Judgement Day: Pro-Israel Z-Street trial “Will Force the IRS to Open its Books”

/in , , , , , , /by

In the August 2013 New English Review (NER) we interviewed Lori Lowenthal Marcus, national correspondent for The Jewish Press and co-founder of Z Street- the Zionist antidote to anti-Israel J Street.  It was about the July 19, 2013 hearing held before Judge Ketanji Brown of the DC Federal  Court in the matter of Z Street v IRS. The case had been filed in the Eastern District in Pennsylvania and then transferred  to the DC Federal court as this was a federal government matter. The original Z Street matter was based on a First Amendment issue, “viewpoint discrimination”. In our NER interview article we noted what the basis of the original filing was about:

A news release by Z STREET, issued  just prior to the DC court proceeding cited the June 24, 2013 House Ways and Means release of acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel’s responses to a letter from Ranking  Member, Sander Levin (D-MI). Z STREET’s supplementary filing revealed that there were no “progressive” groups scrutinized by the IRS “Touch and Go” Group (TAG) in Washington, DC. Instead due diligence of the IRS documents revealed that Z STREET was the sole subject by the TAG review because of “Israel-connected” views of the group in its original 501 (c ) (3) application.   

We further noted the contretemps at the July 19, 2013 DC federal court hearing:

Alana Goodman of The Washington Free Beacon who attended the DC Federal Court hearing noted in her report the IRS argument and the reaction of Judge Brown:

The government argued in court on Friday that Z STREET should resolve its tax-exempt status, which is still in limbo, before any policy questions can be addressed.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson seemed skeptical of the argument, saying that the government appeared to be mischaracterizing the remedy that Z Street was seeking.

“That’s not what they want,” Judge Jackson snapped at one point.

Z STREET said the government was misrepresenting its position.

“We’re not seeking tax-exempt status in this case. We are seeking an untainted process,” said Counsel Jerome Marcus. “What is the policy that the IRS has been following since 2010, and is that process constitutional?”

Is the Z Street case against the IRS evidence of bureaucratic ineptitude or something else? If discovery is granted by the DC Court ruling we may find who and why an unconstitutional act of viewpoint discrimination was perpetrated against Z STREET.

Today’s Wall Street Journal reported Judge Katanji Brown ruling effectively granting discovery to Z Street, “IRS Judgment Day: The un-talkative agency comes under scrutiny from a federal judge”:

In August 2010, Z Street sued the IRS on grounds that the position amounts to viewpoint discrimination and violates the First Amendment. The IRS responded by claiming special protections, including the Anti-Injunction Act, a law written to protect the IRS from litigation that could interfere with its ability to collect revenue.

But Washington, D.C. federal district Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled that the Anti-Injunction Act has not been interpreted by the courts as preventing constitutional claims. In its attempt to “thwart” the action, she wrote in denying the IRS motion to dismiss, the IRS tries to “transform a lawsuit that clearly challenges the constitutionality of the process . . . into a dispute over tax liability.”

The IRS also tried to duck out under the sovereign immunity doctrine, which was designed to deter lawsuits against the feds. But that claim fails, Judge Jackson writes, because the Administrative Procedures Act “waives sovereign immunity with respect to suits for nonmonetary damages that allege wrongful action by an agency or its officers or employees, and the instant lawsuit fits precisely those criteria.”

This ruling will force the IRS to open its books on the procedures it used and decisions it made reviewing Z Street’s tax-exempt application, procedures it has tried to keep shrouded. As the case proceeds, Z Street’s attorneys can seek depositions from many who have been part of the larger attempt to sit on similar applications by other conservative groups.

It will be fascinating to see which names— Lois Lerner, former head of IRS tax-exempt scrutiny?—show up in the internal email traffic. The Administration may have a harder time evading accountability now that a judge will be supervising the testimony.

In our NER interview with Ms. Marcus, we asked her what the best outcome that might emerge with Judge Ketanji’s ruling.  Here is the exchange:

Gordon:  What do you believe would be the best outcome of the D.C. Federal Court after its review of the various filings in terms of handing down a ruling in this case?

Marcus:  Naturally, I think the court should sign the proposed Order that we submitted and provide us with access to what is called discovery. Meaning we are permitted to seek information about how the IRS set about creating this policy, who formulated it, who approved it, who knew about it, who had to apply it, to whom was it applied. That is what we need to find out in order to learn how the IRS came to create policies that are not just inappropriate, not just mismanagement, but which constitute violations of the U.S. Constitution. We need to find out because unless we do, there are going to be greater and greater restrictions on fundamental freedoms.

Way to go Judge Brown.  Now the IRS has no shield against discovery by Z Street. This could an interesting turn of events vis a vis the original viewpoint discrimination issue raised in the Z Street Federal court filling.  Whatever names emerge on the BOTL emails might cause  a flood of filings from other possible social welfare filers. As baseball great Yogi Berra might opine, “It ain’t over till it’s over”.  Congratulations to Lori Lowenthal Marcus and her counsel, her husband Jerome, for undertaking this landmark case for Z Street and all Americans. Let’s see how the IRS counsel  responds  to Judge Brown’s ruling.

As a Z Street board member this federal court ruling has justified the four year wait for justice to be done in the matter. To paraphrase Justice Brandeis Judge Brown’s ruling is good “disinfectant”.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

White House Mouse Droppings: NASA, Putin, Ukraine, and more!

/in , , , /by

Obama, the mouse, has no idea how to handle the Russian bear or much of anything else. His mouse droppings are everywhere: NASA, Russia, Ukraine, Middle East. Who can clean up this mess? Allen West!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/WbMACbqGlIo[/youtube]

 

RELATED ARTICLES:

White House blows cover of CIA chief in Afghanistan
Meet the Youngest Victims of President Obama’s Immigration Policy
6 Small Towns With Big Government Problems

Grover Norquist — Trust me! I’m a Lobbyist!

/in , , , , /by

If Grover says that crops are rotting in the fields, then damn it, crops are rotting in the fields and its time to let illegal aliens into America to harvest those crops so that we can end world hunger.

Hey America, how in the world can this guy get away with these comical policy statements and actually get Members of Congress to support his nonsense?

As we move through this micro-series you will see how Norquist’s nefarious work impacts YOU on a daily basis on the four “I”s of: Immigration, Islam, Israel and Iran.

Watch this short video and see if you can figure it out.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r3SreAxQy0[/youtube]

Why Black Men Need More White Women

/in , , , , , , /by

Black women constantly complain about the dearth of “eligible” Black men to date and marry. Noted sociologist William Julius Wilson has argued that “the increasing levels of non-marriage and female-headed households is a manifestation of the high levels of economic dislocation experienced by lower-class Black men in recent decades.”

He further argued that, “When joblessness is combined with high rates of incarceration and premature mortality among Black men; it becomes clearer that there are fewer marriageable black men relative to black women who are able to provide the economic support needed to sustain a family.”

Then you add in the unfortunate increase in homosexuality within the Black community and you have a recipe for disaster.

This is why Black men need more White women like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. Even though they are conservative media personalities, they have done more to promote the well-being of Black males than many of the very women who stridently complain about the lack of “eligible” Black men.

Coulter is a friend and I find her comments regarding the Black community very insightful. Look at what she said two years ago on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” She said, “Groups on the left, from feminists to gay rights groups to those defending immigrants, have commandeered the Black civil rights experience.”

She continued, “I think what – the way liberals have treated Blacks like children and many of their policies have been harmful to Blacks, at least they got the beneficiary group right. There is the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws. We don’t owe the homeless. We don’t owe feminists. We don’t owe women who are desirous of having abortions, but that’s — or — or gays who want to get married to one another. That’s what civil rights has become for much of the left.”

Stephanopoulos asked, “Immigrant rights are not civil rights?” Coulter responded, “Civil rights are for Blacks…what have we done to immigrants? We owe Black people something…We have a legacy of slavery. Immigrants haven’t even been in this country.”

Earlier this year, she said, “I mean my whole life I’ve heard Republicans hate Black people, I’ve never seen any evidence of it until I read Marco Rubio’s amnesty bill. We are the party that has always stood up for African-Americans. Who gets hurt the most by amnesty, by continuing these immigration policies it is low-wage workers, it is Hispanics, it is Blacks.”

I don’t know Ingraham personally, but I like what she had to say last month about Democrats and Blacks. “

[Congressman] Steve Israel is reprehensible in what he said [on alleged racism in the Republican Party]…Nancy Pelosi, throw her into the ring [for similar comments]…I say this is a race to the bottom…The Democrats have failed the Black youth in this country with their terrible economic approach. Do we call that racist?

“…They turn their heads away from the millions upon millions of Black babies slaughtered in the womb over 10 years… Is that racist?…Is it racist that they allow inner cities to continue to crumble as families decay across the board in America – especially hard hit is African-American families…It is reprehensible and it’s all about November…This is not about ‘They care about Black people.’ They care about their majority eroding away.”

So, let me make sure I understand. Black women complain about the state of “eligible” Black males to date and marry, yet they support the policies of a president who is going to make the problem much worse.

Under Obama, Blacks have regressed on every economic, social and moral indicator that is tracked. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the current Black unemployment rate is 11.6 percent; for Blacks aged 16-19 it is at 36.8 percent.

However, the average Black unemployment rate during the terms of the last three presidents, as well as the average over the past 30 years, are noteworthy. Under Clinton, it was 10 percent; under George W. Bush, 9.3 percent but under Obama, 14 percent for the total time he has been in office. The 30-year average for Blacks is 12.4 percent.

Campaign slogans notwithstanding, this isn’t the kind of change we have been waiting for.

Obama has done more for same-sex marriage couples than he has for his same-race brothers and sisters. In fact, Newsweek dubbed him our first gay president – not for his sexual orientation, but for his relentless pandering to homosexuals.

He has also advocated amnesty for those in this country illegally, which will only continue to increase the unemployment rate in the Black community, especially among low and under-skilled Black workers. This will further decrease the pool of potential Black men for women to date and marry. Let’s face it, our women are not going to marry someone who is unemployed or underemployed.

Historically, Black women have been notoriously protective of their men and children. It is ironic that Coulter and Ingraham, two conservative White women, are now assuming that role. We Black men need more White women like Coulter and Ingraham, not Black women who will give a pass to a failing Black president.

European Parliamentary Elections: Eurosceptic Parties Win — but can they organize an Alliance?

/in , , , , /by

Yesterday afternoon, I spoke with my Geneva based European observer following the close of European Parliamentary Elections in 28 member countries. He indicated that both the UK Independent Party (UKIP) led by Nigel Farage and Marine le Pen ‘s National Front each were poised to pick up 24 seats in their country’s  MEP delegations. Eurosceptic parties  like Denmark’s  anti- immigrant People’s Party led with  26.7 percent  doubling its delegate slate,  while  Greece’s left progressive Syrizia  came out on top  with 26.5 percent. Geert Wilders’ Freedom party tied for second in The Netherland despite poor exit polls on Thursday evening.  Elsewhere, the right wing Austrian People’s Party appeared  to be leading with 20 percent of the vote up from 7 percent in 2009. In Italy, the Democrat Party led by PM Matteo Renzi trounced the Five Star Movement copping fully 40 percent of the vote. Italy will take over the revolving Presidency  next month.

However, there was evidence that some anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi parties won delegates in their European parliamentary slates. Witness Hungary’s Jobbik Party which  came in second with 14.7 percent, while Greece’s Golden Dawn was third with 9.7 percent.

farage

UKIP leader Nigel Farage interviewed after MEP victory. Source: AFP

For results overall and by EU Member countries, consult the Financial Times European Parliament election results on –line, at this interactive graphic, here.

The Financial Times (FT) reported on the “earthquake” that Farage predicted for the UKIP. The Euro Parliamentary Elections in the UK coincided with local council elections, as well. The UKIP at 27.5 percent of the Euro Parliament vote tally has defeated the Liberal Democrats, unnerved Nick Clegg, junior partner in the ruling Westminster parliament coalition. The UKIP significant electoral victory   upset the Labor Party led by  Ed Milleband while causing Conservative PM David Cameron to suggest to the Tories, “that it was not business as  usual”. These UK Euro Parliament results may portend a scramble for the 2015 Westminster Parliamentary elections. The FT account noted:

Nick Clegg’s grey face told the story of Britain’s European elections. The leader of the pro-European Liberal Democrats was subdued, his eyes glassy, as he spoke of his party’s “heartbreaking” electoral annihilation.

Meanwhile across town at a central London hotel, Nigel Farage was mobbed by reporters as he celebrated the UK Independence party’s “historic” breakthrough, topping the national poll with 27.5 per cent of the vote and 24 seats.

[…]

It was also the first time the Conservatives had come third in such a vote, trailing in with only 24 per cent of the vote. For Labor, second with 25.5 per cent, it was an unimpressive performance, raising doubts about whether Mr. Miliband has the momentum to take the party to victory in next year’s general election.

The FT quipped:

There is no obvious policy fix: any attempt to “out-Ukip Ukip” on immigration or Europe is unlikely to succeed. Meanwhile none of the three main parties has a leader capable of matching Mr. Farage’s “man in the pub” style.

la pen

Ms. Marine Le Pen of the French National Front interviewed in the Elsyee Lounge. Source: AFP

Among UK voters who may have swung to the UKIP in droves were reported to be Britain’s Jews.  They may have been motivated by Farage’s disavowal of the troubling anti-Semitic positions of some of the Eurosceptic parties. The exception is the Dutch Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders, who is pro-Israel, while opposing mass immigration and critical of Islam.

Ms. Le Pen has also achieved a stunning upset victory coming in first in France. In her post election remarks, she hinted this could be a prelude to the 2017 Presidential elections.  Given the low poll standing of Socialist Premier Hollande amid the floundering French economic problems unless turned around, this could be a possibility. However, the fallout from  the Euro parliament elections also may upset the possible future plans of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and leader of the UMP.

The FT account of her victory noted:

Ms Le Pen now has her sights firmly fixed on the battle to win the nearby Elysée Palace in the 2017 presidential election. “This is just the first step,” she said as she arrived to join revelers.

Few commentators are yet ready to predict that Ms Le Pen, with her fiercely anti-EU and anti-immigrant policies, will make it. But the scale of the FN’s triumph has planted genuine fear in both President François Hollande’s ruling Socialist party and the centre-right UMP.

The 25 per cent score achieved by the FN on Sunday had been predicted by some polls, but the four point gap over the UMP and the slump in the Socialist tally to less than 14 per cent prompted alarm.

The FN broke out of its strongholds in the south and post-industrial north. It came top in 71 electoral departments, compared with 28 for the UMP and just two for the socialists.

A socialist parliamentarian who saw Mr Hollande on Monday reported him saying: “I expected it to some extent, but it was still a big shock.”

In the wake of Marine Le Pen’s stunning victory in France, French President Hollande went on television today. The FT in an article about changes in leadership for the EU reporting him saying:

He would use an EU summit on Tuesday to call for a marked shift from austerity to growth to combat the populist surge. He said the EU had become “incomprehensible. “This cannot go on,” he said, adding it must be reformed to “be efficient where it needs to be and to withdraw from where it is not needed”.

geert widlers

Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) at the Polls. Source EFP

When we posted on Thursday exit poll results in the Netherlands indicated the Freedom Party (PVV) led by Geert Wilders might have experienced a set setback in the 23 seats held by Dutch parties in the Strasbourg parliament, effectively losing two seats.

On the heels of a conversation with a colleague in Geneva, came  a news brief from the Chicago Tribune  indicating that the PVV was tied with  Democrats 66 with four seats each, bested by the Christian Democrat Appeal  with five. Wilders’ comment in the Chicago Tribune article was “Four Seats, that’s great.  Now we make the first gains for a new alliance of Eurosceptic and anti-immigration parties in the European Parliament”

The FT in its analysis of the Euro Parliament elections was not so sure that the Eurosceptic alliance can be achieved. It commented:

The surge of anti-establishment parties has also led to a scramble to rebuild anti-EU blocks in the parliament, with the two biggest populist groups – France’s National Front and Britain’s UK Independence party, which both secured 24 seats, making them the fourth largest in the assembly – vying for allies.

Marine Le Pen, Front National leader, may struggle to find the six parties needed to form a new anti-EU group in parliament.  Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader who already heads a Eurosceptic group, has seen several of his allies – including the Danish People’s party and the True Finns – wooed by Mr. Cameron’s Tories. Since the Tories left the EPP, they have led the small European Conservatives and Reformists group.

Perhaps the wisest comment on the European Parliamentary election results could be that ancient Chinese curse: “may you live in interesting times”.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

CLICHES OF PROGRESSIVISM #6 – Capitalism Fosters Greed and Government Policy Must Temper It

/in , , , , , /by

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is proud to partner with Young America’s Foundation (YAF) to produce “Clichés of Progressivism,” a series of insightful commentaries covering topics of free enterprise, income inequality, and limited government.

Our society is inundated with half-truths and misconceptions about the economy in general and free enterprise in particular. The “Clichés of Progressivism” series is meant to equip students with the arguments necessary to inform debate and correct the record where bias and errors abound.

The antecedents to this collection are two classic FEE publications that YAF helped distribute in the past: Clichés of Politics, published in 1994, and the more influential Clichés of Socialism, which made its first appearance in 1962. Indeed, this new collection will contain a number of essays from those two earlier works, updated for the present day where necessary. Other entries first appeared in some version in FEE’s journal, The Freeman. Still others are brand new, never having appeared in print anywhere. They will be published weekly on the websites of both YAF and FEE: www.yaf.org and www.FEE.org until the series runs its course. A book will then be released in 2015 featuring the best of the essays, and will be widely distributed in schools and on college campuses.

See the index of the published chapters here.

20140414_Clichesofprogressivism (1)

#6 – Capitalism Fosters Greed and Government Policy Must Temper It

On April 19, 2014, the Colonial Bread store in my town of Newnan, Georgia, closed its doors after a decade in business. The parent company explained, “In order to focus more sharply on our core competencies, the decision was made to close some of our retail stores.” A longtime patron responded in the local newspaper this way: “It’s just sad. It’s simply greed and we’re on the receiving end. It’s frustrating to know there isn’t anything you can do about it either.”

Now there’s a rather expansive view of “greed” if there ever was one! Trying to make more efficient the business in which you’ve invested your time and money is somehow a greedy thing to do? And what is it that the disgruntled patron wishes should be done about it? Perhaps pass a law to effectively enslave the business owner and compel him to keep the store open? Who is really the greedy one here?

“Greed” is a word that flows off Progressive tongues with the ease of lard on a hot griddle. It’s a loaded, pejorative term that consigns whoever gets hit with it to the moral gutter. Whoever hurls it can posture self-righteously as somehow above it all, concerned only about others while the greedy wallow in evil selfishness. Thinking people should realize this is a sleazy tactic, not a thoughtful moral commentary.

Economist Thomas Sowell famously pointed out in Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays that the “greed” accusation doesn’t meet the dictionary definition of the term any more. He wrote, “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

Once upon a time, and for a very long time, “greed” meant more than just the desire for something. It meant the inordinate, obsessive worship of it that often crossed the line into actions that harmed other people. Really, really wanting a million bucks was not in and of itself a bad thing if you honestly worked for it, freely traded with others for it, or took risks and actually created jobs and wealth to secure it. If you worshiped the million bucks to the point of a willingness to steal for it or hire a public official to raid the Treasury on your behalf, then you were definitely a greedy person. Shame on you. If you’re one of those many people today who are willing to stoop to stealing or politicking your way to wealth, you’ve got a lot to answer for.

“Greed” also means, to some people, an unwillingness to share what’s yours with others. I suppose a father who buys a personal yacht instead of feeding his family would qualify. But that’s because he is evading a personal responsibility. He owes it to the family he brought into being to properly care for them. Does the bakery owner who closes his store thereby violate some responsibility to forever serve a certain clientele? Was that ever part of some contract all parties agreed to?

Let’s not forget the fundamental and critical importance of healthy self-interest in human nature. We’re born with it, and thank goodness for that! I don’t lament it for a second. Taking care of yourself and those you love and have responsibility for is what makes the world work. When your self-interest motivates you to do that, it means on net balance you’re good for the world. You’re relieving its burdens, not adding to them.

A common but misleading claim is that the Great Recession of 2008 resulted from the “greed” of the financial community. But did the desire to make money suddenly appear or intensify in the years before 2008? George Mason University economist Lawrence White pointedly explained that blaming greed for recessions doesn’t get us very far. He says, “It’s like blaming gravity for an epidemic of plane crashes.” The gravity was always there. Other factors must have interceded to create a serious anomaly. In the case of the Great Recession, those factors prominently included years of cheap money and artificially low interest rates from the Federal Reserve, acts of Congress and the bureaucracy to jawbone banks into making dubious loans for home purchases, and government entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac skewing the housing market—all policies that enjoyed broad support from Progressives but never from genuinely “free market” people.

The Progressive perspective on “greed” is that it’s a constant problem in the private sector but somehow recedes when government takes over. I wonder exactly when a politician’s self-interest evaporates and his altruistic compassion kicks in? Does that happen on election night, on the day he takes office, or after he’s had a chance to really get to know the folks who grease the wheels of government? When he realizes the power he has, does that make him more or less likely to want to serve himself?

The charlatan cries, “That guy over there is greedy! I will be happy to take your money to protect you from him!” Before you rush into his arms, ask some pointed questions about how the greedy suspect is doing his work and how the would-be protector proposes to do his.

The fact is, there’s nothing about government that makes it less “greedy” than the average guy or the average institution. Indeed, there’s every reason to believe that adding political power to natural self-interest is a surefire recipe for magnifying the harm that greed can do. Have you ever heard of corruption in government? Buying votes with promises of other people’s money? Feathering one’s nest by claiming “it’s for the children”? Burdening generations yet unborn with the debt to pay for today’s National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Nevada (a favorite pork project of Senator Harry Reid)?

If you are an honest, self-interested person in a free market, you quickly realize that to satisfy the self-interest that some critics are quick to dismiss as “greed,” you can’t put a crown on your head, wrap a robe around yourself and demand that the peasants cough up their shekels. You have to produce, create, trade, invest, and employ. You have to provide goods or services that willing customers (not taxpaying captives) will choose to buy and hopefully more than just once. Your “greed” gets translated into life-enhancing things for other people. In the top-down, socialized utopia the Progressives dream of, greed doesn’t disappear at all; it just gets channeled in destructive directions. To satisfy it, you’ve got to use the political process to grab something from other people.

The “greed” charge turns out to be little more than a rhetorical device, a superficial smear intended to serve political ends. Whether or not you worship a material thing like money is largely a matter between you and your Maker, not something that can be scientifically measured and proscribed by lawmakers who are just as prone to it as you are. Don’t be a sucker for it.

Lawrence W. Reed
President
Foundation for Economic Education

Summary

  • Greed has become a slippery term that cries out for some objective meaning; it’s used these days to describe lots of behaviors that somebody doesn’t like for other, sometimes hidden reasons.
  • Self-interest is healthy and natural. How you put it into action in your relationships with others is what keeps it healthy or gets it off track.
  • Lawmakers and government are not immune to greed and, if anything, they magnify it into harmful outcomes.
  • For more information, see http://tinyurl.com/lxdrfac, http://tinyurl.com/pyvvx73, and http://tinyurl.com/lj7s2ab.

20130918_larryreedauthorABOUT LAWRENCE W. REED

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s. Prior to becoming FEE’s president, he served for 20 years as president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan. He also taught economics full-time from 1977 to 1984 at Northwood University in Michigan and chaired its department of economics from 1982 to 1984.

Frak! Has Your Mother Sold Her Mangle? by Sarah Skwire

/in , , , , /by

Language—even profanity—evolves faster than it can be regulated.

I was all ready to write a column about Anthony Trollope, Francis Hodgson Burnett, and women’s property rights, when Brighton, Michigan, decided to start enforcing $200 fines against people who swear in public.

This was such a perfect demonstration of the extension of Skwire’s First Law from politicians to those who enforce the laws enacted by politicians that I had to shelve my original plans and devote this week’s column to the question of cussing. (Skwire’s First Law, by the way, cannot be stated in Brighton, Michigan, without incurring a fine. Suffice it to say that it addresses my opinion of politicians.)

What the fine law enforcement agents of Brighton are failing to consider, however, is that language is a Hayekian spontaneous order. That means language changes and evolves faster than it can be regulated.

Charles Mackay discusses the rapid evolution of nonsensical slang phrases in his book Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Though Mackay may have been too much of a gentlemen to discuss actual profanity, he does record the speedy shifting of popular phrases of the day from “Quoz!” to “What a shocking bad hat!” to “Hookey Walker!” to what may be one of the earliest recorded “your mama” jokes, “Has your mother sold her mangle?” As Mackay notes, the inscrutability and the ephemerality of such slang insults drive their popularity. “Like all other earthly things, Quoz had its season, and passed away as suddenly as it arose, never again to be the pet and the idol of the populace. A new claimant drove it from its place, and held undisputed sway till, in its turn, it was hurled from its pre-eminence, and a successor appointed in its stead.”

My guess is that language—especially profanity—evolves even faster and more creatively in response to attempts to regulate it. W. C. Fields, for example, charmingly evaded rules about swearing in film with epithets like “Godfrey Daniels!” It’s still a fairly satisfying response when a small child steps painfully on one’s foot. In similar fashion and for similar reasons, smart kids have been using “shut the front door” and “see you next Tuesday” for ages.

In fact, it is my hope and expectation that the young skate rats and adolescent flaneurs of Brighton are, even now, innovating new curse words and resuscitating old ones in order to confound the cops and maintain the great teenaged prerogative of insulting geezers in language they can’t understand.

To further that noble end, I have a few suggestions for areas where Brightonians might wish to focus their research.

Science Fiction

Science fiction movies and literature have long been a productive source of alternate curse words. FromBattlestar Galactica’s “frak” and “felgercarb” to Farscape’s “frell” and Firefly’s “gorram,” there are a host of useful and satisfying epithets to explore. The extensive and apparently very well-researched Chinese language cursing in Firefly also serves as a realm that the citizens of Brighton should explore.

Foreign Languages

Anyone who grew up in a multilingual household knows the utility of cursing in a language that most people around you can’t understand. I grew up learning the emphatic pleasures and subtle distinctions of Yiddish cursing, but friends give me to understand that—satisfying as shmendrick and shmeggege andpaskudnyak are—other languages offer equally profane pleasures.

Antiquity

The past is a foreign country as well. They curse so differently there. My high school French teacher taught us curses from the pre-war era. So, to this day, I cause Gallic hilarity with my tendency to exclaim “Ma foi!” and “Zut alors!” when I am in France and incensed. But resuscitating earlier curses from English will work as well. Recall the episode of The Simpsons where Bart notes:

Bart: That ain’t been popular since aught-six, dag-nab it!

Homer: What did I tell you?

Bart: No talking like a grizzled 1890s prospector. Consarn it.

How quaint!

Literature

This may be my favorite option, because I cannot keep myself from envisioning the perplexity among Brighton’s law enforcement agents when confronted by a populace who take their cusswords from theScarlet Pimpernel. “Sink me! You can’t really intend to ticket me for that, can you? Zounds, you rogue!” Those wanting to explore this fertile source of filth will want to pay particular attention to the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Rabelais.

The difficulty with all the foregoing options, of course, is that if one is sufficiently unlucky, one may encounter an officer who is familiar with the obscure curses one has chosen. To evade this problem, I suggest a solution that has been popular with parents of young children since time began.

Curse Words That Aren’t

Titmouse. Ballcock. Christological. Zeugma. Fractional reserve. Bassinet.

And I will cheerfully pay the $200 fine for the first Brighton-area citizen who can show me a citation for having called a cop a “bilabial fricative.”

20121127_sarahskwireABOUT SARAH SKWIRE

Sarah Skwire is a fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc. She is a poet and author of the writing textbook Writing with a Thesis.

Scandal Exhaustion

/in , , , , /by

Listening to President Obama respond on May 21 to the latest scandal regarding something about which he knew and did nothing—the mess at the Veterans Administration—was such a familiar event that I have reached a point of exhaustion trying to keep up with everything that has been so wrong about his six years in office. As he always does, he said was really angry about it.

Writing in the May 20 Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin said, “Forget ideology for a moment. Whether you are liberal or conservative, the Obama presidency’s parade of miscues is jaw-dropping.”

Stacked against the list of Obama scandals and failures, Rubin could only cite the Bush administration’s 2005 handling of Hurricane Katrina, the seventh most intense ever, and, as anyone familiar with that event will tell you, the failure of FEMA’s response was matched by the failures of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and the New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Bush had declared a national emergency two days before it hit the Gulf coast.

Rubin concluded that the Obama administration scandals “reflect the most widespread failure of executive leadership since the Harding administration”, adding “The presidency is an executive job. We hire neophytes at our peril. When there is an atmosphere in which accountability is not stressed you get more scandals and fiascos.”

Obama spent his entire first term blaming all such things on his predecessor, George W. Bush, until it became a joke.

One has to wonder about the effect of the endless succession of scandals and fiascos have had on Americans as individuals and the nation as a whole.

While it is easier to lay all the blame on Obama, the fact is that much of the blame is the result of a federal government that is so big no President could possibly know about the countless programs being undertaken within its departments and agencies, and all the Presidents dating back to Teddy Roosevelt’s progressive initiatives have played a role in growing the government.

It is, however, the President who selects the cabinet members responsible to manage the departments as well as those appointed to manage the various agencies. Kathleen Sebelius, the recently resigned former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, responsible for the implementation of Obamacare, comes to mind. She had solicited donations—against the law—from the companies HHS regulates to help her sign up uninsured Americans for Obamacare and signed off on the millions spent on HealthCare.gov and other expenses leading up to its start.

AA - Obama's Scandals

For a larger view click on the graphic.

There are lists of the Obama scandals you can Google. One that continues to fester is the attack on September 11, 2012—the anniversary of 9/11—that killed an American ambassador and three security personnel in Benghazi, Libya. It has been and continues to be investigated, mostly because of the lies told by Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of “What difference at this point does it make?” fame. Clinton was asked what she had accomplished in her four years as Secretary and was unable to name anything.

Eric Holder, our Attorney General, continues in office despite having been held in contempt of Congress, professing that he knew nothing about “Fast and Furious”, the earliest scandal involving a gun-running scheme to Mexican drug cartels by the ATF presumably to track them, but they lost track and many were used in crimes including the killing of a Border Patrol agent.

Holder also told Congress that he was not associated with the “potential prosecution” of a journalist even though he had signed the affidavit that named Fox News reporter, James Rosen. as a potential criminal. Holder was also in charge when the Justice Department culled the phone records of Associated Press reporters to find out who they deemed was leaking information.

Keeping track of the solar power and other “renewable” and “Green” energy companies like Solyndra that received millions in grants and then rather swiftly went bankrupt became a fulltime effort and, of course, there was the “stimulus” that wasted billions without generating any “shovel ready jobs” qualifies as a fiasco.

In the midst of the recession that was triggered by the 2008 financial crisis various elements of the Obama administration continued to spend money in ways that suggested their indifference. In 2010 the General Services Administration held a $823,000 training conference in Las Vegas, complete with a clown and mind readers.

An Agriculture Department program to compensate black farmers who allegedly had been discriminated against by the agency turned into a gravy train that delivered several billion dollars to thousands of recipients, some of whom probably had not encountered discrimination.

The Veterans Affairs agency made news when it spent more than $6 million on two conferences in Orlando, Florida, and is back in the news for revelations about alleged falsified records concerning the waiting times veterans faced amidst assertions that many died while waiting for treatment surfaced. This was a problem of which the then-Senator Obama was already aware, but six years into his presidency it still existed despite his early promises to fix it.

Obama has been the biggest of Big Government Presidents since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, and Obamacare put the federal government in control of one sixth of the nation’s economy while putting the government in charge of the care Americans expect to receive. Obamacare will dwarf the problems associated with the Veterans agency.

Meanwhile, we have been living with a President who is so indifferent to working with Congress that he has gained fame for his use of executive orders such as the decision to not deport illegal immigrants. His aides have promised more executive orders.

All this over the course of the last six years has left Americans exhausted by the incompetence and wastefulness of an administration that now presides over the highest national debt in the history of the nation and the first ever downgrade of our credit rating.

It has also left them angry if they were conservatives and disillusioned if they were Obama supporters. The Veterans Administration scandal is likely a tipping point for the independent voters and even for longtime Democrats who will want a change.

It is increasingly likely that the November midterm elections give the Republican Party control over the Senate as well as the House and then to hope that it will begin to rein in the spending and save the nation from a financial collapse that will rival the one in 2008.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

USPS Drinks the Harvey Milk Kool-Aid — Awards stamp to “Degenerate Homosexual Icon”

/in , , , /by

Candice Naranjo from KRON 4 reports, “Long lines have formed in front of a U.S. Post Office in San Francisco’s Castro District this morning as supporters of assassinated city Supervisor Harvey Milk rush to get a stamp dedicated to the gay rights leader, a postal service spokesman said. The stamp with Milk’s laughing face, name and a small strip of the rainbow flag, first became available this morning at post offices throughout San Francisco and nationwide.”

Americans  For Truth About Homosexuality noted in an email, “USPS Awards stamp to degenerate homosexual icon, Harvey Milk–who was big supporter of murderous cult leader Jim Jones. No problem that as a 33-year-old man, Milk had an illegal sexual relationship with a 16-year-old runaway boy! (Imagine if you were the boy’s dad or mom or grandparent.).”

The American Family Association reports, “The Harvey Milk stamp was a result of seven years of lobbying by a self-described drag queen (a biological man with implanted breasts) and former transsexual prostitute Nicole Murray Ramirez of San Diego.”

Watch the White House “Harvey Milk stamp” ceremony:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/joJAqZe7ZaU[/youtube]

 

Question: Why honor Harvey Milk rather than Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens? Milk was a minor figure, Ambassador Stevens was a Presidential appointee and died in service to the nation.

In the byline to his San Francisco City Journal column “Drinking Harvey Milk’s Kool-Aid” Daniel J. Flynn states, “Lionized by Hollywood and California state legislators, the real Milk was a demagogue and pal of Jim Jones.”

Flynn writes:

Milk makes a rather unremarkable subject for the silver screen. In his seven years in San Francisco, he made four bids for elective office, only emerging victorious in his last—a 1977 run for city supervisor. For his persistence, Milk jokingly referred to himself as the “gay Harold Stassen.” He served for less than a year. In naming the onetime camera-shop proprietor one of the 100 most important people of the twentieth century, Time conceded, “As a supervisor, Milk sponsored only two laws—predictably, one barring anti-gay discrimination, and, less so, a law forcing dog owners to clean pets’ messes from sidewalks.” Eleven months on the city council hardly seems the stuff of Hollywood legend. So Hollywood invented a legend.

Rather than the gentle, soft-spoken idealist portrayed by Sean Penn, the real Harvey Milk was a short-tempered demagogue who cynically invented stories of victim hood to advance his political career. During his successful run for city supervisor, for instance, Milk’s camera store was the object of a glass-shattering attack by low-grade explosives. Milk blamed singer Anita Bryant, the outspoken opponent of gay-friendly legislation. “Years later friends hinted broadly that Harvey had more than a little foreknowledge that the explosions would happen,” biographer Randy Shilts noted. One friend explained to Shilts: “You gotta realize the campaign was sort of going slow, and, well . . .”

[ … ]

Milk was far more cavalier about the privacy of others than he was about his own. When Bill Sipple became a national hero for tackling gun-toting kook Sara Jane Moore before she could kill President Gerald Ford in 1975, Milk anonymously leaked news of the former Marine’s homosexuality to the media. “It’s too good an opportunity,” Milk reasoned. “For once we can show that gays do heroic things.” Just as Milk anticipated the “outing” tactics of ACT-Up and Queer Nation, his rhetoric, too, foreshadowed the hyperbole of AIDS activists of the following decade. Milk liberally tossed the “Nazi” label at opponents of various gay-rights proposals and even compared politically moderate homosexuals to Nazi collaborators. “We are not going to allow our rights to be taken away and then march with bowed heads into the gas chambers,” Milk proclaimed at 1978’s Gay Freedom Parade in San Francisco.

But Harvey Milk’s homosexuality played about as much of a role in his murder as San Francisco mayor George Moscone’s heterosexuality played in his. Their murderer, troubled political neophyte Dan White, had donated $100 to defeat the Briggs Initiative, which would have empowered school boards to fire teachers for homosexuality. White hired a homosexual as his campaign manager and voted as a city supervisor to fund a Pride Center for homosexuals. White wasn’t driven to murder by Milk’s vision of gay rights but rather by something more pedestrian: the petty politics of City Hall. What makes for good history doesn’t always lend itself to good theater.

[ … ]

Nine days prior to Milk’s death, more than 900 followers of Jim Jones—many of them campaign workers for Milk—perished in the most ghastly set of murder-suicides in modern history. Before the congregants of the Peoples Temple drank Jim Jones’s deadly Kool-Aid, Harvey Milk and much of San Francisco’s ruling class had already figuratively imbibed. Milk occasionally spoke at Jones’s San Francisco–based headquarters, promoted Jones through his newspaper columns, and defended the Peoples Temple from its growing legion of critics. Jones provided conscripted “volunteers” for Milk’s campaigns to distribute leaflets by the tens of thousands. Milk returned the favor by abusing his position of public trust on behalf of Jones’s criminal endeavors.

“Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities here and elsewhere as a man of the highest character, who has undertaken constructive remedies for social problems which have been amazing in their scope and effectiveness,” Supervisor Milk wrote President Jimmy Carter seven months before the Jonestown carnage. The purpose of Milk’s letter was to aid and abet his powerful supporter’s abduction of a six-year-old boy. Milk’s missive to the president prophetically continued: “Not only is the life of a child at stake, who currently has loving and protective parents in the Rev. and Mrs. Jones, but our official relations with Guyana could stand to be jeopardized, to the potentially great embarrassment of our State Department.” John Stoen, the boy whose actual parents Milk libeled to the president as purveyors of “bold-faced lies” and blackmail attempts, perished at Jonestown. This, the only remarkable episode in Milk’s brief tenure on the San Francisco board of supervisors, is swept under the rug by his hagiographers.

Is Harvey Milk deserving of recognition by the United States Postal Service? We report you decide.

EDITORS NOTE: Daniel J. Flynn, the author of A Conservative History of the American Left, blogs at www.FlynnFiles.com. The featured image is courtesy of KRON 4

Washington Shame Game: Dumb Things Politicians Say

/in , , /by

The first edition of the game that tests viewer knowledge of shameful things officials say. How good is your knowledge of the shameful statements by elected officials?… test yourself here:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/3odYWZIv-4E[/youtube]

 

EDITORS NOTE: The edited featured image was originally taken by Anthony Easton. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Slogans or Science? Regression toward the meme in the minimum wage debate by Sandy Ikeda

/in , , , /by

The debate over raising the legal minimum wage (LMW) to $10 an hour has people on both sides saying things they should know better than to say. For example, a friend recently posted the following meme (which isn’t the worst I’ve seen) on Facebook:

One year ago this week, San Jose decided to raise its minimum wage to $10/hour.

Any jobs disappear?

The number of minimum wage jobs has grown.

Any businesses collapse?

The number of businesses has grown.

Any questions?

Yes, several, but I’ll get to those in a bit.

Memes like these are just as silly and misleading as the simplistic arguments they’re probably attacking. In fact, the economic analysis of significantly raising the minimum wage says that, other things equal, it will reduce employment below the level where it would otherwise have been. It doesn’t say that that employment will fall absolutely or businesses will collapse.

A little thinking can go a long way

Have a look at this chart published in the Wall Street Journal. At first, it seems to support the simplistic slogans. But it’s important to compare similar periods, such as March–November 2012 (before the increase was passed) versus March–November 2013, (just after it went into effect). The LMW increase wasn’t a surprise, so in the months before it was passed, businesses would have been preparing for it, shaking things up. Comparing those two periods, which makes the strongest case for the meme’s assertions, the total percentage increase in employment (the area under the red line) looks pretty close, going just by my eyeballs and a calculator. In fact, the post-hike increase might actually be smaller, but you’d need more data to be sure. So if you compare similar periods, the rate of employment growth seems not to have been affected very much by the hike. So is the meme right?

According to that same chart and other sources, hiring in the rest of California and the country, where for the most part there was no dramatic increase in the LMW, was also on the rise at pretty much the same time. Why? Apparently, the growth rate of the U.S. economy jumped in 2012, especially in California. So the demand for inputs, including labor, probably also increased. I’m certainly not saying this correlation is conclusive, but you could infer that while hiring in San Jose was rising, it wasn’t rising as fast as it might have otherwise, given the generally improving economy.

That’s a more ambiguous result, and of course harder to flit into a meme.

You are stupid and evil and a liar!

Those strongly in favor of raising the LMW cast opponents as Republican apologists for big business. Take this post from DailyKos, which apparently is the source of the above meme. The author writes, “Empirically, there’s no clear negative effect that can be discerned. The concerns of Teahadists like Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio is [sic] rather unfounded in academic literature and in international assessments of natural experiments.”

Now, the overwhelming conclusion of years of economic research on the effects of a minimum wage on employment is that it tends to increase, not lower, unemployment. As this article from Forbes summarizes, “In a comprehensive, 182-page summary of the research on this subject from the last two decades, economists David Neumark (UC-Irvine) and William Wascher (Federal Reserve Board) determined that 85 percent of the best research points to a loss of jobs following a minimum wage increase.”

So, saying there is “no clear negative effect” is an outrageously ignorant claim. And there’s not one mention of the economic evidence that significantly raising the LMW will hurt the very people you wish to help: the relatively poor. But why address solid scientific research when there’s sloppy sloganeering by politicos to shoot down?

Attacking easy targets is understandable if you want to vilify your opponents or win an easy one for the cause. In that case, you take the dumbest statement by your rival as the basis of your attack. Such is the way of politics. In intellectual discourse, however, you may win the battle but you’ll lose the war. That is, if your goal is to learn from fruitful intellectual discussion, you must engage your opponent’s best arguments, not her weakest ones.

Let me use a counterexample. The sloganeering approach to attacking those who oppose raising the LMW is the equivalent of someone saying: “Well, this past winter was one of the coldest on record in the Midwest. So much then for global warming!” That may be “evidence” in a mud-slinging contest, but it’s not science.

What’s the theory?

While weather is complex and unpredictable, economic systems are even more so. Does that mean there are no principles of economics? Of course not. In fact, it’s because of such complexity that we need whatever help economic theory can offer to organize our thinking. And it doesn’t get any more basic than this: The demand curve for goods slopes downward.

That is, other things equal, the costlier something is, the less of it you’ll want to buy.

Note that the caveat—other things equal—is as important as the inverse relation between price and quantity demanded. That’s why my earlier back-of-the-envelope analysis had to be conditional on more data. Unfortunately, those data are often very hard to get. Does that mean we abandon the theory? Well, that would be like letting go of the rope you’re hanging on to for dear life because you’re afraid it might break.

So what exactly is the theory behind the idea that raising the LMW will increase hiring low-wage workers and boost business? If raising wages will actually increase employment and output, then why not also mandate a rise in interest rates, rents, electricity rates, oil prices, or the price of any of the other myriad factors of production that businesses ordinarily have to pay for? I would hope that this idea would give even the meme promoters pause.

As far as I know, the only situation in which forcing people to pay a higher wage rate will increase employment is when there is a dominant employer and there are barriers to competition. Economists term this “monopsony,” a situation that might occur in a so-called “factory town.” There, the dominant employer (of labor, capital, land, or whatever) can lower what she pays for inputs below the revenue that an additional unit of input earns the company. I would love to hear that argument and challenge it, because it’s the strongest one that standard economics can offer in favor of coercing businesses to raise wages. But so far I’ve not come across it, let alone any discussion of the economic literature on monopsony in the labor market, most of which questions its relevance. Some almost random examples are here and here.

Margins of analysis

Finally, economics teaches us that we can adjust to a particular change in different ways. In a thoughtful article on the effect of the LMW increase in San Jose that all sides of the debate should read, we get the following anecdote:

For his San Jose stores to make the same profit as before the wage increase, the same combo meal would be $6.75. “That would chase off a large percentage of my customers,” Mr. DeMayo said. He hasn’t laid off San Jose workers but has reduced their hours, along with some maintenance such as the drive-through lane’s daily hosing, and may close two unprofitable stores.

Employers can adjust to higher costs in one area by cutting back on spending in others. That might mean less unemployment than otherwise, but it doesn’t mean that raising the LMW has no negative employment effect at all. It means that the effects are harder to see. There’s that darn “other things being equal” again!

Slogans and memes are no substitute for science, or even clear thinking.

ABOUT SANDY IKEDA

Sandy Ikeda is an associate professor of economics at Purchase College, SUNY, and the author of The Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism. He will be speaking at the FEE summer seminars “People Aren’t Pawns” and “Are Markets Just?“

School Choice: Historic developments in KS, FL, AZ, as other states play defense by Leslie Hiner

/in , , , , , /by

Alabama – Stephanie Linn @StephanieJLinn

U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins dismissed a lawsuit that challenged the Alabama Accountability Act on grounds that the school choice program contained within the Act violated equal protection. The Southern Poverty Law Center had filed a lawsuit contending that its clients, students in “failing” public schools, were unable to take advantage of the program because they do not live near a non-failing public school or a participating private school, and, thus, no student in the state should have the ability to participate in the program. The judge issued his opinion stating:

“The requested remedy is arguably mean: Withdraw benefits from those students who can afford to escape non-failing schools. The only remedy requested thus far would leave the plaintiffs in exactly the same situation to which they are currently subject, but with the company of their better-situated classmates. The equal protection requested is, in effect, equally bad treatment.”

In 2013, the Alabama Supreme Court blocked a challenge to the Accountability Act. A separate lawsuit from the Alabama Education Association is still pending in Montgomery County Circuit Court.

On April 1, the Alabama Senate Fiscal Responsibility and Accountability Committee passed HB 558 that would have amended the Alabama Accountability Act to lift the cap on individual donations and expand the types of entities that could contribute to scholarship granting organizations. The bill died when the Senate adjourned sine die without taking up the bill.

Alaska – Michael Chartier @Mchart1

The legislative session in Alaska was dubbed “The Education Session” by Gov. Sean Parnell (R), and it certainly lived up to that name. The legislation that most interested the Friedman Foundation was Senate Joint Resolution 9, a constitutional amendment that would have removed sections of the state’s Blaine amendment, allowing for a universal voucher system. Unfortunately for the people of Alaska, that amendment did not make it through the legislature. However, the bright spot on the horizon was in the education funding bill. It contained a corporate tax credit for donations to private and religious schools. It is the Friedman Foundation’s hope that money could be used for scholarships for students. Please see our previous coverage of Alaska’s education funding bill for more information on that unique proposal.

Arizona – Leslie Hiner @LeslieHiner

April 23 was a day of victories and defeats for school choice. Here is a summary of significant legislation:

  • Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed into law HB 2150, which will allow children of active duty military families to enroll in the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program upon being stationed in Arizona; no prior Arizona public school enrollment is necessary.
  • Gov. Brewer signed into law HB 2139, which expanded the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program to include siblings of current ESA recipients and children with disabilities who are eligible to enroll in a preschool program.
  • Gov. Brewer vetoed SB 1048, which would have allowed chapter S corporations to contribute to Arizona’s corporate tax-credit scholarship program.
  • The Senate defeated SB 1236, which would have expanded the ESA to include children living in ZIP Codes where the average income is 185 percent of poverty or less; children of various emergency services personnel and siblings of current scholarship recipients would also have been eligible. It is estimated that more than 100,000 children would have become eligible. A similar bill, HB 2291, was defeated in the House on April 17.
  • The House passed HB 2328 and sent the bill to Gov. Brewer. This bill removes the requirement that children with disabilities who qualify for Lexie’s Law scholarships must first attend an Arizona public school to qualify for a scholarship. The bill was signed by Gov. Brewer on May 5.

A week later, Gov. Brewer signed into law HB 1237, which added clarifying language to the existing ESA program. Some of the new specifications include:

  1. requiring parents to use a portion of funding for the child’s current educational needs,
  2. specifying that an individual or facility accredited by a state, regional, or national accrediting organization may provide teaching/tutoring service,
  3. clarifying that only children with disabilities may use the ESA for certain therapies, and
  4. improving the funding formula.

Florida – Stephanie Linn @StephanieJLinn

The Florida House of Representatives passed a bill, April 11, to expand the existing tax-credit scholarship program and a new Personal Learning Scholarship Account Program for students with special needs, similar to Arizona’s ESA program. The expansion to the tax-credit scholarship program included increasing the per-student funding amount, increasing student eligibility by raising the limit on household income, and providing eligibility to students in kindergarten and first grade and siblings of students already in the program. Check out our legislative update for more details of the bill.

Kansas – Michael Chartier @Mchart1

Gov. Sam Brownback (R) signed a school funding bill into law, April 21, that included a provision creating a corporate tax-credit scholarship program. This development ushered Kansas into the school choice club as the 24th state. Low-income children from failing schools are eligible for up to an $8,000 scholarship from approved nonprofits. Corporations that donate to such nonprofits are eligible to receive a 70 percent income tax credit, with the total amount of credits capped at $10 million. Click here for more program details.

Louisiana – Leslie Hiner @LeslieHiner

On April 10, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court ruling denying parents the right to intervene in the Department of Justice request for injunction against the Louisiana voucher program in the decades-old desegregation case, Brumfield v Dodd, 405 F. Supp. 338 (E.D. La. 1975). Parents now have the right to intervene in the case.

Mississippi – Stephanie Linn @StephanieJLinn

The Mississippi House voted down an ESA bill for students with special needs by a vote of 57-63 on April 2. House sponsor, Rep. Carolyn Crawford said she intends to file the bill again next year.

New Hampshire – Leslie Hiner @LeslieHiner

The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Duncan v. State of New Hampshire on April 16. This case positions individuals represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans United For Separation of Church and State (AU) against the state’s new tax-credit scholarship program, that is currently serving well over 100 students in schools of their choice. Check out our explanation of that lawsuit here.

Oklahoma – Leslie Hiner @LeslieHiner

On April 24, the House passed HB 2643, enlarging Oklahoma’s Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship program, making sub-chapter S corporations eligible for participation and providing a 75 percent state tax credit to those donors who commit to give for three years. The House dissented in Senate amendments, and the bill is currently in conference committee.

Tennessee – Stephanie Linn @StephanieJLinn

A voucher bill backed by Gov. Bill Haslam (R) made great progress in the Tennessee legislature, but the bill failed to garner enough support to make it over the finish line.

On April 10 the Senate passed the Tennessee Choice & Opportunity Scholarship Act, SB 196, a voucher program capped at 5,000 students in the first year of operation. If the bill had passed, students from low-income households who attend a “failing” public school would be given the first opportunity to receive a voucher. If remaining spots were available, students from low-income households in districts containing failing schools would be eligible to apply. The House companion bill, HB 190, stalled in the House Finance Committee. The bill sponsor, Rep. Bill Dunn, withdrew the bill citing a lack of support in the committee.

ABOUT LESLIE HINER

 serves as the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice’s Vice President of Programs and State Relations. She also serves on the Schools That Can National Advisory Board. She is an appointee to the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights Indiana State Advisory Committee, and also serves as an appointee to the Indianapolis City-County Ethics Commission.

Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition by George C. Leef

/in , /by

Drug Prohibition Is Deadly.

In perhaps no other public-policy question is the United States more hopelessly in the grip of a conventional wisdom that is utterly and egregiously wrong than drugs. Most Americans, no matter their political affiliation, are adamant supporters of the “war on drugs.” Try suggesting that the war might be stupendous folly and you’ll most likely run into vehement opposition replete with ad hominem attacks.

It is hard to get people to examine their ideas—“prejudices” might be a better word—about drugs, but in Drug War Crimes, Boston University economics professor Jeffrey Miron has put into the public discourse an attack on the conventional wisdom that is impossible for any serious-minded person to brush off. Written with a professional economist’s careful attention to costs and benefits, both seen and unseen, the book relentlessly challenges all the beliefs that support the criminalization of drugs.

Miron begins by toting up some of the principal costs of our anti-drug crusade. Government spends more than $33 billion annually on it. Arrests for drug-related infractions exceed 1.5 million per year. The United States now has well in excess of 300,000 people behind bars for drug violations. If they’re even aware of the cost, drug-war supporters contend that we would experience a disastrous rise in drug use—which is assumed to be a life-ruining event—and therefore worth it. Prohibitionists assert that “drug use causes crime, diminishes health and productivity, encourages driving and industrial accidents, exacerbates poverty, supports terrorism and contributes generally to societal decay,” Miron writes. Those beliefs are carefully reinforced by spokesmen for the drug war. Our author takes on all those claims and shows them to be erroneous.

Consider, for example, the widely held idea that drug use causes crime. Statistics show that in 35 cities monitored by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2000, at least 50 percent of adult men arrested for crimes tested positive for drugs. That’s enough to frighten the typical citizen into supporting the drug war. After all, who wants more crime? But Miron points out that those statistics don’t show that drug usage causes criminal behavior or that the arrestees were under the influence of drugs at the time of the crime. “The methodology used in these analyses would also demonstrate that consumption of fast food or wearing blue jeans causes criminal behavior,” Miron observes with appropriate sarcasm.

Another mistaken belief that leads to support for the drug war is that any drug use almost inevitably leads to addiction and an increasingly dissolute life. That notion causes people to view drug use as so dangerous as to warrant the extreme measures the government employs in its attempt to prevent anyone from using any illegal drug in any amount. Miron shows that belief to be unfounded. Drug use may be addictive, but is not necessarily so and many drug users lead perfectly normal lives. True, some users suffer adverse health consequences, but, the author observes, “A critical problem with standard depictions of the health consequences of drug use is reliance on data sources that are systematically biased toward those who suffer the worst consequences.”

For all our costly enforcement efforts, Miron shows that drug prohibition has little impact on the incidence of drug use, mainly because drug producers and sellers can evade law enforcement so easily. Yet the costs extend beyond the obvious ones already mentioned. One of them is increased racial tension because drug enforcement is so often targeted at minority areas.

Another is a great increase in violence. Miron argues that without drug prohibition, homicide rates in the United States would fall by half. A third is the non-availability of drugs, particularly marijuana, for medical reasons, thus causing much avoidable pain and suffering. By the time our author is done with his analysis of costs and benefits, it is clear that the war on drugs is an exceedingly foolish policy.

Miron advocates legalization rather than any of the halfway alternatives sometimes advanced. He concludes by saying, “American tradition should make legalization—i.e., liberty—the preferred policy, barring compelling evidence prohibition generates benefits in excess of its costs. As I have demonstrated here, a serious weighing of the evidence shows instead that prohibition has enormous costs with, at best, modest and speculative benefits. Liberty and utility thus both recommend that prohibition end now: the goals of prohibition are questionable, the methods are unsound, and the results are deadly.”

ABOUT GEORGE C. LEEF

George Leef is the former book review editor of The Freeman. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

US lawmakers pressure Obama to grant asylum to Christian Sudanese mom sentenced to death for leaving Islam

/in , , , , /by

Why aren’t all the Muslim spokesmen in the West, who claim that Islam has no death penalty for apostasy, such as Harris Zafar, Mustafa Akyol, Salam al-Marayati, M. Cherif Bassiouni, and Ali Eteraz (among many others), jetting to Khartoum now to explain to Sudanese authorities that they are misunderstanders of Islam and must release Meriam Yehya Ibrahim immediately?

One wonders: why, if it is so clear that Islam has no death penalty for apostasy, do so many Muslims misunderstand that? And why is it “Islamophobia” to point out that so many don’t seem to get the memo?

Muhammad said: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57).

“US Lawmakers Pressure Obama Administration to Grant Asylum to Christian Sudanese Mom Sentenced to Death,” Chinatopix, May 24, 2014:

Lawmakers in the US are calling on the Obama team to provide asylum to a pregnant Sudanese wife of an American citizen after she was sentenced to death for upholding her Christian faith.

Meriam Yehya Ibrahim has been imprisoned with her 20-month-old son for over three months because she refused to recant her Christianity. Last week, a Khartoum judge stirred international condemnation by sentencing the 27-year-old mom to death by hanging after giving birth and nursing her baby for two years, wrote Fox News.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Marco Rubio said he was shocked with the “inhumane verdict” given to Ibrahim. GOP senators Roy Blunt and Kelly Ayotte have already sent two letters to the White House requesting for “immediate action” and political asylum for Ibrahim and her child.

On Wednesday, four senators filed a resolution condemning the death sentence and urging Sudan to respect their people’s religious freedom in order to restore their ties with the US or reduce their economic sanctions. Republican Jim Inhofe and Democrats Chris Coons and Bob Menendez co-sponsored the said resolution.

Ibrahim was raised as a Christian when her Muslim father abandoned the family when she was still a child and has now been charged by the Sudanese court has charged with apostasy, or leaving Islam. In some Muslim countries, this crime has a corresponding death penalty.

Ibrahim was also sentenced to receive 100 lashes after she gives birth, for adultery, for having relations with her Christian husband. Her lawyers said the eight-months-pregnant woman is chained by her feet in jail.

Jen Psaki, the State Department’s spokesperson, said the Obama team is doing their best on Ibrahim’s case.

Daniel Wani, Ibrahim’s husband, is confined to a wheelchair and is fully dependent on his wife for everything, the lawyer explained. Wani said he called the US Embassy in Khartoum before the death sentence, but the embassy showed no interest in their problem.

After stating that his son was an American citizen, he was asked to present DNA evidence. He conceded and provided their wedding documents and his son’s birth certificates as additional evidence, but Wani said the embassy still did not offer any help.

Ibrahim’s case is being further complicated by political forces in her country. According to Sudanese Parliament speaker Fatih Izz Al-Deen, it is not true that Ibrahim was raised as a non-Muslim and added that it was her Muslim brother who filed the complaint against her….

RELATED STORIES:

Uganda: Churches step up security after threats from Islamic jihad group
Nigeria: Islamic jihadist murders two in bungled jihad/martyrdom suicide bombing
Sharia Egypt: Christian gets four years prison, $1400 fine for insulting Islam by drawing cartoon of Muhammad on Facebook

Florida’s Communist Congressman Joe Garcia, Jr.: The Latest Threat to the Republic

/in , , , , /by

Born again Communist José Antonio “Joe” García, Jr. the U.S Representative for Florida’s 26th Congressional District made a statement that “Communism is working.”

Joe_Garcia_Off_Port_113Cong

Democrat Rep. José Antonio “Joe” García, Jr

I called Rep. García’s office at 202-225-2778 and told the Congressman to pack his bags, clean out his cubicle and resign from office. I will pay his one way ticket to North Korea. He is the same person that picked his ear during a congressional hearing, then ate the ball of wax that he diligently scooped from his inner canal protrusion.

On May 31st, 2013, Representative García’s chief-of-staff and top political strategist resigned after being implicated in a sophisticated scheme to manipulate the previous year’s primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests. Jeffrey Garcia’s resignation came three months after a Miami Herald investigation found that hundreds of the 2,552 fraudulent online requests for the August 14th primary election originated from unknown hackers using IP addresses in Miami.

On the same day, the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office, served search warrants seeking computers and electronic equipment in the homes of Representative Garcia’s communications director and his 2012 campaign manager. Jeffrey García, the aide, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in October, 2013. He was released from Miami-Dade Correctional Center on December 25, 2013 after having served 65 days of a 90 day active sentence. He must now serve three months of house arrest followed by 15 months of probation.

Joe Garcia is the chief sponsor in the House of Representatives of a comprehensive immigration reform plan which is similar to legislation that has passed the United States Senate. If enacted, the plan would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants already living and working in the United States. Why they would want to be citizens though is a good question. They will then be subject to Obamacare and the income tax that redistributes taxpayer wealth to Michelle Obama’s vacation planning office and dress designer.

Governor Rick Scott of Florida also signed legislation giving illegal immigrants living in Florida, who have attended high school for at least 3 years, in-state tuition. In effect he is now redistributing wealth from law abiding American tax payers in Florida to criminal law breakers living in this state illegally in violation of federal law.

November 4th is just around the corner. Choose wisely. Our nation’s sovereignty and security rests in your hands. Please vote for those people who will protect the Republic and its sovereignty. Please vote for those who will protect this nations wealth and tax payer money. Flush the rest.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Florida Congressman Garcia Accepts Money from Radical Muslim Group

Bring Back the House Un-American Activities Committee