Data On The Minimum Wage

NCPA offers us some interesting statistics about minimum wage.

It's untrue that the majority of minimum-wage-earners go on making such low wages for years and years. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

About 63 percent of minimum wage workers receive raises within one year of employment.

Only 15 percent still earn the minimum wage after three years.

Moreover, minimum wage earners comprise only three percent of all workers paid by the hour and only 1.8 percent of American wage and salary earners. Large numbers of minimum wage earners are young people: 27.5 percent are between 16 and 19 years old and those between the ages of 16 and 24 constitute 52.6 percent.

Source: Gindy

Live 8 Versus Reality

A lot of people got real excited about the Live 8 concerts. There were a lot of "big" names, a lot of genuine concern, and a lot of useless handwringing and blame-putting. I have previously posted common sense pieces that illustrate the futility of throwing money at the problems of the the African continent. Here is another:

Snapping a finger at African aid

By Suzanne Fields
Published July 18, 2005

---

The great entertainers (and some not so great) were at it again, preening in their financial success and trying to make others feel guilty for theirs. "Greed is a weapon of mass destruction," rapped Faithless to a Live 8 concert in Berlin. Rocked back Sting, warning the financial ministers of the Group of 8: "Every vow you break, every step you take, every single day, every word you say, every game you play ... we'll be watching you."
Will Smith, the host at Philadelphia's Live 8 concert, told his audience to snap their fingers at three-second intervals to mark the death of a malnourished, diseased child in Africa who, he confidently said, dies every three seconds. Snap. Snap. Snap.

The stars have been praised (most eloquently by themselves) for focusing attention on poverty in Africa, but their glitter and flash don't quite rise to the level of effective policy. While they were rappin' and snappin', James Shikwati, a distinguished Kenyan economist, was singing another song: "For God's sake, please just stop the aid."

In an interview in der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, Mr. Shikwati describes what he sees as the disastrous result of aid to Africa. Not only do African leaders exploit it for their own purposes, stuffing their pocketbooks and adding to their power, but aid weakens local markets, destroys incentives and fosters corruption and complacency. He scoffs at the motives of the United Nations World Food Program, "which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of ... being dedicated to the fight against hunger while ... being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated."

What the Kenyans have to learn, he says of his own country, is how to help themselves by encouraging sustainable markets. He cites the distribution of corn and clothes as examples of "do-goodism" gone wrong, hurting those it sets out to help in an endless circle of vicious venality. Corn arrives from highly subsidized European and American farmers. African politicians take portions of it to distribute to their constituents. What isn't given away is dumped on the black market, and sold at such bargain prices that an African farmer can't compete, so he puts down his hoe. When the next famine arrives, begging begins again.

African children receive generous packages of clothes. Good? Not necessarily. Local tailors, seamstresses and merchants lose their livelihoods because no one in the low-wage world of Africa can compete with the donated products that find their way to the black market. In 1997, 137,000 workers were employed in Nigeria's textile industry; six years later the figure had fallen to 57,000. The results, Mr. Shikwati says, are similar in other areas "where overwhelming helpfulness and fragile African markets collide."

Increasing numbers of Africans decry the damages of paternalism, but you didn't hear those voices at the Live 8 concerts. Rage and protest were not directed at corrupt local leaders, either. Nelson Mandela's heroism directed at whites who oppressed blacks is needed now directed at black politicians who oppress the black masses.

The developed world rightly directs its generosity to crises of health and hunger, but aid must be part of a larger package to educate and encourage private incentive and enterprise. It's not enough to teach an African how to fish, but we must show the African how to sell the fish in a market where competition is fair. He has to learn how to keep government officials from cutting in on his business. Aid without reform is a dead-end concept, literally.

Nor can aid be understood in isolation. Many of the performers at Live 8 support environmental protections, but bans on DDT have killed more Africans, of malaria and other insect-borne diseases, than hunger ever has.
Bill Gates, who has established a foundation to find innovative ways to fight disease in poor countries, says his money will be monitored carefully for its effectiveness and will be withdrawn from inefficient programs. We should follow his business example. "Success depends on knowing what works," he told the Live 8 audience in London.

Jean-Bedel Bokassa, once the leader of the Central African Republic, got it right: "We ask the French for money. We get it, and then we waste it." James Shikwati sums up the problem today: "Africa is like a child that immediately cries for its babysitter when something goes wrong. Africa should stand on its two feet." This is not the feel-good message easy for feel-good masses to applaud, but snapping fingers only adds to mindless noise.


Technorati Tags: Africa, Live 8, Anomaly, Poverty, Aid

The American Agenda: Dependency on Government

The connection between government efforts to help the poor and the increase in the number of people needing/wanting government assistance is palpable. Below are two comments on this subject that are right on target.

The first one by Newt Gingrich is posted as a “Points to Ponder” at the top of this page (or was recently, until time to update that section) :

The greatest moral imperative we face is replacing the welfare state with an opportunity society. For every day that we allow the current conditions to continue, we are condemning the poor – and particularly poor children – to being deprived of their basic rights as Americans. The welfare state reduces the poor from citizens to clients. It breaks up families, minimizes work incentives, blocks people from saving and acquiring property, and overshadows dreams of a promised future with a present despair born of poverty, violence, and hopelessness.

The second one is by Gertrude Himmelfarb in her wonderful book, One Nation, Two Cultures:

What is evident in the rethinking that has been going on about social problems and policies in recent years is the bankruptcy of the theories and practices that have prevailed for the past half-century or more. Just as nineteenth-century reformers consciously sought to fashion social policies in accord with moral objectives, so their successors tried, just as consciously, to divorce social policies from any suspicion of morality. In part, this reflects the assumption that society is responsible for all social problems and therefore has the task of solving them, and in part the prevailing spirit of relativism, which finds it distasteful to pass moral judgments upon others, let alone impose moral conditions upon them. After decades of cultivating such a “non judgmental” philosophy, we are beginning to discover that all policies, for good or ill, have moral consequences, and that only by deliberately devising policies in accord with desirable ends can the good outweigh the bad.

The sad state of affairs with America's underclass, a group largely created by actions of our own government, is a major obstacle in the continued success of our nation. We need to end this culture of dependency. It is one of the several most serious problems facing the United States.


Technorati Tags: Welfare, Government, Anomaly, Dependency

Democrats' own mood poll scares them

Source:

A poll on the political mood in the United States conducted by the Democratic Party has alarmed the party at its own loss of popularity.

Conducted by the party-affiliated Democracy Corps, the poll indicated 43 percent of voters favored the Republican Party, while 38 percent had positive feelings about Democrats.

"Republicans weakened in this poll ... but it shows Democrats weakening more," said Stanley Greenberg, who served as President Clinton's pollster.

Greenberg told the Christian Science Monitor he attributes the slippage to voters' perceptions that Democrats have "no core set of convictions or point of view."

Fellow strategist James Carville said the war in Iraq and rising fuel prices are affecting party loyalty as well.

"The country is just in a foul mood," Carville said. He noted within the same poll, 56 percent of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

The poll was conducted June 20-26 and queried 1,078 likely voters. The margin of error was pegged at 3 points.

Part I

It’s Time for the Pot to Start Calling the Kettle Black

The first of a __ part series

by The Windjammer

I left the blank space in the number of parts simply because when I get wound up on a subject, more often than not, I don’t know when to stop and couldn’t even if I wanted. People continue to condemn otherwise innocent phrases when they get a broomstraw crosswise and suppose that someone somewhere is going to take offense where none was intended, so I may never run out of material. At least not so long as we continue to subscribe to the flawed philosophy of thin skin and call it "Political Correctness."

When I was a mere tad, and believe you me, that was a far piece back, we had a saying among our backwoodsy people. We said, "It’s the pot calling the kettle black," when we wanted to make an unfavorable but accurate comparison between a talker and a talkee. The talker in question was usually tearing someone else apart for committing a sin this week that the talker didn’t get caught doing last week.

The comparison between the pot and the kettle had its foundation in observation of an everyday phenomenon. It wasn’t much of a phenomenon then, but with today’s high-tech solutions to the energy problem, the only time the bottom of the aluminum skillet turns black is when the cook gets her/his mind on something other than the business at hand. The bottoms of our cast iron cookware turned black from wood smoke and red oak flames. Anyone who has cooked over a pine-knot campfire knows that black is a fact of life. Cook stoves got hot top, sides and bottom and they could make a kitchen hotter than the hubs of Hades when you had to prepare a meal for upwards of fifteen hungry field hands, some of whom wouldn’t know pigweed from pussley, on the spur of the moment and on a wood-burning cook stove. Air conditioned facilities for cooking, dining and used-food disposal was non-existent. Where I lived, electricity still came in the form of lightning strikes or a 6-volt wet cell to operate the radio.

I’ve done a little word twisting in this piece to make it mean something else entirely. We need to return to the age-old custom of telling it like it is without trying to sugar-coat the bitter pill of human frailty which we have been trying to swallow for the last few decades, believing that we should be "politically correct" and not hurt anyone’s feelings. The problem may be a lot larger and have more far-reaching effects than even the most skeptical among us truly professional full-time skeptics ever imagined.

Police officers and others in a rather sensitive security environment can be castigated, criticized and criminalized for profiling. We even started giving it a racial overtone a few years back by calling it racial profiling. There may have been some basis for calling it that, especially when higher numbers of arrests or apprehensions occurred in high-crime areas and most of the residents in that area were of some particular racial or ethnic group. Crime is not a respecter of persons, it is color blind and has no ties to ethnicity. There is and has always been a close tie to crime and to susceptibility based on a number of factors which include environment, social habits, etc. If you put 300 kids in a room and give all of them loaded sixguns which they, untutored, are to draw, twirl and shoot, sooner or later somebody is going to get shot in the foot or somewhere else equally important.

So it is on the streets. When you engage in nefarious activities, you are either going to bring grief upon yourself or upon others. And chances are, you are going to be "profiled." That usually is not a sight one would travel a thousand miles or more to see. It appears in the records as "felon" of some sort or other and the profiling is hard to erase. The paper trail may be comparatively easy to shake, but like it or not, the nearly invisible but ever-present trail of stigma stays with you and always rubs off to some degree onto your kith and kinfolk.

When we condone criminal activities of any kind by trying to whitewash them through calling them something other than what they really are, we only deepen and perpetuate the problem. The same result comes from what has come to be defined as appeasement. If we face the truth, there ain’t no such animal when dealing with any organized entity. Appeasement is only another word which they translate as "Victory" with a capital V.

We have people who honestly believe that we can defeat terrorism by appeasement. Those ignore history.

It may be wrong to tar all members of any ethnic, political, religious or racial group with the same brush because of the actions of a few criminally inclined individuals who claim affiliation with such a group, but that will happen because humans tend to react in that way..

The Plame Name Blame Game

In response to a request from i eat puppies, here are my thoughts on the Karl Rove dustup.

I think this shows just how desperate the Democrats and liberals are. There is no credible evidence that Karl Rove broke any law. Yet, the lack of evidence does not stop the media, the Democrats and the Left from trying and convicting him in the press and in the Press Room.

If there is evidence that Karl Rove, or anyone else, broke any law, why don't we leave it to the prosecutors to determine, and let the reporters report, instead of interrogate?

Two sources that I trust, former Judge Andrew Napolitano and Victoria Toensing, both say that Karl Rove did not break the law in question. Ms. Toensing wrote or participated in the writing of the law, which was narrowly drawn to address a specific issue, the efforts of former CIA agent Philip Agee to identify CIA covert operatives.

According to Judge Napolitano, there are two requirements for the law to be broken: First, the individual in question, Rove, must have had access to classified information directly through his official role. He didn’t, the Judge said.

Second, the information about the protected individual, Plame, must not have been made available prior to Rove’s alleged release of it. The Judge notes that Ms. Plame’s husband, Joe Wilson, had published that information himself prior to the discussion between Mr. Rove and the reporter (Cooper) on Wilson’s Web site!

There is a further question of whether Ms. Plame was undercover at the time all of this came about, and no one has said definitely that she was, and further they have not said that at any time is it clear that she would have been protected by this law, as far as I have been able to determine.

So, it appears that the Democrats are shooting their mouths off before they know what they are talking about. They have only one goal in mind, and that goal has nothing whatsoever to do with national security, or protecting the identity of covert operatives.

And, while we are on the subject of Valerie Plame's outing, have you ever wondered just why The New York Times refuses to reveal the source its reporter is now in jail to protect? Karl Rove released reporters from maintaining his anonymity, so it must not be Mr. Rove that the Times is protecting.

It seems to me that this is what the press ought to be wondering about. And as for the Democrats/liberals, they ought to know better. But as they say, “desperate people do desperate things.”

Technorati Tags: Rove, Plame, Agents, Democrats

Fighting Fire With Fire

Islamic terrorism is rampant in the world. Prior to 9/11 there were quite a few terrorist activities, several aimed at U.S. targets. Since 9/11, terrorists have targeted Madrid and London. Radical Islamists now stoop to killing fellow Muslims in Iraq who are trying to free themselves of the bonds of Islamic fundamentalism, an ancient and outdated religion/philosophy that enslaves its subjects. This they do in the name of Allah.

The Muslim extremists murder at will, without a care. They are not being held in check, or even actively opposed by their moderate brethren, if any moderate Muslims indeed exist. Islam looks at the world as black and white: Either you are Muslim or you aren’t. If you aren’t, you are fair game. As long as extremist, radical, fundamental Islam is in control, every non-Muslim is a potential target. We, the potential targets of these creatures whom the civilized world left behind centuries ago must fight back to end this threat to our way of life.

Islam is touted as a religion of peace. If so, Muslim terrorists pervert their religion to justify murder. They are cowards. Like pedophiles, they prey on the innocent and those unable to defend themselves. They attack schools, hospitals, buses and trains. They blow up cafes and shops. They cause enormous harm and pain. All in the name of Allah.

Terrorism cannot be tolerated. It must be fought fiercely, or else it will consume us. Its perpetrators must be hunted down and killed. Its supporters must be swiftly and painfully punished. The message must be broadcast far and wide that we will not allow them to succeed, and our actions must back that up.

Pockets of radical Muslims in the U.S. must be wiped out. Their members must be jailed or deported. We cannot condone or permit Islamic radicals inflaming anti-American sentiment within our own borders. This is not about free speech. It is not about freedom of religion.

Our borders with Mexico and Canada must be fortified. Our ports must be made safer. All illegal aliens, regardless of who they are or what they are doing here must be rounded up. Those who are merely here illegally will be deported. Those involved in criminal activity will be jailed. Those involved in terrorist activities should be beheaded.

Nations that support terrorism, or which condone terrorist activities within their borders will be warned that if terrorist planning and training groups are detected within their borders, the U.S. will go in and destroy them. We will apologize in advance for any collateral damage to lives and property, but it is their fault for allowing this activity to go on.

They will also be warned that if a terrorist act is traced to within their borders, their country, or a significant portion of it, will be wiped from the face of the Earth. They may need a demonstration up front to convince them we mean business, to get them motivated to find and destroy terrorist organizations within their borders.

The longer we sit back and make excuses, the more we try to blame ourselves for Muslim extremism’s atrocities, the stronger a foothold the extremists gain, the more numerous they become, and the longer and harder the fight will be to kill them.

Tags: Muslims, Islam, Terrorism, Terrorists, United States, Security, Defense

The War With Radical Islam

I found this post last night on El Borak's Myopia. It has some interesting points to make about the nature of Islam and the radical practitioners that visit such attrocities on the world, and whom the Western cultures must defeat and destroy before they destroy us.

No Civilians Left

Responding to questions about the terrorist attack on London, a Muslim scholar in the British capital asserted Islam makes no distinction between civilians and military targets.

"The term 'civilians' does not exist in Islamic religious law," said Hani Al-Siba'i, head of the Al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies in London.

Al-Siba'i, in an interview with the Arab news channel al-Jazeera, elaborated, "There is no such term as 'civilians' in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar Al-Harb or not."

Dar Al-Harb refers to the Muslim concept of the world being divided into two "houses," the House of Islam and the remaining territories, the House of War, or Dar Al-Harb.
-- World Net Daily

Of course, he's correct, because there were no such things as civilians until 1648.

The "Peace of Westphalia," signed that year, ended the Thirty Years' War and ushered in the era of modern warfare. Prior to that time, there were no uniforms, no civilians, and no distinction between combatants and non-combatants. There was only conquest, and such played even greater havoc with civilians than today's warfare, if such can be believed.

Islam hearkens back to warfare between societies, not armies. There is only Islam and Dar al-Harb, them and us. And one or the other must die.

As modern states break their armies against the House of Islam, they are coming to realize one thing: Islam does not fight like we do. It does not recognize "rules" of warfare; it does not adhere to the Geneva Convention. We are not fighting a state, but a state of mind that can exist in anyone. Anyone can be a combatant, therefore anyone can be a threat, from the smallest child to the oldest harridan. And anyone can be a target.

We are, in a large way, going back to the future as warefare devolves into its pre-modern state. Terrorism and insurgency are not new things, but very old things. And it's going to play out very badly for us once the war is joined fully. Unfortunately for those "over there", it's going to play out much worse for them.

This is not a threat, but a fact. The day a suitcase nuke explodes in some American city, bringing down the economy as well as (quite possibly) the government, the day America forgets - in its rage - why we distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, there's going to be a desert of beaded glass from the Mediterranean to India.

It will be a sad day, indeed. But I feel it coming.

2005 Cost of Government Day - July 4

Cost of Government Day is the date of the calendar year on which the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of spending and regulatory burdens imposed by all levels of government, federal, state and local.

Cost of Government Day 2005

Cost of Government Day for 2005 is July 4th, the same date as 2004. With July 4th as the COGD, working people must toil on average 185 days out of the year just to meet all the costs imposed by government. In other words, the cost of government consumes 50.4 percent of national income.

Cost of Government: Trends

• Cost of Government Day remained the same as last year’s revised date of July 4th and down 4 days from July 8th in 2003.
• Slower economic growth, a recession, the war, and corporate scandals were responsible for the substantial increases in previous years.
• However, it appears the index has turned the corner. COGD is now only slightly above 2001 levels.
• The reduction, however, is due to stronger economic growth in the wake of the Bush tax cuts.
• The acceleration of economic growth has produced more income for Americans which has mitigated the large increases in spending and regulations in 2004 and 2005.
• If growth occurred as initially projected then Cost of Government Day would be July 8th.
  However, COGD is still 5 days above 2000’s level.

Cost of Government: Components

Federal Spending

• After posting its first decline in four years, federal spending shot back up in 2005.
• The average American is working 4.9 days more in 2005 than was required in 2000.
• 97 percent of the increase in the total COGD since 2000 has been due to increases in federal spending.

State/Local Spending

• The average American will work 42.2 days to pay for state and local spending; signifying the third straight decline as a percentage of national income in as many years.
• Although the decline for 2005 is expected to be 0.6 days, the average American will work 2.7 fewer days in 2005 than was required in 2001.
• State and local spending as a percentage of national income increased every year from 1998 though 2002 and the recent three-year decline has put state and local spending back around 1999 levels.

Regulations

• Regulations as a percent of national income declined for the second straight year following a substantial increase in 2001 and 2002 then holding at the elevated levels in 2003.
• Regulatory costs have now fallen back to 16 percent of national income.
• In 2005, the average American will have to work 58.5 days out of the year to pay for all regulations, which is a decline of 0.6 days from 2004.
• In the broader picture, 2004 experienced a reduction of 1.6 days compared to 2003 and yet the average American is still working an extra day to pay for regulations than was required in 2000.
• Even with the 2004 and 2005 decline, the average American has worked a cumulative 10 additional days to pay for regulations since 2000.
  

More Information

• Complete 2005 Report (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
• COGD By the Numers (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
• COGD Chartroom (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
• COGD State Tax Increases (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
• COGD State Spending (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

Tags: Government, Taxes, Spending, Labor, Tax Freedom Day

People Are As Weird As Anybody

How could we have forseen the dire consequinces of ramming a comet with a spacecraft? As a follow-up on the story about NASA creashing the Deep Impact spacecraft into a comet, NASA is being sued.

"Astrologer sues NASA

A Russian astrologer is suing Nasa after claiming the probe they smashed into a comet meant she had to rewrite all her horoscopes.

Marina Bai wants 170,000 in damages after Nasa's Deep Impact probe crashed into the Tempel 1 comet.

She said the collision will change the orbit of the comet and therefore affect the night skyscape, and she will be unable to read horoscopes properly without lots of extra research."

Source: Tomorrow's Trends

Tags: Comet, Lawsuit, Nuts, Astrology, NASA, Space

Burr Kills Hamilton in Duel in 1804

On July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton (right) and Aaron Burr (left) met on the dueling grounds at Weehawken, New Jersey, to fight the final skirmish of a long-lived political and personal battle. When the duel was over, Hamilton would be mortally wounded, and Burr would be wanted for murder.

Hamilton was a Federalist. Burr was a Republican. The men clashed repeatedly in the political arena. The first major skirmish was in 1791, when Burr successfully captured a United States Senate seat from Philip Schuyler, Hamilton's powerful father-in-law. Hamilton, then Treasury secretary, would have counted on Schuyler to support his policies. When Burr won the election, Hamilton fumed.

In 1800 Burr obtained and had published "The Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq., President of the United States.," a document highly critical of Adams, a Federalist. Hamilton, its author, had intended it for private circulation. Its publication proved highly embarrassing to Hamilton and helped widen rifts in the Federalist Party. That same year, when Republicans Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson tied in balloting for the presidency, Hamilton lobbied Congress to decide the election in Jefferson's favor. Hamilton's campaign had little effect, but in the end, Jefferson emerged the winner.

It was the New York governor's race of 1804, however, that pushed the two men to violence. In that election, Burr turned his back on the Republicans and ran as an independent. Burr believed that if he won, he would regain power. The prospect of Burr leading New York mortified Hamilton, who despised and mistrusted Burr completely. In early 1804, Hamilton tried to convince New York Federalists not to support Burr.

Although Hamilton's campaign was probably not the deciding factor, the Burr campaign failed. Burr was crushed in the general election by Morgan Lewis, the Republican candidate, who was supported by George and DeWitt Clinton, powerful New York Republicans.

The battle for New York had been a bruising one, but in the end, a relatively minor slight precipitated the Burr-Hamilton duel. In February, 1804, a New York Republican, Dr. Charles D. Cooper, attended a dinner party at which Alexander Hamilton spoke forcefully and eloquently against Burr. Cooper later wrote a letter to Philip Schuyler in which he made reference to a particularly "despicable opinion" Hamilton expressed about Burr. The letter was published in a New York newspaper the "Albany Register."

Hoping that a victory on the dueling ground could revive his flagging political career, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel. Hamilton wanted to avoid the duel, but politics left him no choice. If he admitted to Burr's charge, which was substantially true, he would lose his honor. If he refused to duel, the result would be the same. Either way, his political career would be over.

After Hamilton's and Burr's seconds tried without success to settle the matter amicably, the two political enemies met on the dueling grounds at Weehawken, New Jersey on the morning of July 11. Each fired a shot from a .56 caliber dueling pistol. Burr was unscathed; Hamilton fell to the ground mortally wounded. He died the next day.

Instead of reviving Burr's political career, the duel helped to end it. Burr was charged with two counts of murder. After his term as vice president ended, he would never hold elective office again. And his next plot to gain power would end with charges of treason.

Source: The Burr-Hamilton Duel

Tags: Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Duels, Politics, Rivalry, Murder, Treason

The Seduction of the Welfare State

Columnist and economist Walter Williams often hits the nail squarely on the head. The following excerpt comes from a column that does just that:

Dependency on government

Walter E. Williams

July 6, 2005

William Beach has just written a report for the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation titled "The 2005 Index of Dependency." Between 1962 and today, American dependence on government has more than doubled and shows little sign of abatement. The growth areas of dependency examined in the report are: welfare and medical care, housing, retirement income, education, and rural and agricultural services. The budgetary impact of dependency threatens perpetual budget deficits and high taxes, but to focus only on the budgetary impact is to trivialize the more devastating aspects of dependency.

Some of this has been commented upon by University of Texas professor Marvin Olasky in his 1992 book, "The Tragedy of American Compassion." One of the results of the growth of dependency on government is what Professor Olasky calls the charitable equivalent of Gresham's Law -- where bad charities drive out good charities.

Consider two options for a homeless family. A church or some other non-governmental entity might offer a homeless family shelter in return for the family's performance of chores such as cleaning the kitchen, mowing the lawn and washing windows. By contrast, a shelter financed by the government might provide that family shelter with no such obligation. The natural tendency for many homeless families would be to opt for the shelter where they have no obligation to give back. The Gresham's Law feature of this is the displacement of charity from the local and private level to the state, where all too often the state is unwilling or unable to distinguish between deserving and undeserving need.

There's another devastating feature of growing dependency on government. Professor Olasky says that prior to the 1960s, marriage was a more vital institution than today. It was a "compassionate anti-poverty device that offered adults affiliation and challenge as it provided two parents for each child." Before the '60s, the support for marriage was so strong that an unmarried woman who became pregnant usually would get married. Professor Olasky adds that 85 percent of teenage mothers in the 1950s were married by the time their babies were born. That's before we bought into the vision promoted by "experts" such as Johns Hopkins professor Andrew Cherlin, who said, "It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes." The real issue, according to Professor Cherlin, "is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income." That's a vision that says marriage and fatherhood can be replaced by a welfare check.

Read the entire column

Tags: Welfare, Dependency, Government, Compassion, Family, Marriage, Charities

From the Belly of the Beast

From PowerLine:

How is the American left responding to today's terrorist attacks in London? The posters at Democratic Underground represent the heart and soul of the left, and, arguably, of the Democratic Party. Check out this message thread for their views on the latest terrorist outrage. Warning, this is only for those with strong stomachs. The debate is basically between those who think President Bush is only indirectly responsible for the terrorist attacks, and those who think the administration actually carried out the bombings. Like this guy:

I am so cynical... That all I can think is "how convenient" that this happened to take the light off Karl Rove.

I don't think anything is on the "up-and-up" anymore, not even terrorist attacks.

Yes, that's it, all right. The Bush administration is now staging terrorist bombings to distract attention from Karl Rove. Fortunately, however, our leftist friends have their attention riveted firmly on Rove, and they won't be distracted by something as insignificant as terrorist attacks.

Tags: Religion, News, Politics, Terrorists, Bombing, London, Stupidity

Muslim Mafia

by The Windjammer

The hot news off the cool tube this morning is the bombing of at least seven sites in the major city of the United Kingdom. An Al Qaeda affiliate cell has claimed credit.

It is about time that the civilized world begin calling the perpetrators by their proper name. Maybe if we begin to face facts by telling what they are, a few of us who need desperately to do so will wake up to the fact that they are determined to destroy any and all law-abiding societies.

Muslim Mafia may not be an apt description, but neither were the terms Sicilian or Italian Mafia and Russian Mafia, but they identified the same sort of hoodlums embedded in those societies.

Muslims in general, just as Italians, Sicilians and Russians in general, are decent people. Most have no desire to destroy those who rationally disagree with their philosophies. It is the criminal element inside Islam composed of those who call themselves Muslims and who operate under the guise of religious fervor which is bent on destroying all civilization as the rest of us know it.

The Muslim Mafia has many allies in this country and in others. Some of those may truly have good intentions, but the actions they take actually afford support for the criminal element of Islam.

They have allies in both houses of Congress. All one need do to confirm that hypothesis is to listen to some of the spouting of the members of those "august" bodies. It is unlikely, at least I hope so, that congresspersons would willingly aid and abet such activities as are conducted by the terrorist organizations, but they do so with their support of pork barrel politics and partisan politics which are pushed so far as to be detrimental to the country.

Those who totally oppose development of energy sources which would be the property of or controlled by the United States are also guilty of aiding and abetting. I am sure that is not the aim of some of those groups, but the results are the same as if it were.

This nation is dependent upon petroleum as the primary energy source. It isn’t really, but we have made it so and we are strengthening that position every day. I have read a great deal of information which indicates that a large chunk of the money we have paid to others for oil has gone to support terrorist groups.

There is one particular group which has been pushing for release of detainees held at Gitmo. I believe that to be overt support for the various terrorist groups, all of which have a common objective.

There is considerable support for open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens. I don’t care what the ethnic background, illegal aliens can afford an excellent cover for persons bent on mayhem.

The hardest part for some of those who think that the Hollywood brains are just that is to accept the fact that the guy in the White House who used to wear pointy boots doesn’t have a head to match his toes. I don’t know how many times he and Tony Blair will have to be proven to have been correct in their assessment of the basic problem for those in the perimeter to quit harping on what they perceive to be WMD and focus on the real WMD’s which are being used against people every day. "People" includes non-military men, women and children, Christians, Jews AND Muslims, as well as any others who happen to be in the wrong place at the right time.

Muslims especially should understand that they are having their religion taken over by hoodlums of the worst kind who are doing that by proclaiming that they are the true believers.

True believers in WHAT?

Their sole objective is to establish a world-wide Mafia that will make the others look like a Sunday School youth group hayride on Saturday night.

Tags: Religion, News, Current Affairs, Current Events, Politics, Terrorists, Bombing, London,

An immigrant's musings on Durbin

By Edward Gorin
From JewishWorldReview.com

I was once a violinist for the Bolshoi Symphony in Moscow. I was once a Soviet dissident and refusenik. I was also the son of a man who served six years in one of Russia's gulag camps. Today, in my retirement, my mind has little to do besides muse on the idiocies of some of our politicians. So when I heard Illinois Senator Dick Durbin's comparison of the terrorist storage facility at Guantanamo Bay to "Soviets in their gulags," my mind reeled from such a flaunting of ignorance by an American senator — not to mention his trivialization of the experiences of my father and of countless other Russians who suffered unspeakably or perished in the gulags of the old Soviet regime.

Especially because I recalled how the mother of one of the eight Russian detainees at Guantanamo pleaded with authorities to keep her son at the prison camp. "I am terribly scared of a Russian prison or Russian court for my son," Reuters quoted Amina Khasanova in 2003. "At Guantanamo they treat him humanely. The conditions are fine." Her son, Andrei Bakhitov, had written her a letter saying, "I think there is not even a health resort in Russia on the level of this place."

The only way my assaulted brain was able to recover from Mr. Durbin's boggling remarks was by finding refuge in the Russian language. For it occurred to me that the word "Dur" means stupidity in Russian. From it are derived the words "durnoy" (stupid), "durak" (fool) and "durdom" (mental hospital). Now, "bin" is the American word for something like a hamper or a trash can or a container for all manner of refuse.

Americans should know that especially over the past decade, many American-English words feature prominently in the Russian language— for example, director, computer, region, manager, Internet, traffic, PR, sponsor and producer, to name just a few. (While the French may go out of their way to avoid using American terms such as "email", and come up with French substitutes, the Russian inferiority complex is not as strong.)

So there is actually a real possibility that very soon a new word will enter the Russian vocabulary: durbin (accent on the second syllable). And its meaning will be "a trashcan for idiotic ideas, suggestions, speeches, and hysterical parallels."

In fact, I'd like to be the first to suggest it.

Tags: Durbin, Gulag, Guantanamo, Prisoners, Abuse

U.S. Citizens Held on Insurgency Suspicion

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is holding five U.S. citizens suspected of insurgent activities in Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday.

They were captured separately and don't appear to have ties to one another, spokesman Bryan Whitman said. He declined to identify them, citing a Pentagon policy that prohibits identification of detainees.

Three of those being detained are Iraqi-Americans; another is an Iranian-American; the fifth is a Jordanian-American, Whitman said. The three Iraqi-Americans were captured in April, May and June, officials said. The Iranian-American was captured May 17, one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the cases.

One of the Iraqi-Americans allegedly had knowledge of planning for an attack, and another was possibly involved in a kidnapping. The third was "engaged in suspicious activity," Whitman said, declining to be more specific.

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Reality ruins 'Live 8' boasts

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 6, 2005

Was the TV audience 3 million, 3 billion -- or maybe 3 kajillion? Depends on who's counting.

According to organizers of the "Live 8" concerts staged at nine cities Saturday, 85 percent of the planet could watch the "poverty awareness" music events studded with rockers, rappers and other musical elite.

Concert point man Bob Geldof told the press Monday that 3 billion viewers had tuned into the festivities.

Or did they?

According to Nielsen, fewer than 3 million watched ABC's two-hour special on the concerts, which featured Paul McCartney, Bono and the Who, among others. An additional 5 million watched the innovative video streaming of multiple concerts available at America Online.

The British audience, meanwhile, ranged from 4 million to 9 million, according to the British Broadcasting Corp., which received 400 complaints for airing foul-mouthed remarks from Madonna and other performers.

"Passions are running high, and many celebrities are emotional," a BBC spokeswoman explained.

Meanwhile, the French channel M-6 drew 1.9 million viewers, and two Italian broadcasts of the concerts pulled in a combined 2 million. In Canada, the TV audience numbered 10 million, the Hollywood Reporter said yesterday.

So simple math reveals the audience in these TV markets -- the biggest in the world -- to number about 30 million.

Concert organizers estimated live crowds of 205,000 in London; 150,000 in Philadelphia; 35,000 in Barre, Canada; 8,000 in Johannesburg; 200,000 in Rome; 150,000 in Berlin; 100,000 in Paris; and 10,000 each in Tokyo and Moscow.

In addition, 26 million people sent in text messages via their cell phones in support of the musical cause.

Though the roughly 27 million radio listeners were not factored, the number still does not bring the grand total of concert watchers in these markets to 60 million -- or about as many people as watch a typical Super Bowl in the U.S. alone.

Numbers aside, the "Live 8" events drew criticisms from charities and African leaders who felt the event was "too focused on money, rather than the problems of unequal trade and good governance in Africa itself," the BBC reported.

Others were offended by commentary from on-camera hosts, confused editing and heavy advertising of expensive goodies during a supposedly "anti-poverty" presentation.

"For one day while our culture united to do something good for the world, do we have to put the worst of it on display?" Ari Rabin-Havt asked in an article at the Huffington Post blog yesterday.

A few performers reported a spike in record sales. Some -- such as Pink Floyd and Mr. McCartney -- announced they would donate the profits to charity.

Others were not so generous. Pirated copies of the concert were available on EBay by Monday, but they were removed quickly from the online auction block after complaints from organizers and a record company that had bought the rights to the concert.

The pirates, Mr. Geldof told Reuters, were "cretins and scum."

Supreme Court Vacancy Petition

Join grassroots citizens from around the nation who are urging the President to nominate justices who strictly adhere to the meaning and intent of the Constitution!

The resignation of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor signals the beginning of a monolithic battle over the next Supreme Court nomination. A key swing vote on some of our nation's most high-profile legal cases over the last 25 years, the absence of O'Connor will have liberal interest groups throwing open their war chests to defeat any of President Bush's Supreme Court nominees.

Even with the so-called filibuster compromise, Democrats in the Senate have all-but pledged to oppose any nominee that does not pass their liberal litmus test.

There could not be a more critical time for Americans who are desperate to see order restored to the court and justices who strictly adhere to the original intent of our Constitution.

To counter the aggressive push by liberal groups to nominate and confirm moderate justices, Grassfire.org is moving to rally a minimum 250,000 citizens as quickly as possible for an EMERGENCY PETITION DELIVERY to The White House!

EMERGENCY ACTION ITEM: Grassfire is calling on all members of our online team to take immediate action in helping us rally and mobilize 250,000 citizen signers of our "Judicial Vacancy" petition. With the announced retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, it is crucial that the grassroots voice is heard in the nomination process.

Grassfire will be delivering petitions to the White House during the first week of July.

If you are concerned about the future of our nation and want to stop Judicial Tyranny in America, go here, and alert your friends.

The Petition States:

To: President Bush, U.S. Senate

Whereas, the federal courts of the United States have imposed a tyranny of the judiciary on the American people by straying from the original meaning and intent of our U.S. Constitution, and

Whereas, judges and justices have extended the jurisdiction of the courts in ways that betray the meaning and intent of the Constitution, and

Whereas, some members of the U.S. Senate have obstructed the judicial nomination process and imposed an ideological blockade on President Bush's nominees…

Therefore, I the undersigned do hereby call on the President of the United

States to nominate and the U.S. Senate to speedily confirm nominees for the lower federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court who:

1. Uphold the original meaning and intent of the Constitution and reject the so-called "living Constitution" model that allows judges to apply their own meaning to our founding document;

2. Uphold the intended jurisdiction of the courts as outlined by the Constitution and are committed to reversing the imperial court and the doctrine of judicial supremacy on all societal matters.

3. Are men and women of upstanding moral character who adhere to the historic values of our nation.

I oppose efforts to filibuster or block all nominees who meet these criteria and call for "Up-Or-Down" votes on all of President Bush's nominees. In addition, in the event the following individuals are nominated:

I would support the nomination of Antonin Scalia as Chief Justice.

I would support the nomination of Clarence Thomas as Chief Justice.

Re-establishing Perspective on African Poverty

Now that the hoopla has died down, here's a dash of cold water from Wes Pruden to restore common sense to the discussion of African poverty and other problems:

Slaking a thirst with a fire hose
July 5, 2005

This must be Tuesday, because poverty in Africa ended Monday.

All it took were a few chords, a lot of screaming, several acres of dirty hair and a cloud cover of lethal body odor. When the last guitar strings snapped Saturday night at those Live 8 concerts across the world, promoter Bob Geldof's over-the-hill gang had the prescription: just stuff a few billion dollars down the bottomless holes on the Dark Continent.

"This is the greatest rock show in the history of the world," cried the announcer at the London concert. Gushed a disc jockey on XM Satellite Radio: "This is the single most important concert ever."

No one wanted to stop there. Shouted one of the "musicians" of a group called Coldplay: "This is the greatest thing that's ever been in the entire history of the world."

Since "the entire history of the world" includes the extinction of the dinosaurs, the eruption of Krakatoa, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the construction of the pyramids, the Resurrection of Christ and man's landing on the moon, Live 8 had to be impressive mush.

But this week the grown-ups take over, as grown-ups always must, when the G-8 economic summit commences in Scotland under the baton of Tony Blair, who not only wants to eliminate African poverty but to end global warming before Christmas.

The nations of the West must do something to ease the brutal pain of generations of unbridled greed, ignorant incompetence and rabid corruption in Africa. It's our Christian duty. But it will require discipline that is out of fashion in the 21st century, and it certainly isn't what the simple-minded noisemakers of Live 8 had in mind.

The example of Nigeria says it all. Figures released last month by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, as reported in the London Daily Telegraph, reveal that in the 45 years since Britain granted independence in 1960 a succession of despots squandered $387 billion (that's a "b," not an "m"), almost to the dollar the sum of all Western aid to all of Africa between 1960 and 1997. One of the despots, Gen. Sani Abacha, now safely dead, is believed to have looted Nigeria's vast oil reserves of more than $5 billion in just five years.

William Bellamy, the U.S. ambassador to neighboring Kenya, startled the guests at his Fourth of July garden party yesterday with just the kind of bluntness needed to keep African aid in realistic perspective. "Turning on the fire hose of international compassion and asking Kenya and other African nations to drink from it is not a serious strategy for promoting growth or ending poverty."

President Mwai Kibaki, the Kenyan president, was off at the African Union summit in Libya, helping other despots draw up their gimme list. In his absence, a deputy fired back at Ambassador Bellamy, complaining that Kenya had been singled out for criticism just because it doesn't take terrorism seriously. Aid for Africa, he told the ambassador, "should not get entangled with the politics of your dissatisfaction with a regime, unless you have decided on a regime change."

Nobody has, unfortunately, and that's exactly why aid for Africa is as close to hopeless as anything can be. Regime change all across the continent is sorely needed, even more than another concert by unemployed service-station attendants whanging away on electric guitars and other noisemakers.

Tony Blair's No. 2 man, George Brown, talks giddily of a Marshall Plan for Africa, but Nigerian despots alone have already pocketed the equivalent of six Marshall Plans. George C. Marshall's miracle scheme for rebuilding Europe worked because mature European leadership was determined to rescue the continent from the ravages of World War II. There's scant evidence that Africa's "leaders" want anything more than to drink from the fire hose.

Live 8 concerts are nice, and the photographs of starving children will break the coldest heart, but unless Europe and the West accompany aid with the kind of supervision nobody has the courage to impose, the aid will wind up in the usual Swiss banks, and 20 years from now another generation of children will die while naive hearts bleed.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times.

Canada Releases Triple Sex Murderer After Only Twelve Years In Prison!

Karla Homolka became the symbol of evil in Canada in 1993, when she was convicted of manslaughter and given 12 years for her role in the rapes and murders of Ontario teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. The prison term also included time for the 1990 death of her 15-year-old sister, Tammy Homolka, who died Christmas Eve after Homolka held a drug-soaked cloth over her mouth while both she and her husband raped her.

Neither the U.S., nor apparently Canada, has yet learned the lesson about releasing violent sex offenders on the innocent public. Twelve years for three murders is a pitifully inadequate sentence. It does not reflect concern for the good citizens of Canada, who deserve better.

Now the murderous sub-human is afraid for her life. Isn’t it a pity that she gets to feel some of the horror she visited on three people?

One of Homolka’s attorneys said she was in a "state of terror" about her release from a maximum-security prison outside Montreal. "She is paralyzed with fear, completely panicked," the lawyer told the Montreal Gazette. `When I saw her she was in a state of terror, almost in a trance. She cannot conceive of what her life will be like outside."

The lawyer argues that since Homolka's safety cannot be assured by police, the media must be prevented from reporting on her whereabouts to protect her from numerous threats against her life, mostly by Internet bloggers.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Paul-Marcel Bellavance last week rejected a similar plea, saying it violated press freedoms. The lawyer has asked the court to reconsider before his client's release.

I’m sweating bullets trying to work up some sympathy for this animal. It isn’t working. I don’t condone violence, but somehow in cases like this one, I’ll just look the other way and smile if something awful happens to this creature.

Perhaps justice will indeed prevail in the end.