Newspeak 11/11/10

FEMINISM. A movement that claims to pursue the elevation of women to their rightful place in society. The radical segment of this movement carries their passions to ridiculous extremes.  The woman who declared Newton’s Principia Mathematica to be a “rape manual” is a good example of this. Goodness, did Newton draw an obelisk in there

somewhere that set off phallic nightmares? What does this poor soul do to keep her eyes off the Washington monument? Some women reject men altogether. Gloria Steinem said that, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Rosanne Barr said, “Women are cursed, and man is the proof.”

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY.  Code word for spending whatever the Left thinks needs to be spent in order to achieve their goals. The overspending is usually characterized as the more palatable “investments.”

FINANCIAL REFORM. A need brought on by the financial panic of 2008. If tax cheat Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner has his way the federal government would have nearly unlimited authority to bail out struggling financial institutions. What, then, is the incentive for financial institutions to act responsibly? If we all had a government guaranteed program to bail us out when we vastly overspent our credit card accounts, would that lead to personal fiscal responsibility? Moreover, the bill proposed by the Democrats does little to change the regulation of the government entities that gave AAA ratings to mortgages that turned out to be worthless.

As it did with the stimulus bill and the healthcare bill the administration is trying to ram through a quick measure that it hopes will give them political gain. They are trying to pass legislation before they receive the report from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on the crisis's causes. They have used, once again the “crisis-solution” gambit, (See Crisis, above) to insert urgency into the effort, cobble together a bill that no one understands and get it through Congress before anyone has time to evaluate it. The New York Times listed a number of prominent economists who have declared that this is a mistake.

As Nicholas F. Brady, former Treasury secretary once said, “You can’t fix what you can’t explain.” Among the critics were Andrew Lo, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who cautioned that that the politicians need to tell the public that “we need to proceed about this in a much more deliberate and rational and thoughtful way.” Lawrence J. White, a finance professor at New York University, said it made no sense to overhaul financial regulation without addressing the future of federal housing policy. It was because of the mismanagement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that the housing market ballooned and then collapsed taking a great segment of the economy with it. He described this omission from the bill as “outrageous.” Other critics have said that the measure does nothing to stabilize the markets where lenders get their money. Yet others say that the biggest problem is that the bill does nothing to regulate the regulators. Senator Chris Dodd, the author of the legislation on one hand said that the government’s failure to regulate Fannie Mae was a tragedy. Yet, he refused to insert such regulation into the bill.

The Democrats, Barack Obama in particular, have hammered the Republicans for being in bed with Wall Street. Yet, an examination of Wall Street’s financial contributions to political campaigns shows that the contributions to the Democratic Party were nearly twice as large as to the Republicans. The Democratic Party accusations are nothing more than another  red herring. 

Newspeak 10/22/10

FASCISM. This term is widely bandied about on many levels from the teenager whose father will not let him have the car keys on a Saturday night, to anyone who opposes liberal progressive ideas.  Strictly speaking, fascism strictly applies only to the Italian Fascisti who were created by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the 1920s. The fasces, the symbol from which fascism gets its name, goes back to Roman times. It is a bundle of sticks bound together. The point is that one stick may be easily broken but the bundle is much stronger. The fasces appears many times in the United States. It was on the reverse of the Mercury Dime that the U.S. used between 1916 and 1945, is on the National Guard symbol and in several state seals. E Pluribus Unum, anyone? What the liberal progressives ignore or do not know is that Italian Fascism and that in Nazi Germany began as liberal movements. Author Jonah Goldberg calls fascism “a religion of the state.” Many on the American Left were enthralled by the prospect of European fascism in its early years. A major advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, Rexford Guy Tugwell, said of Italian fascism, “It is the cleanest, neatest most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I have ever seen. It makes me envious.”

Jonah Goldberg defines fascism as follows: “It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian as it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought or action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the ‘problem’ and therefore defined as the enemy.”  (emphasis mine) Mussolini believed that the state had to be strengthened against the individual, see Individual below. He said, “It is not the people who make the state but the state which makes the people.” Holy smoke! Goldberg has obviously read 1984. His description exactly describes the world in Orwell’s book, from “national leader attuned to the will of the people” (Obama/Big Brother) to doing anything they want in order to achieve the “common good” (intrusive, over-regulation of our lives) to demonizing the “enemy”  as in “the problems caused by the last eight years”. My apologies for using “Holy smoke!” It is undoubtedly politically incorrect and I should have said, “Secular smoke!”

FEAR MONGERING (WHAT IS GOOD FOR THE GOOSE DEPARTMENT). The charge that the Left throws at normal people when they question parts of the liberal agenda, say, healthcare, by warning of the enormous cost overruns that will undoubtedly occur.  Barack Obama said during the debate about healthcare, “There's been a lot of fear-mongering, a lot of overheated rhetoric.” Now, however, the Arizona immigration law is “reminiscent” of how Jews were treated in Germany just before World War II,” said Democratic Congressman Jared Polis. “It is polarizing the situation,” said President Obama and, “If you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be harassed. That’s something that could potentially happen.” Sorry about that, gander.

Newspeak 10/13/10

FAIR SHARE. As in the “rich paying their fair share of taxes.” There is nothing fair about this philosophy. The facts are: the top one percent of our citizens pay forty percent of our income tax revenue; the top five percent pay sixty percent of our income tax revenue; the top ten percent pay seventy percent; the top fifty percent pay ninety-six percent of our income tax revenue. The bottom half of Americans only pay about four percent of our income tax revenue. For fifty percent of our citizens, then, paying income tax is what one columnist called a “spectator sport.” The percentage of citizens who pay no income tax has doubled since 1950 to about forty seven percent. The Leftist New York Times calls these figures “a cleverly selective reading of the facts.” Is this another “fact,” New York Times?

Worse, the bottom forty percent of American earners, those who pay no taxes, receive a payment from the government. Characterized as a “refund” it is not a refund at all but a transfer of money from the “rich” to the “less fortunate.”  The “refund” will be more than they pay in federal, state and local taxes, sales tax and Social Security tax combined. ." Representative Paul Ryan Paul Ryan hit the nail on the head when he called this “more takers than makers.”

A New York Times columnist recently commented that elements of the financial reform bill might eventually place another burden on taxpayers. Would it not hurt our other citizens, too? Probably not since they have no “skin in the game” and they will not bear the cost of failed government policies.

Leftist politicians and media pundits, whose compensation often runs into the millions of dollars, often characterize those who make $250,000 as “rich.” In order to appease the unions in regards to the healthcare bill, the administration will not tax their health plan like they will tax similar plans held by other Americans. To make up for not being able to expropriate healthcare cash until 2018 from the remnants of the old industrial unions, the Democrats conjured a 3.8% “Medicare tax” on higher-bracket investment income. Democrats and Mr. Obama defended the investment taxes as “fair-share” social justice. The president has talked of “redistributive change” and “spreading the wealth around.” He has also said, “I do think at a certain point you've made enough money.” Okay, maybe he was talking about just the “rich.” But since the definition of “rich” is being defined downward, at what point are all of us going to be accused of “making too much money.” Maybe we have already reached that point since the Obama administration is piling tax after tax upon those who work and already pay all the income taxes in America.

Sixty years of experience have shown that increasing the marginal tax rates on the “rich” produce no increase in government revenues. Question for Al Gore: Where are you on this “inconvenient truth?” But the Left needs a scapegoat to throw over the cliff to deflect the blame from themselves so the assault on the economy will probably continue.

The tax code, as presently written is 70,000 pages long; this is not a typo. It is so full of exemptions and concessions to special interests that no one can truly understand it. Because they do not understand it, politicians keep heaping additional tax burdens on the “rich.” And, on a regular basis “rich” is includes a greater portion of the middle class.

The Obama administration has no plan for reducing the deficit or rewriting the tax code. Under current levels of spending the national debt will rise from forty percent of

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2008 to ninety percent of GDP by 2010. And this estimate fails to take into account the additional costs of the new healthcare program that the Democrats have squirreled away in one dim corner of the budget or another. Greece, the financially failed state of Europe has an annual deficit of thirteen percent of GDP. In the United States the annual deficit is ten percent and rising. Our politicians fiddle while our fiscal system burns. Greece is a member of the European Union and cannot simply print more money. The United States can print all it wants, even though each dollar minted will be worth less in real money than the one printed before it.

The time is not far off when our government will hit a financial wall where no more tax money is available unless everyone is taxed at punitive levels. Can we expect Europe to bail us out as it is doing for Greece? Think about it. 

FAIRNESS IN BROADCASTING. This was initiated in 1949 when television was in its infancy. It was meant to provide for equal access to broadcast networks for a wide variety of opinions. As a result of several court decisions, the Federal Communication Commission revoked this practice in 1987. For several years now, the Left have been struggling to have it reinstated. They are alarmed by popular radio broadcasters, for example Rush Limbaugh, and the growth of their following. They seek to reduce this influence by reducing the number of stations available to broadcast anything that does not fit into their philosophy. Their own attempts to take to the airways, e.g. Air America, have been dismal failures so they are trying to use a perversion of freedom of speech to give them leverage with an audience that has largely rejected them.

FAMILY. The basic unit of the human race that reaches back to the dawn of mankind. The Left is increasingly encroaching on decisions that were traditionally the business of the family. A book by Hillary Clinton book is a major assault our family structure. See It Takes a Village, below.  The voice of the parents is increasingly less important as the Left removes more and more decisions, choices, from the family. “Choice” is almost always attached to something that has the Left’s approval. They do not, for example, believe parents should have a choice about where to send their children to school. Yet, they believe that underage girls should not need their parents’ consent to obtain an abortion. In Maryland there is a law that prevents schools from sending test scores to military recruiters. The reasoning is that it gives the recruiters access to children without their parents’ consent. See Choice, above.

FAMILY VALUES. The belief that our laws should be written with the American family in mind. In Newspeak this, like law and order, see below, is an inflammatory term that is an attack on non-traditional families.  The Left does not believe that the traditional family is capable raising its children and conducting its affairs, competently.  Secondly, “family values” is regarded by the Left as a conservative code word for opposing the harmful changes in our society wrought by the values of the Sixties generation. These include unrestricted abortion, the prevalence of pornography in the name of the First Amendment, the spread of Internationalism and other things that are destroying our society. They also feel that “family values” is an attack on such treasured things as multiple genders, amnesty for illegal aliens, the coddling of criminals, and absolving half of all Americans from paying income tax. The list goes on and on.

Newspeak, continued, 9/24/2010

ENTREPRENEUR.  Newspeak for “sucker.” Entrepreneurs are Americans who risk all of their assets and devote their entire lives working incredible hours bringing to fruition new ideas for products and services that often add thousand of jobs and provide enormous treasure to our economy. They are the backbone of the American economic engine. But they are regarded by the Left as a bottomless well of money that can be used for endless government schemes. Entrepreneurs are lumped in with the barons of Wall Street, the “rich” the “special interests” and demonized by members of Congress, few of whom ever created a job, risked all their treasure to build a business, or had to make payroll, for our economic problems. The government takes an ever-increasing amount of their earnings and taxes their estates at about forty-five percent when they die.

EXECUTIVE ORDER. The means by which President Obama bought the votes from the doubtful anti-abortion Democrats in order to pass his healthcare bill. He promised to issue an executive order to ban use of federal funds for abortions. Executive orders are easily ignored or reversed by the president. Witness his executive order to close Guantanamo within one year. Sixteen months into his administration, Guantanamo is still open for business.

EQUALITY. This is Newspeak for equality of outcome rather than the equality of opportunity that has made America great. It is the equality of outcome, so treasured by the Left, which has led to affirmative action, excusing the economic bottom half of our citizenry from paying any income taxes, and the twin diseases of political correctness and diversity.

EXTRAPOLATIONS. Familiar form of arguments put forward by the Left as “proof.” An example of the bankruptcy of this type of reasoning is that, say, we got four inches of snow yesterday and six inches of snow today. The extrapolation is that the snowfall will increase by fifty percent daily, ad infinitum. In a month, according to this reasoning, daily snowfall would reach into the millions of inches. Extrapolations are very often used by the Left, for everything from government expenditures to “statistics” about their pet programs.

FACTS.  Almost any data the Left proposes to support their positions. “Facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence . . .”  John Adams. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fond of saying that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.”

Contrast this with “Blackwhite.” This word, used in Orwell’s 1984, has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought that is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doesn’t this sound familiar?” See also, Two Plus Two Equals Five, below.

Newspeak, 9/05/2010

ELECTIONS.  Apparently middle-aged white males are a monolithic force of evil that all other members of American society must work against. According to columnist Michelle Oddis, “our post-racial president himself embraced race with the sole intent of influencing an election.” Obama excluded middle aged, white, male voters calling on “young people, African Americans, Latinos and women,” to vote for Democrats in November.” Gee, Mr. President, I thought that E Pluribus Unum was meant to be all- inclusive, even including we evil white males.

ENRICH Another patronizing code word meaning that if you mindlessly follow my radical theories it will “enrich” your lives and your understanding of how the world really works.

ETHNOCENTRISM. A general term meaning that all of Western culture is inferior to the world’s multiple cultures. The latter have allegedly been suppressed by (who could ever guess?) white males.

ENTITLEMENTS. In addition to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and now healthcare, there are dozens of federal, state and city entitlements. By one estimate, twenty percent of the American people receive seventy five percent or more of their income from government sources.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA). The EPA refuses to believe that the entire global warming thing is a hoax. The White House Climate Czar, Carol Browner, who, like the other “Czars” did not have to be approved by the Senate, is moving ahead with a Cap and Trade twin that will impose environmental restrictions by White House fiat. The total proposal runs, 18,000 pages and, according to columnist Phil Kerpen, “regulates almost everything that moves and lots of things that stay put.” The burdens on small businesses and individuals will add to the economic crisis and retard our recovery. 

Newspeak, continued, 8/26/2010

EMPOWER. A euphemism designed to “protect” any group, preferably a minority group, from the traditional values of the past. See Girl Scouts, below. The United Nations wants to “empower” girls ten to fourteen years of age in sexual matters. Young girls need their parents’ permission to undergo even minor cosmetic surgery but the Left wants them “empowered” to have abortions without notifying the parents.

ENERGY. The Left wants to run the country without utilizing energy sources. They are against drilling simply because it involves oil. They are against using coal because it damages the atmosphere. They are against nuclear power because they regard it as dangerous. They are against wind power because birds sometimes fly into the propellers of wind turbines and are injured or killed. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced in January 2010 that he was shutting down all federal lands for oil and gas drilling. Maybe if Starbucks has to shut down because it has not the electricity to make lattes, it will finally come to the Left’s attention that something is amiss. Obama’s announcement that he was going to open up certain areas to offshore drilling is a beginning but is not nearly enough. He neglected to open drilling in Alaska, California and off Florida where it would do the most good of all.  The explosion of the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the first such incident in over forty years, has the liberals pointing fingers and saying, “I told you so.”

A double standard is consistently employed when it comes to energy use. Al Gore, the patron saint of the Greens, burns up many, many times the energy that the average homeowner uses. Just one of his houses uses twenty times the energy as does the average U.S. residence. In April 2010, Gore and his wife spent $9 million on yet another residence, this one in California. Of course, Gore is busier than most Americans. He invented the internet and global warming so he is probably busy with yet another heroic effort.

And the Kennedy family is protesting the erection of an offshore wind farm because it would “ruin the view” from their Hyannis port compound. Another Kennedy family member characterized anyone who drives an SUV as un-American and then hopped on a private jet to return to Boston. This characteristic of the “anointed” is common. They believe that their laws should apply to everyone but themselves. It is another case of “some being more equal than others.” See Orwell’s Animal Farm and The Anointed, above.

An editorial in the New York Times complained that China was winning the global competition to create green energy sources. Have the editors of the Times been to Beijing lately? Or Shanghai?  The air in most Chinese cities is worse than it was in Los Angeles in the 1970s and is nearly un-breathable. Maybe the Times means that the air in China will turn green in color. Perhaps it will.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE, THE. No longer the universal language of the United States. In the past, immigrants came to this country and learned English. Their children went to schools where all subjects were taught in English. The children learned the language and grew up to be part of the great American melting pot. The secular progressives have bulldozed many school districts in the United States into teaching children, whose first language is not English, into teaching in another language, usually Spanish. These children are much slower in learning English and integrating into American society, which is just fine with the secular progressives who are happy with the “diversity.” One of the few politicians who has the courage to openly oppose the official use of anything but English is Tim James, an Alabama gubernatorial candidate. The New York Times labeled him a bottom-feeding campaigner, a racist and xenophobe. Actually, there is a law on the books in Alabama stating that English must be used for drivers’ license tests but like so many laws, no one has had the courage to enforce it. Maybe James will.  Does anyone but me resent having to "press one for English" when calling a company. 

Newspeak, continued, 8/16/2010

ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE.  Was supposed to save or create two million jobs. The total, in its first year, has been less than a third of that number and even that figure is suspect. The unemployment rate is creeping upward.

EDUCATION. “Ignorance is strength.” “There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent there will be no need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed.” George Orwell, 1984.

The teachers’ unions have had a stranglehold on education for decades. Their refusal to fire bad teachers and reward good ones, the useless teacher certification program and opposition to charter schools has prevented our schools from getting better. In the past forty years, spending on education has increased three-fold in constant dollars while the abilities of our children have declined. In the Obama administration’s plan to improve education, charter schools were not mentioned at all. Nor was competition or school choice. Subservience to the teachers’ unions nearly resulted in Congress cutting back charter schools in the District of Columbia even though D.C.’s schools are a national disgrace.

In New Jersey, a teachers’ union official sent out an email with a “mock” prayer for the death of Governor Christie who is trying to save the state from insolvency by cutting back on the generous retirement plans of public workers. The president of the teachers’ union later called on Governor Christie to offer an apology (Was it a “mock” apology, too?). When the governor asked the union official if the author of the email had been fired, he replied, “Why would we want to do anything like that?”

School administrators are often complicit in perpetuating our poor educational system. A teacher in Louisiana was told that she was not permitted to flunk any of her students regardless of how badly they performed. The state has a mandated test system and it appears that the administrators do not want to be seen as not performing well under the mandate and looking bad themselves. Better to let the students graduate with no skills than to improve the quality of education.

In Rhode Island, only seven percent of eleventh graders pass the state math exams. Seven percent!

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has vowed to invade public schools with lawyers wielding the Civil Rights Act in order to overcome what he considers civil rights violations, such as too many white students in high school advanced placement classes. Columnist George Will points out that the greatest predictor of success in education is a stable family. Until the liberals address the fact that seventy-one percent of African-American and fifty-one percent of Hispanic babies are born to unwed mothers, there is not likely to be any real progress in improving the educational standards of minorities.

ELECTION IS OVER, THE. Routinely used by members of the Obama administration to trump any objections to their policies. They mean it to convey that they have a mandate to do whatever they want. It is their version of the “mandate of heaven” that was used for millennia to justify the position of Chinese emperors or of the “divine right of kings” used by European royalty.

EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. One would think that New York’s most recognizable remaining building would be safe from being an object of political expression. In honor of the 60^th anniversary of the Communist take over of China, it is going to be illuminated in red. Just a year ago, the building authorities refused to illuminate it in blue in honor of the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa. When asked. Daniel Hernandez, representing the public relations branch of the building, told a reporter that the decision was made by a “committee,” the members of which he refused to identify. This is more phony “diversity” at work.