Thanks… as usual 5 or 6 people willing to put the time in for the kids and a 3 wheel drag we invested in 6 years ago.
I have a question for you. I remember 2 years back Canterbury ballfields resodded. I would ask them but I believe that President is gone. They change so frequently. Do you know who did it or was it just the league volunteers?? I can get the turf donated but we would like a professional to handle the install. We are just doing the little league infield. Too expensive otherwise. They obviously have the equipment to do it right by crowning the field coreectly etc.
# 1 I’m no bully BUT, you punch my friend, I’m gonna punch you!
#2 4-5% increases and insurance for life ain’t about the kids.
#3 Hotel California analogy.
I’m glad he cleared up the constant misconception that this is/was about all teachers. ” like in any proffession we have our bad apples” to paraphrase Christie.
Ditto Ray
Scott has done a great job since he’s been involved with LL. In fact before he became LL Prez, it was becoming pitiful down there!
Just the latest essay by the PREMIER intellectual writer, Military Historian, University Professor, and BY FAR THE MOST FREQUENT and PROLIFIC PUBLISHER OF COMMON SENSE still alive in America….Victor Davis Hanson. From his unending and relentless scribing of COMMON SENSE essays, “Works and Days”, enjoy June 13th, 2010 9:20 am
“Government by the Faculty Lounge”: The Professors Are In Charge
We are being run by the mindset of the faculty lounge, as if the philosophy or English department has taken over running the country. Let me adduce some random examples.
Taxes
Tax proposals in haywire fashion are thrown out almost every day from various Obamians, as if at a faculty bull session over coffee. Can we count them all — much less can small businesses plan to hire a worker when they don’t know how much more they will shortly owe the government?
Here is what we hear from Barack Obama: a restoration of the death tax. Trial balloons for a national sales tax or a VAT. How high will capital gains hikes go? Rates are to go back to or beyond (?) the Clinton income tax schedules? Was the cap to come off income exposed to the full FICA bite, and was it to be set at $150,000, $200,000, or $250,000? What exactly is the new health care surcharge? And when and if these federal income hikes are added to the states’ raises in state income, property, and sales taxes, what will the aggregate tax bite be? Does anyone know? Do any of these guys care how “they” are going to make enough money to pay “us”?
Finance
Match that tax uncertainty with a weird financial policy. Are Americans really saving more or is the new thrift simply a result of skipping out on mortgages and maxed out credit cards that has resulted in less collective debt —the banks eating the loss quite well by paying depositors about 1% on their savings while lending out at 6% and more, or having the government cover their bad debts? Are we not seeing a massive transfer of wealth as retirees and savings holders are getting nothing — or rather less than nothing when inflation is factored in — on their money, while debtors pay little in interest and now find class sympathy by not honoring their obligations? Is not the person who borrowed, spent, and defaulted now seen as the better American than those who saved, paid on time, and passed something on to their children? It’s as if the economics and political science departments now set policy.
Race
Let me review the progress of the last two years, because the national mood reminds me of the free speech area at any California university where groups segregate by race while their professors celebrate “diversity.”
We had a green czar who claimed that whites pollute the ghetto and are more likely to be mass murderers. Our attorney general called the nation one of “cowards” for not holding racial conversations on his terms. He has no interest in trying Black Panthers who disrupted voting, but a great deal in trying the architect of 9/11 in a civilian courtroom, replete with Miranda rights, in Manhattan a few hundred yards from Ground Zero.
The Black Caucus, stung by serial charges against its members of corruption, wishes to prune back the House Ethics Committee as we now know it, presumably because it is “racist” as a bad messenger of inconvenient tidings.
The president came to the defense of a shrieking Harvard professor (not much going on in the world elsewhere) by claiming the police acted “stupidly” and characteristically stereotyped the non-white. Our new Supreme Court justice believes race and gender inherently make people smarter, or in her words a “wise Latina” is often a better judge than the old white guys who dominate the courts.
The doyen of the White House press corps, a liberal icon with a front-row seat at briefings, wishes not just that Israel disappear but that the Jews go back to Poland and Germany — and wins praise from Hezbollah and “sympathy” from her peers in DC.
Our governors of Massachusetts and New York allege their own unpopularity is due to racism — in the manner apparently unlike a most unpopular California governor who earned bad polls on his own.
To suggest that the president should not have said “kick ass” or “bring a gun to a knife fight” or “get in their face” or “tear up” a talk show host is to traffic in anti-black stereotypes.
Note the “no more disown Rev. Wright,” clingers of Pennsylvania, and “typical white person” of the campaign led to the above, just as the above in the next two years will lead to even more — given that our president has always sensed that racial identity politics is a sanctuary for setback and an embryo for career promotion.
Are the ethnic studies departments running the country? Foreign Policy
Here is a perversity: almost every rascal-like head of state that this president has decided to use “reset button” diplomacy on is unfortunately now more hostile. He made a big splash of sending a video and greetings to Ahmadinejad, who seems perhaps more bellicose than ever. Chavez was courted, but he now sounds like a Bush is back in the White House. Recall the much ballyhooed trip to Turkey — why then the present Turkish response? The outreach to Syria and the missiles to Hezbollah — why did Assad do that after we were so nice? And why is not Mr. Putin appreciative of our kind words? Why does he not help us with the Iranian problem? Maybe all those new hundreds of millions of borrowed dollars to the Palestinians will at least change their opinion of us?
Who is a friend, who an enemy? Rule of thumb: if you liked the U.S. between 2001-8 (e.g., Britain, Colombia, the Czech Republic, India, Israel, Poland, the former Soviet republics), something was wrong with your illiberal, pro-Bush stance. But if you pretty much despised America (e.g., Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Venezuela), then we sort of sympathize with your former antipathy (we shared it too), and so now want to reach out and expand our common ground.
Crises, then, originate because of miscommunication and being not nice, not out of fundamental differences in belief about the way nations organize the economy, politics, or social and cultural life. Diplomacy and good intentions, not deterrence and military preparation, persuade bad actors to behave. Excuse me! — there are no bad actors, just misunderstood ones who have translated their understandable post-imperial, post-colonial grievances into anti-Americanism. They need to be contextualized rather than confronted.
When we look at the growing darkness in the word over the last two years — Turkey as the new Sultanate, Israel soon to be threatened by a nuclear Iran and new missiles in Syria and among Hezbollah, North Korea promising a fiery Seoul, Europe disintegrating, Russia sensing that Eastern Europe and its former republics are without U.S. support with Putin cat-smiling over the missing canary, China not wanting to lend more to extend our welfare state whose entitlements already surpass its own, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela all eager to remake Latin America into a socialist, pro-Iranian paradise (this list could be vastly expanded) — we see at least some wages of half-baked utopianism and tactical “I hate Bush” bromides in lieu of a serious foreign policy. This is diplomacy practiced along the lines of the peace and conflict resolution program.
Faculty Lounge Wisdom
OK — Washington seems to run now along the logic of the faculty lounge. But let me explain the rules of Lala land. Some of you were not academics for 21 years. No problem, you can easily imagine what the worldview is on campus — given that after six years on the job you cannot be fired except for felony conviction (and even that is problematic). After tenure a failure to publish and awful teaching evaluations mean nothing. “Post-tenure review” has the teeth of a UN investigation.
The in-class work week is about 6-8 hours. You toil at school 32 weeks a year. A hyphenated or exotic name often brings career rewards. Liberalism is defined by accentuating gender and racial differences, not ignoring them.
Peer review and faculty governance adjudicate talent, and academic senate votes resemble the margins of Saddam’s old plebiscites.
Status is predicated on university affiliations, the more Ivy League the better; an Ohio State professor with 10 successful books is always judged a failure in comparison to a brilliant Princeton professor with two “seminal” articles. The more one covets academic status, the more one deplores the unfair social divides in America.
Money is as despised in the abstract as it is pursued in the concrete. No one has run a business, worked much in dead-end, physical labor, or felt economic disaster when the economy went south. Tragedy instead for those who make it on the academic gravy train is the absence of an automatic pay increase, a refused sabbatical, or a hiring freeze. Academics damn Wal-Mart’s exploitation, but count on part-timers to work for a third of their own salaries for the same work — and thereby subsidize their own aristocratic perks. The PhD is felt the equivalent of a MD or MBA, and so leisured contemplation focuses on why less well spoken doctors and CEOs cruelly and so unfairly make so much more than far smarter professors.
I’ll stop for a breath. You get the picture. We are being run by former academics or career politicians and bureaucrats who rely on academic wisdom — note the response to the Gulf slick, the Iranian bomb, or the rising deficits. Obama’s key 500 appointees, like himself, have little experience in commerce, business, law, medicine, or the military, but lots of experience in the academic revolving door.
When I would go to department meetings, get coffee, or see faculty at receptions, I could never quite understand the aberrant mental processes. There was never a connection between our salaries and the source of wealth generated to pay them. Taxes could be limitless, because a Michelle’s proverbial “they” had far too much money anyway, and so spent their lucre on needless things like jet skis and SUVs. Better for the university to have it and spread it around wisely.
Foreigners were usually smarter than Americans, mostly because they took the train and were without a Ram pickup in their garages. Fright surrounded things like flipping back the circuit breaker or unplugging the sewer line under the house; more mysterious were the grubby folk who didn’t eat arugula and were called in to conjure up a fix to these bothersome distractions.
Ambiguity in speech, not clarity was preferred; the ability to adduce ten different points of view was always considered superior to deciding on one. Tantrums, the occasional obscenity, the knife-in-the-back memo always assumed a sort of rule that such rascality never earned a punch in the face; the art was to be as cruel as possible without resort to violence. Yet when gut-check time came to vote openly yes or no and take the consequences, most voted present by skipping out or abstaining.
The white male Midwestern student without money or connections was to be pitied and ignored as a loser as much as was the discriminated black student of the 1940s and 1950s. The more constructed identities the better — I remember the female, gay, half-black administrator achieving a rare “threefer” and soaring through the state university system cursus honorum.
The perverse was always preferred to the logical: so a Mao was better than a Churchill, Lincoln was faulted for not possessing 1999-era academic sensitivity, and FDR not WWII saved the economy from further depression. Versailles explains Hitler rather than his own insane hatreds. The Soviet and Chinese nightmares were problematic and based on misunderstandings of Marx rather than natural conclusions from him. The real fear after 9/11 is backlash, not more terrorism. The non-Christian nihilist Timothy McVeigh or the Columbine Satanists are proof of widespread Christian terrorism; the last 50 aborted Islamic terrorist plots are aberrations.
If you wonder how our present administration’s attitudes toward business, commerce, taxes, finance, race, national security and foreign policy now play out, just drop by a local faculty lounge for a few minutes and listen up — America in 2010 will suddenly make sense, and perhaps scare the hell out of you all at once. It all reminds me of the proverbial first-semester college student who returns home at Thanksgiving to his near-broke parents to inform them of all the “new” things he’s learned at university. (THIS, all written in a scant 2 days since his last WORK….In Days.”)
Nick sounds like he is lobbying to remake hir prediction status. Too bad every “prediction” he is making now every politicalt pundit has done a 100 times over.
Scott says:
June 13, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Nick sounds like he is lobbying to remake hir prediction status. Too bad every “prediction” he is making now every politicalt pundit has done a 100 times over.
I wish I could find it but I don’t have the time or energy. You had repeatedly kept harping on your son being a High Honor Steudent all year long and even through some shots degrading my kids because you thought they weren’t… well I have a litle surprise for you on Monday night at the 8th grade graduation.
First congratulations to your son as I am glad he is doing well in school. That is very important.
Now for the surprise…. my daughter Lindsay is the Valedictorian for the Red team… She has the highest class average. As she said she has a 97. something average. Next time you try to degrade my child make sure you know what you speak of!!!!!!
Now Nick’s little diddy……. wow talk about opening mouth and inserting foot.
Nick says:
April 18, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Scott: Your kids might not be sitting in the same section. BOTH OF MY KIDS MADE HIGH HONORS FOR THE 3RD QUARTER. One has HIGH HONORS FOR THE YEAR, the other Honors, Honors and High Honors. I sure hope your kids make the Honor Roll! (Could be embarrassing for such an EDUCATED SCHOOL BOARD CHEERLEADER not to have his kids listed in the Honor Roll). See ‘Ya! (Not Honors, Scott. HIGH HONORS). Heheheheh! (Must be the genes).
You guys are too much. Okay…. Let’s get the bumper stickers out! My daughter has been 3 years on the school’s CMT plaques with highest scores… She has gotten straight A’s since the beginning of grade school. Not sure why she didn’t get valedictorian on red team except she rejected NJHS three years in a row because she didn’t have time (with dance) to devote to their activities.
Let’s hope they (all 3) do very well in high school. See you Monday!
Just showing what an ass Nick makes of himself… that’s all it was! Tired of him cutting down people or things when he has no clue. This is just another way of showing how clueless he really is of society
Wow… I think it might just be going too far when the kids are brought into the discussion however it sounds like both families have kids that are doing well in school. Congrats. takes a lot of work on both the part of the parents and of the students!
Yeah your a bit right Ray but it was in the heat of the moment. Point is it’s nice to see EVERYONE here knows the value of a good EDUCATION! Congrats to all students as well as their parents/grandparents.
Ahem My grandson is in Bacon Academy. Going to be a junior. 7-outa-8 past semesters he was high honors. He missed one with only honors. This little shit, I swear plays more online video games than studying, and gets it done!! I try to push him a bit to be in the top 1% but hey I’m gonna complain about mid-upper 90s average for two yrs. Yup I’m a proud POP as all of you are! And I am shamelessly promoting my Buddy on Nicks thread hehe. Sorry Nick but thanks!
Very interesting. Great if they use the potential to further their own country not just the “tribal ” chiefs. What’s the chances of us getting a piece of the action to pay for our costs over there? Not holding my breath, but I think we should a a bit of the lithium action.
Happy to hear from you, John! Yes, it is great having honor students and congrats to your grandson!
Our daughter is looking forward to PHS, been with a lot of these kids for 8-9 years.
Nick! Congratulations to your son on 3 years of attendance. I have a couple of photos of him receiving his diploma. He has already probably seen them, tagged on FB.
THE ICEBERG : I know there is a fair amount of dread out there right now. We’re SUPPOSEDLY ramping down one war, and ramping up another; the threat of total financial collapse seems actually possible; the moral decay and loss of decency in much of society is endemic and spreading… Good Lord, we’re seeing famine, pestilence and death… lions and lambs lying down together, plagues of frogs from the skies! – and no one seems to know exactly what is happening.
And a lot of people are starting to think that it’s hopeless. My friends, it’s not hopeless. It’s dire! But it’s not hopeless. It’s never hopeless. You see, people have been here before. Not us, but other people. The great conceit of the modern age is that this is, in fact, a modern age. But it isn’t.
Let’s start at the top: with Barack Obama. Is he:
A. A Muslim-sympathizing, neo-Marxist true believer, who sees America and Capitalism as the principle barrier to fairness and world peace?
Or B, is he merely an empty suit, an unwitting pawn of much larger, hidden forces?
Or C, simply a self-obsessed, incompetent narcissist who happened to be at the right place at the right time.
I’ve given this a lot of careful thought, and I think the real answer is yes.
He is a product of his time; a product of a civilization that has been dynamic and successful long enough for its prosperity to feel inevitable and indestructible. It’s not even really his fault. It has always been pretty clear from his record who he is and what he believes, and we elected him because the country was in the mood for a “progressive” president.
But Progressivism is not progressive – it’s ancient. Cyclical. It’s circular. It is, in fact, the symptom and the eventual cause of impending collapse.
In fact, in all of human history, there has been only one genuinely progressive, genuinely liberating idea: a lightning bolt across the pages of history – the why in 1776, the how in 1787 – the idea of limited government, god-given rights, personal liberty and rule by the vast collective wisdom and industry of the common man, and not by the bored, pampered and self-hating elites that have run everything before and since. This is a once-in-history idea. This is why we have to conserve it. We have to conserve this fundamentally liberal idea.
I said that what we today call Progressivism is in fact ancient and circular. Don’t believe me? Well, the great roman orator Cicero, speaking in defense of his friend Sestius, around 55 BC, said – quote:
“Gaius gracchus proposed a grain law. The people were delighted with it because it provided an abundance of food without work. The good men, however, fought against it because they thought the masses would be attracted away from hard work and toward idleness, and they saw the state treasury would be exhausted.”
When a society – after generations of hard work, sacrifice and hardship – reaches a certain level of prosperity, “Progressives” like Bill Maher, Janeane Garofolo, Rosie O’Donnell and Gaius Gracchus – that last Progressive died in 121 BC – assume that the prosperity is endless, and push for more and more people to get more and more goods and services for less and less work. Why? Because – as today, in America, as with the British Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Ottomans, the Mongols, Rome, Greece, Eqypt, Babylon… They do it for political power. They live for political power. This “Progressivism” is ancient, recurring, tyrannical and ruinous.
And we voted for it. Just like the Romans did.
We can see from Cicero that throughout history, the disease is always the same – too much security and prosperity breeds laziness, narcissism, resentment and entitlement.
So if this is the cycle of civilization, and we see these same recurring signs around us in abundance today – how can there be any hope?
There’s hope because we are Americans. We’re different. Not genetically – although we are in fact the world’s mutts and that is an enormous strength. No, we are different, unique and exceptional culturally – because unlike the Babylonians, the Eqyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, the Turks, the Spanish, the French, The British and all the rest – we have actually done it. We have created the political tools to limit power and reward hard work, and we have lived with them for almost a quarter millennia. It is only by restoring and strengthening these truly progressive, but now-called conservative ideals that we can break the cycle of history.
How?
Well, first, we have to know how we got into this mess in the first place. This time around – our cycle – the rot began to take hold in America due primary to a group called The Frankfurt School. Keep in mind that the Frankfurt school is merely a product of where they appear on this great wheel of history – there have been dozens of civilizations that had their own “Frankfurt schools” in languages now lost to history.
But right after World War One, in Frankfurt, Germany the Institute for Social Research – they wanted to call themselves the “Institute for Marxism” but that was too on the nose – was left wondering why the world communist revolution — predicted as a certainty by Marxist social science – was not leading to the international revolution of the proletariat, the actual common working man.
And they figured out that capitalism – damn it! – was providing enough comfort and material gain, enough of an increase in the working man’s standard of living – that it just simply wasn’t going to happen. Ever.
Now, one kind of person might look at this and say, hooray! People’s lives are getting better – guess we weren’t needed after all.
But not these guys. These guys felt they had to bring heaven to earth.
And so they asked themselves: if the vanguard of the revolution wasn’t going to be the worker, then who would it be? And the answer they came up with was: the dispossessed.
The Neo-Marxist revolution would not attack the capitalist economy – that was too successful. The target of the new Marxist revolution would be the Culture.
Marxist philosophers like Antonia Gramsci, and later, Saul Alinski – personal hero to such present-day fellow travelers as Chris Matthews, Hillary Clinton and, of course, The President of the United States – started to create narratives – stories – about America. This rapidly evolved into a philosophy called “Critical Theory” and the idea of Critical Theory was to attack the dominant culture – that would be us – from all sides, simultaneously.
For instance, Black Americans would be told that their labor built the entire country, while White Americans merely sat back and essentially stole everything. Black slave labor did build the cotton economies of the Southern Confederacy, but the entire Confederacy had less factory capacity than New York City alone.
Nonetheless, many black Americans today have been taught that all of this belongs to them and not the truth, which is that that they were, and are, an integral and essential part of the group effort that built this country together.
Likewise, women are told that we live in an evil patriarchy, where all men are tyrants and potential rapists, determined to keep them in a form of domestic slavery, instead of being their partners and helpmates and husbands and protectors.
Gays are told not that this is one of the most inclusive and forgiving societies in the history of the world, but rather home to knuckle-dragging, murdering Neanderthals – when in plain sight, across the seas, one and a half billion Muslims routinely hang or stone or crush to death innocent people merely because of their sexual practices.
And on and on.
And when you try to argue against this social weapon of theirs, this Narrative, this lie that they tell again and again, well then, prepare for their counter-attack, which is called Political Correctness – the attempt to put the argument out of bounds before it can be had.
They use terms like Hate Speech and Racism. They want to put our arguments and rebuttals out of bounds so that they don’t have to hear them or deal with them. They have to exclude those arguments because if they don’t, those arguments are going to kick their asses and they know it.
And by the way: charges of Racism only work on decent people. You go up to a Klansman or a Nazi and call them a racist, and they say “duh!” Of course they’re racists. They’re proud of being racists. But you go up to someone who is not a racist, a person who finds racism appalling and disgusting, and tell them what they are saying is racism – even when it not only isn’t racism, but is in fact the opposite of racism– well, they’ll shut up. Mission Accomplished.
The objectives of the Frankfurt School, of Gramsci and Alinski in their assault on the culture, were laid out in detail and were very clear: Eliminate not only the voice, but the very idea of reason. Destroy history. Delegitimize shared morality. Medicate instead of discipline children. Promote the idea that problems are so complex that only elitists, experts and academics can discuss, let alone solve them. A later pair of American Marxist philosophers developed what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy: overwhelm America’s social systems – welfare, health care, immigration, etc. by telling people they were owed things, and by intentionally overwhelming them, cause them to collapse – leaving nothing but smoking wreckage, and no where to turn but to the government.
But above all, for this Frankfurt school strategy to work, it needed to foster resentment, envy, hopelessness and despair.
And it’s been spectacularly successful.
My fellow Americans… we are in an information war, a battle of narratives, and if that analysis is true then you and I are the last best hope of the last best hope. We are, together, soldiers in this narrative war for America and for civilization.
So can we win?
Of course we can win! Let me tell you where we are right now. We’re on the Titanic. Now hang on! There are some amazing things about that night that not many people know about. Things that give me hope.
Some people know that if the lookouts aboard Titanic had spotted the iceberg as little as five or six seconds earlier, Titanic would have been able miss that wall of ice by a few feet and would have survived to come home.
But very few people know that if those lookouts had spotted that iceberg only five or six seconds later — Titanic still would have survived. You see, Titanic was designed to remain afloat with up to five or her forward watertight compartments flooded – but not six. Had the lookout on Titanic seen that iceberg only a few seconds later, she would have hit it straight-on. It would have crumpled the bow, and a few hundred people would have been killed in the collision – but she would have stayed afloat, and instead of 1,490 people drowning in those icy waters, she would have limped home to New York, been refitted and repaired, and continued to do what she was built to do: bring people to America – to freedom. She represented what was best in us: vision, industry, ingenuity and hard work. That ship deserved to come home.
Some people misinterpret this to mean that there were a few seconds where Titanic could have been saved. It’s just the opposite. There were only a few seconds – ten or fifteen seconds – where Titanic could have been sunk. That iceberg went right down the side of the ship, staving in compartment after compartment. Progressivism is doing the same thing to our culture: flooding academia…movies…television…news media…comedy…music…government policy… damaging and flooding, one by one, the social institutions that kept this ship of freedom, ingenuity and prosperity afloat.
Like an iceberg, the danger from progressivism lies beneath the surface: the slow erosion of the work ethic, the fostering of division and resentment and unearned entitlement, the abandonment of the entire idea of decency and morality – all of this beneath the placid surface of simply claiming to help people.
My friends, it far too late to avoid this ancient iceberg, this giant dark wall that has sunk civilization after civilization under the calm disguise of compassion and concern. We cannot steer around it. If we are to avoid that fate, there is only one option left.
We need to ram the iceberg. We need to hit it head-on. We need to put in all the power we have – all of the power – and go right at the heart of that monster. Because everyone talks about what the iceberg did to Titanic, but no one talks about what Titanic did to the iceberg.
You see, I know something critical about this iceberg out in front of us, and that is this: that iceberg is hollow. It’s hollow.
Even the people who believe in it most strongly know it’s a lie. That’s why they have to lie to you about what they believe. They know, in their heart of hearts, that this philosophy has been the ruin of civilization in every one of the countless times it has been applied. They know – consciously or not – that in the last century alone their ideas have cost the lives of no less than 150 million people executed, or starved to death, to bring this paradise to earth.
And unlike the brave and selfless men and women that daily risk, and often give their lives in defense of freedom for their fellow man, these people believe in nothing greater than the sound of their own voice and are willing to die for nothing.
What would Bill Maher, or Janeane Garofolo, or Rosie O’Donnel be willing to give their own lives for? Nothing. Nothing.
It’s hollow. That iceberg is hollow. And we need to ram it, and we need to ram it now. It’s going to crush the front of our ship, and severely damage us as a culture – but we will survive. And by surviving, we can repair the damage and make ourselves better than we were.
We, for the first time in human history, have an example of what a free society looks like. We, for the first time in history, are children of the only real progressives in all of human history. And we, for the first time in history, have the technology that allows common people to talk to each other, to encourage and inform each other, and to make an end run around the suicidal elites and their suicidal, dying media organs.
We can do it. And we’re gonna do it. We are going to whip these communists out of their boots. And starting next time, we’ll start figuring out exactly how.
Postal Service Ends Third Quarter With $3.5 Billion Loss
Cash Shortfall Likely in 2011; Customer Service Scores Remain High
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The U.S. Postal Service ended the third quarter of fiscal year 2010 (April 1 – June 30) with a net loss of $3.5 billion, compared with a net loss of $2.4 billion for the same quarter last year. Third-quarter mail volume totaled 40.9 billion pieces – down approximately 700 million pieces, or 1.7 percent, compared to a year ago.
Complete USPS third-quarter results include operating revenue of $16 billion, some $294 million less than the same period last year, and operating expenses of $19.5 billion, an increase of $789 million, or 4.2 percent, over the third quarter last year.
The increase in operating expenses was attributable largely to higher workers’ compensation expenses due to a non-cash fair value adjustment and higher retiree health benefits expenses. Lower interest rates adversely affected the workers’ compensation liability, resulting in a $2 billion expense for the quarter – $870 million higher than the same quarter last year.
A significant portion of USPS losses in the past few years has been due to an unprecedented decline in mail volume – down by more than 20 percent since 2007. The replacement of letter mail and business-transactions mail by electronic alternatives continues to cause downward pressure on mail volume.
The organization’s financial situation is compounded by its obligation to pay $5.4 billion to $5.8 billion annually to prefund retiree health benefits. This requirement, established in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA), is an obligation unique to the Postal Service.
Liquidity remains a major concern as the end of the fiscal year approaches. Although cash flow appears to be sufficient for 2010 operations, it is uncertain whether cash flow, together with maximum available borrowing of $3 billion, will be enough to fund the Congressionally-mandated $5.5 billion payment to the Retiree Health Benefit Fund on September 30 and retain sufficient liquidity into 2011, according to Joseph R. Corbett, the Postal Service’s Chief Financial Officer.
“Given current trends, we will not be able to pay all 2011 obligations,” said Corbett. “Despite ongoing aggressive cost reductions totaling over $10 billion in the last three years, it is clear that a liquidity problem is looming and must be addressed through fundamental changes requiring legislation and changes to contracts.”
The Postal Service has incurred net losses in 14 of the last 16 fiscal quarters. The fiscal 2010 year-to-date net loss is $5.4 billion, compared to a loss in the same period last year of $4.7 billion.
Postmaster General John Potter noted that despite the cost-cutting, the Postal Service has continued to maintain a high level of customer service. The third-quarter service score for overnight single-piece First-Class Mail was 96.7 percent on-time, an improvement of 0.4 percent from the same period last year.
“Our dedication to customer service remains a top priority,” Potter said. “We continue to provide dependable customer service even as we focus on reducing costs. With the dedicated efforts of our entire organization, we are well on track to achieve approximately $3 billion in total cost reductions in 2010,” said Potter.
Cost reductions center on initiatives to improve efficiency and match work hours to reduced mail volume. Other savings are coming from consolidating excess capacity in mail processing and transportation networks, realigning carrier routes, delaying construction of new postal facilities and a variety of other initiatives.
Work hours were reduced by 63 million in the first three quarters of fiscal 2010, or 6.6 percent compared to the first three quarters of 2009. That is the equivalent of about 36,000 full-time employees.
“Securing the fiscal stability of the Postal Service will require continued efforts in all of these areas, as well as further review of retiree health benefit prefunding,” said Potter. “It also will require that the Postal Service gain flexibility within the law to move toward five-day delivery, to adjust our network as needed, to develop new products the market demands, and to work with our unions to meet the challenges ahead.”
Details are contained in the Postal Service Form 10-Q report that will be available Aug. 9, 2010, at http://www.usps.com/financials/ (click Form 10-Q under Quarter Reports).
A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no direct support from taxpayers. With 36,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, the Postal Service relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses. Named the Most Trusted Government Agency five consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $68 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 28th in the 2009 Fortune 500.
Oh Goody! “Massive solar storm to hit Earth in 2012 with ‘force of 100m bombs’” Thu, Aug 26 12:50 PM
Melbourne, Aug 26 (ANI): Astronomers are predicting that a massive solar storm, much bigger in potential than the one that caused spectacular light shows on Earth earlier this month, is to strike our planet in 2012 with a force of 100 million hydrogen bombs.
Several US media outlets have reported that NASA was warning the massive flare this month was just a precursor to a massive solar storm building that had the potential to wipe out the entire planet’s power grid.
Despite its rebuttal, NASA’s been watching out for this storm since 2006 and reports from the US this week claim the storms could hit on that most Hollywood of disaster dates – 2012.
Similar storms back in 1859 and 1921 caused worldwide chaos, wiping out telegraph wires on a massive scale. The 2012 storm has the potential to be even more disruptive.
“The general consensus among general astronomers (and certainly solar astronomers) is that this coming Solar maximum (2012 but possibly later into 2013) will be the most violent in 100 years,” News.com.au quoted astronomy lecturer and columnist Dave Reneke as saying.
“A bold statement and one taken seriously by those it will affect most, namely airline companies, communications companies and anyone working with modern GPS systems.
“They can even trip circuit breakers and knock out orbiting satellites, as has already been done this year,” added Reneke.
No one really knows what effect the 2012-2013 Solar Max will have on today’s digital-reliant society.
Dr Richard Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics division, told Reneke the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning”, causing catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.
NASA said that a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause “1 to 2 trillion dollars in damages to society’s high-tech infrastructure and require four to 10 years for complete recovery”.
The reason for the concern comes as the sun enters a phase known as Solar Cycle 24.
Most experts agree, although those who put the date of Solar Max in 2012 are getting the most press.
They claim satellites will be aged by 50 years, rendering GPS even more useless than ever, and the blast will have the equivalent energy of 100 million hydrogen bombs.
“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Fisher told Reneke.
“Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the Earth and it’s rapid, just like a lightning bolt. That’s the solar effect,” he added.
The findings are published in the most recent issue of Australasian Science. (ANI).
An “Abilene paradox” occurs when a group of people decide on a course of action that is contrary to the preferences of any individual in the group. The concept was created by Jerry B. Harvey, a business management expert, to explain the damage caused by a particular type of groupthink involving assumed agreement. This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_iGdiYO7gI is a nicely produced, humorous enactment of the Abilene paradox.
While Harvey used the Abilene paradox within the context of business decision making, I think it can be applied on larger scales to any group–like, say, the Obama administration, Media, ReidPelosiCongress, and the Democrats generally.
Ace has mentioned “preference cascade” on a few occasions. Here, he calls it a pet obsession, introduced to him by Instapundit. From his link:
This illustrates, in a mild way, the reason why totalitarian regimes collapse so suddenly. . . . Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don’t realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99% of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it – but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.
This works until something breaks the spell, and the discontented realize that their feelings are widely shared, at which point the collapse of the regime may seem very sudden to outside observers – or even to the citizens themselves.
“Until something breaks the spell.” The spell, I would assert, is the Abilene paradox. In fact, the two appear to be parts of the same creature at different points in its evolution. A preference cascade occurs when an Abilene paradox breaks down. And, while every preference cascade would necessarily involve an Abilene paradox, the Abilene paradox can exist alone and undiscovered.
I think the Democrat Abilene paradox is just beginning to break down, with voices like Mort Zuckerman beginning to speak out. (Note that Republican–out group–opposition did nothing to sway these people.) Democrats are starting to realize no individual really wanted to go this far–to Abilene, as it were–with change. I wonder if any of them will be relieved the ride is over.
Obama & the Fishermen
Wednesday, August 25, 2010, 9:00 AM
Why the fishermen are mad at Obama: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1276664
The White House and Lubchenco want an end to private commercial fishing and have taken steps to eliminate “freelancing,” for lack of a better term. Instead, they want to close the fisheries into “commodities markets” where the government essentially licenses fishermen and then allocates the catch based on a predetermined distribution plan. The “commodities markets” will kill many fishing-based jobs and essentially turn fishermen into government employees, and they’re not happy about it.
It just sounds so…
So…
So Soviet, doesn’t it?
It just doesn’t sound like America, at all. No liberty. No freedom of choice. You can choose to work for the government, as they permit, or not work at all.
And there is a weird lack of joy to it all, don’t you think? No fishing because you love it; because it’s in your family, and your blood and your culture and there’s nothing you’d rather do than captain your own boat and work for yourself.
None of that.
No joy, no independence; just the state.
Obama is a cold guy, and he’s putting a chilling government into place.
MORE WASTED MONEY IN A COUNTRY THAT IS NOT USA!!!!
I AM SURE NICK CAN EXPLAIN AGAIN WHY WE WASTE BILLIONS TO SUPPORT OTHER COUNTRIES………..RIGHT NICK!!!!!!!!!
AP IMPACT: US wasted billions in rebuilding Iraq
AFP/File – US soldiers stand next to army vehicles during a logistical operation to clear equipment and heavy machinery … By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer Kim Gamel, Associated Press Writer – Sun Aug 29, 6:43 pm ET
KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq – A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets
As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.
That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.
There are success stories. Hundreds of police stations, border forts and government buildings have been built, Iraqi security forces have improved after years of training, and a deep water port at the southern oil hub of Umm Qasr has been restored.
Even completed projects for the most part fell far short of original goals, according to an Associated Press review of hundreds of audits and investigations and visits to several sites. And the verdict is still out on whether the program reached its goal of generating Iraqi good will toward the United States instead of the insurgents.
Col. Jon Christensen, who took over as commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region District this summer, said the federal agency has completed more than 4,800 projects and is rushing to finish 233 more. Some 595 projects have been terminated, mostly for security reasons.
Christensen acknowledged that mistakes have been made. But he said steps have been taken to fix them, and the success of the program will depend ultimately on the Iraqis — who have complained that they were not consulted on projects to start with.
“There’s only so much we could do,” Christensen said. “A lot of it comes down to them taking ownership of it.”
The reconstruction program in Iraq has been troubled since its birth shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The U.S. was forced to scale back many projects even as they spiked in cost, sometimes to more than double or triple initial projections.
As part of the so-called surge strategy, the military in 2007 shifted its focus to protecting Iraqis and winning their trust. American soldiers found themselves hiring contractors to paint schools, refurbish pools and oversee neighborhood water distribution centers. The $3.6 billion Commander’s Emergency Response Program provided military units with ready cash for projects, and paid for Sunni fighters who agreed to turn against al-Qaida in Iraq for a monthly salary.
But sometimes civilian and military reconstruction efforts were poorly coordinated and overlapped.
Iraqis can see one of the most egregious examples of waste as they drive north from Baghdad to Khan Bani Saad. A prison rises from the desert, complete with more than two dozen guard towers and surrounded by high concrete walls. But the only signs of life during a recent visit were a guard shack on the entry road and two farmers tending a nearby field.
In March 2004, the Corps of Engineers awarded a $40 million contract to global construction and engineering firm Parsons Corp. to design and build a prison for 3,600 inmates, along with educational and vocational facilities. Work was set to finish in November 2005.
But violence was escalating in the area, home to a volatile mix of Sunni and Shiite extremists. The project started six months late and continued to fall behind schedule, according to a report by the inspector general.
The U.S. government pulled the plug on Parsons in June 2006, citing “continued schedule slips and … massive cost overruns,” but later awarded three more contracts to other companies. Pasadena, Calif.-based Parsons said it did its best under difficult and violent circumstances.
Citing security concerns, the U.S. finally abandoned the project in June 2007 and handed over the unfinished facility to Iraq’s Justice Ministry. The ministry refused to “complete, occupy or provide security” for it, according to the report. More than $1.2 million in unused construction material also was abandoned due to fears of violence.
The inspector general recommended another use be found for the partially finished buildings inside the dusty compound. But three years later, piles of bricks and barbed wire lie around, and tumbleweed is growing in the caked sand.
“It will never hold a single Iraqi prisoner,” said inspector general Stuart Bowen, who has overseen the reconstruction effort since it started. “Forty million dollars wasted in the desert.”
Another problem was coordination with the Iraqis, who have complained they weren’t consulted and often ended up paying to complete unfinished facilities they didn’t want in the first place.
“Initially when we came in … we didn’t collaborate as much as we should have with the correct people and figure out what their needs were,” Christensen said. He stressed that Iraqis are now closely involved in all projects.
One clinic was handed over to local authorities without a staircase, said Shaymaa Mohammed Amin, the head of the Diyala provincial reconstruction and development committee.
“We were almost forced to take them,” she said during an interview at the heavily fortified local government building in the provincial capital of Baqouba. “Generally speaking, they were below our expectations. Huge funds were wasted and they would not have been wasted if plans had been clear from the beginning.”
As an example, she cited a date honey factory that was started despite a more pressing need for schools and vital infrastructure. She said some schools were left without paint or chalkboards, and needed renovations.
“We ended up paying twice,” she said.
In some cases, Iraqi ministries have refused to take on the responsibility for U.S.-funded programs, forcing the Americans to leave abandoned buildings littering the landscape.
“The area of waste I’m most concerned about in the entire program is the waste that might occur after completed projects are handed over to the Iraqis,” Bowen said.
The U.S. military pinned great hopes on a $5.7 million convention center inside the tightly secured Baghdad International Airport compound, as part of a commercial hub aimed at attracting foreign investors. A few events were held at the sprawling complex, including a three-day energy conference that drew oil executives from as far away as Russia and Japan in 2008, which the U.S. military claimed generated $1 million in revenues.
But the contracts awarded for the halls did not include requirements to connect them to the main power supply. The convention center, still requiring significant work, was transferred to the Iraqi government “as is” on Jan. 20, according to an audit by the inspector general’s office.
The buildings have since fallen into disrepair, and dozens of boxes of fluorescent lightbulbs and other equipment disappeared from the site. Light poles outside have toppled over and the glass facade is missing from large sections of the abandoned buildings.
Waste also came from trying to run projects while literally under fire.
The Americans committed to rebuilding the former Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah after it was destroyed in major offensives in 2004. The U.S. awarded an initial contract for a new waste water treatment system to FluorAMEC of Greenville, S.C. — just three months after four American private security contractors were savagely attacked. The charred and mutilated remains of two of them were strung from a bridge in the city.
An audit concluded that it was unrealistic for the U.S. “to believe FluorAMEC could even begin construction, let alone complete the project, while fierce fighting occurred daily.” The report also pointed out repeated redesigns of the project, and financial and contracting problems.
The Fallujah waste water treatment system is nearly complete — four years past the deadline, at a cost of more than three times the original $32.5 million estimate. It has been scaled back to serve just a third of the population, and Iraqi officials said it still lacks connections to houses and a pipe to join neighborhood tanks up with the treatment plant.
Desperate residents, meanwhile, have begun dumping their sewage in the tanks, causing foul odors and running the risk of seepage, according to the head of Fallujah’s municipal council, Sheik Hameed Ahmed Hashim.
“It isn’t appropriate for the Americans to give the city these services without completing these minor details,” Hashim said. “We were able to wipe out part of the memories of the Fallujah battles through this and other projects. … If they leave the project as it is, I think their reputation will be damaged.”
By contrast, the Basra children’s hospital — one of the largest projects undertaken by the U.S. in Iraq — looks like a shining success story, with gardeners tending manicured lawns in preparation for its opening. But that opening has been repeatedly delayed, most recently for a lack of electricity.
The construction of a “state of the art” pediatric specialist hospital with a cancer unit was projected to be completed by December 2005 for about $50 million. By last year, the cost had soared above $165 million, including more than $100 million in U.S. funds, and the equipment was dated, according to an auditors’ report.
Investigators blamed the delays on unrealistic timeframes, poor soil conditions, multiple partners and funding sources and security problems at the site, including the murder of 24 workers. Bechtel, the project contractor, was removed because of monthslong delays blamed on poor subcontractor performance and limited oversight, the special inspector general’s office said. A Bechtel spokeswoman, Michelle Allen, said the company had recommended in 2006 that work on the hospital be put on hold because of the “intolerable security situation.”
In an acknowledgment that they weren’t getting exactly what they hoped for, Iraqi officials insisted the label “state of the art” be removed from a memorandum of understanding giving them the facility. It was described as a “modern pediatric hospital.”
Hospital director Kadhim Fahad said construction has been completed and the electricity issue resolved.
“The opening will take place soon, God willing,” he said.
Residents are pleased with the outcome. One, Ghassan Kadhim, said: “It is the duty of the Americans to do such projects because they were the ones who inflicted harm on people.”
___
Associated Press Writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.
CBO: Eight Years of Iraq War Cost Less Than Stimulus Act
As President Obama prepares to tie a bow on U.S. combat operations in Iraq, Congressional Budget Office numbers show that the total cost of the eight-year war was less than the stimulus bill passed by the Democratic-led Congress in 2009.
According to CBO numbers in its Budget and Economic Outlook published this month, the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom was $709 billion for military and related activities, including training of Iraqi forces and diplomatic operations.
The projected cost of the stimulus, which passed in February 2009, and is expected to have a shelf life of two years, was $862 billion.
The U.S. deficit for fiscal year 2010 is expected to be $1.3 trillion, according to CBO. That compares to a 2007 deficit of $160.7 billion and a 2008 deficit of $458.6 billion, according to data provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
In 2007 and 2008, the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 1.2 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively.
“Relative to the size of the economy, this year’s deficit is expected to be the second largest shortfall in the past 65 years; 9.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), exceeded only by last year’s deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP,” CBO wrote.
The CBO figures show that the most expensive year of the Iraq war was in 2008, the year when the surge proposed by Gen. David Petraeus and approved by President Bush was in full swing and the turning point in the war. The total cost of Iraq operations in 2008 was $140 billion. In 2007, the cost of Iraq operations was $124 billion.
According to an analysis by the American Thinker’s Randall Hoven, the cost of the Iraq war from 2003-2008 — when Bush was in office — was $20 billion less than the cost of education spending and less than a quarter of the cost of Medicare spending during that same period.
Ray,
Thanks… as usual 5 or 6 people willing to put the time in for the kids and a 3 wheel drag we invested in 6 years ago.
I have a question for you. I remember 2 years back Canterbury ballfields resodded. I would ask them but I believe that President is gone. They change so frequently. Do you know who did it or was it just the league volunteers?? I can get the turf donated but we would like a professional to handle the install. We are just doing the little league infield. Too expensive otherwise. They obviously have the equipment to do it right by crowning the field coreectly etc.
Thanks
1Here ‘Ya go Scott Buddy!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ksLlAi3iIc&feature=player_embedded
I like Christie. Good video nick!
# 1 I’m no bully BUT, you punch my friend, I’m gonna punch you!
#2 4-5% increases and insurance for life ain’t about the kids.
#3 Hotel California analogy.
I’m glad he cleared up the constant misconception that this is/was about all teachers. ” like in any proffession we have our bad apples” to paraphrase Christie.
Ditto Ray
2Scott has done a great job since he’s been involved with LL. In fact before he became LL Prez, it was becoming pitiful down there!
Scott,
I’m not sure but will try to find out for you.
3Just the latest essay by the PREMIER intellectual writer, Military Historian, University Professor, and BY FAR THE MOST FREQUENT and PROLIFIC PUBLISHER OF COMMON SENSE still alive in America….Victor Davis Hanson. From his unending and relentless scribing of COMMON SENSE essays, “Works and Days”, enjoy June 13th, 2010 9:20 am
“Government by the Faculty Lounge”: The Professors Are In Charge
We are being run by the mindset of the faculty lounge, as if the philosophy or English department has taken over running the country. Let me adduce some random examples.
Taxes
Tax proposals in haywire fashion are thrown out almost every day from various Obamians, as if at a faculty bull session over coffee. Can we count them all — much less can small businesses plan to hire a worker when they don’t know how much more they will shortly owe the government?
Here is what we hear from Barack Obama: a restoration of the death tax. Trial balloons for a national sales tax or a VAT. How high will capital gains hikes go? Rates are to go back to or beyond (?) the Clinton income tax schedules? Was the cap to come off income exposed to the full FICA bite, and was it to be set at $150,000, $200,000, or $250,000? What exactly is the new health care surcharge? And when and if these federal income hikes are added to the states’ raises in state income, property, and sales taxes, what will the aggregate tax bite be? Does anyone know? Do any of these guys care how “they” are going to make enough money to pay “us”?
Finance
Match that tax uncertainty with a weird financial policy. Are Americans really saving more or is the new thrift simply a result of skipping out on mortgages and maxed out credit cards that has resulted in less collective debt —the banks eating the loss quite well by paying depositors about 1% on their savings while lending out at 6% and more, or having the government cover their bad debts? Are we not seeing a massive transfer of wealth as retirees and savings holders are getting nothing — or rather less than nothing when inflation is factored in — on their money, while debtors pay little in interest and now find class sympathy by not honoring their obligations? Is not the person who borrowed, spent, and defaulted now seen as the better American than those who saved, paid on time, and passed something on to their children? It’s as if the economics and political science departments now set policy.
Race
Let me review the progress of the last two years, because the national mood reminds me of the free speech area at any California university where groups segregate by race while their professors celebrate “diversity.”
We had a green czar who claimed that whites pollute the ghetto and are more likely to be mass murderers. Our attorney general called the nation one of “cowards” for not holding racial conversations on his terms. He has no interest in trying Black Panthers who disrupted voting, but a great deal in trying the architect of 9/11 in a civilian courtroom, replete with Miranda rights, in Manhattan a few hundred yards from Ground Zero.
The Black Caucus, stung by serial charges against its members of corruption, wishes to prune back the House Ethics Committee as we now know it, presumably because it is “racist” as a bad messenger of inconvenient tidings.
The president came to the defense of a shrieking Harvard professor (not much going on in the world elsewhere) by claiming the police acted “stupidly” and characteristically stereotyped the non-white. Our new Supreme Court justice believes race and gender inherently make people smarter, or in her words a “wise Latina” is often a better judge than the old white guys who dominate the courts.
The doyen of the White House press corps, a liberal icon with a front-row seat at briefings, wishes not just that Israel disappear but that the Jews go back to Poland and Germany — and wins praise from Hezbollah and “sympathy” from her peers in DC.
Our governors of Massachusetts and New York allege their own unpopularity is due to racism — in the manner apparently unlike a most unpopular California governor who earned bad polls on his own.
To suggest that the president should not have said “kick ass” or “bring a gun to a knife fight” or “get in their face” or “tear up” a talk show host is to traffic in anti-black stereotypes.
Note the “no more disown Rev. Wright,” clingers of Pennsylvania, and “typical white person” of the campaign led to the above, just as the above in the next two years will lead to even more — given that our president has always sensed that racial identity politics is a sanctuary for setback and an embryo for career promotion.
Are the ethnic studies departments running the country? Foreign Policy
Here is a perversity: almost every rascal-like head of state that this president has decided to use “reset button” diplomacy on is unfortunately now more hostile. He made a big splash of sending a video and greetings to Ahmadinejad, who seems perhaps more bellicose than ever. Chavez was courted, but he now sounds like a Bush is back in the White House. Recall the much ballyhooed trip to Turkey — why then the present Turkish response? The outreach to Syria and the missiles to Hezbollah — why did Assad do that after we were so nice? And why is not Mr. Putin appreciative of our kind words? Why does he not help us with the Iranian problem? Maybe all those new hundreds of millions of borrowed dollars to the Palestinians will at least change their opinion of us?
Who is a friend, who an enemy? Rule of thumb: if you liked the U.S. between 2001-8 (e.g., Britain, Colombia, the Czech Republic, India, Israel, Poland, the former Soviet republics), something was wrong with your illiberal, pro-Bush stance. But if you pretty much despised America (e.g., Cuba, Iran, Russia, Syria, Venezuela), then we sort of sympathize with your former antipathy (we shared it too), and so now want to reach out and expand our common ground.
Crises, then, originate because of miscommunication and being not nice, not out of fundamental differences in belief about the way nations organize the economy, politics, or social and cultural life. Diplomacy and good intentions, not deterrence and military preparation, persuade bad actors to behave. Excuse me! — there are no bad actors, just misunderstood ones who have translated their understandable post-imperial, post-colonial grievances into anti-Americanism. They need to be contextualized rather than confronted.
When we look at the growing darkness in the word over the last two years — Turkey as the new Sultanate, Israel soon to be threatened by a nuclear Iran and new missiles in Syria and among Hezbollah, North Korea promising a fiery Seoul, Europe disintegrating, Russia sensing that Eastern Europe and its former republics are without U.S. support with Putin cat-smiling over the missing canary, China not wanting to lend more to extend our welfare state whose entitlements already surpass its own, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela all eager to remake Latin America into a socialist, pro-Iranian paradise (this list could be vastly expanded) — we see at least some wages of half-baked utopianism and tactical “I hate Bush” bromides in lieu of a serious foreign policy. This is diplomacy practiced along the lines of the peace and conflict resolution program.
Faculty Lounge Wisdom
OK — Washington seems to run now along the logic of the faculty lounge. But let me explain the rules of Lala land. Some of you were not academics for 21 years. No problem, you can easily imagine what the worldview is on campus — given that after six years on the job you cannot be fired except for felony conviction (and even that is problematic). After tenure a failure to publish and awful teaching evaluations mean nothing. “Post-tenure review” has the teeth of a UN investigation.
The in-class work week is about 6-8 hours. You toil at school 32 weeks a year. A hyphenated or exotic name often brings career rewards. Liberalism is defined by accentuating gender and racial differences, not ignoring them.
Peer review and faculty governance adjudicate talent, and academic senate votes resemble the margins of Saddam’s old plebiscites.
Status is predicated on university affiliations, the more Ivy League the better; an Ohio State professor with 10 successful books is always judged a failure in comparison to a brilliant Princeton professor with two “seminal” articles. The more one covets academic status, the more one deplores the unfair social divides in America.
Money is as despised in the abstract as it is pursued in the concrete. No one has run a business, worked much in dead-end, physical labor, or felt economic disaster when the economy went south. Tragedy instead for those who make it on the academic gravy train is the absence of an automatic pay increase, a refused sabbatical, or a hiring freeze. Academics damn Wal-Mart’s exploitation, but count on part-timers to work for a third of their own salaries for the same work — and thereby subsidize their own aristocratic perks. The PhD is felt the equivalent of a MD or MBA, and so leisured contemplation focuses on why less well spoken doctors and CEOs cruelly and so unfairly make so much more than far smarter professors.
I’ll stop for a breath. You get the picture. We are being run by former academics or career politicians and bureaucrats who rely on academic wisdom — note the response to the Gulf slick, the Iranian bomb, or the rising deficits. Obama’s key 500 appointees, like himself, have little experience in commerce, business, law, medicine, or the military, but lots of experience in the academic revolving door.
When I would go to department meetings, get coffee, or see faculty at receptions, I could never quite understand the aberrant mental processes. There was never a connection between our salaries and the source of wealth generated to pay them. Taxes could be limitless, because a Michelle’s proverbial “they” had far too much money anyway, and so spent their lucre on needless things like jet skis and SUVs. Better for the university to have it and spread it around wisely.
Foreigners were usually smarter than Americans, mostly because they took the train and were without a Ram pickup in their garages. Fright surrounded things like flipping back the circuit breaker or unplugging the sewer line under the house; more mysterious were the grubby folk who didn’t eat arugula and were called in to conjure up a fix to these bothersome distractions.
Ambiguity in speech, not clarity was preferred; the ability to adduce ten different points of view was always considered superior to deciding on one. Tantrums, the occasional obscenity, the knife-in-the-back memo always assumed a sort of rule that such rascality never earned a punch in the face; the art was to be as cruel as possible without resort to violence. Yet when gut-check time came to vote openly yes or no and take the consequences, most voted present by skipping out or abstaining.
The white male Midwestern student without money or connections was to be pitied and ignored as a loser as much as was the discriminated black student of the 1940s and 1950s. The more constructed identities the better — I remember the female, gay, half-black administrator achieving a rare “threefer” and soaring through the state university system cursus honorum.
The perverse was always preferred to the logical: so a Mao was better than a Churchill, Lincoln was faulted for not possessing 1999-era academic sensitivity, and FDR not WWII saved the economy from further depression. Versailles explains Hitler rather than his own insane hatreds. The Soviet and Chinese nightmares were problematic and based on misunderstandings of Marx rather than natural conclusions from him. The real fear after 9/11 is backlash, not more terrorism. The non-Christian nihilist Timothy McVeigh or the Columbine Satanists are proof of widespread Christian terrorism; the last 50 aborted Islamic terrorist plots are aberrations.
If you wonder how our present administration’s attitudes toward business, commerce, taxes, finance, race, national security and foreign policy now play out, just drop by a local faculty lounge for a few minutes and listen up — America in 2010 will suddenly make sense, and perhaps scare the hell out of you all at once. It all reminds me of the proverbial first-semester college student who returns home at Thanksgiving to his near-broke parents to inform them of all the “new” things he’s learned at university. (THIS, all written in a scant 2 days since his last WORK….In Days.”)
4Wake up people. No one can deny that I’ve been warning about all this for many, many years. (Predictions).
5Nick sounds like he is lobbying to remake hir prediction status. Too bad every “prediction” he is making now every politicalt pundit has done a 100 times over.
6News You Can Use: “U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes&pagewanted=all
7WHOA! TEA PARTY MOVEMENT taking over the Texas GOP? “In the past, these conventions have been about social conservatism. Now the passion and dialogue is driven more by fiscal issues.” http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/tea_party_rules_gop_agenda_96181694.html?showFullArticle=y
8Scott says:
June 13, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Nick sounds like he is lobbying to remake hir prediction status. Too bad every “prediction” he is making now every politicalt pundit has done a 100 times over.
I think he needs a hug
9Nick,
I wish I could find it but I don’t have the time or energy. You had repeatedly kept harping on your son being a High Honor Steudent all year long and even through some shots degrading my kids because you thought they weren’t… well I have a litle surprise for you on Monday night at the 8th grade graduation.
First congratulations to your son as I am glad he is doing well in school. That is very important.
Now for the surprise…. my daughter Lindsay is the Valedictorian for the Red team… She has the highest class average. As she said she has a 97. something average. Next time you try to degrade my child make sure you know what you speak of!!!!!!
10congrats to both of them!
11Thanks Rich
12Now Nick’s little diddy……. wow talk about opening mouth and inserting foot.
Nick says:
April 18, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Scott: Your kids might not be sitting in the same section. BOTH OF MY KIDS MADE HIGH HONORS FOR THE 3RD QUARTER. One has HIGH HONORS FOR THE YEAR, the other Honors, Honors and High Honors. I sure hope your kids make the Honor Roll! (Could be embarrassing for such an EDUCATED SCHOOL BOARD CHEERLEADER not to have his kids listed in the Honor Roll). See ‘Ya! (Not Honors, Scott. HIGH HONORS). Heheheheh! (Must be the genes).
Yup Nick it is in the genes……. LOL
13You guys are too much. Okay…. Let’s get the bumper stickers out! My daughter has been 3 years on the school’s CMT plaques with highest scores… She has gotten straight A’s since the beginning of grade school. Not sure why she didn’t get valedictorian on red team except she rejected NJHS three years in a row because she didn’t have time (with dance) to devote to their activities.
14Let’s hope they (all 3) do very well in high school. See you Monday!
JUne,
Just showing what an ass Nick makes of himself… that’s all it was! Tired of him cutting down people or things when he has no clue. This is just another way of showing how clueless he really is of society
15Wow… I think it might just be going too far when the kids are brought into the discussion however it sounds like both families have kids that are doing well in school. Congrats. takes a lot of work on both the part of the parents and of the students!
16Yes.. I do hope these kids do well in high school Is everyone going to PHS?
17Lindsay will be
18Yeah your a bit right Ray but it was in the heat of the moment. Point is it’s nice to see EVERYONE here knows the value of a good EDUCATION! Congrats to all students as well as their parents/grandparents.
Ahem
My grandson is in Bacon Academy. Going to be a junior. 7-outa-8 past semesters he was high honors. He missed one with only honors. This little shit, I swear plays more online video games than studying, and gets it done!! I try to push him a bit to be in the top 1% but hey I’m gonna complain about mid-upper 90s average for two yrs. 
Yup I’m a proud POP as all of you are! And I am shamelessly promoting my Buddy on Nicks thread hehe. Sorry Nick but thanks!
19Nick says:
June 13, 2010 at 10:24 pm
News You Can Use: “U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes&pagewanted=all
Very interesting. Great if they use the potential to further their own country not just the “tribal ” chiefs. What’s the chances of us getting a piece of the action to pay for our costs over there? Not holding my breath, but I think we should a a bit of the lithium action.
20Happy to hear from you, John! Yes, it is great having honor students and congrats to your grandson!
21Our daughter is looking forward to PHS, been with a lot of these kids for 8-9 years.
Nick! Congratulations to your son on 3 years of attendance. I have a couple of photos of him receiving his diploma. He has already probably seen them, tagged on FB.
22THE ICEBERG : I know there is a fair amount of dread out there right now. We’re SUPPOSEDLY ramping down one war, and ramping up another; the threat of total financial collapse seems actually possible; the moral decay and loss of decency in much of society is endemic and spreading… Good Lord, we’re seeing famine, pestilence and death… lions and lambs lying down together, plagues of frogs from the skies! – and no one seems to know exactly what is happening.
And a lot of people are starting to think that it’s hopeless. My friends, it’s not hopeless. It’s dire! But it’s not hopeless. It’s never hopeless. You see, people have been here before. Not us, but other people. The great conceit of the modern age is that this is, in fact, a modern age. But it isn’t.
Let’s start at the top: with Barack Obama. Is he:
A. A Muslim-sympathizing, neo-Marxist true believer, who sees America and Capitalism as the principle barrier to fairness and world peace?
Or B, is he merely an empty suit, an unwitting pawn of much larger, hidden forces?
Or C, simply a self-obsessed, incompetent narcissist who happened to be at the right place at the right time.
I’ve given this a lot of careful thought, and I think the real answer is yes.
He is a product of his time; a product of a civilization that has been dynamic and successful long enough for its prosperity to feel inevitable and indestructible. It’s not even really his fault. It has always been pretty clear from his record who he is and what he believes, and we elected him because the country was in the mood for a “progressive” president.
But Progressivism is not progressive – it’s ancient. Cyclical. It’s circular. It is, in fact, the symptom and the eventual cause of impending collapse.
In fact, in all of human history, there has been only one genuinely progressive, genuinely liberating idea: a lightning bolt across the pages of history – the why in 1776, the how in 1787 – the idea of limited government, god-given rights, personal liberty and rule by the vast collective wisdom and industry of the common man, and not by the bored, pampered and self-hating elites that have run everything before and since. This is a once-in-history idea. This is why we have to conserve it. We have to conserve this fundamentally liberal idea.
I said that what we today call Progressivism is in fact ancient and circular. Don’t believe me? Well, the great roman orator Cicero, speaking in defense of his friend Sestius, around 55 BC, said – quote:
“Gaius gracchus proposed a grain law. The people were delighted with it because it provided an abundance of food without work. The good men, however, fought against it because they thought the masses would be attracted away from hard work and toward idleness, and they saw the state treasury would be exhausted.”
When a society – after generations of hard work, sacrifice and hardship – reaches a certain level of prosperity, “Progressives” like Bill Maher, Janeane Garofolo, Rosie O’Donnell and Gaius Gracchus – that last Progressive died in 121 BC – assume that the prosperity is endless, and push for more and more people to get more and more goods and services for less and less work. Why? Because – as today, in America, as with the British Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Ottomans, the Mongols, Rome, Greece, Eqypt, Babylon… They do it for political power. They live for political power. This “Progressivism” is ancient, recurring, tyrannical and ruinous.
And we voted for it. Just like the Romans did.
We can see from Cicero that throughout history, the disease is always the same – too much security and prosperity breeds laziness, narcissism, resentment and entitlement.
So if this is the cycle of civilization, and we see these same recurring signs around us in abundance today – how can there be any hope?
There’s hope because we are Americans. We’re different. Not genetically – although we are in fact the world’s mutts and that is an enormous strength. No, we are different, unique and exceptional culturally – because unlike the Babylonians, the Eqyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, the Turks, the Spanish, the French, The British and all the rest – we have actually done it. We have created the political tools to limit power and reward hard work, and we have lived with them for almost a quarter millennia. It is only by restoring and strengthening these truly progressive, but now-called conservative ideals that we can break the cycle of history.
How?
Well, first, we have to know how we got into this mess in the first place. This time around – our cycle – the rot began to take hold in America due primary to a group called The Frankfurt School. Keep in mind that the Frankfurt school is merely a product of where they appear on this great wheel of history – there have been dozens of civilizations that had their own “Frankfurt schools” in languages now lost to history.
But right after World War One, in Frankfurt, Germany the Institute for Social Research – they wanted to call themselves the “Institute for Marxism” but that was too on the nose – was left wondering why the world communist revolution — predicted as a certainty by Marxist social science – was not leading to the international revolution of the proletariat, the actual common working man.
And they figured out that capitalism – damn it! – was providing enough comfort and material gain, enough of an increase in the working man’s standard of living – that it just simply wasn’t going to happen. Ever.
Now, one kind of person might look at this and say, hooray! People’s lives are getting better – guess we weren’t needed after all.
But not these guys. These guys felt they had to bring heaven to earth.
And so they asked themselves: if the vanguard of the revolution wasn’t going to be the worker, then who would it be? And the answer they came up with was: the dispossessed.
The Neo-Marxist revolution would not attack the capitalist economy – that was too successful. The target of the new Marxist revolution would be the Culture.
Marxist philosophers like Antonia Gramsci, and later, Saul Alinski – personal hero to such present-day fellow travelers as Chris Matthews, Hillary Clinton and, of course, The President of the United States – started to create narratives – stories – about America. This rapidly evolved into a philosophy called “Critical Theory” and the idea of Critical Theory was to attack the dominant culture – that would be us – from all sides, simultaneously.
For instance, Black Americans would be told that their labor built the entire country, while White Americans merely sat back and essentially stole everything. Black slave labor did build the cotton economies of the Southern Confederacy, but the entire Confederacy had less factory capacity than New York City alone.
Nonetheless, many black Americans today have been taught that all of this belongs to them and not the truth, which is that that they were, and are, an integral and essential part of the group effort that built this country together.
Likewise, women are told that we live in an evil patriarchy, where all men are tyrants and potential rapists, determined to keep them in a form of domestic slavery, instead of being their partners and helpmates and husbands and protectors.
Gays are told not that this is one of the most inclusive and forgiving societies in the history of the world, but rather home to knuckle-dragging, murdering Neanderthals – when in plain sight, across the seas, one and a half billion Muslims routinely hang or stone or crush to death innocent people merely because of their sexual practices.
And on and on.
And when you try to argue against this social weapon of theirs, this Narrative, this lie that they tell again and again, well then, prepare for their counter-attack, which is called Political Correctness – the attempt to put the argument out of bounds before it can be had.
They use terms like Hate Speech and Racism. They want to put our arguments and rebuttals out of bounds so that they don’t have to hear them or deal with them. They have to exclude those arguments because if they don’t, those arguments are going to kick their asses and they know it.
And by the way: charges of Racism only work on decent people. You go up to a Klansman or a Nazi and call them a racist, and they say “duh!” Of course they’re racists. They’re proud of being racists. But you go up to someone who is not a racist, a person who finds racism appalling and disgusting, and tell them what they are saying is racism – even when it not only isn’t racism, but is in fact the opposite of racism– well, they’ll shut up. Mission Accomplished.
The objectives of the Frankfurt School, of Gramsci and Alinski in their assault on the culture, were laid out in detail and were very clear: Eliminate not only the voice, but the very idea of reason. Destroy history. Delegitimize shared morality. Medicate instead of discipline children. Promote the idea that problems are so complex that only elitists, experts and academics can discuss, let alone solve them. A later pair of American Marxist philosophers developed what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy: overwhelm America’s social systems – welfare, health care, immigration, etc. by telling people they were owed things, and by intentionally overwhelming them, cause them to collapse – leaving nothing but smoking wreckage, and no where to turn but to the government.
But above all, for this Frankfurt school strategy to work, it needed to foster resentment, envy, hopelessness and despair.
And it’s been spectacularly successful.
My fellow Americans… we are in an information war, a battle of narratives, and if that analysis is true then you and I are the last best hope of the last best hope. We are, together, soldiers in this narrative war for America and for civilization.
So can we win?
Of course we can win! Let me tell you where we are right now. We’re on the Titanic. Now hang on! There are some amazing things about that night that not many people know about. Things that give me hope.
Some people know that if the lookouts aboard Titanic had spotted the iceberg as little as five or six seconds earlier, Titanic would have been able miss that wall of ice by a few feet and would have survived to come home.
But very few people know that if those lookouts had spotted that iceberg only five or six seconds later — Titanic still would have survived. You see, Titanic was designed to remain afloat with up to five or her forward watertight compartments flooded – but not six. Had the lookout on Titanic seen that iceberg only a few seconds later, she would have hit it straight-on. It would have crumpled the bow, and a few hundred people would have been killed in the collision – but she would have stayed afloat, and instead of 1,490 people drowning in those icy waters, she would have limped home to New York, been refitted and repaired, and continued to do what she was built to do: bring people to America – to freedom. She represented what was best in us: vision, industry, ingenuity and hard work. That ship deserved to come home.
Some people misinterpret this to mean that there were a few seconds where Titanic could have been saved. It’s just the opposite. There were only a few seconds – ten or fifteen seconds – where Titanic could have been sunk. That iceberg went right down the side of the ship, staving in compartment after compartment. Progressivism is doing the same thing to our culture: flooding academia…movies…television…news media…comedy…music…government policy… damaging and flooding, one by one, the social institutions that kept this ship of freedom, ingenuity and prosperity afloat.
Like an iceberg, the danger from progressivism lies beneath the surface: the slow erosion of the work ethic, the fostering of division and resentment and unearned entitlement, the abandonment of the entire idea of decency and morality – all of this beneath the placid surface of simply claiming to help people.
My friends, it far too late to avoid this ancient iceberg, this giant dark wall that has sunk civilization after civilization under the calm disguise of compassion and concern. We cannot steer around it. If we are to avoid that fate, there is only one option left.
We need to ram the iceberg. We need to hit it head-on. We need to put in all the power we have – all of the power – and go right at the heart of that monster. Because everyone talks about what the iceberg did to Titanic, but no one talks about what Titanic did to the iceberg.
You see, I know something critical about this iceberg out in front of us, and that is this: that iceberg is hollow. It’s hollow.
Even the people who believe in it most strongly know it’s a lie. That’s why they have to lie to you about what they believe. They know, in their heart of hearts, that this philosophy has been the ruin of civilization in every one of the countless times it has been applied. They know – consciously or not – that in the last century alone their ideas have cost the lives of no less than 150 million people executed, or starved to death, to bring this paradise to earth.
And unlike the brave and selfless men and women that daily risk, and often give their lives in defense of freedom for their fellow man, these people believe in nothing greater than the sound of their own voice and are willing to die for nothing.
What would Bill Maher, or Janeane Garofolo, or Rosie O’Donnel be willing to give their own lives for? Nothing. Nothing.
It’s hollow. That iceberg is hollow. And we need to ram it, and we need to ram it now. It’s going to crush the front of our ship, and severely damage us as a culture – but we will survive. And by surviving, we can repair the damage and make ourselves better than we were.
We, for the first time in human history, have an example of what a free society looks like. We, for the first time in history, are children of the only real progressives in all of human history. And we, for the first time in history, have the technology that allows common people to talk to each other, to encourage and inform each other, and to make an end run around the suicidal elites and their suicidal, dying media organs.
We can do it. And we’re gonna do it. We are going to whip these communists out of their boots. And starting next time, we’ll start figuring out exactly how.
23Taking on more water
Postal Service Ends Third Quarter With $3.5 Billion Loss
Cash Shortfall Likely in 2011; Customer Service Scores Remain High
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The U.S. Postal Service ended the third quarter of fiscal year 2010 (April 1 – June 30) with a net loss of $3.5 billion, compared with a net loss of $2.4 billion for the same quarter last year. Third-quarter mail volume totaled 40.9 billion pieces – down approximately 700 million pieces, or 1.7 percent, compared to a year ago.
Complete USPS third-quarter results include operating revenue of $16 billion, some $294 million less than the same period last year, and operating expenses of $19.5 billion, an increase of $789 million, or 4.2 percent, over the third quarter last year.
The increase in operating expenses was attributable largely to higher workers’ compensation expenses due to a non-cash fair value adjustment and higher retiree health benefits expenses. Lower interest rates adversely affected the workers’ compensation liability, resulting in a $2 billion expense for the quarter – $870 million higher than the same quarter last year.
A significant portion of USPS losses in the past few years has been due to an unprecedented decline in mail volume – down by more than 20 percent since 2007. The replacement of letter mail and business-transactions mail by electronic alternatives continues to cause downward pressure on mail volume.
The organization’s financial situation is compounded by its obligation to pay $5.4 billion to $5.8 billion annually to prefund retiree health benefits. This requirement, established in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA), is an obligation unique to the Postal Service.
Liquidity remains a major concern as the end of the fiscal year approaches. Although cash flow appears to be sufficient for 2010 operations, it is uncertain whether cash flow, together with maximum available borrowing of $3 billion, will be enough to fund the Congressionally-mandated $5.5 billion payment to the Retiree Health Benefit Fund on September 30 and retain sufficient liquidity into 2011, according to Joseph R. Corbett, the Postal Service’s Chief Financial Officer.
“Given current trends, we will not be able to pay all 2011 obligations,” said Corbett. “Despite ongoing aggressive cost reductions totaling over $10 billion in the last three years, it is clear that a liquidity problem is looming and must be addressed through fundamental changes requiring legislation and changes to contracts.”
The Postal Service has incurred net losses in 14 of the last 16 fiscal quarters. The fiscal 2010 year-to-date net loss is $5.4 billion, compared to a loss in the same period last year of $4.7 billion.
Postmaster General John Potter noted that despite the cost-cutting, the Postal Service has continued to maintain a high level of customer service. The third-quarter service score for overnight single-piece First-Class Mail was 96.7 percent on-time, an improvement of 0.4 percent from the same period last year.
“Our dedication to customer service remains a top priority,” Potter said. “We continue to provide dependable customer service even as we focus on reducing costs. With the dedicated efforts of our entire organization, we are well on track to achieve approximately $3 billion in total cost reductions in 2010,” said Potter.
Cost reductions center on initiatives to improve efficiency and match work hours to reduced mail volume. Other savings are coming from consolidating excess capacity in mail processing and transportation networks, realigning carrier routes, delaying construction of new postal facilities and a variety of other initiatives.
Work hours were reduced by 63 million in the first three quarters of fiscal 2010, or 6.6 percent compared to the first three quarters of 2009. That is the equivalent of about 36,000 full-time employees.
“Securing the fiscal stability of the Postal Service will require continued efforts in all of these areas, as well as further review of retiree health benefit prefunding,” said Potter. “It also will require that the Postal Service gain flexibility within the law to move toward five-day delivery, to adjust our network as needed, to develop new products the market demands, and to work with our unions to meet the challenges ahead.”
Details are contained in the Postal Service Form 10-Q report that will be available Aug. 9, 2010, at http://www.usps.com/financials/ (click Form 10-Q under Quarter Reports).
A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no direct support from taxpayers. With 36,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, the Postal Service relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses. Named the Most Trusted Government Agency five consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $68 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 28th in the 2009 Fortune 500.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/postal-service-ends-third-quarter-with-35-billion-loss-100030234.html
24Oh Goody! “Massive solar storm to hit Earth in 2012 with ‘force of 100m bombs’” Thu, Aug 26 12:50 PM
Melbourne, Aug 26 (ANI): Astronomers are predicting that a massive solar storm, much bigger in potential than the one that caused spectacular light shows on Earth earlier this month, is to strike our planet in 2012 with a force of 100 million hydrogen bombs.
Several US media outlets have reported that NASA was warning the massive flare this month was just a precursor to a massive solar storm building that had the potential to wipe out the entire planet’s power grid.
Despite its rebuttal, NASA’s been watching out for this storm since 2006 and reports from the US this week claim the storms could hit on that most Hollywood of disaster dates – 2012.
Similar storms back in 1859 and 1921 caused worldwide chaos, wiping out telegraph wires on a massive scale. The 2012 storm has the potential to be even more disruptive.
“The general consensus among general astronomers (and certainly solar astronomers) is that this coming Solar maximum (2012 but possibly later into 2013) will be the most violent in 100 years,” News.com.au quoted astronomy lecturer and columnist Dave Reneke as saying.
“A bold statement and one taken seriously by those it will affect most, namely airline companies, communications companies and anyone working with modern GPS systems.
“They can even trip circuit breakers and knock out orbiting satellites, as has already been done this year,” added Reneke.
No one really knows what effect the 2012-2013 Solar Max will have on today’s digital-reliant society.
Dr Richard Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics division, told Reneke the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning”, causing catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.
NASA said that a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause “1 to 2 trillion dollars in damages to society’s high-tech infrastructure and require four to 10 years for complete recovery”.
The reason for the concern comes as the sun enters a phase known as Solar Cycle 24.
Most experts agree, although those who put the date of Solar Max in 2012 are getting the most press.
They claim satellites will be aged by 50 years, rendering GPS even more useless than ever, and the blast will have the equivalent energy of 100 million hydrogen bombs.
“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Fisher told Reneke.
“Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the Earth and it’s rapid, just like a lightning bolt. That’s the solar effect,” he added.
The findings are published in the most recent issue of Australasian Science. (ANI).
25The Abilene Paradox
An “Abilene paradox” occurs when a group of people decide on a course of action that is contrary to the preferences of any individual in the group. The concept was created by Jerry B. Harvey, a business management expert, to explain the damage caused by a particular type of groupthink involving assumed agreement. This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_iGdiYO7gI is a nicely produced, humorous enactment of the Abilene paradox.
While Harvey used the Abilene paradox within the context of business decision making, I think it can be applied on larger scales to any group–like, say, the Obama administration, Media, ReidPelosiCongress, and the Democrats generally.
Ace has mentioned “preference cascade” on a few occasions. Here, he calls it a pet obsession, introduced to him by Instapundit. From his link:
This illustrates, in a mild way, the reason why totalitarian regimes collapse so suddenly. . . . Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don’t realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99% of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it – but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.
This works until something breaks the spell, and the discontented realize that their feelings are widely shared, at which point the collapse of the regime may seem very sudden to outside observers – or even to the citizens themselves.
“Until something breaks the spell.” The spell, I would assert, is the Abilene paradox. In fact, the two appear to be parts of the same creature at different points in its evolution. A preference cascade occurs when an Abilene paradox breaks down. And, while every preference cascade would necessarily involve an Abilene paradox, the Abilene paradox can exist alone and undiscovered.
I think the Democrat Abilene paradox is just beginning to break down, with voices like Mort Zuckerman beginning to speak out. (Note that Republican–out group–opposition did nothing to sway these people.) Democrats are starting to realize no individual really wanted to go this far–to Abilene, as it were–with change. I wonder if any of them will be relieved the ride is over.
26Obama & the Fishermen
Wednesday, August 25, 2010, 9:00 AM
Why the fishermen are mad at Obama:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1276664
The White House and Lubchenco want an end to private commercial fishing and have taken steps to eliminate “freelancing,” for lack of a better term. Instead, they want to close the fisheries into “commodities markets” where the government essentially licenses fishermen and then allocates the catch based on a predetermined distribution plan. The “commodities markets” will kill many fishing-based jobs and essentially turn fishermen into government employees, and they’re not happy about it.
It just sounds so…
So…
So Soviet, doesn’t it?
It just doesn’t sound like America, at all. No liberty. No freedom of choice. You can choose to work for the government, as they permit, or not work at all.
And there is a weird lack of joy to it all, don’t you think? No fishing because you love it; because it’s in your family, and your blood and your culture and there’s nothing you’d rather do than captain your own boat and work for yourself.
None of that.
27No joy, no independence; just the state.
Obama is a cold guy, and he’s putting a chilling government into place.
Well, THIS is cheerful!: It’s Not A Question Of IF Sovereign Nations Will Default, But HOW: http://www.businessinsider.com/prepare-for-the-age-of-financial-oppression-2010-82
28MORE WASTED MONEY IN A COUNTRY THAT IS NOT USA!!!!
I AM SURE NICK CAN EXPLAIN AGAIN WHY WE WASTE BILLIONS TO SUPPORT OTHER COUNTRIES………..RIGHT NICK!!!!!!!!!
AP IMPACT: US wasted billions in rebuilding Iraq
AFP/File – US soldiers stand next to army vehicles during a logistical operation to clear equipment and heavy machinery … By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer Kim Gamel, Associated Press Writer – Sun Aug 29, 6:43 pm ET
KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq – A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets
As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.
That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.
There are success stories. Hundreds of police stations, border forts and government buildings have been built, Iraqi security forces have improved after years of training, and a deep water port at the southern oil hub of Umm Qasr has been restored.
Even completed projects for the most part fell far short of original goals, according to an Associated Press review of hundreds of audits and investigations and visits to several sites. And the verdict is still out on whether the program reached its goal of generating Iraqi good will toward the United States instead of the insurgents.
Col. Jon Christensen, who took over as commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region District this summer, said the federal agency has completed more than 4,800 projects and is rushing to finish 233 more. Some 595 projects have been terminated, mostly for security reasons.
Christensen acknowledged that mistakes have been made. But he said steps have been taken to fix them, and the success of the program will depend ultimately on the Iraqis — who have complained that they were not consulted on projects to start with.
“There’s only so much we could do,” Christensen said. “A lot of it comes down to them taking ownership of it.”
The reconstruction program in Iraq has been troubled since its birth shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The U.S. was forced to scale back many projects even as they spiked in cost, sometimes to more than double or triple initial projections.
As part of the so-called surge strategy, the military in 2007 shifted its focus to protecting Iraqis and winning their trust. American soldiers found themselves hiring contractors to paint schools, refurbish pools and oversee neighborhood water distribution centers. The $3.6 billion Commander’s Emergency Response Program provided military units with ready cash for projects, and paid for Sunni fighters who agreed to turn against al-Qaida in Iraq for a monthly salary.
But sometimes civilian and military reconstruction efforts were poorly coordinated and overlapped.
Iraqis can see one of the most egregious examples of waste as they drive north from Baghdad to Khan Bani Saad. A prison rises from the desert, complete with more than two dozen guard towers and surrounded by high concrete walls. But the only signs of life during a recent visit were a guard shack on the entry road and two farmers tending a nearby field.
In March 2004, the Corps of Engineers awarded a $40 million contract to global construction and engineering firm Parsons Corp. to design and build a prison for 3,600 inmates, along with educational and vocational facilities. Work was set to finish in November 2005.
But violence was escalating in the area, home to a volatile mix of Sunni and Shiite extremists. The project started six months late and continued to fall behind schedule, according to a report by the inspector general.
The U.S. government pulled the plug on Parsons in June 2006, citing “continued schedule slips and … massive cost overruns,” but later awarded three more contracts to other companies. Pasadena, Calif.-based Parsons said it did its best under difficult and violent circumstances.
Citing security concerns, the U.S. finally abandoned the project in June 2007 and handed over the unfinished facility to Iraq’s Justice Ministry. The ministry refused to “complete, occupy or provide security” for it, according to the report. More than $1.2 million in unused construction material also was abandoned due to fears of violence.
The inspector general recommended another use be found for the partially finished buildings inside the dusty compound. But three years later, piles of bricks and barbed wire lie around, and tumbleweed is growing in the caked sand.
“It will never hold a single Iraqi prisoner,” said inspector general Stuart Bowen, who has overseen the reconstruction effort since it started. “Forty million dollars wasted in the desert.”
Another problem was coordination with the Iraqis, who have complained they weren’t consulted and often ended up paying to complete unfinished facilities they didn’t want in the first place.
“Initially when we came in … we didn’t collaborate as much as we should have with the correct people and figure out what their needs were,” Christensen said. He stressed that Iraqis are now closely involved in all projects.
One clinic was handed over to local authorities without a staircase, said Shaymaa Mohammed Amin, the head of the Diyala provincial reconstruction and development committee.
“We were almost forced to take them,” she said during an interview at the heavily fortified local government building in the provincial capital of Baqouba. “Generally speaking, they were below our expectations. Huge funds were wasted and they would not have been wasted if plans had been clear from the beginning.”
As an example, she cited a date honey factory that was started despite a more pressing need for schools and vital infrastructure. She said some schools were left without paint or chalkboards, and needed renovations.
“We ended up paying twice,” she said.
In some cases, Iraqi ministries have refused to take on the responsibility for U.S.-funded programs, forcing the Americans to leave abandoned buildings littering the landscape.
“The area of waste I’m most concerned about in the entire program is the waste that might occur after completed projects are handed over to the Iraqis,” Bowen said.
The U.S. military pinned great hopes on a $5.7 million convention center inside the tightly secured Baghdad International Airport compound, as part of a commercial hub aimed at attracting foreign investors. A few events were held at the sprawling complex, including a three-day energy conference that drew oil executives from as far away as Russia and Japan in 2008, which the U.S. military claimed generated $1 million in revenues.
But the contracts awarded for the halls did not include requirements to connect them to the main power supply. The convention center, still requiring significant work, was transferred to the Iraqi government “as is” on Jan. 20, according to an audit by the inspector general’s office.
The buildings have since fallen into disrepair, and dozens of boxes of fluorescent lightbulbs and other equipment disappeared from the site. Light poles outside have toppled over and the glass facade is missing from large sections of the abandoned buildings.
Waste also came from trying to run projects while literally under fire.
The Americans committed to rebuilding the former Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah after it was destroyed in major offensives in 2004. The U.S. awarded an initial contract for a new waste water treatment system to FluorAMEC of Greenville, S.C. — just three months after four American private security contractors were savagely attacked. The charred and mutilated remains of two of them were strung from a bridge in the city.
An audit concluded that it was unrealistic for the U.S. “to believe FluorAMEC could even begin construction, let alone complete the project, while fierce fighting occurred daily.” The report also pointed out repeated redesigns of the project, and financial and contracting problems.
The Fallujah waste water treatment system is nearly complete — four years past the deadline, at a cost of more than three times the original $32.5 million estimate. It has been scaled back to serve just a third of the population, and Iraqi officials said it still lacks connections to houses and a pipe to join neighborhood tanks up with the treatment plant.
Desperate residents, meanwhile, have begun dumping their sewage in the tanks, causing foul odors and running the risk of seepage, according to the head of Fallujah’s municipal council, Sheik Hameed Ahmed Hashim.
“It isn’t appropriate for the Americans to give the city these services without completing these minor details,” Hashim said. “We were able to wipe out part of the memories of the Fallujah battles through this and other projects. … If they leave the project as it is, I think their reputation will be damaged.”
By contrast, the Basra children’s hospital — one of the largest projects undertaken by the U.S. in Iraq — looks like a shining success story, with gardeners tending manicured lawns in preparation for its opening. But that opening has been repeatedly delayed, most recently for a lack of electricity.
The construction of a “state of the art” pediatric specialist hospital with a cancer unit was projected to be completed by December 2005 for about $50 million. By last year, the cost had soared above $165 million, including more than $100 million in U.S. funds, and the equipment was dated, according to an auditors’ report.
Investigators blamed the delays on unrealistic timeframes, poor soil conditions, multiple partners and funding sources and security problems at the site, including the murder of 24 workers. Bechtel, the project contractor, was removed because of monthslong delays blamed on poor subcontractor performance and limited oversight, the special inspector general’s office said. A Bechtel spokeswoman, Michelle Allen, said the company had recommended in 2006 that work on the hospital be put on hold because of the “intolerable security situation.”
In an acknowledgment that they weren’t getting exactly what they hoped for, Iraqi officials insisted the label “state of the art” be removed from a memorandum of understanding giving them the facility. It was described as a “modern pediatric hospital.”
Hospital director Kadhim Fahad said construction has been completed and the electricity issue resolved.
“The opening will take place soon, God willing,” he said.
Residents are pleased with the outcome. One, Ghassan Kadhim, said: “It is the duty of the Americans to do such projects because they were the ones who inflicted harm on people.”
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Associated Press Writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.
29CBO: Eight Years of Iraq War Cost Less Than Stimulus Act
As President Obama prepares to tie a bow on U.S. combat operations in Iraq, Congressional Budget Office numbers show that the total cost of the eight-year war was less than the stimulus bill passed by the Democratic-led Congress in 2009.
According to CBO numbers in its Budget and Economic Outlook published this month, the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom was $709 billion for military and related activities, including training of Iraqi forces and diplomatic operations.
The projected cost of the stimulus, which passed in February 2009, and is expected to have a shelf life of two years, was $862 billion.
The U.S. deficit for fiscal year 2010 is expected to be $1.3 trillion, according to CBO. That compares to a 2007 deficit of $160.7 billion and a 2008 deficit of $458.6 billion, according to data provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
In 2007 and 2008, the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 1.2 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively.
“Relative to the size of the economy, this year’s deficit is expected to be the second largest shortfall in the past 65 years; 9.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), exceeded only by last year’s deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP,” CBO wrote.
The CBO figures show that the most expensive year of the Iraq war was in 2008, the year when the surge proposed by Gen. David Petraeus and approved by President Bush was in full swing and the turning point in the war. The total cost of Iraq operations in 2008 was $140 billion. In 2007, the cost of Iraq operations was $124 billion.
According to an analysis by the American Thinker’s Randall Hoven, the cost of the Iraq war from 2003-2008 — when Bush was in office — was $20 billion less than the cost of education spending and less than a quarter of the cost of Medicare spending during that same period.
30Dems like Scott are in “Finger Pointing Mode.” http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/squabbles-on-the-left-as-obama-morphs-into-carter Talk amongst yourselves.
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