Fire Hydrant of Freedom

A bit late in the day to start this thread, but at least this will be here for next year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3eQmzw6n3k&feature=youtu.be

As is its wont, Stratfor ignores the matter of shared vales, but the main point here about sea lanes has merit.
===========

Australia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, ranked in the top 10 in gross domestic product per capita. It is one of the most isolated major countries in the world; it occupies an entire united continent, is difficult to invade and rarely is threatened. Normally, we would not expect a relatively well-off and isolated country to have been involved in many wars. This has not been the case for Australia and, more interesting, it has persistently not been the case, even under a variety of governments. Ideology does not explain the phenomenon in this instance.

Since 1900, Australia has engaged in several wars and other military or security interventions (including the Boer War, World War I, World War II and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq) lasting about 40 years total. Put another way, Australia has been at war for more than one-third of the time since the Commonwealth of Australia was established in 1901. In only one of these wars, World War II, was its national security directly threatened, and even then a great deal of its fighting was done in places such as Greece and North Africa rather than in direct defense of Australia. This leaves us to wonder why a country as wealthy and seemingly secure as Australia would have participated in so many conflicts.

Importance of Sea-Lanes

To understand Australia, we must begin by noting that its isolation does not necessarily make it secure. Exports, particularly of primary commodities, have been essential to Australia. From wool exported to Britain in 1901 to iron ore exported to China today, Australia has had to export commodities to finance the import of industrial products and services in excess of what its population could produce for itself. Without this trade, Australia could not have sustained its economic development and reached the extraordinarily high standard of living that it has.

This leads to Australia's strategic problem. In order to sustain its economy it must trade, and given its location, its trade must go by sea. Australia is not in a position, by itself, to guarantee the security of its sea-lanes, due to its population size and geographic location. Australia therefore encounters two obstacles. First, it must remain competitive in world markets for its exports. Second, it must guarantee that its goods will reach those markets. If its sea-lanes are cut or disrupted, the foundations of Australia's economy are at risk.

Think of Australia as a creature whose primary circulatory system is outside of its body. Such a creature would be extraordinarily vulnerable and would have to develop unique defense mechanisms. This challenge has guided Australian strategy.

First, Australia must be aligned with -- or at least not hostile to -- the leading global maritime power. In the first part of Australia's history, this was Britain. More recently, it has been the United States. Australia's dependence on maritime trade means that it can never simply oppose countries that control or guarantee the sea-lanes upon which it depends; Australia cannot afford to give the global maritime power any reason to interfere with its access to sea-lanes.

Second, and more difficult, Australia needs to induce the major maritime powers to protect Australia's interests more actively. For example, assume that the particular route Australia depends on to deliver goods to a customer has choke points far outside Australia's ability to influence. Assume further that the major power has no direct interest in that choke point. Australia must be able to convince the major power of the need to keep that route open. Merely having amiable relations will not achieve that. Australia must make the major power dependent upon it so that Australia has something to offer or withdraw in order to shape the major power's behavior.

Creating Dependency

Global maritime powers are continually involved in conflict -- frequently regional and at times global. Global interests increase the probability of friction, and global power spawns fear. There is always a country somewhere that has an interest in reshaping the regional balance of power, whether to protect itself or to exact concessions from the global power.

Another characteristic of global powers is that they always seek allies. This is partly for political reasons, in order to create frameworks for managing their interests peacefully. This is also for military reasons. Given the propensity for major powers to engage in war, they are always in need of additional forces, bases and resources. A nation that is in a position to contribute to the global power's wars is in a position to secure concessions and guarantees. For a country such as Australia that is dependent on sea-lanes for its survival, the ability to have commitments from a major power to protect its interests is vital.

Deployment in the Boer War was partly based on Australian ideology as a British colony, but in fact Australia had little direct interest in the outcome of the war. It also was based on Australia's recognition that it needed Britain's support as a customer and a guarantor of its security. The same can be said for the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Australia might have had some ideological interest in these wars, but its direct national security was only marginally at stake in them. However, Australian participation in these wars helped to make the United States dependent on Australia to an extent, which in turn induced the United States to guarantee Australian interests.

There were also wars that could have concluded with a transformation of the global system. World War I and World War II were attempts by some powers to overthrow the existing global order and replace it with a different one. Australia emerged from the old political order, and it viewed the prospect of a new order as both unpredictable and potentially dangerous. Australia's participation in those wars was still in part about making other powers dependent upon it, but it also had to do with the preservation of an international system that served Australia. (In World War II there was also an element of self-defense: Australia needed to protect itself from Japan and certainly from a Japanese-controlled Pacific Ocean and potentially the Indian Ocean.)

Alternative Strategy

Australia frequently has been tempted by the idea of drawing away from the global power and moving closer to its customers. This especially has been the case since the United States replaced Britain as the global maritime power. In the post-World War II period, as Asian economic activity increased, Asian demand increased for Australian raw materials, from food to industrial minerals. First Japan and then China became major customers of Australia.

The Australian alternative (aside from isolation, which would be economically unsustainable) was to break or limit its ties to the United States and increasingly base its national security on Japan or, later, on China. The theory was that China, for example, was the rising power and was essential to Australian interests because of its imports, imports that it might secure from other countries. The price of the relationship with the United States -- involvement in American conflicts -- was high. Therefore, this alternative strategy would have limited Australia's exposure to U.S. demands while cementing its relationship with its primary customer, China.

This strategy makes sense on the surface, but there are two reasons that Australia, though it has toyed with the strategy, has not pursued it. The first is the example of Japan. Japan appeared to be a permanent, dynamic economic power. But during the 1990s, Japan shifted its behavior, and its appetite for Australian goods stagnated. Economic relationships depend on the ability of the customer to buy, and that depends on the business cycle, political stability and so on. A strategy that would have created a unique relationship between Australia and Japan would have quickly become unsatisfactory. If, as we believe, China is in the midst of an economic slowdown, entering into a strategic relationship with China would also be a mistake, or at the very least, a gamble.

The second reason Australia has not changed its strategy is that, no matter what relationship it has with China or Japan, the sea-lanes are under the control of the United States. In the event of friction with China, the United States, rather than guaranteeing the sea-lanes for Australia, might choose to block them. In the end, Australia can sell to many countries, but it must always use maritime routes. Thus, it has consistently chosen its relationship with Britain or the United States rather than commit to any single customer or region.

Australia is in a high-risk situation, even though superficially it appears secure. Its options are to align with the United States and accept the military burdens that entails, or to commit to Asia in general and China in particular. Until that time when an Asian power can guarantee the sea-lanes against the United States -- a time that is far in the future -- taking the latter route would involve pyramiding risks. Add to this that the relationship would depend on the uncertain future of Asian economies -- and all economic futures are now uncertain -- and Australia has chosen a lower-risk approach.

This approach has three components. The first is deepening economic relations with the United States to balance its economic dependencies in Asia. The second is participating in American wars in order to extract guarantees from the United States on sea-lanes. The final component is creating regional forces able to handle events in Australia's near abroad, from the Solomon Islands through the Indonesian archipelago. But even here, Australian forces would depend on U.S. cooperation to manage threats.

The Australian strategy therefore involves alignment with the leading maritime power, first Britain and then the United States, and participation in their wars. We began by asking why a country as wealthy and secure as Australia would be involved in so many wars. The answer is that its wealth is not as secure as it seems.

George Friedman is chief executive officer of Stratfor, the world’s leading online publisher of geopolitical intelligence. This article has been republished from the Stratfor website.

I trust most of us saw the captured exchange between our President and Russia's Medvedev wherein our Dear Leader tells the Russians that after his "last election" he will be ready to negotiate the nuclear arms treaty with them that he is not willing to attempt to sell to the American people before the election.

As Charles Krauthammer astutely points out, the key word here is "last"-- as in he no longer needs to fear the vote of the American people.

This thread is for exploring just where Dear Leader might be looking to take us.

Tricky Dog has brought my attention to this:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/321442

I had seen some whiffs of it, but this plants the issue more squarely than I had been willing to acknowledge to myself.   For fear of it being deleted elsewhere, I post it here in its entirety:
=============

Op-Ed: Obama's Executive Order, business as usual?
Like this article41
JosephBy Joseph Corica
Mar 19, 2012 in Politics
20 comments
By Joseph Corica.
 
 
Washington - Despite controversy over the March 16 Executive Order issued by the Obama administration, apologists are passing the word "Move along. Nothing to see here." But is "business as usual" really the case?
To answer that question let's take a closer look at executive order National Defense Resources Preparedness (NDRP).
The executive order it ostensibly updates is a 'continuity of government' type scenario in case of nuclear holocaust. Can the same be said of NDRP?
Sec. 102. Policy. The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime
(emphasis mine)
No, this is NOT a parallel to a 1950's executive order. It builds off of it, expands it, and where it laid the groundwork for taking the reins in case of emergency, NDRP actively takes the reins as if that emergency is upon us. The justification for this is in NDRP section 102 (quoted above). The President has decided these Continuity of Government plans need to go into effect in peacetime, not just in time of war.
In short, these 'Secretaries' are given complete authority to reorganize civilian labor and/or production quotas within their given field:
PART II - PRIORITIES AND ALLOCATIONS
Sec. 201. Priorities and Allocations Authorities. (a) The authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071, to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:
(1) the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;
(2) the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;
(3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;
(4) the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;
(5) the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and
(6) the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.
(b) The Secretary of each agency delegated authority under subsection (a) of this section (resource departments) shall plan for and issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources and establish standards and procedures by which the authority shall be used to promote the national defense, under both emergency and non-emergency conditions. Each Secretary shall authorize the heads of other agencies, as appropriate, to place priority ratings on contracts and orders for materials, services, and facilities needed in support of programs approved under section 202 of this order.
(emphasis mine)
The lengthy order carries on in this manner, but I've included this segment to give you just a snippet of how radical this order is. Reading through the parts I've emphasized, this reads "The authority of the President to promote national defense and to allocate materials ... as deemed necessary is delegated to these Secretaries in peacetime."
Placating arguments have been made that this is "business as usual", but that is only a half-truth. Government micromanaging civilian industry for the top priority of "national defense" was 'business as usual' last week...but only if you were watching Battlestar Galactica reruns. As Earth is currently devoid of any impending Cylon threat, I question the legitimacy of government seizing authority in this manner.
If this analysis comes across as alarmist, it may well be because the material covered is indeed alarming. If any other conclusion can be reached by rational examination of the order's text, I welcome it in the comments section.
To those of you who may not agree that this is a power grab, I challenge you to find anything in this order that says it is not in effect except in case of emergency. Everything in it alludes to "even in peacetime" or "in emergency and non-emergency".
This is not a 'Democrat' or 'Republican' issue. Americans from all over the political spectrum should be concerned about this unprecedented grasp for power, as well as the lack of coverage from major news networks.
Why are Continuity of Government plans, dreamt up to combat the worst-case nuclear holocaust scenario, being seized upon to grab power in peacetime?
Conscientious Americans need to demand answers from their Executive Branch.
This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com

Although this could easily fit in the Gun Rights thread, I am giving it its own thread in the belief that this is profoundly important and that in the coming months this subject is going to become huge.

Hoping for a serious analysis by Big Dog to help us get started:
======================
Arms Trade Treaty – The Hell With Congress



Manasquan, NJ --(Ammoland.com)- There is a widespread misunderstanding on the part of American gun-owners, evidenced in gun blogs and in commentaries on articles dealing with the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).

The crux of this misunderstanding is that, since there are checks and balances in our Constitution, and since the Constitution clearly states that ratification of a treaty can only occur “provided two thirds of the Senators present concur,” this is almost impossible to come about.

Therefore, we will never be subjected to the constraints of, and penalties for, violations of an Arms Trade Treaty.

Most of those who voice this sentiment do so vehemently, and with all certainty that this is fact, rather than merely conjecture.

What they refuse to acknowledge is that when it comes to words —even those in our sacred blueprint for a representative government, the Constitution— nothing is actually all black and white; when it comes to words —especially words that were penned more than 2 centuries earlier when the world was very different— it will almost always be possible to find grey areas that can be breached to achieve a desired political goal.

The fact is that our Constitution does not protect us against the growing customary international law or the growing norm of global civilian disarmament.

There are many references in the literature which address this situation. We will cite only two: “The Second Amendment and Global Gun Control,” by Joseph Bruce Alonso (Journal on Firearms & Public Policy, Vol. 15), and “The Human Right of Self-Defense” by David B. Kopel, Paul Gallant & Joanne D. Eisen (Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law, Vol 22, Number 1).

These two papers provide carefully documented proof that ratification of an international treaty can occur —and can be made binding to U.S. citizens— without any Senate action at all!

But this is not simply our opinion. The hyperlinks below are provided for convenience, so that any reader can judge for him- or herself as to the veracity of this thesis as part of current international law.

Alonso notes that “There are a variety of ways that these [international] gun control laws could affect the rights and obligations of parties within the United States.”

He enumerates some of the mechanisms which might come into play to effect such a scenario:

“The first way is the possibility that the President of the United States signs…[a treaty]. Signature by a United States President would indicate to the international community that the United States intends to abide by the gun control laws, with or without ratification by the Senate.”
“A second way these gun control laws could affect United States parties is in the event that gun control becomes a customary international law. Even if the United States did not sign on to either treaty, if the United States began to abide by the treaties, the United States may, in effect, be consenting to the treaties becoming customary international law. In the eyes of an international court, the United States, by following the treaties, is consenting to be bound by the treaties in the future. To avoid accidental consent, the United States should expressly state that as a nation, the United States does not consent to the gun control treaties and that any activity consistent with the treaties is not intended to recognize the treaties’ legal status. If the United States does not make such an express statement to the international community, the United States might, arguably, be expected to maintain any and all gun control measures that the treaties require.”
“A third way the gun control measures could affect United States parties is through nonconsensual customary law. Nonconsensual customary international law may arise as a result of international practice. This international practice may be evidenced by events not approved by the United States but eventually held binding on the United States….In many ways, the international community is in agreement on gun control, with the exception being the United States. The respect and adherence by numerous countries to strict gun control adds weight to the notion that a common understanding of how sovereign states must deal with private gun ownership can be established with or without every country’s consent.”

Not only are there grey areas in the treaty ratification process, but they are also present in the ways in which our country can be dragged into war.

According to the U.S. Constitution, Section 8, “The Congress shall have Power To….declare War….” However, in the course of our research, we spotted an item printed in the March 8, 2012 edition of the Canada Free Press. An article entitled Obama Admin Cites Int’l Permission, Not Congress, as ‘Legal Basis’ For Action in Syria stated: “Under question from Sen. Sessions at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey indicated that ‘international permission,’ rather than Congressional approval, provided a ‘legal basis’ for military action by the United States.”

Video: Obama Admin Cites 'Int'l Permission,' Not Congress, As 'Legal Basis' For Action In Syria

The video above includes the interview, and the replies from Panetta and Dempsey to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), are nothing short of mind-boggling to hear! In response to Panetta and Dempsey concerning the issue of Congressional approval, Sen. Sessions replied incredulously: “Well, I’m almost breathless about that. Because what I heard you say was we’re going to seek international approval, and you will come and tell the Congress what we might do….”

The fact is that the U.S. Constitution was written two centuries ago, and we live in a very different world. Times change, and there are many things that our Founding Fathers never anticipated when they wrote the Constitution onto parchment with quill and ink. It is obviously now possible to be forced into a war without the approval of Congress.

And it is also now possible to be forced to abide by the terms of a treaty —like the ATT— without Congressional approval.

According to Kopel, Gallant & Eisen (p. 54-55):

“Having been selected as Special Rapporteur by the old Human Rights Commission, [Barbara] Frey delivered her final report to the new Human Rights Council on July 27, 2006. On August 24, 2006, the UN Human Rights Council’s subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights endorsed the Frey report, and announced that all national governments were required by international human rights law to implement various listed gun control provisions; the subcommission recommended that the full Human Rights Council also adopt the report and issue a similar mandate. Of course the subcommission has little power to enforce its wishes directly, but the declaration gives national government officials, including courts, considerable support to promote restrictive gun laws which are, according to the UN, mandated by international law. The full Human Rights Council is scheduled to take up the issue, and indications at the time of this writing suggest that the full Council will ratify most or all of Frey’s report. The Chairman of the full Human Rights Council has already announced his enthusiastic support for the Frey Report, the subcommission’s adoption of the report, and the prospect of using the Human Rights Council to advance a worldwide gun control mandate. The Frey Report, then, is not simply a scholarly paper that will be filed away in a United Nations library. It is an effort to establish a new norm of international human rights law, and this effort to establish the new norm is supported by the United Nations Human Rights Council, as one aspect of the UN’s far-ranging support for restrictive and confiscatory firearms policies (emphasis ours).”

The Frey report should be required reading for all Americans – gun-owner and non-gun-owner alike, for there is every likelihood that the ATT, in some form, will be enacted! And her report—which represents the UN’s view and the new world “norm,” is one of the scariest documents one can find to describe what our America would look like if the ATT proponents have their way!

The UN has been able to twist the individual human right of self-defense into a human rights abuse against a perpetrator. In the words of Barbara Frey:

“Self-defence is sometimes designated as a ‘right’. There is inadequate legal support for such an interpretation. Self-defence is more properly characterized as a means of protecting the right to life and, as such, a basis for avoiding responsibility for violating the rights of another. No international human right of self-defence is expressly set forth in the primary sources of international law: treaties, customary law, or general principles.”

So much for our Constitution and its Bill of Rights!


About the authors:
Dr. Paul Gallant and Dr. Joanne D. Eisen practice optometry and dentistry, respectively, on Long Island, NY, and have collaborated on firearm politics for the past 20 years. They have also collaborated with David B. Kopel since 2000, and are Senior Fellows at the Independence Institute, where Kopel is Research Director. Most recently, Gallant and Eisen have also written with Alan J. Chwick. Sherry Gallant has been instrumental in the editing of virtually all of the authors’ writings, and is immensely knowledgeable in the area of firearm politics; she actively co-authored this article.

Almost all of the co-authored writings of Gallant, Eisen, Kopel and Chwick can be found at http://gallanteisen.incnf.org/, which contains more detailed information about their biographies and writing, and contains hyperlinks to many of their articles. Their recent series focusing on the Arms Trade Treaty can be found primarily athttp://gwg.incnf.org/ . Respective E-Mail addresses are: PaulGallant2A@cs.com, JoanneDEisen@cs.com, AJChwick@iNCNF.org, Sherry.Gallant@gmail.com

A tinfoil hat thought crossed my mind: Tis a curious death for a man with such powerful enemies.

Syria gets its own thread:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/world/middleeast/al-qaeda-influence-suspected-in-bombings-in-syria.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha22

WASHINGTON — Sunni extremists, including fighters linked to Al Qaeda’s franchise in neighboring Iraq, are likely responsible for two big recent bombings in the Syrian capital as well as attacks on Friday in Aleppo, the country’s largest city, American officials said Wednesday.

As the violence in Syria escalates, several analysts said, Al Qaeda is seeking to exploit the turmoil and reinvigorate its regional ambitions after being sidelined in the initial popular uprisings of the Arab Spring a year ago.

The precise role of the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda in Syria is unclear. Some intelligence officials and diplomats in Washington, Baghdad and Beirut, Lebanon, said the Qaeda franchise was responsible for the deadly bombings in Aleppo last week and in Damascus, the capital, on Dec. 23 and Jan. 6, which killed scores of people. But they acknowledged that they did not have the forensic or electronic intercept evidence to prove it.

Other officials said Sunni fighters loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda but not directly controlled by the terrorist group may also have been involved, operating in common cause with but independently of pro-democracy forces seeking to topple the embattled government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“It appears to be a very complicated mixture of networks that are fighting the Syrian government, including individuals associated with Al Qaeda in Iraq,” said Seth G. Jones, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation and the author of the coming book “Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of Al Qa’ida Since 9/11.”

Other experts agreed, saying Sunni extremists — some of whom have returned from Iraq to fight in Syria — also have the expertise to carry out large-scale bombings.

“There are plenty of people with that kind of know-how in Syria,” said Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of a recent book on Syrian-American relations. “The Assad regime helped invent the car bomb, and they have used it brilliantly to pursue their foreign policy goals. It could be Al Qaeda or simply those with a similar background carrying it out.”

Or as Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it during Senate testimony on Tuesday, “Those who would like to foment a Sunni-Shia standoff — and you know who they are — are all weighing in in Syria.”

The Syrian government has always argued that it was fighting foreign terrorists, including some from Al Qaeda, a charge dismissed as propaganda by the Syrian activists leading the uprising.

But some American officials now say Al Qaeda in Iraq, whose membership has declined substantially in recent years, is trying to take advantage of the violence in Syria and perhaps even hijack the popular uprising against the Syrian government.

Al Qaeda was caught off guard by the Arab Spring’s largely nonviolent, secular revolutions fueled by social media. The death of Osama bin Laden in May dealt the organization another major blow, and it has been seeking a foothold ever since.

“It comes as no surprise that Al Qaeda’s Iraq affiliate, through its networks in Syria, might attempt to seem relevant by going after the Assad regime,” said an American official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the assessment contained classified information. “It is opportunism, plain and simple.”

Indeed, Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Bin Laden as the leader of Al Qaeda worldwide, issued a statement on Saturday urging Muslims in the region — he specifically mentioned Iraq — to support the uprising, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist communications.

The debate over Al Qaeda’s role in Syria came as the United States government on Wednesday offered to help any post-Assad government secure Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons and portable antiaircraft missiles.

With violence rising and the political outcome wholly uncertain, American officials acknowledged that the effort to secure Syria’s unconventional weapons remained speculative.

MORE

I trust that most everyone here gets that the spending crisis is overwhelmingly a function of entitlements; and so this thread to focus on this.

WSJ:  CLASS Warfare

The House votes today on repealing one of the Affordable Care Act's major new subsidy programs, and the referendum deserves more attention than it will probably get. The important point is not merely eliminating one of ObamaCare's worst abuses, but that the entitlement state might shrink for the first time in generations.

Known by the acronym Class, the long-term care insurance program for nursing homes and the like was grafted onto the health-care bill mostly to hide that bill's true costs. Class came with a five-year waiting period before it started to pay out benefits, but it started collecting revenues immediately. The front-loading helped ObamaCare appear to reduce the deficit in the short run—even though the Class Act was designed to go broke after a decade, which is outside the Congressional Budget Office's 10-year budget window.

Thoughtful Democrats in Congress and the Obama Administration privately warned about this "budgetary time bomb," as one staffer put it, but the Pelosi-Obama majority plowed ahead anyway. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius felt obliged to shut down the program last fall because, by some miracle and unlike other entitlements, Class is legally required to be "actuarially sound." Ms. Sebelius conceded that this is impossible, as the critics claimed all along.

The Administration hasn't issued a formal statement on repeal, but it is informally opposing it—perhaps because the Democratic left wants to keep Class frozen in a cryogenic state to be revived when Democrats again control Congress. The Administration is thus opposing repeal of a program its own bureaucracy says can't work. Could there be a clearer illustration of Washington's refusal to face fiscal reality?

CBO estimates Class would cost about $81 billion over a decade, and in any other year it would have led to a major debate as a stand-alone bill. Class only seems like a pittance because it was folded into the much larger multitrillion-dollar ObamaCare package.

Compare it to the 1997 entitlement love child of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich—the state children's health insurance program—that will spend about $78 billion over the next 10 years. The Schip program was supposed to help poor kids but Democrats have expanded it well into the middle class so it is now crowding out private insurance; some 31% of all U.S. children are now on Schip or Medicaid. That was also the explicit political goal for Class and long-term care.

The conventional wisdom is that Class repeal is dead on Senate arrival, though a dozen Democrats voted to strip Class out of ObamaCare in December 2009. If Senate Republicans have any political wit, they'll declare all-out Class warfare and compel repeated floor votes. Either they'll get rid of it permanently or else force Democrats to defend the program that even they admit is indefensible.

If Congress can't strike a zombie entitlement that has no constituency, that now even the Administration says is unworkable, and that its own deficit commission recommended eliminating . . . well, what hope is there for reforming other entitlements?

Death Doula:

By Dawn Turner Trice, Chicago Tribune
 
December 27, 2011
Reporting from Sycamore, Ill.— A midwife is usually associated with the beginning of life — pregnancy, labor and delivery — but another type specializes in the end of life.

Ana Blechschmidt is a death doula — a death midwife.

"Most of the time, it's for people who want to stay away from hospitals and a sterile, mechanical world or machines and tubes," said Blechschmidt, 64, of Sycamore, Ill., who became a death doula four years ago. She is also a certified birth doula.

It's her job to make the environment as peaceful as possible for the person who's dying as well as for family members and friends, she said. She emphasized that she did not assist in suicides.

Unlike a hospice nurse, a death doula doesn't administer medicine or perform medical procedures, nor is a doula certified or licensed by the state, according to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

Also, the death doula will stay — if the family wants — after the client dies to help with the funeral, which often occurs in a place other than a funeral home. That could be the person's home, a nursing home, an elder-care facility or even a hospital.

Blechschmidt said her primary job was to carry out the wishes of the person who is dying.

"The main questions I ask are: 'What do you want? How much do you want to spend? Do you want intervention by medical people or family?' '' she said.

"In many cases, when a person is dying, what they want is a quiet, peaceful exit. Some people want to die by themselves, but others may want their whole family there playing pinochle in the corner."

Blechschmidt encourages clients to have a will, a living will, a power of attorney for healthcare and for finances, and a written plan on disposition of the body. She suggests that everything be in writing.

"I talk with the family sometimes in the presence of the ill person," she said. "And then it's my job to make things happen as gently and harmoniously as possible."

Maintaining peace and harmony can be tricky, especially in families where relationships have been fractured. It's also complicated when family members are of different religious faiths and may have divergent beliefs about an afterlife.

"And, yet, to facilitate the end-of-life transition, I really don't need to know anyone's faith path except the dying person's," Blechschmidt said. "When everything is in writing, you can say, 'This is what Fred wanted.' That way, it's legal and the person who has the power of attorney has to carry it out."

Sometimes the death midwife has to play the heavy.

"There are harsh things that have to be said or done, and someone may need to be the bad guy — and that would be the death midwife," Blechschmidt said. "Family members can hate me and be mad at me because I don't have to show up at their holiday dinners."

A death doula or home funeral may seem unusual, but the concepts are rooted in the past.

Embalming became popular during the Civil War, but Blechschmidt said most American families still laid their dead out for visitations in their homes. Funeral homes were used mostly by the wealthy and were a status symbol until after World War II, when more middle-class people could afford their services.

"But that still wasn't for everyone," she said. "I was 7 years old in 1954 when my father's mother died. She died at home. She was laid out at home, and she was taken to the Methodist church for the services."

Today, she said, many people tend to isolate themselves when a loved one is dying.

"When you get caught up in grief and losing someone and all of that is going on, you need help," she said. "A hundred years ago, this is something that would have happened automatically. If I'm assisting in a death passing, what I'm really doing is assisting the soul to birth its new life. And that's such an honorable, necessary thing."

The Weakness of the West

Western civilization is caught between the horns of a dilemma.

October 7, 2011 - 12:18 am - by David Solway     

In a recent colloquium at the National Archives in Ottawa on the subject of multiculturalism and the advancing subversion of the West, the question arose as to why the most advanced and preeminent civilization the world has ever seen appears to be imploding. It is in every respect stronger than its enemies and competitors and yet is clearly faltering, insecure in its purposes, given to appeasement and self-doubt, and dismissive of its own unmatchable history. Many reasons have been put forward for what is plainly an inward decline, from the natural inevitability of civilizational decay to the loss of religious faith and moral conviction to the apathy and narcissism of a flaccid and materially pampered citizenry.

Muslim author Salim Mansur, whose new book Delectable Lie was the focus of the discussion, steered a different tack, suggesting that our fate might be explained by two iconic figures from literature, Oedipus and Hamlet. This is a provocative insight that needs to be unpacked. Both are royal leaders, one a king and the other a prince in succession to the throne. Both wish to purge their kingdoms of corruption, sickness, and the scourge of illegitimacy. Both are driven to find and expose a buried truth so that the realm may be healed and purified.

Herein lies the problem and the paradox, for in seeking to disinter what is hidden or suppressed, both Oedipus and Hamlet in their diverse ways bring disaster upon themselves, one as a result of a relentless pursuit and the other owing to relentless reflection. One acts and the other fails to act, but the consequences are no less destructive: blindness and death.

If I understand him aright, Mansur’s point is that the central strength of Western civilization is also its attendant weakness, namely, contradictory as this may initially sound, the fostering of critical thought. The valorizing of the concept of truth and the search to discover it rather than adhere to a dogmatic authority which declares without evidence what a people are to believe and to accept as indisputable — or in a current formulation, “the science is settled” — represents the best that civilization has to offer. The conflict between truth and doctrine is, of course, inherent in Western civilization, but the steady progression, despite innumerable setbacks, toward the vision of the European Enlightenment and the legacy it bequeathed to the modern age was ultimately unstoppable. The problem is that the search for truth can — and does — issue in calamitous revelations, as with Oedipus, or in prolonged introspection leading to inaction, as with Hamlet.

If we examine the intellectual and political history of the West from the Enlightenment to the present day, it becomes obvious that Mansur’s theory is persuasive. The Oedipal pursuit of truth conducted by some of the celebrated philosophical minds in the West has led to the destabilizing and ironic conclusion that there is no such thing as “truth.” The pivotal tenet of Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, the source of the postmodern movement in contemporary academic thought and scholarship, is that “there are no facts, only interpretation.” In What Is History, E.H. Carr defines the study and writing of history as a “hard core of interpretation surrounded by a pulp of disputable facts.” French post-structuralist Michel Foucault, in works like The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge, claims that what we call truth is only the expression of dominant power relations that control the cultural semiotic, or “episteme.” In Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida, the founder of the “Deconstructive” school of thought, which has infected the curriculum of the Humanities in European and American universities, notoriously argued that “origins” are infinitely recessive and that words appeal not to facts but to other words—what he designates as différance, suggesting both deferral and difference. His colleague, the Belgian scholar Paul de Man whose Allegories of Reading  has had an equally deleterious affect on intellectual life, developed the notion of “rhetorical slippage,” the imp that inhabits language and sees to it that we can never say what we mean or even determine what we mean in the first place.

These are only a few of the names among the burgeoning caste of iconoclasts, schismatics, deconstructors, nihilists, post-structuralists, post-modernists and post-whateverites who have embarked on a campaign to undo the heritage of Western culture. This revisionist movement has been massively influential and, indeed, instrumental in preparing the way for the plague of cultural relativism from which we suffer today. Oblivious to the inconsistency intrinsic to such thought—that their argument is invalidated by the very position they have adopted respecting truth claims—these anti-cognitive guerrillas have nonetheless distorted a fundamental element of Western thinking: that truth is discernible. The Oedipal search for truth has paradoxically undermined and eviscerated the cultural investment in the epistemological quest for truth itself and those who have sought the grail will find themselves holding a Styrofoam cup. A virtue has become a vice.

A similar result flows from what we might term the Hamletic inquiry into the “problem” of truth, which differs from the Oedipal enterprise in that Hamlet is more preoccupied with the action to be taken in the wake of his conclusions. Once the truth is discovered—Hamlet is no relativist—how is one to proceed? Is violent intervention called for? Or protracted diplomacy? Or continued investigation to ascertain if the “truth” conceals yet more intricacies that must be isolated, turned over and over, examined for minute distinctions that require yet further study before settling upon a course of action? The outcome is that there is no outcome but only more reflection and intellectual stasis—until the moment arrives when it is too late to respond effectively to a growing peril or an imminent disaster.

We can observe this access of dysfunctional inertia, this phlegmatism of the mind, conspicuously at work in our politicians and diplomats, who cannot bring themselves to determine upon a sensible, coherent and effective mode of action in the face of pressing complexities. Admittedly, they are sometimes capable of reacting, but their reactions resemble reflex gesticulations or autonomic responses that generally make things worse. The American president lunging into Egypt and Libya is a perfect example of such immediate buffoonery. What we note on such occasions is the glaring absence of thought.

For the most part, however, our leaders are like lower-class Hamlets, the proletarians of impotent rumination. Unable to decide upon a rational and meaningful reply to unfolding events, they continue either to vacillate or to remain numb and torpid, engaging in one or another form of self-justifying evasion. More committees must be struck, more “talks” must be held, more time is needed, and more “resolutions” must be compiled and passed whose words die on the page and vanish unmourned. Hamlet, of course, said it best:

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment…

…lose the name of action.

And William Blake crystallized the notion in The Proverbs of Hell: “He who desires and acts not, breeds pestilence.”

The West now finds itself the victim of its own essential and defining quality as a civilization. Unlike the civilizations of the Orient, Western thought at its best and most characteristic is engaged in the noble adventure to seek out truth, which accounts for the major scientific breakthroughs of the modern era, a stellar literature and grand historiographic projects that attempt to probe and comprehend the vast currents of world events. In the course of time the quest inexorably begins to undermine its own foundations, finding that truth is asymptotic, ultimately inaccessible or even non-existent on the one hand, or on the other, that it demands ever-prolonged investigation either because it is insolubly complex or because the seeker subjectively fears the consequences it entails.

The result is a kind of intellectual embolism, a clotting of the arteries of thought. The modern Oedipus concludes that the truth is that there is no truth—this is the nowhere land his inquiries have taken him to. His conduct is thus based on whim, appetite, fantasy or ungrounded hope and usually culminates in disaster. The modern Hamlet refrains from proceeding in order to avoid compromising himself or losing the perquisites he may have to surrender by committing to a distinct and irreversible course of action. His condition of lassitude or paralysis also tends to culminate in disaster. And this is pretty well where the West finds itself today, between the Scylla of nihilism and the Charybdis of passivity.

If I am not mistaken, this is the brunt of Mansur’s thesis. And he would likely agree that, barring a far-reaching cultural reorientation, there is no way out of this dilemma—in the “true” etymological sense of the word. What would be needed is a genuine educational revolution, a neo-Enlightenment, in which the twin vices of hubris and lethargy are eradicated and the twin virtues of humility and courage could take root: the humility to acknowledge that there is such a thing as discernible truth existing outside the narrow and confining circle of rampant subjectivity, and the courage to act decisively when circumstances leave us no plausible alternative.

Perhaps only a profound crisis or debacle, a calamity we cannot escape in which our lives and our society are threatened with collapse or military defeat and we are brought to the brink—perhaps only this can issue in the restoration of common sense and a determination to retrieve what made us great. Perhaps only the advent of catastrophe can rescue an Oedipus gone awry or a Hamlet gone rogue, one having gone too far and the other not far enough.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/arts/design/911-memorials-many-perspectives-few-answers.html?ref=arts&pagewanted=all
 

Critic’s Notebook
Amid the Memorials, Ambiguity and Ambivalence
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: September 2, 2011
Has any attack in history ever been commemorated the way this one is about to be? What might we have anticipated, that morning of Sept. 11, as we watched the demonically choreographed assault unfold? What could we have imagined when New York City was covered in the ashes of the twin towers and their dead, or when a section of the Pentagon — the seemingly invulnerable core of the world’s most powerful military — was reduced to rubble? Or when we finally understood that but for the doomed bravery of several heroes, the destruction of the Capitol or the White House was assured?

Enlarge This Image



InterRelations Collaborative
“9/11 Peace Story Quilt,” at the Met Museum.

Enlarge This Image



Marcus Yam/The New York Times
Seen from ground zero, the twin beams of the “Tribute in Light,” which conveyed the absence of the World Trade Center during last year's Sept. 11 anniversary.

Would we have conjured up anything like the “9/11 Peace Story Quilt,” now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with children’s drawings and words emphasizing the need for multicultural sensitivity? Or a book paying tribute to “Dog Heroes of September 11th”? Would we have predicted that the performance artist Karen Finley would impersonate Liza Minnelli at the West Bank Cafe for the occasion, supposedly to champion her spunky spirit (though Ms. Finley will probably be far more mischievous)? Or that a Film Forum festival would pay tribute to the N.Y.P.D. with 19 movies, some unflattering (like “Serpico”)?

The cultural commemorations scheduled for this anniversary will also include compositions that have been associated with death (Brahms’s “Requiem”) and the overcoming of death (Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony), as well as a “Concert of Peace” that will offer music from the cultures out of which the attackers arose.

And while the hours of television broadcasts will include documentaries and interviews with first responders, families of victims, political leaders and the players of the New York Mets, they will also encompass “The Suze Orman Show,” focusing on the money and investment lessons of Sept. 11; a show about messages received from the dead of Sept. 11; and a chronicle of Paul McCartney’s experiences on Sept. 11. There are plays about the rescuers, the rescued and the witnesses; symposiums about American political malfeasance; analyses of the ethics of the attack and the response.

The sheer quantity of cultural events is overwhelming; so is their scattered miscellany, a potpourri of sentiment and argument, memorialization and self-criticism, reflection and political polemic. It seems as if every cultural institution, television network and book publisher feels duty-bound to produce some sort of Sept. 11 commemoration. Is there a precedent for this almost compulsive variety show about an attack on a nation’s people?

No examples suggest themselves. And in the United States, the attack on Pearl Harbor — the only incident remotely comparable — doesn’t seem to have inspired anything similar, even though that surprise assault initiated one of the most traumatic and transformative decades in this nation’s history. Did anybody think to have children make a “peace quilt” after that attack, as a war raged?

Of course Sept. 11 is something different. Most of us didn’t think we had such enemies or were subject to such an assault (though the accumulated evidence was clear enough). And reactions to Sept. 11 still depend on the extent to which we are thought to be in anything like a war, or precisely what the nature of its battles are. But the crossing of an American version of the Maginot Line undermined our implicit sense of the geographic exceptionalism of the United States, whose mainland has not been subjected to the bombardment or devastation known by nearly every other major nation of the modern world.

Had a bomb fallen on the twin towers, though, even that would have been less traumatic. This was something unforeseen, expertly planned, a jarring demonstration of vulnerability. So otherworldly did it seem when those planes were flown into their targets that their collapse came like a thunderclap of judgment. And that is how many immediately took it. “Why do they hate us?” was asked again and again.

And like theologians after the catastrophic 18th-century Lisbon earthquake, who saw the wages of sin in the disaster, many intellectuals didn’t wait long to assert that this blowback was payback. This is why this attack is often mischaracterized as tragedy, a drama that unfolds out of the flaws or failings of its victim.

That impulse of self-blame still runs through many cultural commemorations. Indeed, because little during the past decade was an unmitigated triumph, the impulse has even grown stronger. A poll from the Pew Charitable Trust this week shows that while in September 2001, 33 percent of those asked thought United States wrongdoing might have motivated the attacks, now 43 percent hold that belief. Many of the Sept. 11 books now being published are sentimental recollections of loved ones; another hefty segment is about criticism of American policy before and after Sept. 11.

This means that memorialization, rather than simply recalling the dead, or strengthening the resolve to pursue an enemy, becomes an opportunity to push these arguments further. Disaster becomes ambiguously commemorated. Any victory is also ambiguously celebrated because it is seen as scarred by sin (though surely no victory is ever unmarred). The delays in the reconstruction at ground zero are as much a result of these tensions as anything else.

You can see the same conflicts in the White House “talking points” for Sept. 11 commemorations that The New York Times reported on this week. The memos don’t suggest any cheering for successes of the last decade; there is even a hesitation to attract much attention, as if the White House were feeling ambivalent about the whole business, haunted perhaps by guilt. The memos also minimize any suggestion that military force had something to do with Al Qaeda’s suffering severe setbacks.

Moreover, they stress that commemorations here and abroad should “emphasize the positive.” The implication is made that at one time “fear” was the response to Sept. 11; now “resilience” is. And resilience implies a kind of firm passivity. This is strange, because anyone who has spent time undressing in snaking airport lines before undergoing the kinds of screenings once associated with convicted felons knows full well that this has little to do with resilience.

The memos almost treat Sept. 11 as if it weren’t Sept. 11. It is certainly not about Islamist extremism or the jihadist proclamations by its aspirants. It isn’t even really about us. We are told: “We honor all victims of terrorism, in every nation of the world. We honor and celebrate the resilience of individuals, families and communities on every continent, whether in New York or Nairobi, Bali or Belfast, Mumbai or Manila, or Lahore or London.” (Is it just an accident of alliteration that crucial cities torn by terror have been omitted, because that would have required acknowledging that Jerusalem or Tel Aviv faces something similar?)

Indeed, so anxious is the White House to filter out any historical aspects of Sept. 11 that it proclaims this anniversary “the third official National Day of Service and Remembrance.” It should be used to encourage “service projects” and a “spirit of unity.” Through such demonstrations, the memos affirm, our communities can withstand “whatever dangers may come — be they terrorist attacks or natural disasters.”

If that is the sense the national leadership finds in that day, why should we expect much more from cultural commemorations than miscellany, euphemism, self-effacement and self-blame?

But what might such commemorations look like if approached with more clarity? Some aspects would stay very much the same: this week’s miscellany, after all, is partly a reflection of the world that has provoked our enemies. For the Sept. 11 attacks were not just inspired by Islamist extremism. There are similarities in the motivations behind diverse acts of recent terror, including those of Timothy J. McVeigh, the bomber of the federal office building in Oklahoma City, and Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber. They all involved a disgust with modernity in the West and tried, in different ways, to destroy its culture and institutions. Democratic culture might seem innocuous to us, but it assaults fundamentalisms with its variety, unpredictability, contradiction, dissipation and possibility.

As many commemoration plans suggest, though, democratic culture also finds it difficult to conceive of this kind of enmity, overlooking, like the White House memos, the fact that Islamist extremism is one of the most powerful and dangerous manifestations of such passions. And that strain is not diminishing. The Pew survey found that 21 percent of all Muslim Americans now believe there is either a fair amount or a great deal of support for extremism in their own communities.

So a Sept. 11 commemoration might well be a celebration of democratic culture’s enduring presence. It might include the wide range of what we see before us: Noam Chomsky’s fulminations (“Ten Years of Terror” at the Guggenheim Museum) and an interview with former President George W. Bush (“The 9/11 Interview,” on National Geographic television); multicultural bridge-making; and lines in the sand. But is it impossible to imagine that in the midst of concerts and quilts for peace, communications with the spirit world and varied forms of political and psychological exorcisms, there might also be a recognition of what was at stake that day, and what, to a great extent, still is?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9TmmF79Rw0

Woof All:

As many of us have commented, Hollywood (and related entertainment folks) have been a source of unremitting hostility to America and as a result of much anti-Americanism. Much of what the world thinks it knows about America it gets from Hollywood.

I enjoyed the Bourne movies, but isn't the plot line (the evil CIA run amuck) one we have seen time and time again (e.g. Robert Redford's  , , , Day of the Condor I think it was).  Evil businessmen, evil right wing politicians, warmongering soldiers, patriotic kooks and Christian nutjobs (often protrayed as latently gay) etc etc. The heroes are those who turn upon that from which they come.  Leftists are heroes of the oppressed (endless list) yet never is told a story based around the evils of Stalinism, the oppression of East Europe by the Soviet Empire etc etc.

There is also the matter of values portrayed positively, adultery as a joke, promiscuity and the debasement of sex, binge drinking, romanticization of criminals, etc etc.

I could go on, but I think most of us here already recognize what I am getting at.

So this thread is a chance to vent (and perhaps strategize) about particularly egregious examples.

Recent ones that come to mind for me are

a) Sex and the City 2:  One of the most offensive, ugly American culturally arrogant movies I have ever seen.

b) and the proximate cause of my starting this thread, the movie "Machete", a genuinely seditious work.  Staring Danny Trejo, who has brought a certain intensity to a variety of minor roles over the years, the movie's style is a sort of gloriously bad "B Movie" of the sort which most of us enjoy.  What offended me though was its seditious message of disloyalty to American sovereignty.  I am not going to deconstruct the movie's plot such as it is (right wing politician, murderous minuteman border patrol groups, Mexican narcos conspiring to create circumstances so there will be demand to build a big electric fences the length of the border so money can be made on the construction contracts and drug scarcity can be created so as to increase profits) but the movie's grand finale, including US ICE Agent going to a higher law and forming violent alliance with a illegal alien network to obliterate the border.

The following actors who participated in this movie should be ashamed and their patriotism questioned.

Danny Trejo
Robert DeNiro
Jessica Alba (breaks my heart to say this because I think she is hot)
Steven Seagal
Jeff Fahey
Cheech Marin (hard to be mad, I love his Cheech and Chong character, but this movie is of a piece with his Born in East LA, which also concludes with overwhelming the border with illegals)
Don Johnson
and Lindsay Lohan

Grrrr,
Marc

One of the E4 being pushed by Glenn Beck is Entrepeneurship.  If America is to become again what we are meant to be Entrenpeneurship must be allowed and encouraged to flourish. Coincidentally enough, here's this by the author of the Dilbert comic:

By SCOTT ADAMS
I understand why the top students in America study physics, chemistry, calculus and classic literature. The kids in this brainy group are the future professors, scientists, thinkers and engineers who will propel civilization forward. But why do we make B students sit through these same classes? That's like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn't it make more sense to teach B students something useful, like entrepreneurship?

 
Scott Adams
 .I speak from experience because I majored in entrepreneurship at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. Technically, my major was economics. But the unsung advantage of attending a small college is that you can mold your experience any way you want.

There was a small business on our campus called The Coffee House. It served beer and snacks, and featured live entertainment. It was managed by students, and it was a money-losing mess, subsidized by the college. I thought I could make a difference, so I applied for an opening as the so-called Minister of Finance. I landed the job, thanks to my impressive interviewing skills, my can-do attitude and the fact that everyone else in the solar system had more interesting plans.

The drinking age in those days was 18, and the entire compensation package for the managers of The Coffee House was free beer. That goes a long way toward explaining why the accounting system consisted of seven students trying to remember where all the money went. I thought we could do better. So I proposed to my accounting professor that for three course credits I would build and operate a proper accounting system for the business. And so I did. It was a great experience. Meanwhile, some of my peers were taking courses in art history so they'd be prepared to remember what art looked like just in case anyone asked.

One day the managers of The Coffee House had a meeting to discuss two topics. First, our Minister of Employment was recommending that we fire a bartender, who happened to be one of my best friends. Second, we needed to choose a leader for our group. On the first question, there was a general consensus that my friend lacked both the will and the potential to master the bartending arts. I reluctantly voted with the majority to fire him.

But when it came to discussing who should be our new leader, I pointed out that my friend—the soon-to-be-fired bartender—was tall, good-looking and so gifted at b.s. that he'd be the perfect leader. By the end of the meeting I had persuaded the group to fire the worst bartender that any of us had ever seen…and ask him if he would consider being our leader. My friend nailed the interview and became our Commissioner. He went on to do a terrific job. That was the year I learned everything I know about management.

Read More
Turning the Classroom Upside Down
.At about the same time, this same friend, along with my roommate and me, hatched a plan to become the student managers of our dormitory and to get paid to do it. The idea involved replacing all of the professional staff, including the resident assistant, security guard and even the cleaning crew, with students who would be paid to do the work. We imagined forming a dorm government to manage elections for various jobs, set out penalties for misbehavior and generally take care of business. And we imagined that the three of us, being the visionaries for this scheme, would run the show.

We pitched our entrepreneurial idea to the dean and his staff. To our surprise, the dean said that if we could get a majority of next year's dorm residents to agree to our scheme, the college would back it.

It was a high hurdle, but a loophole made it easier to clear. We only needed a majority of students who said they planned to live in the dorm next year. And we had plenty of friends who were happy to plan just about anything so long as they could later change their minds. That's the year I learned that if there's a loophole, someone's going to drive a truck through it, and the people in the truck will get paid better than the people under it.

The dean required that our first order of business in the fall would be creating a dorm constitution and getting it ratified. That sounded like a nightmare to organize. To save time, I wrote the constitution over the summer and didn't mention it when classes resumed. We held a constitutional convention to collect everyone's input, and I listened to two hours of diverse opinions. At the end of the meeting I volunteered to take on the daunting task of crafting a document that reflected all of the varied and sometimes conflicting opinions that had been aired. I waited a week, made copies of the document that I had written over the summer, presented it to the dorm as their own ideas and watched it get approved in a landslide vote. That was the year I learned everything I know about getting buy-in.

“Why do we make B students sit through the same classes as their brainy peers? That's like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn't it make sense to teach them something useful instead?
”

For the next two years my friends and I each had a private room at no cost, a base salary and the experience of managing the dorm. On some nights I also got paid to do overnight security, while also getting paid to clean the laundry room. At the end of my security shift I would go to The Coffee House and balance the books.

My college days were full of entrepreneurial stories of this sort. When my friends and I couldn't get the gym to give us space for our informal games of indoor soccer, we considered our options. The gym's rule was that only organized groups could reserve time. A few days later we took another run at it, but this time we were an organized soccer club, and I was the president. My executive duties included filling out a form to register the club and remembering to bring the ball.

By the time I graduated, I had mastered the strange art of transforming nothing into something. Every good thing that has happened to me as an adult can be traced back to that training. Several years later, I finished my MBA at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. That was the fine-tuning I needed to see the world through an entrepreneur's eyes.

If you're having a hard time imagining what an education in entrepreneurship should include, allow me to prime the pump with some lessons I've learned along the way.

Combine Skills. The first thing you should learn in a course on entrepreneurship is how to make yourself valuable. It's unlikely that any average student can develop a world-class skill in one particular area. But it's easy to learn how to do several different things fairly well. I succeeded as a cartoonist with negligible art talent, some basic writing skills, an ordinary sense of humor and a bit of experience in the business world. The "Dilbert" comic is a combination of all four skills. The world has plenty of better artists, smarter writers, funnier humorists and more experienced business people. The rare part is that each of those modest skills is collected in one person. That's how value is created.

Fail Forward. If you're taking risks, and you probably should, you can find yourself failing 90% of the time. The trick is to get paid while you're doing the failing and to use the experience to gain skills that will be useful later. I failed at my first career in banking. I failed at my second career with the phone company. But you'd be surprised at how many of the skills I learned in those careers can be applied to almost any field, including cartooning. Students should be taught that failure is a process, not an obstacle.

Find the Action. In my senior year of college I asked my adviser how I should pursue my goal of being a banker. He told me to figure out where the most innovation in banking was happening and to move there. And so I did. Banking didn't work out for me, but the advice still holds: Move to where the action is. Distance is your enemy.

 
Scott Adams
 .Attract Luck. You can't manage luck directly, but you can manage your career in a way that makes it easier for luck to find you. To succeed, first you must do something. And if that doesn't work, which can be 90% of the time, do something else. Luck finds the doers. Readers of the Journal will find this point obvious. It's not obvious to a teenager.

Conquer Fear. I took classes in public speaking in college and a few more during my corporate days. That training was marginally useful for learning how to mask nervousness in public. Then I took the Dale Carnegie course. It was life-changing. The Dale Carnegie method ignores speaking technique entirely and trains you instead to enjoy the experience of speaking to a crowd. Once you become relaxed in front of people, technique comes automatically. Over the years, I've given speeches to hundreds of audiences and enjoyed every minute on stage. But this isn't a plug for Dale Carnegie. The point is that people can be trained to replace fear and shyness with enthusiasm. Every entrepreneur can use that skill.

Write Simply. I took a two-day class in business writing that taught me how to write direct sentences and to avoid extra words. Simplicity makes ideas powerful. Want examples? Read anything by Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett.

Learn Persuasion. Students of entrepreneurship should learn the art of persuasion in all its forms, including psychology, sales, marketing, negotiating, statistics and even design. Usually those skills are sprinkled across several disciplines. For entrepreneurs, it makes sense to teach them as a package.

That's my starter list for the sort of classes that would serve B students well. The list is not meant to be complete. Obviously an entrepreneur would benefit from classes in finance, management and more.

Remember, children are our future, and the majority of them are B students. If that doesn't scare you, it probably should.

—Mr. Adams is the creator of "Dilbert."

No time at the moment to make the first contribution to this thread, but I did want to open the door , , ,

WSJ: Bahrain

MANAMA, Bahrain—Protests in Bahrain entered their third day on Wednesday, as tens of thousands continued to occupy a major intersection in the capital and thousands more marched to mourn a second man killed in Tuesday's clashes with security forces.

A committee set up by seven opposition groups to coordinate the protests called for a massive demonstration on Saturday, forecasting a gathering of at least 50,000 people.

Crowds massed at the hospital morgue, as the body of the man killed on Tuesday was ferried out on top of a land-cruiser in a coffin covered with green satin. Thousands of men followed the coffin, many holding pictures of the deceased, beating their chests and chanting "God is great" and "Death to the Al Khalifa," a reference to the country's ruling family. Security forces remained withdrawn from protest areas, stationed in large battalions around a kilometer away.

At the Pearl roundabout, a central traffic circle in the financial district of the capital which has been claimed by the protesters, more tents and makeshift food stalls sprung up Wednesday, with those who spent the night there in a festive mood. Young men, many carrying Bahraini flags, chanted and danced, while a loudspeaker broadcasted a steady stream of speeches from activists.

The mourners are expected to march to the central roundabout later in the day, further swelling the numbers there.

"It was cold last night, but we'll be here until the government meets our demands or the police come to send us to hell. More people are coming now...All of Bahrain is here," said Jelal Niama, an unemployed university graduate.

WSJ's Charles Levinson and Jerry Seib report on how public protests in Egypt have sparked protests throughout the Middle East, namely Bahrain, Libya, Algeria, Yemen and Iran.

Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, in a rare television address, offered condolences for the two deaths on Tuesday. He promised a probe into the killings and into the security-services' response to the protests, and pledged to make good on previous promises of reforms, including loosening media controls and providing special social-welfare payments.

Seven political opposition groups, including the leading Shiite bloc Al Wafaq, announced Wednesday that they have formed a committee to help coordinate protest activity and unify the demands of the protesters. The committee, which includes Sunni as well as Shiite politicians, will meet at least once a day starting Wednesday.

"We need to unify the demands of the people on the square without telling the protesters what to do...In its objectives this is a national unity movement, we have to convince citizens on the sidelines to join us," said Ebrahim Sharif, a Sunni Muslim and former banker who heads the secularist National Democratic Action society.

On Tuesday, Al Wafaq suspended its participation in Bahrain's parliament, where it holds 18 of the 40 seats, in solidarity with the protesters.

The protests and clashes that erupted on Sunday have turned Bahrain into the latest flashpoint in a wave of Arab rebellion that has already unseated regimes in Tunisia and Egypt and has triggered large protests in Algeria, Jordan and Yemen. It has also raised wider worry about the rapid spread of the unrest, and sharpened the dilemma for the Obama administration as it struggles to shape events in ways that don't harm U.S. interests in the region.

Bahrain is a tiny, island kingdom in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, best known for its banking prowess and bars that cater to nationals from alcohol-free Saudi Arabia next door. While it pumps little crude itself, its neighbors are some of the world's biggest petroleum producers.

Its position straddling the Gulf has made it a longtime, strategic ally of Washington. The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain, though no American warships are actually home-ported here.

Bahrain's Sunni Muslim rulers have long faced a restive Shiite population that alleges economic and political discrimination. Shiite leaders have pushed, sometimes violently, for more political rights over the years, though they have stopped short of trying to remove the ruling family from power.

Not all the protesters are unemployed or poor. Some of Bahrain's young professionals have joined the gatherings, vowing to keep numbers high. "I will go to work for a few hours then come back to the roundabout," said Jelal Mohammed, a 25-year-old who works as a banker at the local office of France's BNP Paribas. "We can get our rights."

But some Bahrainis are unnerved by the protests, fearing that instability could lead to economic difficulties and to further violence. "These people want the same as in Egypt. They want to destroy this country," said an elderly lady who declined to be named.

Although the latest protests often have an overtly Shia choreography, with chanting, chest slapping and references to martyrdom, some activists are eager to stress that the movement is not linked to Iran, the most populous Shia nation. "There is no single pro-Iran statement or slogan. This is people from both sects. We want genuine democracy, not clerical," said Abdulnabi Alekry, chairman of Bahrain Transparency Society.

Egypt gets its own thread for obvious reasons.  

I begin by noting how utterly vapid most of the coverage we are seeing is.   An internet friend is recommending

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

I have no idea whether he has lost his fg mind and am in Vancouver for a seminar at the moment, but perhaps one of us can take a look and report back whether it is worth the time.

====================

RED ALERT: MUBARAK NAMES FORMER AIR FORCE CHIEF AS NEW EGYPTIAN PM



Egypt's former air force chief and minister for civil aviation, Ahmed Shafiq, has
been designated the new prime minister by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and
tasked to form the next Cabinet, Al Jazeera reported Jan. 29. The announcement comes
shortly after Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was appointed vice
president, a position that has been vacant for the past 30 years.
 
Mubarak is essentially accelerating a succession plan that has been in the works for
some time. STRATFOR noted in December 2010 that a conflict was building between the
president on one side and the old guard in the army and the ruling party on the
other over Mubarak's attempt to create a path for his son Gamal to eventually
succeed him. The interim plan Mubarak had proposed was for Suleiman to become vice
president, succeed Mubarak and then pass the reins to Gamal after some time. The
stalwart members of the old guard, however, refused this plan. Though they approved
of Suleiman, they knew his tenure would be short-lived given his advanced age.
Instead, they demanded that Shafiq, who comes from the air force -- the most
privileged branch of the military from which Mubarak himself also came -- be
designated the successor. Shafiq is close to Mubarak and worked under his command in
the air force. Shafiq also has the benefit of having held a civilian role as
minister of civil aviation since 2002, making him more palatable to the public.
 
Mubarak may be nominally dissolving the Cabinet, ordering an army curfew and now
asking Shafiq to form the next government, but the embattled president is not the
one in charge. Instead, the military appears to be managing Mubarak's exit, taking
care not to engage in a confrontation with the demonstrators while the political
details are being sorted out.

Copyright 2011 STRATFOR.

==========

RED ALERT: HAMAS AND THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

The following is a report from a STRATFOR source in Hamas. Hamas, which formed in
Gaza as an outgrowth of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), has an interest in
exaggerating its role and coordination with the MB in this crisis. The following
information has not been confirmed. Nonetheless, there is a great deal of concern
building in Israel and the United States in particular over the role of the MB in
the demonstrations and whether a political opening will be made for the Islamist
organization in Egypt.

 
The Egyptian police are no longer patrolling the Rafah border crossing into Gaza.
Hamas armed men are entering into Egypt and are closely collaborating with the MB.
The MB has fully engaged itself in the demonstrations, and they are unsatisfied with
the dismissal of the Cabinet. They are insisting on a new Cabinet that does not
include members of the ruling National Democratic Party.
 
Security forces in plainclothes are engaged in destroying public property in order
to give the impression that many protesters represent a public menace. The MB is
meanwhile forming people's committees to protect public property and also to
coordinate demonstrators' activities, including supplying them with food, beverages
and first aid.

Copyright 2011 STRATFOR.

Woof All:

Just as we have a "Russia" thread and a "US-Russia" thread and a "Russia-Europe" thread, for purposes of thread coherence and improved research/search function relevance, we need to have a "US-China" thread to accompany the existing thread on "China".

Please post accordingly.  For example, I've asked GM to paste here his Popular Mechanics article here and I note that the Rare Earth Elements story, which we have discussed previously in the China thread, continues to bubble along.  As I recounted there, I made a very nice chunk of change in very short order with the two US rare earth plays MCP and REE.  I sold them in the aftermath of the apparent "resolution" of matters between Japan and China, (MCP at 28.xx and REE at 8.xx) but since then China has further tightened its export restrictions and both MCP and REE have shot up dramatically since then.

TAC!
Marc

This topic has been moved to the Science, Culture, & Humanities forum.
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=2129.0

All:

I post this not because I agree with the inevitability of American decline, but because IMHO this is a serious piece deserving serious conversation.

Marc
=========

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
Four Scenarios for the End of the American Century by 2025
By Alfred W. McCoy

A soft landing for America 40 years from now?  Don’t bet on it.  The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines.  If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.

Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.

Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration’s rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America's downfall. However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first century imperial collapse could come relatively quietly through the invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare.

But have no doubt: when Washington's global dominion finally ends, there will be painful daily reminders of what such a loss of power means for Americans in every walk of life. As a half-dozen European nations have discovered, imperial decline tends to have a remarkably demoralizing impact on a society, regularly bringing at least a generation of economic privation. As the economy cools, political temperatures rise, often sparking serious domestic unrest.

Available economic, educational, and military data indicate that, when it comes to U.S. global power, negative trends will aggregate rapidly by 2020 and are likely to reach a critical mass no later than 2030. The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, will be tattered and fading by 2025, its eighth decade, and could be history by 2030.

Significantly, in 2008, the U.S. National Intelligence Council admitted for the first time that America's global power was indeed on a declining trajectory. In one of its periodic futuristic reports, Global Trends 2025, the Council cited “the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way, roughly from West to East" and "without precedent in modern history,” as the primary factor in the decline of the “United States' relative strength -- even in the military realm.” Like many in Washington, however, the Council’s analysts anticipated a very long, very soft landing for American global preeminence, and harbored the hope that somehow the U.S. would long “retain unique military capabilities… to project military power globally” for decades to come.

No such luck.  Under current projections, the United States will find itself in second place behind China (already the world's second largest economy) in economic output around 2026, and behind India by 2050. Similarly, Chinese innovation is on a trajectory toward world leadership in applied science and military technology sometime between 2020 and 2030, just as America's current supply of brilliant scientists and engineers retires, without adequate replacement by an ill-educated younger generation.

By 2020, according to current plans, the Pentagon will throw a military Hail Mary pass for a dying empire.  It will launch a lethal triple canopy of advanced aerospace robotics that represents Washington's last best hope of retaining global power despite its waning economic influence. By that year, however, China's global network of communications satellites, backed by the world's most powerful supercomputers, will also be fully operational, providing Beijing with an independent platform for the weaponization of space and a powerful communications system for missile- or cyber-strikes into every quadrant of the globe.

Wrapped in imperial hubris, like Whitehall or Quai d'Orsay before it, the White House still seems to imagine that American decline will be gradual, gentle, and partial. In his State of the Union address last January, President Obama offered the reassurance that “I do not accept second place for the United States of America.” A few days later, Vice President Biden ridiculed the very idea that “we are destined to fulfill [historian Paul] Kennedy's prophecy that we are going to be a great nation that has failed because we lost control of our economy and overextended.” Similarly, writing in the November issue of the establishment journal Foreign Affairs, neo-liberal foreign policy guru Joseph Nye waved away talk of China's economic and military rise, dismissing “misleading metaphors of organic decline” and denying that any deterioration in U.S. global power was underway.

Ordinary Americans, watching their jobs head overseas, have a more realistic view than their cosseted leaders. An opinion poll in August 2010 found that 65% of Americans believed the country was now “in a state of decline.”  Already, Australia and Turkey, traditional U.S. military allies, are using their American-manufactured weapons for joint air and naval maneuvers with China. Already, America's closest economic partners are backing away from Washington's opposition to China's rigged currency rates. As the president flew back from his Asian tour last month, a gloomy New York Times headline summed the moment up this way: “Obama's Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage, China, Britain and Germany Challenge U.S., Trade Talks With Seoul Fail, Too.”

Viewed historically, the question is not whether the United States will lose its unchallenged global power, but just how precipitous and wrenching the decline will be. In place of Washington's wishful thinking, let’s use the National Intelligence Council's own futuristic methodology to suggest four realistic scenarios for how, whether with a bang or a whimper, U.S. global power could reach its end in the 2020s (along with four accompanying assessments of just where we are today).  The future scenarios include: economic decline, oil shock, military misadventure, and World War III.  While these are hardly the only possibilities when it comes to American decline or even collapse, they offer a window into an onrushing future.

Economic Decline: Present Situation

Today, three main threats exist to America’s dominant position in the global economy: loss of economic clout thanks to a shrinking share of world trade, the decline of American technological innovation, and the end of the dollar's privileged status as the global reserve currency.

By 2008, the United States had already fallen to number three in global merchandise exports, with just 11% of them compared to 12% for China and 16% for the European Union.  There is no reason to believe that this trend will reverse itself.

Similarly, American leadership in technological innovation is on the wane. In 2008, the U.S. was still number two behind Japan in worldwide patent applications with 232,000, but China was closing fast at 195,000, thanks to a blistering 400% increase since 2000.  A harbinger of further decline: in 2009 the U.S. hit rock bottom in ranking among the 40 nations surveyed by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation when it came to “change” in “global innovation-based competitiveness” during the previous decade.  Adding substance to these statistics, in October China's Defense Ministry unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, so powerful, said one U.S. expert, that it “blows away the existing No. 1 machine” in America.

Add to this clear evidence that the U.S. education system, that source of future scientists and innovators, has been falling behind its competitors. After leading the world for decades in 25- to 34-year-olds with university degrees, the country sank to 12th place in 2010.  The World Economic Forum ranked the United States at a mediocre 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly half of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are now foreigners, most of whom will be heading home, not staying here as once would have happened.  By 2025, in other words, the United States is likely to face a critical shortage of talented scientists.

Such negative trends are encouraging increasingly sharp criticism of the dollar's role as the world’s reserve currency. “Other countries are no longer willing to buy into the idea that the U.S. knows best on economic policy,”observed Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. In mid-2009, with the world's central banks holding an astronomical $4 trillion in U.S. Treasury notes, Russian president Dimitri Medvedev insisted that it was time to end “the artificially maintained unipolar system” based on “one formerly strong reserve currency.”

Simultaneously, China's central bank governor suggested that the future might lie with a global reserve currency “disconnected from individual nations” (that is, the U.S. dollar). Take these as signposts of a world to come, and of a possible attempt, as economist Michael Hudson has argued, “to hasten the bankruptcy of the U.S. financial-military world order.”

Economic Decline: Scenario 2020

After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2020, as long expected, the U.S. dollar finally loses its special status as the world's reserve currency.  Suddenly, the cost of imports soars. Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget.  Under pressure at home and abroad, Washington slowly pulls U.S. forces back from hundreds of overseas bases to a continental perimeter.  By now, however, it is far too late.

Faced with a fading superpower incapable of paying the bills, China, India, Iran, Russia, and other powers, great and regional, provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.  Meanwhile, amid soaring prices, ever-rising unemployment, and a continuing decline in real wages, domestic divisions widen into violent clashes and divisive debates, often over remarkably irrelevant issues. Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal. The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.

Oil Shock: Present Situation

One casualty of America's waning economic power has been its lock on global oil supplies. Speeding by America's gas-guzzling economy in the passing lane, China became the world's number one energy consumer this summer, a position the U.S. had held for over a century.  Energy specialist Michael Klare has argued that this change means China will “set the pace in shaping our global future.”

By 2025, Iran and Russia will control almost half of the world's natural gas supply, which will potentially give them enormous leverage over energy-starved Europe. Add petroleum reserves to the mix and, as the National Intelligence Council has warned, in just 15 years two countries, Russia and Iran, could “emerge as energy kingpins.”

Despite remarkable ingenuity, the major oil powers are now draining the big basins of petroleum reserves that are amenable to easy, cheap extraction. The real lesson of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was not BP's sloppy safety standards, but the simple fact everyone saw on “spillcam”: one of the corporate energy giants had little choice but to search for what Klare calls “tough oil” miles beneath the surface of the ocean to keep its profits up.

Compounding the problem, the Chinese and Indians have suddenly become far heavier energy consumers. Even if fossil fuel supplies were to remain constant (which they won’t), demand, and so costs, are almost certain to rise -- and sharply at that.  Other developed nations are meeting this threat aggressively by plunging into experimental programs to develop alternative energy sources.  The United States has taken a different path, doing far too little to develop alternative sources while, in the last three decades, doubling its dependence on foreign oil imports.  Between 1973 and 2007, oil imports have risen from 36% of energy consumed in the U.S. to 66%.

Oil Shock: Scenario 2025

The United States remains so dependent upon foreign oil that a few adverse developments in the global energy market in 2025 spark an oil shock.  By comparison, it makes the 1973 oil shock (when prices quadrupled in just months) look like the proverbial molehill.  Angered at the dollar's plummeting value, OPEC oil ministers, meeting in Riyadh, demand future energy payments in a “basket” of Yen, Yuan, and Euros.  That only hikes the cost of U.S. oil imports further.  At the same moment, while signing a new series of long-term delivery contracts with China, the Saudis stabilize their own foreign exchange reserves by switching to the Yuan.  Meanwhile, China pours countless billions into building a massive trans-Asia pipeline and funding Iran's exploitation of the world largest natural gas field at South Pars in the Persian Gulf.

Concerned that the U.S. Navy might no longer be able to protect the oil tankers traveling from the Persian Gulf to fuel East Asia, a coalition of Tehran, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi form an unexpected new Gulf alliance and affirm that China's new fleet of swift aircraft carriers will henceforth patrol the Persian Gulf from a base on the Gulf of Oman.  Under heavy economic pressure, London agrees to cancel the U.S. lease on its Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia, while Canberra, pressured by the Chinese, informs Washington that the Seventh Fleet is no longer welcome to use Fremantle as a homeport, effectively evicting the U.S. Navy from the Indian Ocean.

With just a few strokes of the pen and some terse announcements, the “Carter Doctrine,” by which U.S. military power was to eternally protect the Persian Gulf, is laid to rest in 2025.  All the elements that long assured the United States limitless supplies of low-cost oil from that region -- logistics, exchange rates, and naval power -- evaporate. At this point, the U.S. can still cover only an insignificant 12% of its energy needs from its nascent alternative energy industry, and remains dependent on imported oil for half of its energy consumption.

The oil shock that follows hits the country like a hurricane, sending prices to startling heights, making travel a staggeringly expensive proposition, putting real wages (which had long been declining) into freefall, and rendering non-competitive whatever American exports remained. With thermostats dropping, gas prices climbing through the roof, and dollars flowing overseas in return for costly oil, the American economy is paralyzed. With long-fraying alliances at an end and fiscal pressures mounting, U.S. military forces finally begin a staged withdrawal from their overseas bases.

Within a few years, the U.S. is functionally bankrupt and the clock is ticking toward midnight on the American Century.

With the 2010 elections over, its time to give the 2012 Presidential its own thread.  We kick it off with some reflections from Peggy Noonan:

All eyes have been on Capitol Hill, but let's take a look at the early stages of the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

This week the papers have been full of sightings—Newt and Huckabee are in Iowa, Pawlenty's in New Hampshire. But maybe the more interesting story is that a lot of potential candidates will decide if they are definitely going to run between now and New Year's—and some of them will be deciding over Thanksgiving weekend. It's all happening now, they're deciding in long walks, at the dinner table, and while watching the football game on the couch. They'll be talking it through, sometimes for the first time and sometimes the tenth. "Can we do this?" "Are we in this together?" "How do you feel?"

In some cases those will be hard conversations. A largely unremarked fact of modern presidential politics is the increased and wholly understandable reluctance of candidates' families to agree to a run. Looking at it through a purely personal prism, and that's where most people start, they see it not as a sacrifice, which it is, but a burden, a life-distorter, and it is those things too. But they have to agree to enter Big History, or a candidate can't go. And a lot of them don't want the job, if victory follows candidacy, of "the president's family." The stakes are too high, the era too dramatic, the life too intense. They don't want the intrusion, the end of all privacy, the fact that you're always on, always representing.

A president's spouse gets mass adulation one week and mass derision the next. But if you're a normal person you probably never wanted mass adulation or mass derision.

So what's happening now in the homes of some political figures is big and in some cases will be decisive. Potential candidates already have been approached by and met with campaign consultants, gurus looking for a gig telling them "Don't worry about all the travel, you can have a Facebook campaign, we'll make you the first I-pad candidate! You can keep your day job. You can even work your day job!" And then there are the potential contributors, the hedge fund libertarian in Greenwich, and the conservative millionaire in a Dallas suburb, who are raring to go. Candidates have to decide by at least New Year's in order to be able to tell them to stay close and keep their powder dry, and in order to plan an announcement in the spring, in time for the first big GOP debate, at the Reagan Library.

Some candidates and their families are not wrestling with the idea of running, of course. Mitt Romney, for instance, surely knows he's running. But not every potential candidate is serious about it. Some look like they're letting the possibility they'll run dangle out there because it keeps them relevant, keeps the cameras nearby, keeps their speech fees and book advances up. The one thing political journalists know and have learned the past few decades is that anyone can become president. So if you say you may run you are immediately going to get richer and more well known and treated with more respect by journalists. Another reason unlikely candidates act like they're running is that who knows, they may. It's hard to decide not to. It excites them to think they might. It helps them get up that morning and go to the 7 a.m. breakfast. "I'm not doing this for nothing, I may actually run. The people at the breakfast may hug me at my inauguration; I may modestly whisper, 'Remember that breakfast in Iowa when nobody showed? But you did. You're the reason I'm here.'" They're not horrible, they're just human. But history is serious right now, and it seems abusive to fake it. If you know in your heart you're not going to run you probably shouldn't jerk people around. This is history, after all.

View Full Image

Chad Crowe
 .More Peggy Noonan
Read Peggy Noonan's previous columns

click here to order her new book, Patriotic Grace
.All this decision making takes place within the context of a new mood in the party. We are at the beginning of what looks like a conservative renaissance, free of the past and back to basics. It is a revived conservatism restored to a sense of mission.

The broader context is this: Every four years we say, 'This is a crucial election,' and every four years it's more or less true. But 2012 will seem truer than most. I suspect it will be, like 1980, a year that feels like a question: Will America turn itself around or not? Will it go in a dramatically new direction, or not.

And if there are new directions to be taken, it's probably true that only a president, in the end, can definitively lead in that new direction. On spending, for instance, which is just one issue, it's probably true that the new Congress will wrestle with cuts and limits and new approaches, and plenty of progress is possible, and big issues faced. But at the end of the day it will likely take a president to summon and gather the faith and trust of the people, and harness the national will. It's probably true that only a president can ask everyone to act together, to trust each other, even, and to accept limits together in pursuit of a larger good.

Right now, at this moment, it looks like the next Republican nominee for president will probably be elected president. Everyone knows a rising tide when they see one. But everything changes, and nothing is sure. President Obama's poll numbers seem to be inching up, and there's reason to guess or argue that he hit bottom the week after the election and has nowhere to go but up.

Most of my life we've lived in a pretty much fifty-fifty nation, with each cycle decided by where the center goes. Mr. Obama won only two years ago by 9.5 million votes. That's a lot of votes. His supporters may be disheartened and depressed, but they haven't disappeared. They'll show up for a presidential race, especially if the Republicans do not learn one of the great lessons of 2010: The center has to embrace the conservative; if it doesn't, the conservative loses. Add to that the fact that the White House is actually full of talented people, and though they haven't proved good at governing they did prove good not long ago at campaigning. It's their gift. It's ignored at the GOP's peril.

All of this means that for Republicans, the choice of presidential nominee will demand an unusual level of sobriety and due diligence from everyone in the party, from primary voters in Iowa to county chairmen in South Carolina, and from party hacks in Washington to tea party powers in the Rust Belt. They are going to have to approach 2012 with more than the usual seriousness. They'll have to think big, and not indulge resentments or anger or petty grievances. They'll have to be cool eyed. They'll have to watch and observe the dozen candidates expected to emerge, and ask big questions.

Who can lead? Who can persuade the center? Who can summon the best from people? Who will seem credible (as a person who leads must)? Whose philosophy is both sound and discernible? Who has the intellectual heft? Who has the experience? Who seems capable of wisdom? These are serious questions, but 2012 is going to be a serious race.

Good luck to those families having their meetings and deliberations on Thanksgiving weekend.

Stratfor

Summary
The president of the United States arrived in Indonesia on Nov. 9 as interest in strengthening commercial and military ties is increasing in both Washington and Jakarta. Constraints on this emergent relationship remain, however, on issues such as economic protectionism and human rights. Still, the relationship is set to grow, leaving Indonesia with the task of carefully balancing between the United States and China as it attempts to capitalize on its economic and strategic advantages and relative political stability.

Analysis
U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in Indonesia on Nov. 9 after visiting India in a tour that will later take him to South Korea and Japan for the G-20 and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summits. Obama has delayed his visit to Indonesia twice already, and volcanic ash in the air over Java from the recent eruptions of Mount Merapi may require him to cut this one short, but the trip was made as a sign of deepening interest in a relationship with bilateral, multilateral and strategic potential.

Washington wants to forge a closer relationship with Indonesia to boost bilateral trade and investment, use ties with Indonesia as a pathway to better relations with the region as a whole through multilateral groupings like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and generally maintain support for a Muslim ally in the conflict against radical jihadists. But the longer term and more important strategic goal is to develop Indonesia as one of several regional counterweights to China. Jakarta will welcome greater U.S. involvement, and ultimately may lean toward the United States and away from China. But it will try to avoid choosing sides and will seek to maintain good relations with China and the United States, and leverage its economic size and strategic location to its maximum advantage.


Toward a Comprehensive U.S.-Indonesian Partnership

On one level, Obama’s visit to Indonesia is about improving diplomatic relations to pave the way for more substantial economic, security and political agreements. Obama will emphasize that Indonesia is a model Muslim-majority country. He will highlight how its $631 billion economy, population of 237 million and fast economic growth (estimated at around 6 percent in 2010) hold promise for the U.S. economy, and that it has made strides in stabilizing its domestic political situation since the chaos of the late 1990s, when the Asian financial crisis struck and the collapse of the decades-old Suharto regime brought the country close to breaking apart. Obama will emphasize his willingness to engage the Muslim world, will call attention to his childhood years in Indonesia to show his connection to the country, and will express optimism about Indonesian and American relations going forward.

Obama and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono officially will launch a Comprehensive Partnership Agreement between the two states, which will serve as a framework for expanding bilateral ties. This partnership, announced in June, included an agreement on closer defense ties and science and technology cooperation and American investment in Indonesia. The latter included a renewed agreement with the Overseas Private Investment Corp. (which has provided $2.1 billion since the 1960s but is only engaged in $94 million worth of projects at the moment) and a $1 billion credit facility from the Export-Import Bank of the United States. The two sides have established a joint commission that met in September and will meet annually and several working groups in trade and investment, security and energy, and education and democracy; these groups are expected to develop more initiatives going forward, ranging from U.S. investment in Indonesia’s infrastructure construction and energy sector to expanded educational exchanges.

Simultaneously, U.S. companies will promote their products in Indonesia, as Washington attempts to give more momentum to its national export initiative. For its part, Indonesia is looking for high-tech and high-value added goods, especially in infrastructure, energy and transportation, inherently capital-intensive sectors difficult to develop in a sprawling archipelago like Indonesia.

Washington and Jakarta also will reaffirm their security relationship. The United States has agreed to restart training and exchanges with Kopassus, the Indonesian military’s special operations unit. Though that cooperation has not yet begun, it is on track to do so, and is only one aspect of U.S.-Indonesian security cooperation. Washington will continue to support Indonesia’s police efforts to fight terrorism, including through the elite Special Detachment 88, which has racked up a string of successes over the past year. The United States also is looking to expand arms exports after having seen Indonesia’s willingness to turn elsewhere (for instance, to Russia) for its military needs.


Constraints on the U.S.-Indonesian Relationship

Of course, there are inherent constraints on their cooperation. Indonesia is highly protective about its economy, which is dominated by state-owned and state-affiliated companies and has high barriers to foreign competition that threatens privileged sectors. The United States repeatedly has run into trouble accessing Indonesian markets for farm goods and medicine, for instance, and has a number of outstanding disputes over import and investment regulations and concerns of inadequate intellectual property rights protection. In sectors where Jakarta has opened up the economy, it already has attracted a number of foreign investors to provide the higher-end goods and services, including huge infrastructure contracts, that it needs to continue developing — which means the United States faces stiff competition from far more established players like Singapore, Japan, and South Korea (not to mention Western competitors like the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, which in 2009 were also bigger investors in Indonesia than the United States).

On the security front, although Indonesia can be expected to maintain strong relations with the United States, it does not want to be overly dependent on Washington or to appear like a proxy state. The Indonesian government must tread carefully since the United States is unpopular among those Indonesians who see Obama’s overtures to the Muslim world as mere rhetoric and who resent U.S. support for Israel (some of whom will stage demonstrations during Obama’s visit). Moreover, military ties will face political obstacles on the American side. This is because the Indonesian military always will struggle to maintain control over far-flung islands, especially in places like Aceh and West Papua where ethnic minorities have a tendency toward unrest or separatism — fairly frequently resulting in heavy-handed security measures and human rights violations. Despite officially re-opening relations, U.S. cooperation with the Indonesian military’s special operations forces must be approved by the U.S. State Department, which will vet the Indonesians’ progress on human rights.

Despite these hindrances, both states’ interests overlap significantly enough to point them toward deeper cooperation. Washington wants to tap into this massive and young consumer market and wants to take advantage of Indonesia’s fast growth rates and relative political stability. Meanwhile, the United States offers a massive consumer pool for Indonesian exports. Moreover, no one can offer better security guarantees for the strategically situated island chain than the United States, the world’s supreme naval power.


The Balancing Act with China

Crucially, the United States sees Indonesia as a counterweight in Southeast Asia to the rising influence of China. In recent years, Washington’s relations with China have become more tense as Beijing’s economic might has increased and it has expanded its influence in its periphery. China has built up its military and naval capabilities and has become more strident regarding its territorial claims in the South China Sea, a crucial waterway for the United States and its allies Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The United States has sought to re-energize its alliances and partnerships in the region not only for the sake of its own regional relations, but also as a means of hedging against China. Indonesia is especially suitable for this purpose. It straddles the Strait of Malacca, a global shipping choke point, as well as the Sunda and Lombok straits, making it critical for sea-lanes between the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea and the Pacific and Australia and China. These sea-lanes supply China with critical raw materials; any power controlling this area accordingly has enormous leverage over Beijing.

This process has alarmed Beijing, which views it as an encirclement policy. As Washington gradually extricates itself from conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia, Beijing fears U.S. attention will come to focus squarely on suppressing China’s rise. Indeed, the U.S. focus on Indonesia, a staunch Cold War ally under the U.S.-backed Suharto dictatorship, has reinforced this impression of an emerging Cold War-style containment policy.

In general, Indonesia’s trade relationships with the United States and China are comparable, though China has a slight edge. Indonesia exported $11.5 billion and imported $14 billion worth of goods from China in 2009, while the United States exported $5.1 billion worth of goods to Indonesia and imported $12.9 billion worth. Indonesian imports from China grew by nearly 56 percent in the first three quarters of 2010, as the China-ASEAN free trade agreement took full effect. Still, U.S. export growth to Indonesia was also strong, growing 37 percent during the first half of the year. The United States is a larger investor in Indonesia than China, but neither country has a very large role — the United States accounted for 1.6 percent of total foreign direct investment in Indonesia in 2009, as opposed to China’s 0.6 percent.

Of course, Beijing has a number of economic advantages at the moment, including its aggressive outward investment strategy. This is driven by state-owned enterprises and state banks with massive pools of cash that have been allowed to spread across the world looking to expand markets, employ their services and buy up resources, including in Indonesia. To emphasize its economic strength and cash reserves it is able to draw upon immediately, on Nov. 8, the day before Obama arrived in Indonesia, Beijing announced a $6.6 billion construction and trade deal with Jakarta.

But Beijing’s growing economic sway has little impact on the immense U.S. advantage in security matters. The U.S. re-engagement therefore leaves Jakarta in a tricky position not unlike that of its fellow ASEAN states. It stands to benefit from competition between the United States and China (as well as competition among Singapore, Japan, the European Union and others) as it seeks to attract the highest bidder and to draw in foreign investment, however if relations between the United States and China take a turn for the worse, Indonesia could find itself caught in the middle of a strategic confrontation.

But Indonesia is in a more advantageous position than its fellow ASEAN states in managing this tricky situation. With the largest economy and population in ASEAN, and a strategic location in the crossroads of global maritime trade, Jakarta has a unique ability to leverage its relationships with the United States, China and other players. Domestic stability and national unity — maintaining the stabilization over the past near-decade — remain at the top of its strategic priorities. This means that economic growth and foreign capital are necessary, but also that it must move carefully on domestic reforms allowing foreign competition. Hence Jakarta will seek a careful balance in its relations, and will avoid having to choose sides. It will welcome improved ties with Washington and U.S. re-engagement with the region, while allowing Beijing to gain further traction in the economic sphere. In the final analysis, however, Indonesia has far more to fear from a militarily ascendant China close to home than it does from an outside power like the United States, which shares Indonesia’s interest in stability in its surrounding waters.

This thread may include subjects such as depletion of fish, ocean currents and their temperatures, dead zones (i.e. no oxygen, such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico) trash (e.g. the vast whirlpool of trash in the Pacific) and more.  We begin with  , , , waves.
================

Terrors of the sea

Are "rogue waves" responsible for the disappearance of dozens of ships every year?

 

THE CLOCK READ midnight when the 100-foot wave hit the ship, rising from the North Atlantic out of the darkness. Among the ocean’s terrors, a wave this size was the most feared and the least understood, more myth than reality—or so people had thought. This giant was certainly real. As the RRS Discovery plunged down into the wave’s deep trough, it heeled 28 degrees to port, rolled 30 degrees back to starboard, then recovered to face the incoming seas. What chance did they have, the 47 scientists and crew aboard this research cruise gone horribly wrong? A series of storms had trapped them 250 miles off the coast of Northern Ireland in the black void east of Rockall, a volcanic island that is nicknamed Waveland for the nastiness of its surrounding waters. More than a thousand wrecked ships lay on the seafloor below.

 

Captain Keith Avery steered his vessel directly into the onslaught, just as he’d been doing for five days. While weather like this was common in the cranky North Atlantic, these waves were unlike anything he’d encountered in 30 years of seafaring. And worse, they kept rearing up from different directions. Avery knew their only hope was to remain where they were, with their bow pointed into the waves. Turning around was too risky; if one of these giants caught Discovery broadside, there would be long odds on survival. A breaking 100-foot wave packs 100 tons of force per square meter and can tear a ship in half.

Below deck, the scientists huddled in their cabins nursing black eyes and broken ribs. Ten days earlier, in late January 2000, they had left port in Southampton, England, on what they had hoped would be a typical three-week trip to Iceland and back. Along the way they’d stop and sample the water for salinity, temperature, oxygen and other nutrients. From these tests the team would draw a picture of what was happening out there, how the ocean’s basic characteristics were shifting, and why. These are not small questions on a planet that is 71 percent covered in salt water. As the Earth’s climate changes—as the winds increase, as the oceans heat up—what does all this mean for us? Trouble, most likely, and this team was in the business of finding out how much. It was deeply frustrating for them to be lashed to their bunks rather than out on the deck working.

The trip was far from a loss, however. During the endless trains of massive waves, Discovery itself was collecting data that would lead to a chilling revelation. The ship was ringed with instruments; everything that happened out there was being precisely measured. Months later, long after Avery had returned everyone safely to the Southampton docks, Penny Holliday, one of the expedition’s two chief scientists, began to analyze these figures and would discover that the waves they had experienced were the largest ever scientifically recorded in the open ocean. The significant wave height, an average of the largest 33 percent of the waves, was 61 feet, with frequent spikes far beyond that. At the same time, none of the state-of-the-art weather forecasts and wave models—the information upon which all ships, oil rigs, fisheries, and passenger boats rely—had predicted these behemoths. In other words, under this particular set of weather conditions, waves this size should not have existed. And yet they did.

HISTORY IS FULL of eyewitness accounts of giant waves, monsters in the 100-foot range and beyond, but until very recently scientists dismissed them. The problem was this: According to the basic physics of ocean waves, the conditions that would produce a 100-footer were so far beyond rare as to virtually never happen. Anyone who claimed to have seen one, therefore, was engaging in nautical tall tales or outright lies.

Even so, it was difficult to discount a report from the polar hero Ernest Shackleton, hardly the type for hysterical exaggeration. During his crossing from Antarctica to South Georgia Island in April 1916, Shackleton recorded an encounter with a wave far larger than any he had seen in 26 years of experience on the ocean. “It was a mighty upheaval of the ocean,” he wrote. When the wave hit his ship, Shackleton and his crew were “flung forward like a cork.” Fast bailing and major luck were all that saved them from capsizing. “Earnestly we hoped that never again would we encounter such a wave.”

The men on the 850-foot cargo ship München would have seconded that, if any of them had survived their rendezvous with a similar wave on Dec. 12, 1978. Considered unsinkable, the München was a cutting-edge craft, the flagship of the German Merchant Navy. At 3:25 a.m., fragments of a Morse code Mayday, emanating from 450 miles north of the Azores, signaled that the vessel had suffered grave damage from a wave. But even after 110 ships and 13 aircraft were deployed—the most comprehensive search in the history of shipping—the ship and its 27 crew were never seen again. A haunting clue was left behind: Searchers found one of the München’s lifeboats, usually stowed 65 feet above the water, floating empty. Its twisted metal fittings indicated that it had been torn away. “Something extraordinary” had destroyed the ship, concluded the official report.

The München’s disappearance points to the main problem with proving the existence of a giant wave: If you run into that kind of nightmare, it’s likely to be your last. The force of waves is hard to overstate. An 18-inch wave can topple a wall built to withstand 125-mph winds, for instance, and 5-foot-tall surf regularly kills people caught in the wrong places. The number of people who’ve witnessed a 100-foot wave and made it back home to describe the experience is very small.

Then, in 1995, something happened that no one could ignore. On Jan. 1 that year, the North Sea was feisty due to a pair of storms, a brutish one crawling northward and a smaller one moving southward to meet it. Statoil’s Draupner oil-drilling platform sat somewhere between them, about 100 miles off the tip of Norway. For the crew who lived on the rig it was a New Year’s Day of 38-foot seas rolling by, as measured by the laser wave recorder on the platform’s underside.

Unpleasant, perhaps, but not especially dramatic—until 3 p.m., when an 85-foot wave careened over the horizon and walloped the rig at 45 mph. While the Draupner sustained only moderate damage, the proof was there. This wasn’t a case of laser malfunction or too many aquavit toasts the night before. It was the first confirmed measurement of a freak wave, more than twice as tall and steep as its neighbors, a teetering maniac ripping across the North Sea.

They were out there all right. You could call them whatever you wanted—rogues, freaks, giants—but the bottom line was that no one had accounted for them. The engineers who’d built the Draupner rig had calculated that once every 10,000 years the North Sea might throw them a 64-foot curveball in 38-foot seas. Eighty-five-foot waves were not part of the equation. But the rules had changed. Now scientists had a set of numbers that pointed to an unsettling truth: Some of these waves make their own rules. Suddenly the emphasis shifted from explaining why giant waves couldn’t simply leap out of the ocean to figuring out how it was that they did.

This was a matter of much brow sweat for the oil industry, which would prefer that its multimillion-dollar rigs not be swept away. It had happened before. In 1982 the Ocean Ranger, a 337-foot-high oil platform located 170 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, was struck by an outsize wave in heavy weather. We’ll never know how big the wave was exactly, for there were no survivors. Built to withstand 110-foot seas, the Ocean Ranger had capsized and sank close to instantly, killing all 84 people on board.

In the nautical world things were even more troubling. Across the global seas ships were meeting these waves, from megaton vessels like theMünchen down to recreational sailboats. At best, the encounters resulted in damage; at worst, the boats vanished. “Two large ships sink every week on average [worldwide], but the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash. It simply gets put down to ‘bad weather,’” said Dr. Wolfgang Rosenthal, senior scientist for the MaxWave Project, a consortium of European scientists that convened in 2000 to investigate the disappearing ships.

While Rosenthal’s numbers may be high, his point is well taken. Exact statistics of ships scuttled by giant waves are impossible to come by, but it is clear that every year, on average, more than two dozen large ships sink or otherwise go missing, taking their crews with them. When I first read about the missing ships, I was astonished. In the high-tech marine world of radar, GPS, and satellite surveillance, how could hundreds of enormous vessels just get swallowed up by the sea? Imagine the headlines if even a single 747 slipped off the map with all its passengers and was never heard from again. After the Draupner incident, it became undeniable: No one had a clue how waves behaved in the most extreme forms.

A WAVE MIGHT seem to be a simple thing, but in fact a wave of any kind is the most complicated form in nature. Paradoxically, a wave is both an object and a motion. When wave energy moves through water, the water itself doesn’t actually go anywhere. The wave energy does. It’s like cracking a whip.

In order to exist, waves require a disturbing force and a restoring force. In the ocean that disturbing force is usually, but not always, the wind. (Earthquakes, underwater landslides, and the gravitational pull of the sun and moon can also play this role.) The restoring force is usually, but not always, gravity. And all of this goes to explain why, if you’re serious about trying to pin down a wave, you turn to equations rather than words.

But math fails even the experts, because waves in nature do all sorts of bizarre stuff. When Penny Holliday finally got around to studying her data from Discovery’s stormy February 2000 trip, she and a colleague at the National Oceanographic Center in Southampton concluded that most of the higher-than-expected waves the ship encountered were created by an effect known as “resonance.” Resonance is an aspect of nonlinearity that is endlessly complex when scrawled across a whiteboard, but kindergarten-simple when explained by the analogy of a kid pumping his legs on a swing, dramatically boosting his height on each pass. Energy is continually being added to the system, more and more and more, in erratic bursts. Likewise in the North Atlantic, wind energy surged into the waves until they grew to enormous proportions.

But the freak waves—the mutants that are three or four times taller than anything else in the surrounding seas? One of Holliday’s colleagues, Peter Challenor, admits that an explanation for those giants is a long way off. “We don’t have that random messy theory for nonlinear waves. At all,” he says. “People have been working actively on this for the past 50 years at least. We don’t even have the start of a theory.”

 

The ocean, it seems, doesn’t subscribe to the orderly explanations that we would like it to. Its depths still hold more secrets than anyone can count.

We kick off this new thread with a really good idea from our Canadian friends:

Stephen Taylor: The beginning of the end of the Canadian welfare state

Stephen Taylor July 26, 2010 – 10:45 am

I received a call last week from a reporter around noon about what he
conceded was “the story that just won’t go away.” He was, of course, talking
about the census. He wanted to know if I could pass on a few names of
possible interviews for right-wingers that support the government’s stand to
scrap the long-form census. Of course, there are the folks over at the
Western Standard who are taking up their obvious position against the
mandatory “burden,” but in broader view, it got me thinking about who
opposes the government’s plan and why the story would not just go away.

Every day it seems that there’s a new group of people lining up to bemoan
the Industry Minister’s announcement that the census would forego the
mandatory long-form. Certainly, this illustrates a serious problem that
Stephen Harper faces as Prime Minister. Facing an opposition that can’t get
its act together is one thing, but a nation where the voices of special
interests are louder than ordinary citizens is another.

Indeed in this country, there are two groups of people. In fact, some would
call these groups the haves and the have-nots. This is an not inaccurate way
of describing it, but those that would might have the two switched.
Canadians form two groups: those that receive from the government and those
that pay to the government. Those who form — or are constituent to —
organizations dependent on government policy (and spending) are firmly
against the changes to the census. Those on the other side are largely
ambivalent because they are the large, unorganized and unsubsidized net
taxpaying masses.

The conservative/libertarian Fraser Institute think tank’s motto is “if it
matters, measure it.” The untruth of the inverse of this statement is at the
centre of why this government should follow through. “If you measure it, it
matters” is the motto of those net tax-receiving organizations who only
matter if they can make their case. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has tried
the ideological argument against these groups for years. But ideology is by
its nature debatable; removing the framework of debate is his shortcut to
victory.

If Stephen Harper succeeds in moving in this direction, he will be in the
initial stages of dealing a huge blow to the welfare state. If one day we
have no idea how many divorced Hindu public transit users there are in East
Vancouver, government policy will not be concocted to address them
specifically. Indeed if this group were organized (the DHPTUEV?) and looking
for government intervention, they’d be against the census change. The
trouble is that in Canada, the non-affiliated taxpayers not looking for a
handout have not organized. Indeed, the only dog they have in this fight is
the amount of tax they pay (aka “transfers”) to sustain the interests of
others.

QMI’s David Akin exclaimed surprise that from his cell within the beehive of
special interests that is Ottawa, he was shocked to find that a full half —
that other half — of Canadians aren’t upset about the changes to the census
when it seems that’s the only thing the other bees seem to be buzzing about.
The story that “just won’t go away” is a flurry of activity “inside the
beehive,” because until you go outside, you can’t see the forest for the
trees.

The other recent Lockheed Martin-related news story of the past couple of
weeks was the Conservative government’s huge sole-sourced $16-billion
contract with Lockheed Martin to buy F-35 fighter jets. Perhaps I was a bit
naive to think that every part of that sentence should be offensive to the
Ottawa media… sole-sourced… American arms dealer… flying war machines…
Conservative government. No, this largest military purchase in Canadian
history didn’t even make a significant blip on the Ottawa establishment
radar, simply because it didn’t challenge the position of any special
interest groups. There’s no bevy of community/cultural/government
organizations ready to line up to criticize/laud such a move. If the
government had taken $16-billion out of HRSDC’s $80+ billion annual budget
to pay for it, however, there’d be a swarm.

I believe that this Prime Minister has a few objectives in mind as he
integrates seemingly transactional initiatives into something
transformative. First, he merged the Progressive Conservative party and the
Canadian Alliance to challenge what seemed to be entrenched Liberal
electoral domination. Through initiatives such as financial starvation via
election finance reform and ideological force-feeding on the policy front,
Stephen Harper seeks to diminish or destroy the Liberal Party to replace
them with the Conservatives as Canada’s default choice for government. His
greatest challenge is to dismantle the modern welfare state. If it can’t be
measured, future governments can’t pander. I imagine that Stephen Harper’s
view, Canada should be a country of individual initiative, not one of
collective dependence “justified” through the collection of data.

This article is from POTH and as such its integrity, particularly on a subject such as this one, is suspect.  That said, I post it because I respect Paul Volcker.
====================

Volcker Pushes for Reform, Regretting Past Silence
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Published: July 9, 2010

JUST before the Fourth of July weekend, Paul A. Volcker packed his fishing gear and set off for his annual outing to the Canadian wilds to cast for Atlantic salmon.


He left behind a group of legislators in Washington still trying to nail down a controversial attempt to overhaul the nation’s financial regulations in the wake of the country’s most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.
A well-regarded lion of the regulatory world, Mr. Volcker had endorsed the legislation before he went fishing, but unenthusiastically. If he were a teacher, and not a senior White House adviser and the towering former chairman of the Federal Reserve, he says, he would have given the new rules just an ordinary B — not even a B-plus.

“There is a certain circularity in all this business,” he concedes. “You have a crisis, followed by some kind of reform, for better or worse, and things go well for a while, and then you have another crisis.”

As the financial overhaul took final shape recently, he worked the phone from his Manhattan office and made periodic visits to Washington, trying to persuade members of Congress to make the legislation more far-reaching. “Constructive advice,” he calls it, emphasizing that he never engaged in lobbying.

For all of what he describes as the overhaul’s strengths — particularly the limits placed on banks’ trading activities — he still feels that the legislation doesn’t go far enough in curbing potentially problematic bank activities like investing in hedge funds.

Like few other policy giants of his generation, Mr. Volcker has been a pivotal figure in the regulatory universe for decades, and as he looks back at his long, storied career he confesses to some regrets, in particular for failing to speak out more forcefully about the dangers of a seismic wave of financial deregulation that began in the 1970s and reached full force in the late 1990s.

Despite his recent efforts to ensure that the financial legislation might correct what he regards as some of the mistakes of the deregulatory years, he’s concerned that it still gives banks too much wiggle room to repeat the behavior that threw the nation into crisis in the first place.

Some analysts share Mr. Volcker’s worries that the proposed changes may ultimately not be enough.

“It could be we will look back in 10 years and say, ‘Wow, Volcker really changed the tone of the debate and the outcome,’ ” says Simon Johnson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a historian of financial crises and regulation. “But I kind of worry that is not going to happen.”

Hear, hear, says Mr. Volcker.

“People are nervous about the long-term outlook, and they should be,” he says.

AMONG the tools that Mr. Volcker has been able to deploy when regulatory debates heat up is the public support he enjoys in financial and political circles.

He earned that esteem over many years, and is famously credited for making tough-minded choices to tame runaway inflation as Fed chairman from 1979 to 1987, when he served under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

At the age of 82, Mr. Volcker is from a generation of Wall Street personalities who accepted strict financial regulation as a fact of life through much of their careers. In his recent push for more stringent financial regulations than he believed Congress — and the Obama administration, for that matter — were inclined to approve, he lined up public support for a tougher crackdown from other well-known financiers who are roughly his age, including George Soros, Nicholas F. Brady, William H. Donaldson and John C. Bogle.

His most visible contribution to the current regulatory overhaul effort is what has come to be known as the Volcker rule, which in its initial form would have banned commercial banks from engaging in what Wall Street calls proprietary trading — that is, risking their own funds to speculate on potentially volatile products like mortgage-backed securities and credit-default swaps.

Such bets added considerable tinder to the financial conflagration that erupted in 2008. Many went horribly awry, and the federal government used taxpayer money to bail out banks, Wall Street firms and even a major insurer.

“I did not realize that the speculative trading by commercial banks had gotten as far out of hand as it had,” says Mr. Volcker, explaining why he first proposed the rule 18 months ago.

Congressional handicappers and Wall Street originally gave the Volcker rule a slim chance of becoming part of the overhaul bill — until, in fact, it got solidly on track to do just that.

Mr. Volcker thinks that Congress has watered down his trading rule — more on that later — but rather than roar in protest, he has resigned himself to the present shape of the Volcker rule as well as the overall legislation.

“The success of this approach is going to be heavily dependent on how aggressively and intelligently it is implemented,” he says, emphasizing that a new, 10-member regulatory council authorized by the bill will have to be vigilant and tough to prevent the nation’s giant banks and investment houses from pulling America into yet another devastating credit crisis. “It is not just a question of defining what needs to be done, but carrying it out in practice, day by day, bank by bank.”

The 2,400-page financial overhaul legislation, already passed by the House, is coming up for a vote in the Senate this week.

The Obama administration says it is now satisfied with the broader legislation, and in particular with the Volcker rule in its amended form.

“The Volcker rule was designed to make sure that banks could not engage in proprietary trading or create risks to the system through their investments in hedge funds or private equity,” says Neal S. Wolin, the deputy Treasury secretary. “We accomplished that.”

Some members of Congress who have backed the bill still say that it is not as restrictive as they would like, but that a more sweeping bill — one that also hewed to Mr. Volcker’s original conception — wouldn’t make it through the Senate, where the vote is expected to be close.

Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, subscribes to that view. He says that there are stronger measures he would have preferred to see in the bill, including the original version of the Volcker rule, but that political reality dictated otherwise.

“I would give the present bill an A-minus,” Mr. Frank says, “when you consider that six months ago people were saying the Volcker rule had no chance.”

Mr. Frank is quick to point out that Mr. Volcker signed off on the compromises that got the Volcker rule into the bill. Mr. Volcker doesn’t dispute that.

“The thing went from what is best to what could be passed,” he says.

============

Page 2 of 3)



THE financial bill has been routinely described in the news media and on Capitol Hill as the most far-reaching regulatory overhaul since the Great Depression, which in some aspects it may be. But it certainly falls short of re-establishing some of the strict boundaries that the earlier laws put in place.


In Chicago on Nov. 26, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced that Mr. Volcker would lead an Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Those laws, most notably the Glass-Steagall Act, forbade commercial banks (what are now, for example, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America) and investment banks (like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) from mingling plain-vanilla products like savings accounts, mortgages and business loans with the more high-octane, high-risk endeavors of trading.

Such rules managed to keep the banks and the Wall Street investment houses — and the broader economy that depended on them — out of a 2008-style crisis for several decades. But the gradual unwinding of those regulations began in the 1970s as Mr. Volcker rose to prominence, first as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1975, and then as Fed chairman.

Mr. Volcker says that most of the deregulation came after he left the Fed. His reluctance to deregulate contributed in part to his departure under pressure from the Reagan administration. His replacement, Alan Greenspan, openly campaigned to weaken and finally repeal Glass-Steagall, and President Bill Clinton signed the repeal into law in 1999.

Although Mr. Volcker opposed the repeal, he didn’t go public with his concerns. “It is very difficult to take restrictive action when the economy and the financial markets seemed to be doing so well,” he says of his silence at the time. “But eventually things blew up.”

He also says he failed to anticipate just how wild things would become, post-Glass-Steagall: “Those were the days before credit-default swaps, derivatives, securitization. All of that changed the landscape, and now some adjustment must be made.”

There were other, earlier silences. Starting in the 1970s, ceilings came off the interest rates banks could place on most deposits and loans. A rising inflation rate made the ceilings impractical, and competition from unregulated money market funds was siphoning big chunks of deposits from the banks.

“The lifting of interest-rate ceilings was inevitable,” he says. “I was for doing it more gradually, but it got such a momentum that we moved the limits more abruptly than I wanted to.”

In the wake of those changes, banks were suddenly free to charge more for risky loans, and that encouraged risky lending. The subprime mortgage market grew out of this dynamic, as did the panoply of complex, mortgage-backed securities, credit-default swaps and heart-stopping leverage that finally produced the 2008 crisis.

In retrospect, Mr. Volcker regrets not challenging the widely held assumptions that underpinned much of this. “You had an intellectual conviction that you did not need much regulation — that the market could take care of itself,” he says. “I’m happy that illusion has been shattered.”

THE Volcker rule, in its initial, undiluted form, was an attempt to resurrect the spirit of Glass-Steagall.

The administration initially did not want to separate banks and investment houses, and wanted federal regulation and protections in place for both the Banks of America and the Goldman Sachses of the world. Mr. Volcker disagreed. Let Goldman Sachs and others trade to their hearts’ content, he argued in Congressional testimony last fall, and if they fail they can lose their own money, not get a dime in bailouts from taxpayers, and then be dismantled by the government in an orderly fashion.

Old-fashioned commercial banks that made loans to individuals and businesses were much more essential to the financial system, he argued, and deserved broader federal support than pure Wall Street trading shops.

But in exchange for that support, Mr. Volcker said, commercial banks had to agree to a partial resurrection of Glass-Steagall that corralled their trading activities. His hope is that the trading restrictions will make the nation’s banks embrace the business of commercial and consumer lending more fully and move away from speculative trading.

To encourage that shift, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, and Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, co-sponsored an amendment to the financial bill that would have incorporated the Volcker rule with all of its original restrictions. Mr. Volcker even had a hand in writing the amendment, so much so that Senator Merkley suggested, only half-jokingly, that it should be called the Merkley-Levin-Volcker amendment.

The White House, after resisting, signed on to the proposal, and so did Congress after much internal wrangling — but the legislation now contains what Mr. Volcker considers an annoying and potentially dangerous loophole.

Instead of forbidding banks to make investments in hedge funds and private equity funds, the amendment allows them to invest up to 3 percent of their capital in such funds, so long as the fund is “walled off” from the bank in a separate subsidiary.

==============

Page 3 of 3)



Banks won’t be allowed to leverage their investments by lending to a hedge fund; such a loan, if sizable enough, could endanger the bank if the hedge fund should fail. In addition, if regulators discover that a bank is overexposed to a given fund, they are required to intervene and, in some cases, may even be able to shut down the fund or restrict its activities, in order to preserve a bank’s well-being.

But the lending restriction is not as clear-cut as it should be, cautions Senator Merkley.
“We have to get some clarification on that,” he says.

Nor is it clear that a bank wouldn’t try to come to the aid of a hedge fund or a private equity firm in danger of failing if that failure would also cause financial or reputational problems for the bank.

For all of that, Henry Kaufman, a Wall Street economist and a contemporary of Mr. Volcker, wonders how effectively regulators will enforce any of the bill’s numerous mandates. “The legislation is a Rube Goldberg contraption,” he says, “and there are very long timelines before the Volcker rule is fully implemented.”

Whatever warts exist in the Volcker rule, its author says that other positive elements of the larger bill are still worthy and important.

“Don’t take the Volcker rule out of perspective,” he says. “It is one aspect of a broad reform, and it became a big issue because the administration initially disagreed.”

MR. VOLCKER has had a lukewarm relationship with the Obama White House, where the approach to the economy and financial regulation has been dominated by Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, and Lawrence H. Summers, director of the National Economic Council.

Both men were at the center of the deregulatory whirlwind that swept across Wall Street and Washington over the last decade or so, and analysts have considered them to be friendlier to Wall Street and less inclined to pursue tougher regulations than Mr. Volcker would be.

Mr. Volcker supported Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential election, and the new president named him to lead his Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a group of distinguished outsiders with little real impact on White House policy — until Mr. Volcker publicly proposed the ban on proprietary trading by commercial banks.

After the proposal gained support outside Washington, the president embraced it and dubbed it the Volcker rule. That gave Mr. Volcker more access to the White House and the Treasury on regulatory policy, but people who work with him say that the White House doesn’t regularly seek his input on other issues.

However complicated his relationship with Washington, Mr. Volcker says his personal life has taken a turn for the better. He had been a widower since 1998, until six months ago when he married Anke Dening, his longtime administrator, executive secretary, adviser and constant companion. Ms. Dening, who is German-born and speaks several languages, travels regularly with her husband and often serves as his interpreter.

When it comes to interpreting the financial legislation, Mr. Volcker says he remains less than impressed. “We have to have a regulatory system that reflects today’s problems and tomorrow’s potential problems,” he says. “This bill attempts to do that. Does it do it perfectly? Obviously it does not go as far as I felt it should go.”

SEIU has been part of another thread for quite some time now, but I am thinking the subject of unions needs its own thread.
================

- The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. - http://blog.heritage.org -

Morning Bell: Unions Just Flushed $5 Million of Your Tax Dollars Down the Toilet

Posted By Conn Carroll On June 9, 2010 @ 9:31 am In Enterprise and Free Markets | No Comments

It is not every day we get to agree with the Obama administration. But after Sen. Blanche Lincoln defeated Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter in the Arkansas Democratic Senate primary runoff election, after the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME poured millions of dollars into Halter’s campaign, a senior White House official told Politico [1]: “Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet.” But it wasn’t just “their members” money that those unions were wasting. This year the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed that for the first time in the history of the United States, a majority of union members work for the government, not the private sector [2]. To be exact, 52% of all union members work for the federal or state and local governments. That means more than half of the $10 million that unions wasted just in Arkansas first came from your tax dollars. And the waste goes well beyond Arkansas.

In his ongoing battle with teachers unions, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) recently told [3] a town hall in Robbinsville: “My argument is not with teachers in New Jersey. My argument is with a union who collects $730 a year from every teacher and school employee in the union in mandatory dues. And if you don’t want to join the union here’s your option: you can be out. You pay 85% of $730 … to be out. It’s like the Hotel California. You can check in anytime you like but you can never leave. That raises for the teachers union, get ready, $130 million a year. What do they spend that money on? … $6 million in negative advertising against me since March 16th. Think about that. That’s a little over two months they have spent $6 million on New York TV and Radio, Philadelphia TV and radio to attack me. That’s dues money that is coming from their teachers, mandatory no choice, and from all of you because those salaries come from your property taxes and your state income taxes.”

Christie’s fight with government unions is over his constitutional amendment that would limit annual property tax increases to 2.5 percent. Government unions hate this policy because lower taxes mean less government spending which means less dues from government employees. At a meeting with conservative journalists yesterday at The Heritage Foundation, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels called government unions “the new privileged class in America.” He told Politico [4] earlier this week: “We used to think of government workers as underpaid public servants. Now they are better paid than the people who pay their salaries.”

As Heritage fellow James Sherk has documented [2] this battle between government unions and the people who pay their salaries is playing out across the country. In Maine, the Maine Municipal Association, the SEIU, the Teamsters, and the Maine Education Association collectively spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to campaign against a ballot initiative that would have prevented government spending from growing faster than the combined rate of inflation and population growth. In Illinois, AFSCME Council 31 ran television and radio ads pushing for tax increases in their “Fair Budget Illinois” campaign. In Oregon, government unions provided 90 percent of the $4 million spent advocating two ballot initiatives to raise personal income and business taxes by $733 million.

When a private sector company agrees to an unwise labor contract, it goes out of business (unless it gets bailed out by the government). But government never goes out of business, and in fact, always grows. In 2009 private-sector unions lost 834,000 members while public-sector unions actually gained 64,000 members. This is untenable. Something must change before government unions bankrupt this country.

Quick Hits:

According to a Treasury Department report to Congress, the ratio of debt to the gross domestic product will rise to 102 percent by 2015 [5].
According to Rasmussen Reports [6], 84% of Americans oppose a three percent (3%) tax on monthly cell phone bills to help newspapers and traditional journalism.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wooed Hugo Chavez ally [7] Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa Tuesday.
Turkey hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [8] at a regional security summit meeting in Istanbul yesterday.
Members of Israel’s National Student Union are organizing a “reverse flotilla” [9] to bring humanitarian aid to the “oppressed people of Turkish Kurdistan” and to members of the “Turkish Armenian minority.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.: http://blog.heritage.org

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/09/morning-bell-unions-just-flushed-5-million-of-your-tax-dollars-down-the-toilet/

URLs in this post:

[1] Politico: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0610/White_House_official_Organized_labor_just_flushed_10_million_of_their_members_money_down_the_toilet_.html

[2] for the first time in the history of the United States, a majority of union members work for the government, not the private sector: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/01/Majority-of-Union-Members-Now-Work-for-the-Government

[3] told: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ksLlAi3iIc

[4] Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38183.html

[5] the ratio of debt to the gross domestic product will rise to 102 percent by 2015: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN088462520100608

[6] Rasmussen Reports: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/general_business/june_2010/74_oppose_taxing_internet_news_sites_to_help_newspapers

[7] wooed Hugo Chavez ally: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/world/americas/09diplo.html?ref=todayspaper

[8] hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/world/middleeast/09turkey.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[9] “reverse flotilla”: http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177789