Commonsense & Wonder

Unions

2012-01-31T10:17:00.000-08:00

Here's why union membership keeps falling

By: James Sherk
OpEd Contributor

Folks in Springfield, Ill., witnessed a bizarre scene two years ago. Thousands protested outside the Capitol, chanting: "Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes!"

Who protests for higher taxes?

Government unions do. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees helped organize the rally.

This is the new face of the union movement. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this past Friday that union rates fell again last year. Fewer than one of every eight Americans now belong to unions.

Of those, most work in the government; less than 7 percent of private-sector workers belong to unions. The Postal Service employs twice as many union members as the auto industry does.

Competition makes it difficult for private-sector unions to survive. During the 1950s, a third of Americans belonged to unions -- during a tightly regulated economy with few international competitors.

Americans could choose to buy expensive union-made cars from Ford, or expensive union made cars from General Motors, or expensive union-made cars from Chrysler.

Deregulation and free trade have since made the economy more competitive, giving Americans more choices. Now Americans can buy from whomever offers the most value. Unfortunately for the union movement, that company is often nonunion.

The auto industry. The steel industry. Trucking. Construction. Unionized companies have fallen behind in industry after industry. This makes organizing new members difficult.

Few workers want their company to wind up like General Motors or Bethlehem Steel. Only one of every 10 nonunion workers tells pollsters he or she wants to join a union. Unionization rates are lower now than when President Franklin Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.

Unions remain strong in government because government has no competition. It does not matter how efficiently or wastefully the government operates. Americans must pay their taxes or go to jail.

So in government, unions can raise costs without risking their jobs. The taxpayers must pick up the tab. Government unions have remained strong because of these factors. They now represent two of every five government employees.

This explains why the overall unionization rate fell last year. Union rates did not fall in either the private sector or in government. But while the mostly nonunion private sector created almost 2 million jobs, state and local governments cut spending.

That meant fewer unionized government employees. The strength of the union movement now moves in tandem with the size of the government. This would have surprised the early leaders of the labor movement.

They did not think unions belonged in government. Government unions bargain with elected representatives over how to spend taxes. They thought that made no sense. George Meany, the first president of the AFL-CIO, famously declared that "Bargaining collectively is impossible in government."

Today's union movement has a direct stake in big government, no matter how well that serves the public.

Government unions do not want more efficient government; that means fewer dues-paying union members. Government unions do not want reasonable benefits; they want to retire in their 50s.

Even President Obama believes that schools should remove bad teachers. But education unions disagree. They want their members to have jobs for life, whether or not their students learn to read.

Taxes pay for all this, which explains union opposition to tax relief. It means less money for them. Government unions have lobbied for almost every recent tax increase.

Illinois' union protestors got their tax hike. The Legislature increased the state income tax by two-thirds. Business taxes went up almost 50 percent. Government unions hit the jackpot.

The rest of Illinois suffered. Businesses fled the state, taking jobs with them. Last year, Illinois' unemployment rate increased the most in the nation. They would have done better to follow Wisconsin's example. The government should serve the public, not the other way around.

James Sherk is the senior policy analyst in labor economics at the Heritage Foundation.

Krugman distortions caught again

2012-01-31T10:05:00.000-08:00

Krugman is wrong about the UK – again

"Daniel Okrent, the first and factually the only true NY Times Public Editor nailed Paul Krugman in his final column in 2005 as

"2. Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his
acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.""

Look at who is for voter ID...

2012-01-31T09:57:00.000-08:00

Federal Election Reform Commission Advocated Voter Photo ID

Jimmy Carter, James Baker led panel saying election integrity essential

By Karen McMahan

Jan. 31st, 2012

RALEIGH — Critics of requiring voters to present a photo ID at the polls say the practice would disenfranchise minority voters, and some even accuse proponents of being motivated by racism. They don’t mention, however, that a 21-member bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter,advocated just such a policy in 2005.

The commission, also co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, called voter identification one of “five pillars” that would “build confidence” in the integrity of federal elections. Only three of the 21 commission members voted against requiring photo identification of voters.

“The right to vote is a vital component of U.S. citizenship, and all states should use their best efforts to obtain proof of citizenship before registering voters,” the commission’s report stated. “In close or disputed elections, and there are many, a small amount of fraud could make the margin of difference.”

Far from seeing a photo ID requirement as a negative, the commission said it could become a path to even greater access to the ballot.

“To prevent the ID from being a barrier to voting, we recommend that states use the registration and ID process to enfranchise more voters than ever,” the executive summary of the commission’s report states. “States should play an affirmative role in reaching out to non-drivers by providing more offices, including mobile ones, to register voters and provide photo IDs free of charge. There is likely to be less discrimination against minorities if there is a single, uniform ID, than if poll workers can apply multiple standards.”

The commission urged “procedural and institutional safeguards” to ensure that citizens’ rights are not abused and that no voters are disenfranchised. It also proposed that voters not in possession of a photo ID be allowed to cast a provisional ballot until they are verified.

The voter ID battle heated up in North Carolina last year when the Republican-led General Assembly passed House Bill 351, a North Carolina voter ID bill. Critics in North Carolina, including Democrats, left-leaning groups, and many media columnists and editorial writers, concluded that the bill could only be intended by Republicans to suppress the votes of minority, elderly, disabled, and low-income residents.

A blog post at the website of the left-leaning Democracy NC group said the provision “would mostly affect voters [Republicans] don’t like” and that the issue was “tinged with racism.”

Along with Democracy NC, organizations opposing the voter ID requirement include the League of Women Voters of North Carolina, the North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP, and NC Policy Watch. These and other progressive groups mounted a vigorous campaign to defeat the bill, accusing conservative lawmakers and their supporters of trying to make it harder for people to vote.

The General Assembly attempted to override Perdue’s veto but fell short. The measure was left open for reconsideration, however, and Rep. Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, one of the bill’s primary sponsors, told Carolina Journal that lawmakers could take up the override in this year’s short session.

CJ contacted several groups in North Carolina that oppose the photo ID bill to see if they were aware of the federal commission’s report, and whether they would characterize members who supported its voter ID recommendation as racist or extremist.

Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy NC, admitted that he didn’t think members of the commission were racist for recommending photo ID, but maintained they went along with it only because of the report’s other recommendations, especially those dealing with increasing accessibility for voters.

“Will you mention in your story that the commission supported using the REAL ID card for photo ID, since you conservatives and libertarians opposed that?” he asked. “Are you going to include all the other recommendations, like improving voter registration lists? Are you going to mention the report said there’s been little evidence of voter fraud?”

The commission made a point several times in its report that the level of voter fraud is immaterial to discussions of photo identification for voters. “There is no evidence of extensive fraud in U.S. elections or of multiple voting, but both occur, and it could affect the outcome of a close election,” the report states. “The electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters.”

The commission’s members overwhelmingly supported the photo ID provision. Only three of the 21 objected to it: former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota; former president of the National Council of La Raza Raul Yzaguirre; and George Washington University law professor Spencer Overton.

Hall differs with the findings of the commission that photo ID requirements, correctly administered, will not have a detrimental effect on voting. He said that many North Carolinians do not have a government-issued photo ID and cannot afford one, and making voters come back a second time with a photo ID if they show up to vote without one would disenfranchise many honest voters.

Jo Nicholas, president of the League of Women Voters of NC, told CJ her organization opposes photo ID because it would take $25 million to implement in the first three years. She also made the argument, countered by the commission, that such a law is unnecessary because there’s almost no voter fraud in North Carolina.

Moore said cost figures cited by the bill’s opponents for providing free photo IDs to those who don’t have one are inaccurate, and that the General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division concluded the cost would be much lower.

Both Hall and Nicholas said the photo ID bill would not prevent the type of voter fraud that occurred in Wake County in 2008. Asked about the video of New Hampshire poll workers handing out ballots in dead people’s names during the GOP primary in January, both said they didn’t think this happens very often.

Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow in the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation and a former federal prosecutor who focused on election fraud, said photo ID laws do not reduce voter turnout but they do help prevent fraudulent voting.

“Georgia and Indiana already have two of the nation’s strictest laws on voter ID,” von Spakovsky said, and “all claims made by opponents of photo ID laws today were made six years ago when Georgia passed its bill and none of those claims has proven true.”

In testimony last September before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, von Spakovsky said actual election results in both Georgia and Indiana confirm that voter ID does not hurt minority turnout, since both Georgia and Indiana experienced record turnout in the first presidential elections held after their photo ID laws went into effect.

More than twice as many as voters turned out in Georgia’s 2008 presidential primary than in 2004 when the photo ID law was not in effect. “The number of African-Americans voting in the 2008 primary also doubled from 2004,” von Spakovsky said.

In the 2008 general election when President Obama was elected, von Spakovsky testified that Georgia had the largest turnout in its history, and “Democratic turnout was up an astonishing 6.1 percentage points.”

In contrast, Mississippi witnessed only an increase of 2.35 percentage points, von Spakovsky said, a nearby state that also has a high percentage of black voters but no voter photo ID requirement.

As for opponents’ claims that photo ID is costly and onerous especially for the poor, von Spakovsky pointed to federal laws that anyone receiving welfare or Social Security benefits must prove citizenship and have a photo ID.

Von Spakovsky also considered the claim that a voter ID mandate would not prevent all fraud a red herring. “Putting in only security measures that are 100 percent effective is not a valid rationale for not requiring a photo ID,” said von Spakovsky. He compared that claim to saying screening passengers at airports or installing computer virus software was useless because they don’t work in all cases.

“Well, we just feel North Carolina’s photo ID bill would disenfranchise voters and there are better places to put the money, like education or reducing the state’s budget deficit,” Nicholas said.

CAIR in control of the First Amendment?

2012-01-31T09:48:00.000-08:00

GAFFNEY: Free speech - for some

Uncle Sam is joining in efforts to crack down on Islamists’ critics

Knowing OWS

2012-01-31T09:20:00.000-08:00

Occupy Pledge of Allegiance: “…and to the plutocracy for which it stands, the privately owned central bank, under the Jews…”

During yesterday’s hours-long rioting at the Occupy Oakland protest, the Occupiers burned a United States flag in front of Oakland City Hall (before later breaking in and smashing up irreplaceable antique museum exhibits in the foyer). Someone posted a video of the flag-burning to YouTube, and then added narration on top of it — his own rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance in an Occupy theme:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pzI-hmAag8

Here’s exactly what he says as the Oakland Occupiers burn the flag:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the imperialistic capitalistic dictatorship, and to the plutocracy for which it stands, the privately owned central bank, under the Jews, with inequality and injustice for the 99.“

It’s not clear who made the narration and the video — it could be one of the Occupiers themselves, or a local Occupy sympathizer, or perhaps just some random guy on the Internet getting all excited seeing the Occupiers in action.

(The YouTube channel for the narrator has this self-description: “Combination of Technical analysis, marxism, monetary history, and mainstream economic analysis,” alongside a litany of Bay Area Occupy and “evil Federal Reserve” videos.)

But even if it was just some random guy, you’ve got to ask yourself:

When rank anti-Semites are inspired by your actions to rant about evil Jews controlling the banks, isn’t it time to re-think your message?

Looks like the Occupiers have embraced their leaders’ call to spread hate.

[Hat tip to Ringo of Ringo's Pictures for digging up the video. Also reported at Moonbat Tracker and
Weasel Zippers.]

Same for the US.

2012-01-31T08:55:00.000-08:00

Eurozone unemployment hits new record

Unemployment in the eurozone hit a record high at the end of last year, the Eurostat agency has said.

The jobless rate in the 17 countries that use the single currency was 10.4% in December, unchanged from November's figure which was revised up from 10.3%.

Will the mainstream media report?

2012-01-31T08:34:00.000-08:00

Latest Congressional Budget Outlook For 2012-2022 Released, Says Real Unemployment Rate Is 10%

Canada: showing it's a friend of Israel

2012-01-31T08:28:00.000-08:00

In West Bank meeting, Canadian ministers take firm line with Palestinians

...

A Palestinian official later said they found Mr. Baird’s bluntness “refreshing.”

....

“There’s no mistaking where he stands,” the official said, somewhat admiringly.

....

"In a presentation on Monday evening to a private gathering at the Herzliya Conference, Mr.Baird, who is on his third visit to Israel, explained why the Harper government “believes so passionately in Israel’s right not only to exist, but to exist as a Jewish state and to live in peace and security.”

In part, he said, it is because “the state of Israel embodies principles that Canada values and respects.”

“It is also, in no small measure,” he added, “because Canada recognizes the long and unbroken history of anti-Semitism.”

“Israel today,” he said, “is a country whose very existence is under attack, both literally and figuratively.”

“Whether it is rockets raining down on Israeli schools, or the constant barrage of rhetorical demonization, double standards and delegitimization, Israel is under attack.”

“The easy thing to do,” Mr. Baird said, “would be simply to go along with anti-Israeli sentiment to get along with other countries.

Taking a swipe at Canada’s own historical stands on Middle East issues, Mr. Baird, who has been Foreign Minister for eight months, said “it would be easier to pretend that engaging in anti-Israeli rhetoric is being somehow even-handed and to excuse it under the false pretence of being an ‘honest broker.’”

“But Canada will not ‘go along to get along,’” he said."

Bitter cold records broken in Alaska – all time coldest record nearly broken, but Murphy’s Law intervenes

2012-01-30T18:18:00.000-08:00

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/30/bitter-cold-records-broken-in-alaska-all-time-coldest-record-nearly-broken-but-murphys-law-intervenes/

Dating boys unacceptable but killing is?

2012-01-30T10:35:00.000-08:00

'You have no place in civilised society': Muslim family jailed for life after 'despicable' honour killing of three teen daughters who dared to date boys

Father, mother and son found guilty of murdering family's three teenage daughters
The girls defied strict rules by dating, socialising and going online
Bodies found submerged in car in canal

Doctrinaire. Why the left and environmentalists so resemble totalitarians

2012-01-30T10:20:00.000-08:00

Global warming activists seek to purge ‘deniers’ among local weathermen

Concerned that too many “deniers” are in the meteorology business, global warming activists this month launched a campaign to recruit local weathermen to hop aboard the alarmism bandwagon and expose those who are not fully convinced that the world is facing man-made doom.

The Forecast the Facts campaign — led by 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters and the Citizen Engagement Lab — is pushing for more of a focus on global warming in weather forecasts, and is highlighting the many meteorologists who do not share their beliefs.

“Our goal is nothing short of changing how the entire profession of meteorology tackles the issue of climate change,” the group explains on their website. “We’ll empower everyday people to make sure meteorologists understand that their viewers are counting on them to get this story right, and that those who continue to shirk their professional responsibility will be held accountable.”

According to the Washington Post, the reason for the campaign can be found in a 2010 George Mason University surveys, which found that 63% of television weathermen think that global warming is a product of natural causes, while 31% believe it is from human activity.

So far, the campaign has identified 55 “deniers” in the meteorologist community and are looking for more. They define “deniers” as “anyone who expressly refutes the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change: that it is real, largely caused by humans, and already having profound impacts on our world.”

“We track the views of meteorologists through their on-air statements, blog posts, social media activity, public appearances, interviews, and interactions with viewers,” the campaign explains.

The Houston Chronicle noted that meteorologists mostly track short periods of weather, not long-term climate trends.

You wouldn’t ask your dentist about your gallbladder and you shouldn’t ask your local TV weatherman about climate change,” Houston’s KTRK Channel 13 chief meteorologist, Tim Heller, told The Chronicle.

“Operational meteorologists and forecasters are not climatologists. The background education is somewhat similar, but our area of expertise is different,” he added. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop some TV weather forecasters from spouting off on the subject.”

While some meteorologists question and push back against the campaign, ThinkProgress said that the “deniers” are not doing their audience any favors.

“These climate denier meteorologists are betraying the public’s trust and distorting America’s airwaves with ideological science denial,” the liberal publication reported, listing the names of a majority of the campaign’s identified “deniers.”

Forecast the Facts is currently pushing for signatures to their petition, which calls on the American Meteorological Society (AMS) to pass a new official statement on climate change.

“I urge the AMS Council to immediately pass a new information statement that reflects the widespread scientific consensus that climate change is increasingly impacting our planet, and then vigorously promote that statement to AMS members,” the letter reads.

They have even alienated their useful idiot friend the Mayor of Oakland.

2012-01-30T09:06:00.000-08:00

Occupy Oakland arrests reach 400; City Hall vandalized

Saturday's daylong protest was the most contentious since authorities dismantled the Occupy Oakland encampment late last year.

Lied to Congress and gets to resign. Why isn't he behind bars.

2012-01-29T11:25:00.000-08:00

Burke of Fast and Furious had anti-gun history

Protecting us from mercury far away by bringing it into our houses s

2012-01-29T11:02:00.000-08:00

EDITORIAL: Obama’s twisty light-bulb logic

White House wants to turn every other house into a HAZMAT zone

President Obama said in his State of the Union address, "I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury pollution." Of course, no one is asking him to back down. There is no movement in favor of exposing kids to mercury poisoning. It was like boldly proclaiming opposition to organized dog fights.

Mr. Obama was obliquely referring to his support for the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule issued late last year by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In a December presidential memorandum, Mr. Obama claimed that "by substantially reducing emissions of pollutants that contribute to neurological damage, cancer, respiratory illnesses and other health risks, the MATS Rule will produce major health benefits for millions of Americans - including children, older Americans and other vulnerable populations." MATS is the most expensive EPA rule revision in history, and compliance will cost power plants $10-18 billion a year. These costs will be passed directly to consumers.

Some critics have charged that hyping mercury poisoning in MATS was just a cover for the EPA to ramp up its regulatory assault on the coal industry. Trace amounts of mercury from coal-fired power-plant emissions affect a small number of Americans, chiefly those who live near the emissions sources. At the same time, however, the Obama administration has been trying to force Americans to accept even greater mercury risks by insisting that traditional incandescent light bulbs be replaced with compact fluorescent lights (CFLs).

The mercury vapor in CFLs is at a much more dangerous concentration than anything coming out of power plants. The associated risks are magnified because the toxic vapors and dust from a broken bulb would be contained in a room or enclosed area. The same EPA that is sounding the alarm about mercury emissions from power plants has written a detailed guide explaining how to respond to a broken CFL. It involves, among other things, evacuating the room in which the breakage occurs, shutting down central heating and air conditioning, airing out the room, carefully collecting bulb fragments and dust with rolled up duct tape, and placing all cleanup materials in airtight bags in a protected area outdoors pending proper disposal. Who knew that dropping a light bulb would instantly turn a home into a HAZMAT zone?

If Mr. Obama had his way, fluorescent lights would be in every home and school in America. The administration was set to enforce the ban on traditional incandescent light bulbs that passed in 2007 and was to begin this year, but a provision was included in the budget bill passed in December that would prohibit the Obama administration from spending any money to enforce the light-bulb ban. Energy Secretary David Chu mocked this as "a choice that continues to let people waste their own money." But it might also let them better protect their kids.

Remember when you are handling a CFL that it contains potentially deadly poisons. You can recognize the bulbs because they are twisty, like Mr. Obama's policy logic.

When will Holder be held accountable for his lies?

2012-01-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

Latest Friday night document dump shows Holder was informed of Brian Terry’s murder on day Fast & Furious weapons killed border agent

Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice dumped documents related to Operation Fast and Furious on congressional officials late Friday night. Central to this document dump is a series of emails showing Holder was informed of slain Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder on the day it happened – December 15, 2010.

An email from one official, whose name has been redacted from the document, to now-former Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke reads: “On December 14, 2010, a BORTAC agent working in the Nogales, AZ AOR was shot. The agent was conducting Border Patrol operations 18 miles north of the international boundary when he encountered [redacted word] unidentified subjects. Shots were exchanged resulting in the agent being shot. At this time, the agent is being transported to an area where he can be air lifted to an emergency medical center.”

That email was sent at 2:31 a.m. on the day Terry was shot. One hour later, a follow-up email read: “Our agent has passed away.”

Burke forwarded those two emails to Holder’s then-deputy chief of staff Monty Wilkinson later that morning, adding that the incident was “not good” because it happened “18 miles w/in” the border.

Wilkinson responded to Burke shortly thereafter and said the incident was “tragic.” “I’ve alerted the AG [Holder], the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.”

Then, later that day, Burke followed up with Wilkinson after Burke discovered from officials whose names are redacted that the guns used to kill Terry were from Fast and Furious. “The guns found in the desert near the murder BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about – they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store,” Burke wrote to Wilkinson.

“I’ll call tomorrow,” Wilkinson responded.

Holder has faced difficult questions surrounding the question of when he was first informed of the gunwalking program. He testified in Congress that he had only learned of Fast and Furious a “few weeks” before a May 3, 2011, House Judiciary Committee appearance.

Holder has since walked back that “few weeks” comment, amending it to more of a “couple months.”

“I did say a ‘few weeks,’” Holder said during a November 8 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, responding to a question from its chairman Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy. “I probably could’ve said ‘a couple of months.’ I didn’t think the term I said, ‘few weeks,’ was inaccurate based on what happened.”

There have also been a series of documents containing the intimate details of Fast and Furious that were sent to Holder throughout 2010 from several of his senior aides. Holder claims he did not read his memos.

Holder will be appearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform next Thursday, Feb. 2. Though Holder has already testified before Congress three times about matters relating to Fast and Furious — twice before the House Judiciary Committee and once before the Senate Judiciary Committee — this is the first time the House oversight committee will have an opportunity to question Holder himself.

“The Judiciary Committee has multiple issues with the Attorney General,” House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller last week. “We have one issue: the issue of breaking the law in order to enforce the law.”

“The oversight committee is investigating the Department of Justice, which is very different than his appearances before the Judiciary Committees in which they’re asking how things are going at Justice. What we’ve discovered in our investigations is a pattern of cover-up [and] delay. Ultimately Congress was given false information and now we’ve had people both resign and take the Fifth as we try to get to the basic elements of why and how was Congress lied to.”

A total of 103 members of the House have called for Holder’s resignation or firing, expressed “no confidence” in Holder via a formal House Resolution, or both. Two sitting governors, two U.S. senators and all the major Republican presidential candidates join those 103 congressmen in not trusting Holder. Many of those who have called for Holder’s resignation have pointed out that Holder claiming that he didn’t read his memos is a sign that he’s admitting incompetence to avoid charges of corruption.

Today's blood boiler...

2012-01-29T10:35:00.000-08:00

Disgraced teacher is worth $10M, makes $100,000 a year, does nothing, & refuses to leave

By SUSAN EDELMAN

Hell no, he won’t go.

In a defiant raspberry to the city Department of Education — and taxpayers — disgraced teacher Alan Rosenfeld, 66, won’t retire.

Deemed a danger to kids, the typing teacher with a $10 million real estate portfolio hasn’t been allowed in a classroom for more than a decade, but still collects $100,049 a year in city salary — plus health benefits, a growing pension nest egg, vacation and sick pay.

Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo can call for better teacher evaluations until they’re blue-faced, but Rosenfeld and six peers with similar gigs costing about $650,000 a year in total salaries are untouchable. Under a system shackled by protections for tenured teachers, they can’t be fired, the DOE says.

“It’s an F-U,” a friend of Rosenfeld said of his refusal to quit.

“He’s happy about it, and very proud that he beat the system. This is a great show-up-but-don’t-do-anything job.”

Accused in 2001 of making lewd comments and ogling eighth-grade girls’ butts at IS 347 in Queens, Rosenfeld was slapped with a week off without pay after the DOE failed to produce enough witnesses at a hearing.

But instead of returning Rosenfeld to the classroom, the DOE kept him in one of its notorious “rubber rooms,” where teachers in misconduct cases sat idle or napped. As The Post reported, Rosenfeld kept busy managing his many investment properties and working on his law practice. He’s a licensed attorney and real-estate broker.

Since the DOE closed the teacher holding pens in June 2010, those facing disciplinary charges were scattered to offices and given tasks such as answering phones, filing and photocopying.

But Rosenfeld and six others whose cases have long been closed are “permanently reassigned.” Rosenfeld reports to the Division of School Facilities, which maintains DOE buildings, in a warehouse in Long Island City.

Asked what work he does, Rosenfeld laughingly told his friend, “Oh, I Xeroxed something the other day.”

Rosenfeld could have retired four years ago at 62, but his pension grows by $1,700 for each year he stays — even without teaching. If he quit today, his annual pension would total an estimated $85,400.

“Why not make it bigger?” the friend said.

Rosenfeld will also get paid for 100 unused sick days when he leaves.

New York has no mandatory retirement age for teachers.

That let rubber-room granddaddy Roland Pierre make a mockery of the system. He finally retired at age 76 last year — 14 years after he was yanked from PS 138 in Brooklyn and never taught again. Criminal charges in 1997 that he molested a sixth-grade girl were dropped. He got $97,101 a year.

“It’s a tremendous waste of money,” said Marcus Winters, a Manhattan Institute expert on teacher evaluation. “While we don’t want to remove people just because they’ve been accused, we also want the school system to cut ties with teachers it’s not going to put in the classroom.”

But Winters added, “If these people are actually dangerous, it’s better to waste the money than to put them back with kids.”

Pervy pedagogues living on $leazy street

Stimu-loss

2012-01-29T10:27:00.000-08:00

Some 200 laid off at North Las Vegas Amonix solar plant

Just seven months after California-based solar power company Amonix Inc.opened its largest manufacturing plant, in North Las Vegas, the company’s contractor has laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce.

Flextronics Industrial, the Singapore solar panel manufacturer that partnered with Amonix to staff the new $18 million, 214,000-square-foot plant, laid off about 200 of its 300-plus employees Tuesday.

Amonix’s director of manufacturing operations, Eric Culberson, said the layoffs are part of “retooling” the factory as the company prepares to roll out its next-generation product.

“The new 8700 utility-scale CPV solar power system is a higher efficiency and lower cost,” Culberson said. “Once it is ready, we will ramp back up to meet the demands of the industry.”

Culberson said the job cuts are temporary and expects to begin hiring more people in the second half of the year to meet demand.

The company scaled down at all levels of employment at the plant — which was hiring as recently as three months ago — from entry level assemblers, process engineers, production supervisors and quality-control techs, according to one employee who was laid off.

Culberson said layoffs were made across the board.

Theodore Lewis, another employee, was working at the plant for six months before he and dozens of other employees were called into a mandatory meeting Tuesday.

“There was no excuse,” said Lewis, 34, who was never told his job was temporary. “They just said our job was done.”

Lewis said employees were confused and disappointed when they heard the news and were directed by human resources to look for other local jobs in retail.

The Las Vegas resident, who worked various assembly jobs at the plant, said it took him more than a month to secure the job last year and is frustrated to be back at square one.

“It’s setting me back,” Lewis said. “Now I have to fish for another job. It was hard getting that job and now this."

With a promise to bring hundreds of clean energy jobs and boost the hard-hit North Las Vegas economy, the plant was heralded as a success earlier this month by Mayor Shari Buck in her state of the city address.

Buck said Wednesday that she was aware of the layoffs but has faith the company will bring back the jobs.

“They were temporary employees brought in to handle a major project,” she said. “Amonix is taking the opportunity to automate their system better and get ready for the next big project. I expect Amonix to continue to be successful and have a great future in their solar production.”

Amonix and Flextronics opened shop in May 2011 at the Golden Triangle Industrial Park near Craig Road and Interstate 15 in North Las Vegas to a warm welcome from U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., Gov. Brian Sandoval and Buck.

Amonix received a $5.9 million investment tax credit through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act in 2010, and another $12 million in private capital helped finance the plant.

Together, the two companies manufacture concentrated photovoltaic solar power systems, producing about four solar panel arrays — each 50 feet by 72 feet — a day. The Amonix 7700 systems were estimated to generate enough solar energy to power up to 30 homes.

Many of the solar panels are shipped to clients in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona, but the company has built solar arrays for UNLV, NV Energy and the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

Although the company originally said it was working to secure contracts with the new water reclamation facility and the Veterans Affairs hospital under construction in North Las Vegas, Culberson would not comment on the status of the local projects.

Last month, Amonix CEO Brian Robertson was killed in a plane crash in Pennsylvania. An Amonix spokeswoman said the layoffs were in process before he died. Jan van Dokkum, an operating partner with venture capital firm KPCB, was named interim CEO.

Technology comes in its own sweet time. Something utopians will not accept.

2012-01-29T09:51:00.000-08:00

Drip, Drip, Drip: Yet Another Green Energy Stimulus Recipient Hits the Skids (the third this week!)

Earlier this week, Stimulus beneficiary Evergreen Energy bit the dust. Then, Ener1, a manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles and recipient of Stimulus largesse, filed for bankruptcy. And today, the Las Vegas Sun reports that Amonix, Inc., a manufacturer of solar panels that received $5.9 million from the Porkulus, will cut two-thirds of its workforce, about 200 employees, only seven months after opening a factory in Nevada.

I foresaw this spate of bad news last November. As I explained yesterday,

In a previous post, I compared renewable energy spending in the 2009 Stimulus to a green albatross burdening the President. I argued that Stimulus spending was inherently wasteful, because politics invariably corrupts government’s investment decisions. The result is taxpayers losses on bankrupt companies that existed only by the grace of political favoritism, a la Solyndra. I predicted the green stimulus would haunt the President, in the form of a slow drip public relations nightmare, as a litany of bad investments go belly-up in the run up to the 2012 elections.

Mr. President, are you still sure you want to “double down” on renewable energy giveaways?

I can't even imagine...

2012-01-29T09:46:00.000-08:00

Temperatures fall to 50 below in Fairbanks; small air carriers cancel flights

Quietly released...now I wonder why the whispering? Do you?

2012-01-29T09:32:00.000-08:00

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

The left's Jew hatred on display

2012-01-28T10:18:00.000-08:00

PRO-PALESTINIANS, CODEPINK, AND LGBT ACTIVISTS JOIN BOYCOTT ISRAEL

CONFERENCE AT UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Next weekend at the University of Pennsylvania, the National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Conference is taking place, where pro-Palestinian activists are teaming up with a wide array of leftist causes including social and “racial justice” advocates, self-proclaimed “queer” activists, dedicated socialists and anti-Zionists aiming to grow the boycott Israel effort, whose ultimate goal is to “bring an end to Israel’s system of oppression, segregation and dispossession.”

While the BDS activists say they don’t oppose the existence of the State of Israel – just the “occupation” – a deeper look at some of those involved reveals a more basic opposition to the existence of the Jewish state altogether.

The best glimpse into the unstated goal of the BDS movement is to know the conference’s keynote speaker. As the conference speakers list states:

Ali Abunimah (Photo from National BDS Conference)

“Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian American journalist and co-founder of Electronic Intifada. A graduate of Princeton University and University of Chicago, Abunimah has contributed to many publications…”

What’s omitted from the short bio is that Abunimah opposes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, he advocates the “One State Solution.” Translation: a bi-national Jewish-Arab state which by demographics and the “return” of millions of Palestinian refugees would spell the end of the Jewish state and eventually establish the 23rd Arab state in the Middle East. His book (which is not listed as one of his achievements in the BDS conference bio) laying out that vision is One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

On his website, Electronic Intifada, Abunimah wrote in 2007 that he met Barack Obama half a dozen times before he became president, “often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago…” In an article complaining Obama tilted more toward Israel after being elected, Abunimah writes that previously, “Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

Abunimah describes a 2004 conversation with Obama when he was in the middle of the Senate primary campaign:

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.” He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, “Keep up the good work!”

Other conference speakers reflect the growing cooperation, as seen in Occupy Wall Street, between thematically unrelated groups in the fight for “social justice” and the Palestinian cause. Examples include:

Nancy Kricorian, “coordinator of CODEPINK NYC, a grassroots peace and social justice movement.”

Bill Fletcher, Jr, the “editor of BlackCommentator.com. He is a labor, racial justice and international activist and was a key player in both the anti-Apartheid and US Civil Rights movements.”

Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui is on the advisory board of the USACBI (US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel). More on Dr. Kauanui from her bio:

She is the author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity … Kauanui is a co-founder of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, as well as the producer and host of a public affairs radio program, ‘Indigenous Politics: From Native New England and Beyond’…Her research areas include: settler colonialism; comparative indigeneity; anarchism and the state; and decolonization & nation-building.

Philip Weiss, a “self-described ‘anti-Zionist’ Jewish writer.”

Several gay and lesbian activists are also taking part, despite the fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where gays can live freely without fear of discrimination or violence. Even Palestinian gays take refuge in Israel for fear of attacks in the West Bank. Tel Aviv was recently named by American Airlines as the “Best Gay City” for vacationers.

Those speakers include:

Sherry Wolf, a journalist “who focuses on LGBT equality, human rights, and economic justice. In addition to her books, she has contributed to multiple publications, including the Nation, New Politics, and Dissident Voice, and has served as co-editor of the International Socialist Review.”

Dr. Heather Love “is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and author of ‘Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History.’”

BDS conference organizers are open about cultivating allies among other leftist causes. The conference website states:

Special attention will be devoted to building alliances and uniting in struggle with other constituencies engaged in resistance to bigotry in all its forms, from African Americans to those fighting for LGBT rights.

Stand With US, a pro-Israel group, released a statement saying:

“most of the scheduled speakers are extremists who oppose the existence of the Jewish state and irresponsibly spread propaganda, distort facts, whitewash or justify terrorism and the murder of Jews, and frequently lie about basic facts to demonize Israel and its supporters.”

Stand With Us researched the speakers and discovered:

Another invited speaker, Helena Cobban, has claimed that Israelis are “incapable of empathy and compassion for other people.” (January 2009, Georgetown University) Keynote speaker Ali Abunimah has declared that “Ending the occupation does not solve the problem. The Jews do not view all human beings as equal. The 1948 borders were calculated to harm Christians, Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims.” (Chicago Sabeel Conference, October 7, 2005) Speaker Susan Abulhawa resurrects blood libels, claiming that: “Palestinians are killed as if insects not because of Hamas or Yasser Arafat before them…..Palestinians burn and bleed because they are the non-Jewish natives of that land. There is no other reason.” (Jan. 6, 2009 here)
We trust that if a white supremacist, Islamophobic or homophobic group held a conference on campus, university administrations would condemn the prejudice and bigotry of the messages. The same principle should apply when Israel and Jews are targeted.

Opening night of the conference includes a screening of the film “Roadmap to Apartheid.” Narrated by novelist and “Free Gaza Flotilla” supporter Alice Walker, the film cultivates the comparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa. The apartheid label is one that’s found favor in pro-Palestinian circles – bolstered by President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid – even though a cursory knowledge about Israel would belie that comparison. The film is also being played at Occupy AIPAC, as discussed on GBTV this week.

“Apartheid” is a powerful word and effective tool for anti-Israel activists to enlist. The association with South Africa elicits an immediate negative response for Americans, while college students hearing their professors use the label may never seek solid information about Israel including the thousands of examples that falsify the comparison. Such examples include an Arab supreme court justice, Arab members of Knesset (including those who meet with Hamas), Arab diplomats serving in Israel’s overseas embassies and consulates, Arab officers in the Israeli army (from the Druse Arab sector), and many more. Israel is the only real democracy in the Middle East, with an independent judiciary, a vibrant press free to criticize the government, free and fair elections, and freedom of religion.

The University of Pennsylvania BDS conference discussions include: “Pinkwashing to Pinkwatching: Queer Organizing and BDS,” “Lessons from the South African Struggle,” “BDS and the Black Community,” “Community Coalition Building.”

Even while accusing Israel of racism without acknowledging the concrete facts about the country, conference organizers seem sensitive themselves to being labeled racist:

While it is clearly stated on our website, we nonetheless reiterate that PennBDS categorically and unequivocally condemns any form of racism, including anti-Semitism. We are fundamentally an anti-racist and anti-discrimination organization that seeks to promote non-violent forms of protest against long-standing official Israeli policies that we believe deny civil, political and human rights to Palestinians based on their ethnicity. We make a clear distinction between Israeli policy and the Jewish people. Jews are well represented in the BDS movement worldwide and groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Philadelphia Jews for a Just Peace, both pro-BDS organizations, will be fielding speakers at our conference.

The Obama administration is the union's enforcer and promoter.

2012-01-28T09:49:00.000-08:00

NLRB WANTS TO FORCE COMPANIES TO TURN OVER EMPLOYEE CONTACT INFO

Politicians would never pay for anything themselves. What slime.

2012-01-28T09:34:00.000-08:00

ALBANY — Crooked ex-state Sen. Carl Kruger forked over big bucks to prepare him for life in the big house.

The Brooklyn Democrat spent $7,500 of his campaign contributors’ money to hire a “prison consultant” to help him make the transition from the halls of power to a federal pokey.

A slap for the America hating ACLU

2012-01-27T19:04:00.000-08:00

'Lawfare' Loses Big

The ACLU loses its nasty suit against former defense officials.

Do you know who Lysenko is and why he is important now? Read this.

2012-01-27T18:56:00.000-08:00

No Need to Panic About Global Warming

There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.

Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Corbis

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

The utopians are at it again...

2012-01-27T18:33:00.000-08:00

California breaks rank again, demands over 15% of cars sold be non-polluting by 2025

Less than a year after everyone with any sort of say in the matter seemed to agree that 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2025 was a properly attainable goal, the California Air Resources Board has decided to change things up a bit.

In addition to CAFE requirements of a 54.5-mpg fleet average (using the government's formula, not what you see on window stickers), at least 15.4 percent of all cars sold by any major automaker doing business in California will have to be either fully electric, a plug-in hybrid or be powered by a hydrogen fuel cell by 2025. There are questions about the "over-compliance" section of the bill, which we'll be investigating further.

According to Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, 15.4 percent is "actually a relatively modest goal, but that's all that we're mandating." Most automakers are on board, says Nichols. "Probably the most heartening aspect of this whole rulemaking was the level of cooperation that we received from the industry... Overall, the degree of support for the package was just extraordinary."

Even if automakers are on board, though, there's still a question of who will actually buy the vehicles. While everyone wants better fuel efficiency, not everyone is willing to pay for it, counters the California New Car Dealers Association, estimating that the plan would add about $3,200 to the average price of a new car or truck. Perhaps to help dissuade such fears, Nichols added that "direct incentives to people who buy these cars (like) rebates and credits" are also in the works.

At least 10 more states are likely to follow California's lead, reports Automotive News. That would put the total number of advanced green vehicles (either with a plug or powered by hydrogen) at around three million total units by 2025, 1.4 million of which would be in California.

Interesting...

2012-01-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

Poll: Most Say High Court Should Reject Health Insurance Mandate

A little history about the sustainable development movement

2012-01-27T10:50:00.000-08:00

Green Lebensraum: The Nazi Roots of Sustainable Development

By Mark Musser

Much of the European Union's green sustainable development plans are largely based on government controlled land use planning theories rooted in the lebensraum tradition. Literally, lebensraum means "living space." Lebensraum was originally developed by German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904) and then greatly expanded under the banner of National Socialism (1933-1945).

Ratzel is the father of modern political geography which is commonly called geopolitics. He believed history was largely a natural evolutionary development of peoples looking for geographical living space. Ratzel also held that expanding borders reflected the biological health of a nation. The National Socialists adopted Ratzel's mixing of evolutionary theory, biology, and geopolitics in their own version of lebensraum.

Karl Haushofer (1869-1946), who was an early advisor to Hitler, was the link between Ratzel and National Socialism. Karl Haushofer's father was a friend of Ratzel. Karl was a member of the Thule Society before it was converted into the Nazi Party in 1920. Haushofer was also the mentor of Rudolf Hess, who was a green vegetarian mystic. Hess was Hitler's personal secretary up until 1941. Haushofer and Hess helped Hitler write Mein Kampf.

There was also a strong connection between lebensraum and the growing political empire of the Nazi SS under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler and Walther Darre. Himmler and Darre promoted a "back to the land" movement under the SS slogan of "blood and soil." In Darre's racist ideology, the economic catastrophe of the 1920's confirmed the decadence of the modern cosmopolitan city life. Darre believed that greedy foreign capitalism coupled with international Marxist class warfare divided the German race so that it was not allowed to sustain itself in the soil of its own homeland.

The hunger pangs of the 1920's were blamed on the international city, largely run by Jewish capitalists and communists. Darre and Himmler believed cosmopolitan cities arrogated themselves above the laws of life and nature. The answer to this crisis, therefore, was to get the German race out from under the yoke of dirty industrial cities and re-ruralize them "back to the land." In this way, the German race could recover its cultural and physical health based on a green socialistic agrarianism that was designed to compete against the cultural decadence of the cities.

There was not enough space in Germany itself to re-ruralize the population "back to the land." Without more living space there could be no proper marriage between German blood and soil. Additional lebensraum was required. It would therefore be sought in Eastern Europe and western Russia.

When the SS began to implement its "back to the land" campaign, it found itself in conflict with other powerful forces in Germany. However, by the mid to late 1930's the Office for Spatial Research and Space Planning was set up by the Nazi hierarchy to provide technocratic solutions on how to properly balance all the competing desires of the nation -- everything from the war economy, to industrial needs, housing, and even environmental protection. Sustainable development as a political ideal was thus pioneered under the auspices of Nazi spatial planning.

During the war, the SS had grandiose plans to use research garnered from the Office of Spatial Planning to create an eco-imperial empire in the conquered eastern territories. Inspired by SS planners Konrad Meyer (1901-1973), Emil Meynen(1902-1994), and Walter Christaller (1893-1969) , sustainable development as an applied political policy was to be implemented on the eastern front behind advancing German lines. Shockingly, under the SS, Ratzel's lebensraum came to mean living space for sustainable development.

The SS planned to use industry in the conquered eastern territories along with slave labor to pay for and build master planned communities. The eastern territories would also be filled with socialistic green garden villages and farms, together with national parks, forests, and many cockamamie renewable energy projects. Behind enemy lines, the living space of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia would be cleansed of unnatural Jews and Slavs who were unworthy of the soil they lived on. In particular, planning schemed based on Walter Christaller's Central Place Theory would be applied on a scale unachievable in Germany thanks to the fact that the Nazis were first going to cleanse the landscape. Christaller advocated a hierarchy of towns and villages wrapped around a central city that was to maximize economic and administrative efficiency for state planners.

Toward the end of the war, Nazi spatial and environmental planners destroyed massive quantities of records. They then re-organized themselves into the 'Academy for Area Research and Regional Planning" and the 'Institute for Spatial Planning.' In 1946, Karl Haushofer committed suicide. Konrad Meyer survived Nuremberg and later continued his work in spatial planning and sustainable development. Walter Christaller joined the Communist Party in 1951. His Central Place Theory is sometimes even considered a model for sustainable development and the so-called Green Economy. Emil Meynen, a leading geographer of the Third Reich, became an environmental spatial theorist after the war. He was also present at the infamous Wanssee Conference where the destruction of the Jews was discussed from a technocratic point of view.

After the war, social engineering based on Aryan biology was replaced with a blander form of socialism, but its ties to environmentalism and sustainable development continued unabated and grew exponentially in the decades to come. Environmental planners just exchanged brown paint with red paint -- all the while keeping the interior green. German spatial planners played an early critical role in the development of the EU's sustainable development policies.

Today, the EU is fond of using the concept of "territorial cohesion" and "supra-nationalism" in the place of lebensraum. Its stress on multiculturalism has converted the old Nazi nationalism into an EU Super State. Instead of promoting German supremacy, the EU is now promoting European supremacy. In fact, the EU is using environmental social engineering, i.e., sustainable development, to hasten the evaporation of national borders.

Yet in spite of this multicultural super-state emphasis, Germany has still become the heart of the EU from both a financial and an environmental point of view. EU's expansion has thus only served to strengthen Germany's influence, not weaken it. The global warming apocalypse was first popularized by Austrian Nazi Guenther Schwab in the 1960's, but it was the German green movement in the 1980's that helped convert the theory into the worldwide political issue it has since become.

Today, the EU even has sustainable development plans and ideas for the western Russian living space. Ironically, 65 years after the end of World War II, lebensraum has returned to the gates of Moscow, this time without panzers. The EU is also in North Africa. It wants to cover the Sahara with solar panels for the sake of renewable energy.

Lebensraum is not dead. Ratzel's geopolitics is still in vogue today under the guise of the EU's sustainable development plans. While the Nazi past has been completely ignored and willfully forgotten in the development of the EU's environmental sustainability policies, the geopolitical epicenter of the green movement has been and continues to be: Germany.

HR 3784 Windfall profits tax

2012-01-27T10:43:00.000-08:00

The class-warfare, economic illiterates in Congress have propose H.R. 3784, "the Gas Price Spike Act, which would place a "windfall" profits tax on gasoline to prevent oil companies from overcharging for gas"

Let's put aside, for now, the absurd idea that government has any business deciding what is and is not an appropriate profit of a private business and instead look at what those profits actually are:

From CA.gov's Energy Almanac, here is the breakdown of the cost of a gallon of gas:

	Branded
	Distribution Costs, Marketing Costs and Profits	Crude Oil Costs	Refinery Cost and Profit	State Underground Storage Tank Fee	State and Local Tax	State Excise Tax	Federal Excise Tax	Retail Price
Jan 16	$0.20	$2.65	$0.21	$0.02	$0.08	$0.36	$0.18	$3.70
Jan 09	$0.21	$2.64	$0.22	$0.02	$0.08	$0.36	$0.18	$3.71
Jan 02	$0.19	$2.62	$0.19	$0.02	$0.08	$0.36	$0.18	$3.64

Hmmm, let's see, they bundle profits in with distribution, marketing and refinery costs, but out of the total of $3.70, at most 41 cents is profit, if distribution, marketing and refinery costs are 0, but more likely south of 20 cents. Out of $3.70 sale price, that is about 6%. As a comparison, Apple's profit margin is on the order of 40%. On the other hand state, local and federal taxes add up to 62 cents. So various government entities make more than 3x what the oil and refinery companies do. And there is also no legislation pending to punish evil Apple for reaping such huge profits.

How federal welfare distorts economic decisions. Eleven studies and they need one more?

2012-01-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

$300,000 allocated for streetcar consultant

This is the definition of socialist style crony business

The OWS marching orders have been announced

2012-01-27T10:30:00.000-08:00

It’s Official: #OccupyChicago Feeble Pawns of the NATO/G8 Protests

While many laughed off Occupy Wall Street and predicted it would not last, the puppet masters have made their next move. We now have the evidence to prove that the early phase of the movement was nothing more than a staging period to build an infrastructure that will culminate in a massive occupation of Chicago this May. The strategy to descend upon Chicago’s NATO/G8 Summits has now been made loud and clear, as evidenced from a recent call to arms for revolutionaries around the world to flock to Chicago in May, as well as details regarding Occupy Chicago’s internal communications provided to RebelPundit.

Yesterday, Adbusters.org, the originators of the initial “Occupy Wall Street” call-to-action, just released its “Tactical Briefing #25,” an international call for radical revolutionaries from around the world to set up a month-long “occupation” (tent city) against the backdrop of the international NATO/G8 Summit.

Continue reading

How the left has destroyed the women's movement

2012-01-27T09:57:00.000-08:00

The Marxist Mission to Destroy Ayaan Hirsi Ali

by
PHYLLIS CHESLER

Bio

The feminism I once championed — and still do — was first taken over by Marxists and subsequently “Stalinized.” It was then conquered again by Islamists and “Palestinianized.” I and a handful of others maintained honorable minority positions on a host of issues. In time, women no longer mattered as much to many feminists — at least, not as much as Edward Said’s Arab men of color did. The Arab men were more fashionable victims who had not only been formerly “colonized” but who, to this day, are still being “occupied” by allegedly “apartheid”–intentioned Jews.

While most of my generation of feminists have long ago retired, died, fallen ill, or have continued to rest visibly on their own earliest laurels, I continue to champion universalist values and to resist the death-grip of multicultural relativism.

But my cohort have influenced the media. Thus, I am not at all surprised to see that Deborah Scroggins has just written a book titled Wanted Women: Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafiya Siddiqui. Truly, she has got to be kidding. Alas, I am afraid that she is serious.

Recently, the New York Times gave a relatively glowing review to this new work. According to critic Dwight Garner, the two women are “such opposites that, as the author memorably observes, ‘Like the bikini and the burka or the virgin and the whore, you couldn’t quite understand one without understanding the other.’”

Garner continues: “If you are wondering who is the bikini (and thus the whore) in that formulation, Ms. Scroggins leaves little doubt that it is Ms. Hirsi Ali, whom her book relentlessly attacks.”

Hirsi Ali is indeed “wanted”— but by misogynist Islamists whom she exposes and opposes. Siddiqui, “Lady Al Qaeda,” was indeed “wanted” and is now in prison for attempting to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan for al-Qaeda. In 2003, the FBI “named her as the only known female operative of al-Qaeda.” In 2010, Siddiqui, a devout Muslim and a Brandeis-educated Pakistani, was sentenced to 86 years in jail.

Which of the two women do you think Scroggins prefers? The brave feminist freedom fighter Hirsi Ali, or the pro-Islamist and terrorist Siddiqui? Scroggins finds a “weird symmetry” between the two. Of all the false moral equivalents with which I am forced to live, this rankles quite a bit. But Scroggins sees them both as “rebels,” as sister-equivalents.

Siddiqui became a rabid antisemite. And a terrorist. This does not bother Scroggins as much as Hirsi Ali’s “imperiousness” and “egomania” does — that, and the fact that Hirsi Ali accepted a perch at the (conservative) American Enterprise Institute. From Scroggins’ point of view, the fact that Hirsi Ali has embraced universal human rights, outlined a pro-Western critique of political Islam, and supported the war in Iraq renders her something of a war criminal.

Maybe Scroggins even views Siddiqui as the true freedom fighter.

As a student in America, Siddiqui joined the infamous Muslim Students Association and fell under the spell of one of bin Laden’s own mentors who ran a Muslim charity in Brooklyn, New York. Siddiqui’s second husband’s uncle was none other than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who planned 9/11. Apparently, the kindly uncle-in-marriage gave up her name to interrogators. However, Siddiqui and her children had disappeared. She was not found until 2008, wandering around in Afghanistan with bomb-making formulas in her possession as well as plans for mass casualty attacks. Under questioning she picked up a gun and shot at her captors.

Scroggins and her supporters have argued that Siddiqui is both mentally ill and/or that she was brainwashed by al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups which, in turn, led to her mental illness. (Siddiqui could be mentally ill.) Nevertheless, Scroggins and her supporters absolutely refuse to criticize a terrorist group that routinely sacrifices their own women, children, and men without remorse or that exploits the mentally ill among them.

This 2012 book may be rooted in an earlier essay which appeared in the pages of The Nation magazine in 2005 (subscription required to read.) At the time, I could not believe what I was reading. Scroggins took off after the heroic and besieged Hirsi Ali. Her piece was funded by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute. The essay was titled “The Dutch-Muslim Culture War: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Has Enraged Muslims with her Attacks on their Sexual Mores.” Scroggins did not view Hirsi Ali as a hero but rather as a reactionary and a traitor who left the Left Labor Party and became affiliated with the political “center right” in Holland.

Scroggins saw Hirsi Ali as part of an anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, and anti-Islam faction that included the assassinated filmmaker Theo Von Gogh and politician Geert Wilders who dared argue that Muslims “assimilate” to the more “humane” and “higher level” European culture.

Obviously, Scroggins believes that Europe should return to the anti-infidel 7^th century instead.

Scroggins judges Hirsi Ali by the politically incorrect company she keeps rather than by whether she is telling the truth. Scroggins condemns Hirsi Ali for revealing that the prophet Mohammed was a pedophile because he married a six-year-old girl and then consummated the marriage when she was nine years old. (Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff has recently been found criminally liable in Austria for telling this rather inconvenient truth.)

In classic left-feminist fashion, Scroggins attacks Hirsi Ali for “putting all the blame on Islam” instead of blaming “patriarchal customs”; for ignoring the work of Muslim feminists who have “shown that Islam’s sacred texts can be interpreted in more female-friendly ways”; and for failing to focus on the “role the West has played and continues to play in assisting the rise of the Islamist movements.”

Say what?

Thus, according to Scroggins, Hirsi Ali’s main thought crime is her refusal to blame the West for its history of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and racism. Obviously, Scroggins has not read the excellent works of Ibn Warraq (reviewed in these pages) and the work of Salim Mansur (which I will shortly review). Both are men of color, Muslims by birth, who understand the long history of Islamic imperialism, colonialism, racism, slavery, censorship, and real gender and religious apartheid. Like Hirsi Ali, both men understand the danger of “multicultural” societies in the West which encourage immigrants not to assimilate and which keep women, especially Muslim women, subordinate and enslaved.

However, contrary to all reason, Scroggins views Hirsi Ali’s passionate and feminist defense of both Muslim women and European and Western culture as “contributing” both to the rise of Islamism — and paradoxically, to anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment. Scroggins quotes an unnamed Muslim woman who sees Hirsi Ali as “nothing but an Uncle Tom.”

Scroggins then argues that “there have been many more attacks against Dutch Muslims than on non-Muslims.” She gives no sources, statistics, studies, or proof.

But “Islamophobia” is also a fashionable concept, far more so than is “Israelophobia” or “Judeophobia.” Scroggins does not care as much about the lethal sexism that Hirsi Ali decries as she does about the Muslim right to colonize the West, face-veil its women, censor, sue, even murder Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents, and convert infidels by the sword.

Am I am “alarmist”? You bet I am. But that’s because I know a thing or two. Clearly, Scroggins and her kind do not.

We have an anti Constitutional tyrant in the White House.

2012-01-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

Obama Signs Global Internet Treaty Worse Than SOPA

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, January 26, 2012

White House bypasses Senate to ink agreement that could allow Chinese companies to demand ISPs remove web content in US with no legal oversight

Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.

The hacktivist group Anonymous attacked and took offline the Federal Trade Commission’s website yesterday in protest against the treaty, which was also the subject of demonstrations across major cities in Poland, a country set to sign the agreement today.

Under the provisions of ACTA, copyright holders will be granted sweeping direct powers to demand ISPs remove material from the Internet on a whim. Whereas ISPs normally are only forced to remove content after a court order, all legal oversight will be abolished, a precedent that will apply globally, rendering the treaty worse in its potential scope for abuse than SOPA or PIPA.

A country known for its enforcement of harsh Internet censorship policies like China could demand under the treaty that an ISP in the United States remove content or terminate a website on its server altogether. As we have seen from the enforcement of similar copyright policies in the US, websites are sometimes targeted for no justifiable reason.

The groups pushing the treaty also want to empower copyright holders with the ability to demand that users who violate intellectual property rights (with no legal process) have their Internet connections terminated, a punishment that could only ever be properly enforced by the creation of an individual Internet ID card for every web user, a system that is already in the works.

“The same industry rightsholder groups that support the creation of ACTA have also called for mandatory network-level filtering by Internet Service Providers and for Internet Service Providers to terminate citizens’ Internet connection on repeat allegation of copyright infringement (the “Three Strikes” /Graduated Response) so there is reason to believe that ACTA will seek to increase intermediary liability and require these things of Internet Service Providers,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The treaty will also mandate that ISPs disclose personal user information to the copyright holder, while providing authorities across the globe with broader powers to search laptops and Internet-capable devices at border checkpoints.

In presenting ACTA as an “international agreement” rather than a treaty, the Obama administration managed to circumvent the legislative process and avoid having to get Senate approval, a method questioned by Senator Wyden.

“That said, even if Obama has declared ACTA an executive agreement (while those in Europe insist that it’s a binding treaty), there is a very real Constitutional question here: can it actually be an executive agreement?” asks TechDirt. “The law is clear that the only things that can be covered by executive agreements are things that involve items that are solely under the President’s mandate. That is, you can’t sign an executive agreement that impacts the things Congress has control over. But here’s the thing: intellectual property, in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is an issue given to Congress, not the President. Thus, there’s a pretty strong argument that the president legally cannot sign any intellectual property agreements as an executive agreement and, instead, must submit them to the Senate.”.

26 European Union member states along with the EU itself are set to sign the treaty at a ceremony today in Tokyo. Other countries wishing to sign the agreement have until May 2013 to do so.

Critics are urging those concerned about Obama’s decision to sign the document with no legislative oversight to demand the Senate be forced to ratify the treaty.

The STASI would be so proud.

2012-01-27T09:29:00.000-08:00

Hawaii may keep track of all Web sites visited

Hawaii's legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.

The legislation appears to have been inspired by this Web site attacking Hawaii Rep. Kym Pine. It was created by her ex-Web designer after a billing dispute.

Its House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing this morning on a new bill (PDF) requiring the creation of virtual dossiers on state residents. The measure, H.B. 2288, says "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years.

H.B. 2288, which was introduced Friday, says the dossiers must include a list of Internet Protocol addresses and domain names visited. DemocraticRep. John Mizuno of Oahu is the lead sponsor; Mizuno also introduced H.B. 2287, a computer crime bill, at the same time last week.

Last summer, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas)managed to persuade a divided committee in the U.S. House of Representatives to approve his data retention proposal, which doesn't go nearly as far as Hawaii's. (Smith, currently Hollywood's favorite Republican, has become better known as the author of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.)

Democrat Jill Tokuda, the Hawaii Senate's majority whip, who introduced a companion bill, S.B. 2530, in the Senate, told CNET that her legislation was intended to address concerns raised by Rep. Kymberly Pine, the first Republican elected to her Oahu district since statehood and the House minority floor leader.

"I was asked to introduce the Senate companions on these Internet security related bills by Representative Kymberly Marcos Pine after her own personal experience in this area," Tokuda said. "I would defer to her on the origins of these bills as she has done the research and outreach, and been the main champion of this effort."

Pine, who did not immediately respond to queries, has been targeted by a disgruntled Web designer, Eric Ryan, who launched KymPineIsACrook.com and claims she owes him money, according to an article last summer in the Hawaii Reporter. Her e-mail account was also reportedly hacked around the same time. The article said Pine would advocate for "tougher cyber laws at the Hawaii State Capitol" as a result.

John Mizuno, a Democratic state legislator in Hawaii and a sponsor of the bill, wants to require virtual dossiers to be compiled on state residents: two years' worth of their Internet browsing.

(Credit: Hawaii.gov)

"We must do everything we can to protect the people of Hawaii from these attacks and give prosecutors the tools to ensure justice is served for victims," Pine said at the time.

Whatever its sponsors' motivations, the bill isn't exactly being welcomed by Hawaiian Internet companies.

"This bill represents a radical violation of privacy and opens the door to rampant Fourth Amendment violations," says Daniel Leuck, chief executive of Honolulu-based software design boutique Ikayzo, who submitted testimony opposing the bill. He adds: "Even forcing telephone companies to record everyone's conversations, which is unthinkable, would be less of an intrusion."

Mizuno's proposal currently specifies no privacy protections, such as placing restrictions on what Internet providers can do with this information (like selling user profiles to advertisers) or requiring that police obtain a court order before perusing the virtual dossiers of Hawaiian citizens. Also absent are security requirements such as mandating the use of encryption.

Because the wording is so broad and applies to any company that "provides access to the Internet," Mizuno's legislation could sweep in far more than AT&T, Verizon, and Hawaii's local Internet providers. It could also impose sweeping new requirements on coffee shops, bookstores, and hotels frequented by the over 6 million tourists who visit the islands each year.

"H.B. 2288 raises all of the traditional concerns associated with data retention, and then some," Kate Dean, head of the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association in Washington, D.C., which counts Verizon and AT&T as members, told CNET. "And this may be the broadest mandate we've seen."

Even the Justice Department has only lobbied the U.S. Congress to record Internet Protocol addresses assigned to individuals--users' origin IP address, in other words. It hasn't publicly demanded that companies record the destination IP addresses as well.

In Washington, D.C., the fight over data retention requirements has been simmering since the Justice Department pushed the topic in 2005, a development that was first reported by CNET. Proposals publicly surfaced in the U.S. Congress the following year, and President Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said it's an issue that "must be addressed." So, eventually,did FBI director Robert Mueller.

Tax Rates

2012-01-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of buzz in recent days about Romney's 15% tax rate and Warren Buffett's secretary tax rate and how Buffett's 17% tax rate is less than hers.

Everytime I hear about the low tax rate of billionaire's I want to scream.

Let's make this clear, neither Romney nor Buffett has a 15-17% tax rate. They own businesses, the income of the businesses is theirs, the businesses pay tax at the corporate rate, which is one of the highest in the developed world (35% in the US), on that already taxed income they pay an additional 15% on dividends or capital gains they receive from those businesses.

A simple example:

Joe has a business structured as an LLC. The LLC earnings are $1M. These pass through to Joe as income on which he pays the top marginal tax rate of 35% over $379k. The total tax paid will be about $322k, leaving Joe with $688k.

Jack is a senior executive working for Zeta Industries. Jack's salary is $1m. He will pay the same taxes as Joe.

Jim owns 10% of public corporation Zeta Industries. Zeta earns $10m. %1m is Joes as a 10% owner. Zeta pays taxes on that $10m at the 35% corporate tax rate, leaving $6.5m. It pays it all out as dividends giving Jim $650,000. Jim then pays 15% dividend tax, leaving him $552k.

Joe's average tax rate is about 32%.
Jack's average tax rate is about 32%.
Jim's average tax rate is about 45%.

Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett are Jim. They do not have tax rates around 15%.

From a recently discovered blog site

2012-01-26T17:51:00.000-08:00

If it’s Wednesay, this must be Media Bias Against Israel Day

The brilliance of Harvey Korman and Mel Brooks

2012-01-26T17:16:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Km7WD8wkb1c#!

or is it a meeting with George Soros

Obama turns a blind eye. It's only Anti American and Jew hating

2012-01-26T16:59:00.000-08:00

Why Doesn’t Obama Ban Iranian Press TV?

Authorities in Britain revoked the license of the Iranian regime’s English-language global television channel known as Press TV because of evidence that it is a propaganda outlet controlled by the Iranian regime. But the Obama Administration permits the channel to operate on American soil without a license and in violation of U.S. sanctions regulations, which ban commercial transactions with Iran. It appears to be another example of Obama coddling the terrorist regime.

British authorities justified the move by citing the specific example of a Press TV 2009 interview with a Newsweek correspondent held in an Iranian jail. British telecom regulator Ofcom found that the interview by Press TV with Maziar Bahari, who was jailed by the Iranian regime over his reporting of the disputed presidential elections in June 2009, was conducted under duress. It held that Press TV was in violation of its British broadcasting license because its content was dictated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the state broadcasting authority, and instructed the satellite carrier BSkyB to remove Press TV from its platform.

In the United States, the situation is even worse because although it operates openly in Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles, and regularly conducts interviews with such figures as Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, it does not have a license from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). So far, the Obama Administration has done nothing to shut it down.

What appears to be lacking is a determination from OFAC pointing out the obvious—that the Iranian state propaganda channel is operating illegally in the U.S. Because of this failure to enforce the law, Press TV is able to operate a propaganda facility in downtown Washington, D.C. with a prestigious K Street address and send its operatives to observe and survey U.S. Government offices, under the cover of “freedom of the press.”

“While other countries might not respect the right to a free press, this is something we take very seriously,” an administration official told this reporter. “We like to stay true to our values.”

But why do our values permit accommodating the actions of an illegal television entity devoted to propaganda and support for an outlaw regime that the Obama Administration itself says supports international terrorism?

In the case at issue in Britain, Bahari was picked up by the Iranian authorities at his parents’ home in Tehran on June 21, 2009, and jailed for four months in Iran. After an international campaign won his release and he returned home four months later that October, Bahari said that his captors had forced him to read a prepared script in front of Press TV cameras, just as American POWs were forced to do in Vietnam.

Press TV has scrubbed the interview from its website but it was widely reported at the time. In the script his captors gave him to read, Bahari accused Western reporters of working “as spies,” and “confessed” that he had been covering “illegal demonstrations” as part of a Western effort to promote a “color revolution” in Iran. His family and the media dismissed his “confession” as clearly coerced.

Clinton Excuses Tehran

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed Iran hard to release Bahari, but never made a statement condemning Press TV for airing the coerced interview. “We’ve been condemning the Iranian government writ large on this, not any specific agency,” a State Department spokesman said.

The Obama Administration has continued to allow Press TV to operate unhindered in the United States, despite clear evidence that it is operating as a propaganda arm of the Iranian regime. Indeed, the State Department regularly entertains questions from Press TV reporters, and allows bloggers on its “DipNote” website to plug rabid anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda with links to Press TV articles and interviews.

“If Press TV were to request a license to operate here in the U.S., the activities that led to having their license removed in the UK would certainly be reviewed by us,” a U.S. official said. “But for now, we cannot take a similar action because they have no license.”

So because it operates illegally in violation of the law, the U.S. will take no action. This might be enough for administration lawyers, but it defies common sense.

Other Propaganda Outlets

Press TV is not the only Iranian government media organization operating in the United States. The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) operates Aftab TV, which broadcasts in Persian and operates a prominent website.

On December 28, 2006, for example, Aftab featured an interview with prominent pro-Tehran advocate Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian-American Council, NIAC. In prefacing the interview, Aftab stressed the importance of the “Iranian American lobby on behalf of the Iranian regime” and described it as the regime’s “unofficial diplomacy.”

Last year, IRIB opened yet another 24-hour TV network they billed as “Iran’s CNN,” called Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, IRINN TV. They began broadcasting in the U.S. with an hour-long live program from a new Washington, D.C. studio on April 6, 2011. Their flagship U.S. show is called “Two half-hours (Dow Nim Saat) that airs from 11 a.m. to noon everyday.

While most programs are in Persian, IRINN also broadcasts news in English via satellite to the U.S.

The regime has also lavished money on the print media as a means of maintaining an intimidating presence within the Iranian-American community. The U.S. edition of the Tehran daily, Etelaat, was printed in New York and flown via Federal Express to a dozen distribution points around the country for over two decades, until it was shut down last year after an undercover FBI investigation determined it was being funded illegally out of the Iranian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, a source involved in the investigation told me.

With the exception of Etelaat, the Obama Administration has continued to allow Iranian government media organizations to operate freely in the United States, mostly without licenses, despite nearly two decades of Iran sanctions that prohibit commercial exchanges between the U.S. and Iran.

Doubletalk from Obama

In a series of email and telephone exchanges, officials at the Department of the Treasury refused to acknowledge whether the administration or its predecessors had granted Press TV a license to operate in the United States.

“We are unable to comment publicly on organizations that may or may not have received licenses from OFAC. However, we note that as an official propaganda arm of the Iranian government, Press TV has a history of fabricating news and has faced lawsuits in the UK for airing forced confessions,” a Treasury Department official said.

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls issues trade sanctions guidelines and maintains the list of “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDNs) banned from doing business with U.S. persons.

In the case where an organization subject to U.S. sanctions continues to operate in the United States by moving money under the radar, OFAC has often acted quickly and without warning to shut them down. But not in this case.

Spewing Filth

Press TV spews out unending streams of anti-American propaganda in a full-service program mix that includes talk shows, news reports, and TV magazines, aimed at an American audience via satellite.

Professionally-produced—often times by Americans—these shows trot out a congeries of conspiracy theorists, Holocaust deniers and their apologists, masquerading as “analysts” and “political commentators” to give them a veneer of respectability.

In this case, Press TV appears to be emulating the old Soviet Union, which specialized in propaganda for the regime and against its enemies. The Soviet-led Comintern sent propaganda specialist Willi Muenzenberg to America to recruit propaganda agents.

The Iranian regime has invested heavily in Press TV because it understands the value of propagandists who speak unaccented English and who are not openly tied to the regime to spread its ideological “payload.”

Muenzenberg wrote the playbook that was later used by Press TV and much of the “politically-correct” left in the 1920s and 1930s, when he set up a vast web of cover influence operators stretching from media to academia to America’s newsrooms that continue to make their message felt way beyond the grave.

As former CIA propaganda expert Kent Clizbe explains in his book on Muenzenberg, “the goal of the operations was to make Americans feel that their country was bad.”

“You claim to be an independent-minded idealist,” said Muenzenberg’s widow, Babette Gross. “You don’t really understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break… You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country… You believe in peace… You yearn for international understanding… You think the capitalist system is corrupt.”

The propaganda from Occupy Wall Street appears to be a modern-day example of the Muenzenberg approach.

Press TV takes the anti-American propaganda to a global level. Like the old Soviet propaganda networks, Press TV uses Americans to make the case against their own government and society.

Consider the case of James Fetzer, “a prominent philosopher” who went on Press TV to comment on the violent turn of the Occupy movement in Oakland last November.

He blamed the police. A professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, Fetzer said, “We are seeing the increase in militarization of the police forces throughout the United States and that is a very bad tendency that has been taking place since 9/11. We see the rich getting richer and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. This gap has been widening since the administration of Ronald Reagan,” Fetzer said.

He went on: “What they are doing, the politicians are ignoring the needs of the average American and the working families. We have had increasing foreclosures, and unemployment is seen as the tip of an iceberg resistance to the corruption of politics in America… I believe this movement is not going to go away, and that what we are seeing is the real face of the police state of America has become.”

As it turns out, James H. Fetzer is indeed well-known—as a conspiracy theorist.

In a Wikipedia entry tagged by editors as “an autobiography,” Fetzer is described as “a well-known conspiracy theorist,” who has written extensively on the JFK assassination, 9/11, and the plane crash that killed U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone.

Fetzer claims, for example, that the film footage taken of the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 was “video fakery” caused by “holographic projects,” because the high-speed crash was “in violation of Newton’s laws” of physics.

His own website highlights his book, The 9/11 Conspiracy: The Scamming of America. A YouTube videoshows Fetzer arguing that Senator Wellstone was assassinated, not killed by accident in a plane crash.

After a federal judge in District Court in New York issued a finding last December that Iran “shared responsibility with al Qaeda” for the 9/11 attacks, Press TV naturally turned to Fetzer for comment. Calling the ruling “preposterous,” he said he knew who was responsible for the attacks: Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad.

“Multiple investigations by independent journalists have revealed that Israel—the Mossad—played a key role in 9/11,” Fetzer said. “Look up ‘the dancing Israelis.’ Look up ‘urban moving systems.’ Look up ‘CITS ‘and you’ll find ample indication that Israel was profoundly involved in 9/11.”

Another Press TV Propagandist

Another propagandist used by Press TV as an on-air commentator is Mark Dankof, whose support for the Ron Paul presidential campaign we highlighted in an earlier story.

In a May 2011 article aimed at discrediting the Ofcom case against Press TV in Britain, Dankof hauled out the big artillery. Why was the British government attempting to shut down Press TV? It was, of course, all because of the Jews.

“It may not be a coincidence that the British Ofcom case against Press TV Iran pops up against the backdrop of Netanyahu’s state visit to the United States to press his own case for ongoing Talmudic Death and Destruction in the Middle East,” Dankof wrote.

The “logic” of his case went like this: Press TV accuser Maziar Bahari was a contributor to Newsweek, whose late chairman, Sidney Harman, was married to Rep. Jane Harman of California, a Jewish Democrat. “Mrs. Harman, in turn…proves to be the very member of Congress wiretapped by the American National Security Agency (NSA) conveying promises to Israeli agents that the dogs would be called off from tailing and successfully prosecuting the espionage case involving key executives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),” Dankof wrote.

In the article, “Empire continues to sweat over Press TV,” he went on, “This is the transparent connection in this case, as it is in other recent attacks on Press TV in the West involving media outlets and correspondents with provable connections to the American Jewish lobby; Israeli intelligence; and Neo-Conservatives thirsting for a War of Civilizations with Iran specifically, and the Islamic world generally.”

“If anyone wanted to run the traps and understand the connections, they should read the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” Dankof concluded. Press TV was being persecuted because it was “one of the few exceptions to The [Jewish] Lobby’s control of global print and electronically transmitted news and analysis.”

The Protocols was a Russian forgery designed to blame the Jews for the world’s problems. Muslim religious leaders and political leaders have touted its “accuracy” to me in interviews throughout the Middle East for decades.

More material of this sort can be found in the innumerable interviews Press TV conducts with “expert” Paul Sheldon Foote, whose favorite line is that “Crypto-Jews” have initiated a war between Christians and Muslims. Such arguments harken back to the ugliest forms of Western anti-Semitism.

The Rise of Press TV

When Press TV CEO Mohammad Sarafraz announced the creation of the new English-language satellite broadcasting channel in June 2007, he stated at the get-go that the goal was to spread the propaganda payload of the Tehran regime.

“Since September 11, Western bias has divided the media into two camps: those that favor their policies make up one group and the rest of the media are attached to radical Islamic groups like Al-Qaeda. We want to show that there is a different view. Iran, and the Shi’ites in particular, have become a focal point of world propaganda. From the media point of view, we are trying to give a second eye to Western audiences,” Sarafraz said.

While Press TV made some effort in its U.S. programming to invite guests who weren’t always fans of the Iranian regime, all pretense of its propaganda aims disappeared in May 2009, just before the stolen elections that gave Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office.

That was when a group of Ahmadinejad supporters raided the petty cash desk at Press TV’s Tehran headquarters and used the money to support Ahmadinejad’s election campaign, according to Press TV insiders who subsequently left or were forced to leave the network.

Since the June 2009 elections, opposition politicians, such as Mir Hossein and other challengers to Ahmadinejad, have been banned from the airwaves and Press TV has abandoned any pretense of even-handedness.

Skirting the Sanctions

Press TV has used a number of subterfuges to skirt the U.S. sanctions on commercial transactions with Iran.

From the start, Press TV has maintained close ties to the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, the Iranian regime’s only legal financial base in the United States. The UN mission may have paid some staff in cash brought in through the diplomatic bag. Press TV maintained an official presence at the Iranian Mission.

Because it could not incorporate directly in the United States, Press TV worked through production companies operating in the U.S., which in turn hired crew, correspondents, and producers.

Former Atlantic Television News (ATN) correspondent Colin Campbell questioned U.S. officials on Press TV’s behalf. ATN Productions Ltd. has seven reporters currently registered with the Senate Press Gallery: Nicholas Ewing, Affra Khallash, Taleb Khallash, Zina Khallash, Dirik Rice, Mohamed Said Ouafi, and Firas Tuma. The company is registered in Denmark and produces the weekly magazine show “American Dream,” hosted by an American, Nisa Islam.

ATN operates out of production studios located on K Street in downtown Washington, D.C. AIM Center for Investigative Journalism director Cliff Kincaid was invited and appeared on its “American Dream” program a couple of times, before realizing that ATN was operating as a front for the Iranians. When he criticized the Iranian regime on one of the programs, he was not invited back.

Press TV contacted Accuracy in Media on another occasion, looking for a guest for one of its programs to discuss why Republican Representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul was not getting more favorable attention from the U.S. media. Paul has pleased the Iranian regime by defending its pursuit of nuclear weapons. AIM declined the invitation but considered the request as more evidence of how foreign propaganda channels, such as Press TV and Russia Today, have embraced the foreign policy views of the Texas congressman.

The Press TV Media Universe

Press TV also contracts with American Press and TV Services (APTVS), an outfit run by Egyptian nationals Gamal Hassanein and Samir Ezeldin. Like ATN, they hire producers and camera crews to film events and conduct interviews at Press TV’s request.

“Gamal and Sam were running the operation, because Press TV was not allowed to incorporate here,” a former Press TV insider told me.

APTVS took over Press TV’s bureau at the United Nations in 2010. Like ATN, their correspondents and camera crews have all received press passes for the U.S. Capitol complex from the Senate Press Gallery. They hired Colin Campbell away from ATN, and have also registered the following staff with the Senate Press Gallery: Ibrahim Alshamrani, Moaz Attawia, Fahd Banhawy, Umut Colak, Samir Ezeldin, and Mike Kellerman.

The Senate press passes not only give the Press TV contractors access to the House and Senate chambers, but serve as accreditation for a much wider range of events reserved for members of the press corps, including White House, State Department, and Defense Department briefings. Although each of these three issues its own credentials to beat reporters (the “White House press corps,” etc.), the Senate press pass gets most reporters through the door for the occasional event.

Although APTVS and ATN are not part of Press TV, they produce “works for hire” for Press TV. Should OFAC decide to enforce the law, this could be construed to mean that they are engaging in unlicensed commercial transactions with Iran.

In an effort to forestall precisely such an investigation, APTVS for several years received payment from Press TV through a Palestinian production company in Ramallah run by silent partner Maher Shalabi, according to former Press TV insiders. On his Facebook page, Shalabi identifies himself as General Manager of that company, PMCC TV.

“Press TV used to contract Maher, and he then contracted with APTVS in Washington,” a former insider said. “APTVS then booked the guests and studios and conducted the interviews or satellite link-ups.” Shalabi also works for “Palestine TV,” and conducted a high-profile interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for that channel in 2010.

Do the activities of Press TV and these production companies fall within the “information” loop-hole of the Iran sanctions?

“If I am sending an academic journal, or some materials that actually will help the exchange of knowledge, that is allowed,” an Obama administration official told me. “But if I am actually conducting paid journalistic work, right now I still need a specific license to allow that to happen.”

Press TV does not have a license, this official hastened to add. “Therefore, they are operating illegally.”

Yet, the Obama Administration permits the channel to continue to operate in violation of the law. Congress should investigate.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is the New York Times best-selling author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum, 2005), among other works