Saturday, September 22, 2007

I WAS AFRAID

I was afraid. I was recently reading an article by Prof. Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under the Clintons and now teaching at University of California at Berkeley. I was agreeing with Prof. Reich. Any time I agree with Prof. Reich it scares me. He was defending large pay packages for Chief Executive Officers (CEO’s) of major corporations. Essentially he opined most star quality CEO’s are worth their exorbitant pay packages if they can negotiate them from the corporation’s board of directors. His defense of allowing boards, shareholders and CEO’s to negotiate in the free market to set pay packages was atypical of him. Normally he rants about corporate greed, oppression of the workers and the need for government control of all aspects of business, as expected from an extreme liberal. Many people are repulsed by sky high CEO pay packages as unfair in some undefined way. Usually the same people have no problem with Hollywood celebrities or sports demigods receiving higher pay than anyone other than a few top CEO’s in the country. I always think of Barbra Streisand getting 10 million dollars a night for a series of performances in Las Vegas a few years ago. Many times there are calls for Congress to legislate pay caps for CEO’s, but not stars or athletes, as a way to impose some idealized fairness into the system. I would have thought that Prof. Reich would be in this camp. Finally, I understood my fear as I read Prof. Reich’s last paragraph where he calls for "a higher marginal tax rate on the super pay of those in super demand." I realized that if CEO pay were legislatively limited, a company, instead of paying the executive, would retain the ‘excess’ amount and could pay other workers, raise dividends or build new factories - all options totally unacceptable to a liberal. On the other hand, by letting the CEO negotiate a super pay package and then super taxing the pay, any benefit would be stripped away from the private sector, CEO, company or shareholder, and instead accrue into the hands of the government to be disposed of by politicians. Does any true American want that? Simply, Mr. Reich’s real intent is to find a way to remove the country’s wealth from the private sector and put into the incompetent hands of government.

Hillary Clinton, shrilled that as President, "I want to take those profits and put them into alternative energy..." This outburst came during a February 2007 campaign speech when she attacked Exxon for too much profit from high oil and gas prices last year. Such an attitude expresses the concept that all wealth really belongs to the government; private citizens and corporations have the use of their wealth only at the sufferance of the government. Exxon, one of the largest oil companies in the world, had offended her sense of ‘fairness’ by earning 37 billion dollars in profit in 2006. She neglects to mention that Exxon already paid the top corporate tax rate on those earnings. And, she certainly does not want the public to know that the government is already collecting an extra 18.4 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold, far more than Exxon earns per gallon. Exxon prospects, drills, refines, delivers and pumps the gasoline for it’s lesser share of the profit while the federal government only sits back and waits for the gas station owner to send in 18.4 cents for every gallon you pump.

The common thread in both Prof. Reich’s and Sen..Clinton’s plans is to gather all wealth to the government and then have the bureaucrat wizards redistribute the wealth as they see fit. The name given to the concept that wealth does not belong to the creator, producer or the worker but to the government is Socialism. We all remember Socialism’s ugly child is communism. Sen. Clinton, in one of the recent debates, waffled on her ideology. She wandered through the evolution of the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’, said she believed in the best of both, avoided the word Socialism and concluded she should be called a Progressive. Fuzzy, but Politically Correct. Her programs, however, all claim power and wealth to the government. This is usually called Socialism where wealth belongs to the government to be distributed by ideological whim.
Central planning of a society - that is the government deciding who pays what, who gets what and what it is that you get - has a socialistic effect. Even the late Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU describes socialism as, "everybody poor together." When politicians and academics ask, no order, me to turn over my wallet to the beneficent government and the have the government ‘ take care’ of me, I am very afraid.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

9/11 PATH OR MAZE

9/11 will go down the ‘memory hole’, at least if Hillary Clinton has her way. The ABC TV miniseries the "Path To 9/11" is 5 hours long and cost $40 million to produce. It was shown once and had a viewership of 25 million. It was good enough to receive seven Emmy award nominations but now it is down the ‘memory hole’. For those not old enough to remember, the ‘memory hole’ comes George Orwell’s novel "1984" about totalitarianism. Inconvenient documents, photos and stories that did not reflect the leader’s world view were dropped down a hole in the office of the ‘Ministry of Truth’ and disappeared from all public memory. While Hillary Clinton may not be a totalitarian, or at least not until she is elected President, she certainly is one heck of a schoolyard bully already. Consider the fear and trembling she must have instilled in the ABC network executives, if they are willing to sink the $40 million they have in the "Path To 9/11" project in order not to incur her wrath. I am sure that when it is time for the Emmy Awards most of Hollywood and New York will dutifully ‘disremember’ the "Path to 9/11."

What offence does this miniseries commit to cause bloodless, calculating businessmen at ABC to scuttle an investment of $40 million? When September 11, 2001 occurred, the Clinton duo were safely out of the presidency and the arch villain George W. Bush was in office for several months. He would take the fall for the tragedy. Why are the Clintons concerned with a docudrama re-telling the event? Unfortunately for the Clintons, the docudrama does not cover just the terror of the 9/11 event in isolation. The series looks backward over several years to determine the seeds of the plot and the preparation and planning of the U.S. government for terrorist events. What it documents is that the Clinton co-presidency was woefully unaware of intelligence issues and botched an attempt to ‘take out’ bin Laden. This is clearly unacceptable. As Martin Miller, of the Los Angles Time, reports " attempts to pressure ABC to cancel the miniseries at the time were unsuccessful, but last-minute edits were imposed to quell the critical outcry." Clinton cohorts made the edits. Even so, Sen. Harry Reid, now majority leader, and four other Democrat senators threatened ABC that if it were shown it would "deeply damage" ABC’s reputation. Wow, they get to edit the program and threaten ABC with consequences for daring to defy political correctness! This may even rise above normal schoolyard bullying.

The DVD version of the program was to be issued in January, then April, then, this summer. Currently, release time is unknown. Cyrus Nowrasteh, the miniseries writer and producer, is angered over the stonewalling on the release date and said he was told by ABC "if Hillary weren’t running for president, this wouldn’t be a problem." Even notorious left-wing Hollywood types are disturbed by the non-release of the DVD. Oliver Stone stated "this is a shame; it’s censorship in the most blatant way." But in the weird world of Hollywood spin, the protesters don’t directly criticize the Clintons, they just see the precedent of the censorship (by the Clintons) as giving cover so that "the Bush administration may go after a movie." Political Correctness does sometimes require strenuous twisting of facts to obtain the proper conclusion.

Author Judge Robert H. Bork said that the final stage of liberalism is tyranny. Left-leaning liberals like Hillary Clinton have demonstrated intolerance for any presentation that illuminates their unflattering characteristics and activities. Judge Bork notes that extreme liberalism leads to tyranny because of liberals’ need to control. Controlling the media is just a prelude to controlling the Clintons’ images, but it is an essential prerequisite to controlling the country. The left’s agenda to control has already curtailed freedoms to smoke, own guns, choose schools, eat trans fats, pollute, gas guzzle, select associates, acknowledge God or flag, waste money, be stupid or to think differently from them. Certainly in the campaign for 2008, they do not want any mention or image of 9/11 used, nor do they want the word ‘terrorism’ heard.

The ‘memory hole’ has moved into the electronic age with only slight modification. The Amazon page for "Path To 9/11" reads: "Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock." Will the Amazon search entry "Path To 9/11" after the November 2008 elections read: "No Match Found - Please Search Again" The Ministry of Truth has its ways.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

NO PICTURES PLEASE

Political Correctness is a madness that can kill. In Seattle political correctness, commonly called PC, causes the local newspapers to refrain from cooperating with the FBI in a hunt for possible terrorists because of an excessive concern for the rights and privacy of the terrorist suspects. In Arizona, PC causes a school principal to suspend an eighth grader because a doodle on his homework could be construed as a weapon. How odd - protect terrorists, hound little boys.

Political correctness began in the 1960's on elite college campuses as a means of insuring that all students and faculty followed the left’s ideas and behavior. Unfortunately as the addled graduates infiltrated many of our cultural institutions, including the news media, they are now wreaking havoc on the security of the United States. First Seattle’s madness.

In late August, the FBI requested the public’s help in locating some suspected terrorists. Two men had been observed on several occasions over several weeks by different people acting suspiciously on Puget Sound ferries, these ferries having previously been identified as the “ No.1 target for maritime terrorism” by the Dept. Of Justice. After receiving numerous reports, the FBI and Washington Joint Analytical Center (WJAC) began an investigation but could neither identify nor locate the suspects. At that point they enlisted the public’s help in finding the individuals by asking the newspapers to publish this request: “The Seattle FBI and the WJAC are requesting the public’s assistance in identifying the two individuals pictured below. These men have been seen aboard Washington State Ferries on several occasions and have exhibited unusual behavior, which was reported by passengers. While this behavior may have been innocuous, the FBI and WJAC would like to resolve these reports.”

Then something odd happened. The local newspapers, the Seattle Times and the Post Intelligencer, printed the FBI request but eliminated the suspects’ pictures. Imagine an Old West Wanted Poster with a blank spot where the fugitives picture would be and stamped in the blank space “Picture withheld for fugitive’s privacy.” What would Bat Masterson or Wyatt Earp have said to that The P-I’s Managing Editor, David McCumber, said “Based on what we have, it seemed newsworthy that the FBI was trying to find these guys, but it did not seem appropriate to run their photographs.” Huh? McCumber hoped “we are able to get more information on this story, if it exists, from the FBI that would give us a clearer idea of the background behind their request.” I love the qualification “ if it exists” casting suspicion on the FBI rather than on the suspects. These suspects were observed photographing ferry doorways and structures and asking questions about construction and schedules.

On the following day, the Seattle Times relented and printed the pictures but the P-I stood firm in defense of terrorist suspects’ superior rights over public safety. Over 200 leads were received from the public and are now being investigated by the FBI. Ferry ridership has dropped way off due to public concerns over safety. As justification for his continuing refusal to run the picture, the P-I’s Mr. McCumber reports receiving a call thanking him for his refusal. The caller said, “he feared we were moving to some sort of brown-shirt state where hysteria replaced reason.” Mr. McCumber agreed saying the caller “expressed what I consider to be the controlling point here more eloquently than I was able to myself.” Let’s summarize with two equations. Hitler + Brown-shirts = Fascism. History tells us this is bad but true. Bush + FBI = Fascism according to Political Correctness. Is this true? By thwarting the FBI and Pres. Bush, P-I claims to defend freedom from Fascism. Scary, when editors cannot separate reality from the paranoia and delusions that infected them in the 60's.

Even though the PC crowd cannot see a terrorist threat in suspicious men skulking about Puget Sound ferries, they can see the dangers posed by little boys. In Arizona school officials booted out an eighth grade boy because he turned in homework with a sketch that “resembled a gun and posed a threat to his classmates.” The boy’s parents said it was a doodle of a spaceman’s laser gun and showed no targets, bullets or injury. The PC school officials found the drawing so threatening they declined to allow the local newspaper to view the “weapon.” Now Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp knew the difference between “drawing a gun” and “drawing” a gun. Liberal loonies don’t.

I say sane Americans should post a bill for Political Correctness: “Wanted dead not alive. Political Correctness is killing us”, picture withheld for protection of fugitive privacy.