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Alan Caruba

U.S. is Going Bankrupt One City at a Time

By Alan Caruba

Time to start watching U.S. cities go bankrupt. Prior to Detroit, there was Stockton, California, and, according to Stephen Moore, now the chief economist with the Heritage Foundation, there are more than sixty of the largest cities that “are plagued with the same kinds of retirement legacy costs that sent Detroit in Chapter 9 bankruptcy” last year.

“Keep an eye on ‘too big to fail’ cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York,” he warned. Among the twenty cities he listed in an August 2013 Newsmax article, he cited Compton and Oakland, CA, Harrisburg, PA, and Providence, RI. What these and other cities have in common is that “the vast majority are located in states with forced unions, non-right-to-work states.”

As Steve Stanek, a research fellow with the Heartland Institute, reported, when a federal judge, Stephen Rhodes, cleared the way for Detroit’s bankruptcy filing, in December, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFCCME) immediately filed a notice of appeal, but Detroit has more than 100,000 creditors. As its emergency financial manager, Kevyn Orr, said, “The reality is the city has no cash on hand to pay the magnitude of the debt we have, which is $12 billion--$5.7 billion of which has to do with health care obligations, $3.5 billion has to do with pensions, and $2 billion has to do with bondholders.”

At the time it declared bankruptcy, Detroit had 47 different public employee unions. The Detroit Water & Sewer Department had a farrier (a horse-shoer) who received $56,000 in pay and benefits every year even though the city had no horses in the department.

As Moore points out, “For at least the last 20 years major U.S. cities have been playgrounds for left-wing experiments—high taxes on the rich; sanctuaries for illegal immigrants; super-minimum wage rules; strict gun-control laws; regulations and paperwork that makes it onerous o open a business or develop on your own property; crony capitalism with contracts going to political donors and friends; and failing schools ruled by teacher unions, with little competition or productivity.”

The legacy costs of pensions and health benefits to retired teachers and municipal retirees force “city managers and mayors are forced to lay off firefighters, police and teachers. Detroit,” Moore noted, “has three retired city workers collecting a pension for every two currently working.”

Recently published, “The Great Withdrawal” by Craig R. Smith with Lowell Ponte examines the damage that progressive programs and policies have done to cities and to the nation. A nation with a $17 trillion debt who’s President has only one answer, raise the debt limit, will encounter a financial Armageddon if the spending and borrowing is not sharply curtailed.

Craig and Ponte point to 1913 as the year progressive, collectivist ideas “took control of the United States government and began a ‘fundamental transformation’ of our economy, politics, culture and beliefs that continues today.”

Citing Detroit as an example of the result of liberal, progressive policies, Smith said that “by 2013 (it) had become a war zone of urban strife, poverty, decay and government profligacy.”

Recall that President Obama claimed he had “saved” General Motors and Chrysler with bailouts that cost taxpayers “at least $25 billion that will never be paid back. At least a billion of these tax dollars went to improve GM facilities in Brazil, and at least $550 million went to GM facilities in Mexico.” Chrysler is now owned by the Italian automaker, Fiat.

Bond holders are major investors in cities and corporations, but the GM bailout denied payment to secured bondholders and redistributed their rightful share to the United Auto Workers. “As a result, today’s bonds are viewed as an investment with uncertain risk,” says Smith. In 2013, investors withdrew $80 billion from bond funds.”

As Smith points out, “The progressive method of operation was, and is, that when the economy is good, they raise taxes and expand government. When the economic cycle turns negative, the politicians blame others, refuse to reduce government—and, increasingly, use the bad economy as a reason for expanding government and spending even more.”

This describes what President has been doing since first elected in 2008. For the entirety of his first term, he blamed everything on President George W. Bush.

“Put simply,” says Smith, “most progressive cities are welfare city-states in which a large percentage of the population lives on government money, either as government dependents or government employees.”  This description fits the nation as well.

How bad are the present times? “27 percent of Americans have no savings at all, 46 percent have savings of less than $800, and 76% of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck.”

With the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—the Congressional Budget Office released a report predicting that, over the next decade, it will cost the nation about 2.3 million jobs and contribute to a $1 trillion increase in projected deficits.

Hans Bader, a senior attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, notes that it contains massive marriage penalties that discriminate against married people, huge work disincentives for some older workers, has slashed hiring, cut economic growth, and induced employers to replace full-time workers with part-time employees. In the process, millions have seen their healthcare policies canceled or replaced with policies with higher premiums and deductibles.

There are already 92 million Americans who are unemployed or ceased looking for work. There are 47 million on food stamps.

The ultimate progressive, President Obama, is impoverishing millions of Americans. Unlike Detroit, America cannot declare bankruptcy. It can only collapse if voters do not replace those Senators and Representatives that voted for Obamacare and who refuse to take the steps to reduce government spending and borrowing. We have three years in which to survive Obama.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Cartoon Round Up

 

 

 

Hating All Infidels

 

By Alan Caruba

What does it say about Islam that both the Super Bowl in America and the winter Olympics in Russia require massive security against an attack by jihadists?

What most people in America and the West have not been able to grasp is Islam’s hatred of the infidel—the unbeliever. It has existed for fourteen centuries. On top of that is the schism within Islam between Sunnis, the majority of Muslims, and Shiites.

Because few among us have actually lived among the Muslims of the Middle East our understanding of that particular element of Islam, Arabs and Persians, is gained only by the daily headlines of the way they kill one another in those nations where the Sunnis and Shiites are locked in a war to gain or retain power.

While Islam looks and sounds like a religion, it is more a political and economic entity concerned with controlling those populations where it is dominant, largely keeping them unable to resist the despots, monarchs, and clerics in charge. Iran’s Supreme Leader, for example, is worth billions.

What the West has yet to grasp is its intent on world domination. That is why jihad—the so-called holy war—is a central pillar of faith.

The worship of Mohammed, believed by Muslims to be the final prophet who replaces the Jewish prophets and Jesus, doesn’t just permit but encourages the Islamic hatred of the infidel. It justifies any action taken against Judaism and Christianity; it includes the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and all others.

At a time when the U.S. is attempting to encourage Iran to give up its program to acquire its own nuclear weapons, those engaged in this ignore decades of deceit while the program continued and the example set by Mohammed who signed treaties when he felt his group was not strong enough to gain power and then broke them. His history is filled with attacks, taking women and children hostage, and looting until he had built a force capable of prevailing.

As one of the leading authorities on Islam, Ali Sina, has written, “This is how Muslims have operated ever since. They offer peace and sign treaties when in their estimation the prospect of winning the war is not good. But they will break their treaties the moment they become confident of their victory.”

In the 1970s, after centuries of little to no Jihad, Muslims resumed it, launching their terrorist activities. “Jihad was never abandoned.” Sina warns that, “Unfortunately the Westerners have no understanding of the Muslim mind and here lies their vulnerability.” 

This explains in part why, following 9/11, a classic terrorist attack, the U.S. response in Afghanistan should have been a limited, but devastating attack followed by withdrawal. The same applies to Iraq where the reason given was the removal of Saddam, its dictator who had previously attacked Kuwait, and the belief he had weapons of mass destruction. Instead of an attack comparable to Kuwait, his quick capture and death, America settled into Iraq thinking it could introduce democracy. Al Qaeda, the Sunnis and Shiites had other thoughts. Today they are locked into bloody battle.

The same applies to Syria where hundreds of thousands have died as various Islamist groups, generally referred to as al Qaeda these days, as they have fought for control of the nation and been resisted by Bashar Assad, the son of its former dictator. Only mentioned in passing has been the wanton killing of Syrian Christians. Today the Middle East is a no-man’s land for Christians.

Open Doors USA recently released its 2014 World Watch List, a report that ranks the 50 worst nations engaged in the persecution of Christians. What it reveals is that 82% of all the prosecution occurring worldwide is perpetrated by Muslims.

It has become a cliché that, while all Muslims are not terrorists, all the terrorists are Muslims.

As Sina bluntly says, “The Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with what the Westerners do and there is nothing that they could do to diminish it except to fight it and destroy it.” An author and founder of Faith Freedom, a movement to encourage Muslims to leave Islam, Sina says “The truth is that Islam is a sick ideology. It is an ideology of hate and it can do nothing but produce death. This is the reality that the world is unwilling to accept.”

In the Middle East the U.S. has only one ally and that is Israel, the Jewish state. While it has maintained diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia for decades since World War Two, that nation has invested billions to build mosques and spread Islam throughout Europe, America, and everywhere else in the world. They are Sunni mosques where Shiites are not welcome.

The misnamed “Arab spring” has revealed how rotten to the core Islam is. Those despots who were overthrown in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt has left the first two nations in chaos and, in Egypt, the army, recognizing who the enemy is, has declared the Muslim Brotherhood the enemy. So has the United Arab Republic.

Iran is the classic case of Islamists overthrowing the shah and instituting a nightmarish state in which Iranians have no justice system to turn to and a legislature in name only. The ayatollahs rule. If they acquire nuclear weapons, they will use them, first against Israel, and then likely against Saudi Arabia, a Sunni nation. The Iranians are Shiites.

A reading of the Qur’an would tell you what America and the West is up against. Islam is not about peace. “Fight in the cause of God those who fight you…And slay them wherever ye catch them…And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression and there prevail justice and faith in God…” (2:190-193).

“The punishment of those who wage war against God and His apostle and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sites, or exile from the land.” (5-36).

                                                                                 

“…fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war…” (9.5)

The Qur’an is a battle plan for world conquest.

When President Obama says that al Qaeda is being defeated, he is deceiving Americans. Thus far his Middle East policies have seen Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria turn against us. American influence there is waning as the Jihad continues and spreads. In Benghazi, Libya, it cost us the life of our ambassador and three security personnel. And then the President and Secretary of State lied about it. The date of the attack was September 11, 2012.

Islam demands that infidels either convert or accept a limited role called dhimmitude. That is our fate if we do not demonstrate our power and destroy those seeking to dominate the world.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

The Gay Attack on American Values

A Gay Parade

By Alan Caruba

In societies around the world, homosexuals encounter not just resistance, but the threat of death for their sexual orientation. In the West we regard this as barbarian and it is. I concluded long ago that gays—using their own term—have no choice over this sexual aberration from the norm of heterosexuality.

In America, gays—male and female homosexuals—represent about 3% of the population. That leaves 97% in a majority and that majority is now under a full assault on their traditional values concerning marriage—intended only for the opposite sexes—and in some cases on their religious faith that deems homosexuality a sin.

In recent years we have seen gays achieve a legal status for same-sex marriage, thus undermining centuries of tradition that understands marriage to be for the purpose of procreation and as the keystone of society. We have a President who changed his mind from his 2008 political campaign and announced that he not only approved of gay marriage but that his administration, the Department of Justice, would not enforce the Defense of Marriage law passed by Congress. 

The Obama administration has pressed hard to alter the military that went from “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” under the Clinton administration, to the present status that sees no problem in the close living conditions under which heterosexual and homosexual troops must live and work together. This was always regarded as a problem of unit cohesion in the long years leading up to the 1990s and it likely still is. In a similar fashion, the infusion of women into combat units poses problems that the military understandably avoided for most of the last two hundred and twenty-eight years of the nation’s history.

The passage of Obamacare has posed significant problems for religious groups that oppose abortion and related practices. It has particularly affected Catholic institutions and, most recently, the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of nuns who do not want to signal any concurrence with the law as it is written. The Supreme Court has granted that some respite, but their issue and others will surely have to be addressed by the Court at some point.

In Massachusetts, a homosexual legal group has filed papers to force a Catholic school to hire a man who is “married” to another man. As reported by MassResistance.org, “Back in July, Matthew Barrett of Dorchester applied for a job as the food service director at Fontbonne Academy, a Roman Catholic girls’ high school in Milton, Mass, and was subsequently offered the job. When he filled out a pre-employment form listing his ‘husband’ as an emergency contact the school told him that ‘the Catholic religion doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage. We cannot hire you.’”

“Barratt claimed to be shocked by the school’s action,” noted MassResistance, “But it appears that he was purposefully dishonest. He told the Boston Globe that he was raised a Catholic and that he was informed by school officials during the interview process that employees are expected to follow Catholic doctrine. However, he did not tell the school that he was openly involved with homosexual behavior and was in a ‘gay marriage.’”

MassResistance regards the case as “the beginning of the homosexual movement’s legal assault on conservative churches, particularly Catholic, that have steadfastly refused to modify their religious convictions and comply with the homosexual movement’s demands on society. Up until now they’ve been largely left alone. But that is about to change.”

As the Boston Globe noted, “Barrett’s complaint, which may be the first of its kind in the country, comes at a time when religion-based schools in the increasing number of states where gay marriage is legal have been scrutinizing hiring and firing practices to ensure they conform with the pillars of their faiths”

“School administrators,” the Globe reported, “have been fired from Catholic schools and universities in Arkansas, California, New York, and Washington, among other states, after marrying their same-sex partners or announcing plans to do so.”

Bennett Klein, the lawyer for the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission against Discrimination, asserts that “Our laws carefully balance the important values of religious liberty and non-discrimination. When Fontbonne Academy fired Matt from a job that has nothing to do with religion, they came down on the wrong side of the law.” It has everything to do with the free practice of religion.

“We’re seeing religion-affiliated entities more and more trying to push the line toward discriminating against gay, lesbian, and transgendered people,” said Klein.

No, it is the homosexuals who are pushing the line against religious groups who believe that their belief in God and their faith precludes the destruction of the construct of marriage is a sin against mankind and society.

It is 3% of the population demanding that 97% toss aside their faith and their values to accommodate the aberration called homosexuality. And, yes, it is an aberration because homosexuality cannot be interpreted as “normal” in any species.

MassResistance correctly says “This is madness and should not have any legal leg to stand on.”

If the homosexual assault on values and practices that have existed for centuries in the Catholic Church and in other religious faiths succeeds, the whole of our society will suffer for it. The Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion—murder—has resulted in the deaths of millions of unborn children who had a right to life.

Now, in Massachusetts and other States where same-sex marriage is deemed to be legal, the whole of the nation’s defense of marriage is under assault.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Israel Watchful in Midst of Mideast Unrest

Palestinian Children

By Alan Caruba

While Syria remains in turmoil, Iraq is afflicted with bombings, and Egypt addresses terrorism in its cities and the Sinai desert, Israel is an oasis of peace even though it continues to be rocketed from Gaza, the base for Hamas, a Palestinian faction that is in conflict with the Palestinian Authority.

The Authority has been led since 2004 by Mahmoud Abbas after the death of Yasser Arafat. Elected president in 2005, his term ended in 2009, but he has remained in that office by not holding any elections.

Despite the fact that Israel has been a steadfast ally of the United States and is the only nation in the Mideast that does not pose a threat to peace it continues to be an obsession with the United Nations that is devoted to the stateless Palestinians and has declared 2014 the UN Years of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

Since its declaration of independence in 1948, Israeli efforts to secure any peace with the Palestinians have proven futile. Instead, it was immediately attacked by a coalition of Arab states, followed by wars in 1967 and 1973. It exists with threats of extinction by the Palestinian leadership and from Iran.

Journalist-in-resident at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Claudia Rosett, recently noted that “In the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinian Liberation Organization promised to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and resolve all outstanding issues of permanent status ‘through negotiations’. Instead, the Palestinian Authority has been reneging on this agreement, seeking a path to statehood by applying for, and getting, full membership in UNESCO in 2011, and enhanced status in the U.N. General Assembly in 2012, as a non-member Observer State.”

The efforts of the Obama administration ignore the fact that setting up an independent Palestinian state, one that would have control of the West Bank, would produce a disaster for Israel as a flood of refugees from neighboring Arab countries would arrive, throwing the territories into chaos and posing a huge security threat to Israel. In addition, Jordan has expressed opposition to such control. 

 

The Palestinian Authority, created by the Oslo Accords, has enormous unemployment problems and so does the Hamas-controlled Gaza. Neither has the financial stability to maintain itself.

The “Arab Spring” that saw Egypt’s, Tunisia’s, and Libya’s despots deposed have declined into internal conflicts in these nations. Groups affiliated with al Qaeda and comparable movements have taken advantage by seeking to assume control. Syria is divided by many groups, some of whom oppose the jihadists. In Egypt, the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is an offspring), led the government to crack down on the organization.

Egypt’s former defense minister, Gen. Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, resigned in late January in anticipation of running for president. Though the new constitution separates the two pinnacles of power, the army and the political executive, he would likely remain the most powerful leader, still able to continue the war on the Brotherhood to free Egypt from its grip. One of his goals is the remove the Palestinian Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip and this would be very good news for the Israelis.

Meanwhile, the Israelis have been working with the U.S. to develop two security buffer zones that are taking shape in Syria. This involves the provision of U.S. small arms to local militias where some 180,000 Druse tribesmen live in 120 scattered villages. In Jordan, the U.S. has Special Forces helping, along with the Jordanians, to train Syrians opposed to the jihadists. A second buffer zone will include the Syrian-Golan border area to include Quneitra that has a population of around 300,000.

According to a news report by Israel’s DEBKA File, “The goal is to connect the two buffer zones as a safe haven and a stronghold in southern Syria for moderate Syrian opposition elements, safeguarded by U.S., Israel and Jordanian military support.

What remains a cancerous conundrum is the hatred directed at Israel by the United Nations, an international organization allegedly devoted to world peace. Not far behind it is the European Union and, of course, the whole of the Mideast region mired in a hatred that goes back 1,400 years thanks to Islam.

The Obama administration owes much to Israel for the assistance it has provided as it has tried to find a role in resolving or containing the Syrian conflict. Despite protestations of support, Israel cannot be blamed for being watchful of what the U.S. says and what it does. As in the whole of the Mideast, President Obama has squandered any trust the U.S once had.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

The Sierra Club Hates Energy

 

By Alan Caruba

If I told you that you should hate coal, oil and natural gas, you might think I was crazy and you would be right. Everything we do involves these three energy reserves and the U.S. has so much of them that we could be energy independent of the rest of the world while, at the same time, exporting them.

When you think about energy reserves, think about the hundreds of thousands of jobs they represent. Then think about the huge revenue in leases and taxes they represent to the government that needs to reduce its debt. Ultimately, though, try to imagine a nation that does not utilize petroleum in thousands of ways or fails to tap its enormous coal and natural gas reserves to generate the electricity upon which that everything depends.

I recently received an email from the Sierra Club praising the President’s State of the Union speech in which he claimed that climate change—by which they mean global warming—is real and that the science is “settled.” No, the science entirely refutes it—except if one means that the climate has always been a state of change. The most recent climate change is seventeen years of cooling that has gifted us with record-breaking cold as far south as Florida.

What Sierra Club focused on was Obama’s call for “new sources of energy” other than the traditional ones. He was referring to solar and wind energy. A recent news article on CNSNews noted that “Solar power, which President Barack Obama promoted…accounted for 0.2 percent of the U.S. electricity supply in the first nine months of 2013, according to data published by the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration.” 

According to the EIA, “the United States is producing less electricity now than it did when Obama took office…From 2008 to 2012, U.S. electricity production declined by 1.7 percent.”

Some might take this as a good thing, but “electricity has gotten more expensive since 2008—with the electricity price index at an all-time high.” So we are paying more while getting less.

The Sierra Club, however, criticized Obama saying “As long as his administration keeps throwing lifelines to old sources of energy like oil and gas, we won’t be able to lead the world on clean energy solutions like wind and solar.”  They called for an “end to oil and gas fracking on public lands.” What they are not saying is that the Obama administration has virtually put an end to any exploration and extraction of energy sources on public lands. And you can forget about the massive reserves estimated to exist off-shore of our coasts.

In early January, Mark D. Green, the editor of Energy Tomorrow, a project of the American Petroleum Institute, examined the reality of our vast energy sources. Keep in mind that every product we purchase is dependent in some way on oil. “Every day 143 U.S. refineries convert an average of 15 million barrels of crude oil” that provide power for our vast transportation needs and thousands of other uses. Oil is the basis for the creation of plastic. Try to imagine living without anything that does not utilize plastic in some fashion.

As for natural gas, experts predict that lower prices as more is discovered via fracking, will increase industrial output 2.8 percent by 2015 and 3.9 percent by 2025. Policies that would allow the export of U.S. liquefied natural gas would generate between $15.6 billion and $73.6 billion to the Gross Domestic Product and help reduce our deficits and debt.

The Sierra Club doesn’t want to see the U.S. benefit from coal, oil and natural gas. It wants to see the landmass filled with solar farms and thousands of wind turbines that would not produce enough electricity to meet the needs of nation, let alone a major city. Because they are unpredictable, all require the backup of traditional plants.

Nor does the Sierra Club make any mention of the Obama administration’s war on coal that has forced 153 plants to shut down. Its Environmental Protection Agency has proposed regulations that would require new plants to employ carbon capture and sequestration technology that is not commercially available! Nor is there any reason to capture carbon dioxide, the gas that is the “food” that every single piece of vegetation requires; a gas that plays virtually no role at all in the Earth’s climate.

As this is being written, the State Department just released a report that would clear the way for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada after a five-year delay by the Obama administration. Pipelines are the safest way to transport oil and natural gas. If the U.S. cannot gain access to the oil, it will go to China and other nations.

The prospect of the pipeline was rejected by the Sierra Club. Friends of the Earth announced that it would join with the Rainforest Action Network, the Sierra Club, and other radical Green groups to hold vigils around the nation Monday to protest its possible approval and construction.

The Sierra Club is not only lying to its members, it is lying to all of us when it says “Getting all of the energy we need without using fossil fuels is no longer a question of whether we can—but whether we will.” We can’t, we shouldn’t, and we won’t…but we must wait until Obama is no longer in office and, as early as the 2014 midterm elections, we must rid our nation of his supporters in Congress.

Then we will watch our nation’s economy expand with more jobs and more revenue.

© Alan Caruba, 2014