches the Democrat party. The average voters think he’s just helping along the working guy. Nope - he’s helping ensure a Democrat majority… this is ALL about politics. This is ALL about turning America into a Euro-socialist country.

(FDR, however, threatened to pack the Court; Obama hasn’t done that …. yet. The Constitution does not specify the number of Justices in SCOTUS; FDR wanted to add a few who agreed with him in order to gain a majority after SCOTUS overturned some of his early unconstitutional legislation to combat the Depression through tyranny - Executive Orders replacing legislation, unelected federal bureaucrats telling people what prices they could charge and how to run their businesses (if this sounds familiar - it’s exactly the same as the healthcare debate and Obama’s comment that if Congress doesn’t do what he wants, he’ll just go around Congress… Democrats are totalitarians, root and branch). We’ll see if Dems pursue court-packing when SCOTUS overturns Obamacare this summer - my guess is that they will.)

If Democrats gave a rat’s ass about the working class we’d have better education (see below) and lower energy costs (high energy costs are HUGELY regressive, hitting the working class far harder than anyone else … Democrats don’t care). But the working class continues to vote for them as long as they redistribute my money to their pockets. Welfare, food stamps, long-term unemployment, anti-poverty programs ALL are nothing but vote-buying. Anti-poverty never works, and we have spent over $13T on it from 1964 to 2008, lowering the poverty RATE from 10.8% (1965) to 10.7% (2008, pre-recession) - in absolute numbers millions more Americans are in poverty now than BEFORE anti-poverty programs spent your kids’ future…. and now our deficit is… $16T).

Democrats also have not won a national race since 1960 without getting at least 85% of the Black vote. So they keep Blacks in poverty and bad schools and play the race game (Blacks were moving in to the Middle Class more quickly BEFORE the Great Society than since, btw). All major urban school districts in America have been owned by the Dems since 1945. If Dems actually cared about good education, we’d have good education. But they think the purpose of schools is to ensure jobs for teachers - who are public sector union employees… see above…

Democrats have owned all major urban City Councils since 1945… and every inner city is worse-off than it was then. Where do Dem voters live? A logical case CANNOT be made that Dems care about inner-city residents. They have been proving for 66 YEARS they do not care.

Democrats cannot win without fraud - why they HATE voter ID laws. The GOP has to win bigger than the margin of cheat. JFK won a race against Nixon in 1960 that was closer than Gore-Bush in 2000. (Nixon cared enough about America that, when advised to litigate the election, he refused, saying that America didn’t deserve that, unlike Gore, a modern-day Democrat who cares about nothing so much as power. And I’m not a pro-Nixon guy - I gave my Final Exam speech in college Speech class in the Spring of 1974 on why Nixon should be impeached.) Dead people all over Cook County, IL (Chicago) voted for JFK, often multiple times. His dad bought the votes of the entire United Mine Workers union in W. VA. Everyone knew this. (Interesting side note - do you know where the Kennedy family money came from? Joe Kennedy - JFK’s dad - ran whiskey from Canada during Prohibition. Do you know where FDR’s money came from? He didn’t have enough to fund a presidential campaign, so he got it from his father in law, who made it running opium in China.. even AFTER it became illegal. The money of the two most famous Dem politicians of the 20th Century came from crime. Who is hurt most by crime? The working classes…) This is just like the recall signatures in WI against Walker - Howdy Doody. Mickey Mouse. Goofy. All these and more are on the recall petitions. And the judge tasked with reviewing them and deciding if there were enough valid signatures for the recall? A Democrat, who signed the recall petition (and didn’t recuse himself from the review), refused to invalidate Mickey Mouse, and refused to set a recall election date allowing time for a real review of the signatures: Democrats are corrupt, period. They cannot win without cheating AND THEY KNOW IT.

Basically, there are NO current Dem policies that are geared toward better education, higher living standards (ie more wealth in society), lower energy costs. ALL current Dem policies are geared toward totalitarianism. It is true that many of what we today take for granted are the results of Dems, however. We would not have any of the following without Liberals in the 1960s and 1970s: Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, seat belts, air bags, crash bumpers… But Classical Liberals - the kind of which Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D, NY) was an excellent - and may have been the last - example, are the antithesis of today’s Democrat Party. Liberalism is the celebration of the individual against the State. That’s today’s GOP. It is certainly NOT the party of Pelosi/Reid/Obama.

Progressivism - Democrat’s current ideology - is founded on the idea that We the People are just too stupid to be able to deal with the complexities of the modern world so need to be ruled by our betters. This is the FOUNDATION of Progressivism. Evidently we’re too stupid to manage ourselves but smart enough to pick from our own ranks one person (too stupid to manage his/her own affairs) who is smart enough to run ALL our affairs… The fascinating thing to me is the numbers of people voting for someone who tells them they’re too stupid to vote (and, of course, the logic of accepting the vote of one who agrees that he/she is too stupid to vote by voting FOR a candidate telling them they are too stupid to vote… their votes should, by their own logic, be invalidated).

Anyway, Progressivism has been tried many, many times. It turned Detroit from the wealthiest per-capita major city in America in the 1950s to the poorest major city in America now, a city in which perfectly good houses cannot be sold for $500 (five hundred dollars; not a typo), in which housing is being bulldozed-under to provide more farmland, in which the dropout rate is 75% and the illegitimacy rate 85%. But they have “living wage” laws,”social justice,” strong unions and stronger public sector unions. Heard of the USSR? Progressivism - redistributing the money. East Germany? Ditto. In the 19th Century there were a few “Progressive” communities tried in the US - share and share alike, the produce of your sweat equally-shared, including by those who don’t go out to the field and sweat - they ALL failed. During the Depression one of FDR’s brain guys formed a “utopian” Progressive community and they bused a bunch of starving people there… it failed. When the Pilgrims first landed they tried Progressivism - equal sharing of everything…. and were starving to death when they decided, nope, let’s try private property. America was born from the ashes of failed Progressivism. Progressive policies have destroyed everything they have touched throughout history, culture and geography. Simply, there are NO historical examples of Progressivism doing anything other than destroying living standards, wealth, education, the environment, families, cities, lives and hope. NO HISTORICAL EXAMPLES OF SUCCESS for the policies for which half of America votes… and now we’re back to bad education… and public sector unions.

Well, you asked about why CA is broke and I’ve gone rather far afield… sorry about that. America is just too important to me and my kids to let the Left continue to destroy it. And that, unquestionably, is the goal of the Left… and of Obama.

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The Senate can’t pass a legally-required budget in over three years…. they really haven’t been doing much of anything at all.. yet they can pass a bill that is a direct violation of the Constitution.

The 2012 Highway bill evidently, in addition to letting Congress tap-in to your IRA for more money, in addition to tens of billions of earmarked (remember, Obama promised never to sign a bill with earmarks…) pork, will allow the Feds to revoke your citizenship - making it impossible to use your passport and travel outside the US - if you owe back taxes. Without any due process. All they need is an accusation and, viola! you’re no longer free to travel.

I never thought “America is a free country” would become an anachronism… or be in the incorrect tense…

Oh, yeah, the Constitution (Article 1, Section 9, paragraph 3) specifically prohibits “Bills of Attainder, ” which are laws providing for the punishment of an individual without benefit of due process.

But - no matter to the Totalitarian Party - Democrats.

If Obama wants your taxes… your citizenship is revoked and you cannot travel outside the country. Can anyone still spell “USSR”?

What’s next? Gov. Gerry Brown of CA not letting Californians travel outside the Peoples Republic of California? After all, he has a $35B deficit - or is it $117 Billion? - (illegal on its face as CA can’t legally - constitutionally - run a deficit) and I’m sure plenty of taxpayers owe back taxes….

But I guess the real question is this: Does the Constitution mean anything anymore?

Every Senator voting for this Highway Bill is voting to approve Bills of Attainder - Constitutional violation.

Every senator voting for this Highway Bill is voting for conviction and punishment of citizens without due process - Constitutional violation .

Every senator voting for this Highway Bill is voting to restrict the right of free citizens to move freely across the planet - certainly a novel concept for Americans… not even sure the Founders dealt with it…

Warren Buffett owes a billion in back taxes; he’s been litigating the IRS for a decade. Ya think he’ll have his citizenship revoked? No?

Welcome to the Party.

At what point, EXACTLY, does the US Military obey its oath to “Protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic” ?? .. or has the military really become just a Palace Guard?

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But - do you know how the official unemployment rate is calculated? If you are not looking for work, you don’t count as unemployed. So if you’ve gotten tired of months or years of being unable to find a job and decided just to dropout of the labor force - you don’t count as unemployed. If you count everyone not working - rather than those still looking - then the real unemployment rate, U6, is over 14%.

REPORTED Black unemployment is 14%, Youth unemployment 25%. Real unemployment in those groups is even worse.

I guess if you’re a Democrat voter you are unemployed. Probably why you are a Democrat voter. If you think Democrats want to fix unemployment, you don’t understand politics.

Here is the most important chart on employment you will see.

America is at a record in those not participating in the labor force, 88 million people have given up looking for work.

88 Million people are not even in the labor force. And the children of those families are not learning about Mom and/or Dad going off to work in the morning, creating a complete culture of dependency on the taxpayers, rather than being independent as adult human beings.

This does NOT bode well for the future of America.

Not coincidentally, below is an Op-Ed from today’s WSJ (requires subscription). When you read it, remember - Detroit was the wealthiest major city, per-capita, in America in the 1950s. It also had the highest population of Middle Class African Americans. Then the same policies that Obama is implementing nationally were put in place by LBJ to make Detroit the “Model City” for Liberal programs and policy.

Now they are bulldozing houses no one will buy to regain farmland… And it is the poorest major American city, and has the worst schools, with a dropout rate over 75%, and an illegitimacy rate of over 85%, creating an enormous future drain on taxpayers - and, of course, future Democrat voters.

(Anyone thinking that Democrats want to fix education or illegitimacy simply does not understand politics.)

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Motown Repair Plan

Michigan rides to Detroit’s rescue.

There’s nothing like bankruptcy to concentrate the mind, and that prospect finally induced the Detroit city council Wednesday to approve a consent agreement with the state of Michigan to save the day—at least for a while.

The deal will help refinance $137 million in debt but, more important, it gives Mayor Dave Bing authority to void and amend labor agreements. He’ll now have the whip hand to renegotiate contracts that unions ratified earlier this year. Employee benefits make up about half of the city’s parched general fund, and Detroit’s largest liability is $6 billion for pensions and retiree health care.

Workers who have been loathe to concede anything more than a pay freeze will have to pay more for benefits. Many haven’t been contributing a dime to their pensions. If the unions refuse to make concessions that meet the state’s cost-cutting benchmarks, the mayor can impose new contracts.

The city council, which approved the agreement kicking and screaming, will retain control of day-to-day operations. But a financial advisory board will oversee the budget and ensure that city leaders fulfill the accord. City council members resent the oversight because of the implication that they’re not up to the job.

Maybe they haven’t been outside lately. Detroit has one of the nation’s highest crime and foreclosure rates, and its schools are among the worst. The city has lost 250,000 residents in a decade and its jobless rate tops 17%. Motown’s economy has been in recession for much of the last decade, but its politicians kept ratifying generous labor agreements. To pay the bills they raised taxes, which drove out more businesses and residents.

Detroit will never recover unless its leaders recognize that government can’t grow a local economy. Mayor Bing seems to understand this, but if the city council won’t do more than claim to be victims of an authoritarian state government, they ought to step aside.

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Why is this important?

Because the policies that killed Detroit are the same policies that Dems demand nation-wide. Unable to learn from Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, CA, MI, IL or Detroit… Dems demand we do more of the same.

Never another Democrat. Never.

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