Say Anything Blog

The San Diego Union Tribune is daring to do what most California media outlets won’t. Point out that the one person who isn’t willing to make compromises in California’s budget fiasco is Democrat Karen “Buzzcut” Bass.

To put it charitably, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass is not having a good 2009. In February, the Los Angeles Democrat was one of a handful of state leaders who put together five budget-related ballot measures that included $16 billion in tax hikes. She then went along with the dishonest decision to omit any mention of the hikes in ballot language. When vote

Just FYI California was one of the highest taxed states in America. Then Democrats (along with a few turncoat Republicans) passed the largest state tax increase in American history.

Within days, however, Bass joined in efforts to spin the May 19 results as somehow having nothing to do with opposition to tax hikes. She also began closed-door meetings with Assembly Democrats on, yes, new tax-increase schemes.

Along with Senate President Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, she then orchestrated efforts to impose tax hikes on a simple majority vote, flagrantly disregarding the plain intent of the California Constitution.

Buzzcut has been part of the cartel of socialists-Democrat and RINO Republicans who have increased the size of the state government by about 40 percent over the last few years. Now that houseing bubble money is no longer flowing into state coffers, Buzzcut and the others are rufusing to even consider reducing some of that 40 percent increase.

Soon afterward, in a June 27 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Bass offered the clearest view yet of her mind-set. She likened to terrorists the handful of talk-radio hosts who supported recalls of the lawmakers who broke public vows to oppose tax hikes.

“I don't know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it's about free speech, but it's extremely unfair,” she said.

This is beyond belief: One of the most powerful elected officials in California questions why strong dissent is allowed to exist.

Now there is fresh evidence of Bass' otherworldly perspective: She is boycotting negotiations meant to close California's massive budget deficit because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pressing for fundamental reforms in how the state operates. Bass says now is not the time to raise such issues.

Earth to Karen: Sacramento is in the fix it's in precisely because it always balks at and blocks cost-saving reforms of the exact sort the governor is proposing.

Schwarzenegger is absolutely right to insist on changing the absurdly generous formula for calculating pensions for state employees. He's absolutely right to want to finally implement the welfare reforms that have had such amazing success in most other states. He's absolutely right to want to end the systemic fraud within the corrupt-by-design In-Home Supportive Services program. He's absolutely right to want school districts to be able to save money and focus on education by contracting out for services such as payroll, food preparation and janitorial work.

He's absolutely right to want to end the rules that virtually ensure every agency's budget goes up every year no matter what.
These are not radical proposals to shut down broad swaths of state government. They are all the epitome of common sense. If Steinberg were administered a lie-detector test, we suspect the Senate leader would agree.

But not Bass. The Assembly leader somehow thinks the Sacramento status quo is a good thing.
And if you don't agree, you just might be a terrorist.

Now the "Buzzcut" is calling anyone who opposes raising taxes a terrorist.

Here’s an interesting bit of reporting from the San Francisco Examiner.

Corporate and political officials who defy workplace and community organizers risk being made objects of scorn by bright red-clad protestors in public and private, courtesy of an activist union and its close allies in the nation’s most controversial liberal non-profit advocacy group.
It’s officially called the “Muscle for Money” program within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) where it was started, and unofficially by the same name among activists of Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN).
ACORN is under investigation in at least 14 states over voter registration fraud allegations stemming from the 2008 presidential campaign. The group endorsed President Barack Obama, despite federal laws barring partisan political activities by tax-exempt groups.

Muscle for Money includes multiple techniques for creating highly aggressive, organized efforts both to pressure businesses and officials to support the activists’ agenda or to discredit and intimidate opponents of their agenda, according to present and former ACORN members.
SEIU has funded Muscle for Money activities in the past and continues to finance corporate shakedown efforts across the country as part of this program.  SEIU locals 100 and 880 have been identified as allied organizations on ACORN’s web site.
That information has since been removed from the ACORN web site, but U.S. Department of Labor LM-2 financial disclosure forms show over $600,000 in transactions between these same locals and ACORN operations in recent years.

[...]

Some of the more prominent Muscle for Money targets to date have included the Carlyle Group, Sherwin-Williams, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, Liberty Tax and Money Mart, according to Anita Moncrief, a former ACORN employee and now an ACORN 8 member.
“The idea is to go to private homes where wives and children are present and stand outside so the family members of a company official could be harassed and subjected to intimidation,” said MonCrief. “Protestors would also go to company functions like banquets where they would be as disruptive as possible.”

Isn’t that nice. If you do something to piss off the SEIU, ACORN thugs will show up at your house to intimidate your wife and children.

The program’s biggest score came against H&R Block, MonCrief said. The company was targeted beginning in January 2004 when ACORN promised demonstrations by its members in front of H&R Block offices protesting “overpriced tax refund loans” in at least 30 cities.
Eventually, H&R Block agreed to pay for the establishment of tax centers for the benefit of ACORN officials and members in exchange for stopping the protests, MonCrief said. H&R Block did not respond to an Examiner request for comment.

So all it takes to make the thuggery stop is a sweet deal for ACORN or SEIU big shots.

Reid, who now chairs ACORN 8, said she became disillusioned with the program when the shakedown campaign targeted Sherwin Williams four years ago. She said an estimated 400 ACORN members dressed in red shirts stormed into a Sherwin Williams meeting held at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio.
“The people in that room were absolutely terrified and I didn’t realize it was going to be like this,” Reid said. “These tactics were really heavy, many of us became disillusioned. The idea is to isolate the target so they don’t have time to build up sentiment with neighbors and co-workers. We would intrude into a person’s social life.”

There’s more

(more...)

The grandparents who raised me were not wealthy people. They owned some farmland, yet my grandather still worked full time for a utility company to put food on the table. On weekends we’d load produce into Grandpa’s ‘63 GMC truck and Grandma’s ‘72 Nova and sell it at swap meets. Despite my grandparents hard work, on seveeral occasions they had to take out short term loans to pay the ever increasing property tax. Because of inflation and irrational increases in home prices, forces outside their control was driving up the “value” of their property, and also driving their property taxes up beyond what they could afford. Then Proposition 13 passed which freed my grandparents from the yearly scramble to arrange short term loans.

The Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters points out that before Prop 13 property taxes were increasing so rapidly that some kind of taxpayer revolt was unavoidable.

Were Californians’ property being taxed at the same rate today as in 1978, our property taxes would have soared to at least $150 billion a year – a politically unsustainable level. In other words, a backlash against property taxes was inevitable. Had Proposition 13 not occurred, something else would have.

 

More importantly, Walters also points out that despite Proposition 13, property taxe revenues have increased much faster than other forms of taxes.

Over the past three decades, state general fund revenues, primarily from sales and income taxes, have increased 500 percent, from just over $15 billion a year to about $90 billion.

Proposition 13 slashed property taxes nearly in half, to $5.6 billion a year in 1978-79. Since then, property taxes have risen 800 percent to more than $50 billion, according to data from the state Board of Equalization – far faster than other revenues, thanks to new construction and transfers.

 

So despite Proposition 13, property tax revenues have exploded. Those who like to point their fingers at Prop 13 want to take commercial real estate out of the equation. But commercial real estate property taxes have gone up as well.

Typical is a recent op-ed piece by Phil Ting, San Francisco's property tax assessor. "The abundance of corporate property tax loopholes creates a system where the middle class, our families and our seniors are buried under a mountain of property taxes," Ting wrote. "Combine this with a tax system that relies on regressive and unpredictable taxes and fees, and we find our state in a perpetual budget crisis."

Ting didn't offer any hard data to back his hyperbole because, in fact, numbers don't support him.

[...]

What about Ting's contention, widely repeated in anti-Proposition 13 circles, that commercial property is unduly benefited?

Dave Doerr, chief consultant to the California Taxpayers' Association and a leading expert on taxation, has calculated that commercial property subject to local assessment by Ting and his colleagues in other counties is actually bearing a slightly larger share of the property tax burden than it did 30 years ago – and, interestingly enough, residential property's share has also been rising.

What's happened, Doerr says, is that the share of taxes on personal property not subject to Proposition 13 has declined, as has the share borne by state-assessed railroads and utilities.

California is experiencing unemployment rates above the national average by a couple percentage points. I'm sure that saddling California businesses with additional property tax costs will help that.

The overwhelming fact is that California is not in financial trouble because it taxes too little. Before recent massive tax increases, Californians were among the most taxed people in the country. California is broke because of out of control spenging by progressives in the assembly and senate. Remember, even during the real estate boom when the state government was awash in tax money, the politicians were still running a deficit. And the deficit was largely a result of generous give-away programs and inefficient spending on needed programs.

Education is a prime example. California is the 8th largest economy in the wold, with possibly the highest taxes in the country. Education is guaranteed 40 percent of total tax revenue. We're talking about a huge piece of fiscal pie. Yet the NEA constantly harps that California is 47th in per pupil spending. So where did the money go? Most of it is eaten up in the massive state Department of Education machinery.

The problem with the California budget is not too little money, it's too many politicans who want to give away as much money as possible to constituents and special interests.

California has been living under a budget written at the behest of the NEA, the SEIU and La Raza, and the money no longer exists to pay the bills.

Democrats have placed wording in the Cap and Trade bill that will pay some Americans for the jobs they lose because of the law.

(U.S News and World Report) In her remarks bringing the debate over the climate bill to a close, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California urged her colleagues to vote in favor of the cap and trade bill, saying the measure was about four things: “jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.”

She was right—the House-passed version of cap and trade is all about jobs: jobs lost, jobs never created, jobs sent overseas, and, unbelievably, jobs people will be paid for doing long after they cease to exist.

According to Friday’s Washington Times, the legislation includes language that provides, should it become law, that people who lose their jobs because of it “could get a weekly paycheck for up to three years, subsidies to find new work and other generous benefits—courtesy of Uncle Sam.”

How generous. The progressives want to ship your job to China or India to keep your employer from spewing CO2 into the air. But don’t worry, they’re perfectly happy to send you a welfare check to make up for your lost paycheck.

Instead of being a the source of millions of new jobs of “green jobs”—as House Democrats are fond of saying over and over again—the provision is a hidden admission that their effort is a job killer, not just a massive new tax on energy.

Building a safety net into the legislation is probably the responsible thing to do. The government is going to be directly responsible for the destruction of millions of jobs if the bill passed by the House becomes law—anywhere from a net loss of .5 percent of total jobs over the first 10 years, according to the liberal Brookings Institution, to 3 million by the year 2030, according to the industry-backed Coalition for Affordable American Energy. But wouldn’t it be better to leave the jobs alone in the first place? It would certainly be cheaper.

Despite some of the highest taxes in the country, California is broke. The progressive-socialists in the legislature have spent the state into oblivion. RINO Arnold could have brought some fiscal discipline to Sacramento, but instead acted like a rubber stamp governor, approving every spending and tax increase the Democrat legislature approved.

The silver lining, according to Kevin Hassett of Bloomberg, is that moderate Democrats in the U.S. Senate might be looking at California as a failed state who’s spending stands as an example of what not to do.

Last week, we discovered that the state of California will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

With California mired in a budget crisis, largely the result of a political impasse that makes spending cuts and tax increases impossible, Controller John Chiang said the state planned to issue $3.3 billion in IOU’s in July alone. Instead of cash, those who do business with California will get slips of paper.

Actually the state, which is already has at least the 3rd highest taxes has had the largest tax increase in California history imposed on it last spring. The massive tax increases didn’t close the buget gap because spending levels were set according to revenues at the peak of the reat estate bubble.

The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.

It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors.

California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.

If there’s a silver lining to the mess, that silver lining is in Hollywood on the Potomic not in Sacramento.

As bad as the California legislature has been over the years, it has never entered a fiscal crisis like the one that we face today and then doubled down with a massive spending increase. In the end, when times got tough, patriotic and sensible Californians of both parties stood up and began acting like adults.

Maybe the same thing is starting to happen in our nation’s capital. The key players in Washington are Senator Evan Bayh and 15 Senate Democrats who joined him this year in forming a coalition of moderates. One thing that has distinguished moderate Democrats from the garden variety of the species is heightened concern about fiscal responsibility.

Off a Cliff

With the price tag of Obama-care likely to exceed $1 trillion, moderate Democrats face a simple choice. They can jump off the cliff with the president, or they can stay true to the principles that they have espoused throughout their careers.

There are reassuring signs that principle is winning. One of the most expensive components of the Obama plan is the so- called public-insurance option, which opponents fear would result in massive government subsidies. Senator Mary Landrieu said that she is “not open” to a public option that will compete with private insurance.

Many other Democratic Senators, including Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Tom Carper, also oppose the public option. As the cost estimates increase and support wanes, the Senate Finance Committee is even going as far as to pursue its own health-care plan, meaning that the health-care end game is now in sight.

Tax Bite

Moderates might support Obama’s health-care objectives if the bill also included tax increases to cover the spending increases. But those tax increases would likely be unpopular, making it almost impossible to pass a bill.

Given the increasing public concern about deficits that heightened significantly last week because of the California crisis, there are only two possibilities left. Either the Obama plan will come crashing down or Senate Democrats will concoct some bill that has health in the title but costs almost nothing and does even less. With Al Franken arriving in the Senate and providing Democrats with a crucial 60th vote, the latter seems most likely.

As bad as things are here in California, at least we can provide an example to the rest of the country of what not to do.

California has made itself into a cash cow for public sector unions, a generous haven for illegal aliens, and an equally generous haven for those not inclined to work. Make no mistake, excessive spending is what broke California. We can expect Obama's far more massive spending to break the United States. (more...)

Here in California, our gun control laws are so whacky that most new .22 caliber revolvers are illegal to purchase. I know because I looked into buying a Smith and Wesson .22 and found the model I was interested in was not legal in the Golden State. Guns that are legal in Nevada, Colorado and many European countries such as Finland, are illegal in CA. But at the federal level, those who actually do the background checks, allow the majority of applicants on terrorist watch list buy firearms.

(Page) People on the government’s terrorist watch list tried to buy guns almost 1,000 times in the last five years, a federal study finds. In 9 out of 10 cases, federal authorities let them do it, the report finds, because there was no legal way to stop them.

Liberals tell us that we need more gun control laws, but Federal authorities don't seem any more interested in enforcing federal gun control laws against gang members of possible terrorists than they're interested in enforcing immigration laws against illegal immigrants.

There were 963 attempts by people on the government's no-fly list to buy guns from licensed dealers over the past five years, according to a Government Accountability Office report, and 865 were approved. At least one person was able to buy explosives.

You read that correct. There are 963 terrorist sympathizers living in the United States and wanting firearms. Of those 865 were allowed to purchase firearms.

Here’s my question. There are 400,000 individuals on the watch list, with some of them living in the United States. I’d assume that the majority of individuals on the terrorist watch list, living in the U.S., are either non-citizens, or citizens born in forign countries. Why do we allow them to stay? (more...)

With all the sex and violence that kids are exposed to in the media, you wouldn’t think anybody would get upset that Disney cartoons depict boys and girls liking eagh other. But some University of Michigan pointy-head types actually took the time (and I assume funding) to write a scholarly report on how children are having “heteronormism” forced on them by Disney.

Kathleen Gilbert reports:

Researchers at the University of Michigan have concluded that the love stories told in classic Disney and other G-rated children’s films - such as the Little Mermaid - are partially to blame for the pervasiveness of what they label “heteronormativity.”

“Despite the assumption that children’s media are free of sexual content, our analyses suggest that these media depict a rich and pervasive heterosexual landscape,” wrote researchers Emily Kazyak and Karin Martin, in a report published in the latest issue of the Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) publication Gender & Society.

OK, so maybe they’re only sociologist and not real academics. But they’re still getting university paychecks.

Kazyak and Martin said they studied the role of heterosexual relationships in several of the highest-grossing G-rated films between 1990-2005.

The results, say the researchers, illustrate two ways that the children’s films “construct heterosexuality”: through “depictions of hetero-romantic love as exceptional, powerful, transformative, and magical,” and “depictions of interactions between gendered bodies in which the sexiness of feminine characters is subjected to the gaze of masculine characters.”

“Characters in love are surrounded by music, flowers, candles, magic, fire, balloons, fancy dresses, dim lights, dancing and elaborate dinners,” the researchers observed. “Fireflies, butterflies, sunsets, wind and the beauty and power of nature often provide the setting for - and a link to the naturalness of - hetero-romantic love.”

The SWS press release on the research blamed what they called the “old ideals” of romantic relationships, specifically those found the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, which in many instances inspired the films’ storylines, for “such heavily gendered depictions and glorified portrayals of heterosexual relationships.”

 

I’m shocked….shocked to learn that boys and girls fall in love in romantic movies. I’m even more shocked to learn that boys and girls falling in love is idealized by music.

So what these Academics (see university check cashers) have against all this.

The team says the results point to heterosexuality achieving a “taken-for-granted status” “because hetero-romance is depicted as powerful.”

“Both ordinary and exceptional constructions of heterosexuality work to normalize its status because it becomes difficult to imagine anything other than this form of social relationship or anyone outside of these bonds,” they concluded.

“These films provide powerful portraits of a multifaceted and pervasive heterosexuality that likely facilitates the reproduction of heteronormativity.”

The SWS press release concluded: “President Obama may have declared June to be Gay Pride Month, but entertainment for children therefore continues to perpetuate a less inclusive message, leaving those outside its confines with little to build their own dreams of happily ever after.”

Years ago I read that sociology was the 2nd most common major for those admitted into a university without being actually qualified. If you get into college because you can throw a ball or because you fill a quota, you’ll likely major in Education of Sociology. As a major it’s considered less rigerous and intellectual than Physical Education. I’ve often fealt that sociology was a pseudo-social-science. I may have been too generous.

Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Ortez is claiming that ousted Honduran president (almost president-for-life) Zelaya conspired with Venezualan strong man and anti-American Hugo Chavez to smuggle drugs into the United States.

(IBD) Foreign Minister Enrique Ortez dropped a bombshell last week when he said Zelaya, the president who was thrown out by a constitutional process June 28 after defying the law, had a little side business with the Caracas caudillo allowing cocaine to roll into Honduras from Venezuela before heading to the U.S.

“Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds . . . and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking,” Ortez told CNN En Espanol. “We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it.”

If Ortiz is right, the U.S. effort to restore Zelaya to power would be suicidal for U.S. efforts to destroy drug organizations south of our border. It would undercut Mexico’s and Colombia’s savage drug wars and give drug lords such as the Sinaloa cartel’s Shorty Guzman, who has bases in Honduras, reason to strengthen operations.

It also means the U.S. must start asking questions about Chavez’s role in the drug trade now that U.S.-Venezuelan diplomatic ties are being restored. Right now, it’s such a hot potato that nobody in either the State Department or the Drug Enforcement Administration wants to comment on it.

Zelaya’s return would put the U.S. in a dilemma. The U.S. has gone along with the Chavez-led global consensus denouncing Zelaya’s exit as a coup d’etat and condemning the current Honduran government. But that position means the U.S. would have to cut off a $43 million aid package to Honduras that includes drug-fighting.

This is why the legal definition of “coup” is so touchy.U.S. policymakers are stalling about labeling Zelaya’s removal as such — though hotheads in the Obama administration, such as U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, don’t hesitate to use the term.

Honduras, like Mexico, has been hit hard by drug violence. The U.S. has invested a lot of money in the Honduran drug war. That investment will be a waste if Zelaya (a friend of Chavez and the drug cartels) is able to re-impose himself on Honduras.

Restoring Zelaya and then pretending the drug war can be won would be a travesty, harming the interests of the U.S. and all the battered nations fighting drugs alongside us.

Ortez’s warning lacks detail. But it does describe the well-known problem of traffickers using Central American countries as transshipment points for drugs. This has gotten worse since Zelaya made his alliance with Chavez two years ago.

The aircraft landings, many of which become known after they’ve crashed with multiton shipments — cannot happen without the president of a small country knowing about them.

The recent high-profile murder of an attorney investigating money-laundering in Guatemala highlighted the problem of corruption extending all the way to the president of that country. Before he was shot dead in the street, Rodrigo Rosenberg videotaped testimony calling Guatemala’s president his murderer and said the motive was to cover up the drug-linked corruption he was probing.

This same drug onslaught has slammed Honduras with crime and corruption. The country now has the highest murder rate in the hemisphere, with 4,000 dead in 2008.

It’s a fact that the crime has gotten worse under Zelaya, whose commitment to the war on drugs is weak. The leftist demagogue’s call to legalize drugs last October didn’t come out of some principled libertarian impulse.

If Zelaya is behind Honduras’ drug problems, then he can’t be allowed back into the country. An international investigation must be undertaken, and Honduras must provide information.

If Zelaya is found to be in league with Chavez on drugs, then the quarrel over whether or not he was removed in a coup becomes a small matter. Then the only place for this former dictator is a jail cell, the same as Noriega got.

The fact that Zelaya was an anti-American who violated his country’s constitution and aided anti-American drug lords will not stop anti-Americans in the executive branch from trying to put him back in power.

Neil Nagraj of Daily News reports:

Two midget wrestlers have been found dead in a seedy Mexican motel - and authorities are investigating whether a cruel Amazonian gang of thieves drugged them to death, the Daily Mail of the UK reported.

The two brothers were killed and police suspect a female gang.

Coroners are examining the corpses of brothers Alberto and Alejandro Jiménez, known in the ring as “Espectrito Jr.” and “La Parkita” or “Little Death,” who donned a skeleton costume for combat.

Witnesses spotted two women - posing as prostitutes - leaving the victims’ room prior to the discovery of their bodies.
Gangs of female robbers roaming Mexico are experienced at drugging men to knock them out and rob them, said Prosecutor Miguel Angel Mancera.

Authorities speculate the bandits, using a mix of alcohol and eye drops, may have used too strong a dose. The Lilliputian pugilists’ small stature may have played a role in the fatal drugging, but larger men have also died in the robberies.

As I reported in an earlier post, Britain is now statistically the most violent country in Europe.

The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.

It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.

It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.

But it is the naming of Britain as the most violent country in the EU that is most shocking. The analysis is based on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents.

In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677.

An article I found in City Journal suggests that Britain’s actual crime rate may be far higher than what these official numbers suggest. Claire Berlinski writes that crime has gotten so bad in Britain, and the people so numb to its effects, that many serious crimes go unreported.

Just before midnight on January 12, 2006, Tom ap Rhys Pryce, a 31-year-old lawyer, left a London party and telephoned his fiancée to say that he was on his way home. He emerged from the tube station at Kensal Green about 20 minutes later and began walking toward their apartment. That was when two teenage gang members attacked him. Donnel Carty kicked Pryce in the back, sending him flying to the ground, and Delano Brown kicked him in the face. When Pryce tried to defend himself, the attackers stabbed him in the legs, hands, face, and heart. Then they took his cell phone and public-transportation pass, the only valuables in his possession, and ran off, leaving him dying on the ground. The paramedics who strove unsuccessfully to revive him found his wedding vows strewn on the pavement.

The British press, particularly the tabloid press, carries stories like this nearly every day—lurid accounts of drunken vandals, teenage murderers, child abuse, knifings, and gang violence. “After bingeing on lager, vodka and cocaine, twisted Jobson launched a frenzied attack, stabbing Samantha TEN times with an eight-inch blade,” the Sun reported this past November 26. drunken yob who left teenager with part of his skull missing after party attack gets just one year’s detention, cried the Daily Mail on the same day—about a different incident. Collectively, these reports paint a portrait of a nation terrorized by vomit-spewing, tattooed thugs. And according to polls, British citizens also consider crime an exceedingly grave problem.

Government officials are quick to point out that official figures show that fewer crimes are being reported. But the author believes that crime has gotten so bad that minor incidents of assualt, burglary, vandalism and arson are going unrported. (more...)

Socialism nearly destroyed the Russian people, and proved a failure in China. Both of those countries have dumped socialism in favor of capitalism. As Economics Professor Mark W. Hendrickson points out, those who remember the ravages of socialsim are mocking the United States’s race towards socialism.

voices in Russia and China are mocking our current Big Government policies. Those whose countries took the tragic, impoverishing detour through Big Government hell now react with scorn and derision as we Americans charge headlong down that same path. What an amazing spectacle it must be for them to see the victor of the Cold War borrow many pages from the losers’ playbook.

To read a startling indictment of the American predicament, Google the words “American capitalism gone with a whimper,” the title of an article by Stanislav Mishin. The author writes, “the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed.”

This decline has happened because, according to Mishin, “the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education” that produced millions of Americans who “know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in D.C. that directly affects their lives.” Mishin also faults the widespread abandonment of Christ’s religion in America, our loss of faith. This is the cultural backdrop for a political system that has culminated in Barack Obama’s unprecedented “spending and money printing.” Mishin believes that, under Obamanomics, “America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.”

Earlier this year, reports Mishin, “Prime Minister Putin … warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster.” Mishin has concluded that we are ignoring Putin’s warning—based on 70 years of suffering during the nightmarish Soviet experiment in central planning—and he concludes, “The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world how free he really is. The world will only snicker.”

When I first read this astounding diatribe, I thought perhaps it had been written as a satire, almost as a spoof of what some libertarian writers in the United States have written. After consulting with a Russian friend, I have concluded that Mishin wrote in complete earnestness. Either way—satire or grim analysis—what Mishin wrote is no laughing matter. Mishin’s is one of many voices, foreign and domestic, warning us of the dangers of faith that government can be omnicompetent and can meet all our economic needs.

Adding to the irony of a Russian warning the United States about the dangers of Marxism is the fact that this article appeared in the online publication Pravda.ru—the contemporary version of the Soviet-era newspaper Pravda that served as the official Communist Party channel for pro-communist, anti-American propaganda.

 

In Russia, the newspaper that once served as the official mouth of the Communist Party is warning American’s not to follow the socialist path our leaders have us on.

In China, our race to socialism is seen more as a sign of weakness by a people who are growing stronger every day through private enterprise.

Another harsh indictment of our ill-advised embrace of Big Government occurred on June 1, during Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s official visit to China. Speaking at the University of Beijing, Geithner assured a large audience of students that China’s large holdings of U.S. Treasury securities were “very safe.” The students laughed out loud. This reaction might have been unusually rude, but it was brutally honest. They didn’t believe Geithner for one second.

When the ability of the United States government to repay its debts (or at least, without doing so in significantly depreciated dollars) is perceived as a joke, it is anything but a laughing matter for our country. The Chinese gave us a wakeup call, although we appear not to have heeded it.

The Chinese students see what is plain for anyone with eyes to see. For years, fiscal discipline has been eroding in Washington, but President Obama has increased government spending with reckless abandon as the leviathan government absorbs more and more of the private sector. As I wrote in “Into the Fiscal Abyss,” with Uncle Sam’s total financial obligations totaling approximately five times our GDP, there is no way those debts and promises can be honored. The most likely outcome will be Uncle Sam—the largest debtor in human history—paying off those debts in greatly depreciated dollars. Indeed, our one-trick Federal Reserve (Motto: When there’s a bump in the economic road, inflate) already has begun to create vast sums of new dollars through the mechanism of “quantitative easing”—the direct purchase of the bonds that the government issues to finance its massive spending agenda.

The Chinese students laughing at Geithner told us implicitly what Stanislav Mishin told us explicitly: It is runaway government spending, stemming from the socialistic error that the government can be all things to all people, which threatens us all with financial cataclysm, national bankruptcy, and the loss of our prosperity and our freedoms. From the perspective of the Russians and the Chinese, the joke is on us. But for all of us, America’s plunge into the Big Government trap is no laughing matter.

 

According to a story by James Slack, Britain is statistically the most violent country in the European Union.

Britain’s violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it is revealed today.

[...]

The Tories said Labour had presided over a decade of spiralling violence.

In the decade following the party’s election in 1997, the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77 per cent to 1.158million - or more than two every minute.

The figures, compiled from reports released by the European Commission and United Nations, also show:

The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.

It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.

It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.

But it is the naming of Britain as the most violent country in the EU that is most shocking. The analysis is based on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents.

In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677.

Not only is Britain more violent than the rest of Europ, but it’s far more violent than the united states.

In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people…

[...]

The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: ‘This is a damning indictment of this government’s comprehensive failure over more than a decade to tackle the deep rooted social problems in our society, and the knock on effect on crime and anti-social behaviour.

We know that ousted Manuel Zelaya was close to Venezualan strongman Hugo Chavez. We also know that Chavez has close ties to Columbia’s drug smuggling marxist terrorists (FARC). Now the Hondurans who loaded the aspiring president-for-life onto a Costa Rican bound plane are claiming that Zelaya was allowing Venezualan drug smugglers free reign.

BOGOTA (AP) — The regime that ousted Manuel Zelaya in Honduras claimed Tuesday that the deposed president allowed tons of cocaine to be flown into the Central American country on its way to the United States.

“Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds ... and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking,” its foreign minister, Enrique Ortez, told CNN en Espanol.

“We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it,” he added.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Rusty Payne in Washington said he could neither confirm nor deny a DEA investigation.

Without blaming the aspiring president-for-life, the DEA admits that Honduras has become a haven for drug muggling.

Honduras and other Central American nations have become major transshipment points in recent years for Colombian cocaine, particularly as Mexico’s government cracks down on cartels.

The drugs arrive in Honduras on non-commercial aircraft from Venezuela and increasingly in speedboats from Colombia, according to the Key West, Florida-based Joint Interagency Task Force-South, which coordinates drug interdiction in region.

In its most recent report on the illicit narcotics trade, the U.S. State Department said in February of Honduras that “official corruption continues to be an impediment to effective law enforcement and there are press reports of drug trafficking and associated criminal activity among current and former government and military officials.”

The report did not name names.

Drug-related violence appears to be up in Honduras.

Homicides surged 25 percent from some 4,400 in 2007 to more than 7,000 in 2008 while more than 1,600 people were killed execution-style, suggesting drug gang involvement, according to the Central American Violence Observatory.

 

To combat drug violence, the aspiring president-for-life proposed to legalize some drugs.

In October, Zelaya proposed legalizing drug use as a way of reducing the violence, and doubling the country’s police force, which reached 13,500 last year, up from 7,000 in 2005, according to the State Department report.

This story would probably shock someone who hasn’t brazed the gender/ideology/PC indoctrination of the University of California system.

(Sweden) A couple of Swedish parents have stirred up debate in the country by refusing to reveal whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child is a boy or a girl.

Pop’s parents,both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information.

In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, the parents were quoted saying their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction.

Yep… this crap is right out of Womens Studies 101. It’s all based on the theory that aside from a few minor mechanical differences, there’s no difference between a boy and a girl.

 

“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”

The child’s parents said so long as they keep Pop’s gender a secret, he or she will be able to avoid preconceived notions of how people should be treated if male or female.

Pop’s wardrobe includes everything from dresses to trousers and Pop’s hairstyle changes on a regular basis. And Pop usually decides how Pop is going to dress on a given morning.

Although Pop knows that there are physical differences between a boy and a girl, Pop’s parents never use personal pronouns when referring to the child – they just say Pop.

“I believe that the self-confidence and personality that Pop has shaped will remain for a lifetime,” said Pop’s mother.

 

But even in ultra liberal Sweden this is raising some eyebrows.

But while Pop’s parents say they have received supportive feedback from many of their peers, not everyone agrees that their chosen course of action will have a positive outcome.

“Ignoring children’s natures simply doesn’t work,” says Susan Pinker, a psychologist and newspaper columnist from Toronto, Canada, who wrote the book The Sexual Paradox, which focuses on sex differences in the workplace.

“Child-rearing should not be about providing an opportunity to prove an ideological point, but about responding to each child’s needs as an individual,” Pinker tells The Local.

“It’s unlikely that they’ll be able to keep this a secret for long. Children are curious about their own identity, and are likely to gravitate towards others of the same sex during free play time in early childhood.”

Pinker says there are many ways that males and females differ from birth; even if gender is kept ‘secret,’ prenatal hormones developed in the second trimester of pregnancy already alter the way the child behaves and feels.

She says once children can speak, males tell aggressive stories 87 per cent of the time, while females only 17 per cent. In a study, children aged two to four were given a task to work together for a reward, and boys used physical tactics 50 times more than girls, she says.

 

Although this might not be good for the child, gender feminists are delighted with the idea.

But Swedish gender equality consultant Kristina Henkel says Pop’s parents’ experiment might have positive results.

“If the parents are doing this because they want to create a discussion with other adults about why gender is important, then I think they can make a point of it,” Henkel says in a telephone interview with The Local.

“You can talk about there being a non-stereotypical gender; if you are a girl you can do the same as a boy, and if you’re a boy you can do the same as a girl.”

Henkel also says a child’s sex can deeply affect how they are treated growing up, and distract them from simply being a human being.

“If the child is dressed up as a girl or boy, it affects them because people see and treat them in a more gender-typical way,” Henkel explains.

“Girls are told they are cute in their dresses, and boys are told they are cool with their car toys. But if you give them no gender they will be seen more as a human or not a stereotype as a boy or girl.”

She says that without these gender stereotypes, children can build character as individuals, not hindered by preconceived notions of what they should be as males or females.

“I think that can make these kids stronger,” Henkel says.

Nothing says strenght like personal issues involving gender identity.

Anna Nordenström, a paediatric endocrinologist at Karolinska Institutet, says it’s hard to know what effects the parents’ decision will have on Pop.

“It will affect the child, but it’s hard to say if it will hurt the child,” says Nordenström, who studies hormonal influences on gender development.

“I don’t know what they are trying to achieve. It’s going to make the child different, make them very special.”

She says if Pop is still ‘genderless’ by the time he or she starts school, Pop will certainly receive a lot of attention from classmates.

“We don’t know exactly what determines sexual identity, but it’s not only sexual upbringing,” says Nordenström. “Gender-typical behaviour, sexual preferences and sexual identity usually go together. There are hormonal and other influences that we don’t know that will determine the gender of the child.”

By the way. Something similar was tried back in the 1960s, and it didn’t turn out very well.

Both Nordenström and Pinker refer to a controversial case from 1967 when a circumcision left one of two twin brothers without a penis. Dr. John Money, who asserted that gender was learned rather than innate, convinced the parents to raise ‘David’ as ‘Brenda’ and the child had cosmetic genitalia reconstruction surgery.

She was raised as a female, with girls’ clothes, games and codes of behaviour. The parents never told Brenda the secret until she was a teenager and rebelled against femininity. She then started receiving testosterone injections and underwent another genetic reconstruction process to become David again. David Reimer denounced the experiment as a crushing failure before committing suicide at the age of 38.

 

I actually remember a feminist professor discussing the Reimer case, and talking about how successfully had been raised as a girl, and how the reimer case proved that gender was a learned social construct, not biological. Years later I read an article from David Reimer’s POV, where he talked about how much he hated the people who did that too him.

I think these parents are playing with fire, but it will be poor “Pop” that will get burned.

The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now has been linked to voter registration fraud in multiple states. Now, as Kevin Mooney reports, it’s threatening to sue critics.

Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) leaders are using the threat of a law suit to silence and intimidate critics, according to current and former members of the liberal activist group.

In a letter dated June 11 an attorney for ACORN advised top whistleblowers that their unauthorized use of the organization’s name could make them liable for monetary damages and injunctive relief.

[...]

ACORN’s Project Vote affiliate has filed suit against Anita MonCrief, a former employee, who has testified under oath on voter registration allegations. ACORN is currently under investigation in at least 14 states for electoral irregularities. The Project Vote suit claims that Anita MonCrief and an unidentified accomplice gained access into private e-mails from group executives and stole the group’s name without permission. It also accuses Moncrief of using a company credit card for her own purposes.
“ACORN is attempting to silence me, and the allegations in the lawsuit are false,” MonCrief said in statement emailed to The Examiner.

And since most people now associate the name ACORN with voter registration fraud and financial irregularities.

ACORN executives have also changed their organization’s name, which was tarnished by investigations in at least 14 states of allegations of voter registration fraud during the 2008 presidential campaign, and charges by current and former members of financial mismanagement and misrepresentation.

The new name will let ACORN leaders continue their operations without worrying about prior bad publicity, according to Marcel Reid of ACORN 8, a group of present and former members.

“We’ve known for many months now that the name ACORN is going to be retired,” Reid said. “The name has been so damaged to the point where the leadership knows it simply can’t go on as it has with the ACORN label out front and center, especially after all of the reporting.”
In fact, the process has already begun, she noted. Wade Rathke, who founded the organization, announced on his blog that ACORN International has officially changed its name to “Community Organizations International.”

Reid also said ACORN is in the process of dismantling Citizen’s Consulting Inc. (CCI), a New-Orleans based non-profit, which has been used to maintain centralized financial control, ACORN 8 activists claim. Tax records show that CCI is interlinked with several ACORN affiliates.

Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled almost $1 million from the organization in 1999 and 2000, while he was employed as the organization’s chief financial officer with the CCI affiliate. For almost a decade Wade Rathke and other staff members concealed the embezzlement from ACORN’s board of trustees, according to the criminal complaint ACORN 8 members filed against the organization.