A Few Inspirational Videos

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Amazing Grace:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMF_24cQqT0

Supreme Court Scene - Amistad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPd-xQ2NrGU&feature=PlayList&p=4245061F175BB70D&index=40

What's In the New Stimulus Package

Link to Excellent Graphic Illustration from the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/02/01/GR2009020100154.html

Newsweek Cover: We Are All Socialists Now

We Are All Socialists Now

In many ways our economy already resembles a European one. As boomers age and spending grows, we will become even more French.

Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas - NEWSWEEK -
From the magazine issue dated Feb 16, 2009

The interview was nearly over. on the Fox News Channel last Wednesday evening, Sean Hannity was coming to the end of a segment with Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, the chair of the House Republican Conference and a vociferous foe of President Obama's nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill. How, Pence had asked rhetorically, was $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts going to put people back to work in Indiana? How would $20 million for "fish passage barriers" (a provision to pay for the removal of barriers in rivers and streams so that fish could migrate freely) help create jobs? Hannity could not have agreed more. "It is … the European Socialist Act of 2009," the host said, signing off. "We're counting on you to stop it. Thank you, congressman."
There it was, just before the commercial: the S word, a favorite among conservatives since John McCain began using it during the presidential campaign. (Remember Joe the Plumber? Sadly, so do we.) But it seems strangely beside the point. The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries. That seems a stronger sign of socialism than $50 million for art. Whether we want to admit it or not—and many, especially Congressman Pence and Hannity, do not—the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.
We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want government to invest in alternative energies in order to break our addiction to foreign oil. And it is unlikely that even the reddest of states will decline federal money for infrastructural improvements.
If we fail to acknowledge the reality of the growing role of government in the economy, insisting instead on fighting 21st-century wars with 20th-century terms and tactics, then we are doomed to a fractious and unedifying debate. The sooner we understand where we truly stand, the sooner we can think more clearly about how to use government in today's world.
As the Obama administration presses the largest fiscal bill in American history, caps the salaries of executives at institutions receiving federal aid at $500,000 and introduces a new plan to rescue the banking industry, the unemployment rate is at its highest in 16 years. The Dow has slumped to 1998 levels, and last year mortgage foreclosures rose 81 percent.
All of this is unfolding in an economy that can no longer be understood, even in passing, as the Great Society vs. the Gipper. Whether we like it or not—or even whether many people have thought much about it or not—the numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction. A decade ago U.S. government spending was 34.3 percent of GDP, compared with 48.2 percent in the euro zone—a roughly 14-point gap, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2010 U.S. spending is expected to be 39.9 percent of GDP, compared with 47.1 percent in the euro zone—a gap of less than 8 points. As entitlement spending rises over the next decade, we will become even more French.
This is not to say that berets will be all the rage this spring, or that Obama has promised a croissant in every toaster oven. But the simple fact of the matter is that the political conversation, which shifts from time to time, has shifted anew, and for the foreseeable future Americans will be more engaged with questions about how to manage a mixed economy than about whether we should have one.
The architect of this new era of big government? History has a sense of humor, for the man who laid the foundations for the world Obama now rules is George W. Bush, who moved to bail out the financial sector last autumn with $700 billion.
Bush brought the Age of Reagan to a close; now Obama has gone further, reversing Bill Clinton's end of big government. The story, as always, is complicated. Polls show that Americans don't trust government and still don't want big government. They do, however, want what government delivers, like health care and national defense and, now, protections from banking and housing failure. During the roughly three decades since Reagan made big government the enemy and "liberal" an epithet, government did not shrink. It grew. But the economy grew just as fast, so government as a percentage of GDP remained about the same. Much of that economic growth was real, but for the past five years or so, it has borne a suspicious resemblance to Bernie Madoff's stock fund. Americans have been living high on borrowed money (the savings rate dropped from 7.6 percent in 1992 to less than zero in 2005) while financiers built castles in the air.
Now comes the reckoning. The answer may indeed be more government. In the short run, since neither consumers nor business is likely to do it, the government will have to stimulate the economy. And in the long run, an aging population and global warming and higher energy costs will demand more government taxing and spending. The catch is that more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth (as it has in Europe, where a big welfare state has caused chronic high unemployment). Growth has always been America's birthright and saving grace.
The Obama administration is caught in a paradox. It must borrow and spend to fix a crisis created by too much borrowing and spending. Having pumped the economy up with a stimulus, the president will have to cut the growth of entitlement spending by holding down health care and retirement costs and still invest in ways that will produce long-term growth. Obama talks of the need for smart government. To get the balance between America and France right, the new president will need all the smarts he can summon.

Time Out for a Little Patriotism

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Born Again American: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBZSBGHm0RY

Chimes of Freedom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3onnJuBS18 (Copenhagen - Also done in East Berlin in 1988 to adoring crowds.)

Why Bush Should Be Investigated

Final Scene -- Judgment at Nuremburg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnvtCGj8Sow

Ben & Jerry's Honor the Presidents ...

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Ben & Jerry created "Yes Pecan!" ice cream flavor in honor of Obama.

In honor of George W. Bush they asked for suggestions from the public. Here are some of their favorite responses:

- Grape Depression
- The Housing Crunch
- Abu Grape
- Cluster Fudge
- Nut'n Accomplished
- Good Riddance You Lousy Motherfucker... Swirl
- Iraqi Road
- Chock 'n Awe
- WireTapioca
- Impeach Cobbler
- Guantanmallow
- imPeachmint
- Heck of a Job, Brownie!
- Neocon Politan
- RockyRoad to Fascism
- The Reese's-cession
- Cookie D'oh!
- Nougular Proliferation
- Death by Chocolate... and Torture
- Freedom Vanilla Ice Cream
- Chocolate Chip On My Shoulder
- Credit Crunch
- Mission Pecanplished
- Country Pumpkin
- Chunky Monkey in Chief
- WMDelicious
- Chocolate Chimp
- Bloody Sundae
- Caramel Preemptive Stripe
- I broke the law and am responsible for the deaths of thousands . . . with nuts

Learn Spanish for Your Nanny

I believe Hunter posted this some time back -- it's perfect --

Letterman vs. O'Reilly on Iraq

An oldie but a goodie ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKftpGB03vU

Card Check

With all the recent discussion of a top priority "payback" for political support from the major labor unions, Congress has been debating a bill which both significantly eases the bar for organizing a company, makes decertification of a union more difficult, and apparently would at least partly nullify the effect of a 20+ year old Supreme Court decision.   Certain features of the Worker Protection Act may impinge elements of Beck vs Communications Workers (1988).  Beck applied to union expenses the kind of full disclosure required of most other non-profits, and would allow union members to redirect that portion of their dues spent on political campaigning.   Union hate the measure, and have invented some creative ways to avoid the disclosure -- SEIU has for instance insisted that their efforts in behalf of Democrats during the past two years were in fact completely neutral "voter education."  Here are a few pages from a paper I heard at a symposium possibly a dozen years ago, but which is still wholly relevant.

Bishop Denies Nazi Gas Chambers -- Vatican Demands Retraction Following Outrage

I can't believe that the Catholic Church is still stumbling around on this issue. The Vatican should not only stop Williamson from serving as a Bishop; they should remove him from the priesthood. It truly is an outrage. Although I am not a Jew, my wife is. I have repeatedly witnessed the psychological destruction wrought by the Holocaust among several people I know -- camp survivors and their children. I really believe that the Church wants to do the right thing here, but they must lead -- not just react to public outrage.

TC


NY Times
February 5, 2009


Vatican Move on Bishop Exposes Fissures of Church
By RACHEL DONADIO


ROME — Responding to an extraordinary burst of global outrage, especially in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany, the Vatican for the first time on Wednesday called on a recently rehabilitated bishop to take back his statements denying the Holocaust.
Late last month, the pope revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops from the ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X, including Bishop Richard Williamson, a Briton, who in an interview broadcast last month denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers.
In a statement issued Wednesday, the Vatican Secretariat of State said that Bishop Williamson “must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,” or Holocaust, or else he would not be allowed to serve as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church.
The statement said that the bishop’s recent comments denying the Holocaust had been “unknown to the Holy Father at the time he revoked the excommunication.”
Efforts to reach Bishop Williamson were unsuccessful, and he issued no public response. The bishop has a history of public statements denying the Holocaust.
Outside Seminario Nuestra Señora Corredentora, the bishop’s bucolic seminary with its own farm in La Reja, Argentina, a small town near Buenos Aires, a priest who came to the door said that Bishop Williamson would not comment until he had spoken with his superiors.
Pope Benedict has stumbled before in his nearly four-year papacy, most notably when he offended Muslims in 2006 by citing a medieval scholar who said Islam brought things “evil and inhuman.” But the internal controversy created by Bishop Williamson’s rehabilitation is unlike anything the Vatican has faced in recent decades.
Wednesday’s unsigned statement — a rare case of the Vatican’s diplomatic arm furthering earlier remarks by the pope himself — not only showed an age-old institution grappling with the 24-hour news cycle. It also seemed to be a clear indication that the Vatican was facing nothing less than an internal and external political crisis.
The day before, in a rare criticism from the head of a government, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called on the pope to clarify his position on the Holocaust, saying his previous remarks had not been sufficient.
Several prominent figures in the German Catholic Church joined in the criticism, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also issued a statement condemning Bishop Williamson.
But the statement from the Vatican Secretariat of State seemed to go a long way toward calming the uproar. The chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, praised it, saying Wednesday that the Vatican had “clarified in an unequivocal way that every form of anti-Semitism should be condemned.”
The Vatican statement noted Benedict’s remarks last week in which he expressed his “full and unequivocal solidarity” with Jews and condemned all attempts to deny the Holocaust. But it went far beyond the pope’s earlier remarks, which had never mentioned Bishop Williamson by name.
The four bishops are from the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, founded in 1970 by a French archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre, to protest the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, including liturgical changes, a commitment to ecumenism and religious liberty.
The society’s 600 priests and estimated 400,000 followers are on the far right of the world’s one billion Catholics. They are particularly opposed to a Vatican II document that absolved contemporary Jews of responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus.
The four bishops were excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988 after Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated them without a papal mandate. The schismatic society has no legal standing within the Catholic Church.
Benedict has said he revoked the excommunications in an effort to heal a rift within the church. Last week, he called them a gesture of “compassion” and a first step on a longer path toward the society’s full reconciliation with the church.
The statement from the Vatican on Wednesday also addressed questions about what conditions the society would have to meet before being fully welcomed back into the fold, saying it would have to offer its “full recognition of the Second Vatican Council” to receive “recognition” by the church.
Jewish groups on Wednesday welcomed the statement by the Secretariat of State.
“This was the sign the Jewish world has been waiting for,” Ronald S. Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, said in a statement.
He noted that Bishop Williamson’s anti-Semitism was not “an isolated case” in the Society of St. Pius X, and he called on the pope “to ensure that the achievements of four decades of Catholic-Jewish dialogue are not being damaged by a small minority of people who want to divide rather than unite.”
Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s international director of interreligious affairs, said the Vatican’s “clear reiteration” that the Society of St. Pius X would be allowed back into the church only if it accepted the teachings of Vatican II was “most reassuring.”
“Had all this been expressed at the outset,” he added, “we could have avoided the unnecessary damage and distress.”
An internal doctrinal issue exploded into a firestorm after a Swedish television channel broadcast an interview days before the revocations were announced on Jan. 24, in which Bishop Williamson said he believed that no more than 300,000 Jews died in the Holocaust and that “there were no gas chambers.”
Nowhere was outrage at the pope’s decision to rehabilitate Bishop Williamson stronger than in Germany, where Holocaust denial is a crime.
Mrs. Merkel’s remarks on Tuesday tapped into a growing well of German discontent with the Vatican, including within the German Catholic Church.
In a broadcast on German television on Monday, the bishop of Mainz, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, a former chairman of the German bishops’ conference and an influential and respected figure, said that the pope’s decision to rehabilitate Bishop Williamson had been “a disaster for all Holocaust survivors.”
Cardinal Lehmann singled out Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, the president of the Vatican commission in charge of relations with the Society of St. Pius X, who said last week that the commission had not been aware of Bishop Williamson’s comments before revoking the excommunications. Cardinal Lehmann said that there “had to be consequences for those who are responsible here.”
On Wednesday, the archbishop of Berlin, Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky, called for a review of Bishop Williamson’s reinstatement. “My sense is that a different outcome would be reached,” he told the newspaper Bild. “And if it is determined that mistakes were made, no matter on what level, then an apology has to be issued.”
In a public declaration issued last weekend, Bishop Gebhard Fuerst of Rottenburg-Stuttgart in southern Germany said that revoking the excommunications had led to “external and internal alienation from the church on the part of many believers, to a betrayal of trust especially among Jewish sisters and brothers in their relationship to the church and to a considerable disturbance in the Christian-Jewish dialogue.”
That the revocation of an excommunication could erupt into such a crisis speaks to what some see as a failure of leadership within the Vatican.
Conversations with a variety of people inside and outside the Vatican portray an intellectual pope increasingly isolated from the Vatican administration. Many point to a lack of communication between the handful of cardinals responsible for revoking the excommunications and other members of the curia who might have opposed the move.
Writing on his blog, Sandro Magister, a correspondent for the weekly magazine L’Espresso and one of Italy’s most highly respected Vatican experts, pointed to a “double disaster” of “governance and communication” within the church.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, a German who directs the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and who is the liaison for Vatican-Jewish relations, has said he was not consulted before the pope’s decision.
“There were certainly management errors on the part of the curia, I want to be clear about that,” Cardinal Kasper said in an unusually direct interview with Vatican Radio’s German service on Monday.
In the statement from the Secretariat of State on Wednesday, the pope asked the clergy and all the faithful “to support the very delicate and weighty mission of the successor of the Apostle Peter, who is custodian of the unity of the church.”
Judy Dempsey contributed reporting from Berlin, and Vinod Sreeharsha from La Reja, Argentina.

You Will Be Judged By What You Build

"Creation, not acquisition, is the measure of a nation's rank. It is the only road to an enduring place in the memory of mankind" John Dewey

I was thinking of this quote this morning along with Obama's inaugural declaration to the world: "To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."

Shortly afterwards I saw the below biography of Millard Fuller in the NY Times and thought of how true these sentiments are for individuals as well: To a very large extent, as individuals, we build our health, our families, our communities, our minds and our friendships. Millard Fuller built homes -- lots of them. He was an outstanding American and an exemplar of the best that religion has to offer the world -- in his case Christianity.

Although I am a religious humanist -- neither a Christian nor Jew -- the largest donation I ever made to any charitable enterprise was to Fuller's Habitat for Humanity which is nothing short of a brilliant system for providing low income housing, along with promoting personal responsibility and good works. The fact that it is a Christian mission was not relevant to me. It could have been an Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, Communist or Anarchist mission. I measured the value of my contribution by the consequences it had for needy households. Those consequences were immediate, substantial and very satisfying to the soul.

TC

NY Times --- February 4, 2009

Millard Fuller, 74, Who Founded Habitat for Humanity, Is Dead
By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Millard Fuller, who at 29 walked away from his life as a successful businessman to devote himself to the poor, eventually starting Habitat for Humanity International, which spread what he called “the theology of the hammer” by building more than 300,000 homes worldwide, died Tuesday near Americus, Ga. He was 74.
His brother, Doyle, said Mr. Fuller became ill with a severe headache and chest pains and was taken to a hospital in Americus, his hometown. He died in an ambulance on the way to a larger hospital in Albany, Ga. Doyle Fuller said the cause had not been determined, but may have been an aneurysm.
Propelled by his strong Christian principles, Millard Fuller used Habitat to develop a system of using donated money and material, and voluntary labor, to build homes for low-income families. The homes are sold without profit and buyers pay no interest. Buyers are required to help build their houses, contributing what Mr. Fuller called sweat equity.
More than a million people live in the homes, which are in more than 100 countries. There are 180 in New York City, including some that former President Jimmy Carter, a longtime Habitat supporter and volunteer, personally helped construct. Mr. Carter said of him on Tuesday that “he was an inspiration to me, other members of our family, and an untold number of volunteers who worked side by side under his leadership.”
Former President Bill Clinton has also volunteered on Habitat projects. When he presented Mr. Fuller the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, he said, “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Millard Fuller has literally revolutionized the concept of philanthropy.”
Mr. Fuller said his inspiration came from the Bible, starting with the injunction in Exodus 22:25 against charging interest to the poor. He spoke of the “economics of Jesus” and insisted that providing shelter to all was “a matter of conscience.” Christianity Today in 1999 called him “God’s contractor.”
His skills included fund-raising finesse, an exuberant speaking style and a talent for making use of the news media. In 1986, The Chicago Tribune quoted him asking a publicity man about a woman in front of her ramshackle apartment, “Don’t you think that’d make some great pictures to show her in that rat-infested place?”
The article later said Mr. Fuller did not expect to house the world. “Instead,” it said, “he sees Habitat as a hammer that can drive the image of a woman in a rat-infested apartment as deep into the mind of America as the image of an African child with a distended stomach.”
Mr. Fuller liked to tell and re-tell the stories of his earliest houses. One man had moved from a leaky shack into a new house.
“When it rains, I love to sit by the window and see it raining outside,” one new homeowner said, “and it ain’t raining on me!”
Another new resident saw his new home as a literal resurrection. “Being in this house is like we were dead and buried, and got dug up!” she said.
In 2005, a woman employed by Habitat accused Mr. Fuller of verbally and physically harassing her, a widely publicized charge that an investigation by the organization did not prove. But he and a new generation of Habitat board members were disagreeing on organizational and other issues, and he and his wife agreed to resign.
Mr. Fuller started a new organization called the Fuller Center for Housing. It is active in 24 states and 14 foreign countries.
Millard Dean Fuller was born on Jan. 3, 1935, in Lanett, Ala., then a small cotton-mill town. His mother died when he was 3, and his father remarried. Millard’s business career began at 6 when his father gave him a pig. He fattened it up and sold it for $11. Soon he was buying and selling more pigs, then rabbits and chickens as well. He dabbled in selling worms and minnows to fishermen.
When he was 10, his father acquired 400 acres of farmland, and Mr. Fuller sold his small animals to raise cattle. He remembered helping his father repair a tiny, ramshackle shack that an elderly couple had inhabited on the property. He was thrilled to see their joy when the work was complete.
Mr. Fuller went to Auburn University, running unsuccessfully for student body president, and in 1956 was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He graduated from Auburn with a degree in economics in 1957 and entered the University of Alabama School of Law.
He and Morris S. Dees Jr., another law student, decided to go into business together while in the law school. They set a goal: get rich.
They built a successful direct-mail operation, published student directories and set up a service to send cakes to students on their birthdays. They also bought dilapidated real estate and refurbished it themselves. They graduated and went into law practice together after Mr. Fuller briefly served in the Army as a lieutenant.
As law partners, they continued to make money. Selling 65,000 locally produced tractor cushions to the Future Farmers of America made $75,000. Producing cookbooks for the Future Homemakers of America did even better, and they became one of the nation’s largest cookbook publishers. By 1964, they were millionaires. Mr. Dees went on to help found the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Mr. Fuller’s life changed completely after his wife, the former Linda Caldwell, whom he had married in 1959, threatened to leave him. She was frustrated that her busy husband was almost never around, and she had had an affair, their friend Bettie B. Youngs wrote in “The House That Love Built” (2007), a joint biography. For the rest of his career, he talked openly about repairing the marriage.
There was much soul-searching. Finally, the two agreed to start their life anew on Christian principles. Eschewing material things was the first step. Gone were the speedboat, the lakeside cabin, the fancy cars.
The Fullers went to Koinonia Farm, a Christian community in Georgia, where they planned their future with Clarence Jordan, a Bible scholar and leader there. In 1968, they began building houses for poor people nearby, then went to Zaire in 1973 to start a project that ultimately built 114 houses.
In 1976, a group met in a converted chicken barn at Koinonia Farm and started Habitat for Humanity International. Participants agreed the organization would work through local chapters. They decided to accept government money only for infrastructure improvements like streets and sidewalks.
Handwritten notes from the meeting stated the group’s grand ambition: to build housing for a million low-income people. That goal was reached in August 2005, when home number 200,000 was built. Each home houses an average of five people.
The farm announced plans for a simple public burial service for Mr. Fuller on Wednesday.
Besides his brother, Doyle, of Montgomery, Ala., and his wife, Mr. Fuller is survived by their son, Christopher, of Macon, Ga.; their daughters, Kim Isakson of Argyle, Tex., Faith Umstattd of Americus, and Georgia Luedi of Jacksonville, Fla.; and nine grandchildren.
After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Fuller Center built a house in Shreveport, La., for a mother and her daughters, one named Genesis, the other Serenity. Mr. Fuller loved the religious connotations he saw in their names.
“What will little Genesis become?” he asked at the time. “What will little Serenity become? We don’t know, but we know one thing: if we give them a good place to live, they’ve got a better chance.”

Blue Skies for Obama --

Forwarded by Hunter ---

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=318557909400135

Blue Skies For Obama - By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Tuesday, February 03, 2009 4:20 PM PTMedia:

Katrina crashes into New Orleans, FEMA responds feebly and PresidentBush is blamed for the loss of life and limb. Winter smacks middle America, killing 55, FEMA's late again, but President Obama gets a pass. Read More: Military & DefenseLast week's winter storm, paying no attention to Al Gore's warnings about global warming, has left a trail of dead and broken bodies and wrecked property from the Plains to the East Coast. Of the 55 deaths, 24 have been in hard-hit Kentucky. Throughout the region, hundreds of thousands are still without power and some survivors have had to resort to using melted snow for their watersupply. A shortage of gasoline and heating oil has made life miserable formany. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear called the ice storm "the biggest natural disaster that this state has ever experienced, at least in modern history."The Federal Emergency Management Agency, however, apparently didn't get the memo. Much as they did in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, locals are complaining that FEMA has not been swift enough in delivering aid. Nothing remarkable about that. FEMA, whose performance in the 2005 Katrina disaster wasn't exactly sterling, is a federal agency that supplements state and local authorities. It's not an on-site organization and can't respond instantly. That's the job of the city, county and state governments. Sensing that the gloomy stories gushing out of New Orleans were the perfec tplatform from which to lash into the president, an opportunistic media-political-celebrity pack roundly accused Bush of negligence,incompetence and outright malice. From rapper Kanye West's immediate charge that "George Bush doesn't careabout black people" to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's blog entryfrom just over a month ago lamenting that Bush did a "terrible" job of handling of the disaster, smears rained down in a devastating storm of their own.The bitter criticism achieved its intended effect. Many people believe that Bush's FEMA response ‹ or more accurately the media's biased portrayal of it‹ was the moment he began to lose the public. Meanwhile, Obama, whose administration on taking office vilified Bush on Katrina, has done no more for the victims of the winter storm. Yet no tirade has been forthcoming from either the media or the loopy orbit of CelebrityPlanet. The double standard is what we've come to expect, but it's not what weshould continue to accept.

Free Speech - A Soapbox Legacy

From Professor John Q. Barrett at St. John’s University School of Law:

This morning’s New York Times brought the sad news of the death ten days ago of Irving Feiner, age 84, of Nyack, New York. (For the obituary story, click here.) In 1949, when Feiner was a student at Syracuse University, he was arrested for disorderly conduct after he, speaking from a soapbox at a Syracuse street corner to a crowd of interested listeners and less enthusiastic onlookers, ignored police orders to shut up.

After Feiner was convicted and sentenced to thirty days in prison, he appealed. His case ultimately reached the Supreme Court of the United States. In January 1951, the Court affirmed Feiner’s conviction by a vote of 6-3, upholding the lawfulness of the police conduct and rejecting Feiner’s free speech claims. Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, joined by Justices Stanley Reed, Felix Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson, Harold H. Burton and Tom C. Clark, wrote for the Court. Justice Frankfurter also filed, in a companion case, a concurring opinion stating his views.

Justice Hugo L. Black filed the principal dissenting opinion. Its many ringing passages include the following:

Here [Feiner] was “asked” then “told” then “commanded” to stop speaking, but a man making a lawful address is certainly not required to be silent merely because an officer directs it. [Feiner] was entitled to know why he should cease doing a lawful act. Not once was he told. I understand that people in authoritarian countries must obey arbitrary orders. I had hoped that there was no such duty in the United States.

(According to Mr. Feiner, one of Justice Black’s sons told Feiner years ago that Feiner was one of Justice Black’s favorite and most troubling cases.) Justice William O. Douglas, joined by Justice Sherman Minton, also dissented. (For the opinions in Feiner v. New York, 340 U.S. 315 (1951), click here.)

Irving Feiner never met any of the Supreme Court justices who decided his case and, in fact, he never even saw them in action. Feiner told me that he did not travel to Washington in October 1950 to attend the Supreme Court oral argument in his case because his attorneys told him that they did not need the dynamic of the FBI surveilling Feiner, as they then were, inside the Supreme Court courtroom as the lawyers argued the merits of his case.

From the 1951 decision through the rest of his life, Feiner believed emphatically that Jackson and the five other Justices who comprised the majority in the Feiner v. New York blew it. By contrast, Feiner’s heroes for getting both the facts and law right in his case were, of course, Justices Black, Douglas and Minton. The Supreme Court, by moving during recent decades away from the doctrine of Feiner v. New York, implicitly seems to share that view.

I knew Irv Feiner only by telephone, but that medium delivered very well his smarts, strong opinions, guts and very active mind. (It is flattering to me and evidence of Irving Feiner’s lifelong engagement and intellectual curiosity that he was among your number in subscribing to, and indeed in promoting, the Jackson List.)

Like many other Supreme Court “losers” across our history, Irving Feiner leaves us his name, his story and his example of serious citizenship—a rich legacy indeed.

Vermont Products -- Maple Syrup, Honey, Artisinal Cheese

Anyone interested in purchasing VT products can post their interest here. Dr. Shields will be producing maple syrup in mid-March. The expected price will be $40 per gallon -- which is the going rate these days. He sells in one gallon or one quart tins -- plastic containers are optional. Later this year I will also be receiving some superb raw honey from our farm which is sold in one pound jars. I also have some connections with artisinal cheese producers and should have more info on this at a later date. Vermont produces some of the best cheeses in the world.

I generally make two trips each month -- just to enjoy the view from my front porch (above). Anything I bring back will be readily available from my home in Irvington, New York. I can bring smaller items to my office in lower Manhattan. I usually pass through Grand Central Station each morning.

Krugman On the Bailout

NYTimes - February 2, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Bailouts for Bunglers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Question: what happens if you lose vast amounts of other people’s money? Answer: you get a big gift from the federal government — but the president says some very harsh things about you before forking over the cash.
Am I being unfair? I hope so. But right now that’s what seems to be happening.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the Obama administration’s plan to support jobs and output with a large, temporary rise in federal spending, which is very much the right thing to do. I’m talking, instead, about the administration’s plans for a banking system rescue — plans that are shaping up as a classic exercise in “lemon socialism”: taxpayers bear the cost if things go wrong, but stockholders and executives get the benefits if things go right.
When I read recent remarks on financial policy by top Obama administration officials, I feel as if I’ve entered a time warp — as if it’s still 2005, Alan Greenspan is still the Maestro, and bankers are still heroes of capitalism.
“We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to do our best to preserve that system,” says Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary — as he prepares to put taxpayers on the hook for that system’s immense losses.
Meanwhile, a Washington Post report based on administration sources says that Mr. Geithner and Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s top economic adviser, “think governments make poor bank managers” — as opposed, presumably, to the private-sector geniuses who managed to lose more than a trillion dollars in the space of a few years.
And this prejudice in favor of private control, even when the government is putting up all the money, seems to be warping the administration’s response to the financial crisis.
Now, something must be done to shore up the financial system. The chaos after Lehman Brothers failed showed that letting major financial institutions collapse can be very bad for the economy’s health. And a number of major institutions are dangerously close to the edge.
So banks need more capital. In normal times, banks raise capital by selling stock to private investors, who receive a share in the bank’s ownership in return. You might think, then, that if banks currently can’t or won’t raise enough capital from private investors, the government should do what a private investor would: provide capital in return for partial ownership.
But bank stocks are worth so little these days — Citigroup and Bank of America have a combined market value of only $52 billion — that the ownership wouldn’t be partial: pumping in enough taxpayer money to make the banks sound would, in effect, turn them into publicly owned enterprises.
My response to this prospect is: so? If taxpayers are footing the bill for rescuing the banks, why shouldn’t they get ownership, at least until private buyers can be found? But the Obama administration appears to be tying itself in knots to avoid this outcome.
If news reports are right, the bank rescue plan will contain two main elements: government purchases of some troubled bank assets and guarantees against losses on other assets. The guarantees would represent a big gift to bank stockholders; the purchases might not, if the price was fair — but prices would, The Financial Times reports, probably be based on “valuation models” rather than market prices, suggesting that the government would be making a big gift here, too.
And in return for what is likely to be a huge subsidy to stockholders, taxpayers will get, well, nothing.
Will there at least be limits on executive compensation, to prevent more of the rip-offs that have enraged the public? President Obama denounced Wall Street bonuses in his latest weekly address — but according to The Washington Post, “the administration is likely to refrain from imposing tougher restrictions on executive compensation at most firms receiving government aid” because “harsh limits could discourage some firms from asking for aid.” This suggests that Mr. Obama’s tough talk is just for show.
Meanwhile, Wall Street’s culture of excess seems to have been barely dented by the crisis. “Say I’m a banker and I created $30 million. I should get a part of that,” one banker told The New York Times. And if you’re a banker and you destroyed $30 billion? Uncle Sam to the rescue!
There’s more at stake here than fairness, although that matters too. Saving the economy is going to be very expensive: that $800 billion stimulus plan is probably just a down payment, and rescuing the financial system, even if it’s done right, is going to cost hundreds of billions more. We can’t afford to squander money giving huge windfalls to banks and their executives, merely to preserve the illusion of private ownership.

The Merits of Prohibition?

I do not agree with social libertarians on the question of legalizing narcotics. I may want to decriminalize drug use. But legalization would do very heavy damage to this country -- particularly to young people. Indeed, I am only an inch or two away from supporting a reinstitution of the prohibition on alcohol. Our national experience in the 1920's clearly confirms that Prohibition created almost as many problems as it solved. But Prohibition did solve an awful lot of problems -- as cataloged below:

Benefits of National Prohibition
(Quoting E. Deets Pickett, who was Associate Editor of the American Prohibition Yearbook; the actual sources are unidentified.)
Wife beating and lack of family support decreased 82%
Drunkenness decreased 55.3%
Assault decreased 53.1%
Vagrancy decreased 52.8%
Disorderly conduct decreased 51.5%
Delinquency decreased 50.0%
Deaths due to cirrhosis decreased 50.0%
The number of inmates in jails and prisons decreased 75%, and many correctional institutions were closed entirely
General domestic complaints decreased by two-thirds
County hospital death rates were historically low
Alcohol became almost unavailable
Prostitution decreased
The national crime rate (excluding Chicago) declined 38%; in Chicago, the crime rate declined 25% (despite some well-publicized criminal events)
Savings accounts tripled
Insurance policies written doubled
Real estate values increased dramatically, due to home improvements
Families became better clothed
Attendence at churches and schools became more regular
Factory job attendence and job performance greatly increased
Demand for services at welfare missions decreased by half
(Ed. note: None of the above were demonstrably caused by Prohibition. There is only a temporal association of these events with Prohibition. But, taken all together, and also noting that these social indices rose toward their pre-Prohibition levels after Repeal, it is difficult to deny that National Prohibition was a beneficial influence on American society during the 1920s.)

Economic vs. Political Freedom

Resurrecting an earlier thread that got lost in the shuffle:

The Heritage Foundation has confidently asserted that a comparison of nations on Freedom House's Index of Political Freedom and the World Bank's Index of Economic Freedom demonstrates a near perfect correlation between economic and political freedom. This is the conventional wisdom among conservatives. Well, let's take a look:

There are 179 ranked nations in the 2009 Index of Economic Freedom. The United States ranks #6 on the list. In addition to the United States, Singapore, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Switzerland and the UK rank in the top 10. Hong Kong (which is part of the Peoples Republic of China) ranks #1 but it has a geographically and historically unique situation.

So let's look at the other 9 on the list. Except for the U.S. they all have universal health care systems (in many cases including dental and optical coverage). Along with the U.S. they all have heavily subsidized public university systems. They all have heavy subsidies for public housing (Singapore has a huge public housing program). They all have public transportation systems, social security programs, unemployment insurance and progressive taxes. Yet, they are all considered quite economically free.

While I could not quantify it, I suspect that if one were to rank these 9 countries -- including the U.S. -- by social safety net, the U.S. would fall to the bottom of the list. Countries with apparently stronger safety nets -- Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Singapore -- rank ahead of the US in economic freedom.

Now let's compare the economic list with the Index of Political Freedom published by Freedom House. There are 193 nations listed here. They are ranked on two scales of 1 to 7 for political freedom and civil rights. So a country receiving a 1 for political freedom and a 1 for civil liberties has the highest rating. Hong Kong -- which enjoys the top slot on the Index of Economic Freedom is not ranked here. Singapore -- which ranks the 2nd most economically free nation -- is really quite politically repressed with a ranking of 5 for political freedom and 4 for civil liberties. All of the Scandinavian countries -- known for their democratic socialism and vast safety nets -- receive the highest rankings of 1 and 1. Canada -- with it's comparably liberal reputation also receives the highest ranking. France, which ranks a lowly 64 on the Index of Economic Freedom, also gets perfect scores for political freedom and civil liberties. And Poland, which comes in at 84 in economic freedom, gets perfect scores for political freedom and civil liberties.

In sum, the Heritage Foundation's correlation between economic and political freedom is misleading -- particularly if you view economic freedom as a limited or non-existent social safety net and flat taxes.

I agree that economic freedom -- that is the right to trade freely, own property and run a private business -- is a good thing. And economic freedom is often conducive to political freedom. But that does not mean that a country that provides a decent life for its citizens -- with universal health care, open access to education, affordable housing, old age security, public transportation and progressive taxes -- is destined for tyranny. History has proven otherwise. And it does not mean the economically "free" nations cannot fall into forms of authoritarian tyranny -- such as Singapore which is highly repressive and brutal but which ranks well above the U.S. in economic freedom.

There is a natural tension between democracy and private property which is well recognized by legal scholars who analyze property -- like Harvard Law professor Frank Michaelman. A pure majoritarian democracy could theoretically abolish private property. A pure form of capitalism could theoretically replace democracy with a system of private contractual governance. Pure capitalism is close to the economic libertarian ideal. Because virtually every act of government effects property interests at some level, economic libertarianism allows for little majoritarian control over anything. As Michaelman eloquently stated, if every existing “legally sanctioned advantage is property” we are gradually “forced to recognize in every act of government a redefinition and adjustment of a property boundary [for which compensation must be paid]. The war between popular self government and strongly constitutionalized property now comes to seem not containable but total.”

Being a pragmatist, I don't worry about ideological purity. I think democracy is a good thing -- up to the point where it invades traditional realms of private liberty. I think individual liberty, including economic liberty, is a good thing -- up to the point where private power becomes so concentrated that a nation is effectively divided into oligarchs and serfs. Real human freedom lies at the center of this economic balance -- not at the abstract ideological extremes of communism or economic darwinism. Real freedom seems to reach its apex in social democracies -- like Canada, Scandinavia and most European nations --- and the United States of America. Various social support systems in these countries emphasize opportunity and social mobility (mainly through subsidized education and progressive taxation) and a baseline of human dignity (through various health care, housing, social security and unemployment benefits). This middle ground is where my political philosophy lies. This places me just to the left of center in the United States, among progressives inside and outside the Democratic party.