WAR Declared! Beck, Rove, Norquist, GOP

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An all out knock down drag out media war has broken out between Glenn Beck vs. Grover Norquist and Karl Rove and the GOP.

Glenn has threatened to revoke his NRA membership if Grover Norquist, a Muslim Brotherhood agent, is re-elected to the NRA board.

Karl Rove, a 30 year friend and mentor to Norquist, unleashed a verbal attack on Bill O’Reilly. Beck replied, with the following, “If you want to rumble baby, c’mon,” and added, “You guy’s have the spine of a worm, the ethics of whores, and the integrity of pirates, with my apologies to worms, whores and pirates.”

VIDEO: The Mind of the Islamic State

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Is this Micro Series we will delve into the mind of the Islamic State terrorist. Why killing Jews, American, and infidels is his (or her) only option.

In the Islamic State’s online publication Dabiq they depict clearly their purpose and world view.

As ten’s of thousands flock to the Islamic state worldwide, this series will illustrate motivations, desires and tactic for world domination.

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Richard Viguerie: Cruz is First Top-Tier Movement Conservative Candidate Since Reagan

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MANASSAS, Va., March 23, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — After today’s official announcement that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is running for president, Richard Viguerie says that changes everything in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Ted Cruz isn’t running for Vice President or Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Jeb Bush administration.

Every Republican candidate for president will have to move to significantly to the right, starting with Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, and define their position on amnesty for illegal aliens, on fighting and winning the war radical Islam has declared on America, on spending, the deficit and the debt, and on repealing Obamacare, against the positions Ted Cruz will talk about and campaign on in the coming months.

They will all have to move right to respond to Cruz, or be left behind by a grassroots conservative electorate fed-up with Republican candidates who are merely principle-free messengers for an out of touch Washington elite.

Ted Cruz’s base is the conservative movement, and although other Republican presidential candidates since Ronald Reagan, such as Gary Bauer and Michelle Bachmann, looked to movement conservatives for their support, they were never able to expand beyond their starting base of support into the top-tier of candidates.

Ted Cruz is the first top-tier movement conservative candidate since Reagan for three reasons that separate him immediately from the rest of the Republican pack.

First, is his ability to unite all three elements of the old Reagan coalition; national defense conservatives, economic conservatives and social conservatives with the new fourth leg of the 21st century’s winning conservative coalition – the constitutional conservatives of the Tea Party movement.

Others, such as Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal and Rand Paul may have some appeal to elements of that coalition, but no one unites it the way Ted Cruz does.

Second, is Ted Cruz’s understanding of and almost spiritual bond with America’s country class – the voters outside the Beltway who have looked with alarm at Obama’s fundamental transformation of America and seen not a spending bill to be negotiated or a deal to be cut, as the Republican establishment does, but an existential threat to American exceptionalism and the future of constitutional government that must be resisted at every turn.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, are Ted Cruz’s zest for the battle of ideas between conservatives and progressives in both political parties and his intellectual gifts for fighting it.

The Ted Cruz campaign is planned as a great conservative crusade to, as he put it in his compelling announcement speech at Liberty University, reignite the promise of America.

And this means with Ted Cruz in the race voters will have a clear choice between policy grounded in the thought of the modern conservative movement and the Washington deal-making that has often corrupted Republican campaigns of the recent past.

Today, everything in American politics changed, and that tremor you felt at midday was the shiver in the DC establishment as millions of conservatives across America respond to Ted Cruz and said in unison, we’ve found our leader and “We demand our Liberty.”

Blacks Are in Denial About Obama

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Last week I couldn’t help but watch with sadness the National Urban League’s annual “State of Black America” report being released at a press conference. This was their 39th annual report. According to their press release, “it has become the most highly-anticipated benchmarks and sources for thought leadership around racial equality in America across economics (including employment, income and housing), education, health, social justice and civic engagement. Each edition of the State of Black America contains thoughtful commentary and insightful analysis from leading figures and thought leaders in politics, the corporate arena, NGOs, academia and popular culture.

The theme of the 2015 State of Black America¨ “Save Our Cities: Education, Jobs + Justice” conveys the urgency of focus around each of these areas and their interconnectedness in our ongoing quest for full equality in America.

So, what is the state of Black America in 2015? In short, on many fronts, Black America remains in crisis—and we see justice challenged at every turn.”

As you might guess, I have a different point of view.

The state of Black America in 2015 is not in crisis; but rather the state of the “media appointed Black leadership” is in crisis. This includes organizations and people like the National Urban League (headed by Marc Morial), National Action Network (headed by Al Sharpton), the NAACP (headed by Cornell Brooks), and the Congressional Black Caucus (headed by Democratic Congressman G.K Butterfield of North Carolina).

All of the above groups and their “media appointed leaders” have one thing in common: they all are vestiges of the Democratic Party. They are all card-carrying members of the Democratic Party and all of their proposed solutions to what ails the Black community come straight out of Democratic talking points.

The interesting thing is that these groups and their leadership are totally out of step with the grassroots within the Black community.

Blacks consistently support marriage between a man and a woman; and school choice and vouchers more than any other group. But this group’s “leadership” has been willingly hijacked by the fringe left at the expense of the very people they claim to represent.

The saddest part of watching Morial’s press conference last week was that he refused to state the obvious—that the past six years under Obama, America’s first Black president, has been an unmitigated disaster for Blacks.

Mr. Obama’s campaign theme in 2008 was “Hope and Change.” Now, after six years, people, especially Blacks, are saying they have no hope that he changes. Mr. Obama is the first president in the history of the U.S. to deliberately ignore his largest voting bloc — the Black community.
We are 13 percent of the population and gave Mr. Obama 96 percent and 94 percent of our vote in 2008 and 2012, respectively. In 2012, the Black voter participation rate (66.2 percent) was higher than overall turnout (58 percent) and, for the first time in the history of the U.S., higher than the White rate (64.1 percent). So, where is the “voter suppression” that liberals keep talking about?

If Mr. Obama was a corporation, his largest shareholders would be: Blacks, Whites, Latinos and Asians. In capital markets, dividend payouts are distributed according to percentage of ownership, from the highest to the lowest. On this principle, Blacks should be the largest recipient of Mr. Obama’s largess. But in typical Democratic fashion, Blacks don’t even get crumbs from the table.

The biggest beneficiaries of Mr. Obama’s presidency are: homosexuals (an estimated 2 percent of the population), illegals, Hispanics and Whites. I challenge my readers to name one thing Mr. Obama has done “specifically” to benefit the Black community — the largest shareholder in “Obama Inc.” If Black voters were shareholders in “Obama Inc.,” they could have gone to court and sued for fraud and breach of contract — and prevailed.

The Black community had every expectation that Mr. Obama would provide “targeted” remedies to address seemingly intractably high unemployment within our community. Instead, the Black unemployment rate rose from 10.3 in January of this year to 10.4% last month; yet the national rate fell from 5.7% to 5.5% during the same period–and not a word from this president.

Blacks had every right to expect Mr. Obama to be supportive of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Instead, the HBCU community and its students have been devastated under this president; but yet they continue to swear their allegiance to Obama’s presidency.

According to the Urban League’s own numbers, “the median African American household income was $34, 815, or only 60 percent of the $57,684 for white households. Blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to live in poverty.

The median black wealth is $6,314 compared with $110,500 for whites, meaning the median black household has only 6 cents for every dollar the median white household possesses.”

These negative indices didn’t begin under Obama, but there is no denying that they have accelerated during the past six years. If we had a White president presiding over these types of economic numbers, Democrat or Republican, Blacks would be screaming to the high heavens about the state of the Black community.

The first thing Blacks must do is to accept the fact that Obama is the problem, but we all know that will not happen. The state of Black America is denial.

The Israelis Send Obama a Message

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When the news of Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection victory was announced I factitiously posted on my Facebook page that the Israelis had “sent Obama a two-word message and it wasn’t happy birthday.” It took him two days to call and congratulate Bibi.

I don’t think we have ever had a President so ignorant of the Middle East and that includes the neo-cons that got George W. Bush into a war in Iraq to rid that nation of Saddam Hussein and presumably create a democracy to replace him. Liberals tend to forget that Bush had actually accomplished that until Obama pulled out all of our troops and consigned Iraq to anarchy and ISIS.

A simple understanding of the last century would presumably tell any President that the U.S. had troops all around the world for the purpose of maintaining the peace that various tyrants would challenge. As far as Obama is concerned, the sooner America retreated to his own borders and eliminated its nuclear arsenal, the safer the world would be. Only an idiot would believe that.

To put it succinctly, Obama has been wrong about Iraq, wrong about Syria, wrong about Egypt when he supported the Muslim Brotherhood, and is very wrong about Iran, a fact that has Israel and all the other Middle Eastern nations seriously concerned. If Putin hadn’t concluded that Obama is a fool and a weakling, he might not have invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimea.

This is, after all, a President who sent five high level terrorists back to join their Taliban colleagues in Afghanistan in exchange for a U.S. Army sergeant, Bowe Bergdahl, who defected from his unit to join the Taliban and was held prisoner for five years. If you haven’t heard anything more about him it’s because that’s the standard operational procedure of the Obama White House. First they screw up and then they wait until they hope everyone has forgotten.

If that wasn’t obscene enough, in the latest Worldwide Threat Assessment submitted to Congress by the director of National Intelligence, both Iran and Hezbollah, a terror state and its proxy in Lebanon, were removed from the list of global terror threats.

Hamas Tunnel

IDF Soldier in Hamas Tunnel.

Throughout his two terms to date Obama has demonstrated unremitting animosity toward Israel in general and Netanyahu in particular. His demand for a two-state “solution” ignores that fact that the Palestinians have refused to initiate a state of their own from the day Israel declared its independence in 1948.

The “land-for-peace” policy provided the Palestinians with the whole of Gaza. Instead of building a thriving homeland, they used it to rocket Israel until it was forced to respond with enough force to reduce the threat. Land-for-peace? How about the land through which the Palestinians were tunneling into Israel for the purpose of attacking Israelis on the Gaza border?

These people have been incorrigible for 67 years since Israel’s founding. These days Gaza is controlled by Hamas, a terrorist organization devoted to the destruction of Israel and funded by Iran. Netanyahu’s decision reflects the minds and hearts of the Israelis who reelected him and the Likud party to power.

So what is Obama’s response? He wants to go to the United Nations to force Israel to cede land to a Palestinian nation that the Palestinians have refused to create. Ironically, if you want to find a nation full of Palestinians, you need only visit Jordan which, along with Egypt, has had a peace treaty with Israel for decades.

If you want to find a nation with a million-plus Muslims, then visit Israel which is their home. Arabs and Jews have lived together there in peace for a long time.

Someone needs to tell Obama about the Hamas assassination plot against Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas that was disrupted in early March when his forces raided nine PA-ruled towns in the West Bank to detain 550 Hamas suspects. By initiating mass riots as Hamas had done in Gaza in order to seize power from the PA, the overthrow of Abbas was intended to give them control over the West Bank as well.

Someone might also inform Obama that 2014 was the deadliest year for terror attacks in 45 years. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in late February told Congress that “When the final counting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years such data has been compiled.” Worldwide, from January to September, around 13,000 terror attacks were carried out, killing 31,000 people.

While Obama obsesses about Israel, he continues to do little about ISIS, the Islamic State, that has been expanding from Iraq and Syria into the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, and South Asia. The report says “ISIL’s rise represents the greatest shift in the Sunni violent extremist landscape since Al Qaeda affiliates first began forming, and it is the first to assume at least some characteristics of a nation state.”

No one knows better than the Israelis who have fought wars and intifadas that the major menace to the West is to be found in the Middle East. Instead of demanding that Israel commit territorial suicide, Obama should be supporting the greatest ally America has in the Middle East, but that is perhaps too much to ask of this ignorant, arrogant, former community organizer.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

Hillary: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

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The thought of Hillary in the White House should strike fear into every freedom loving American!

Let the Budget Battles Begin

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The announcement of a new fiscal budget for the U.S. government always sets the stage for struggles between the spenders and those trying to put some limits on the spending. The spenders usually win because politicians—particularly progressive ones—love to tap the national treasury in order to reward their supporters.

As the Speaker of the House John Boehner said on the occasion of the March 17 announcement, “For 53 of the last 60 years, the federal government has spent more than it has taken in. It is unacceptable.” Not so unacceptable that one Congress after another has not seen fit to ignore common sense and fiscal prudence.

Capitol with DollarsThe sheer enormity of the budget tends to overwhelm and I suspect that most voters pay little attention to it and the issues it represents except to want assurances that their benefit check arrives. Rarely mentioned or largely unknown is the size of the nation’s unfunded liabilities, long term obligations in Medicare and Social Security. In 2014 they reached nearly $49 trillion with a “T”.

Our annual Gross Domestic Product, (GDP) what the U.S. takes in for goods and services is about $14 trillion. Our current national debt is $18 trillion and growing. Regarding the unfunded liabilities, Romina Boccia of The Heritage Foundation noted last year that they were “nearly three times the size of the total national debt or more than $150,000 for every person in the U.S.” He predicted that “even the most vulnerable Medicare and Social Security beneficiaries would see their benefits drastically cut after 2030.”

Here’s another way of looking at our debt. When interest rates return to normal WE are going to be paying several hundred billion in interest on our current $18 trillion debt. In short, we have to desperately start cutting spending NOW to reduce that debt. Or else!

The 2016 budget announced by House Budget Chairman Tom Price represents Republican values. As the Wall Street Journal noted, it “would cut spending by $5.5 trillion relative to the status quo over the next decade, reducing federal spending to 18.2% of the economy by 2024. The share today is 20.3% and is headed toward 22.3% in a decade on present trend.” It’s useful to keep in mind that every dollar the government collects and spends is one less dollar that the private sector can spend on starting and expanding businesses large and small.

All that money represents opportunities for waste that are mind-boggling. A recent article in CNS News reported that “Medicare and Medicaid made a combined $77.4 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2014, a 20.4 percent increase from fiscal 2013, according to data published by the Government Accountability Office and the federal paymentaccuracy.gov website.” Twelve government programs that wasted money made the Government Accountability Office list including the school lunch and public housing/rental assistance programs.

The good news about the new fiscal budget is that it openly calls for repealing ObamaCare. It also outlines deregulating Medicaid to give governors more flexibility. It is a terrific fiscal burden. The budget took note of the fact that there are too many duplicative government programs such as 92 antipoverty programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that consolidating such programs would increase real GDP per capita by 1.5% in 2015. Eliminating a whole bunch of them would save even more.

Jane M. Orient, M.D., the Executive Director of American Physicians and Surgeons, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute, warned that “there seem to be some good first steps, such as block-granting Medicaid to the states. But even Republicans aren’t admitting that their budget also involves fighting over money that we don’t have, that the Federal Reserve will create out of faith and credit.”

“Also absent,” said Dr. Orient, “is recognition of the crushing burden of regulation, especially EPA rules to destroy a huge portion of our electrical generating capacity, with heavy subsidization of costly, unreliable, environmentally destructive wind and solar projects that can’t possibly replace coal, nuclear, or natural gas. Or recognition of the destructive impact of the Department of Education. How about devolving environmental protection and education back to the states, too, along with Medicaid?”

Heartland Tax & Budget News (1)“This new House budget,” said Peter Ferrara, a Heartland Senior Fellow for Entitlement and Budget Policy, “shows the passing of the Age of Obama and the broad gulf of difference between today’s conservative Republicans and the modern, ultra-Left, extremist, neo-socialist Democrats. Reagan-life, the plan would balance the budget without tax increases, while modernizing our increasingly dangerously lagging military.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial pointed out that, “As important, failing to pass a budget would also deprive Republicans of the procedural tool known as reconciliation. This allows the GOP to pass a final budget with a simple majority in the House and Senate, and thus it will be crucial to putting larger reforms of ObamaCare or taxes on Mr. Obama’s desk. A vote against the budget is in that sense a vote for the ObamaCare status quo.”

In sum, the proposed budget represents a serious effort to enact reforms that are long overdue. These and other measures are needed to encourage economic growth, the heart’s blood of the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo.

Florida: Time for the Sarasota County School Board to Operate in the Sunshine

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One Sarasota County School Board member has been pushing to have all meetings televised and open to the public. Her name is Bridgette Ziegler.

In November we wrote about Sarasota Herald-Tribune Opinion Editor Tom Tryon’s concern that Ziegler was bringing discord to the Sarasota School Board. We wrote:

Tryon is concerned that  in the local community there is “a palpable sense of hostility, enmity and animus.” Tryon wants to be the “can’t we all just get along” Rodney King of Sarasota, Florida. You know, think alike, be alike, don’t stand out from the crowd for your ideas and ideals. Perhaps Tryon should write a letter to President Obama on his enmity toward Republicans, rather than picking on a working mother who is doing her civic duty [Ziegler].

[ … ]

He wants this school board member [Ziegler] to embrace government secrecy and behind closed door “workshop” meetings in the name of being nice.

Well it appears others agree with Ziegler on operating in the sunshine, especially when it comes to the “closed door workshops” to select a new superintendent.

Sarasota Herald-Tribune reporter Shelby Webb recently reported:

The Sarasota County School Board will dip its toe into the search for Superintendent Lori White’s replacement during a monthly work session on Tuesday, but one local nonprofit has already cried foul.

Joe Hembree, president of the Argus Foundation, wrote a letter to the School Board asking that Tuesday’s monthly work session be televised.

He said agenda items referring to the superintendent search and the financial advisory committee are “very significant items of public interest” that should be easily accessible to parents, teachers, students and other stake-holders.

“Any discussions on these items, whether informative in nature or preliminary, are important ones and we feel strongly that the public should be informed and have easy access to view,” Hembree wrote.

Gee, is it not in the best interest for all to see the discussion on choosing a new superintendent? Does this not deserve the sunshine?

Ziegler has been vindicated. Time to give her credit where it is due.

As we wrote in November, “Abandon your principles, says Tryon, and you will be loved. Tryon has one thing right, the 2014 mid-term election is over. But the bad policies of the school board continue… Enmity is a good thing. Marching in lockstep is a bad thing, just as it is in Washington, D.C. and at Sarasota school board meetings. Different ideas must be heard, discussed in a civil manner and then voted on. That is the Constitutional Republican way.”

Khamenei screams “Death to America” as Kerry hails progress on nuke deal

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How they must be laughing up their sleeves in Tehran at Kerry and the rest of the American fools so eager to give them everything they want on a silver platter.

“Khamenei calls ‘Death to America’ as Kerry hails progress on nuke deal,” Times of Israel, March 21, 2015:

Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei called for “Death to America” on Saturday, a day after President Barack Obama appealed to Iran to seize a “historic opportunity” for a nuclear deal and a better future, and as US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed substantial progress toward an accord.

Khamenei told a crowd in Tehran that Iran would not capitulate to Western demands. When the crowd started shouting, “Death to America,” the ayatollah responded: “Of course yes, death to America, because America is the original source of this pressure.

“They insist on putting pressure on our dear people’s economy,” he said, referring to economic sanctions aimed at halting Iran’s nuclear program. “What is their goal? Their goal is to put the people against the system,” he said. “The politics of America is to create insecurity,” he added, referring both to US pressure on Iran and elsewhere in the region.

Khamenei’s comments contrasted with those of Iranian President Hassan Rohani, who said “achieving a deal is possible” by the March 31 target date for a preliminary accord.

Kerry was more circumspect, as he spoke to reporters after six days of negotiations in the Swiss city of Lausanne. The talks, made “substantial progress,” he said, but “important gaps remain.

“We have an opportunity to get this right,” Kerry said, as he urged Iran to make “fundamental decisions” that prove to the world it has no interest in atomic weapons.

But Khamenei warned against expectations that even a done deal would mend the more than three-decade freeze between the two nations in place since the Iranian revolution and siege of the American Embassy, proclaiming that Washington and Tehran remained on opposite sides on most issues.

“Negotiations with America are solely on the nuclear issue and nothing else. Everyone has to know that,” Khamenei said.

In a reflection of the delicate state of negotiations, other officials differed on how close the sides were to a deal.

Top Russian negotiator Sergey Ryabkov and Iran’s atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said in recent days that technical work was nearly done. But French officials insisted the sides were far from any agreement….

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Net Nonsense

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Market competition is creating a better Internet, without the FCC by JULIAN ADORNEY.

Over the past few years, millions of concerned citizens have called on the FCC to pass Net Neutrality. Many claimed that without tight regulation, Internet service providers (ISPs) would wreak all kinds of mischief, from creating “slow lanes” for ordinary users to blocking access to certain sites. After a number of false starts and under pressure from the White House, the FCC gave in and voted to regulate the Internet as a public utility in order to ban such practices, thus saving the Internet from a variety of boogeymen.

This is a tempting narrative. It has conflict, villains, heroes, and even a happy ending. There’s only one problem: it’s a fairy tale. Such mischief has been legal for decades, and ISPs have almost never behaved this way. Any ISP that created “slow lanes” or blocked content to consumers would be hurting its own bottom line. ISPs make money by seeking to satisfy consumers, not by antagonizing them.

There are two reasons that ISPs have to work to satisfy their customers. First, every company needs repeat business. DISH Network couldn’t grow if customers signed up for one month, suffered from poor access, and then decided to spend their money elsewhere. If — as Net Neutrality advocates fear — DISH decided to throttle Internet access to regular users or small businesses, these irritated consumers would just switch brands.

For Internet service providers, getting new business is expensive. To convince me to sign up for their service, DISH must first spend a lot of money on advertising. After I sign up, they must pay for the dish itself and for employees to install it at my house. But after that initial up-front cost, the marginal cost to provide me with Internet access falls to almost nothing. Satisfying customers so that they continue subscribing is cheaper, easier, and more profitable than continually replacing them. ISPs’ self-interest pushes them to add value to their customers just to keep them from jumping ship to their competitors.

In fact, this is what we’ve seen. ISPs have invested heavily in new infrastructure, and Internet speeds have increased by leaps and bounds. From 2011 to 2013, the top three national providers alone invested over $100 billion upgrading their infrastructure to provide cutting edge service. In 2013, average broadband speed grew by 31 percent. These faster speeds have not been limited to big corporate customers: ISPs have routinely improved their services to regular consumers. They didn’t do so because the FCC forced them. For the past twenty years, “slow lanes” have been perfectly legal and almost as perfectly imaginary.

In one sense, ISPs do have fast and slow lanes, because customers can pay for higher speeds. When I called DISH, for instance, their sales reps offered me a variety of packages from 7Mbps (megabits per second) to 20Mbps. But tiered service is different from the nightmare scenario that Net Neutrality advocates are worried about.

To demo the slow lane it feared, for instance, Neocities dropped the speed at which their website was delivered to 28.8 Kbps, or about 1/250th of the slowest speed DISH offered me. Brad Feld proposed an Internet-wide “slow day” of 1 or even 0.5 Mbps to show what life in a hypothetical slow lane might look like. For DISH to offer such slow speeds would be ludicrous: consumers would switch service providers in a heartbeat. ISPs shy away from creating slow lanes not because they have to but because they have a vested interest in offering fast service to all customers.

Contrary to the myth about ISPs being localized monopolies, 80 percent of Americans live in markets with access to multiple high-speed ISPs. While expensive regulations can discourage new players from entering the market, competition in most cities is increasingly robust. Google Fiber recently expanded into several cities, offering speeds up to an astounding 1Gbps (1,000Mbps), with predictable results. AT&T, Grande Communications, and other service providers have rushed to match the offer, and Verizon is pushing its own fiber optic services. Even the lumbering telecom giant Comcast is under pressure to upgrade its network.

ISPs still have to compete with each other for customers. If one ISP sticks them in the slow lane or blocks access to certain sites — or even just refuses to upgrade its service — consumers can simply switch to a competitor.

The second reason that ISPs seek to satisfy customers is that every business wants positive word of mouth. Consumers who receive excellent service talk up the service to their friends, generating new sign-ups. Consumers who receive mediocre service not only leave but badmouth the company to everyone they know.

In fact, this happened in one of the few cases where an ISP chose to discriminate against content. When Verizon blocked text messages from a pro-choice activist group in 2007, claiming the right to block “controversial or unsavory” messages, the backlash was fierce. Consumer Affairs notes that, “after a flurry of criticism, Verizon reversed its policy” on the pro-choice texts. The decision may have been ideological, but more likely Verizon reversed a policy that was driving away consumers, generating bad press, and hurting its bottom line.

In 2010, an FCC order made such “unreasonable discrimination” illegal (until the rule was struck down in 2014), but even without this rule, consumers proved more than capable of standing up to big corporations and handling such discrimination themselves.

In competitive markets, the consumer’s demand for quality prevents companies from cutting corners. Before the FCC imposed public utility regulations on the Internet, ISPs were improving service and abandoning discriminatory practices in order to satisfy their users. Net Neutrality advocates have spent years demanding a government solution to a problem that  markets had already solved.

ABOUT JULIAN ADORNEY

Julian Adorney is Director of Marketing at Peacekeeper, a free app that offers an alternative to 911.  He’s also an economic historian, focusing on Austrian economics.  He has written for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Townhall, and The Hill.

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Internet at the Speed of Government MARCH 10, 2015 by LAWRENCE W. REED

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

Hard to grasp the Middle East situation?

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A UK friend emailed me about the mess in the Middle East, saying that the tribal differences make it hard to grasp the situation there. Yes, from the standpoint of the inhabitants of the region, the situation is labyrinthine. But from the U.S. standpoint there is nothing complex about it at all. It is a secret hidden in the open, IF you know about the petrodollar agreement signed in 1973. You can truly call it blood money. Of course, in one way, the motivation of the U.S. policy is still hard to grasp, namely, how it could be so utterly and irredeemably EVIL?

Here is my response:

Dear X,

The key to ALL our Middle East wars in recent decades is the petrodollar agreement with the Saudis. It is not at all hard to grasp.

From the U.S. standpoint, the wars (and support for revolutions) are disarmingly easy to understand. Here is a digest explaining exactly why the U.S. has been fighting in the Middle East: http://www.americandailyherald.com/pundits/donald-hank/item/how-the-petrodollar-perpetuates-Islamic-terror

It all boils down to the petrodollar agreement signed between Nixon and King Faisal in 1973. Under this agreement, the Saudis agreed to demand payment for oil in dollars in exchange for “protection” of the Saudi royals and their oil fields. But in reality, the Saudis were not only interested in protection. Their aim was to have the US wage proxy wars against their religious opponents, mostly Shiites but also secularists.

In reality, every single war in the Middle East was fought by the U.S. as a proxy for the Saudis, essentially in defense of Saudi Wahhabism (radical fundamentalist SUNNI sect) against two groups:

  1. Secularists like Qaddafi and Saddam.
  2. Shiites like Iran and Syria (Shiites are in fact the less violent and radical of the two groups. You see why the ME has exploded, with the U.S. supporting the radical SUNNI Wahhabi sect and their minions — al-Qaeda, Taliban, ISIS? — Incidentally, Afghanistan and the Taliban are a somewhat complicated case. The Saudis turned against them because they were refusing to bow to the Saudis and were making bad publicity for Saudi Arabia)

That is just about all you need to know about U.S. motivation. In a word, money.

Young men from a “Christian” country dying for radical Muslims and their religion, and Christian churches standing with our contemptible government in support of these proxy wars. Easy to grasp the mechanics. Almost impossible to grasp the evil behind it.

Best,

Don

P.S.: Consider how IRAN is one of the countries having religious differences with the Saudis and how Christians have supported confrontation with that country without understanding what is behind it and without making a rational comparison of Iran with other Muslim countries (which would show Iran, with its 600 churches, to be significantly more Christian-friendly than Saudi Arabia, which bans all churches). Jesus commanded us to be gentle as doves and wise as serpents. You can’t have wisdom without any knowledge. Most American Christians are guilty of the sin of willful ignorance, something God hates as much as any other sin. He says My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge – Hosea 4:6.

Judging by the way Europe and even our allies in Asia have been turning away from the US-dominated World Bank and becoming founding members of the Chinese AIIB, we are truly being destroyed by our obstinate refusal to know the truth. Instead we prefer hokus-pokus, signs like blood moons and other nonsense. Please read the following article on the AIIB vs World Bank and leave a comment.

Freedom’s Presidents

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Jeffrey Rogers Hummel on President Martin Van Buren (1837–1841)

Martin Van Buren was the least bad president in American history. Although other chief executives had some libertarian accomplishments, he was by far the most consistent. Domestically, Van Buren kept government spending and taxes low, and also brought to culmination the Jacksonian program for the “divorce of bank and state,” despite the country being engulfed in a severe depression. But Van Buren’s most stunning achievements were in foreign policy. Mainstream historians usually rate presidents according to their forceful leadership, which biases them toward presidents who drag the country into wars, permitting displays of decisiveness and energy. But if we instead applaud maintaining peace, Van Buren has the unique distinction of keeping the country out of two possible wars. By blocking annexation of Texas, he forestalled a war with Mexico that unfortunately came about a decade later. He also calmed two major disputes with Canada, either of which could have instigated full-fledged conflict with Britain. One involved border incidents resulting from a revolt in Canada, and the other a clash over the Maine boundary. The unpopularity of these libertarian and diplomatic measures, even within Van Buren’s own party, contributed to his failure to win reelection in 1840 and renomination in 1844.

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel is a professor of economics at San Jose State University. He is the author of Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War.

Ivan Eland on President John Tyler (1841–1845)

John Tyler was generally in favor of limiting government — both domestically and internationally — much to the chagrin of his own Whig Party. It advocated a revival of the national bank and high tariffs, both of which would fund federal canals and roads. As an unelected president who had taken over after William Henry Harrison had died only a month into his term, Tyler exhibited amazing political courage in vetoing his own party’s platform. In the process, his cabinet resigned. His party expelled him and then unsuccessfully tried to impeach him. Tyler, like many of the best American presidents who stuck by their principles, was not asked back for a second term.

Tyler’s greatest triumph may have been in reversing the terrible policies toward Native Americans perpetrated by his predecessors, Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren (an otherwise admirable president). Tyler settled the longest and bloodiest American Indian war in history by allowing Seminole Indians to stay on their reservation instead of being expelled by armed force west of the Mississippi River — a solution Van Buren had rejected. Tyler then was able to cut the size of the US Army by a third.

Ivan Eland is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and author of the book Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty.

Lawrence W. Reed on President Grover Cleveland (1885–1889, 1893–1897)

Unless you grade politicians on the curve, the vast majority would flunk right out of the gate. But Grover Cleveland, America’s 22nd and 24th president, was one of the best. He exercised good judgment on so many occasions — from supporting lower taxes and freer trade, to vetoing more bills than the previous 21 presidents combined, to opposing the paternalistic nanny state — that it’s hard to pick just one decision to rate as his finest.

But I’ll choose his staunch opposition to the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, passed during the tenure of the man between Grover’s terms, Benjamin Harrison. The act required the US Treasury to purchase (with newly printed paper money) virtually the entire output of American silver mines, precisely 4.5 million ounces per month. Furthermore, it forced the Treasury to pay twice what the silver was worth, mint it into silver dollars, and redeem it for gold on demand at half of what gold was worth. Dumb— really dumb. It was a subsidy for silver interests and a surefire prescription for undermining confidence in America’s money and economy. It was the primary cause of the Panic of 1893 and the depression that followed, even though it had strong support in the Congress and around the country.

While recovering from a secret, life-threatening operation for cancer in his mouth, Cleveland beat Congress into submission and secured the act’s repeal. “Patriotism,” Grover thundered, “is no substitute for a sound currency!”

Lawrence W. Reed is president of FEE.

Burton Folsom on President Warren G. Harding (1921–1923)

What if I were to tell you that we once had a president who, in his first two years in office, was able to lower tax rates and still cut the federal budget in half while slashing unemployment from 11.7 percent to 2.4 percent? Would you believe me?

Warren G. Harding accomplished all three of those things in his short presidency from 1921 to 1923. When he was elected in 1920, he (and his vice president, Calvin Coolidge) faced a stagnant economy and a ballooning national debt left over from World War I. Harding decided to cut the size of government.

“We need more business in government and less government in business,” he said. That would give entrepreneurs incentives to invest. Harding was right. With tax rates cut for all groups, Americans invented or expanded such businesses as air conditioning, talking movies, radios, refrigerators, telephones, and air travel.

The Roaring ‘20s launched with Harding’s assumption that greater freedom and less government would increase prosperity for all groups. The 1920s would also become the last decade in US history to see annual budget surpluses every year. Almost one-third of the federal debt disappeared under Harding and Coolidge.

Do historians celebrate Harding’s achievements? No; they collectively rank him in presidential polls as the worst president in American history. They criticize his appointments—some of whom were indeed corrupt—but others, such as Andrew Mellon, were superb). Historians also deplore Harding’s philosophy of limited government. But if we judge presidencies by results, we have to rank Harding as one of the better presidents in US history.

Burton Folsom Jr. is a professor of history at Hillsdale College and author (with his wife, Anita) of FDR Goes to War.

Amity Shlaes on President Calvin Coolidge (1923–1929)

Action is the main characteristic voters seek today. Yet, inaction can benefit a nation more, as President Coolidge demonstrated. He was our “Great Refrainer.”

Where others strutted, Coolidge stood. Where others exhorted, Coolidge held his tongue. The 13th president emptied even his writing of action — and active verbs. A classic Coolidge sentence: “The growing multiplicity of laws has often been observed.” Nine out of 10 English teachers would grade such a sentence down. Nine out of 10 would be wrong.

Example: When Coolidge was still governor of Massachusetts, patrolmen struck, the port city rioted, and the police commissioner fired the police. The union petitioned the governor, begging Coolidge to intervene. But the governor refused, insisting only the commissioner had that authority. Coolidge knew that public-sector strikes hurt the public too much to be warranted. Man had his place in the world, but man alone could not do everything: “Men do not make laws,” Coolidge wrote. “They do but discover them.” As president, Coolidge vetoed 50 bills. This was the boy with the finger in the dike, stopping a great progressive tide.

To honor Mr. Understatement, an understated sentence suits best: America could do worse than elect another Great Refrainer.

Amity Shlaes is author of Coolidge, The Forgotten Man, and the forthcoming Silent Majority.

Paul G. Kengor on President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989)

In the case of Ronald Reagan, this is a difficult assignment, one that I’ve been kicking around ever since Larry Reed kindly requested my input. I’ve settled on the following example.

Reagan was, of course, a free marketer. He was also the world’s leading optimist — an optimism particularly on display during the lingering recession of 1982–83, when the effect of his 1981 tax cuts seemed slow. “He is absolutely convinced that there will be a big recovery,” one Reagan adviser told Time. “My God is he an optimist!”

There was immense pressure on Reagan to reverse his tax cuts. The naysayers were not only external but internal. Reagan, however, hung in there. He was undeterred. He knew that the market needed to be freed to perform and work its magic, which it eventually did.

Freeman readers are familiar with the data:

After a slow start through 1982–83, the stimulus effect of Reagan’s tax cuts was extraordinary, sparking the longest peacetime expansion and recovery in the nation’s history: 92 consecutive months, far surpassing the previous record of 58 months.

Contrary to liberal demonology, women and blacks and other minorities did extremely well during the Reagan years. In the 1980s, there was a 40 percent jump in the number of black households earning $50,000 or more. Black unemployment actually fell faster than white unemployment in the 1980s. The number of black-owned businesses increased by almost 40 percent, while the number of blacks who enrolled in college increased almost 30 percent (white college enrollment increased only 6 percent).

Overall, the “Reagan Boom” not only produced widespread prosperity but — along with the attendant Soviet collapse — helped generate budget surpluses in the 1990s.

These impressive results were the product of a president’s optimism, his common-sense knowledge of markets, and his confidence to stay true to a course he knew would work.

Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. His latest book is 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative.

ABOUT THE FREEMAN

The Freeman is the flagship publication of the Foundation for Economic Education and one of the oldest and most respected journals of liberty in America. For more than 50 years it has uncompromisingly defended the ideals of the free society.

Disarming the Armchair Critics

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Should people outside a democracy – if they are citizens of that democracy – be allowed to cast a ballot? It is a question which has gone on in Israel for many years and which returned in the wake of Benjamin Netanyahu’s triumph in the polls this week.

There are many elections in which citizens and non-citizens outside the country clearly prefer one candidate over another. Before the 2008 elections it was undeniably the case that international support for Barack Obama’s Presidential race vastly exceeded international support for the candidacy of John McCain. It is highly unlikely that had Senator McCain made a trip to Berlin to give a keynote speech that he would have filled a room, let alone a public space with German citizens as far as the eye could see. In 2008 the world wanted a change of American leadership. As it turned out the American people did as well so their interests aligned.

It can safely be said that much of the public and political class in the West was hoping for a change of Israeli leadership this week. The White House could barely disguise its hostility to Netanyahu’s triumph at the polls, publicly criticising remarks made in the last hours of the campaign before the White House managed a rather grudging congratulations in private. In Europe too the feeling was that a Livni-Hertzog coalition of the left would somehow deliver a different, more palatable ally with concerns for the peace process with the Palestinians somewhere nearer the top of their agenda.

But the Israeli public thought otherwise. And this is a reminder not just of the adequacy of the democratic system, but an argument against the franchise being extended to expats. Because it is easier to take risks for peace if you are not actually taking any risks yourself. The Israeli public’s high turnout in this week’s elections is partly a demonstration that they take their politics seriously, but also a demonstration that they take their security seriously. It is true that no leaps forward have been made in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute during Netanyahu’s time in office. But nor have there been any large scale terror attacks. And the response to last summer’s barrage of rockets was deemed by most of the public to be both necessary and proportionate.

When they go to the ballot box the Israeli public know that they are casting a vote which might well have an effect on the security and wellbeing of their family to an extent that most Western voters cannot imagine. Outside the country one might wish the country to be willing to take risks. But inside the country the public wishes for security and stability. Whatever one’s views on the results that fact at least deserves to be accepted and respected.

LeadershipNOW: America’s Search for the Most Qualified U.S. Presidential Candidate

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CLEVELAND, March 19, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — It would be hard to embrace any of the candidates in our last few presidential elections to even run a $20 Million company. If we don’t elect better leaders we will completely lose our position as a leading country.

Famed executive search consultant, transformation CEO and leadership expert, Jeff Christian, who conducted HP’s search for a new CEO, the largest executive search in history, has now set his sights higher, unveiling today his intention to use the best search technologies used in industry, non-profits, and other organizations to identify the most exceptional leaders for the role of President of the United States through a new organization called LeadershipNOW.

jeff christian leadership now ceo

Jeff Christian, CEO LeadershipNOW.

Jeff Christian, Transformational CEO

At age 23, Jeff Christian founded Christian and Timbers, the most rapidly growing executive search firm from 1980s through 2000s. According to Dr. Tom Janz, who worked with Jeff as a coach in 2014 and 2015, “Jeff Christian is a transformational CEO, having built Christian and Timbers into the clear market leader in its space, one of the strongest indicators of a transformational CEO. He is credited for transforming the sleepy executive search industry, a rolodex business, into an information knowledge based powerhouse.” Christian personally led searches which filled top leadership roles and boards of Silicon Valley’s most admired corporations including HP, Cisco System and Apple. He not only found the top talent, he helped it succeed, launching two venture capital companies which landed him on the Forbes Midas list for 5 years as a top deal maker.  Christian authored “The Headhunter’s Edge”, a Random House book where he first introduced the concepts of “Transformational Leadership” and “Talent Centric Companies”.  His most recent company, RevenueNOW, the only company that ensures rapid revenue acceleration, applies transformational components to help America’s entrepreneurs transform their businesses. LeadershipNOW applies these technologies to the political selection process for the first time.

“As far as challenging our thinking, Jeff will do that. As we were putting together the profile for the CEO search that is currently underway, instead of just following the specs, Jeff thought about them, rewrote them and came back to us and said, ‘We ought to be more open in this area.’ He really pushes and hauls the definition before he gets started.”

– Lew Platt, former CEO Hewlett-Packard

America’s Search for the next President

Christian has long dreamed of applying the most advanced science of executive search to selecting U.S. Presidential candidates.  “America’s top corporations use the best of executive search science, which includes creation of a detailed position profile that realistically defines qualities required to be the most effective president. These profiles will be developed by a citizens selection committee drawn from America’s most trusted business, non-profit and academics thought leaders with direct input from all Americans though the LeadershipNOW website.  Christian criticizes the old style politics: “America’s political parties use methods that have hardly changed since the days when smoke filled room deal makers selected presidential candidates.   America’s voters deserve the best candidates from each party and for every office, and we need a modern selection system for identifying and assessing them.  We have created LeadershipNOW to make sure Americans get a choice between strong leaders.”

Scientific Leadership Search will Enable More Informed Choices

Jeff Christian, the top expert on Transformational Leadership, and Dr. Tom Janz, who wrote the definitive book on behavioral interviewing and leadership assessment, have come together to develop an assessment tool and process to identify the very best transformational political leaders.  Christian explains “traditional back room political deal making doesn’t select for those qualities that make for effective government executives and legislators.  By assessing candidates and publicly sharing their results, the result for America should be that the most qualified candidates who might get otherwise be overlooked might just be discovered for the gems they are.  Using scientific search techniques, everyone will know who really stacks up and what their strengths and weaknesses are.”

Candidates Take Notice

“It’s a double edged sword, because scientific search methodologies and assessment can also pinpoint hidden weaknesses.  But the better a leader the candidate is, the less their risk and the more they have to gain by this transparency.” Christian revealed.  Some Republican candidates have taken notice and indicated their willingness to go under the LeadershipNOW microscope.

“Right now, Hillary is the one name that people know. A search is all about discovering what you don’t know, so every other candidate, Republican or Democrat, has the opportunity to become the new front runner, because they will have the strongest emotional link with the voters. So the first candidate courageous enough to follow this initiative has to be taken seriously,” said one political analyst.

Leadership Search technology for local, state and other federal offices as well.

While LeadershipNow is currently developing Presidential position profiles, assessments and recruiting independent governance councils to guide the evaluation processes, it plans to offer similar services for allraces on a non-partisan basis.  Christian is passionate in his commitment to greater public accountability for all offices, “For every office from village major, to governor or senator, voters deserve to know whether candidates have the leadership qualities the desire.  LeadershipNow will measure them and give them the information they need to make the most informed choices about which candidates to give their donations and votes to.”  Campaigns can even use these services to evaluate their own internal leadership, and after the election to assess possible cabinet and staff positions, so candidates can assure the voters that their staff are equally well qualified and worthy of trust.

LeadershipNOW is a new organization that is draws on the talent and technologies of Christian’s most recent venture, RevenueNOW, a consulting organization which merges capabilities of top executive recruiting, private equity, and brand marketing firms. The founding leadership of RevenueNow includes Jeff Christian, Dr. Janz and Scott McGregor.

Jeff Christian is the CEO and founder of the search firm Christian and Timbers and two venture funds, who transformed the Executive Search industry. He is also as the author of The Headhunter’s Edge.

Dr. Tom Janz literally wrote the book on behavioral leadership Assessment: Behavior Description Interviewing.

Scott McGregor is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and co-inventor of Web Conferencing and Prescient Agents  predictive analytics technologies, technologies that have changed the lives of over one billion individuals around the world.

Hands Off the Secret Service

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Each time we witness a disaster or a scandal of one kind or another, especially those involving politicians or government agencies, we find Monday morning quarterbacks pounding the table, shouting, “Somebody do something!”  That is certainly true of the latest mini-scandal involving the once-vaunted Secret Service, a government agency with a long and storied history of service to the nation… until recent years, of course.

On November 24, 2009, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, of Warren County, Virginia, crashed a black tie event at the White House honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singhon.  Although they were uninvited, the Salahis passed through two Secret Service’s checkpoints, one of which required guests to provide photo IDs which were then checked against a list of invited guests.  Their gate-crash set off a firestorm of criticism of the Secret Service protective detail.

On April 14–15, 2012, the sixth Summit of the Americas was held at Cartagena, Colombia.  However, the misbehavior of Secret Service agents and U.S. military personnel, members of the presidential advance party, overshadowed the event.  In the days that followed, it was learned that some twenty Colombian prostitutes were suspected of having spent the night with Secret Service agents and U.S. military personnel at the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena.  The episode first came to light when one of the prostitutes complained that, even though she had upheld her end of the bargain, she had been inadequately compensated by one of the agents.  The central theme of the summit was, appropriately enough, “Connecting the Americas: Partners for Prosperity.”

On December 10, 2013, as Barack Obama spoke at a memorial service for former South African president Nelson Mandela, a fake sign-language interpreter joined Obama on stage, standing just feet to his left.  The impostor, Thamsanqa Jantjie, later told the Johannesburg Star that while he was on stage with Obama he heard strange voices and began to hallucinate, causing him to make signing gestures that were pure gibberish.  Obama’s unintelligible remarks left bewildered deaf viewers around the world scratching their heads and wondering, “What the hell did he just say?”

On March 23, 2014, three Secret Service agents were recalled from the Netherlands after one of the agents was found passed out drunk in the hallway of his hotel.  The agents were part of an advance team sent to the Netherlands in preparation for Obama’s upcoming visit to The Hague.  According to a story in the Washington Post, the three agents were members of the elite Counter Assault Team (CAT).  If the president or his motorcade is ever under attack, the CAT’s job is to draw fire, providing an opportunity for Obama and others in his party to escape unharmed.  One of the three agents recalled was a CAT “team leader.”

On September 16, 2014, Obama visited the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta to receive a briefing on the Ebola crisis in Africa.  What he and his protective detail apparently did not know was that a local security guard, armed with a concealed handgun, rode on an elevator elbow-to-elbow with Obama, totally unaware of the security breach.

On September 19, 2014, just three days later, a mentally-disturbed veteran, Omar J. Gonzalez, climbed the White House fence on Pennsylvania Avenue, sprinted across the lawn, entered the double doors on the north portico, and rushed into the mansion.  Armed with a folding knife with a 2½ inch blade, Gonzales was well inside the White House, in the hallway leading to the East Room, when he was tackled by an off-duty Secret Service agent.

On March 12, 2015, two senior Secret Service agents, including a senior member of Barack Obama’s protective detail, crashed a car into a barricade at the southeast entrance to the White House following a late-night retirement party for Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan.  It was immediately suspected that the agents were under the influence of alcohol.  However, a report in the Washington Post tells us that the agents were allowed to leave the scene after a supervisor overruled uniformed officers who wanted to arrest the agents and conduct sobriety tests.

The two agents, who were on their way home from the retirement party, were responding to a radio report saying that an active bomb investigation was underway on the White House grounds.  It was reported that, shortly before the agents crashed their car into the crime scene barricade, a woman had thrown a package at the security gate, shouting, “It’s a bomb!”  When the intoxicated agents careened onto the scene they reportedly ran their vehicle over the suspect package.  Fortunately, it contained a book, not a bomb.  To the best of our knowledge, the book was not a copy of Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father.

Contrast these uncharacteristic “Keystone Cops” foul-ups by the Secret Service to the conduct of the well-turned-out Marines who stand guard at the White House and at embassies around the globe.  A Marine Corps website tell us, “Missions have changed over the years, but what has remained constant since November 10, 1775 is our unyielding commitment to protecting the lives of our citizens and the interests of our nation.”  The website goes on to say, “Honor requires each Marine to exemplify the ultimate standard in ethical and moral conduct… And, above all, honor mandates that a Marine never sully the reputation of the Corps.”

However, when one begins to contrast Marine Corps conduct with Secret Service lapses during the Obama era, it comes down to a question of constancy.  And while Secret Service personnel know as well as the Marines that Barack Obama is ineligible to serve in the office he holds, and that he is totally incompetent as our commander in chief, there is a difference.  While the young Marines, who dutifully salute as Obama steps down from Marine One on the south lawn of the White House, have 240 years of exemplary Marine Corps tradition to sustain them, the same is not true of the men and women of the Secret Service.  Although their duties and their obligation to the security of our nation’s leaders remain the same, the level of respect they hold for  presidents and first ladies undergoes a major transformation every four years.

In his book, In The President’s Secret Service, former agent Ronald Kessler provides insights into the presidents and first ladies of the modern era.  Having interviewed dozens of agents, past and present, Kessler tells us that “Gerald Ford was a true gentleman who treated the Secret Service with respect and dignity.  Agents found Ford to be a ‘decent man who valued their service.’ ”

He describes Jimmy Carter as being “a complete phony who had disdain for the Secret Service and was very irresponsible with the ‘football’ nuclear codes… a ‘moody and mistrustful’ person who distanced himself from the agents who were sworn to protect him and his family.”

He describes Ronald Reagan as “moral, honest, respectful, and dignified.  The Reagans treated (the) Secret Service and everyone else with respect and honor.  Nancy Reagan was very nice but very protective of the President… he treated the Secret Service agents, the Air Force One Crew, and the staff of maids and butlers at the White House with respect.”

“George H.W. Bush was extremely kind, considerate and always respectful towards Secret Service agents.  The Bushes took great care in making sure the agents’ comforts were taken care of and even brought them meals.”

Kessler writes that, “Bill Clinton’s term in office was one giant party; he was not trustworthy, (he was) adulterous, and was only nice because he wanted everyone to like him.  Hillary Clinton was another phony whose personality would change the instant cameras were near.  She hated with open disdain the military and (the) Secret Service.”
“George and Laura Bush were loved by the Secret Service… The Bushes made sure their entire administrative and household staff understood to respect and be considerate of the Secret Service.  Laura Bush was one of the nicest First Ladies, if not the nicest…”

From interviews with current agents, Kessler writes, “Barack and Michelle Obama look down on the Secret Service and hate the military.  He is egotistical, cunning, and untrustworthy, and has temper tantrums.  Michelle… hates anybody who is not black, hates the military, and looks at the Secret Service as servants.”

What is immediately evident is that the last four Republicans presidents are described by the men and women who protect them as being “considerate,”  “decent,” “dignified,” “honest,” “kind,” “moral,” and “respectful,” while adjectives used to describe the last three Democratic presidents include “adulterous,” “cunning,” “hateful,” “disdainful,” “egotistical,” “elitist,” “irresponsible,” “moody,” “phony,” “temperamental,” “untrusting.” and “untrustworthy.”  What it tells us is what we’ve always known, which is that, compared to Republicans, Democrats are, in every respect, an entirely different “breed of cat.”

So let’s not overreact to an occasional Secret Service hiccup.  It is understandable that agents may not be at the top of their game when they’re called upon to lay their lives on the line for men and women who fail to command their respect.  What they suffer from and what makes their jobs so difficult is, more than anything else, a lack of constancy in the personal characteristics and the worthiness of those they protect.

Once the Obamas have packed up and left the White House on January 20, 2017, whether willingly or in handcuffs, the Secret Service will quickly regain its honored and well-deserved reputation.  In the meantime, until we can get the next Republican family moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, let’s keep our hands off the Secret Service.  If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.