Government health care at work

Hospital patient so shocked at dirty ward she climbed out of bed to clean it herself

Government out to make you poorer

If you believe the cost of electricity will go up by the amount estimated you're naive. Notice how these program will cut the cost to society of health care. Although this excuse is often used has it ever been proven.

Prepare for blackouts.

Los Angeles will end use of coal-fired power
By Bernie Woodall

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles will eliminate the use of electricity made from coal by 2020, replacing it with power from cleaner renewable energy sources, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.
Consumers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest city-owned utility in the United States with 1.45 million electricity customers, will see higher power bills in the fight against climate change, he added in his inaugural speech for his second four-year term as mayor on Wednesday.
California does not have any coal-fired power plants, a leading contributor to greenhouse gas pollution, but the LADWP now gets 40 percent of its electricity from coal plants outside the state.
"LADWP will deliver 40 percent renewable power, with the remainder coming from natural gas, nuclear, and large hydroelectric," said Villaraigosa.
Coal and natural gas-fired power now account for 76 percent of the electricity delivered by the LADWP. By 2020, the LADWP expects to cut its carbon emissions by up to 60 percent from 1990 levels, according to the mayor's office.
Villaraigosa said the LADWP will meet its goal of getting 20 percent of its power from renewables by 2010.
"We applaud Mayor Villaraigosa's bold decision to move Los Angeles beyond coal," said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's efforts to end coal-fired power plants. "The decision to replace coal with cleaner energy alternatives is key to boosting job creation and economic growth."
The LADWP also wants to cut overall electricity use by 1 percent a year for the next 10 years, Freeman said, through energy efficiency.
On Thursday, Deputy Mayor David Freeman said the LADWP will continue to use power from the coal-fired 2,250-megawatt Navajo Generating Station in Arizona until 2019 when its current contract expires. It takes 21.2 percent of the plant's output.
Freeman, the one-time head of the federal Tennessee Valley Authority, said negotiations have not yet begun on how and when the LADWP will leave its contract as lead owner of the 1,800-megawatt coal-fired Intermountain plant in Utah.
It takes 44.6 percent of the output of Intermountain in a contract that extends to 2026.
Together, Navajo -- 477 MW -- and Intermountain -- 803 MW -- can deliver as much as 1,280 MW of power to Los Angeles.
RATES TO RISE
Villaraigosa and Freeman said the elimination of coal-fired power will also mean higher electricity rates. LADWP customers pay an average of about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Freeman said eliminating power from coal will one day increase rates but they will remain competitive with the 15.5 cents per kwh of the average Southern California Edison customer. SCE, a unit of Edison International, has nearly 4.9 million power customers and covers Los Angeles County outside of the city of Los Angeles.
The Navajo plant can deliver power at 3 cents per kwh, and the Intermountain power is between 4 to 5 cents per kwh.
Freeman said that coal power costs will rise as rules limiting carbon dioxide, including a cap-and-trade system, are implemented.
But "costs to society" such as higher medical bills for lung-related diseases, including asthma, will drop.
"The rates are going to go up," said Freeman. "There is no way you can bring in renewable energy and not have some rate impact when you replace coal. But the value to society even aside from global warming is going to be positive."

The tyranny of the self righteous

Not long until we'll have to import refined products as well as crude. This is a slow motion suicide. A few folks get to feel powerful beyond their importance or the significance of their argument, the rest of us get hammered.

Chevron Refinery Expansion Halted; 1,000 Jobs To Be Lost


RICHMOND, Calif. -- The Chevron refinery in Richmond released 100 workers Thursday following a Contra Costa County Superior Court judge's ruling Wednesday ordering the refinery to stop construction of its Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project, Chevron spokesman Brent Tippen said.
The refinery expects to release a total of about 1000 workers over the next 60 days as it demobilizes construction activities at the plant, Tippen said.
Tippen estimated that the ruling would result in a loss of about 1 million labor hours and approximately $50 million to $75 million in income to the workforce in Richmond and the county within the next year.
The city will also lose $61 million in various community benefits, Tippen said.
Tippen did not disclose how much money Chevron is expected to lose as a result of the order, but said that construction of the hydrogen plant and hydrogen purity components had been well underway. Construction of the new cogeneration facility hadn't yet begun.
The project, which broke ground in September after a permitting process that took more than three years, included replacing the refinery's 1960s-era hydrogen plant and its 1930s-era power plant. The Richmond City Council finally approved the project by a 5-4 vote.
Judge Barbara Zuniga's order to halt construction came after a ruling in June in which she found that an environmental impact report on the project failed to disclose whether it would enable the refinery to process heavier crude oil, failed to analyze a proposed hydrogen pipeline and illegally deferred greenhouse gas mitigation plans.
Refinery officials said the upgrade would increase the refinery's flexibility to process a wider variety of crude oil and improve the plant's energy efficiency and reliability.
However, experts at Communities for a Better Environment, Asian Pacific Environmental Network and the West County Toxics Coalition -- plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to Wednesday's ruling -- said that the upgrade would enable the refinery to process heavier crude oil, which would lead to increased pollution and increased risk of upset and explosion.
Heavier crude oil can contain higher amounts of contaminants such as mercury and selenium, which can cause serious health problems, according to Communities for a Better Environment.
"The residents of Richmond do not accept letting Chevron continue to poison our community," 33-year Richmond resident and APEN senior organizer Torm Nompraseurt said in a news release from Earthjustice, the law firm representing the plaintiffs in the case. "This is a victory for the grassroots, and the people who have been suffering the health impacts of the refinery for the past 100 years."
"This is a historic environmental justice victory," said Dr. Henry Clark of the West County Toxics Coalition. "The court's decision gives our community hope and inspiration that the judicial system can work for the people."
Tippen, however, said that the physical limitations of the refinery's crude oil processing unit would not allow the refinery to process heavier crude oil.
He said the refinery would have continued to process the same types of crude after the project was completed. He also noted that harmful emissions of chemicals, such as mercury and selenium, are heavily regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
"Ironically, putting the project on hold means delaying demonstrable environmental benefits including improved refinery energy efficiency and reduced overall emissions," Tippen said.
He said refinery officials were disappointed with the court's ruling and believe the project had been properly analyzed and permitted.
Tippen also said that Chevron would continue to review its options and work with the city to decide what to do next.

Today's moment of Ewww, A social worker no less.

'YOU DON'T DO THIS TO A KID!'
It was a "horrific" plot.
A Long Island woman allegedly tried to get revenge on a 9-year-old girl who ar gued with her daughter by giving a throng of sex- seeking men the child's home phone number through a Craigslist ad.
Margery Tannenbaum, 40, alreadly accused of harassment in the sick scheme, was slapped with even more serious charges at her arraign ment yesterday -- and the young victim's mother spoke out for the first time.
"You don't do this to a child!" the woman said at her Hauppauge home. "What she did was horrific, and hopefully the courts will take care of it."
Tannenbaum, also of Hauppauge, allegedly launched the sick plot in February, after the victim -- whose name is being withheld by The Post -- had an argument with her daughter. The two girls are in the same elementary-school class.
Tannenbaum put the ad -- which read, "Looking for a good time? W4M 21" -- on Craigslist in a section known for escort-service ads, authorities said. It directed them to an e-mail address, "lacethong23@yahoo.com."
That address was allegedly controlled by Tannenbaum. She then gave the would-be escort patrons the girl's home phone number, authorities allege.
Soon the phone was ringing off the hook with men looking for "dates." Her mom said she fielded at least 50 calls in two days before she changed her number.
She said she was shocked when she got the first call.
"She usually answers the phone, but I happened to be closer that time," she told The Post.
She said the caller started talking about her daughter's supposed physical attributes.
According to court documents, the first caller also said, "Hey, baby, is this . . .," using the girl's first name
When the mom answered, "This is her mother," the caller responded, "Oh, hot lady lives with foxy momma."
"I told him the hot lady you are referring to is 9 years old. He hung up," she said, according to the documents.
"It hard for a young girl to understand," she said. "It's hard for me to understand."
At yesterday's hearing, Tannenbaum was arraigned on charges of aggravated harassment and new charges of endangering the welfare of a child.
Tannenbaum is a social worker who lives with her businessman husband, Glenn, and their daughter.
Suffolk DA Tom Spota said his office will ask the state to review her social-work license and make her "undergo therapy."
As she left court, free on $500 bail, she faced the anger of the public.
"Shame! Shame on you!" a someone yelled.

For the nanny's nothing is ever good

How Safe Is Safe Enough?
By Edward NiedermeyerJuly 2, 2009

There are some seriously mixed messages coming out of the NHTSA today, which perfectly illustrate what I like to call the tyranny of safety. On the one hand, the NHTSA announced today that overall traffic fatalities dropped by nearly ten percent in 2008, hitting the lowest levels per vehicle mile traveled since 1961. Estimates for the first quarter of 2009 show the high-single digit downward trend continuing into this year. In 2008, the NHTSA logged 1.27 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Which, based on the number of cars and the shoddy quality of driving one encounters in this country (sorry, it’s true), is a remarkable statistic. But, for safety nuts like SecTrans Ray LaHood, it’s not enough. “While the number of highway deaths in America has decreased, we still have a long way to go,” he tells his press release. And how are we going to go about protecting Americans from the lowest fatality rates since JFK was elected and the Beatles were still playing the Cavern? Gizmos, baby, gizmos.
The Detroit News reports that the NHTSA has planned a study for 2011 which will determine whether Forward Collision Warning and Lane Departure Warning Systems should be made mandatory for all vehicles. FCW uses radar to alert the driver to objects in the path of the car, and in some cases could even apply the brakes. LDWS alerts the driver to unintentional lane changes, and in some cases could automatically return the car to its original lane. Because apparently the 1.27 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled are caused by drivers being unable to see what is directly in front of them, and falling asleep and drifting across lanes.
According to the NHTSA, these features are currently available for Model Year 2008 on select Audi, BMW, Buick, Cadillac, Infiniti, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Volvo vehicles. Which means it won’t be that expensive to make them standard on all models, right? But the added cost would just be adding injury to insult. The argument that these features should exist on all cars knocks down any further impetus for improved driver training. Or paying attention to what lane you are in. Or looking out the windshield and noticing objects which may lie in the path of your vehicle.
How much intrusion and driver disengagement are we willing to endure to eliminate the last traffic fatalities? Will Secretary LaHood only feel that we no longer “have a long way to go” when drivers are as disengaged from their transportation as the patrons of his beloved rail transit? As long as busybodies try to completely eliminate danger from an inherently dangerous (yet satisfying) pursuit, the tyranny of safety will march on.NHTSA »

Obama style of totalitarianism

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

What?????

Barney Frank: Let's spend TARP profits before taxpayers can get them
By: Byron YorkChief Political Correspondent07/01/09 9:19 PM EDT
When President Obama announced on June 9 that some financial institutions would be allowed to repay Troubled Asset Relief Program dollars, he said the massively expensive TARP bailout had made money for the federal government. "It is worth noting that in the first round of repayments from these [TARP recipients], the government has actually turned a profit," the president said. Indeed, TARP supporters have long held out the hope that the program might be profitable.But now Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced the "TARP for Main Street Act of 2009," a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats.In exchange for receiving TARP money, financial institutions were required to hand over shares of preferred stock that paid a dividend for the government. In theory, if a financial institution paid the dividend faithfully, and then repaid the TARP money, then the government would turn a profit. Last month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that, through June 12, 2009, the government had received $6.2 billion in dividend payments. The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt." Frank, however, wants to spend the money before it can be used to pay down anything. First, the "TARP for Main Street" proposal would take $1 billion "from dividends paid by financial institutions that have received financial assistance provided under&hellipthe Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and apply it to a trust fund that Frank has long wanted to create for low-income rental housing. (The measure, unfunded, was part of last year's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) Next, Frank would take $1.5 billion from TARP dividends for a so-called "neighborhood stabilization" fund. Republican critics have charged that both measures might allow federal dollars to be distributed to activist groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN.The "TARP for Main Street" bill would also spend $2 billion, apparently from remaining TARP funds, to subsidize people who are delinquent on their mortgages, and another $2 billion to "stabilize multifamily properties that are in default or foreclosure."Frank's proposal comes at a time when Republicans, and some Democrats, are expressing concern about the continued use of TARP money. Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch recently complained that TARP funds are "now being used as a go-to solution to address all of our nation's economic ills." Hatch and Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln recently introduced a bill that would require that TARP money goes back to the Treasury for debt reduction.Spending the dividend payments now, as Frank proposes, would reduce the chance that TARP might ever be a break-even deal for the taxpayers. "We don't know if TARP is going to be making any money, so taking the dividend payments going back to Treasury is pretty questionable," says one House GOP aide. Indeed, in its June report, the GAO revealed that 17 troubled institutions have not paid their dividends, much less repaid the TARP money itself. And last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that three other institutions were not paying dividends. But now, Frank is proposing that dividends be spent immediately. "It defeats the idea of taxpayer protection," says the GOP aide.

Cultural collapse

The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S.
By James Slack

Britain's violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it is revealed today.
Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa - widely considered one of the world's most dangerous countries.
The figures comes on the day new Home Secretary Alan Johnson makes his first major speech on crime, promising to be tough on loutish behaviour.

Britain has an even worse violence rate than South Africa (file picture)
The Tories said Labour had presided over a decade of spiralling violence.
In the decade following the party's election in 1997, the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77 per cent to 1.158million - or more than two every minute.
The figures, compiled from reports released by the European Commission and United Nations, also show:
The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.
It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.
It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.
But it is the naming of Britain as the most violent country in the EU that is most shocking. The analysis is based on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents.
In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677.

The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'This is a damning indictment of this government's comprehensive failure over more than a decade to tackle the deep rooted social problems in our society, and the knock on effect on crime and anti-social behaviour.

'We're now on our fourth Home Secretary this parliament, and all we are getting is a rehash of old initiatives that didn't work the first time round. More than ever Britain needs a change of direction.'
The figures, compiled by the Tories, are considered the most accurate and up-to-date available.
But criminologists say crime figures can be affected by many factors, including different criminal justice systems and differences in how crime is reported and measured.

New Home Secretary Alan Johnson is to make his first major speech on crime today
In Britain, an affray is considered a violent crime, while in other countries it will only be logged if a person is physically injured.
There are also degrees of violence. While the UK ranks above South Africa for all violent crime, South Africans suffer more than 20,000 murders each year - compared with Britain's 921 in 2007.
Experts say there are a number of reasons why violence is soaring in the UK. These include Labour's decision to relax the licensing laws to allow round-the-clock opening, which has led to a rise in the number of serious assaults taking place in the early hours of the morning.
But Police Minister David Hanson said: 'These figures are misleading. Levels of police recorded crime statistics from different countries are simply not comparable since they are affected by many factors, for example the recording of violent crime in other countries may not include behaviour that we would categorise as violent crime.
'Violent crime in England and Wales has fallen by almost a half a peak in 1995 but we are not complacent and know there is still work to do. That is why last year we published 'Saving lives. Reducing harm. Protecting the public. An Action Plan for Tackling Violence 2008-11'.'
The timing of the Europe-wide violence figures is a blow for Mr Johnson, who will today seek to reassert Labour's law and order credentials.
In his first major speech on crime since becoming Home Secretary, Mr Johnson is expected to promise a concerted crack down on antisocial behaviour.
He wants to set up a website to allow the public to see what is taking place in their neighbourhood, such as the number of louts who have been served with Asbos.
Mr Johnson is also known to support early intervention to stop children going off the rails.

The New Manchurian Candidate

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, preferring to believe in Robert Heinlein's dictum 'Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity', however, here's a little thought experiment:

If I were a Chinese politburo member looking to expand my external trade over the next several decades and I had some money to give to US political candidates, I could, if I were shortsighted, try to influence some current trade deals in my favor or get some illegal technology transfer. If I were longsighted though, I might try to find some US pol who was already a bit nutty about environmental issues and make a deal to make him very rich by having him put on boards of companies it could influence and paying him lots of money funneled through various businesses of his in exchange for his help in putting their main competitor, the US, at an enormous trade disadvantage by imposing enormous energy costs on all of their output while at the same time making energy cheaper for the Chinese, because of the reduction in US demand. I can't imagine a plan more destructive to US interests and more helpful to Chinese interests than the Waxman-Markey bill and if I were a top Chinese official I would certainly pay a lot to make sure it gets passed.

Now I have no evidence that Al Gore or Waxman or Markey et al have ever taken a cent from the Chinese Govt (except for the documented illegal campaign contributions when he was VP, the penalty for which was a firm talking to), but it could make the plot of a fine Hollywood thriller (for which, of course, they would change the villian into an evil Republican Senator taking Chinese money to support free-trade legislation).

The bond and similarities of Jew haters

(courtesy Little Green Footballs)

McKinney Arrested By Israel, Appears on Hate Radio
Moonbats Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 10:46:53 am PDT
One of the craziest moonbat politicians in the US, Cynthia McKinney, has been arrested again for trying to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas: Israel navy intercepts boat with ex-U.S. Rep. McKinney.
JERUSALEM (CNN) — The Israeli navy took control of a boat that violated an Israeli blockade and crossed into Gazan waters Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said, while a Gaza group said the ship was carrying humanitarian aid, a former U.S. congresswoman and a Nobel laureate.
The boat’s crew included former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, according to the Free Gaza Movement, a human rights group that sent the boat it calls “Spirit of Humanity” from Cyprus. ...
IDF said the Israeli navy contacted the boat, which it called the Arion, while it was still at sea and warned the crew they would not be allowed to enter Gazan waters “because of security risks in the area and the existing naval blockade.”
Disregarding all warnings, the boat entered Gazan coastal waters, IDF said. An Israeli navy force intercepted, boarded and took control of the boat, directing it toward Ashdod, Israel, IDF said. The boat’s crew, the military said, would “be handed over to the proper authorities.” ...
According to the Free Gaza group, McKinney said, “This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip,” before authorities confiscated cell phones.
“President Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that’s exactly what we tried to do. We’re asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey,” McKinney said, according to the group.
Adam Holland, meanwhile, has been tracking McKinney’s frequent appearances on antisemitic radio shows: McKinney on hate radio again.
Now McKinney has done several more interviews on another racist radio show with far-right links — this time with a better-known, and much more widely read, internet hate monger called Daryl Bradford Smith. You can read an archived version of his website’s homepage here: Zionism Research - The French Connection - Fighting Criminal Zionism. (Has McKinney read it? How did she find these people?) This webpage, on which recordings of the programs featuring McKinney can be found, features a banner headline endorsing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It reads:
The Protocols are sometimes criticized as containing nothing that had not been said previously by philosophers or statesmen; but even if that were true, it would detract little from their interest. For their importance does not lie in the aim, world domination, nor in the theory by which it is attained, exploitation of man’s baser instincts, but in the extraordinary astuteness with which the practical application of the plan has been suited to existing conditions.
Smith’s homepage links to other pages on his website devoted to the works of infamous bigots such as Charles Coughlin, Denis Fahey, Nesta Webster, and Douglas Reed. The page devoted to Fahey deals with what Smith calls the “Judeo-Bolshevist plot against Christianity”. In fact, the vast majority of the authors published by Smith on his website come from the extreme far-right of the political spectrum, and promote, as did the Nazis, the view that communism was a Jewish conspiracy. However, Smith’s website also promotes the Stalinist Doctors’ Plot myth. It seems that Smith is happy to cross ideological lines and promote myths of czarist, fascist or Stalinist origin, so long as they support his anti-Jewish agenda. Now he’s interviewed Cynthia McKinney and added her socialism of fools to the mix.

"Walled In"

The story of the Berlin Wall.

Well wroth a look. A reminder of where Communism and totalitarianism lead. It's particularly important now that we are heading that way.

Democrat culture of corruption

After Call From Senator's Office, Small Hawaii Bank Got U.S. Aid

The Democrats natural totalitarian impulse.

"How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature's work?The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: "You vote for revenue and your career is over." I don't know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it's about free speech, but it's extremely unfair."

Karen Bass, California State Assembly Speaker in an interview with the LA Times.

Revenue = taxes.

Obama's selective meddling on behalf of leftist dictators

Honduras Defends Its Democracy
Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object.
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution.
It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.
But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.
Associated Press
That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.
But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.
The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.
Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.
The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.
It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya's next move will be. It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.
Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating "the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter" and said it "should be condemned by all." Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.
Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.
Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya's foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. "We won't go backwards," one sign said. "We want to live in peace, freedom and development."
Besides opposition from the Congress, the Supreme Court, the electoral tribunal and the attorney general, the president had also become persona non grata with the Catholic Church and numerous evangelical church leaders. On Thursday evening his own party in Congress sponsored a resolution to investigate whether he is mentally unfit to remain in office.
For Hondurans who still remember military dictatorship, Mr. Zelaya also has another strike against him: He keeps rotten company. Earlier this month he hosted an OAS general assembly and led the effort, along side OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, to bring Cuba back into the supposedly democratic organization.
The OAS response is no surprise. Former Argentine Ambassador to the U.N. Emilio Cárdenas told me on Saturday that he was concerned that "the OAS under Insulza has not taken seriously the so-called 'democratic charter.' It seems to believe that only military 'coups' can challenge democracy. The truth is that democracy can be challenged from within, as the experiences of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and now Honduras, prove." A less-kind interpretation of Mr. Insulza's judgment is that he doesn't mind the Chávez-style coup.
The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.

Leaving New York

Some arithmetic help for state officials: 8.97% of zero is zero.

Ending any speculation about another possible run for governor, Rochester businessman and Sabres owner B. Thomas Golisano said Thursday he will be moving his legal residence to Florida to escape New York state taxes.

Golisano told a gathering of Rochester business executives that he will remain as owner of the Buffalo hockey team, but he is fleeing the Empire State to avoid paying $13,000 a day in state income taxes.

While Golisano said his move will not end his role as outspoken critic of New York state government, it remains uncertain how seriously his cause will be taken at the State Capitol as a resident of the Town of Naples, Fla.

The billionaire earlier this year told The Buffalo News that the only thing keeping him in New York was his family. “The only reason I’m staying in this state is I have family here. Economically, it just doesn’t make sense,” he said in February.

But since then, Gov. David A. Paterson and lawmakers approved a state budget that will raise $4 billion in new income taxes this year on wealthier residents. In Golisano’s case —and anyone else making more than $500,000 this year — he is seeing his state tax rate go from 6.85 percent to 8.97 percent.

Where we're going.

Did you know that the new Cap and Trade bill contains legislation that requires the government approve that your house meets certain environmental conditions before you can sell it? Wrong toilet, no sale. Windows leaking air, no sale. Old appliances, no sale. No more will these issues be between buyer and seller. Now the government will send an agent to approve your house for sale. Will the inspector know your political party affiliation? Will the rules be enforced equally or will the Sotomayor's of the government demand racial preferences.

Beginning to look like a totalitarian country isn't it?

Quote of the Day

I doubt that many of the current members of Congress even know who Madison is these days, but as they pass enormous bills which none of them have read, this Madison quote seems apropos:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Yes we can

Britain has 85 sharia courts: The astonishing spread of the Islamic justice behind closed doors

Evidence trumps idiocy.

Supreme Court sends a signal - in English
Phil Kent


Thursday's U.S. Supreme Court decision in Horne v. Flores drives another nail into the coffin of bilingual education, the teaching theory in which immigrant children are segregated by language and taught primarily in their native language while being taught English on the side.
Bilingual education is a documented failure in school systems across the country, and the 5-4 decision, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., involving Arizona's Nogales Unified School District emphasizes this failure with a stark conclusion: Teach English. Specifically, the high court recognizes the demonstrated effectiveness of structured English immersion (SEI) methods for teaching English language learners (ELL).
In 1992, some students and parents in the district sued the state, claiming it wasn't taking "appropriate action" to overcome barriers to ELLs in schools. The state responded with English-immersion techniques. (Thomas Horne is the state school superintendent for public instruction.) Here's what the high court concluded: "Research on ELL instruction indicates there is documented academic support for the view that SEI is significantly more effective than bilingual education. Findings of the Arizona Department of Education in 2004 strongly support this conclusion."
The Supreme Court also concluded that a lower court had failed to adequately consider whether the Nogales school district's implementation of SEI was a "changed circumstance" warranting relief.
SEI has proved its superiority to bilingual education wherever it has been implemented. The English-advocacy group ProEnglishfiled a Horne friend-of-the court brief, and it is significant that the ruling cites Arizona data provided by the organization.
In fact, new numbers just released by the Arizona Department of Education estimate that 40,000, or 29 percent, of ELLs enrolled in SEI classes passed the English fluency exam and will transition into mainstream classes this year. That is up from just 17,813 students, or 12 percent, of ELLs who passed the English-fluency exam after being enrolled in bilingual education classes in 2006-07.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Nogales school district is doing exactly what the law requires - taking "appropriate action" through English immersion techniques to teach English to students who grew up speaking another language.
The Supreme Court could have cited many more SEI success stories. Massachusetts, for example, effectively uses English immersion as opposed to bilingual education. The June 7 Boston Globe reported on that state's top-performing high school graduates - the valedictorians - including a boy from Haiti who arrived in Boston four years ago without knowing a word of English. The paper reported that Edner Paul not only leads his school but won a four-year scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Furthermore, according to the Globe, immigrant students were class valedictorians in 17 of the 42 high schools in Boston - and most arrived a few years ago barely knowing English.
A recent study by the Editorial Projects in Education also spotlights Massachusetts education and chronicles further encouraging news about English learners. Compared to English learners across the country, 36 percent of the state's ELL students reached a proficient level in English, as opposed to just 16 percent nationwide. If that level of success holds true each year, most kids would learn English quickly enough to be out of special programs in two to three years at most.
Nogales school officials were trying to follow a successful model in spite of a vocal multilingual lobby that seeks to coddle non-English speakers in our classrooms. Yet polls continue to show that more than 90 percent of all Americans view English is the nation's unifying language - a common tongue that enables job-seeking legal newcomers to participate in the American dream. The Supreme Court couldn't have sent a clearer signal: Get rid of bilingual education and give English language learners a real opportunity to learn English and succeed.
Phil Kent is a board member of ProEnglish, based in Arlington.

Putting things in context...

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Obama creates a deadly power vacuum
By Spengler

There's a joke about a man who tells a psychiatrist, "Everybody hates me," to which the psychiatrist responds, "That's ridiculous - everyone doesn't know you, yet." Which brings me to Barack Obama: one of the best-informed people in the American security establishment told me the other day that the president is a "Manchurian Candidate". That can't be true - Manchuria isn't in the business of brainwashing prospective presidential candidates any more. There's no one left to betray America to. Obama is creating a strategic void in which no major power will dominate, and every minor power must fend for itself. The outcome is incalculably hard to analyze and terrifying to consider. Obama doesn't want to betray the United States; he only wants to empower America's enemies. Forcing Israel to abandon its strategic buffer (the so-called settlements) was supposed to placate Iran, so that Iran would help America stabilize Iraq, where its influence looms large over the Shi'ite majority. America also sought Iran's help in suppressing the Taliban in Afghanistan. In Obama's imagination, a Sunni Arab coalition - empowered by Washington's turn against Israel - would encircle Iran and dissuade it from acquiring nuclear weapons, while an entirely separate Shi'ite coalition with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would suppress the radical Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was the worst-designed scheme concocted by a Western strategist since Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery attacked the bridges at Arnhem in 1944, and it has blown up in Obama's face. Iran already has made clear that casting America's enemies in the leading role of an American operation has a defect, namely that America's enemies rather would lose on their own terms than win on America's terms. Iran's verbal war with the American president over the violent suppression of election-fraud protests leaves Washington with no policy at all. The premise of Obama's policy was that progress on the Palestinian issue would empower a Sunni coalition. As the president said May 18:
If there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way. To the extent that we can make peace with the Palestinians - between the Palestinians and the Israelis, then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with the potential Iranian threat.Israel's supporters remonstrated in vain. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Obama supporter, wrote, "If there is to be any linkage - and I do not believe there should be - it goes the other way: it will be much easier for Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank if Iran does not have a nuclear umbrella under which it can continue to encourage Hamas and Hezbollah to fire rockets at Israeli civilians." No matter: America made clear that it had annulled the George W Bush administration's promise that a final settlement would allow most of Israel's 500,000 "settlers" to keep their homes, in order to launch the fantasy ship of Iranian cooperation with America. That policy now is in ruins, and Washington has no plan B. David Axelrod, Obama's top political advisor, told television interviewers on January 28 that Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who spent the last week denouncing the United States, "Did not have final say" over Iran's foreign policy and that America still wanted to negotiate with Iran. This sounds idiotic, but the White House really has painted itself into a corner. The trouble is that Obama has promised to withdraw American forces from Iraq, and Iran has sufficient influence in Shi'ite-majority Iraq to cause continuous upheaval, perhaps even to eventually win control of the country. By a fateful coincidence, American troops are scheduled to leave Iraq's urban centers on June 30. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein left Iraq open to Iranian destabilization; that is why the elder George Bush left the Iraqi dictator in power in 1990. Offering Iran a seat at the table in exchange for setting a limit to its foreign ambitions - in Lebanon and Gaza as well as Iraq - seemed to make sense on paper. But the entity that calls itself revolutionary Islam is not made of paper, but of flesh and blood. It is in danger of internal collapse and can only assert its authority by expanding its influence as aggressively as it can. After the election disaster, Iran's revolutionary leadership urgently needs to demonstrate its credibility. Israel now can say, "A country that murders its own citizens will have no compunction about massacring its enemies," and attack Iran's nuclear capacity with fewer consequences than would have been imaginable in May. And if an Israeli strike were to succeed, or appear successful to the world, the resulting humiliation might be fatal to the regime. Israel may not be Tehran's worst nightmare. Iraq's Sunnis are testing the resolve of the weakened mullahs. The suicide bombing that killed 73 people at a Shi'ite mosque in Kirkuk on June 20 and a second bombing that killed another 72 Shi'ites in Baghdad's Sadr City slum most likely reflect Sunni perceptions that a weakened Tehran will provide less support for Iraqi Shi'ites. Although Shi'ites comprise more than three-fifths of Iraq's population, Sunnis provided the entire military leadership and are better organized on the ground. America's hopes of enlisting Iran to provide cover for its withdrawal from the cities of Iraq seem delusional. What move on the chessboard might Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei venture to pre-empt an Israeli air raid against the nuclear facilities? Iran has the rocket launchers of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and terrorist sleeper cells throughout the world. Iran might seek to pre-empt what it anticipates to be the next move from Israel by demonstrating its capacity to inflict injury on Israel or on Jewish targets elsewhere. That would require careful judgment, for a heavy handed action could provide a pretext for even more serious action by the Israelis and others. The same sort of consideration applies to Iranian support for Pakistan Shi'ites, for Hezbollah, and other vehicles of Iran's program of imperial expansion. The Obama administration has put itself in a peculiar bind. It has demanded that the Pakistani army suppress the Taliban, after Islamabad attempted a power-sharing agreement that left the Taliban in control of the Swat Valley. To root out the largely Pashtun Taliban, Pakistan's largely Punjabi army has driven a million people into refugee camps and leveled entire towns in the Swat Valley. Tens of thousands of refugees are now fleeing the Pakistani army in the South Waziristan tribal area. Punjabis killing Pashtuns is nothing new in the region, but the ferocity of the present effort does not augur well for an early end to the conflict. While the Pakistan army holds nothing back in attacking the Taliban, American troops in Afghanistan have been told that they no longer can call in air strikes if civilians are likely to suffer. That will put American forces in the unfortunate position of the Pirates of Penzance, who exempted orphans. Once this became generally known, everyone they attempted to rob turned out to be an orphan. The Taliban need only take a page from Hamas' book, and ensure that civilians are present wherever they operate. The US has made clear that it will not deal in civilian blood, the currency of warfare in that region since before the dawn of history. It will not be taken seriously in consequence. What will the administration do now? As all its initiatives splatter against the hard realities of the region, it will probably do less and less, turning the less appetizing aspects of the fighting over to local allies and auxiliaries who do not share its squeamishness about shedding civilian blood. That is the most dangerous outcome of all, for America is the main stabilizing force in the region. The prospect of civil wars raging simultaneously in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq is no longer improbable. The Israel-Palestine issue is linked to all of these through Iran, whose credibility depends on its ability to sustain such puppies of war as Hezbollah and Hamas. Whether or not the Israelis take the opportunity to strike Iran, the prospect of an Israeli strike will weigh on Iran's proxies in the region, and keep Israel's borders in condition of potential violence for the interim. America's great good fortune is that no hostile superpower stands ready to benefit from its paralysis and confusion. When Soviet troops landed in Afghanistan in December 1979, America was in the grip of an economic crisis comparable to the present depression. American diplomats at the Tehran Embassy were still hostages to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. The price of gold doubled from around $400 to $800 after the Russian invasion because most of the world thought that Russia would win the Cold War. If America lost its dominant superpower status in the West, the dollar no longer could serve as a global reserve currency. To the superpower goes the seigniorage, the state's premium for providing a currency. By contrast, the gold price barely fluttered all through the present crisis. America remains the undisputed global superpower for the time being. America's creditors express consternation about its $1.8 trillion budget deficit and many trillions more of guarantees for the banking system, but there is nothing they can do about it for the time being but talk. That is how one should interpret a June 25 Reuters report that a "senior researcher with the ruling Communist Party" had urged China to shift some of its $2 trillion in reserves out of dollars and into gold.
Li Lianzhong, who heads the economic department of the Party's policy research office, said China should use more of its $1.95 trillion in foreign exchange reserves to buy energy and natural resource assets. Speaking at a foreign exchange and gold forum, Li also said that buying land in the United States was a better option for China than buying US Treasury securities. "Should we buy gold or US Treasuries?" Li asked. "The US is printing dollars on a massive scale, and in view of that trend, according to the laws of economics, there is no doubt that the dollar will fall. So gold should be a better choice." There is no suggestion that Li, even though he is a senior researcher, was enunciating an agreed party line. The last thing China wants at the moment is to undercut the US dollar, for three reasons. First, as America's largest creditor, China has the most to lose from a dollar collapse. Second, Americans would buy fewer Chinese imports. And third, the collapse of the dollar would further erode America's will to fulfill its superpower function, and that is what China wants least of all. America remains the indispensable outsider in Asia. No one likes the United States, but everyone dislikes the United States less than they dislike their neighbors. India need not worry about China's role in Pakistan, for example, because America mediates Indian-Pakistani relations, and America has no interest in a radical change to the status quo. Neither does China, for that matter, but India is less sure of that. China does not trust Japan for historical reasons that will not quickly fade, but need not worry about it because America is the guarantor of Japan's security. The Seventh Fleet is the most disliked - and nonetheless the most welcome - entity in Asia. All of this may change drastically, quickly, and for the worse. Obama's policy reduces to empowering America's enemies in the hope that they will conform to American interests out of gratitude. Just the opposite result is likely to ensure: Iran, Pakistan and other regional powers are likely to take radical measures. Iran is threatened with a collapse of its Shi'ite program from Lebanon to Afghanistan, and Pakistan is threatened with a breakup into three or more states. Obama has not betrayed the interests of the United States to any foreign power, but he has done the next worst thing, namely to create a void in the region by withdrawing American power. The result is likely to be a species of pandemonium that will prompt the leading players in the region to learn to live without the United States. In his heart of hearts, Obama sees America as a force for evil in the world, apologizing for past American actions that did more good than harm. An example is America's sponsorship of the 1953 coup in Iran that overthrew the left-leaning government of Mohammed Mossadegh. "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," the president offered in his Cairo address to Muslims on June 5. Although Iran's theocracy despises Mossadegh - official Iranian textbooks call him the "son of a feudal family of exploiters who worked for the cursed Shah, and betrayed Islam" - Iran's government continues to reproach America for its role in the coup. "With a coup they toppled the national government of Iran and replaced it with a harsh, unpopular and despotic regime," Ahmadinejad complained in a January 28 speech. It is s a bit late to offer advice to Obama, but the worst thing America can do is to apologize. Instead, it should ask for the gratitude of the developing world. Weak countries become punching-bags in the proxy wars of empires. This was from the dawn of history until the fall of the last empire - the "evil" empire of Soviet communism. The Soviets exploited anti-colonial movements from the 1917 Bolshevik coup until the collapse of the Afghanistan adventure in the late 1980s. Nationalists who tried to ride the Russian tiger ended up in its belly more often than on its back. Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, Angola and numerous other weak countries became the hapless battleground for the contest of covert operations between the Soviet Union and America - not to mention Vietnam and Korea. The use of developing countries as proxy battlefields and their people as cannon fodder came to an end with the Cold War. As a result, the past 20 years have seen the fastest improvement in living standards ever in the global south, and a vast shift in wealth towards so-called developing countries. By defeating Russia in the Cold War, America made it possible for governments in the global south to pursue their own interests free from the specter of Soviet subversion. And by countering Soviet subversion, America often averted much worse consequences. Many deficiencies can be ascribed to the Shah of Iran, but a communist regime in the wake of a Mossadegh administration would have been indescribably worse. The septuagenarian Mossadegh had his own agenda, but he relied on the support of the communist Tudeh party. The US feared a Soviet invasion of Iran, and "the [Harry S] Truman administration was willing to consider a Soviet invasion of Iran as a casus belli, or the start of a global war", according to Francis J Gavin's 1999 article in The Journal of Cold War Studies. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with help from British intelligence helped the shah overthrow the left-leaning regime. But this was no minor colonial adventure, but a flashpoint with the potential to start a world war. It is painful and humiliating for Iranians to recall the overthrow of a democratically elected government with American help. It would have been infinitely more humiliating to live under Soviet rule, like the soon-to-be-extinct victims of Soviet barbarism in Eastern Europe. The same is true of Chile, where the brutal regime of General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973, with help from the CIA. Allende was surrounded by Cuban intelligence operations. As Wikipedia reports:
Shortly after the election of Salvador Allende in November 1970, the [Cuban Directorate of Intelligence - DI] worked extremely closely to strengthen Allende's increasingly precarious position. The Cuban DI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona even married Salvador Allende's daughter Beatrice, who later committed suicide in Cuba. The DI organized an international brigade that would organize and coordinate the actions of the thousands of the foreign leftists that had moved into Chile shortly after Allende's election. These individuals ranged from Cuban DI agents, Soviet, Czech and North Korean military instructors and arms suppliers, to hardline Spanish and Portuguese Communist Party members. My Latin American friends who still mourn the victims of Pinochet's "night and fog" state terror will not like to hear this, but the several thousand people killed or tortured by the military government were collateral damage in the Cold War. Like Iran, Chile became the battleground of a Soviet-American proxy war. The same is true in Nicaragua. (Full disclosure: I advised Nicaragua's president Violeta Chamorro after she defeated the Cuban-backed Sandinistas in the 1990 elections; I did so with no tie to any government agency.) Obama's continuing obsession with America's supposed misdeeds - deplorable but necessary actions in time of war - is consistent with his determination to erode America's influence in the most troubled parts of the world. By removing America as a referee, he will provoke more violence than the United States ever did. We are entering a very, very dangerous period as a result.

Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman, Associate Editor of First Things (www.firstthings.com) (Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.