Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Summary

 
ROMEO GACAD/AFP/Getty Images

A Filipino man harvests bananas in Mindanao

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said May 14 that banana growers should seek alternatives to the Chinese market. The statement follows May 9 reports that Chinese customs agents would begin inspecting banana and pineapple shipments from the Philippines for "harmful organisms." Under the heightened scrutiny, Chinese customs agents have impounded ships carrying bananas from the Philippines, causing the cargo to spoil at the expense of Philippine growers. The tensions over China's import restrictions on Philippine fruit come as travel agencies in China and Taiwan stop Chinese tourism in the Philippines due to the Scarborough Shoal maritime dispute.

As the third-largest destination for Philippine exports, China possesses significant economic leverage over the relatively small island country. It will use this leverage to persuade the Philippines to relax its claims in the South China Sea.

Analysis:

China seems to be focusing on sectors large, strategic and urgent enough (fruit spoils quickly, and there are no reserves to mitigate a dip in tourism) to send Manila a message without seriously damaging the Philippine and Chinese economies. By contrast, targeting things like electronics or machine parts would harm both economies and risk a regional backlash against China.

Bananas are the Philippines' most important fruit export, providing a major source of employment on the poor and politically unstable island of Mindanao. Bananas account, however, for just about 1 percent of the Philippines' total export value. China is currently the second-largest destination of Philippine bananas after Japan, importing $75 million worth of the fruit in 2011 -- 16 percent of Philippine banana exports. Thought it is a distant second behind Japan, which consumes more than half of Philippine banana exports, China is the fastest growing market for Philippine bananas. Imports more than doubled each year from 2009 to 2011. Even when Philippine exports to other countries dipped drastically after El Nino hit in 2010, exports to China leapt from $14 million to $33 million. This rapid growth and a declining or relatively steady demand in other markets like South Korea and Iran suggest that Philippine growers will not willingly give up the market in China.

Bolstering this perception, the president of the Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) warned that losing the Chinese market could have political, social and economic implications. He noted that up to 200,000 workers would be affected by the current situation, the first such incident since the Philippines started exporting bananas to China in 2001. The PBGEA has played an important role in developing and consolidating the country's banana growers. As such, it constitutes the largest unified voice in the Philippine fruit industry and the strongest potential lobby to affect national policy.

PBGEA's efforts to develop Mindanao's banana industry have paid off in recent years, with the Philippines emerging as the third-largest exporter worldwide and the largest by far in Asia. Most Philippine bananas are grown on Mindanao. The island long has been a hotbed for political and ethnic struggle, with several competing separatist groups inhabiting different parts of the island. Poor and relatively underpopulated, the island embodies the Philippines' struggle to integrate its rural, agriculture-based and heavily indigenous southern islands with the more prosperous urban north. While these tensions are not directly tied to the island's banana industry (the majority of bananas are grown in Davao del Norte, which is not occupied by separatist groups), they form part of a larger political context that Manila treats with caution.

Beijing may hope its tougher banana inspections and tourism boycott will impel the Philippine agriculture and tourism lobbies to coax Manila into toning down its maritime territorial rhetoric. Despite the relatively small value of banana exports compared to electronics or machine parts, the PBGEA plays a central role in the country's key agricultural export product. That and bananas' important Mindanao employer may give the PBGEA -- and other parts of the country's agriculture sector that fear wider Chinese sanctions -- a significant say in crafting Manila's response to China.

This would allow Beijing to resolve a territorial dispute without acting overly aggressive toward the Philippines, a move that could deprive third parties, including the United States, of any reason to intervene. That Manila has joined Beijing in denying any connection between banana import restrictions and the Scarborough Shoal affair helps efforts to cast the spat as a trade issue rather than a political issue, as does a Philippine Department of Agriculture delegation's visit to China to seek a resolution to the issue. (Representatives of that department have said the particular bacteria the Chinese claimed to find do not even typically affect bananas.)

In some ways, China's strategy toward the Philippines is reminiscent of its rare earth elements export ban, which was seen as directed against Japan. It may extend this strategy of using less overt ways of reinforcing its territorial claims against countries with competing claims in the South China Sea.

Please see today's entry on the Venezuela thread concerning growing alliance with Iran and the attendant risks to the US.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?feature=player_embedded&v=-Czo5Vf8KZs

"There is no part of the administration of government that requires extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy, so much as the business of taxation. The man who understands those principles best will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue. It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome." --Alexander Hamilton: Federalist No. 35

Q: What's the best place to view the eclipse in Southern California?

 A: The partial solar eclipse will occur late in the day in Southern California on Sunday, beginning at 5:24 p.m., reaching its maximum coverage at 6:38 p.m., and exiting the sun's path at 7:42 p.m., just 10 minutes before sunset. "That means the sun is fairly low in the northwest, and you want a clear view of the northwest horizon," said Griffith Observatory director Ed Krupp.

He suggested a place with a clear view of the northwest, with an elevated view and a clear horizon, to see the moon obscure the sun's beams. Griffith Observatory, which is run by the city of Los Angeles, will have extra telescopes and staff on hand to help people view the eclipse for free.   

"They'll be seeing something that is really unusual -- a big bite coming out of the sun. And that's the real charm of this event," Krupp said.

Q: How big of a bite will the moon's shadow take of the sun?

A: According to the Griffith Observatory, 86% of the sun's diameter will be covered up by the moon. (That statistic is the standard one astronomers like to use; lay people may prefer knowing that 79% of the area of the sun will be covered up.) "It's a pretty deep eclipse here in Los Angeles," Krupp said

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3580/tehran-west-caving-on-iranian-nuclear-program

Tehran: West Caving on Iranian Nuclear Program
by Joel Himelfarb  •  May 16, 2012 at 11:06 am

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3580/tehran-west-caving-on-iranian-nuclear-program


Iranian and United Nations officials claimed to have made progress in negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program on Tuesday. But initial reports have provided little substantive information beyond an announcement that representatives of the Iranian regime and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will meet again next week in Vienna, Austria.

Iranian officials waxed optimistic, claiming the West is coming to terms with the inevitability of Iran's nuclear program. In a New York Times interview, Hamidreza Taraghi, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, bragged that Tehran had managed to skew the current nuclear negotiations in its favor by making uranium enrichment (a potential path to nuclear weapons) a reality that the West cannot stop.

Taraghi told the Times that Iran had convinced the West of the importance of a fatwa against the possession of nuclear weapons that Khamenei issued. Iranian officials emphasized that edict during last month's negotiations in Istanbul.

American officials countered that they brought up Khamenei's fatwa in an effort to provide the Iranians a "face-saving" way to reach a compromise. But Iranian negotiators left Istanbul believing they had prevailed. "We have managed to get our rights," Taraghi said. "All that remains is a debate over the percentage of enrichment."

That may be posturing. But a new analysis by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggests the Islamist regime has good reason to believe it has the upper hand in the nuclear standoff.

The IAEA's own reports show "that Iran has moved far beyond the point where it lacked the technology base to produce nuclear weapons," Cordesman writes. "Iran has pursued every major area of nuclear weapons development, (and) has carried out programs that have already given it every component of a weapon except fissile material." Moreover, "there is strong evidence that it has carried out programs to integrate a nuclear warhead on [to] its missiles."

Cordesman finds that Iran's nuclear efforts are diversified and can be concealed from international inspectors. Even if it were to suspend uranium enrichment, Tehran could "pursue nuclear weapons development through a range of compartmented and easily concealable programs without a formal weapons program."

Even if Tehran agreed to controls on its current enrichment facilities or saw them destroyed in a military strike, it would not necessarily put an end to the regime's nuclear capability. It "would take an amazing amount of intelligence access to prevent" Iran from creating replacement enrichment facilities if its existing programs were destroyed in bombing raids, Cordesman writes.

In short, "Iran could appear to agree to arms control or appear to have had its programs destroyed and still go on creating better future enrichment capability."

Read the full article here.



continued

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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/noam-chomsky-sarah-palin-was-right-about-obama/

Schumpeter in the White House
How to talk about creative destruction
GUY SORMAN

The 2012 presidential race will be, in part, a showdown between two different models of economic growth. President Barack Obama and his Democratic administration will defend the once-discredited and now-resurgent theory that government must act as the economy’s “tutor” and use public funds to stimulate it. The Republican nominee, presumably Mitt Romney, will advance the free-market argument that the main source of new growth is the innovative energy of American entrepreneurs and that government needs to get out of the way.
 
An essential part of the free-market argument is “creative destruction,” a theory proposed by the great Austrian economist and Harvard University professor Joseph Schumpeter. If you don’t understand Schumpeter’s insight—expressed most powerfully in his classic 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy—you’ll have a hard time understanding why free markets work so well to generate prosperity. Yet creative destruction is a complicated concept, poorly understood by the general public and not always easy to defend. As November nears, the Republican nominee will have to figure out a way to show voters how essential it is to American prosperity.

Schumpeter believed that progress in a capitalist economy requires that the old give way constantly to the new: production technologies in a free economy improve constantly, and new products and services are always on offer. But this creative transformation also has a destructive side, since it makes earlier products and services—and the workers who provided them—obsolete. Today’s consumers have little reason to buy an oil lamp instead of a lightbulb, or a Sony Walkman instead of an iPod—which can be bad news for the people who manufacture the oil lamp and the Walkman.

Looking back at the history of Western capitalism, we can see how the discovery of new energy sources, new communications systems, and new financial instruments regularly demolished old ways of doing things. When this happened, the result was typically short-term pain, as certain workers found themselves displaced, and sometimes even what appeared to be economic crises; but there was also substantial long-term gain, as the economy became more efficient and productive. Economists W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm point to transportation as a striking example of the process. “With the arrival of steam power in the nineteenth century, railroads swept across the United States, enlarging markets, reducing shipping costs, building new industries, and providing millions of new productive jobs,” they write. Automobiles and airplanes had similar effects. Yet “each new mode of transportation took a toll on existing jobs and industries. In 1900, the peak year for the occupation, the country employed 109,000 carriage and harness makers. In 1910, 238,000 Americans worked as blacksmiths. Today, those jobs are largely obsolete.”

Creative destruction can take place not just across sectors of the economy but within particular firms, too. Since the invention of the automobile, many automakers have disappeared, unable to improve their products; those that survived have had to transform themselves radically to stay competitive. Sometimes firms even change their business to stay alive. Think of IBM, which started in 1930 by building calculating machines, shifted to computers in the 1950s, and today is a service company.

Trying to prevent creative destruction brings economic torpor or worse. At the extreme were the twentieth century’s totalitarian Communist regimes. I vividly recall the Soviet economy under Brezhnev and the Chinese economy under Mao Zedong. In these state-controlled societies, competition was illegal and existing factories were never shuttered; every industrial complex contained layers of antiquated technologies to which more recent ones had been added. To close down a factory, after all, would imply that the central planners had made mistakes—an impossibility, since socialism was supposedly scientific.

Innovation is very rare under such state-stifled conditions. In East Germany, factories produced the same car—the only one available—for three decades: the infamous Trabant. Without competitors providing consumers with other choices, there was no incentive to do anything else. Visiting Communist countries during the seventies and eighties, as I frequently did, was to enter a museum of industries past. In the poorly stocked shops, one would come across outmoded devices, like mechanical watches, long gone from advanced capitalist economies. In- deed, most of the innovative products that did surface in the Communist world—usually for the benefit of the military—were stolen or smuggled in from the West.

The same weakness affects, though less dramatically, the watered-down form of state economic planning often practiced in European democracies and renascent in America under the Obama administration, with its Keynesian stimulus spending, massive bailouts of the auto industry, partial takeover of General Motors, and subsidies of alternative energy. The track record of such economic intervention in democratic societies has been stagnation, though it has occasionally proved useful in emerging economies, like Japan’s in the 1950s, when capital is scarce and entrepreneurs are thin on the ground. Even in Japan’s case, though, many of the government-backed industries failed, while sectors of the economy that weren’t nurtured by the state’s “industrial policy”—cars, components, ceramics—flourished.

Central planners can never match the private innovators of a competitive economy. (Friedrich Hayek called this bureaucratic arrogance the “fatal conceit.”) A bureaucrat would need omnipotence to anticipate, let alone invent, the paradigm shifts that capitalist economies, churning with creative destruction, have regularly birthed. Economies open to creative destruction have innovated more, created more employment, and enjoyed higher growth rates than their statist rivals.

No place has been more open to creative destruction than the United States, where whole cities, left behind by technological advance, have crumbled into ruin, with abandoned factories standing forlornly alongside rusted railroad tracks and many workers long since departed to clear new lands, like the pioneers of yesteryear. The willingness of Americans to endure creative destruction has allowed their economy to outperform European economies for decades. But creative destruction always runs the risk of ruining the lives of individuals along the way, which poses a significant political problem for defenders of free markets. Consider an example from overseas. Rail now allows travelers to zoom easily and quickly from London to Paris and back. Who, then, needs the slow-moving ferry that links Dover and Calais? But just try explaining Schumpeter’s virtues to a unionized sailor!

Yes, free-market advocates can point out that when a state steps in to help a dying sector of the economy, it is actually harming economic growth by sinking financial capital—a limited resource—into inefficient activities and diverting funds from more innovative enterprises. A job saved in an obsolete economic sector, they will say correctly, is a job—often many jobs—forgone elsewhere in the economy. But that’s a very hard argument for a politician to make. As the great free-market economist Milton Friedman frequently observed, a business closing gets on the television news, while the new businesses that get created from the reallocated capital go unnoticed because they are so widely dispersed.

Mitt Romney has run smack into this problem during his campaign for the Republican nomination. Bain Capital, the firm he led, was a pure engine of creative destruction: a private investment fund that bought troubled businesses, restructured them (often by firing people), and sold them for a profit. Even some of Romney’s Republican opponents, who know better, couldn’t resist attacking him for his entrepreneurial work; Newt Gingrich went so far as to run ads featuring workers who had lost their jobs because of Bain’s restructuring. Romney contended that Bain had helped create 100,000 new jobs, which may be true, but—underscoring Friedman’s point—no one knows exactly where they are.

It may therefore be necessary for defenders of creative destruction to balance Schumpeter with some form of social support. It is misguided to protect superseded firms and industries, they would maintain, but helpingpeople displaced by economic progress is a moral imperative. They would argue for the implementation of a “compassionate capitalism,” perhaps including unemployment benefits, retraining, and various welfare services. (These should be designed not to become disincentives to work, as they frequently have been in the past.) A compassionate capitalism wouldn’t merely be humane; it would also help preserve capitalism, because in a democracy, creative destruction cannot occur without some type of safety net. Workers who risk losing their jobs and lack any social support will soon vote an end to free markets.

Private Equity, Capitalism’s Secret Weapon

Created in the United States in 1946, private equity funds are collective investment schemes that didn’t become serious economic players until the 1970s in Silicon Valley. Early private equity investors, also known as venture capitalists, would buy shares in promising new industries like high-tech and sell their investments at a considerable profit. Eventually, private equity funds spread beyond Silicon Valley and invested in a wider range of industries. Today, they raise capital from cash-rich investors—pension funds, insurance companies, wealthy individuals—or borrow it from commercial banks and other financial institutions. Then they invest in various companies. The goal of the private equity fund is to sell those investments—often to another private equity fund—and turn a profit.

Smart investors at private equity funds select poorly managed companies whose value can be increased by extending, reducing, or reshuffling their activities. After buying a significant number of shares in such a company, a private equity fund can redirect or replace its management structure. Private equity managers may terminate redundant workers to increase productivity; scale back or eliminate less profitable departments; or use the company’s existing business to extend its brand and reach. For instance, Bain Capital, the private equity fund founded by Mitt Romney, turned Staples from a local brand into a national office supplier.

In the simplest sense, private equity investors reallocate capital where it will be most effective—from less productive uses to more profitable ones. Private equity funds propel capitalism’s creative destruction: by promoting innovation and punishing obsolescence, they fuel economic growth.

At the same time, by speeding up processes that might otherwise take a long time—such as the decline of an old industry and the emergence of a new one—private equity funds make the social costs of creative destruction more visible. Those who defend free markets, creative destruction, and private equity must do a better job of explaining their genuine benefits while supporting effective social policies to help workers make smoother transitions from old industries to new ones.
Schumpeter himself prophesied that the unpopularity of capitalism would eventually kill it. He doubted the capacity and willingness of the bourgeoisie to defend capitalism’s legitimacy, and he doubted the heirs of capitalist entrepreneurs even more. He knew many, both in his native Austria and in the United States, who squandered the capital that their parents and grandparents had accumulated and who were eager for the Left to forgive them for having inherited their wealth.
The ultimate enemies of capitalism, in Schumpeter’s view, were intellectuals, many of whom found it outrageous that businessmen had so much more money than they did. Envy—and the indisputable imperfections of capitalism—made these thinkers and writers, including some of Schumpeter’s Harvard colleagues, yearn for a better economic system. Ironically, the wealth created by capitalism had bankrolled a massive expansion of the educational system, empowering the intellectual class that hated that wealth. “Capitalism inevitably . . . educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest,” Schumpeter noted. The rhetorical talent of the intellectuals, he predicted darkly, would help bring capitalism to its knees.
Schumpeter’s pessimism about capitalists’ heirs may have gone too far: some of them, especially in America, have put their money to good use in philanthropies, museums, and foundations that don’t lobby against capitalism. His characterization of intellectuals, though, remains as accurate today as when he made it decades ago. And while it’s true, of course, that socialism as Schumpeter feared it has all but disappeared, the Obama administration’s enthusiasm for economic intervention shows that American openness to creative destruction is not a given. Perhaps the most virulent opponent of creative destruction is the riotous antiglobalization movement. Perpetually laying siege to G-20 meetings, the antiglobalists refuse to accept—or fail to understand—that competition spurs innovation and that innovation spurs economic growth and human progress. Thanks to trade, market competition has become global, establishing a worldwide division of labor that dramatically reduces the costs of consumer goods, from food to cell phones and beyond. In the antiglobalists’ dreamworld, everything would become local again—a fantasy that, were it ever to become reality, would limit access to many goods to the wealthy alone.

Can a Schumpeterian candidate make it to the White House in 2012? Yes, but in the current climate of economic uncertainty, he will need to be a talented rhetorician. Otherwise, America in a second Obama term will probably continue to move in a European direction, with the government playing an increasingly activist role in the economy, protecting out-of-date ways of doing business. And without the liberating fire of creative destruction, America will follow Europe down the path of slow growth, high unemployment, and decline.

Guy Sorman is the author of Economics Does Not Lie.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/16/warrens-story-falls-apart/print/

Warren’s Story Falls Apart

Posted By Arnold Ahlert On May 16, 2012 @ 12:45 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 28 Comments

The wheels have finally fallen off Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren’s diversity wagon. The reliably leftist Boston Globe has issued a retraction of Warren’s claim that she is 1/32 Cherokee Indian. “Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in the May 1 Metro section and the accompanying headline incorrectly described the 1894 document that was purported to list Elizabeth Warren’s great-great-great grandmother as a Cherokee,” the paper writes. “The document, alluded to in a family newsletter found by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, was an application for a marriage license, not the license itself. Neither the society nor the Globe has seen the primary document, whose existence has not been proven.” The original story? A headline piece in the Sunday Metro section. The correction? The third item on the correction page, typically buried deep in the paper. The larger issue? The transparent efforts of a biased media to maintain the fiction as long as possible.

The Globe’s original story, published on May 1st, reported that a document proved Warren’s claim. “A record unearthed Monday shows that US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has a great-great-great grandmother listed in an 1894 document as a Cherokee, said a genealogist at the New England Historic and Genealogy Society.” The same day the Boston Herald reported that “the Harvard Law professor’s campaign last night finally came up with what they claim is a Cherokee connection–her great-great-great-grandmother.” ABC News also did a May 1st report, noting that genealogist Chris Child of the New England Historic Genealogical Association ”set out to hunt down Warren’s ancestry last Thursday. In less than a week, he discovered documents citing an 1894 marriage record that lists Warren’s great-great-great grandmother, O. C. Sarah Smith as Cherokee, meaning that Warren is 1/32nd Native American.”

On May 4th the New York Times  took it a step further, claiming that Republican opponent Scott Brown’s questioning of Warren’s assertion “is straight from the Republican cookbook of fake controversy,” and that “Massachusetts Republicans place doubts on her racial claims to portray her as an opportunistic academic seeking special treatment.” Writer Kevin Noble Maillard, a law professor enrolled as a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, offer his own take on the controversy. “For the Cherokee Nation, Warren is ‘Indian enough;’ she has the same blood quantum as Cherokee Nation Chief Bill John Baker,” he wrote.

The meme, “Warren is 1/32 Cherokee” continued to be promoted by several different news outlets, most of which did nothing more than regurgitate the original story, absent any independent fact-checking. These included CBS News, the Huffington Post and the Associated Press. The most hilarious assertion regarding Warren’s claim came courtesy of the Washington Post’s David Treuer. In a column entitled, “Elizabeth Warren says she’s Native American. So she is.,” Treuer makes the absurd claim that “an Indian identity is something someone claims for oneself; it is a matter of choice.” He further excuses Warren’s assertion, contending that “to be a woman from Oklahoma of working-class upbringing — and to want not only to walk the halls of power but to help build them — you have to press whatever advantage you have. Doing so might seem distasteful to those who’ve never had to do it because they were born into privilege and power.” In other words, lying is acceptable — as long as one’s lower class and purported ethnicity qualifies one to do so.

Despite the mainstream media pile-on, it didn’t take long to prove that Elizabeth Warren’s assertion was nothing more than wishful thinking. Breitbart.com was apparently willing to do something most other news organizations were unwilling to do: conduct an actual investigation of Warren’s assertion. They reviewed original marriage records found in the files of the Logan County, Oklahoma Court Clerk’s office in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and spoke with Logan County Court clerk ReJeania Zmek. Breitbart discovered that the original May 12, 1894 marriage license and the corresponding May 13, 1894 certificate of marriage of William J. Crawford, great-great-grand uncle of Elizabeth Warren, and Mary E. (Long) Wolford contains a column for the race of the bride and the groom — but both of them left it blank

Zmek offered another indication that something was amiss. “In modern times we keep marriage license applications,” she said. “The way they’re issued now, you do the application, then you do the license. We currently do keep records of marriage license applications.” Yet she revealed that this practice didn’t begin until 1950.

Zmek then revealed (probably inadvertently) why many Americans consider mainstream media claims of even-handed reporting beneath contempt. She confirmed to Breitbart that “no other news organization had contacted her to date on any national topic or to inquire about the validity of this purported 1894 Logan County, Oklahoma marriage license application or anything related to the 1894 marriage of William J. Crawford.”

Such “errors of omission” might be acceptable were it evenly applied to both sides of the political spectrum. Yet one need only compare the Washington Post’s recent effort to portray Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney as an anti-gay bully based on a single incident that happened 47 years ago with the mainstream media’s calculated incuriosity regarding large portions of president Obama’s life, which still remain off the record almost four years into his time in office. Furthermore, as the Journolist scandal of 2008 reveals, leftist media members coordinated efforts to keep Jeremiah Wright and his incendiary rhetoric from damaging the president during that election run.

Elizabeth Warren can continue to insist that she is part Cherokee, whether based on dubious assertions, like her grandfather having “high cheekbones,” or ridiculous rationale such as the claim that she did so “in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am.” And the leftist media can continue to protect her by asserting that she didn’t use such claims to advance her career. But the fact remains that the University of Pennsylvania, who listed her as a minority in a “Minority Equity Report” from 1987 to 1994, and Harvard University, who listed her as a diversity hire in 1996, were more than willing to do so based on nothing more than hearsay. And the mainstream media, as well as the New England Historic Genealogical Association, which is now saying that “the original [marriage license] application cannot be located” were also willing to take Warren at face value, or base their entire assertions of proof on an unsubstantiated March 2006 family newsletter quoting an amateur genealogist.

Yet it remains to be seen if the people of Massachusetts will be as flexible regarding the truth on election day next November. Undoubtedly they will base their votes for either Republican Scott Brown or Warren on a number of issues. Warren might want to hope that personal credibility isn’t one of them.


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Stratfor

The Chinese Marine Surveillance (CMS) announced May 9 that 36 new vessels are expected to join its surveillance fleet by 2013. The CMS fleet's new ships reportedly include seven 1,500-ton ships, 15 1,000-ton ships and 14 600-ton ships. The CMS is one of five Chinese maritime law enforcement agencies, and is tasked with maintaining China's presence in disputed waters and enforcing and surveilling Beijing's claimed economic exclusive zone, which is extensive and difficult to monitor. The new shipbuilding announcement comes while China is locked in a standoff with the Philippines over Huangyan Island in the South China Sea. The standoff began April 8 when two CMS ships blocked a Philippine warship from boarding eight Chinese fishing vessels anchored in the contested region. While both Manila and Beijing have publicly committed to resolving the standoff diplomatically, the situation remains tense and Chinese authorities say they are prepared for an escalation by Manila. The growing capabilities of China's maritime enforcement agencies allow Beijing to strengthen its presence within China's claimed maritime territory and to better position itself to respond to any clash, such as the current Huangyan Island standoff. China's bolstered maritime enforcement fleet and assertive maneuvering will increase the likelihood of maritime confrontation in a region rife with other claimants.

Yes, its happening pretty much everywhere.  The question presented is the nature of the response.

In his January 2011 inaugural address, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared it a "time to honestly assess our financial condition and make the tough choices." Plainly the choices weren't tough enough: Mr. Brown has just announced that he faces a state budget deficit of $16 billion—nearly twice the $9.2 billion he predicted in January. In Sacramento Monday, he coupled a new round of spending cuts with a call for some hefty new tax hikes.

In his own inaugural address back in January 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also spoke of making tough choices for the people of his state. For his first full budget, Mr. Christie faced a deficit of $10.7 billion—one-third of projected revenues. Not only did Mr. Christie close that deficit without raising taxes, he is now plumping for a 10% across-the-board tax cut.

It's not just looks that make Mr. Brown Laurel to Mr. Christie's Hardy. It's also their political choices.

When the Obama administration's Transportation Department called on California to cough up billions for a high-speed bullet train or lose federal dollars, Mr. Brown went along. In sharp contrast, when the feds delivered a similar ultimatum to Mr. Christie over a proposed commuter rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, he nixed the project, saying his state just couldn't afford it.

On the "millionaire's" tax, Mr. Brown says that California desperately needs to approve one if the state is to recover. The one on California's November ballot kicks in at income of $250,000 and would raise the top rate to 13.3% from 10.3% on incomes above $1 million. Again in sharp contrast, when New Jersey Democrats attempted to embarrass Mr. Christie by sending a millionaire's tax to his desk, he called their bluff and promptly vetoed it.

On public-employee unions, Mr. Brown can talk a good game—at Monday's press conference, he announced a 5% pay cut for state workers, and he has proposed pension reform. Yet for all his pull with unions (the last time he was governor, he gave California's public-sector unions collective-bargaining rights), Gov. Brown, a Democrat, has not been able to accomplish what Republican Gov. Christie has: persuade a Democratic legislature to require government workers to kick in more for their health care and pensions.

Now, no one will confuse New Jersey with free-market Hong Kong. Still, because the challenges facing the Golden and Garden States are so similar, the different paths taken by their respective governors are all the more striking. And these two men are by no means alone.

Our states today are conducting a profound and contentious rethink about the right level of taxes, spending and government. Most obvious is the battle for Wisconsin. There Republican Gov. Scott Walker finds himself pitted against public-sector unions that successfully forced a recall election for June 5 after the legislature adopted the governor's package of labor reforms last spring.

Amid the turmoil—Democratic legislators fled the state to prevent a vote, while union-backed protesters occupied the Capitol—Mr. Walker looked weakened. Now he has taken the lead in polls. More than that, voters have taken the lesson: A recent Marquette University Law School poll showed only 12% of Wisconsin voters listing "restoring collective bargaining rights for public employees" as their priority.

Indeed, the American Midwest today is home to some of the biggest experiments in government. Republicans now hold both the governorships and the legislatures in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, and in Wisconsin they control all but the Senate. In each they are pushing for smaller, more accountable government. The outlier is Illinois, where Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and his Democratic legislature pushed through a tax increase on their heavily indebted state.

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California Gov. Jerry Brown
.Now ask yourself this. Can anyone look at Illinois and say to himself: I have seen the future and it works?

Indiana's Mitch Daniels, a Republican, is probably the only governor who can truly claim to have turned around a failing state. That may change if we get eight years of Mr. Christie in New Jersey. Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, also a Republican, may be another challenger for the title, having just succeeded in pushing through arguably the most far-reaching reform of any state public-school system in America.

Hard economic times bring their own lessons. Though few have been spared the ravages of the last recession and the sluggish recovery, those in states where taxes are light, government lives within its means, and the climate is friendly to investment have learned the value of the arrangement they have. They are not likely to give it up.

Meanwhile, leaders in some struggling states have taken notice. They know the road to fiscal hell is paved with progressive intentions. The question regarding the sensible ones is whether they have the will and wherewithal to impose the reforms they know their states need on the interest groups whose political and economic clout is so closely tied with the public purse.

Mr. Brown's remarks Monday suggest the answer to this question is no.

Iranian Rapper Fears for His Life After Fatwa
by FARNAZ FASSIHI

BEIRUT—Iranian rapper Shahin Najafi expected his song calling on a Shiite saint to save Iran from its current rulers to stir up controversy, but he never imagined it might cost him his life.

He is now being dubbed the Salman Rushdie of music after two influential clerics in Iran issued fatwas—religious edicts—justifying his murder on grounds of blasphemy.

"I am still in disbelief. I'm only 31, with my whole life ahead of me," said Mr. Najafi in an interview from Germany, where he lives and, since last week, has been in hiding under the protection of German police.

Mr. Najafi says he doesn't regret the song and refuses to apologize, arguing that invoking a saint's name is a freedom of expression and not a religious insult. "Each person has to pay a price for what they want. I will never apologize for my art and for speaking the truth about Iran's government," said Mr. Najafi.

Iranian officials haven't commented on the fatwas or denounced them. But the case could present a new public-image problem for Iran ahead of talks next week with the international community in Baghdad over its nuclear program.

In recent months, Iran has sought to improve its image as a rogue nation by offering conciliatory remarks to build trust with the West. The efforts paid off to some extent at an initial meeting in March in Istanbul, where both sides claimed the negotiations ended on a positive note, paving the way for a second round set to begin on May 23 in Baghdad. Iran says the world should trust its word that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

The senior clerics empowered to issue fatwas act independently of the government—but anyone who carries out a death fatwa is granted impunity under Iranian law.

"Iranian authorities could make it very clear that people who are inciting murder could be held accountable, and that's something they aren't currently doing," said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International's deputy program director for Middle East and Africa.

After Mr. Najafi released his song "Naqi" online on May 7, Iranian media and conservative bloggers said it was in violation of an earlier fatwa calling for the execution of anyone who blasphemes the 10th saint of Shiite Islam, Ali an-Naqi. A subsequent fatwa by another grand ayatollah declared that a singer who had been insulting the saint was guilty of blasphemy—giving the green light for his followers to kill Mr. Najafi, though the fatwa didn't mention the rapper by name. Both rulings have been repeated in Iranian media.

An Iranian website, Shia-Online, subsequently put a $100,000 bounty on Mr. Najafi's head, and more than 100 people, joining an online "campaign to execute Shahin Najafi," have pledged further rewards.

Mr. Najafi, a native of a small port town in southern Iran, fled to Germany in 2005 after he said an intelligence agent threatened him for staging underground concerts. His angry lyrics touch on rights abuses, stifling social norms and other difficulties of life in Iran, and in "Naqi," he calls on the saint to save the country. He says he is too young to go into hiding, but fears he might never be safe in Europe.

After the fatwa issued by the Iranian revolution's founding father Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against Mr. Rushdie in 1989, the British-Indian writer went into hiding for years, and Iran suffered diplomatic fallout with Europe. While Mr. Najafi isn't nearly as renowned as Mr. Rushdie and the clerics who issued the fatwa aren't as powerful as Iran's supreme leader, the threat to his life is serious, human-rights organizations say.

—David Crawford contributed to this article.
 
A version of this article appeared May 16, 2012, on page A10 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Rapper Fears for His Life After Fatwa.

WSJ
By NAFTALI BENDAVID
A state senator who had been stuck for weeks in third place in polls has won the GOP nomination for a U.S. Senate seat from Nebraska, continuing a pattern of challengers successfully taking on prominent Republicans in party primaries.

State Sen. Deb Fischer capped a remarkable surge by capturing the Senate nomination on Tuesday. She will face Democrat Bob Kerrey, a former Nebraska senator and governor, in the November election.

Ms. Fischer beat state Attorney General Jon Bruning, who had long been the front-runner, by 41% to 36% with all precincts reporting. Mr. Bruning had won statewide election three times before and raised far more money than Ms. Fischer.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed Ms. Fischer last week, and a political action committee backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts spent $200,000 over the weekend on ads criticizing Mr. Bruning and promoting Ms. Fischer.

The result was a setback for powerful conservative groups that backed the third major candidate in the race, state treasurer Don Stenberg.

Mr. Stenberg, who had 19% of the vote, positioned himself as the tea party-style challenger to Mr. Bruning. He benefited from roughly $2 million spent on his behalf by Club For Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks, but he faded at the end.

With the retirement of Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, Nebraska is considered one of the GOP's best opportunities to pick up a Senate seat. Mr. Kerrey may be the one Democrat who gives his party even a small chance of victory.

Ms. Fischer's surprise win comes a week after an Indiana primary that saw state Treasurer Richard Mourdock upset veteran Sen. Richard Lugar. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah was forced into a June runoff election with former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist.

Democrats hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, but they are defending more seats than the Republicans. That leaves the two parties in a close fight for the majority, with a chance that the election will yield a 50-50 Senate, requiring the vice president to break ties.

It isn't clear what accounted for Ms. Fischer's last-minute surge, but many voters were apparently turned off by the harsh battle of words between Messrs. Bruning and Stenberg.

The platform of Ms. Fischer, whose family owns a ranch, echoes that of many other Republican candidates. It calls for reducing the size of government, repealing the federal health-care law and balancing the budget.

Democrats said her victory could play into Mr. Kerrey's hands. Ms. Fischer has never run for statewide office, they noted, and her record has received little scrutiny, leading Mr. Kerrey's supporters to question whether she is prepared for the challenges of a major campaign.

Mr. Kerrey was a Navy SEAL in Vietnam whose right leg was amputated after a war injury. He owns a chain of restaurants and fitness clubs in Nebraska. He was elected governor in 1982 and senator in 1988.

Mr. Kerrey has been emphasizing his pattern of reaching across party lines, while Republicans are painting him as a carpetbagger, noting that he lived in New York for a decade while serving as president of the New School in Manhattan.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney won Tuesday's Republican presidential primaries in Nebraska and in Oregon. In Nebraska, the presumptive GOP nominee had 71% of the vote with 93% of precincts reporting, with Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich—all of whom have stopped campaigning—winning the remainder. In Oregon, Mr. Romney had 73% of the vote with 59% of precincts reporting.

The Associated Press also declared Oregon Democratic incumbent Peter DeFazio has won the Democratic primary for his seat in the state's 4th Congressional District. Congressman DeFazio, seeking his 14th term, was facing Oregon State University graduate student Matthew Robinson. Mr. Robinson is the son of Art Robinson, a Cave Junction, Ore., candidate who ran against Mr. DeFazio as a Republican candidate for Congress in 2010 and is again his party's candidate to unseat Mr. DeFazio in November.

In a statement the DeFazio campaign said: "Oregon voters saw through Art Robinson's stunt and soundly defeated his son's bizarre bid for the Democratic nomination." With 57%of the vote tallied Tuesday night, Mr. DeFazio had 90%, to 10 percent for Matthew Robinson, a nuclear engineering student. Matthew Robinson changed his party affiliation to run against Mr. DeFazio.

Write to Naftali Bendavid at naftali.bendavid@wsj.com

Gun Owners of America
________________________________________
Two Representatives Looking
to Neuter the NDAA
-- Amendment would protect you from indefinite detention
 
Representatives Justin Amash (R-MI) and Adam Smith (D-WA) are looking to fix one of the most troubling pieces of legislation that have passed during Barack Obama’s presidency.
 
As you know, at the end of last year, Congress passed and Barack Obama signed a defense authorization bill which contained two very dangerous provisions.
 
The first of these troubling provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act [NDAA] is section 1021.  It would allow American citizens to be arrested on American soil, detained indefinitely, tried in a military court, and deported to a Third World country for torture.
 
And all of this could be done without a trial!
 
An American could be detained if he “substantially supported” an individual who engaged in a belligerent act against the U.S. or its allies, whether knowingly or unknowingly.  Thus, if you were to sell a gun to a Timothy McVeigh, unaware of his intentions, you could have all of your constitutional rights summarily taken away by Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder under the terms of this law.
 
The Amash provision would amend section 1021 by barring the U.S. military from putting any citizen into indefinite detention without a charge or trial.
 
Another provision in the NDAA [section 1022] actually requires the military to put certain civilian suspects into military detention.  While the administration has waived this provision’s applicability to certain groups of people, the underlying law could still be enforced one day by the Obama administration (or a future administration).
 
The Amash amendment would repeal section 1022 entirely.
 
ACTION:  Please click here to ask your representative to support the NDAA-neutering amendment to H.R. 4310.

http://capwiz.com/gunowners/issues/alert/?alertid=61337441

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/world/cartwright-key-retired-general-backs-large-us-nuclear-reduction.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120516
Former Commander of U.S. Nuclear Forces Calls for Large Cut in WarheadsBy THOM SHANKER
Published: May 15, 2012
 
WASHINGTON — Gen. James E. Cartwright, the retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former commander of the United States’ nuclear forces, is adding his voice to those who are calling for a drastic reduction in the number of nuclear warheads below the levels set by agreements with Russia.

General Cartwright said that the United States’ nuclear deterrence could be guaranteed with a total arsenal of 900 warheads, and with only half of them deployed at any one time. Even those in the field would be taken off hair triggers, requiring 24 to 72 hours for launching, to reduce the chance of accidental war.

That arsenal would be a significant cut from the current agreement to limit Russia and the United States to 1,550 deployed warheads each, down from 2,200, within six years. Under the New Start agreement, thousands more warheads can be kept in storage as a backup force, and the restrictions do not apply to hundreds of short-range nuclear weapons in the American and Russian arsenals.

“The world has changed, but the current arsenal carries the baggage of the cold war,” General Cartwright said in an interview. “There is the baggage of significant numbers in reserve. There is the baggage of a nuclear stockpile beyond our needs. What is it we’re really trying to deter? Our current arsenal does not address the threats of the 21st century.”

The proposals are contained in a report to be issued Wednesday by Global Zero, a nuclear policy organization, signed by General Cartwright and several senior national security figures, including Richard Burt, a former chief nuclear arms negotiator; Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska; Thomas R. Pickering, a former ambassador to Russia; and Gen. John J. Sheehan, who held senior NATO positions before retiring from active duty.

General Cartwright’s leading role in the study is expected to give heft to the proposals; he was the top officer at the United States Strategic Command, overseeing the entire nuclear arsenal. The report’s proposals also may help shape the election-year debate on national security.

President Obama has pronounced a goal of eliminating nuclear weapons, but the specific steps and timetable remain aspirational.

Pentagon officials have drawn up options for the president, ranging from an arsenal that remains at New Start levels to one with 300 to 400 warheads. But officials emphasized that this internal review was still under way and that no decisions had been made.

In March, Republicans criticized Mr. Obama after he was overheard telling his Russian counterpart during a nuclear terrorism conference in South Korea that he would have more flexibility to deal with Moscow’s concerns on arms control after the November election.

Among the striking Global Zero proposals is one to eliminate outright the fixed, land-based intercontinental nuclear missiles that form one leg of the three-part nuclear arsenal, and instead rely solely on submarines, which are nearly impossible to detect, and long-range bombers, which can be summoned back from an attack should a crisis ease. The proposal calls for 360 warheads deployed aboard submarines and 90 gravity bombs aboard strike aircraft, and calls on Russia also to limit its arsenal to 900 warheads.

Given the low likelihood of a huge nuclear exchange with Russia or China, General Cartwright said, these steep reductions in the American arsenal are necessary if the United States wants credibility to urge restraints on the weapons programs of smaller nuclear powers like India and Pakistan — and on potentially emerging nuclear states like Iran and North Korea.

General Cartwright said that countries like India and Pakistan viewed their weapons more as a shield to protect their sovereignty than as a sword to be used in conflict. They and some potentially emerging nuclear powers ignore Washington’s calls for curbing their nuclear aspirations, saying that the United States is guilty of hypocrisy because it maintains a huge arsenal.

“A significant number of countries are not part of the dialogue” on reducing nuclear weapons, he said. And as more nuclear weapons are held by more nations — whose arsenals are not guarded by the layers of high-tech security systems in place over American weapons — the greater the opportunity for them to fall into the hands of terrorists, General Cartwright noted.

The Global Zero study also says that the large reductions make sense in a time of constrained Pentagon spending. The delivery systems in the American nuclear arsenal are nearing the end of their service life at nearly the same time, presenting a bill of hundreds of billions of dollars just as the Defense Department must cut spending.

Bruce Blair, who directed the study and is a co-founder of Global Zero, said that decisions should be made soon on nuclear arms reductions, so that money is not wasted on weapons programs that should be eliminated.

Mr. Blair said that land-based intercontinental missiles “have no role to play any longer.” In fixed silos, they are vulnerable to targeting. And the study includes maps to show that America’s land-based missile force would have to fly over Russia to reach potential nuclear adversaries like North Korea or Iran. That route “risks confusing Russia with ambiguous attack indications and triggering nuclear retaliation,” he said.

The report emphasizes the importance of missile defense in bolstering American deterrence in an era of smaller offensive nuclear arsenals.

"Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." --Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

http://firearmsregulation.org/

http://www.americanhunter.org/blogs/is-isacs-a-sham/

Is ISACS a Sham?
5/4/2012

By Jeff Johnston

The Myth: The International Small Arms Control Standards (ISACS) is not about banning guns, but about making them safer, say Hillary Clinton, NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and other known gun banners.

The Facts: ISACS is composed of a bunch of governments such as Iraq and Colombia, among others, organizations such as the Canadian Coalition for Gun Control, the World Health Organization and others. See here for a full list.

But NRA’s Chris Cox, Wayne LaPierre, former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton and scores of evidence say otherwise. They say ISACS was created to use the U.N. as a means to sidestep the U.S. Constitution to lessen or ban small arm ownership in the U.S., under the guise of “firearm safety.”

What Gun Owning Americans Want to Know: Who’s telling the truth?

Despite the NRA’s 100-plus year track-record of being the gold standard in small arms safety training (it trains about a million people each year in firearm use and safety, including law enforcement personnel) it wasn't welcomed to the ISACS meeting. So just taking NRA’s word on it isn’t enough.

But the neutral Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute (SAAMI) was invited to take part, because it was told that ISACS’ goal was to review and adopt international standards of safety. After all, SAAMI sets the safety standards for firearm and ammo manufacturing in this country, which in turn is very influential all over the world.

Any time you fire a gun, it is due to SAAMI’s tireless, technical research that assures you the gun or ammo is not loaded to hyper-pressures, and the gun is made to tested technical specifications so it will not literally blow up in your face. Any time a new gun or ammo manufacturer wishes to send a new product to market, it must pass SAAMI’s stringent protocols. If it is made elsewhere and is to be imported here, it must first pass SAAMI’s rigorous specs, so obviously not all gun and ammo manufacturers love SAAMI. They work with SAAMI because they must. Since 1926 SAMMI has been keeping them honest, and consumers safe.

So what does SAAMI say about ISACS? A press release issued by SAAMI is telling, and since SAAMI is neutral and has a pristine record of promoting gun safety and nothing else, I’ll point to it as plausible evidence.

The Proof: The following release was taken verbatim from SAAMI’s website days after it withdrew on March 21, 2012:

Quote:
SAAMI Withdraws Its Name from Tainted U.N. Program

The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (SAAMI), a registered United Nations non-governmental organization (NGO) with roster status, has taken the regrettable but necessary step of withdrawing any reference of SAAMI association from the U.N. agency project to create "International Small Arms Control Standards (ISACS)."

The goal of ISACS, as stated on the U.N. website is "To develop internationally accepted and validated standards that provide clear and comprehensive guidance to practitioners and policy-makers on small arms and light weapons control." SAAMI, being an accredited standards-setting organization, welcomed the opportunity to be part of a standards-setting process which requires rigorous adherence to facts.

"We saw the ISACS as a way to cut through the politics and rhetoric of this issue and get down to core actions that will reduce violence," says Rick Patterson, Managing Director of SAAMI. "Regrettably, the process has been tainted, expert input has been ignored, and the resulting standards represent nothing more than the opinions of the authors—most of whom are affiliated with NGO's supporting gun control." Because the U.N. has ignored contrary facts and opinions, and quelled debate, the U.N. has done itself—and everyone associated with ISACS—a disservice. They have negatively affected the credibility of all parties involved. For these reasons, SAAMI simply cannot allow its reputation for professionalism, integrity and factual expertise to be associated with the ISACS program. 
 

This is a fund raiser letter.  I've no knowledge of the group and so caveat donor.  I post the letter for the info it offers:
==================

Following on the heels of two National Right to Work Foundation-won victories against Obama Administration lawyers, a federal court has overturned yet another Obama Labor Board power grab.

Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia struck down the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) ambush elections rule change that generated record opposition last summer from concerned citizens like you.

You see, the former union lawyers on the NLRB were so desperate to enact the rule change in December before radical Member Craig Becker's term expired, they rammed it through without securing the quorum necessary to vote on the rule.

Yesterday's decision prevents implementation of a rule that deprives employees of hearing both sides of the story about unionization.

Ambush elections are designed to make union organizing campaigns as one-sided as possible and to stifle the rights of employees who may oppose bringing a union into their workplace.

Just weeks earlier in a case brought by Foundation attorneys, a federal appeals court enjoined the NLRB from enforcing another new policy that would force most private sector employers nationwide to post biased notices that effectively serve as a roadmap to forced unionization.

And recently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected arguments by union and Obama Administration lawyers to roll back one worker's groundbreaking victory against a corrupt card check scheme.

While these victories for workers against the ideologically-charged Obama Labor Board are crucial, I'm afraid things could continue to get worse.

As you may recall, President Obama double-downed on his bureaucratic assault on workers and job providers by installing "recess" appointees to the NLRB -- while Congress was still in session.

This cynical move represents an unprecedented defiance of Congress and the Constitution.

Obama's spin doctors claim that the Senate had long stalled on the President's nominations. But that's simply not true.

The White House never even submitted the proper paperwork to the Senate Labor Committee to let the Committee members conduct background checks and interview two of the nominees -- including a lawyer for the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE).

With such a flagrant abuse of power by the Obama Administration, I'm grateful for the continued generosity of Right to Work supporters like you who enable us to fight back in the courts and in the media.

These recent victories in court are encouraging and remind us why our legal program is so critical.  Thanks for helping us stand up for worker freedom.

Sincerely,
 
Mark Mix

P.S. The Foundation relies completely on voluntary contributions from its supporters to provide free legal aid.

If you can, please chip in with a tax-deductible contribution of $10 or more today to support the Foundation's programs.

http://theweek.com/article/index/226196/how-electrical-brain-stimulation-can-change-the-way-we-think
ESSAY
How electrical brain stimulation can change the way we think
After my brain was jolted, says Sally Adee, I had a near-spiritual experience
PUBLISHED MARCH 30, 2012, AT 10:01 AM

Researchers have found that "transcranial direct current stimulation" can more than double the rate at which people learn a wide range of tasks, such as object recognition, math skills, and marksmanship.   Photo: Adrianna Williams/Corbis
HAVE YOU EVER wanted to take a vacation from your own head? You could do it easily enough with liberal applications of alcohol or hallucinogens, but that's not the kind of vacation I'm talking about. What if you could take a very specific vacation only from the stuff that makes it painful to be you: the sneering inner monologue that insists you're not capable enough or smart enough or pretty enough, or whatever hideous narrative rides you. Now that would be a vacation. You'd still be you, but you'd be able to navigate the world without the emotional baggage that now drags on your every decision. Can you imagine what that would feel like?

Late last year, I got the chance to find out, in the course of investigating a story for New Scientist about how researchers are using neurofeedback and electrical brain stimulation to accelerate learning. What I found was that electricity might be the most powerful drug I've ever used in my life.

It used to be just plain old chemistry that had neuroscientists gnawing their fingernails about the ethics of brain enhancement. As Adderall, Ritalin, and other cognitive enhancing drugs gain widespread acceptance as tools to improve your everyday focus, even the stigma of obtaining them through less-than-legal channels appears to be disappearing. People will overlook a lot of moral gray areas in the quest to juice their brain power.

But until recently, you were out of luck if you wanted to do that without taking drugs that might be addictive, habit-forming, or associated with unfortunate behavioral side effects. Over the past few years, however, it's become increasingly clear that applying an electrical current to your head confers similar benefits.

U.S. military researchers have had great success using "transcranial direct current stimulation" (tDCS) — in which they hook you up to what's essentially a 9-volt battery and let the current flow through your brain. After a few years of lab testing, they've found that tDCS can more than double the rate at which people learn a wide range of tasks, such as object recognition, math skills, and marksmanship.

We don't yet have a commercially available "thinking cap," but we will soon. So the research community has begun to ask: What are the ethics of battery-operated cognitive enhancement? Recently, a group of Oxford neuroscientists released a cautionary statement about the ethics of brain boosting; then the U.K.'s Royal Society released a report that questioned the use of tDCS for military applications. Is brain boosting a fair addition to the cognitive enhancement arms race? Will it create a Morlock/Eloi–like social divide, where the rich can afford to be smarter and everyone else will be left behind? Will Tiger Moms force their lazy kids to strap on a zappity helmet during piano practice?

After trying it myself, I have different questions. To make you understand, I am going to tell you how it felt. The experience wasn't simply about the easy pleasure of undeserved expertise. For me, it was a near-spiritual experience. When a nice neuroscientist named Michael Weisend put the electrodes on me, what defined the experience was not feeling smarter or learning faster: The thing that made the earth drop out from under my feet was that for the first time in my life, everything in my head finally shut up.

The experiment I underwent was accelerated marksmanship training, using a training simulation that the military uses. I spent a few hours learning how to shoot a modified M4 close-range assault rifle, first without tDCS and then with. Without it I was terrible, and when you're terrible at something, all you can do is obsess about how terrible you are. And how much you want to stop doing the thing you are terrible at.

Then this happened:

THE 20 MINUTES I spent hitting targets while electricity coursed through my brain were far from transcendent. I only remember feeling like I'd just had an excellent cup of coffee, but without the caffeine jitters. I felt clear-headed and like myself, just sharper. Calmer. Without fear and without doubt. From there on, I just spent the time waiting for a problem to appear so that I could solve it.

It was only when they turned off the current that I grasped what had just happened. Relieved of the minefield of self-doubt that constitutes my basic personality, I was a hell of a shot. And I can't tell you how stunning it was to suddenly understand just how much of a drag that inner cacophony is on my ability to navigate life and basic tasks.

It's possibly the world's biggest cliché that we're our own worst enemies. In yoga, they tell you that you need to learn to get out of your own way. Practices like yoga are meant to help you exhume the person you are without all the geologic layers of narrative and cross talk that are constantly chattering in your brain. I think eventually they just become background noise. We stop hearing them consciously, but believe me, we listen to them just the same.

My brain without self-doubt was a revelation. There was suddenly this incredible silence in my head; I've experienced something close to it during two-hour Iyengar yoga classes, or at the end of a 10k, but the fragile peace in my head would be shattered almost the second I set foot outside the calm of the studio. I had certainly never experienced instant Zen in the frustrating middle of something I was terrible at.

WHAT HAD HAPPENED inside my skull? One theory is that the mild electrical shock may depolarize the neuronal membranes in the part of the brain associated with object recognition, making the cells more excitable and responsive to inputs. Like many other neuroscientists working with tDCS, Weisend thinks this accelerates the formation of new neural pathways during the time that someone practices a skill, making it easier to get into the "zone." The method he was using on me boosted the speed with which wannabe snipers could detect a threat by a factor of 2.3.

Another possibility is that the electrodes somehow reduce activity in the prefrontal cortex — the area of the brain used in critical thought, says psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Claremont Graduate University in California. And critical thought, some neuroscientists believe, is muted during periods of intense Zen-like concentration. It sounds counterintuitive, but silencing self-critical thoughts might allow more automatic processes to take hold, which would in turn produce that effortless feeling of flow.

With the electrodes on, my constant self-criticism virtually disappeared, I hit every one of the targets, and there were no unpleasant side effects afterwards. The bewitching silence of the tDCS lasted, gradually diminishing over a period of about three days. The inevitable return of self-doubt and inattention was disheartening, to say the least.

I HOPE YOU can sympathize with me when I tell you that the thing I wanted most acutely for the weeks following my experience was to go back and strap on those electrodes. I also started to have a lot of questions. Who was I apart from the angry bitter gnomes that populate my mind and drive me to failure because I'm too scared to try? And where did those voices come from? Some of them are personal history, like the caustically dismissive 7th grade science teacher who advised me to become a waitress. Some of them are societal, like the hateful lady-mag voices that bully me every time I look in a mirror. An invisible narrative informs all my waking decisions in ways I can't even keep track of.

What would a world look like in which we all wore little tDCS headbands that would keep us in a primed, confident state, free of all doubts and fears? I'd wear one at all times and have two in my backpack ready in case something happened to the first one.

I think the ethical questions we should be asking about tDCS are much more subtle than the ones we've been asking about cognitive enhancement. Because how you define "cognitive enhancement" frames the debate about its ethics.

If you told me tDCS would allow someone to study twice as fast for the bar exam, I might be a little leery because now I have visions of rich daddies paying for Junior's thinking cap. Neuroscientists like Roy Hamilton have termed this kind of application "cosmetic neuroscience," which implies a kind of "First World problem" — frivolity.

But now think of a different application — could school-age girls use the zappy cap while studying math to drown out the voices that tell them they can't do math because they're girls? How many studies have found a link between invasive stereotypes and poor test performance?

And then, finally, the main question: What role do doubt and fear play in our lives if their eradication actually causes so many improvements? Do we make more ethical decisions when we listen to our inner voices of self-doubt or when we're freed from them? If we all wore these caps, would the world be a better place?

And if tDCS headwear were to become widespread, would the same 20 minutes with a 2 milliamp current always deliver the same effects, or would you need to up your dose like you do with some other drugs?

Because, to steal a great point from an online commenter, pretty soon, a 9-volt battery may no longer be enough.


©2012 by Sally Adee, reprinted by permission of New Scientist. The full article can be found at NewScientist.com.

The rising cost of education
"For decades, American politicians have waxed passionate on the need to put college within every family's reach. ... The College Board, which tracks each type of financial assistance in a comprehensive annual report, shows total federal aid soaring by more than $100 billion in the space of a single decade -- from $64 billion in 2000 to $169 billion in 2010. ... And what have we gotten for this vast investment in college affordability? Colleges that are more unaffordable than ever. Year in, year out, Washington bestows tuition aid on students and their families. Year in, year out, the cost of tuition surges, galloping well ahead of inflation. And year in, year out, politicians vie to outdo each other in promising still more public subsidies that will keep higher education within reach of all. ... Federal financial aid is a major source of revenue for colleges and universities, and aid packages are generally based on the gap between what a family can afford to pay to send a student to a given college, and the tuition and fees charged by that college. That gives schools every incentive to keep their tuition unaffordable. Why would they reduce their sticker price to a level more families could afford, when doing so would mean kissing millions of government dollars goodbye? Directly or indirectly, government loans and grants have led to massive tuition inflation. ... The more government has done to make higher education affordable, the more unaffordable it has become. Doing more of the same won't yield a different outcome." --columnist Jeff Jacoby
===============

"If our students are burdened with oppressive loans, why do so many university rec centers look like five-star spas? Student cell phones and cars are indistinguishable from those of the faculty. The underclass suffers more from obesity than malnutrition; our national epidemic is not unaffordable protein, but rather a surfeit of even cheaper sweets. Flash mobbers target electronics stores for more junk, not bulk food warehouses in order to eat. America's children do not suffer from lack of access to the Internet, but from wasting hours on video games and less-than-instructional websites. We have too many, not too few, television channels. The problem is not that government workers are underpaid or scarce, but that so many of them seem to think mind readers, clowns and prostitutes come with the job. An average American with an average cell phone has more information at his fingertips than did a Goldman Sachs grandee 20 years ago. ... In 1980, a knee or hip replacement was experimental surgery for the 1 percent; now it is a Medicare entitlement. American poverty is not measured by absolute global standards of available food, shelter and medical care, or by comparisons to prior generations, but by one American now having less stuff than another." --historian Victor Davis Hanson

Clinton, Obama, UN To Tell Us How To Raise Our Children
By DICK MORRIS
Published on DickMorris.com on May 14, 2012

Printer-Friendly Version
In Screwed!, we expose the Rights of the Child Treaty which is now being negotiated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and will likely be submitted to the Senate this year (perhaps in the lame duck session).
 
Twenty years ago, during the Clinton Administration, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty.  But now it is being pushed by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA).
 
The Treaty, literally, tells us how to raise our children.  And it would be legally enforceable in American courts under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.  Only a constitutional amendment could supersede the "rights" it confers on children:
 
•  It bans spanking or any form of corporal punishment of children.
 
•  Article 12 of the Treaty says "when adults are making decisions which affect children, children have the right to say what they think should happen and have their opinion taken into account." Could this proviso establish a due process right of children to challenge their parents' divorce or their decision to move?
 
•  Worried that your children are hanging out with a bad bunch?  Article 15 guarantees children "freedom of association."  It says "Children have the right to meet together and to join groups and organizations, as long as it does not stop other people from enjoying their rights."
 
•  The Treaty would stop states from trying children as adults and incarcerating them with adult inmates.  It would require that even murderers in their teens be sent to children's facilities rather than prison. Article 37 says "children should not be put in prison with adults."
 
The Treaty requires all signatory nations to provide children with adequate levels of food, clothing, housing, education and medical care.  In Britain, Prime Minister Cameroon is facing a lawsuit for violating the Rights of the Child Treaty by proposing a cut in welfare benefits.
 
It also obliges rich nations to "help poorer countries achieve the best health care possible, safe drinking water, nutritious food, and a clean and safe environment for children."  Enforceable in US courts, this provision might create a basis for judicial decisions ordering increases in foreign aid, just as courts now order steps to address overcrowding of prisons.
 
The Treaty would make a new level of busybody intrusion into our lives. 

"The state of the traditional family is so precarious that one wonders how same-sex marriage can appreciably deprave it."

And why is it that the state of the traditional family is so precarious? 

The massive propagandaziation of progressive values seems to me to be the major variable-- and the dilution of the definition of marriage is but another step along that road-- so for me to use the decline which it has caused as a reason to do even more of the same is not a persuasive argument.