Tuesday, December 30, 2003

I wish I could make this stuff up LOL:

Monday, Dec. 29, 2003 4:13 p.m. EST
N.Y. Times: No Evidence of Halliburton Profiteering

A comprehensive investigation into Halliburton's multibillion-dollar contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure shows "no evidence of profiteering" by the Houston-based oil services company.

That's the verdict by the New York Times, which assigned its Whitewater sleuth Jeff Gerth and investigative ace Don Van Atta to lay bare all the tawdry details of how Vice President Dick Cheney's former company was reaping big-bucks profits from sweetheart deals imagined by Democrats.

One problem: Gerth and Van Atta found almost nothing for Dems to hang their hats on. In fact, not only couldn't the Times find any evidence that Halliburton was stuffing its pockets under the table – even the above-board revenue collected by the company hasn't been much to write home about.

"So far this year, Halliburton's profits from Iraq have been minimal," the Times admitted. "The company's latest report to the Securities and Exchange Commission shows $1.3 billion in revenues from work in Iraq and $46 million in pretax profits for the first nine months of 2003."

That's a slender 3.5 percent margin, hardly enough to make any self-respecting war profiteer look twice. No wonder this story hasn't been leading TV and radio news reports all day.

To be sure, Times editors did their best to make it sound as if something fishy was going on. The report's front-page headline – "Halliburton Contracts in Iraq: The Struggle to Manage Costs" – gave no clue to the exoneration that followed.

And subheadlines like "Little Public Disclosure" and "An Absence of Competition" hinted darkly of shady deals where Cheney's friends were lining their pockets with blood money.

But even the Times had to admit that Halliburton's original Iraq contract was won "in a bidding process in December 2001."

What about that widely cited report last month claiming the company had overpaid by as much as 100 percent for Kuwaiti gasoline? Turns out that news is pretty much a political bust, too.

Company spokeswoman Wendy Hall explained that the Army Corps of Engineers needed the fuel imported to Iraq within 24 hours – not much time to launch a competitive bidding process.

"There's a premium for getting it done fast," explained Gordon Adams, a military procurement expert at George Washington University.

Anyone who disagrees ought to try sending all their mail by next-day air and see what happens to their postage budget.

Another factor that sent job cost estimates through the roof: sabotage by terrorists.

"As the war wound down, more work came [Halliburton subsidiary] KBR's way, mostly because of acts of sabotage on pipelines and Iraq's oil facilities," the Times noted. "When security problems made the production of fuel inside Iraq even more difficult – leading to shortages – the government asked Halliburton to import fuel."

If the Times' report on Cheney's old company is the best the Democrats can do, it's time for Terry McAuliffe to begin searching for a new campaign boogeyman ASAP.

coming close to the end of the year:
Two earthquakes
Thomas Sowell (archive)


December 30, 2003 | Print | Send


Within a week of each other, two earthquakes struck on opposite sides of the world -- an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale in California and a 6.6 earthquake in Iran. But, however similar the earthquakes, the human costs were enormously different.


The deaths in Iran have been counted in the tens of thousands. In California, the deaths did not reach double digits. Why the difference? In one word, wealth.

Wealth enables homes, buildings and other structures to be built to withstand greater stresses. Wealth permits the creation of modern transportation that can quickly carry people to medical facilities. It enables those facilities to be equipped with more advanced medical apparatus and supplies, and amply staffed with highly trained doctors and support staff.

Those who disdain wealth as crass materialism need to understand that wealth is one of the biggest life-saving factors in the world. As an economist in India has pointed out, "95 percent of deaths from natural hazards occur in poor countries."

You can see the effect of wealth by looking at the same country at different times. The biggest hurricane to hit the United States was hurricane Andrew in 1998 but it took fewer than 50 lives. Yet another hurricane, back in 1900, took at least 6,000 lives in Galveston.

The difference was that the United States was a much richer country in 1998. It had earlier warning from more advanced weather tracking equipment. It had better roads and more cars in which to evacuate before the hurricane struck, as well as more and better equipment for digging victims out of debris, and better medical treatment available for those who needed it.

Those who preen themselves on their "compassion" for the poor, and who disdain wealth, are being inconsistent, if not hypocritical. Wealth is the only thing that can prevent poverty. However, if you are not trying to prevent poverty but to exploit it for political purposes, that is another story.

There is another side to the story of these two earthquakes and their consequences. It gives the lie to the dogma being propagandized incessantly, from the schools to the media, that one culture is just as good as another.

It is just as good to lose tens of thousands of lives as not to? What hogwash! It is just as good to lack modern medicine, modern transportation, and modern industry as it is to have them? Who is kidding whom?

This dogmatism prevails at home as well as internationally. Cultures that lead to most children being born to single mothers are just as good as cultures where children grow up with two parents -- if you believe the dogma.

Facts say the opposite. Whether it is education, crime, or poverty, there are huge differences between single-parent families and two-parent families. Even race doesn't make as much difference in outcomes. The poverty rate among black married couples is in single digits. The infant mortality rate among black married women with only a high school diploma is lower than the infant mortality rate among white unmarried women who have been to college.

None of this makes a dent in those who promote the big lie that one culture is just as good as another. What does it even mean to say that? Does it mean that facts fit the dogma? Or does it just mean that they choose to use words in a certain way? It may not make any difference in their theories, but only in the real world.

None of this means that one culture is better than another for all purposes. The cheap vulgarity and brutal ugliness of so much of our media is a legitimate complaint at home and abroad. The sheer silliness of our fad-ridden public schools is a national disgrace.

By the same token, cultures that are less advanced in some ways often have contributions to make in other ways. We all take different things from different cultures to create our own personal lifestyles. We need to stop pretending that it makes no difference when all the facts show that it makes a huge difference, from poverty to matters of life and death.



©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Friday, December 26, 2003

Xmas Present From Progressives: Starvation (Horowitz)
Town Hall.com ^ | 12/25/2003 | David Horowitz


Posted on 12/26/2003 4:34:29 AM PST by mollynme


Xmas Present From Progressives: Starvation
David Horowitz



December 25, 2003


How many poor people have progressives starved since 1917? It's a good question and somebody should do the research and publish it.


Russia was the breadbasket of Europe until progressives seized power in that year and started instituting policies to "share the wealth." For the next 70 years until socialism collapsed, Russia was a net importer of food always on the brink of famine. In the 1930s, Stalin instigated a calculated famine in the Ukraine to rid himself of approximately 10 million political enemies.


His crime was protected by the progressives at the New York Times and on the Pulitzer Prize Committee (they control both institutions to this day). Because soft progressives cover for hard-line progressives like Stalin, Castro and other political monsters -- preferring to demonize George Bush and John Ashcroft instead -- these atrocities continue.


The left's inability to understand the most basic economic fact -- that people need an incentive to produce -- has caused the unnecessary deaths of tens of millions of people -- mostly poor -- in the last 75 years. But thanks to a politically corrupted media and educational system, their pig-headed pursuit of socialist fantasies goes on.


A few years ago when Robert Mugabe, the leftist dictator of Zimbabwe began his race war against white farmers to the cheers of progressives here (including such luminaries of the social justice cause as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton), I had a correspondence with a black journalist friend of mine who writes for all the leftist news outlets that pretend to care about black people but really care only about their destructive leftwing agendas.


I suggested that he might get his friends to protest Mugabe's bloody racism and brain-dead Marxism before poor black people began starving in Zmibabwe as a result of these criminal policies aimed at the most productive segment of Zimbabwe's economy.


Naturally my friend defended the murders and thefts as "social justice" and turned a blind eye to the racism since it was only directed against whites, whose parents of course had been "imperialists." In this he was expressing the majority of world progressive opinion, for example that of the dictatorships and radical organizations that attended the Orwellian UN Conference Against Racism in Durban in September 2001, an orgy of racist attacks on whites and Jews.


America and Britain which led the world in ending slavery and even attempted (futilely) to end it in Africa were put in the dock at the UN and held up for "reparations," while the Muslim Sudan which maintains slavery today and the League Of Arab States whose ancestors enslaved more black Africans than all the Europeans and Americans put together were not; Israel the only democracy in the Middle East whose Arab citizens have more rights than Arabs in all the Arab states was attacked for racism, while the Arab states which forbid Jews to set foot on their territory were not.


Now the progressive chickens are coming home to roost in Zimbabwe. On Christmas Eve the Wall Street Journal ran a front page news story on conditions in Mugabe's Marxist police state. The title of the Journal story said it all: "Once a Breadbasket, Now Zimbabwe Can't Feed Itself." Corn production -- the staple diet -- has declined by two-thirds in the last three years and 6 million Zimbabweans are on the verge of starvation.


US Ambassador Tony Hall nearly got it right when he said, "Zimbabwe stands alone as an example of how a country can be ruined by one person." Actually, Zimbabwe is one of many such countries, and it was not ruined by one person but by one person supported by a global movement of arch reactionaries who call themselves progressives and who have killed 100 million people in the last century in the name of "social justice" and learned nothing in the process.



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Friday, December 19, 2003

finally its FRIDAY!!!! and hopefully the interview went well.. more good stuff:

Saddam: Arab Honor or Dishonor
Walid Phares, Ph.D (archive)


December 19, 2003 | Print | Send


I remember from the days in Beirut, which I left in October 1990, how many called Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein: Al-Jassur. It means "The Darer," "The Courageous," and "The Macho." A few months earlier, he had ordered the invasion and plundering of Kuwait. Arab nationalists in Lebanon and throughout the region praised his conquest of its small neighbor. "No more borders between the Arabs!," (la hudud bayna al-arab) they shouted.

See when a big Arab fish eats a little Arab fish, he becomes a hero in the eyes of the radicals. The Ruler of Baghdad had always portrayed himself as a sword of the Arab nation, its soul and its avenger. He projected a leader who was on the footsteps of the great conquering Caliphs. In few words, the embodiment of what is known as al-sharaf al-arabi, or Arab honor.

Saddam knew all too well the delirium tremens of the political elites in the region. They were the product of a failed development, of crumbled empires and of trapped evolution. The writings of Pan-Arabists, the poetry of social-nationalists and the slogans of ruthless leaders shaped the ideological minds of thousands of political cadres of the Baath partisans, Nasser supporters and, later on, Jihadist militants of the region.

Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, liberal trends were crushed under the yoke of those so-called "Arab nationalists." Instead of social development, democratization and emancipation of minorities, the new rulers of the Arab world erected dictatorships in the newly established nation-states. In each one of these entities, a powerful man emerged. Each one of these dictators declared his messianic dimension. In each capital from Tripoli to Baghdad, dictators self- appointed themselves as the Saladin of the Umma. (the nation).

As the famous Lebanese-American writer Khalil Joubran put it so well, "Beware the disaster of nations, in which each piece believe it is the entire nation." So was the case with the rulers of the region. Nasser of Egypt, Kadhafi of Libya, Assad of Syria, Arafat of Palestine, Turabi of Sudan and Saddam of Iraq. Each man thought they were the unique saviors of the Arabs, all the Arabs on all Arabs lands. Hence, their will was endless, their desires unstoppable and their crimes unpunished.

Their existence on Earth was legitimized by one word: Honor. Read honor of the Arab nation. They were chosen to defend and embody that pride. It replaced democracy, development, equality, security, stability, prosperity and, above all, justice. The region lived off what the Pan-Arabist elites have divinely defined as al-sharaf al-arabi, Arab honor. Under this honor, regimes killed, tortured, raped, invaded, and ordered all sorts of inhuman behavior.

Nasser invaded Yemen, Kadhafi conquered Chad, Assad occupied Lebanon, Arafat subverted Jordan, and Turabi cleansed southern Sudan. Millions were killed, millions were jailed, and millions were tortured - - from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. All of that under one word: Honor.

Wars were started with Israel, but could never be ended because of Honor. Women were deprived from basic rights in Saudi Arabia and under the Taliban, because of pride of ideologies. Students are suppressed in Beirut and Tehran because of dignity of regimes. And when reformists, activists or critics would attempt to raise these inhumane issues internally or internationally, they were accused of injuring Arab Honor.

In Mesopotamia, the supreme commander of the social-nationalist Baath exulted honor as a state-ideology. With Baathist pride, he ordered the Kurds to be gazed. And responding to Arab dignity, he threw half a million Shiites into mass graves. Saddam's honor eliminated thousands of Sunni opponents after savage torture. And yet, the irreducible Baathists of Iraq and the Arab world still believe in the superseding doctrine of honor.

Is it unique in history? Not really. In the middle of the past century, millions were assassinated for the pride of the Nazi Third Reich and for the Fascist Empire. When Mussolini was hanged, followers were horrified. And when the Fuhrer committed suicide, supremacists raged. How dare the world injure Nazi and Fascist honor? They attempted to associate German and Italian nations with the injury, but not to avail. The World already understood the crimes that Adolph and Benito had committed. It was too late to play the pride game.

After the capture of Saddam this past weekend, followers of Arab National-Socialism and Jihadism raged. They condemn the images shown of their leader, simply because they identify with him. He is them, but he is NOT the Arab world. The game is over. Millions of men and women have been liberated: 14 million Shiites; four million Kurds; and two million Assyrian and Turkomen.

Arab Sunni in Iraq and Kuwait and many, many more are freeing their voices in this large region of the world. They are just discovering that the honor of Saddam is the dishonor of the Arabs. He now embarrasses even those who were pleased with the dictator's ambitions. He pledged Arab unity, yet attacked a brother country, Kuwait. He vowed to destroy Israel, but attacked Iran instead. He lived off a legend of courage, yet didn't die in fighting as Uday and Qusay did several months earlier.

So where is the honor that al-Jazeera and its commentators are mobilizing the region for? Was Arab honor tarnished when Saddam's teeth were examined? Where was Arab honor when tens of thousands of skulls, canines and skeletons were unearthed from Basra to Halabjah.. Indeed, to the millions of innocent victims, Saddam is not the embodiment of Arab honor, but of the dishonor made to the Arabs by their dictators.

Walid Phares is a Professor of Middle East studies and an MSNBC Middle Eastern and Terrorism analyst.

Thursday, December 18, 2003

If there is any area in American public life where liberals hold nearly total sway, it is public education, which is sacred to them. Liberals are always able to win more "spending on education." And one of their key interest groups, the teachers unions, has a hammerlock on education policy and its implementation.


Consider, then, what Ted Kennedy and Co. have wrought:

--The typical black high-school graduate has, in effect, only an eighth-grade education.

--The typical black student scores below 80 percent of white students on tests. A majority of black students score in the lowest category -- Below Basic -- in five of the seven subjects on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

--Seventy-seven percent of white students read at a higher level than the average black student. Only 23 percent of black students, on the other hand, read at a level equal to or better than the average white student.

--During the 1990s, average black math scores fell dramatically. Despite two decades of spending and "reforms," black students' achievement in math is at its 1978 level.

--The average black student knows less about science than 90 percent of white students.

If these numbers make you queasy, they should. America has an educational system worthy of David Duke. Its effect is to perpetuate and exacerbate the country's racial divide, disadvantaging blacks (and Hispanics) and blighting their prospects. The above figures are from Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom's new book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning," a damning account of how the public schools fail black students.

The Thernstroms explain one of the more vexing statistics in American life: Whites consistently earn more than blacks with equal years of schooling. This is taken as a sure-fire sign of racial discrimination. But the Thernstroms point out that the equal years of schooling are meaningless as long as blacks and whites have learned a different amount during those years. "A number of sophisticated studies," they write, "demonstrate clearly that whites and blacks who are truly equally educated are equal earners."

They bat away the easy explanations for the racial disparity in academic achievement. Socio-economic factors explain something, but far from all. Actually, the racial gap between black and white children of college-educated parents is worse than the gap at large. Nor can standardized tests be dismissed as racist. Black students at elite colleges actually get lower grades than their SAT scores had projected.

What, then, is to be done? The Thernstroms destroy the solutions advanced in popular cliches, such as "reducing class size." Class sizes are already relatively small in schools with a high proportion of black students, and class sizes have steadily shrunk since 1992 with no effect on black performance. The problem with reducing class sizes is that it means hiring more teachers, who will usually be less skilled than those already in the profession. California, for instance, gained almost nothing from a massive program to reduce class size in the mid-1990s.

Amid all the bleakness, the Thernstroms find hope in a few scattered schools across the country -- like the KIPP Academy in the South Bronx -- that work for black kids. The schools emphasize standards, testing, accountability and high expectations. They are invariably charter schools free of the numbing constraints imposed on the rest of the public school system by the teachers unions. They point the way forward, if only we have the political will to follow.

One cannot read the Thernstroms' book without wondering: Where are the civil-rights marches protesting the public schools? Where are Jesse Jackson's angry denunciations? Most black leaders have simply sold out the future of black kids to teachers unions. And most other people are happy to avert their eyes from the sort of ugly numbers mustered by the Thernstroms.

It's time to face the facts and find a way to make the universally held aspiration to "Leave no child behind" apply to black kids as well.


Rich Lowry is editor of National Review, a TownHall.com member group
more good stuff :)
Socialist Pipe Dreams and the Assault on Capitalism
National Anxiety Center ^ | 12/17/03 | Alan Caruba


Posted on 12/18/2003 10:42:28 AM PST by presidio9


A lot of very bad ideas, philosophies, and economic theories seem to have a life of their own. No matter that history has demonstrated their failure, they continue, inculcating each new generation. Such is the case with socialism, but in a strange twist of fate, socialism has come to embrace capitalism as the best means to further its goal of redistributing wealth. Without the success of capitalism, socialism simply would not have the means to advance itself.

Socialism, however, once in control, stifles capitalism and brings whole nations to their knees when it becomes clear that the ever-expanding matrix of laws that redistribute wealth cripples the means by which that wealth is created. America is now a nation with a capitalist economy and a socialist system of government. That process began in earnest during the years Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in office and has continued apace ever since.

Socialism is the economic system of Europe and the United Kingdom. In China, its communist leadership has abandoned its failed system to embrace capitalism so long as the party remains in power. All around the world, capitalism has proved its power to increase prosperity and all around the world socialism struggles to gain control of that prosperity.

In October, the XXII Congress of the Socialist International met in San Paulo, Chile, "to promote a new world order based on a new multilateralism for peace, security, sustainable development, social justice, democracy, respect for human rights and gender equality." Who is against peace? Democracy? But who understands that "sustainable development", a term ginned up by hardcore environmentalists, conspires to thwart economic growth?

Few seem to understand that environmentalism, hiding behind the mask of noble sounding goals, is in fact socialism with its goal of destroying property rights, the very pillar of capitalism! Without property rights there can be no capitalism. Without the right to save, spend and invest one’s earnings, the individual ceases to be a capitalist and becomes merely the means by which socialism is advanced in the name of "social justice", "protecting the environment", and "human rights."

Who among us would oppose such noble goals? I am often accused of not understanding, nor supporting the need for clean air, clean water, and other environmental goals. What I oppose is the use of these goals to achieve what is, in fact, a vast matrix of laws and regulations that destroy property rights by requiring homes, farms and other structures be sold to the government in order to create "a viewshed", i.e., an area "returned" to its natural state or to declare property to be a "wetland" because the occasional migrating bird may show up.

I oppose the use of "endangered species" laws to deprive property owners of the right to improve a site or deny the development of structures such as hospitals, schools or the building of new corporate campuses, factories or retail outlets that generate jobs and expand the economic base of a community.

I oppose the unnecessary mandated cost of having to "recycle" waste that is often more expensive than merely creating additional landfills. This is the case of laws that require people to separate glass and plastic, and to bundle newspapers.

I oppose the expansion of purely socialist programs such as Social Security or Medicare that deny people the right to allocate their own money to their own needs. These programs not only are running out of funding, but in the case of Medicare have now added trillions to an existing system rife with waste, further denying people choices about health providers. These programs in effect undermine personal responsibility in the name of "social justice" and, in the case of Social Security, not only is the money taken from one’s paycheck (nearly half of every earned dollar), it is then taxed again as income.

At the San Paulo Socialist Congress, the primary message was the advocacy of "global governance" when anyone paying any attention to the failure of the United Nations to achieve any peace anywhere in the world is there for anyone to see. This is the same UN that wants the power to tax all financial transactions, have its own private military and a judicial system that would supercede our own. Moreover, the UN’s roster of member nations is filled with those that are either outright despotisms as in the Middle East or which are communist dictatorships as is the case of Red China, North Korea, and Cuba.

The Socialist Congress declared, "The global divide between poverty and wealth has reached intolerable proportions" and decried "the mounting pressure on natural resources" that makes "the current model of globalization unsustainable." This ignores the fact that the Western model of capitalism works and those nations that do not embrace democracy and capitalism suffer for that failure. Only the expansion of democracy and capitalism can insure that Third World nations can catch up, but many are rife with tribalism, superstition, despotism, and other impediments that impede the creation of jobs, entrepreneurism, and wealth.

The Socialist Congress called for "global ecological balance" whatever that means! There is no way to achieve ecological balance in areas of the world where vast deserts exist. There is no way to create wealth in areas where timber cannot be harvested. There is no way to create wealth where access to natural resources such as coal, oil and gas is denied. Wealth that is seized by tyrants like Saddam Hussein and other oligarchies leaves the people of these nations impoverished and denies them justice.

What the Socialist Congress offers is a program of ever-expanding government control of the lives of everyone on the Earth, ignoring the fact that government at any level unfailingly does a poor job by comparison with the free market forces that respond to the real needs of people and does so affordably because they must be competitive. The world does not need "global government" and Americans clearly need far less government involvement in every aspect of our lives.

There is no greater tyranny than that imposed "for your own good." That is the antithesis of freedom. That is the essence of socialism. Our government, "conceived in liberty", cannot survive the tender mercies of socialism. The recent Socialist Congress, totally unreported by our mainstream media, demonstrates that this destructive, regressive economic system remains the ultimate threat.

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

December 17, 2003 | Print this page

Devaluing the Black Family

by Anthony B. Bradley

Forty-three percent of black pregnancies end in abortion, according to a recent study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a leading research and advocacy organization promoting sex education. Nearly 70 percent of all black children are born out-of-wedlock. These two facts taken together should be perceived by everyone as clear evidence of a marriage and family crisis in black America. But don’t count on it. During the upcoming presidential campaign, while we can expect to hear a lot about affirmative action and racial injustice, we’ll likely hear nothing about this crisis.

For demagogues, such unbalanced racial statistics necessarily imply discrimination. Employing this popular political logic, the numbers suggest that abortion providers are racist and that states racially discriminate when issuing marriage licenses. The explanation lies elsewhere.

If nearly half of all black kids in America are being aborted, we must start asking different questions about the moral climate of America in general and what incentives lie behind the preference for abortion and the disdain for marriage. Facts and figures about family life necessarily raise larger questions about the moral choices people make. What’s more, we should be asking searching questions about churches and what they are teaching about the dignity and value of human life, marriage, family, and community.

Interestingly, the severity of social problems within black communities has intensified since the civil rights victories of the 1960s. In 1960, when black America was considered relatively worse off, only 23 percent of black kids were born out-of-wedlock. In 1970, just 33 percent of black women aged 20-29 were unmarried. By 1992, the number of unmarried twenty-something black women catapulted to 70 percent. A gross misconception about the out-of-wedlock birth crisis in black communities is that it is a consequence of teenage pregnancy. In fact, out-of-wedlock birth rates are the highest among women between the ages of 18 and 29. Moreover, since 1969, the largest increase in out-of-wedlock births has been among black women between the age of 20 and 24. Therefore, adult black women are purposefully choosing to have children outside of the context of marriage.

Marriage has profound effects on the quality of life for black kids. A data analysis report on marriage released by the Heritage Foundation highlights several benefits of marriage. For example, marriage dramatically reduces the incidence of poverty for women who remain romantically involved with the father from the time of the child’s birth. Marriage reduces the odds that a mother and child will live in poverty by more than 70 percent. If mothers remain single and unemployed, they will remain poor permanently; if single and employed at least part-time, slightly more than half will slip below the poverty line; and only 10 percent of mothers will sink into poverty if employed full-time. Moreover, marriage combined with part-time maternal employment increases family income by 75 percent. Sadly, over 80 percent of long-term child poverty occurs in broken or never-married families.

There are even more alarming pathologies resulting from out-of-wedlock births. For example, nearly 30 percent of all welfare recipients resort to living on public assistance because of poverty associated with single-parenthood. Black children from single-parent homes are twice as likely to commit crimes as are black children from families with resident fathers. Seventy percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from single-parent homes. And there is a strong, inverse relationship between incidence of out-of-wedlock births and education attainment.

Of course, individuals can and do rise above brokenness and poverty. Yet, the statistical big picture reveals how the devaluation of marriage and family has created a crisis in many black communities. The Bush Administration has proposed making marriage an important component of the next phase of welfare reform and rightly so. The administration seeks to introduce incentives to increase and maintain a high number of marriages in an effort to thwart many of the associated outcomes listed above.

A government program, however, can only go so far. What is needed, more desperately than ever, is for churches to step in and engage this issue proactively. What America needs is a strong witness from Christians who can communicate persuasively and practice God’s design for marriage, family, and community. Disconnecting human life, marriage, and family from its correct foundation in God is literally destroying our communities and keeping generations enslaved to self-destructive behavior.

Reverend Ray Hammond, pastor of Bethel AME Church and board member of Boston’s Black Ministerial Alliance, has the right idea. Rev. Hammond is promoting biblical formulations of marriage and family in hopes of combating what he calls “the epidemic level of fatherlessness in America.” He understands that marriage, rightly constructed, is necessary in providing the way out of “the social wilderness of family disintegration.”

Given a culture that stifles human potential through abortion and the devaluation of the bedrock, life-sustaining institution of the family, we should not be surprised that there is not “enough” black presence in influential sectors of American society. Many have forgotten that there was a time when these pathologies were the exception rather than the rule in the black community. They can be overcome only when we rediscover God’s wisdom, including a right understanding of the institutions that strengthen families and build up communities.

Anthony B. Bradley is a research associate at the Acton Institute.

Monday, December 15, 2003

The latest evidence of a weak connection between education spending and academic achievement comes courtesy of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. A report released last week found that rural states in the West and Midwest tend to have the highest rates of high school graduation. So here's a pop quiz: Guess where most of those same states rank in per-pupil spending?


Wyoming leads the nation in high school graduates with 90.2%, followed by Utah (90.1%), Minnesota (89.8%), Alaska (89.7%) and Nebraska (89.3%). All are well above the national average of 82.6%, which includes GED recipients. At the same time, four of those top five states spend right around the per-student national average of $7,376, according to Education Department data for 2001, the most recent year available. The exception, Alaska, spends $9,216.


By contrast, the District of Columbia ($12,046) and New York ($10,716) tied for 33rd in the high school graduates rankings. Other big spenders like Connecticut ($10,127) and New Jersey ($11,248) could do no better than 20th and 22nd, respectively. Vermont and Massachusetts spend in excess of $9,000 per student and both ranked in the top 15. Utah spends about half of that but came in second.


Iowa ranks in the lower half of states in per-pupil outlays (as do its teachers with respect to pay), yet last year its students produced some of the highest standardized test scores in the country. The reverse is true in places like the District of Columbia, even though education spending there has tripled since 1980.


We're not suggesting an inverse relationship between education spending and outcomes, or that money is irrelevant. The point is that the empirical data consistently show that how school dollars are spent matters more than how much. When politicians brag that they're working to increase education spending, they are telling you almost nothing about how they'd improve education.

Updated December 15, 2003


Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Cool beans -- I actually found lots o good stuff to post today:
Education
Doesn't capitalism oppose "free" education?
Capitalism supports freedom in education as opposed to the tax funded "free" education run by the state. Under capitalism, the indoctrination of the young by the officials of the state is illegal. Under capitalism, education, like food, computers, and medicine, is taken on as a private profit making enterprise, not because education is unimportant, but because it is so important (like all private enterprise this leaves room for private charity, but this is a secondary issue).

How is 'free' education funded under capitalism?
The only "free" education under capitalism is provided by private individuals, i.e., parents paying for their child's education, i.e., individuals acting as a group, e.g., church groups and non-religious groups.

What is the price of a 'free' state-funded education?
The price of a "free" public education is freedom. The collectively (Nazi, communist, socialist) notion that there is such a thing as a "free" education is a monstrous myth -- anything of value must be paid for. The state per say produces nothing, all state funds are forcibly taken from others through taxes, etc. When one recommends the "state funding of education to preserve freedom", one is asking that the freedom of one's fellow citizens be abridged, that their wealth be looted by public officials, all for the alleged purpose of protecting freedom. This is a contradiction in terms: freedom of action under a system of rights, is never preserved by the violation of those rights. That is, no matter how good the alleged ends, evil means are never justified.

What do collectivists really mean by "free education"?
What the advocates of "free" education espouse is not leaving individuals free to pay for their own education, or free to pay for the education of another, or free to decide on the content of that education. Rather, they advocate the robbing of one man to pay the for the unearned benefit (in this case the "schooling") of another. The proper name for such a program is not "free" education, but is legalized theft. This is what those who advocate "free" state supported education actually endorse.

The key issue here is whether one is forced to pay for education of oneself (or others) voluntarily of one's own free-will -- as with private education; or, if one is forced to pay for the education of oneself (or others) at the point of a gun (to see this gun appear, simply volunteer to refuse to take 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Tues and still nuthing on the job front... gotta love it.


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We're still slaves

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Posted: September 9, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com


I remember a rather bizarre question I was occasionally asked by classmates when I was in grammar school. Someone would find out I was of mixed race and offer: "If the blacks and the whites had a war, whose side would you be on?"

The apparent absurdity of this query obviously stems from the fact that it was typically asked by 6- to 10-year-olds, who normally have a tendency to look at these abstracts rather superficially. Still, there's something about this recollection that brings to mind the current state of race politics.

There's a war on right now – not just in Iraq, or on terrorism, but on the home front – for the hearts and minds of Americans. No longer is it a question of what's good for America vs. what's not so good for America – it's a question of what might ensure America's survival vs. what will most assuredly destroy this nation.

The far Left – which is a minority – is nevertheless a strategically placed and highly vocal minority whose influence is inordinately potent. That they espouse policies which weaken America is, to me, a given. With lines becoming more clearly drawn every day, it is becoming increasingly important for ethnic minorities to become enlightened as to the stakes involved in this war, how they are being manipulated and what is truly in their best interests.

There are some among minorities who regularly refer to the U.S. as a "racist state." Others are of the opinion that while progress has been made, the possibility of some racist or separatist group or party gaining preeminence in America and reversing it all is a real possibility. Those of the first persuasion, I believe, are either delusional or are simply playing the game – making their gains through intimidation of the impressionable.

To those of the second persuasion, I would point out, as I have many, many times in conversation: Whites in America still outnumber all minority groups combined. If "Whitey" wanted to "get" us, we'd be "got." Very few of us – of any race – are truly color blind, because we have not been raised to be so.

I get interesting e-mails from minorities in response to the articles in which I address race. Most are positive and insightful, and many are from supportive individuals, gratified and relieved they are not alone in their beliefs. A much smaller number are so vulgar and laced with threatening overtones that they would likely raise FBI scrutiny were they the words of white racists.

Apparently, some minority individuals presume people like me are wholly insensitive to – and ignorant of – issues regarding race. Based on the rhetoric I hear directed at us, we've obviously never suffered the effects of prejudice, never been subjected to name-calling, have somehow avoided bigotry in schools, the workplace and in housing, and certainly never, ever had to fight over race or flee for our lives from parties who sought to harm or even kill us because of our race. We grew up in an idyllic, color-blind enclave someplace, were nurtured perfectly and lovingly, attended the best prep schools and Ivy League universities, sailed triumphantly into the job market through the connections of our color-blind white pals, and have been living large ever since.

At best, we're misguided and clueless, at worst, we're Uncle Toms and sellouts because we do not hold the line of those self-appointed career activists who rail against the U.S. as a "racist nation," as though blacks still had to fear being lynched in the streets, and who continue to support the same socialist programs that have not only failed for nearly half a century, but which have debased minorities to a degree unimaginable 50 years ago, and which would do an old Jim Crow supporter proud.

I personally hold that minority civil-rights activists in this country are pimps – they've sold their integrity for personal aggrandizement, and they've encouraged those whom they claim to represent to sell their collective "favors." And for what? Mere subsistence and, most importantly, absolution from any form of personal responsibility – in perpetuity.

If someone of an ethnic minority is miserable, somehow it will always be the fault of some faceless racist in a suit who is not doing enough, or is actively trying to "keep him down." I picture the slavemaster creeping into the slave quarters in the middle of the night and enticing the newly freed blacks to sign their freedom back over for a roof and three squares a day. Extrapolate this to the present and it appears that the former slaves gave in to this enticement.

Black people were once among the most socially conservative groups in America. This was due largely to the fact that most were devoutly religious. During the '60s, riding on the wave of appreciation for Jack and Bobby Kennedy's advocacy, the Democrat Party hijacked the civil-rights agenda and essentially "turned" prominent black clergymen – some through the rhetoric of brotherhood and others through the prospect of personal gain.

Since then, blacks have voted Democratic (despite the fact that Republicans spearheaded the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and have supported everything the party has proposed or brought to pass. More damaging, black pastors have allowed the secular agenda of the Left to thoroughly permeate their churches, and consequently, black culture. Think about that the next time you see a poor, unwed, pregnant teen-age black girl.

It is the professional minority civil-rights activist who is the faceless racist in a suit, actively trying to keep his people down. The same southern Democrats who supported segregation simply modified their modus operandi as civil-rights laws were passed and, now, under the umbrella of the Democrat Party, minorities are being sold into the slavery of socialism. Of course, we all are. But among minorities, the Left continues to promulgate petty issues, race hatred and class envy, deflecting concern from the real dangers we face. Honestly, where would the likes of Jesse Jackson be if the truth were widely known among blacks at large?

With regard to race politics, if you take anything away from reading this article, let it be this: For all practical purposes, there are no races anymore. In America, there are freedom fighters and there are those who would enslave all of us, regardless of race – and it's time to choose a side

Thursday, December 04, 2003

And you wonder where the afford housing and decent jobs went off to.... :
Thomas Sowell (archive)


December 4, 2003 | Print | Send


One of the staples of liberal hand-wringing is a need for "affordable housing." Last year, the standard liberal solution -- more government spending -- was proposed in a televised speech at the National Press Club in Washington, in a report billed as a "new vision."

This year, supply and demand made front-page news in the New York Times of November 29th: "Apartment Glut Forces Owners to Cut Rents in Much of U.S." As apartment vacancy rates reached an all-time high of 10 percent nationwide, landlords have been cutting rents, both directly and by such gimmicks as giving gift certificates and allowing so many rent-free months for new tenants.

Buried deep inside the second section of the newspaper are facts that completely undermine the liberal notion that high housing costs are a "national crisis" calling for a "national solution" by the federal government.

Far from being a national crisis of affordable housing, outrageous rents and astronomical home prices are largely confined to a relatively few places along the east and west coasts. Rent per square foot of apartment space in San Francisco is more than double what it is in Denver, Dallas, or Kansas City, and nearly three times as high as in Memphis. Home prices show even greater disparities.

The Times story notes that the difference between apartment rents in coastal California and those in the rest of the country is widening. It also refers to cities "where land is abundant but building regulations are not," where "housing costs were already among the least expensive of the country's urban areas."

Wait a minute. Vacant land is at least as abundant in coastal California as in places with far lower rents and home prices. More than half the land in huge San Mateo County, adjacent to San Francisco, is vacant and is kept that way by law.

The difference is not in the land but in the politics. The long-time dominance of liberal Democrats from San Francisco to Silicon Valley has meant that restrictions on land use have proliferated and the costs of building anything have skyrocketed as a result of environmental red tape, bureaucratic delays, and legal harassment by activists of various sorts.

The New York Times story refers gingerly to "many cities on the coasts, where new construction is more difficult" than in the rest of the country. To put it more bluntly, liberals have driven housing prices sky high by forbidding, restricting, and harassing the building of housing.

In turn, this has meant driving people of modest incomes out of the communities where they work. Nurses, teachers and policemen, for example, typically live far away from places like San Francisco or Silicon Valley, and have to commute long distances to and from work.

All the while, liberals wring their hands about a lack of affordable housing, about urban sprawl, and about congested highways. In their puzzlement about the causes of all these things, they never think to look in the mirror.

While the Times story noted in passing "the growing gap between the cost of living in the Northeast and parts of California and the cost of living almost anywhere else," it does not take the next fatal step of connecting the dots.

It is precisely in the places that have been most dominated by liberals for the longest times that housing costs and other costs of living have been driven up to levels that force many people out of town and even out of state. New York and California are losing more of their native-born populations than any other states and only influxes of immigrants help conceal that fact in gross statistics.

It was not always like this. Prior to the 1970s, home prices in California were comparable to those in the rest of the country. Today they are more than three times as high.

What happened during the 1970s was the beginning of the drastic restrictions on building pushed by liberal Democrats in general and environmental extremists in particular. On the 6 o'clock news, it is common to say, "Details at eleven." Here let me say: Details in chapter 3 of my new book, "Applied Economics."



©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

more good stuff for the holidays:
Do Nothing Democrats On The War In Terror
By Tamara Wilhite ()

D = do-nothing democrat, C = concerned citizen

C: What do we do about the terrorists?

D: Do nothing.

C: Shouldn't we be trying to fight them?

D: Certainly not. If we kill them, they'll hate us.

C: Don't they already hate us?

D: That's beside the point. They don't like us, and we can't give them a valid reason for their hatred of us by killing their cohorts.

C: What about the fact that they've been killing us for years?

D: Soldiers volunteered for that when they volunteered for the military, so their deaths don't count unless it furthers our agenda. Conservative black diplomats serving in Africa don't matter. Dead evangelical missionaries get what they asked for - martyrdom. We shouldn't do anything about those idiots who got themselves killed.

C: What should we do if they continue to attack us at home?

D: Nothing! We can't strike back. That would risk enraging the Arab Street.

C: I thought they already hated us.

D: Yes, but striking out at them would breed more terrorists.

C: Aren't they already breeding terrorists?

D: Yes. But the Muslim minority in this nation is very vocal and very active in increasing their numbers by both local production and foreign imports. We can't risk them being angry with us. They're very conservative, but they can be lulled to the Democratic side. Acting against their friends in the Middle East risks them becoming violent in our own streets.

C: Haven't some of those locally born or naturalized citizens sought to act against the US?

D: We can't assume they did anything. We don't have adequate proof yet.

C: Those men from Lackawanna pled guilty.

D: They haven't run out of appeals, so we can't assume that they're guilty.

C: What can we do to defend ourselves from attack?

D: Converting to Islam is a possibility.

C: If we do nothing, we might not be allowed to make that choice willingly.

D: Nonsense! Islam is a religion of peace!

C: The Sunni and Shiite attacks on each other in Iraq and Pakistan are proof that that's not a safe option. They're throwing suicide bombers at other sects of Islam even as they send them at our allies and us.

D: That's a trivial detail. They hate us because we're oppressing them.

C: How are we oppressing them?

D: We're buying their oil!

C: How is that oppressing them?

D: We're bringing capitalism to their socialist dictatorships. Democracy could only be around the corner if that continued.

C: Then how do we stop oppressing them?

D: We should stop buying their oil.

C: Then how will we keep our economy going?

D: We won't. That's part of the beauty of it. We would just do nothing. No oil imports. No problems.

C: Our economy would stall -

D: More Democratic votes.

C: We'd see the transportation network grind to a stop -

D: More people doing nothing, and that would save the environment, too.

C: Shouldn't we build more power plants here, then, to reduce dependence on their oil?

D: Oh, no.

C: Why not?

D: That costs too much.

C: Per your arguments, it would reduce the terrorist motivations.

D: Yes, but it would provide jobs and power. We can't do that.

C: So you vote to turn off the oil imports and to not bother with a replacement fuel source?

D: Of course! Doing nothing about the supply or the demand issues would bring the whole nation to a stop! Imagine it! Everyone doing nothing ... except being motivated to vote for us because we can solve the crisis!