:: March 2010 :: newslinks | articles | opinion
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Chavez Arrests President of Globovision Television
[c] Today, the Venezuelan government arrested Guillermo Zuloaga, president of Globovision Television, the only remaining television on public airwaves critical of Hugo Chavez. According to the government, Zuloaga made offensive comments about Chavez (which is against the law in Venezuela) while speaking at a conference of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) in Aruba, where media representatives criticized the Venezuelan regime’s crackdown on freedom of speech.
Globovision and Zuloaga have been under constant harassment from the government, and Chavez has promised to close the station. Last July, Cato held a forum in Washington on “Venezuela’s Assault on Freedom of the Press and Other Liberties,” which was to feature Zuloaga. After the event was announced, however, a politically directed court prohibited him from leaving the country. So Zuloaga taped this 3 minute video address to the Cato audience and sent his son and vice president of Globovision, Carlos, to take his place. [see link for video]
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Best Of : Ann in Canada
OK...since this has become such an entertainment value and no doubt promises to do so further - at least until Ann's Calgary stint is over - it seems the best thing to do here is to dedicate this bit of space to The Best of Ann in Canada. For the duration, world, if you might, cease any other 'newsworthy' events, if you would be so kind.
Various Related
Unsurprisingly, all manner of summations of the Ottawa cancellation have cropped up, many from those that were attending, so they might as well be contained together for reference, but don't be surprisedif when some of them are scrubbed or removed and sent down the memory hole.
We select a few:
Video
Pre - Ottawa Speech Cancellation
[ctv-p1]
[ctv-p2]
[ctv-p3]
[cbc]
Websites
[link] A better collection of various links than we'll no doubt get around to.
[link] What happened last night was shameful, frightening and profoundly sad.
Shameful that an institution that should encourage debate instead incites censorship and bully tactics.
Frightening that a generation is being educated to think that free speech does not need to be protected.
Sad that one day my grandchildren may not have the right to say what they want no matter how right, wrong, stupid or brilliant.
A dear friend who called me to find out just what happened reminded me of a profoundly apropos quote from Ronald Reagan: "Freedom is only one generation away from extinction."
Before I left I took my copy of "Guilty" and approached Ezra to ask if he would sign it. When I got home, I opened the cover to find that he had written the perfect message.
Freedom!
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Steyn :
[so] [...] As I wrote in The National Post eight years ago - August 5th 2002:
The aim of a large swathe of the left is not to win the debate but to get it cancelled before it starts. You can do that in any number of ways -- busting up campus appearances by conservatives, "hate crimes" laws, Canada's ghastly human-rights commissions, the more "enlightened" court judgments, the EU's recent decision to criminalize "xenophobia," or merely, as the Times does, by declaring your side of every issue to be the "moderate" and "nonideological" position...
The quality of your argument is only important if you want to win by persuasion. But it’s irrelevant if you want to win by intimidation. I’m personally very happy to defend my columns in robust debate, but, if Canada believed in robust debate, we wouldn't have these "human rights" commissions or university administrators like the wretched M Houle in the first place. The morons who shut down Ann Coulter last night don't care that they made her point for her, anymore than those Muslim agitators in the streets of London fretted about the internal contradictions of threatening to kill anyone who says they're violent.
Freedom of speech is in grave peril in Canada. In the Coulter fracas, almost all the major societal institutions behaved poorly:
1) François Houle symbolizes a decadent academy that is the very antithesis of honest enquiry and intellectual debate that the university is supposed to represent.
2) The Ottawa Police have declared that there is no equality before the law. If you belong to certain groups, they'll stand by as the mob shuts you down.
3) The dinosaur media are vast lumbering eunuchs too cowed by political correctness to do even elementary research. Fatima Al Dhaher, the poor wee thing traumatized by Ann Coulter's camel joke, turns out to be a Jew-hater who wants to eliminate the State of Israel, and belongs to a group who regard Jews as "subhuman" "zionazis/kikeroaches". But that's too complicated for the media to fit into their Sesame Street narratives.
Between them, the media, the law and the education system are actively shriveling Canada's liberties. It doesn't lead anywhere good: Ghost of a Flea's title - "Fascist Canada" - is no exaggeration. If you say, "Oh, c'mon, if you're not a troublemaker like Coulter or Levant or Guy Earle or Douglas McCue, Canada's very pleasant", well, so were large parts of Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain. But they were not free, and few pre-Trudeau Canadians would have entertained trading ancient liberties for soft totalitarianism euphemized as "diversity".
The saddest aspect of this sad day is the number of people who've sent e-mails denouncing the Ottawa bullies but ending with the words "If you print this, please don't mention my name." Don't you realize that that's part of the problem? In a sane world, it would be François Houle and Fatima Al Dhaher and Susan Cole who would be ashamed to have their names mentioned. But they're not. They're proud to nail their colours to the masts of state censorship, Israeli eliminationism, and mob violence - while your support for free speech and other traditional liberties can only be expressed sotto voce and anonymously. That right there tells you how much of Canada you've already lost.
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Ann Coulter prepares human-rights complaint
[g&m] [...] She said she’s hired Canadian conservative activist Ezra Levant to prepare a human-rights complaint that will test how equitably these hate-crime laws are applied.
In an interview with The Globe, Ms. Coulter suggested the University of Ottawa’s provost, Francois Houle, is partly responsible for the angry crowds that opposed her speaking Tuesday night. He is the official who warned her in advance to watch what she said lest she incur criminal charges for hate speech.
The tribunal should take her complaint seriously, she said, “because either Francois [Houle] has created a climate of hate against me based on my membership in an identifiable group – or the whole human rights commission is complete horseshit.” [...]
“I would like to know if any Muslim has been treated this badly, at least since the Reformation, because I am drawing a blank,” Ms. Coulter told The Globe.
She also took a swipe at Canadians, saying this country has lost its edge.
“You guys used to be so cool. You were smokers. You had epic hockey fights. We had half our comedians from Canada. Now you’re all a bunch of girls named Francois.”
*Emphasis ours.
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Even Infamous Sock-Puppet Gets It :
"The creepy tyranny of Canada's hate speech laws"
[s] I've written many times before about the evils of "hate speech" laws that are prevalent in Canada and Europe -- people being fined, prosecuted and hauled before official tribunals for expressing political opinions which the State has prohibited and criminalized. I won't rehash those arguments here, but I do want to note a particularly creepy illustration of how these laws manifest. [...]
Personally, I think threatening someone with criminal prosecution for the political views they might express is quite "hateful." So, too, is anointing oneself the arbiter of what is and is not sufficiently "civilized discussion" to the point of using the force of criminal law to enforce it. If I were administering Canada's intrinsically subjective "hate speech" laws (and I never would), I'd consider prosecuting Provost Houle for this letter. The hubris required to believe that you can declare certain views so objectively hateful that they should be criminalized is astronomical; in so many eras, views that were most scorned by majorities ended up emerging as truth.
For as long as I'll live, I'll never understand how people want to vest in the Government the power to criminalize particular viewpoints it dislikes, will never understand the view that it's better to try to suppress adverse beliefs than to air them, and will especially never understand people's failure to realize that endorsing this power will, one day, very likely result in their own views being criminalized when their political enemies (rather than allies) are empowered. Who would ever want to empower officious technocrats to issue warnings along the lines of: be forewarned: if you express certain political views, you may be committing a crime; guide and restrict yourself accordingly?
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...We Have a Bingo!
[nrb] [...] Understand: Establishment Canada hates America, but paradoxically, cares desperately about what America says about our country, and seeks secondhand validation from any meager attention we might get from you; consider the thirty-years-worth of boilerplate Canadian puff pieces, bragging about how many now-famous comedians we’ve “given” to Hollywood, and how we built the arm (the arm!) on the Space Shuttle like, 500 years ago, to take two of the more pathetic examples. The “look at us! Pleeeeeze!!” b.s. surrounding the supposed wonderfulness of the recent Vancouver Winter Olympics (yawn) is another.
So for us, the Ann Coulter Riot is A. Very. Big. Deal. I expect lawsuits galore, questions about the pathetic security apparatus that “protects” our nation’s capital, criminal charges and countercharges, commemorative tee shirts (the “Coulter in Canada” one pictured above is now selling fast), magazine coverstories story — I forgot: we only have one magazine — and much more.
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Coulter talk cancelled for security reasons
[np] After protesters at the University of Ottawa prevented Ann Coulter from giving a speech on Tuesday night, the American conservative writer said it proved the point she came to make - free speech in Canada leaves much to be desired.
Then she said what she really thought of the student protesters who surrounded Marion Hall, making it to unsafe, in the view of her bodyguard, for the pundit to attempt entry.
"The University of Ottawa is really easy to get into, isn't it?" she said in an interview after the cancelled event. "I never get any trouble at the Ivy League schools. It's always the bush league schools."
Ms. Coulter said she has been speaking regularly at university campuses for a decade. While she has certainly been heckled, she said this is the first time an engagement has been cancelled because of protesters. [...]
"Since I've arrived in Canada, I've been denounced on the floor of Parliament - which, by the way, is on my bucket list - my posters have been banned, I've been accused of committing a crime in a speech that I have not yet given, I was banned by the student council, so welcome to Canada!"
COMMENTS FROM THE INTERNET
It is a special brand of intellect (apparently in flourish and taught with regularity at most modern universities these days) that suggests that "free speech" equals the squelching of another person espousing their opinion and done so not with reasoned, return speech but, rather, intimidation.
One need not agree with the views of Ann Coulter (or anyone else - nor are any forced to listen to or attend function of same) to understand that the best recourse to subjectively disagreeable speech is rationale, counter-speech.
Realize that it's not unthinkable that the next speech silenced by whim of a changeable government might be your own. The endorsement of such a thing is the domain of the fool.
Herald this as a triumph, idiotic, programmed charlatans. Yours is disgrace.
- Dr.Zen
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
— Harry S. Truman
"If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed."
— Benjamin Franklin
"All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship."
— George Bernard Shaw
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
— Salman Rushdie
"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?"
— Kurt Vonnegut
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"Coulter is not an anti Semite--the Semites being a linguistic group extending from the Caucasus to North Africa and Malta---she is a fervent Christian which is, as you know, a Jewish heresy which believes that the Rabbi Jesus is the Messiah---it is quite consistent to her belief system that the Jewish people accept Jesus as the true Messiah.
Not being a theist I stay away from the theological infighting that characterizes the bronze age Abrahamic tradition with its warring off shoots ---the Jewish stem and the Christian and Islamic offshoots---she has as much right to express her opinion on theological matters as do followers of the other two.
I certainly hope that her threat to go to the HRC is carried out---it would be very entertaining to see that entity full of politically correct intellectually mediocre pedants who focus their attention to only one side of the political spectrum whilst turning a blind eye to the maliciousness of the other twisting and turning to avoid her rapier thrusts.
Intelligence is merely neuronal speed---and Coulter is faster than most---when one is verbally fencing of course one has to use guile to put the other debater off balance---and she's as shrewd and as sharp as any of her opponents with her opponents constantly off balance---watching her debate is absolute fun---and there is only one way for her inferiors to counter her---they cannot use logic or reason or facts so they abuse her and insult her in the hope of putting her off balance---which is exactly what they won't be able to do because she was expecting it and had planned for it.
'Reactionary' refers to any political or social movement or ideology or belief system that seeks to return to a previous state---usually aimed at the ultra conservatives it can also apply to Marxists who wish to return to a mythical era in the distant past where everyone was equally poor with no filthy capitalists around to spoil their equality as they lived in a state of nature---our Islamofascist reactionaries wish to return to that glorious golden era somewhere around the seventh century---many others however wish to return to a culture dominated by the philosophy of reason---as occurred in Ancient Greece, the Renaissance and the nineteenth century---many modern day conservatives yearn for a return to the age of reason---many Marxist reactionaries in the guise of the 'green' movement want to go all the way back to the garden of Eden and then get rid of the humans who they think spoiled it all."
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"The antics of those "socially conscious" activists who prevented Coulter from speaking in Ottawa University today reflects badly on the whole of Canada and in particular on those involved at the university and its officials.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree---it also includes the freedom not to listen---the goons were free to not to attend the lecture and free to cover their own ears during the lecture---but a line has to be drawn when physical force and violence [including the pulling of the fire alarm which surely was an offence] is used to prevent others from attending or hearing the speech.
One wonders what punitive steps the University will take against those who deprived the audience from hearing Ms Coulter's speech, no matter its content?
One suspects that they'll do nothing, marking it down as one more victory for their version of unidirectional politically correct 'free speech'.
Surely Ms Coulter has enough ammunition now to go the the HRC---let's hope that she does." - by Ascalepius
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“Our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or ‘free speech’) in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States.
"In other words, we don’t really have freedom of speech, just Pre-approved rhetoric. Guess what else you don’t have now, Canadians- Good healthcare just across the border." -SpeakEasy
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"I so love reading these Canadian analysis of American politics. I'm one of those fringe, Christian, American (you left out "apple pie") conservatives to which you lob such enlightened, melba-toast opinion and of whom you write off as losers. Ah! But you're thinking godless, cowardly Canada, mon chéri! This is habanero eating USA, and you're in for a surprise (like the extortionist abortionist perv's, or rather Liberal elite) and will have to really eat some crow when we grab out country back. By the by, I teach at a college here and you blokes can come speak any time, though I don't think I can talk any students into attending some Canadian chinwag." -Profvolkswagen
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Some good comments there, but...I think this one has 'best of the month' locked in...
"Just out of curiousity, is that Ron Wood from the Rolling Stones over Pelosi’s left shoulder? Just wonderin’" -Dopenstrange
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[bg] Ann Coulter: "I was hoping for a fruit basket, not a threat to prosecute:"
The 'Letter To Ann'
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Steyn on The 'Letter to Ann'
[s] [...] What a sad and embarrassing letter, even by the standards of the Canadian academy. Does M Houle write to all University of Ottawa speakers like this? Or does he reserve his telekinetic powers to detect "pre-crime" only for the ideologically suspect?
I've no idea what Ann Coulter's reaction to this letter is, but I suspect it's "Go ahead, Princess Fairy Pants, make my day." M Houle would have a very hard time persuading the Ottawa police or the RCMP to lay criminal charges over an Ann Coulter speech because they realize, even if he doesn't, that Canada doesn't need to become even more of an international laughingstock in this area. More likely is a complaint to the Canadian and/or Ontario "Human Rights" Commissions. But you know something? I don't get the feeling they'd be eager to re-ignite the free speech wars on a nuclear scale. Think of Ezra's and my appearance in the House of Commons, and then imagine the scene when Miss Coulter testifies. So the threat is an empty one and M Houle seems to be being - oh, what's the "respectful and civil" way of putting it? - a posturing wanker.
This is the pitiful state one of the oldest free societies on the planet has been reduced to, and this is why our free speech campaign matters - because those who preside over what should be arenas of honest debate and open inquiry instead wish to imprison public discourse within ever narrower bounds - and in this case aren't above threatening legal action against those who dissent from the orthodoxies. Lots of Americans loathe Ann Coulter but it takes a Canadian like François Houle to criminalize her. The strictures he attempts to place around her, despite his appeal to "Canadian law", are at odds with the eight centuries of Canada's legal inheritance. Canadians should point that out to him politely, and explain that, although he lives high off the hog courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer, he does not speak for them.
Furthermore: A collection of [Letters To Houle] :
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Pony Up
[bh] [...] I wanna show you a graph from Nick Gillespie’s great piece at Reason.com.
CLICK FOR FULL SIZE
Check out the estimated cost of Medicare. 12 billion. Now check out its actual cost. 110 billion. They were only off by 900 percent.
Welcome to Greece, people. Jump in, the water’s warm.
Let’s look at all arguments for health care. First they tried to sell the thing on moral grounds. Didn’t work. Then on efficiency grounds. Still didn’t work. Then they switched to saving money. Thirty million new people to insure, and somehow they convinced themselves it’ll save us money! Using the same logic, we should insure Canada too! We’d really be saving cash then!
Look – universal health care is a beautiful idea. But so is getting a pony for your fifth birthday.
When daddy argues with little Susie over that pony, she doesn’t care about how they’re going to afford the pony. She doesn’t care if they have to mortgage the house to pay for the pony. She just wants that pony.
But see, daddy is supposed to know that. And daddy isn’t supposed to actually buy the pony! And, most of all, he isn’t supposed to tell everyone in earshot that it’s cheaper having that pony – than having a car.
But he just did. And the media, and the Dems – fell in line like a classroom of five year old girls.
They didn’t just buy the pony. They just bought the whole damn farm.
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Judge Napolitano Weighs In: How Solid is Stupak’s ‘Executive Order’ Compromise?
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The Enlightened and Tolerant 'Liberal' University Students : Canada
Coulter Comes To Canada
[oc] The president of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa has barred a volunteer organizer from putting up posters advertising the upcoming appearance of American right-wing columnist and political commentator Ann Coulter.
She is to talk about political correctness, media bias and freedom of speech Tuesday night at Marion Hall as part of a Canadian lecture tour. Canadian conservative political activist Ezra Levant will also speak at the event and introduce Coulter.
"The federation does not support Ann Coulter speaking on our campus," said student president Seamus Wolfe. "We're trying to work with the administration to see if we can ask her to do her speaking event somewhere else."
[ifp] American conservative firebrand Ann Coulter won't be in London until Monday but already the dust is flying.
Local activist and one-time NDP candidate Megan Walker says of Coulter, "She's venomous . . . She crosses the line and promotes hatred and violence."
Walker's comments provoked a response from a woman instrumental in bringing Coulter to London, Mary Lou Ambrogio, whose group, the International Free Press Society, is paying $10,000 for the appearance, the balance of Coulter's fee coming from an American group that promotes conservatism in young women, the Claire Boothe Luce Policy Institute.
Coulter couldn't be reached by phone. In a brief e-mail, Coulter offered to comment, but hadn't done so by Friday.
Ambrogio said Coulter was chosen to test the tolerance of Londoners for free speech, a test she says Walker has flunked.
"She pays lip service to free speech," Ambrogio said.
While Coulter pushes peoples' buttons, she doesn't incite criminal activity nor hatred, she said.
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Ryan Is Not Ready to Give Up on Health Care
[nro] ‘This is the closing of the first chapter of America’s health-care saga,” Rep. Paul Ryan says from his office, which is adorned with reminders of contests of the non-political kind: hunting mementos and a Green Bay Packers helmet. “We are witnessing the beginning of a whole new kind of health-care politics, the likes of which we have never seen before.”
Ryan, a 40-year-old Wisconsin Republican, says Republicans have a fight on their hands, and he is ready for combat. As Democrats scrambled this past week for votes, he’s been listening to Metallica on his iPod and strategizing about how best to counteract Obamacare. Sunday night’s passage, he says, “was a rude awakening and a big wake-up call,” but also a call to action for Americans — and, especially, for the GOP.
“We need to establish a set of metrics and benchmarks to measure the sector going forward, keeping a close eye on all of the Democrats’ claims,” Ryan says. “From cost to quality, we will need to be vigilant in making sure that their assertions are actually substantiated with facts, and I have every reason to believe they won’t be.” [...]
“Health care is really the issue that speaks to the relationship between the citizen and the government in America,” he says. “It shapes the fiscal trajectory and the economic trajectory. This whole debate has been a proxy fight about what kind of country America will be — whether we’ll become a cradle-to-grave welfare state or stay a free-market democracy. The Democrats who are being told that the worse is over should know that the battle has not even begun. It’s up to us to now bring the case to the American people — a real moral, philosophical, and economic case — asking about our values, our founding principles, and if we really want to move toward a Western European–style system.”
“Just look across the pond at how terrible things have become,” Ryan says. In Britain, even Conservative leader David Cameron is politically unable or unwilling to criticize the National Health Service, and Ryan calls that “a pretty pitiful thing to watch.” President Obama knows this, Ryan says, and wants government health care to achieve the same level of entrenchment here at home. “What’s really happening here is the president is saying to the American people that you’re stuck in your current station in life, you’re frozen, and the government is here to help you cope with it. But that’s not who we are. We are a dynamic society where people have the will and incentive to make the most of their lives, to reach their potential. With this bill, that whole mindset, the American idea is upended.”
What about the practical consequences of Obamacare? “Soon, we’ll see individual-market insurance companies go out of business and dump their people,” Ryan says. “Tax increases on capital are going to hurt the economy in 2011. These arbitrary Medicare cuts will adversely affect the providers and therefore their beneficiaries. You’ll have the Internal Revenue Service beefing up its enforcement of this new mandate, which people have no clue is coming. And you’re going to have employers dump employees in this exchange once it’s up and running — funneling everyone into a government-run rationing system. Then we’ll see a big spike in insurance rates, and the Democrats are going to wager that they can just blame the insurers for that, and therefore that means they will need to institute insurance price controls or have a public option. [...]
“We need to become the party of liberty and freedom,” Ryan argues. “We’re not doing enough. We can do better, and we will — because we have no choice. If we’re going to offer the country a completely different vision, we can’t be Democratic-lite or resign ourselves to be slightly more efficient managers and tax-collectors for the welfare state. We have to break with that and give people a clear and distinct difference.”
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Anderson Cooper : Jeopardy
Cooper came in last (tied with Aisha Tyler, both with zero cash at the end), losing to Cheech Marin. Yea, we know that Cooper won once in this seemingly lowered-bar version of the program. CNN Buddies, Wolf Blitzer and Soledad O'Brien have also finished in the last place position on the show.
[g] Tonight brought us another edition of celebrity Jeopardy!, with Cheech Marin, Aisha Tyler, and the Silver Fox himself, Anderson Cooper. Well, Cooper kind of sucked. Actually, he really sucked. Are CNN anchors incapable of playing Jeopardy! well? Inside, video highlights.
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Ann Coulter : Strictly Right Radio : [link]
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The Failure of RomneyCare
[wsj] Former Massachusetts governor and likely 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney has been on the wrong side of the defining political battle of our time.
Mr. Romney claimed earlier this month on "Fox News Sunday" that the Massachusetts health reform plan he signed into law in 2006 is "the ultimate conservative plan." But there are many similarities between it and the ObamaCare loathed by conservative voters.
Both have an individual mandate requiring most residents to have health insurance or pay a penalty. Most businesses are required to participate or pay a fine. Both rely on government-designed purchasing exchanges that also provide a platform to control private health insurance. Many of the uninsured are covered through Medicaid expansion and others receive subsidies for highly-prescriptive policies. And the apparatus requires a plethora of new government boards and agencies.
While it's true that the liberal Massachusetts legislature did turn Mr. Romney's plan to the left, his claims that his plan is "entirely different" will not stand up to the intense scrutiny of a presidential campaign, especially a primary challenge. Mr. Romney needs to be more honest about his Massachusetts experiment and its failings. [...]
Mr. Romney's promise that getting everyone covered would force costs down also is far from being realized. One third of state residents polled by Harvard researchers in a study published in "Health Affairs" in 2008 said that their health costs had gone up as a result of the 2006 reforms. A typical family of four today faces total annual health costs of nearly $13,788, the highest in the country. Per capita spending is 27% higher than the national average.
The state's stubbornly high health costs are partly the result of intrusive government regulations that stifle competition in the insurance market and strict mandates on what services insurance must cover. A 2008 study by the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy found that the state's most expensive insurance mandates cost patients more than $1 billion between July 2004 and July 2005. The Massachusetts health reform law left all of them in place.
Further, insurance companies are required to sell "just-in-time" policies even if people wait until they are sick to buy coverage. That's just like the Obama plan. There is growing evidence that many people are gaming the system by purchasing health insurance when they need surgery or other expensive medical care, then dropping it a few months later.
Some Massachusetts safety-net hospitals that treat a disproportionate number of lower-income and uninsured patients are threatening bankruptcy. They still are treating a large number of people without health insurance, but the payments they receive for uncompensated care have been cut under the reform deal.
The Bay State is also suffering from what the Massachusetts Medical Society calls a "critical shortage" of primary-care physicians. As one would expect, expanded insurance has caused an increase in demand for medical services. But there hasn't been a corresponding increase in the number of doctors. As a result, many patients are insured in name only: They have health coverage but can't find a doctor.
Fifty-six percent of Massachusetts internal medicine physicians no longer are accepting new patients, according to a 2009 physician work-force study conducted by the Massachusetts Medical Society. For new patients who do get an appointment with a primary-care doctor, the average waiting time is 44 days, the Medical Society found.
As Dr. Sandra Schneider, the vice president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, told the Boston Globe last April, "Just because you have insurance doesn't mean there's a [primary care] physician who can see you."
The difficulties in getting primary care have led to an increasing number of patients who rely on emergency rooms for basic medical services. Emergency room visits jumped 7% between 2005 and 2007. Officials have determined that half of those added ER visits didn't actually require immediate treatment and could have been dealt with at a doctor's office—if patients could have found one.
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State Treasurer Tim Cahill slams Barack Obama, Dems on health care
[bh] State Treasurer Tim Cahill, taking swipes at both Gov. Deval Patrick and President Obama, boosted his bipartisan chops yesterday, telling Herald columnist Howie Carr on WRKO, “I voted for John McCain, believe it or not.”
Cahill, saying he was barred from the 2008 Democratic National Convention because he wouldn’t endorse either Obama or Hillary Clinton, said, “My own party basically voted me out.”
“I was afraid of what we had already been getting in Massachusetts, and at that point in 2008, I was aware that it wasn’t working,” he said. Separately yesterday, Cahill accused Obama of “propping up” the Bay State’s health plan with federal aid in order to help push the Democrats’ plan through Congress.
“The real problem is that this . . . sucking sound of money has been going into this health-care reform,” Cahill said. “And I would argue that it’s being propped up so that the federal government and the Obama administration can drive it through.”
Gov. Deval Patrick argues the state’s universal health care program has added 1 percent to the budget, but Cahill said the real impact is buffered by federal dollars.
Meanwhile, Republican Charles Baker’s campaign said Patrick “has consistently failed to address rising health-care costs in Massachusetts.” Baker, the former Harvard Pilgrim CEO, advocated for years for greater transparency on the part of medical service providers.
Cahill called on congressional Democrats yesterday to go “back to the drawing board,” saying he fears they will “bankrupt” the country.
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Is Tom Hanks Unhinged?
[pm] Much has been written of the recent Tom Hanks remarks to Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine interview about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific. Here is the explosive excerpt that is making the rounds today.
“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”
Hanks may not have been quoted correctly; and his remarks may have been impromptu and poorly expressed; and we should give due consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II; and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers. All that said, Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well, an ignoramus.
Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous. Consider:
1) In earlier times, we had good relations with Japan (an ally during World War I, that played an important naval role in defeating imperial Germany at sea) and had stayed neutral in its disputes with Russia (Teddy Roosevelt won a 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his intermediary role). The crisis that led to Pearl Harbor was not innately with the Japanese people per se (tens of thousands of whom had emigrated to the United States on word of mouth reports of opportunity for Japanese immigrants), but with Japanese militarism and its creed of Bushido that had hijacked, violently so in many cases, the government and put an entire society on a fascistic footing. We no more wished to annihilate Japanese because of racial hatred than we wished to ally with their Chinese enemies because of racial affinity. In terms of geo-strategy, race was not the real catalyst for war other than its role among Japanese militarists in energizing expansive Japanese militarism.
2) How would Hanks explain the brutal Pacific wars between Japanese and Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, Japanese and Filipinos, and Japanese and Pacific Islanders, in which not hundreds of thousands perished, but many millions? In each of these theaters, the United States was allied with Asians against an Asian Japan, whose racially-hyped “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” aimed at freeing supposedly kindred Asians from European and white imperialism, flopped at its inauguration (primarily because of high-handed Japanese feelings of superiority and entitlement, which, in their emphasis on racial purity, were antithetical to the allied democracies, but quite in tune with kindred Axis power, Nazi Germany.) [...]
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Atty. Gen. Holder failed to disclose legal briefs to senators
[lat] Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. gave more ammunition to his critics Friday, admitting he had failed to tell a Senate committee about half a dozen briefs to the Supreme Court that he had signed, including two involving a terrorism dispute.
Holder's aides said the failure to mention the briefs last year before his confirmation was an oversight and a mistake.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, called it an "extremely serious matter" that would trigger sharp criticism when Holder is due to be questioned March 23.
"The attorney general, as with all nominees, has a duty of candor. . . . It is simply unacceptable that briefs in such significant cases were not provided to the committee so they could be discussed during his confirmation hearing," Sessions said. [...]
Holder's aides said the failure to mention the briefs last year before his confirmation was an oversight and a mistake.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, called it an "extremely serious matter" that would trigger sharp criticism when Holder is due to be questioned March 23.
"The attorney general, as with all nominees, has a duty of candor. . . . It is simply unacceptable that briefs in such significant cases were not provided to the committee so they could be discussed during his confirmation hearing," Sessions said.
Holder has run into a drumbeat of Republican criticism since he announced in November that he had decided to move the admitted Sept. 11 plotters, including self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, from military custody at Guantanamo Bay to be tried in a federal civilian court in Manhattan. The attorney general said this trial would demonstrate the nation's commitment to the rule of law.
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States may hold onto tax refunds for months
[usat] Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months.
States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls.
"It's an indicator of how bad it is," says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. "You know things are bad when you have to do that."
New York, hit with a $9 billion deficit, may delay $500 million in refunds to keep the state from running out of cash, says Gov. David Paterson.
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[bg] Based on the Recovery.gov data, more than two third of the 594,754.3 jobs “created or saved” with the stimulus funds were “created or saved” in the Department of Education. Basically, what the administration meant by shovel ready projects was funding for your next door teacher.
Now, let’s recap some of findings and news of the previous weeks.
1. Most jobs are created in the Department of Education
2. In 2009, for the first time ever, more public-sector employees (7.9 million) belonged to a union than did private-sector employees (7.4 million) despite there being five times more wage and salary workers in the private sector.
3. A third of all union jobs are in Education
4. 33 percent of the education industry is unionized
5. The union boss, Andy Stern, was appointed to be on the president’s debt commission.
It all makes sense, doesn’t it?
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Record Monthly Deficit Of $220 Billion in February
[abc] The government racked up a record-high monthly budget deficit of $220.9 billion in February, the Treasury Department announced today.
The latest flood of red ink brings the total deficit for the first five months of the current fiscal year to $651 billion, far exceeding the $589 billion shortfall for the same timeframe in the last fiscal year.
The government ended the 2009 fiscal year with a record $1.4 trillion shortfall. The Obama administration has forecast a $1.56 trillion deficit for this year.
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Lying About Bush's Tax Cuts
[at] [...] Two of the most oft-cited objections to the Bush tax cuts by the left are that it helped only the rich and it was largely responsible for the federal deficit at the end of the Bush presidency. Instead, it is true that if the current administration allows any or all of the Bush tax cuts to expire, economic growth will be slowed and tax revenue could actually decrease, perpetuating our deficit dilemma.
The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 broadly lowered income, capital gains, dividends, and estate taxes. Fanning the lie that only the rich benefited, liberal economists Peter Orszag and William Gale described the Bush tax cuts as reverse-government redistribution of wealth, "[shifting] the burden of taxation away from upper-income, capital-owning households and toward the wage-earning households of the lower and middle classes." This criticism stuck so well that it is difficult to find a liberal today who doesn't believe that these tax relief measures were anything more than "tax cuts for the rich."
But the data does not support this conclusion. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Bush tax cuts actually shifted the total tax burden farther toward the rich so that in 2000-2004, total income tax paid by the top 40% of income-earners grew by 4.6% to 99.1% of the total. [...]
The second major misconception spread by the left about the Bush tax cuts is that the lower tax rates caused the federal deficit woes we face today. Keeping with the party line of blaming the previous administration for all of today's problems, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) quipped in a news conference on January 8 of this year: "Let me just say that the tax cuts at the high end ... have been the biggest contributor to the budget deficit." Of course, the Speaker would have us believe that overspending has nothing to do with our deficit.
In fact, the Bush tax cuts actually increased government revenue. According to economist Brian Reidl of the Heritage Foundation, The Laffer Curve (upon which much of the supply-side theory is based) merely formalizes the common sense observations that
* 1. Tax revenues depend on the tax base as well as the tax rate,
* 2. Raising tax rates discourages the taxed behavior and therefore shrinks the tax base, offsetting some of the revenue gains, and
* 3. Lowering tax rates encourages the taxed behavior and expands the tax base, offsetting some of the revenue loss. [...]
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CNN Ratings : In The Toilet
It's been a steady ride of churning out garbage for CNN. We've been saying it for so long now that we're tired of it. The programming on the network is one long loop of essentially crap. It's unwatchable.
And another thing, and this applies to all of the networks/news programs - why even bother having an anchor or host when you simply let guests avoid answering what you've asked them? So blatantly? It's chronic and it's a waste of time and money. You might as well just have people on by themselves to have their message churned out.
Sure, occasionally someone may say, "That wasn't the question, that was not what I asked you." Once. Then they let it slide. Keep asking the question until it is answered or you waste time and render yourselves useless.
Anchor: "Senator, is that sky not blue?"
Senator: "I arrived by car this morning."
Anchor: "In fairness, I asked you if the sky was not blue? You didn't answer the question."
Senator: "The ride was pleasant and smooth."
Anchor: "Moving on,what did you have for breakfast this morning?"
And on it goes...complete waste of time.
[rcp] Get out the defibrillator quick: CNN is dying. What other conclusion can be drawn from the Nielsen ratings from February, which showed the once dominant news network finishing in fifth place for the first time ever- and now trailing CNBC and Headline News as well as its main competitors, FOX and MSNBC?
The numbers are, as you can imagine, pretty stark. Wolf Blitzer's show, The Situation Room, was down 44% in total viewers in February. Campbell Brown, Larry King, and Anderson Cooper all posted their lowest ratings ever in February among total viewers, declining 50%, 55%, and 59%, respectively.
The numbers are equally grim among the coveted 25-54 demographic. CNN's share of the market with this group during prime time declined from 21% last February to just 10% this year. Even worse, its market share among viewers 25-54 in day time - what's been seen as the network's bread and butter - declined nine percent in the last year to 14%.
After a good year in 2008 fueled by sharp election coverage, CNN President Jon Klein has stubbornly refused to change course despite the network's epic slide over the last 15 months. The loss of Lou Dobbs last year obviously made things worse. But as CNN continues to fade, the question is whether anything less than a radical makeover can save this once proud, but deeply humbled network.
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Long Overdue : Sorry Charlie : Rangel Takes Leave of Absence
I guess Chuckles figures if he sleeps in and stays away for a little while everyone will just forget his personal manner and ways and means. Sorry Charlie, not going to happen.
[ap] The investigation of Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is looking into whether he:
_Violated House rules by using his official position to raise money for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York.
_Had his committee consider legislation that would benefit donors to the center at the same time the congressman solicited donations or pledges.
_Preserved a tax shelter for an oil drilling company, Nabors Industries, which has a chief executive who donated money to the center while Rangel's committee considered the loophole legislation.
_Used four rent-controlled apartment units in New York City, when the city's rent stabilization program is supposed to apply to one's primary residence. This raises the question of how all the units could be primary residences.
_Disclosed information on the financing of his ownership interest in a guest unit within the Punta Cana Yacht Club in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
_Intentionally failed to report — when required — hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in assets. The amended disclosure reports added a credit union IRA, mutual fund accounts and stock.
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Something Fishy : Representatives ditching Rangel's hot dirty money
[nyd] At least three Democratic congressmen have given to charities $26,000 in campaign contributions they received from embattled House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel of New York following inquiries by this newspaper.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., appeared Feb. 23 in The Washington Examiner's "Dirty Money Watch" but had declined to say what he would do with $2,000 he'd received from Rangel for the 2010 campaign cycle.
Two days later, the Connecticut Post published a letter citing The Examiner and calling on Himes to return the Rangel contribution. The same day, Himes' prospective Republican opponent, Rob Russo, also called on Himes to return the money.
The next day, Rangel was admonished by the House ethics committee for accepting trips to the Caribbean that were paid for by a nonprofit foundation funded in part by corporations with business before Rangel's committee.
And Himes announced that he was giving the $2,000 to a charity.
Rangel is under investigation for multiple allegations of ethical improprieties, including failure to pay income taxes, misuse of official property in fundraising and getting tax advantages for favored donors.
On Monday, Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., announced that he is giving $14,000 he received from Rangel to an Illinois food bank. Foster's announcement came after The Examiner's query earlier in the day.
Also on Monday, Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., told The Examiner that he is giving $10,000 he received from Rangel to charity.
Following Rangel's admonishment by the ethics panel, The Examiner recontacted dozens of senators and representatives featured in "Dirty Money Watch" since last November who either had declined to comment or said they would not return the money.
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Obama Flashback on 50-Plus-1 Vote Strategy : Like Everything Else He Says : Apparently Meaningless
COMMENTS FROM THE INTERNET
"Where is the honor in violating everything you promised on the campaign trail once in office? I would rather resign than force health care through on reconciliation, and have this video go viral for the next hundred years as an example of the total and complete violation of my campaign promises. Once someone has achieved enough financial success to provide for one’s family, as Obama obviously had by the time he reached the US senate, then the only remaining issue for the rest of one’s career is, can you conduct yourself with honor? Apparently a commitment to the socialist agenda IS the only matter of honor for him. That’s the only conclusion to draw. He should have been honest with the American people on the campaign trail that this is who he is. What a liar." - RNel; Nreitbart.tv
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Obama Fatigue
[pjm] Every President starts to wear on the public. But the omnipresent Obama has become wearisome in record time. Why?
1) Money: There is none. Every time the president talks of another billion for this, and trillion for that, the people sigh: “We don’t have it; he’s going to borrow it.” Unemployment is near 10%, so borrowing nearly $2 trillion each year makes more sense to Keynesian economists than to voters who don’t find hope by maxing out their credit cards when they lose their jobs.
Obama is weirdly oblivious to number crunching — as is true of many who have never been self-employed or had to scramble without a public salary. Yet even Hillary is now whining that her foreign policy is frozen by the fact of mounting American debt. Obama is the stereotypical great-aunt that sweeps into the Christmas dinner casually boasting about what she is going to do for this niece and that nephew, while most roll their eyes with the understanding that her credit cards are long ago maxed out — and more likely she will be hitting up relatives for loans. Americans don’t like magnanimity with other people’s money.
2) Style: Great orators get better in their rhetoric, not worse. It turns out that the people risked a blank slate in Obama in part because in his teleprompted hope and change orations, he sounded fresh and mellifluous. Voters assumed he would wear well. But in nonstop interviews, press conferences, and conversations, the impromptu president seems no more comfortable than was an ad hoc George Bush. And just as liberals were turned off by Bush’s cowboyisms, so too conservatives are tired of Obama’s professorial, condescending sermons. After a year, the people are tired of all the “let me be perfectly clear” psycho-drama, the “make no mistake about” pseudo-tough man pose, the straw man “I reject the false choice that some would…,” and the narcissistic “I have ordered…..my team…to.” The boilerplate is now recognizable even to the Washington press corps. But as important, it dovetails with more disturbing propensities: there are the periodic signs of inanity like “Cinco de Cuatro” and “corpse-man;” the constant fudging on the truth of multibillion dollar new programs really “saving” money; and the surreal bowing to dictators and emperors, with the relish of turning our misdemeanors into felonies and our enemies’ felonies into benefactions.
3) Laureate Warmaking: [...]
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I Told You So
[] [...] Back in September 2008, as a lifelong Democratic Party loyalist and activist, I backed John McCain; I told The New York Times, “I love my country more than my party.” Supporting a Republican was the last thing I expected to be doing in the fall of 2008. But I knew it was my only choice, given the decision by the Democratic Party establishment to reject 18 million voters in favor of the inexperienced and ideological Barack Obama.
The health-care summit vividly demonstrated Mr. Obama’s fake bipartisanship. When he was a candidate, we celebrated when he said, “We are not red or blue states. We are the United States of America.” But candidate Obama had no record of bipartisan behavior. Ironically, the one time that Obama entered into a bipartisan effort was with, of all people, John McCain. He reached across the aisle to draft ethics reform legislation with Senator McCain. But when Obama returned to the Democratic establishment with a bill that did not meet their favor, he backed away fast. It was candidate McCain who had worked productively and regularly with Democrats, like with Russ Feingold on campaign-finance reform and Ted Kennedy on immigration. The record told me more than the rhetoric about which candidate would honestly respect the other side and reach across the aisle to find the best solutions for America.
Perhaps the biggest fabrication of the Obama candidacy was his claim of being a centrist. Sure, he made promises during the campaign that pleased moderates. He promised “the elimination of capital gains taxes for small business,” a $3,000 refundable tax credit to existing businesses for every additional employee hired through 2010, removal of penalties for early withdrawal of 401(k) savings during the recession, and no administration jobs for lobbyists. Perhaps the best of all was the promise he made in the Mississippi presidential debate when he said, “We need earmark reform. And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” They were specific, sensible promises—ones that enabled him to mislead the electorate about his real plans for America.
Again, I chose to look beyond the rhetoric to the record. At the time, it was obvious that a candidate who won the primary because of the left would be beholden to the left, no matter what promises he made to get elected. It was also obvious to ask what kind of president would have voted “present” on 129 difficult votes while in the Illinois State Senate. He was always thinking about how to keep every constituency happy; how to maintain his viability for the White House. In The Audacity of Hope, he criticized Bill Clinton for giving too much respect to Ronald Reagan. He asked the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist Democratic group, to remove his name from their lists.
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Chavez Arrests President of Globovision Television
[c] Today, the Venezuelan government arrested Guillermo Zuloaga, president of Globovision Television, the only remaining television on public airwaves critical of Hugo Chavez. According to the government, Zuloaga made offensive comments about Chavez (which is against the law in Venezuela) while speaking at a conference of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) in Aruba, where media representatives criticized the Venezuelan regime’s crackdown on freedom of speech.
Globovision and Zuloaga have been under constant harassment from the government, and Chavez has promised to close the station. Last July, Cato held a forum in Washington on “Venezuela’s Assault on Freedom of the Press and Other Liberties,” which was to feature Zuloaga. After the event was announced, however, a politically directed court prohibited him from leaving the country. So Zuloaga taped this 3 minute video address to the Cato audience and sent his son and vice president of Globovision, Carlos, to take his place. [see link for video]
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Best Of : Ann in Canada
OK...since this has become such an entertainment value and no doubt promises to do so further - at least until Ann's Calgary stint is over - it seems the best thing to do here is to dedicate this bit of space to The Best of Ann in Canada. For the duration, world, if you might, cease any other 'newsworthy' events, if you would be so kind.Various RelatedUnsurprisingly, all manner of summations of the Ottawa cancellation have cropped up, many from those that were attending, so they might as well be contained together for reference, but don't be surprised
We select a few:
Video
Pre - Ottawa Speech Cancellation
[ctv-p1]
[ctv-p2]
[ctv-p3]
[cbc]
Websites
[link] A better collection of various links than we'll no doubt get around to.
[link] What happened last night was shameful, frightening and profoundly sad.
Shameful that an institution that should encourage debate instead incites censorship and bully tactics.
Frightening that a generation is being educated to think that free speech does not need to be protected.
Sad that one day my grandchildren may not have the right to say what they want no matter how right, wrong, stupid or brilliant.
A dear friend who called me to find out just what happened reminded me of a profoundly apropos quote from Ronald Reagan: "Freedom is only one generation away from extinction."
Before I left I took my copy of "Guilty" and approached Ezra to ask if he would sign it. When I got home, I opened the cover to find that he had written the perfect message.
Freedom!
::
Steyn :
[so] [...] As I wrote in The National Post eight years ago - August 5th 2002:
The aim of a large swathe of the left is not to win the debate but to get it cancelled before it starts. You can do that in any number of ways -- busting up campus appearances by conservatives, "hate crimes" laws, Canada's ghastly human-rights commissions, the more "enlightened" court judgments, the EU's recent decision to criminalize "xenophobia," or merely, as the Times does, by declaring your side of every issue to be the "moderate" and "nonideological" position...
The quality of your argument is only important if you want to win by persuasion. But it’s irrelevant if you want to win by intimidation. I’m personally very happy to defend my columns in robust debate, but, if Canada believed in robust debate, we wouldn't have these "human rights" commissions or university administrators like the wretched M Houle in the first place. The morons who shut down Ann Coulter last night don't care that they made her point for her, anymore than those Muslim agitators in the streets of London fretted about the internal contradictions of threatening to kill anyone who says they're violent.
Freedom of speech is in grave peril in Canada. In the Coulter fracas, almost all the major societal institutions behaved poorly:
1) François Houle symbolizes a decadent academy that is the very antithesis of honest enquiry and intellectual debate that the university is supposed to represent.
2) The Ottawa Police have declared that there is no equality before the law. If you belong to certain groups, they'll stand by as the mob shuts you down.
3) The dinosaur media are vast lumbering eunuchs too cowed by political correctness to do even elementary research. Fatima Al Dhaher, the poor wee thing traumatized by Ann Coulter's camel joke, turns out to be a Jew-hater who wants to eliminate the State of Israel, and belongs to a group who regard Jews as "subhuman" "zionazis/kikeroaches". But that's too complicated for the media to fit into their Sesame Street narratives.
Between them, the media, the law and the education system are actively shriveling Canada's liberties. It doesn't lead anywhere good: Ghost of a Flea's title - "Fascist Canada" - is no exaggeration. If you say, "Oh, c'mon, if you're not a troublemaker like Coulter or Levant or Guy Earle or Douglas McCue, Canada's very pleasant", well, so were large parts of Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain. But they were not free, and few pre-Trudeau Canadians would have entertained trading ancient liberties for soft totalitarianism euphemized as "diversity".
The saddest aspect of this sad day is the number of people who've sent e-mails denouncing the Ottawa bullies but ending with the words "If you print this, please don't mention my name." Don't you realize that that's part of the problem? In a sane world, it would be François Houle and Fatima Al Dhaher and Susan Cole who would be ashamed to have their names mentioned. But they're not. They're proud to nail their colours to the masts of state censorship, Israeli eliminationism, and mob violence - while your support for free speech and other traditional liberties can only be expressed sotto voce and anonymously. That right there tells you how much of Canada you've already lost.
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Ann Coulter prepares human-rights complaint
[g&m] [...] She said she’s hired Canadian conservative activist Ezra Levant to prepare a human-rights complaint that will test how equitably these hate-crime laws are applied.
In an interview with The Globe, Ms. Coulter suggested the University of Ottawa’s provost, Francois Houle, is partly responsible for the angry crowds that opposed her speaking Tuesday night. He is the official who warned her in advance to watch what she said lest she incur criminal charges for hate speech.
The tribunal should take her complaint seriously, she said, “because either Francois [Houle] has created a climate of hate against me based on my membership in an identifiable group – or the whole human rights commission is complete horseshit.” [...]
“I would like to know if any Muslim has been treated this badly, at least since the Reformation, because I am drawing a blank,” Ms. Coulter told The Globe.
She also took a swipe at Canadians, saying this country has lost its edge.
“You guys used to be so cool. You were smokers. You had epic hockey fights. We had half our comedians from Canada. Now you’re all a bunch of girls named Francois.”
*Emphasis ours.
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Even Infamous Sock-Puppet Gets It :
"The creepy tyranny of Canada's hate speech laws"
[s] I've written many times before about the evils of "hate speech" laws that are prevalent in Canada and Europe -- people being fined, prosecuted and hauled before official tribunals for expressing political opinions which the State has prohibited and criminalized. I won't rehash those arguments here, but I do want to note a particularly creepy illustration of how these laws manifest. [...]Personally, I think threatening someone with criminal prosecution for the political views they might express is quite "hateful." So, too, is anointing oneself the arbiter of what is and is not sufficiently "civilized discussion" to the point of using the force of criminal law to enforce it. If I were administering Canada's intrinsically subjective "hate speech" laws (and I never would), I'd consider prosecuting Provost Houle for this letter. The hubris required to believe that you can declare certain views so objectively hateful that they should be criminalized is astronomical; in so many eras, views that were most scorned by majorities ended up emerging as truth.
For as long as I'll live, I'll never understand how people want to vest in the Government the power to criminalize particular viewpoints it dislikes, will never understand the view that it's better to try to suppress adverse beliefs than to air them, and will especially never understand people's failure to realize that endorsing this power will, one day, very likely result in their own views being criminalized when their political enemies (rather than allies) are empowered. Who would ever want to empower officious technocrats to issue warnings along the lines of: be forewarned: if you express certain political views, you may be committing a crime; guide and restrict yourself accordingly?
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...We Have a Bingo!
[nrb] [...] Understand: Establishment Canada hates America, but paradoxically, cares desperately about what America says about our country, and seeks secondhand validation from any meager attention we might get from you; consider the thirty-years-worth of boilerplate Canadian puff pieces, bragging about how many now-famous comedians we’ve “given” to Hollywood, and how we built the arm (the arm!) on the Space Shuttle like, 500 years ago, to take two of the more pathetic examples. The “look at us! Pleeeeeze!!” b.s. surrounding the supposed wonderfulness of the recent Vancouver Winter Olympics (yawn) is another.
So for us, the Ann Coulter Riot is A. Very. Big. Deal. I expect lawsuits galore, questions about the pathetic security apparatus that “protects” our nation’s capital, criminal charges and countercharges, commemorative tee shirts (the “Coulter in Canada” one pictured above is now selling fast), magazine cover
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Coulter talk cancelled for security reasons
[np] After protesters at the University of Ottawa prevented Ann Coulter from giving a speech on Tuesday night, the American conservative writer said it proved the point she came to make - free speech in Canada leaves much to be desired.
Then she said what she really thought of the student protesters who surrounded Marion Hall, making it to unsafe, in the view of her bodyguard, for the pundit to attempt entry.
"The University of Ottawa is really easy to get into, isn't it?" she said in an interview after the cancelled event. "I never get any trouble at the Ivy League schools. It's always the bush league schools."
Ms. Coulter said she has been speaking regularly at university campuses for a decade. While she has certainly been heckled, she said this is the first time an engagement has been cancelled because of protesters. [...]
"Since I've arrived in Canada, I've been denounced on the floor of Parliament - which, by the way, is on my bucket list - my posters have been banned, I've been accused of committing a crime in a speech that I have not yet given, I was banned by the student council, so welcome to Canada!"
COMMENTS FROM THE INTERNET
It is a special brand of intellect (apparently in flourish and taught with regularity at most modern universities these days) that suggests that "free speech" equals the squelching of another person espousing their opinion and done so not with reasoned, return speech but, rather, intimidation.One need not agree with the views of Ann Coulter (or anyone else - nor are any forced to listen to or attend function of same) to understand that the best recourse to subjectively disagreeable speech is rationale, counter-speech.
Realize that it's not unthinkable that the next speech silenced by whim of a changeable government might be your own. The endorsement of such a thing is the domain of the fool.
Herald this as a triumph, idiotic, programmed charlatans. Yours is disgrace.
- Dr.Zen
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
— Harry S. Truman
"If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed."
— Benjamin Franklin
"All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship."
— George Bernard Shaw
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
— Salman Rushdie
"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?"
— Kurt Vonnegut
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"Coulter is not an anti Semite--the Semites being a linguistic group extending from the Caucasus to North Africa and Malta---she is a fervent Christian which is, as you know, a Jewish heresy which believes that the Rabbi Jesus is the Messiah---it is quite consistent to her belief system that the Jewish people accept Jesus as the true Messiah.
Not being a theist I stay away from the theological infighting that characterizes the bronze age Abrahamic tradition with its warring off shoots ---the Jewish stem and the Christian and Islamic offshoots---she has as much right to express her opinion on theological matters as do followers of the other two.
I certainly hope that her threat to go to the HRC is carried out---it would be very entertaining to see that entity full of politically correct intellectually mediocre pedants who focus their attention to only one side of the political spectrum whilst turning a blind eye to the maliciousness of the other twisting and turning to avoid her rapier thrusts.
Intelligence is merely neuronal speed---and Coulter is faster than most---when one is verbally fencing of course one has to use guile to put the other debater off balance---and she's as shrewd and as sharp as any of her opponents with her opponents constantly off balance---watching her debate is absolute fun---and there is only one way for her inferiors to counter her---they cannot use logic or reason or facts so they abuse her and insult her in the hope of putting her off balance---which is exactly what they won't be able to do because she was expecting it and had planned for it.
'Reactionary' refers to any political or social movement or ideology or belief system that seeks to return to a previous state---usually aimed at the ultra conservatives it can also apply to Marxists who wish to return to a mythical era in the distant past where everyone was equally poor with no filthy capitalists around to spoil their equality as they lived in a state of nature---our Islamofascist reactionaries wish to return to that glorious golden era somewhere around the seventh century---many others however wish to return to a culture dominated by the philosophy of reason---as occurred in Ancient Greece, the Renaissance and the nineteenth century---many modern day conservatives yearn for a return to the age of reason---many Marxist reactionaries in the guise of the 'green' movement want to go all the way back to the garden of Eden and then get rid of the humans who they think spoiled it all."
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"The antics of those "socially conscious" activists who prevented Coulter from speaking in Ottawa University today reflects badly on the whole of Canada and in particular on those involved at the university and its officials.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to agree---it also includes the freedom not to listen---the goons were free to not to attend the lecture and free to cover their own ears during the lecture---but a line has to be drawn when physical force and violence [including the pulling of the fire alarm which surely was an offence] is used to prevent others from attending or hearing the speech.
One wonders what punitive steps the University will take against those who deprived the audience from hearing Ms Coulter's speech, no matter its content?
One suspects that they'll do nothing, marking it down as one more victory for their version of unidirectional politically correct 'free speech'.
Surely Ms Coulter has enough ammunition now to go the the HRC---let's hope that she does." - by Ascalepius
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“Our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or ‘free speech’) in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States.
"In other words, we don’t really have freedom of speech, just Pre-approved rhetoric. Guess what else you don’t have now, Canadians- Good healthcare just across the border." -SpeakEasy
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"I so love reading these Canadian analysis of American politics. I'm one of those fringe, Christian, American (you left out "apple pie") conservatives to which you lob such enlightened, melba-toast opinion and of whom you write off as losers. Ah! But you're thinking godless, cowardly Canada, mon chéri! This is habanero eating USA, and you're in for a surprise (like the extortionist abortionist perv's, or rather Liberal elite) and will have to really eat some crow when we grab out country back. By the by, I teach at a college here and you blokes can come speak any time, though I don't think I can talk any students into attending some Canadian chinwag." -Profvolkswagen
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Some good comments there, but...I think this one has 'best of the month' locked in...
"Just out of curiousity, is that Ron Wood from the Rolling Stones over Pelosi’s left shoulder? Just wonderin’" -Dopenstrange
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[bg] Ann Coulter: "I was hoping for a fruit basket, not a threat to prosecute:"
The 'Letter To Ann'
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Steyn on The 'Letter to Ann'
[s] [...] What a sad and embarrassing letter, even by the standards of the Canadian academy. Does M Houle write to all University of Ottawa speakers like this? Or does he reserve his telekinetic powers to detect "pre-crime" only for the ideologically suspect?
I've no idea what Ann Coulter's reaction to this letter is, but I suspect it's "Go ahead, Princess Fairy Pants, make my day." M Houle would have a very hard time persuading the Ottawa police or the RCMP to lay criminal charges over an Ann Coulter speech because they realize, even if he doesn't, that Canada doesn't need to become even more of an international laughingstock in this area. More likely is a complaint to the Canadian and/or Ontario "Human Rights" Commissions. But you know something? I don't get the feeling they'd be eager to re-ignite the free speech wars on a nuclear scale. Think of Ezra's and my appearance in the House of Commons, and then imagine the scene when Miss Coulter testifies. So the threat is an empty one and M Houle seems to be being - oh, what's the "respectful and civil" way of putting it? - a posturing wanker.
This is the pitiful state one of the oldest free societies on the planet has been reduced to, and this is why our free speech campaign matters - because those who preside over what should be arenas of honest debate and open inquiry instead wish to imprison public discourse within ever narrower bounds - and in this case aren't above threatening legal action against those who dissent from the orthodoxies. Lots of Americans loathe Ann Coulter but it takes a Canadian like François Houle to criminalize her. The strictures he attempts to place around her, despite his appeal to "Canadian law", are at odds with the eight centuries of Canada's legal inheritance. Canadians should point that out to him politely, and explain that, although he lives high off the hog courtesy of the Canadian taxpayer, he does not speak for them.
Furthermore: A collection of [Letters To Houle] :
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Pony Up
[bh] [...] I wanna show you a graph from Nick Gillespie’s great piece at Reason.com.
CLICK FOR FULL SIZE
Check out the estimated cost of Medicare. 12 billion. Now check out its actual cost. 110 billion. They were only off by 900 percent.
Welcome to Greece, people. Jump in, the water’s warm.
Let’s look at all arguments for health care. First they tried to sell the thing on moral grounds. Didn’t work. Then on efficiency grounds. Still didn’t work. Then they switched to saving money. Thirty million new people to insure, and somehow they convinced themselves it’ll save us money! Using the same logic, we should insure Canada too! We’d really be saving cash then!
Look – universal health care is a beautiful idea. But so is getting a pony for your fifth birthday.
When daddy argues with little Susie over that pony, she doesn’t care about how they’re going to afford the pony. She doesn’t care if they have to mortgage the house to pay for the pony. She just wants that pony.
But see, daddy is supposed to know that. And daddy isn’t supposed to actually buy the pony! And, most of all, he isn’t supposed to tell everyone in earshot that it’s cheaper having that pony – than having a car.
But he just did. And the media, and the Dems – fell in line like a classroom of five year old girls.
They didn’t just buy the pony. They just bought the whole damn farm.
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Judge Napolitano Weighs In: How Solid is Stupak’s ‘Executive Order’ Compromise?
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The Enlightened and Tolerant 'Liberal' University Students : Canada
Coulter Comes To Canada
[oc] The president of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa has barred a volunteer organizer from putting up posters advertising the upcoming appearance of American right-wing columnist and political commentator Ann Coulter.
She is to talk about political correctness, media bias and freedom of speech Tuesday night at Marion Hall as part of a Canadian lecture tour. Canadian conservative political activist Ezra Levant will also speak at the event and introduce Coulter.
"The federation does not support Ann Coulter speaking on our campus," said student president Seamus Wolfe. "We're trying to work with the administration to see if we can ask her to do her speaking event somewhere else."
[ifp] American conservative firebrand Ann Coulter won't be in London until Monday but already the dust is flying.
Local activist and one-time NDP candidate Megan Walker says of Coulter, "She's venomous . . . She crosses the line and promotes hatred and violence."
Walker's comments provoked a response from a woman instrumental in bringing Coulter to London, Mary Lou Ambrogio, whose group, the International Free Press Society, is paying $10,000 for the appearance, the balance of Coulter's fee coming from an American group that promotes conservatism in young women, the Claire Boothe Luce Policy Institute.
Coulter couldn't be reached by phone. In a brief e-mail, Coulter offered to comment, but hadn't done so by Friday.
Ambrogio said Coulter was chosen to test the tolerance of Londoners for free speech, a test she says Walker has flunked.
"She pays lip service to free speech," Ambrogio said.
While Coulter pushes peoples' buttons, she doesn't incite criminal activity nor hatred, she said.
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Ryan Is Not Ready to Give Up on Health Care
[nro] ‘This is the closing of the first chapter of America’s health-care saga,” Rep. Paul Ryan says from his office, which is adorned with reminders of contests of the non-political kind: hunting mementos and a Green Bay Packers helmet. “We are witnessing the beginning of a whole new kind of health-care politics, the likes of which we have never seen before.”
Ryan, a 40-year-old Wisconsin Republican, says Republicans have a fight on their hands, and he is ready for combat. As Democrats scrambled this past week for votes, he’s been listening to Metallica on his iPod and strategizing about how best to counteract Obamacare. Sunday night’s passage, he says, “was a rude awakening and a big wake-up call,” but also a call to action for Americans — and, especially, for the GOP.
“We need to establish a set of metrics and benchmarks to measure the sector going forward, keeping a close eye on all of the Democrats’ claims,” Ryan says. “From cost to quality, we will need to be vigilant in making sure that their assertions are actually substantiated with facts, and I have every reason to believe they won’t be.” [...]
“Health care is really the issue that speaks to the relationship between the citizen and the government in America,” he says. “It shapes the fiscal trajectory and the economic trajectory. This whole debate has been a proxy fight about what kind of country America will be — whether we’ll become a cradle-to-grave welfare state or stay a free-market democracy. The Democrats who are being told that the worse is over should know that the battle has not even begun. It’s up to us to now bring the case to the American people — a real moral, philosophical, and economic case — asking about our values, our founding principles, and if we really want to move toward a Western European–style system.”
“Just look across the pond at how terrible things have become,” Ryan says. In Britain, even Conservative leader David Cameron is politically unable or unwilling to criticize the National Health Service, and Ryan calls that “a pretty pitiful thing to watch.” President Obama knows this, Ryan says, and wants government health care to achieve the same level of entrenchment here at home. “What’s really happening here is the president is saying to the American people that you’re stuck in your current station in life, you’re frozen, and the government is here to help you cope with it. But that’s not who we are. We are a dynamic society where people have the will and incentive to make the most of their lives, to reach their potential. With this bill, that whole mindset, the American idea is upended.”
What about the practical consequences of Obamacare? “Soon, we’ll see individual-market insurance companies go out of business and dump their people,” Ryan says. “Tax increases on capital are going to hurt the economy in 2011. These arbitrary Medicare cuts will adversely affect the providers and therefore their beneficiaries. You’ll have the Internal Revenue Service beefing up its enforcement of this new mandate, which people have no clue is coming. And you’re going to have employers dump employees in this exchange once it’s up and running — funneling everyone into a government-run rationing system. Then we’ll see a big spike in insurance rates, and the Democrats are going to wager that they can just blame the insurers for that, and therefore that means they will need to institute insurance price controls or have a public option. [...]
“We need to become the party of liberty and freedom,” Ryan argues. “We’re not doing enough. We can do better, and we will — because we have no choice. If we’re going to offer the country a completely different vision, we can’t be Democratic-lite or resign ourselves to be slightly more efficient managers and tax-collectors for the welfare state. We have to break with that and give people a clear and distinct difference.”
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Anderson Cooper : Jeopardy
Cooper came in last (tied with Aisha Tyler, both with zero cash at the end), losing to Cheech Marin. Yea, we know that Cooper won once in this seemingly lowered-bar version of the program. CNN Buddies, Wolf Blitzer and Soledad O'Brien have also finished in the last place position on the show.
[g] Tonight brought us another edition of celebrity Jeopardy!, with Cheech Marin, Aisha Tyler, and the Silver Fox himself, Anderson Cooper. Well, Cooper kind of sucked. Actually, he really sucked. Are CNN anchors incapable of playing Jeopardy! well? Inside, video highlights.
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Ann Coulter : Strictly Right Radio : [link]
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The Failure of RomneyCare
[wsj] Former Massachusetts governor and likely 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney has been on the wrong side of the defining political battle of our time.
Mr. Romney claimed earlier this month on "Fox News Sunday" that the Massachusetts health reform plan he signed into law in 2006 is "the ultimate conservative plan." But there are many similarities between it and the ObamaCare loathed by conservative voters.
Both have an individual mandate requiring most residents to have health insurance or pay a penalty. Most businesses are required to participate or pay a fine. Both rely on government-designed purchasing exchanges that also provide a platform to control private health insurance. Many of the uninsured are covered through Medicaid expansion and others receive subsidies for highly-prescriptive policies. And the apparatus requires a plethora of new government boards and agencies.
While it's true that the liberal Massachusetts legislature did turn Mr. Romney's plan to the left, his claims that his plan is "entirely different" will not stand up to the intense scrutiny of a presidential campaign, especially a primary challenge. Mr. Romney needs to be more honest about his Massachusetts experiment and its failings. [...]
Mr. Romney's promise that getting everyone covered would force costs down also is far from being realized. One third of state residents polled by Harvard researchers in a study published in "Health Affairs" in 2008 said that their health costs had gone up as a result of the 2006 reforms. A typical family of four today faces total annual health costs of nearly $13,788, the highest in the country. Per capita spending is 27% higher than the national average.
The state's stubbornly high health costs are partly the result of intrusive government regulations that stifle competition in the insurance market and strict mandates on what services insurance must cover. A 2008 study by the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy found that the state's most expensive insurance mandates cost patients more than $1 billion between July 2004 and July 2005. The Massachusetts health reform law left all of them in place.
Further, insurance companies are required to sell "just-in-time" policies even if people wait until they are sick to buy coverage. That's just like the Obama plan. There is growing evidence that many people are gaming the system by purchasing health insurance when they need surgery or other expensive medical care, then dropping it a few months later.
Some Massachusetts safety-net hospitals that treat a disproportionate number of lower-income and uninsured patients are threatening bankruptcy. They still are treating a large number of people without health insurance, but the payments they receive for uncompensated care have been cut under the reform deal.
The Bay State is also suffering from what the Massachusetts Medical Society calls a "critical shortage" of primary-care physicians. As one would expect, expanded insurance has caused an increase in demand for medical services. But there hasn't been a corresponding increase in the number of doctors. As a result, many patients are insured in name only: They have health coverage but can't find a doctor.
Fifty-six percent of Massachusetts internal medicine physicians no longer are accepting new patients, according to a 2009 physician work-force study conducted by the Massachusetts Medical Society. For new patients who do get an appointment with a primary-care doctor, the average waiting time is 44 days, the Medical Society found.
As Dr. Sandra Schneider, the vice president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, told the Boston Globe last April, "Just because you have insurance doesn't mean there's a [primary care] physician who can see you."
The difficulties in getting primary care have led to an increasing number of patients who rely on emergency rooms for basic medical services. Emergency room visits jumped 7% between 2005 and 2007. Officials have determined that half of those added ER visits didn't actually require immediate treatment and could have been dealt with at a doctor's office—if patients could have found one.
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State Treasurer Tim Cahill slams Barack Obama, Dems on health care
[bh] State Treasurer Tim Cahill, taking swipes at both Gov. Deval Patrick and President Obama, boosted his bipartisan chops yesterday, telling Herald columnist Howie Carr on WRKO, “I voted for John McCain, believe it or not.”
Cahill, saying he was barred from the 2008 Democratic National Convention because he wouldn’t endorse either Obama or Hillary Clinton, said, “My own party basically voted me out.”
“I was afraid of what we had already been getting in Massachusetts, and at that point in 2008, I was aware that it wasn’t working,” he said. Separately yesterday, Cahill accused Obama of “propping up” the Bay State’s health plan with federal aid in order to help push the Democrats’ plan through Congress.
“The real problem is that this . . . sucking sound of money has been going into this health-care reform,” Cahill said. “And I would argue that it’s being propped up so that the federal government and the Obama administration can drive it through.”
Gov. Deval Patrick argues the state’s universal health care program has added 1 percent to the budget, but Cahill said the real impact is buffered by federal dollars.
Meanwhile, Republican Charles Baker’s campaign said Patrick “has consistently failed to address rising health-care costs in Massachusetts.” Baker, the former Harvard Pilgrim CEO, advocated for years for greater transparency on the part of medical service providers.
Cahill called on congressional Democrats yesterday to go “back to the drawing board,” saying he fears they will “bankrupt” the country.
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Is Tom Hanks Unhinged?
[pm] Much has been written of the recent Tom Hanks remarks to Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine interview about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific. Here is the explosive excerpt that is making the rounds today.
“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”
Hanks may not have been quoted correctly; and his remarks may have been impromptu and poorly expressed; and we should give due consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II; and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers. All that said, Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well, an ignoramus.
Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous. Consider:
1) In earlier times, we had good relations with Japan (an ally during World War I, that played an important naval role in defeating imperial Germany at sea) and had stayed neutral in its disputes with Russia (Teddy Roosevelt won a 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his intermediary role). The crisis that led to Pearl Harbor was not innately with the Japanese people per se (tens of thousands of whom had emigrated to the United States on word of mouth reports of opportunity for Japanese immigrants), but with Japanese militarism and its creed of Bushido that had hijacked, violently so in many cases, the government and put an entire society on a fascistic footing. We no more wished to annihilate Japanese because of racial hatred than we wished to ally with their Chinese enemies because of racial affinity. In terms of geo-strategy, race was not the real catalyst for war other than its role among Japanese militarists in energizing expansive Japanese militarism.
2) How would Hanks explain the brutal Pacific wars between Japanese and Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, Japanese and Filipinos, and Japanese and Pacific Islanders, in which not hundreds of thousands perished, but many millions? In each of these theaters, the United States was allied with Asians against an Asian Japan, whose racially-hyped “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” aimed at freeing supposedly kindred Asians from European and white imperialism, flopped at its inauguration (primarily because of high-handed Japanese feelings of superiority and entitlement, which, in their emphasis on racial purity, were antithetical to the allied democracies, but quite in tune with kindred Axis power, Nazi Germany.) [...]
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Atty. Gen. Holder failed to disclose legal briefs to senators
[lat] Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. gave more ammunition to his critics Friday, admitting he had failed to tell a Senate committee about half a dozen briefs to the Supreme Court that he had signed, including two involving a terrorism dispute.
Holder's aides said the failure to mention the briefs last year before his confirmation was an oversight and a mistake.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, called it an "extremely serious matter" that would trigger sharp criticism when Holder is due to be questioned March 23.
"The attorney general, as with all nominees, has a duty of candor. . . . It is simply unacceptable that briefs in such significant cases were not provided to the committee so they could be discussed during his confirmation hearing," Sessions said. [...]
Holder's aides said the failure to mention the briefs last year before his confirmation was an oversight and a mistake.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, called it an "extremely serious matter" that would trigger sharp criticism when Holder is due to be questioned March 23.
"The attorney general, as with all nominees, has a duty of candor. . . . It is simply unacceptable that briefs in such significant cases were not provided to the committee so they could be discussed during his confirmation hearing," Sessions said.
Holder has run into a drumbeat of Republican criticism since he announced in November that he had decided to move the admitted Sept. 11 plotters, including self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, from military custody at Guantanamo Bay to be tried in a federal civilian court in Manhattan. The attorney general said this trial would demonstrate the nation's commitment to the rule of law.
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States may hold onto tax refunds for months
[usat] Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months.
States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls.
"It's an indicator of how bad it is," says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. "You know things are bad when you have to do that."
New York, hit with a $9 billion deficit, may delay $500 million in refunds to keep the state from running out of cash, says Gov. David Paterson.
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[bg] Based on the Recovery.gov data, more than two third of the 594,754.3 jobs “created or saved” with the stimulus funds were “created or saved” in the Department of Education. Basically, what the administration meant by shovel ready projects was funding for your next door teacher.
Now, let’s recap some of findings and news of the previous weeks.
1. Most jobs are created in the Department of Education
2. In 2009, for the first time ever, more public-sector employees (7.9 million) belonged to a union than did private-sector employees (7.4 million) despite there being five times more wage and salary workers in the private sector.
3. A third of all union jobs are in Education
4. 33 percent of the education industry is unionized
5. The union boss, Andy Stern, was appointed to be on the president’s debt commission.
It all makes sense, doesn’t it?
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Record Monthly Deficit Of $220 Billion in February
[abc] The government racked up a record-high monthly budget deficit of $220.9 billion in February, the Treasury Department announced today.
The latest flood of red ink brings the total deficit for the first five months of the current fiscal year to $651 billion, far exceeding the $589 billion shortfall for the same timeframe in the last fiscal year.
The government ended the 2009 fiscal year with a record $1.4 trillion shortfall. The Obama administration has forecast a $1.56 trillion deficit for this year.
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Lying About Bush's Tax Cuts
[at] [...] Two of the most oft-cited objections to the Bush tax cuts by the left are that it helped only the rich and it was largely responsible for the federal deficit at the end of the Bush presidency. Instead, it is true that if the current administration allows any or all of the Bush tax cuts to expire, economic growth will be slowed and tax revenue could actually decrease, perpetuating our deficit dilemma.
The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 broadly lowered income, capital gains, dividends, and estate taxes. Fanning the lie that only the rich benefited, liberal economists Peter Orszag and William Gale described the Bush tax cuts as reverse-government redistribution of wealth, "[shifting] the burden of taxation away from upper-income, capital-owning households and toward the wage-earning households of the lower and middle classes." This criticism stuck so well that it is difficult to find a liberal today who doesn't believe that these tax relief measures were anything more than "tax cuts for the rich."
But the data does not support this conclusion. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Bush tax cuts actually shifted the total tax burden farther toward the rich so that in 2000-2004, total income tax paid by the top 40% of income-earners grew by 4.6% to 99.1% of the total. [...]
The second major misconception spread by the left about the Bush tax cuts is that the lower tax rates caused the federal deficit woes we face today. Keeping with the party line of blaming the previous administration for all of today's problems, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) quipped in a news conference on January 8 of this year: "Let me just say that the tax cuts at the high end ... have been the biggest contributor to the budget deficit." Of course, the Speaker would have us believe that overspending has nothing to do with our deficit.
In fact, the Bush tax cuts actually increased government revenue. According to economist Brian Reidl of the Heritage Foundation, The Laffer Curve (upon which much of the supply-side theory is based) merely formalizes the common sense observations that
* 1. Tax revenues depend on the tax base as well as the tax rate,
* 2. Raising tax rates discourages the taxed behavior and therefore shrinks the tax base, offsetting some of the revenue gains, and
* 3. Lowering tax rates encourages the taxed behavior and expands the tax base, offsetting some of the revenue loss. [...]
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CNN Ratings : In The Toilet
It's been a steady ride of churning out garbage for CNN. We've been saying it for so long now that we're tired of it. The programming on the network is one long loop of essentially crap. It's unwatchable.
And another thing, and this applies to all of the networks/news programs - why even bother having an anchor or host when you simply let guests avoid answering what you've asked them? So blatantly? It's chronic and it's a waste of time and money. You might as well just have people on by themselves to have their message churned out.
Sure, occasionally someone may say, "That wasn't the question, that was not what I asked you." Once. Then they let it slide. Keep asking the question until it is answered or you waste time and render yourselves useless.
Anchor: "Senator, is that sky not blue?"
Senator: "I arrived by car this morning."
Anchor: "In fairness, I asked you if the sky was not blue? You didn't answer the question."
Senator: "The ride was pleasant and smooth."
Anchor: "Moving on,what did you have for breakfast this morning?"
And on it goes...complete waste of time.
[rcp] Get out the defibrillator quick: CNN is dying. What other conclusion can be drawn from the Nielsen ratings from February, which showed the once dominant news network finishing in fifth place for the first time ever- and now trailing CNBC and Headline News as well as its main competitors, FOX and MSNBC?
The numbers are, as you can imagine, pretty stark. Wolf Blitzer's show, The Situation Room, was down 44% in total viewers in February. Campbell Brown, Larry King, and Anderson Cooper all posted their lowest ratings ever in February among total viewers, declining 50%, 55%, and 59%, respectively.
The numbers are equally grim among the coveted 25-54 demographic. CNN's share of the market with this group during prime time declined from 21% last February to just 10% this year. Even worse, its market share among viewers 25-54 in day time - what's been seen as the network's bread and butter - declined nine percent in the last year to 14%.
After a good year in 2008 fueled by sharp election coverage, CNN President Jon Klein has stubbornly refused to change course despite the network's epic slide over the last 15 months. The loss of Lou Dobbs last year obviously made things worse. But as CNN continues to fade, the question is whether anything less than a radical makeover can save this once proud, but deeply humbled network.
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Long Overdue : Sorry Charlie : Rangel Takes Leave of Absence
I guess Chuckles figures if he sleeps in and stays away for a little while everyone will just forget his personal manner and ways and means. Sorry Charlie, not going to happen.
[ap] The investigation of Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is looking into whether he:
_Violated House rules by using his official position to raise money for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York.
_Had his committee consider legislation that would benefit donors to the center at the same time the congressman solicited donations or pledges.
_Preserved a tax shelter for an oil drilling company, Nabors Industries, which has a chief executive who donated money to the center while Rangel's committee considered the loophole legislation.
_Used four rent-controlled apartment units in New York City, when the city's rent stabilization program is supposed to apply to one's primary residence. This raises the question of how all the units could be primary residences.
_Disclosed information on the financing of his ownership interest in a guest unit within the Punta Cana Yacht Club in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
_Intentionally failed to report — when required — hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in assets. The amended disclosure reports added a credit union IRA, mutual fund accounts and stock.
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Something Fishy : Representatives ditching Rangel's hot dirty money
[nyd] At least three Democratic congressmen have given to charities $26,000 in campaign contributions they received from embattled House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel of New York following inquiries by this newspaper.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., appeared Feb. 23 in The Washington Examiner's "Dirty Money Watch" but had declined to say what he would do with $2,000 he'd received from Rangel for the 2010 campaign cycle.Two days later, the Connecticut Post published a letter citing The Examiner and calling on Himes to return the Rangel contribution. The same day, Himes' prospective Republican opponent, Rob Russo, also called on Himes to return the money.
The next day, Rangel was admonished by the House ethics committee for accepting trips to the Caribbean that were paid for by a nonprofit foundation funded in part by corporations with business before Rangel's committee.
And Himes announced that he was giving the $2,000 to a charity.
Rangel is under investigation for multiple allegations of ethical improprieties, including failure to pay income taxes, misuse of official property in fundraising and getting tax advantages for favored donors.
On Monday, Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., announced that he is giving $14,000 he received from Rangel to an Illinois food bank. Foster's announcement came after The Examiner's query earlier in the day.
Also on Monday, Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., told The Examiner that he is giving $10,000 he received from Rangel to charity.
Following Rangel's admonishment by the ethics panel, The Examiner recontacted dozens of senators and representatives featured in "Dirty Money Watch" since last November who either had declined to comment or said they would not return the money.
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Obama Flashback on 50-Plus-1 Vote Strategy : Like Everything Else He Says : Apparently Meaningless
COMMENTS FROM THE INTERNET
"Where is the honor in violating everything you promised on the campaign trail once in office? I would rather resign than force health care through on reconciliation, and have this video go viral for the next hundred years as an example of the total and complete violation of my campaign promises. Once someone has achieved enough financial success to provide for one’s family, as Obama obviously had by the time he reached the US senate, then the only remaining issue for the rest of one’s career is, can you conduct yourself with honor? Apparently a commitment to the socialist agenda IS the only matter of honor for him. That’s the only conclusion to draw. He should have been honest with the American people on the campaign trail that this is who he is. What a liar." - RNel; Nreitbart.tv
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Obama Fatigue
[pjm] Every President starts to wear on the public. But the omnipresent Obama has become wearisome in record time. Why?
1) Money: There is none. Every time the president talks of another billion for this, and trillion for that, the people sigh: “We don’t have it; he’s going to borrow it.” Unemployment is near 10%, so borrowing nearly $2 trillion each year makes more sense to Keynesian economists than to voters who don’t find hope by maxing out their credit cards when they lose their jobs.
Obama is weirdly oblivious to number crunching — as is true of many who have never been self-employed or had to scramble without a public salary. Yet even Hillary is now whining that her foreign policy is frozen by the fact of mounting American debt. Obama is the stereotypical great-aunt that sweeps into the Christmas dinner casually boasting about what she is going to do for this niece and that nephew, while most roll their eyes with the understanding that her credit cards are long ago maxed out — and more likely she will be hitting up relatives for loans. Americans don’t like magnanimity with other people’s money.
2) Style: Great orators get better in their rhetoric, not worse. It turns out that the people risked a blank slate in Obama in part because in his teleprompted hope and change orations, he sounded fresh and mellifluous. Voters assumed he would wear well. But in nonstop interviews, press conferences, and conversations, the impromptu president seems no more comfortable than was an ad hoc George Bush. And just as liberals were turned off by Bush’s cowboyisms, so too conservatives are tired of Obama’s professorial, condescending sermons. After a year, the people are tired of all the “let me be perfectly clear” psycho-drama, the “make no mistake about” pseudo-tough man pose, the straw man “I reject the false choice that some would…,” and the narcissistic “I have ordered…..my team…to.” The boilerplate is now recognizable even to the Washington press corps. But as important, it dovetails with more disturbing propensities: there are the periodic signs of inanity like “Cinco de Cuatro” and “corpse-man;” the constant fudging on the truth of multibillion dollar new programs really “saving” money; and the surreal bowing to dictators and emperors, with the relish of turning our misdemeanors into felonies and our enemies’ felonies into benefactions.
3) Laureate Warmaking: [...]
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I Told You So
[] [...] Back in September 2008, as a lifelong Democratic Party loyalist and activist, I backed John McCain; I told The New York Times, “I love my country more than my party.” Supporting a Republican was the last thing I expected to be doing in the fall of 2008. But I knew it was my only choice, given the decision by the Democratic Party establishment to reject 18 million voters in favor of the inexperienced and ideological Barack Obama.
The health-care summit vividly demonstrated Mr. Obama’s fake bipartisanship. When he was a candidate, we celebrated when he said, “We are not red or blue states. We are the United States of America.” But candidate Obama had no record of bipartisan behavior. Ironically, the one time that Obama entered into a bipartisan effort was with, of all people, John McCain. He reached across the aisle to draft ethics reform legislation with Senator McCain. But when Obama returned to the Democratic establishment with a bill that did not meet their favor, he backed away fast. It was candidate McCain who had worked productively and regularly with Democrats, like with Russ Feingold on campaign-finance reform and Ted Kennedy on immigration. The record told me more than the rhetoric about which candidate would honestly respect the other side and reach across the aisle to find the best solutions for America.
Perhaps the biggest fabrication of the Obama candidacy was his claim of being a centrist. Sure, he made promises during the campaign that pleased moderates. He promised “the elimination of capital gains taxes for small business,” a $3,000 refundable tax credit to existing businesses for every additional employee hired through 2010, removal of penalties for early withdrawal of 401(k) savings during the recession, and no administration jobs for lobbyists. Perhaps the best of all was the promise he made in the Mississippi presidential debate when he said, “We need earmark reform. And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” They were specific, sensible promises—ones that enabled him to mislead the electorate about his real plans for America.
Again, I chose to look beyond the rhetoric to the record. At the time, it was obvious that a candidate who won the primary because of the left would be beholden to the left, no matter what promises he made to get elected. It was also obvious to ask what kind of president would have voted “present” on 129 difficult votes while in the Illinois State Senate. He was always thinking about how to keep every constituency happy; how to maintain his viability for the White House. In The Audacity of Hope, he criticized Bill Clinton for giving too much respect to Ronald Reagan. He asked the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist Democratic group, to remove his name from their lists.
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