Support wanes for U.S. war in Afghanistan as doubts grow

Our 9-year-old war in Afghanistan has long had its critics. But now, a number of former officials who once supported the war — or were at least willing to give the U.S. military time to see if it could be won — are questioning whether the benefit of stabilizing Afghanistan is worth the daunting cost.

The doubters include Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, the closest thing the United States has to an official "foreign policy establishment"; Leslie H. Gelb, his predecessor; and Robert D. Blackwill, a former aide to President George W. Bush.

"The current strategy isn't working, and it's costing roughly $100 billion a year," Haass, a former aide to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, told me last week. "It's time for a major recalibration: not an immediate withdrawal but a significant scaling down of our ambitions."

And last week, a group of 46 foreign policy experts issued a joint report arguing that the goal of building a unified, stable Afghanistan is beyond the ability of the United States, and unnecessary to boot. The panel, the Afghanistan Study Group, included both longtime critics of the war and some who supported U.S. policy until recently.

"A U.S. military victory over the Taliban is simply not necessary to protect U.S. interests," said one of its members, Paul R. Pillar, a former CIA counter-terrorism official.

In the general public, of course, support for the war in Afghanistan has been declining for at least four years. In a CNN poll this month, 57% of respondents said they opposed the war; only 41% said they favored it. But that was to be expected as the war dragged on and casualties rose.

"Elite" opinion is harder to measure. Who counts as a member of the foreign policy elite anyway? But looking only at people who have held, or might soon hold, foreign policy jobs in Republican or Democratic administrations, you find increasing skepticism about whether the war is winnable.

Who knew Democrats in Congress would face first death panels?

The past week began (for me) on a bright note and only got better. The New York Times announced the Democrats have instituted internal death panels:

As Democrats brace for a November wave that threatens their control of the House, party leaders are preparing a brutal triage of their own members in hopes of saving enough seats to keep a slim grip on the majority.

In the next two weeks, Democratic leaders will review new polls and other data that show whether vulnerable incumbents have a path to victory. If not, the party is poised to redirect money to concentrate on trying to protect up to two dozen lawmakers who appear to be in the strongest position to fend off their challengers.

My friend Rick Ballard immediately pictured Democratic party leaders "breaking the fingers of those clutching the gunwales," and Nancy Pelosi called for a party redistributionist scheme in which members in safe districts were to redirect their money to vulnerable incumbents. I couldn't figure out who she was talking about because with so many members of the Congressional Black Caucus under indictment or the object of ethics inquiries, who exactly was in a safe district? Still, there must be some. She indicated they had $218 million in their campaign accounts and could help out their colleagues. Of course, those figures might have been compiled by the CBO at the same time as it calculated the savings to be achieved by ObamaCare. In any event, the Democrats had better use what they have because it appears from all credible accounts that the PACs and employees of the nation's biggest businesses have finally awakened from their stupor and are diverting their campaign money spigot from the Democrats to the Republicans.

What only yesterday had been touted as the party (and Obama's) "signature" achievements --ObamaCare and the stimulus package -- were now obvious handicaps to re-election. Bill Clinton who had earlier urged ObamaCare's passage to wavering Congressmen had the nerve to praise Rep. Mike McMahon for his independence and non partisanship in refusing to vote for that Act. Five Democrats who voted against ObamaCare were running on that fact. Not a single incumbent who voted for it was citing support for that "signature" achievement in a campaign ad.

As for the Stimulus throwaway, the party bosses directed candidates never to even use the word "stimulus" in their campaigns.

On the hustings, even Senator Feingold in fairly liberal Wisconsin was running from the President. You have to wonder if he hums "You'll Never Walk Alone" as Air Force One hits the tarmac on the campaign circuit. And Obama, who proudly called himself a "mutt" at his first press conference is now complaining that interest groups "talk about me like a dog."

When Obama talks "shovel-ready," check what he's shoveling

President Obama is asking for even more tax dollars this week for his failed stimulus policies yet his first trillion-dollar stimulus already promised massive spending on infrastructure that would put people back to work.

Didn't happen. The massive spending on infrastructure or the putting people back to work.

Now Obama says putting the taxpayer on the hook for borrowing billions more and then spending those billions on infrastructure is the ticket to pulling the economy out of its Obamanomics nosedive.

“This will not only create jobs immediately, it’s also going to make our economy hum over the long haul,” Obama said of his new borrowing and spending plan in his Labor Day speech to a Big Labor union audience.

Yet a senior White House official told reporters on a conference call the very same day, “We’re not like trying to put out an idea today that in October 2010, this is going to create a lot of jobs. This is not what this is.”

So which is it? Will borrowing and spending billions more on the president’s Big Labor union leadership buddies “create jobs immediately,” as Obama said? Or is that “not what this is”?

And will anyone in the Obama administration ever tell us what it really is without the doublespeak?

Judging by history, it’s not likely.

The first stimulus bill was sold as spending on “shovel ready” projects to provide the jobs that would put millions of people back to work.

According to Recovery.gov, the President’s own website which accounts for the stimulus funding (ahem), of the first $787 billion stimulus bill, a full $275 billion has gone un-spent as of August 27, 2010. And of the $512 billion of stimulus already spent, only $18.5 billion (less than seven percent) has been paid out by the Department of Transportation on these “shovel ready” jobs.

Let me repeat that: less than seven percent has gone for the promised transportation infrastructure.

Pentagon blocked book naming Mohammed Atta as hazardous

U.S. soldier in Afghanistan uses Facebook to alert parents to alleged civilian murders by other soldiers; 5 charged, 7 accused

A dozen US soldiers are facing trail accused of being part of a 'kill team' that allegedly killed Afghan civilians in an arbitrary fashion - and they even collected their victims' fingers as trophies of war.

Five soldiers have been charged with the killing three Afghan men 'for sport'. And seven more are accused of covering up the murders.

In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to come out of the Afghan war, the deaths are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan.

But the father of one of the five accused of murder said today he tried to warn the Army that troops in his son's unit had killed civilians.

Accused: Emma and Christopher Winfield's son Adam, 22, tried to to tell the Army about the civilian killings

By the time suspects were arrested in May, two more Afghans were dead.

Christopher Winfield said his son Adam, 22, was so disgusted after the first killing that he sent Facebook messages home asking for help.

Winfield called the Army and a military hot line asking officials to investigate - to no avail.

His son's lawyer said he was ordered to shoot at the third victim but deliberately shot high.

An Army spokeswoman declined to comment about whether the base received any tips about the case.

The new details about Winfield's efforts to alert the Army and his son's pleas raised questions about the Army's handling of the case and its system for allowing soldiers to report misconduct by their colleagues.

The soldiers have been accused of conspiracy and premeditated murder.

The highest ranking of them is Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, who, with Cpl. Jeremy Morlock, are accused of taking part in all three killings.

Pte Andrew Holmes is charged with murder in the first killing, and Specialist Michael Wagnon is charged in another. Both deny the charges.

But Adam Winfield's words and fears fell on deaf ears, according to his parents

Winfield is charged with murder in the final killing, and his lawyer insists he was ordered to shoot after Gibbs hit the civilian with a grenade. Winfield deliberately shot high and missed, he said.

Gibbs has denied the charges. His lawyer said his client maintains that the shootings were 'appropriate engagements' and denies involvement in any conspiracy to kill civilians.

The soldiers, all assigned to the 5th Stryker Brigade, deployed in July 2009 and were stationed at a base in Kandahar Province.

Gibbs, 25, arrived in the unit late last year and soon began discussing how easy it would be to kill civilians, some in the platoon told Army investigators.

The first indication for Christopher Winfield and his wife, Emma, that something was amiss came on January 15, the day of the first killing.

'I'm not sure what to do about something that happened out here, but I need to be secretive about this,' their son wrote them in a Facebook message.

On February 14, he told his parents what happened in a lengthy internet chat: Members of his unit on patrol had killed 'some innocent guy about my age just farming.'

He said he did not witness the killing.

But, he wrote, those involved told him about it and urged him to 'get one of my own.'

He said that virtually everyone in the platoon was aware of what was going on, but no one seemed to object.

He added: 'If you talk to anyone on my behalf, I have proof that they are planning another one in the form of an AK-47 they want to drop on a guy.'

He continued that he didn't know who to trust and feared for his safety if his comrades learned he was talking to authorities.

'Should I do the right thing and put myself in danger for it. Or just shut up and deal with it,' he asked his parents.

'There are no more good men left here. It eats away at my conscience everyday.'

In statements to investigators, at least three platoon members said Gibbs directly threatened Winfield.

One soldier, Private first class Justin Stoner, who reported hashish smoking in the unit, said he was beaten by several platoon members.

Gibbs and Morlock then paid him a visit, with Gibbs rolling out on the floor a set of severed fingers, he told investigators.

Morlock told him that 'if I don't want to end up like that guy ... shut the hell up.'

The killings eventually came to light when the soldier who had reported the drug use told investigators that Morlock 'had three prior kills that none of which I believe were actually justified.'

Preliminary hearings in the case are expected to begin this autumn.

Monica Conyers begins 37-month prison term for taking bribes

With roughly 20 minutes to go until her deadline, Monica Conyers obeyed a judge’s order and turned herself in to a federal prison camp in West Virginia this afternoon to begin her 37-month sentence for taking bribes.

Conyers, federal inmate No. 43693-039, self-surrendered at roughly 1:40 p.m. at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp -- nicknamed Camp Cupcake for its cushy atmosphere and one-time home to domestic guru Martha Stewart. The former Detroit city councilwoman will undergo a medical screening and psychological evaluation before being placed in general housing.

According to Sam Adams, the public information officer at the Alderson prison camp, once Conyers is medically cleared and assigned a case manager, she will be placed in her room, which is a standard cubicle with a bunk bed, no lock on the door, and no bars.

Because the facility is a work camp, Adams explained, Conyers will get a job assignment that could include plumbing, painting, food service, groundskeeping or orderly duties.

What's Castro up to with his confession of communism's failure?

Fidel Castro stunned the world this week by admitting socialism had failed in Cuba. The implication of the dictator's statement is unclear, but one thing isn't: Castro's sycophants have some explaining to do.

Castro, now 84 and semi-retired, made a surprisingly lucid admission about how 52 years of communist dictatorship have ruined his country. "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he casually told the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, a reporter he summoned to Havana to tell him his thoughts.

Castro made other noteworthy statements to the reporter — that he regretted urging the Soviet Union to rain nuclear war on the U.S. in 1962, and that he wanted Iran's leader to stop slandering the Jews. But nothing was as arresting as the statement that his life work, the communism he forced on Cuba in 1959 was, in truth, a miserable failure.

Castro's motives in stating the obvious are still unclear. He may be desperate for attention. Or, having turned his country into an impoverished hellhole, he may want the U.S. trade embargo to end.

Cuba scholar Humberto Fontova notes that Castro has made similar offhand statements in the past, and none had any consequences.

Embattled Democrats tout their opposition to Obama's agenda

'They're betting that between now and November, you're going to come down with amnesia," President Obama told a Milwaukee crowd on Monday, vilifying the Republicans who "helped devastate our middle class." But it seems as if the real case of amnesia—or maybe post-traumatic stress disorder—has struck the Democrats, who are now doing everything they can to help voters forget ObamaCare.

This is a remarkable turn of events for Mr. Obama's major domestic achievement that was also supposed to be a political winner. Facing a grim November, Democrats are now running on another quarter-baked stimulus plan and the specter of John Boehner's perpetual tan, instead of the bill they spent more than a year debating and hailed as the liberal triumph of the century. Democrats now barely mention ObamaCare on the trail—unless they're trashing it.

In Milwaukee, the President made a few desultory mentions of "health care that will be there when you get sick." And in Cleveland Wednesday, his list of the iniquities from which he saved the country included "health insurance reform that stops insurance companies from jacking up your premiums at will."

But what about all the grandiose ambitions of universal coverage? What about bending the cost curve? The parade of horribles that would occur if Congress failed to act? "Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result," as Mr. Obama put it in a speech to Congress a year ago.

The only politicians who today are finding any redeeming electoral value in ObamaCare are Republicans running on reform alternatives and the Democrats who voted against it. In South Dakota, four-term Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is running ads that tout her vote against "the trillion-dollar health-care plan." Mrs. Herseth Sandlin won in 2008 with 68% of the vote but now is in a dead heat against GOP challenger Kristi Noem.

Idaho freshman Walt Minnick says in one TV spot that "I've had to say no far more than I've said yes. I've said no to more government spending, no to President Obama's big health-care plan," because "standing up to what's wrong in Washington is right for Idaho." Pennsylvania's Jason Altmire, class of 2006, features constituents who say things like, "You saw when he voted against health care" and, "He's not afraid to stand up to the President."

Now that insolvency looms, Obama is offering tax cuts: as elsewhere, "the chariot of state is driving over the cliff"

In France, the legal retirement age is 60. President Sarkozy, who like every other European leader is desperate to balance the books, proposes to raise this to 62. Hence the scene, as strikers work at bringing the country to a halt, and fill the streets in the time-honoured, Parisian fashion.

Over the Channel, the flashpoint was an attempt by management to lay off 800 employees of the London Underground. Sympathetic unions began an industrial action designed to cripple the city in Monday's rush hour.

From what I can see, nothing like the scenes in Athens, recently, but getting there.

The foreground problem is essentially the same everywhere, and in the stimulating spirit of "yes we can," Obama's America is quickly catching up with the European bankruptcy. Here in Canada, we may be feeling rather smug, thanks chiefly to the "no we can't" attitudes of successive federal governments. But our actual fiscal condition is concealed in the federal-provincial cups and marbles: A country that may be technically solvent, consisting of provinces that are all going bankrupt.

The background problem is simplicity itself. The Nanny State has blown the bank. She, or it, has done so everywhere. Even after appropriating half of every national income with taxes both direct and indirect, and after offloading the costs of cumbersome do-good schemes onto businesses through convoluted regulations, Nanny is reduced to printing money.

From the liquidators' point of view, however, the problem is rather more complicated: the debtors are more hostile than the creditors. Thanks to democracy, and the power of "the people," under the inspiration of demagogues, to appropriate each other's wealth, there seems no chance of a smooth disposition.

Our debts have been rephrased as "entitlements." They are the fiscal dimension of "human rights." Everyone has a "right" to a pension, and to much else besides, regardless of whether he put his share into the piggy; or whether Nanny absconded with what he did put in.

Those who prudently saved against the contingencies of this world, have subtly numbered themselves among "the rich." And, "tax the rich" is the received solution. For generations now, "progressive" politicians, imposing "progressive" tax systems, have been making an example of the prudent. The cultivation and manipulation of envy is at the heart of all political schemes for income redistribution, and parties of the Left have been building their client base upon it.

Hence the gradual division of every electorate between the Party of Entitlement, and the Party of Tax Cuts: the one to increase spending, the other to limit revenue, until the gap between income and expenditure has grown to oceanic proportions. In a pinch, the government pulls both ways at once, as poor hapless Obama is now doing because his Party of Entitlement is about to be mooshed in the U.S. midterm elections. In addition to more ruinous "stimulus" spending, he is now promising tax cuts (for everyone but "the rich").

There, as here, the chariot of state is driving over the cliff.

Democrats still running against president, but now it's Obama

Barack Obama hit the campaign trail this week to resurrect some of that hopey-changey stuff and to complain that his critics talk about him "like a dog." Turns out the president wasn't, in fact, referring to his own party.

Voters might be forgiven the confusion. It isn't as if Democrats have been showing Mr. Obama much love. Quite the opposite. Seven weeks from Election Day, the vulnerable wing of the majority has finally found itself a campaign issue: blunt opposition to Mr. Obama and his agenda.

Has it only been 20 months? Candidate Obama swelled into office with an ambitiously liberal plan. He promised his party that his legislative items would be more than policy triumphs; they'd be political triumphs. Stick with me, he said, and we'll get credit for leadership. Voters will come to love this stuff. Polls will improve. I'll campaign in your district.

It was bunk, as many Democrats knew even back then. Witness the threats and bribes necessary to coax a bare majority for every vote. But enough went along. And now that the ambitious Obama experiment in liberal governance is going kaboom, his members—even those who voted with him—are running for cover.

Health care? A total of 279 House and Senate Democrats voted for ObamaCare. Not one is running an ad touting that vote. How can they, given headlines about Medicare cuts and premium hikes? You will, however, find a growing catalogue of ads such as this one from Maryland Rep. Frank Kratovil: "As a career prosecutor, I made decisions on facts, not politics," and that's why "I voted against . . . the health-care bill."

Not to be outdone, Alabama Rep. Bobby Bright's ad explains he voted against "massive government health care." South Dakota's Stephanie Herseth Sandlin boasts she voted against the "trillion-dollar health-care plan." But the prize goes to former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, vying to get his old job back: Not only is ObamaCare "financially devastating," it is "the greatest failure, modern failure, of political leadership in my lifetime."

Stimulus? Only a handful of Democrats can be found who will even utter the dreaded "s" word—and those are the ones bragging they voted against it. The rest have developed a curious code involving brief references to "roads" and "bridges." Even the White House is running from the White House. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs crankily lectured the press corps this week that the latest $50 billion Mr. Obama wants to "spur" the economy is absolutely not a "stimulus."

Cap and trade? "I voted against Nancy Pelosi's energy tax on Hoosier families," explains Indiana Rep. Joe Donnelly in an ad, echoed by North Carolina Rep. Mike McIntyre and Pennsylvania Rep. Jason Altmire. And the yes votes are rushing to argue that all they were really voting for was "renewable energy."

Financial regulation? What's that? Most of the country doesn't know, and few Democrats are bothering to explain. They see more mileage in ads putting distance between themselves and the auto bailouts, the president's budget, or the party's cultural reputation. Roy Herron, running in Tennessee, ran an ad describing himself as a "truck-driving, shotgun-shooting, Bible-reading, crime-fighting, family loving country boy." This is not a joke.

As for campaigning, Mr. Obama failed to warn Democrats that—thanks to the agenda he was asking them to pass—by September he'd be upside-down in his approval on most issues, and not much help. Instead of a president to help them, Democrats have found a president to run against. And it isn't George W. Bush.

Democrat candidates not stimulated by Obama's $50b stimulus

In a sign that Democrats are not on-board with what was supposed to be a major cornerstone of their platform this fall, an increasing number of Democratic incumbents and candidates are criticizing Pres. Obama's economic plan.

Within 24 hours of Obama's major address in Ohio on Thursday, a Democratic senator, three House Democrats and another two Democrats vying for open House seats all distanced themselves from Obama's economic plan.

Their remarks indicate that it will be difficult for Obama to get his plan through Congress before the November elections. They also show that Democrats are increasingly on shaky political footing on the economy -- the top issue for voters this year.

On Thursday, Obama, along with the DNC, sought to regain control of the economic narrative. Obama unveiled a proposal that included $50B in new government spending on infrastructure projects and tax breaks for small businesses.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), who is locked in a difficult race against Weld Co. DA Ken Buck (R), was the first to oppose Obama's proposal. "I will not support additional spending in a second stimulus package," Bennet said in a statement Wednesday.

Since then, House Democrats in competitive races have also voiced their opposition. Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI) said he supports extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which Obama opposes. He also said he opposes the $50B spending plan. Peters is facing former state Rep. Andrew Raczkowski (R) in MI 09.

Obama comes through for speculators in underwater mortgages

The hedge fund candidate has become the hedge fund President. Obama's mortgage moves will enrich hedge funds (such as those run by Obama supporter, George Soros, sugar daddy of the Democrats) who speculated by buying up underwater mortgages to be now made whole by you.

The Washington Times reports:

On Tuesday, the Federal Housing Administration announced a "short refinance option" for underwater mortgages - that is, mortgages on which the amount that the homeowner owes is more than the house is worth. Under this new program, the government promises to guarantee what's left of the mortgage's face value after the mortgage holder agrees to write off 10 percent of the principal.

For some big Wall Street financial houses, this could represent a major windfall. Some of these firms bought risky mortgages at huge discounts from their face value, often just 40 percent or 50 percent of the amount owed. Say a Wall Street firm paid $250,000 to take over a risky $500,000 mortgage. If the firm agrees to reduce the face value of what is owed by $50,000, the FHA will guarantee the mortgage. Thanks to the protection from default, the loan's value instantly increases from $250,000 to $450,000 - a $200,000 gift to the Wall Street mortgage holder.

While the Washington Times focuses on Wall Street, many of these mortgages have been bought up by hedge fund investors as well. Obama attacks fat cats on Wall Street for partisan and populist reasons to rile his base and bring them out to vote and to worship him. Meanwhile, he pulls fast ones to enrich them at our expense. In other words his rhetorical attacks against wealth are, in his own words, just distractions.

One always has to watch what Obama does behind the scenes. We know most of the media won't.

Europe opted for small stimulus; U.S. went big: Europe won

"Just as the German chancellor vetoed a bailout for eastern Europe on March 1, she is now leading European opposition to US President Barack Obama's call for a global pump-priming package... Merkel's rejection of more stimulus touched off the first trans-Atlantic clash of the Obama administration and led critics to say she risks deepening the global recession." The Financial Express, March 2009.

"Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts suggested continued growth in national economic activity during the reporting period of mid-July through the end of August, but with widespread signs of a deceleration compared with preceding periods." [Emphasis added.] The Federal Reserve's Beige Book , Sept. 8, 2010.

Hoven's Index for September 10, 2010

US: 101.3

Germany: 102.6

Euro Area: 101.8

OECD Europe: 101.6

Sources: OECD.

Obama's tax-and-spend government is filled with tax cheats, including 41 White House staffers who owe $831,055

We now know that federal employees across the nation owe fully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.

As in, 1,000 times one million dollars. All this political jabber about giving middle-class Americans a tax cut. Thousands of feds have been giving themselves one all along - unofficially. And these tax scofflaws include more than three dozen folks who work for the president with that newly decorated Oval Office.

The Post's T.W. Farnum did some research and found that out of the total sum, just 638 workers on Capitol Hill owe the IRS $9.3 million in back taxes. As in, overdue. The IRS gets stiffed by the legislative body that controls its budget. How Washington works.

Now, back taxes have been a problem for the Obama-Biden administration. You may recall early on that Tom Daschle was the president's top pick to run the Health and Human Services Department. But it turned out the former Democratic senator, who was un-elected from South Dakota in 2004, owed something like $120,000 to the IRS for things from his subsequent benefactor that he just forgot to pay taxes on. You know how that is. $120G's here or there. So he dropped out.

And then we learned this guy Timothy Geithner owed something like $42,000 in back taxes and penalties to the IRS, which is one of the agencies that he'd be in charge of as secretary of the Treasury. The fine fellow who's supposed to know about handling everyone else's money. In the end this was excused by Washington's bipartisan CYA culture as one of those inadvertent accidental oversights that somehow never seem to happen on the side of paying too much taxes.

And under Geithner's expert guidance the U.S. economy has been, well, wow! Just look at it.

Privacy laws prevent release of individual tax delinquents' names. But we do know that as of the end of 2009, 41 people inside Obama's very own White House owe the government they're allegedly running a total of $831,055 in back taxes. That would cover a lot of special chocolate desserts in the White House Mess.

In the House of Representatives, 421 people owe a total $6,524,892. In the Senate, 217 owe $2,774,836. In the IRS' parent department, Treasury, 1,204 owe $7,670,814. At the Labor Department, where Secretary Hilda Solis' husband had some back-tax problems before her confirmation, 463 owe $7,481,463. Eighty-one workers for the Federal Reserve System's board of governors owe $1,076,733.

Over at the Justice Department, which is so busy enforcing other laws and suing Arizona, 1,971 employees still owe $14,350,152 in overdue taxes.

Then, we come to the Department of Homeland Security, which is run by Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona who preferred to call terrorist acts "man-caused disasters." Homeland Security is keeping all of us safe by ensuring that a Dutch tourist is aboard every inbound international flight to thwart any would-be bomber with explosives in his underpants.

Within that department, there reside 4,856 people who owe the tax agency a whopping total of $37,012,174.

And they're checking our pockets for metal and coins?

Applications for jobless benefits fall - if the estimates are right

Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits declined more than forecast last week, easing concern that employers will accelerate firings as the world’s largest economy cools.

Initial jobless claims dropped by 27,000 to 451,000 in the week ended Sept. 4, the lowest level in almost two months, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The total number of people receiving unemployment insurance was little changed, while those getting extended payments rose.

Job creation needs to pick up to prevent a slide in consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy, and reduce the risk of a relapse into recession. The Federal Reserve said yesterday in its latest regional survey that the economy maintained its expansion while showing signs of a “deceleration” from mid-July through August.

“It’s still consistent with a pretty lackluster labor market,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida, whose forecast of 460,000 initial claims was among the most accurate. “The good news is it’s coming down; the bad news is it’s still pretty high.”

Jobless benefits applications were projected to fall to 470,000 from a previously reported 472,000 for the prior week, according to the median forecast of 46 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 460,000 to 482,000. The Labor Department revised the prior week’s figure to 478,000.

For the latest reporting week, nine states didn’t file claims data to the Labor Department in Washington because of the federal holiday earlier this week, a Labor Department official told reporters. As a result, California and Virginia estimated their figures and the U.S. government estimated the other seven, the official said.

Intense? Or something more severe? You decide...

Harry Reid's Office - Blunder Miffed from RightChange on Vimeo.

Business Insider: You Know The US Is Screwed When China, Gambia And Jordan Have Better Property Rights

The World Economic Forum is out with its latest global competitiveness rankings today, and the US has fallen to 4th place (which is still really good). Switzerland, Sweden, and Singapore are the three countries that are ranked better.

But look beneath the hood, and you'll find serious deterioration in the factors and institutions that underpin our healthy economy.

Take property rights. They're at the essence of US capitalism. Last year, according to the WEF's survey of executives, the US was the 30th best country. This year we've fallen to 40th.

And you'll be stunned at the countries that our better than the US.

In New York state, collegians have defaulted on almost $2 billion

ALBANY -- At New York's colleges and universities, the arrival of a new school year brings anticipation tinged with anxiety. For many students, the second emotion is prompted by one nagging question: How am I going to pay for this?

Many of them won't be able to find an answer. The Higher Education Services Corp., which services and collects federally backed college loans in New York, has almost $2 billion worth of defaulted debt on its hands.

As of July 1, HESC listed 145,437 accounts with $1,983,922,931 in college loans that had gone into default. That's up from last year, when there were 144,216 borrowers for a total of $1,895,211,727 by the end of July.

In 1991, the defaulted sum was just $230 million.

HESC, a state-operated agency, was in the news last month when Inspector General Joseph Fisch reported that some of its employees, including Assistant Vice President of Collection and Default Management Joseph Catalano, had given preferential treatment to a handful of friends and acquaintances. Additionally, Fisch's office found that in an effort to save state jobs. HESC personnel tried to obstruct the turning over of $1.25 million in accounts to private collectors. Six HESC employees were subsequently suspended.

Despite the IG's findings, some observers say the rising defaults simply reflect tough economic times and rising college costs.

"Students are graduating and they don't have jobs," said state Sen. Toby Stavisky, D-Queens, who chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee.

"Are people being encouraged to take on more debt than they can reasonably be expected to repay?" asked Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, D-Manhattan, who chairs the Assembly's Higher Education Committee.

Along with the lack of jobs, college prices have been rising at rates two and three times that of inflation, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

After a second look, voters decide Michelle "not that pretty..."

...a funny thing happened on the way to the 2010 mid-term elections. On the heels of a stimulus package that didn’t stimulate, healthcare reform that socializes medicine in this country, and a financial reform bill that gives the government expanded powers of regulation over our money (and our lives), the American people decided to shelve their “white guilt” and fight Marxism once more. As a consequence of this, President Obama’s approval numbers have plummeted, the Republicans are poised to dominate in the November elections, and Mrs. Obama just isn’t that pretty anymore.

That’s right, the bloom is off the rose: Mrs. Obama is rarely described in the glowing terms that were used to describe her during 2008 and 2009. And while a lot of this is due to her husband’s socialism, her nearly $400,000 Spanish vacation didn’t help matters either.

And of course we can’t overlook the fact that Mrs. Obama never was pinup material to begin with. Like her husband’s “hope and change,” the beauty the media fawned over in Mrs. Obama wasn’t real from the start. It was simply a mirage in the harsh and graceless climate that is her real self.

Another bravura performance by NJ Gov. Chris Christie

GOP could win 15-seat majority in House and control Senate

If the Democrats’ worst-case scenario comes true on Nov. 2, according to top election prognosticators, they won’t just lose the majority in both chambers of Congress, but in the House, the GOP could potentially end up with a 15-seat majority.

Republicans in the House need to net 39 seats to win control. Race predictor Stu Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report says the GOP gaining 55 seats is “quite possible,” Dr. Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia says Republicans could pick up as many as 47 seats and the Cook Political Report says the GOP will win at least 35 seats.

“The worst case Election Day scenario for Democrats is losing both the House and Senate to the GOP,” says Isaac Wood, an editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “Just a few months ago neither of these seemed poised to change hands and even now many are wondering if the Senate is really in play. The economic news keeps getting worse for Democrats and if it continues on that path, we could be moving towards that worst-case scenario.”

As for the Senate, Sabato acknowledged last week for the first time that Republicans have a shot — even though the chances are not good — at winning a majority in the upper chamber by picking up the 10 seats needed to win control. Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report also wrote that “the possibility of a GOP takeover is growing,” arguing the GOP has six seats in the bag with chances to win in states like Colorado, California, Wisconsin, Washington and Nevada.

While these election analysts doubt the GOP can pull it off, in a worst-case scenario, the Republicans could win the Senate plus two seats to spare. “The absolute highest they could go is a 12-seat gain,” Wood said, while stipulating that it was a “very unlikely scenario.”

These positive prognostications for the GOP come on the heels of other positive news for the Party: In the history of Gallup polling, Republicans have never held as wide a margin over Democrats as they do now, according to the results of last week’s generic poll of party preferences of registered voters. An ABC News/Washington Post poll this week shows Republicans leading Democrats by 13 percent, the widest GOP margin since 1981 for the poll.

Obama introduces new style of governance - Bizarre

Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.

The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.

More strange behavior: Obama's June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans "consume more than 20% of the world's oil but have less than 2% of the world's resources." Obama railed on about "America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the calamity have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world's resources?

The oddities go on and on. Obama's Administration has declared that even banks that want to repay their bailout money may be refused permission to do so. Only after the Obama team cleared a bank through the Fed's "stress test" was it eligible to give taxpayers their money back. Even then, declared Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Administration might force banks to keep the money.

The President continues to push for stimulus even though hundreds of billions of dollars in such funds seem to have done little. The unemployment rate when Obama took office in January 2009 was 7.7%; now it is 9.5%. Yet he wants to spend even more and is determined to foist the entire bill on Americans making $250,000 a year or more. The rich, Obama insists, aren't paying their "fair share." This by itself seems odd given that the top 1% of Americans pay 40% of all federal income taxes; the next 9% of income earners pay another 30%. So the top 10% pays 70% of the taxes; the bottom 40% pays close to nothing. This does indeed seem unfair--to the rich.

Obama's foreign policy is no less strange. He supports a $100 million mosque scheduled to be built near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade Center. Obama's rationale, that "our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable," seems utterly irrelevant to the issue of why the proposed Cordoba House should be constructed at Ground Zero.

Recently the London Times reported that the Obama Administration supported the conditional release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber convicted in connection with the deaths of 270 people, mostly Americans. This was an eye-opener because when Scotland released Megrahi from prison and sent him home to Libya in August 2009, the Obama Administration publicly and appropriately complained. The Times, however, obtained a letter the Obama Administration sent to Scotland a week before the event in which it said that releasing Megrahi on "compassionate grounds" was acceptable as long as he was kept in Scotland and would be "far preferable" to sending him back to Libya. Scottish officials interpreted this to mean that U.S. objections to Megrahi's release were "half-hearted." They released him to his home country, where he lives today as a free man.

One more anomaly: A few months ago nasa Chief Charles Bolden announced that from now on the primary mission of America's space agency would be to improve relations with the Muslim world. Come again? Bolden said he got the word directly from the President. "He wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering." Bolden added that the International Space Station was a model for nasa's future, since it was not just a U.S. operation but included the Russians and the Chinese. Obama's redirection of the agency caused consternation among former astronauts like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, and even among the President's supporters: Most people think of nasa's job as one of landing on the moon and Mars and exploring other faraway destinations. Sure, we are for Islamic self-esteem, but what on earth was Obama up to here?

Theories abound to explain the President's goals and actions. Critics in the business community--including some Obama voters who now have buyer's remorse--tend to focus on two main themes. The first is that Obama is clueless about business. The second is that Obama is a socialist--not an out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist, with a penchant for leveling and government redistribution.

Obama hits another new low on Rasmussen Reports

Study: If Michigan had adopted right-to-work in 1960s, the state would have 60,000 more auto-related jobs than it has

GRAND RAPIDS — If Michigan opted to be a right-to-work state back in the 1960s, it could have up to 60,000 more auto-related jobs, but they wouldn’t pay as well as they do today, according to a study commissioned by The Grand Rapids Press and Booth Newspapers.

Grand Valley State University economist Hari Singh authored the report, “Right to Work and Economic Impact: What It Means for Michigan?” as part of The Press’ Michigan 10.0 series on crucial questions for the state’s future.

The highly contentious issue — long considered a nonstarter in the home state of the United Auto Workers — is being raised anew by business groups and conservatives who argue such a law will help Michigan reverse its severe job losses.

Unions staunchly resist the idea, calling it instead “the right to work for less,” and say the deep recession’s credit crisis, housing slump and stalled auto sales were to blame for the state’s job losses, not its stand on union shops.

Right-to-work laws, in force in 22 states, do not ban unions but prohibit agreements between trade unions and an employer that make union membership and dues a job requirement. Such prohibitions make it harder for unions to organize, operate and collect dues.

Union shops are found across Michigan — at General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Delphi, Whirlpool and some Johnson Controls plants.

In the Grand Rapids area, there also are union shops at Bradford White Corp., American Seating Co., Kellogg Co., Dematic North America, a Benteler plant and General Electric Aviation, for example.

(snip)

In his study released today, Singh focused on nine states that have major auto-related industries. He compared six right-to-work states, Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, with Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, which all allow union shops.

Singh’s findings? Michigan could have 50,000 to 60,000 more people working in the auto industry today if it had become a right-to-work state in 1965. Those jobs would have accumulated over the years as more auto companies, suppliers, and other union-averse companies had moved to Michigan over time, Singh said. Taking the recent industry downturn out of the equation, the increase in auto-related jobs would total nearly a quarter of those employed in recent years.

But Singh also found those jobs would not be the high-paying jobs long associated with the industry.

“If we were an RTW state, annual wages of these workers would be significantly lower initially, dropping from the current $74,000 to perhaps in the mid-$60,000 range,” Singh said in an interview.

Subprime housing collapse makes economy look worse than it is; extended jobless benefits have caused jobless rates to rise

A year after the US economy stopped falling, we are still mired in "the worst labor-market crisis since the Great Depression," writes Laura Tyson in The New York Times. Voicing the consensus of the left-liberal economic establishment — she's reportedly a leading candidate to head up President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers — Tyson argues that the US unemployment rate, still stuck at 9.6 percent, is reason to try "a second fiscal stimulus" to raise "aggregate demand." She's wrong in a number of illuminating ways.

First, the highest unemployment rates are highly concentrated in relatively few states — largely the ones with the highest home-foreclosure rates. That suggests that the root problems are localized, lingering debt woes — so a nationwide quick fix designed to entice people to borrow more and save less is doubly off-base.

Two-thirds of the states have jobless rates lower than the national average, which is an amalgamation of 3.6 percent unemployment in North Dakota and 13.1 percent in Michigan.

For most of America, this has not been the worst postwar labor-market crisis. True, the unemployment rate did reach a postwar high this year in three states hit hardest by the boom-bust cycle in housing — California, Nevada and Florida. Unemployment also hit postwar peaks in Georgia, North and South Carolina and Rhode Island in 2010 and in Kansas last year. For all other 42 states, however, unemployment reached higher peaks during the recessions of 1976 or 1982.

Tyson's second problem: This stubbornly high unemployment is not simply the result of sluggish growth.

Industrial production has been rising steadily for 13 months — the same 13 months in which the unemployment rate has been above 9 percent. Manufacturing, consumption and business investment have all been recovering — yet the unemployment rate has been higher than it was when the whole economy was collapsing.

The president's Council of Economic Advisers agrees that unemployment is about "1.7 percentage points higher than would have been expected given the behavior of real GDP." But the reason is clear: The US has for the first time extended jobless benefits beyond one year, to nearly two.

In "The Stimulus for Unemployment" on this page last November, I explained how extended jobless benefits have had the predictable effect of raising the duration and rate of unemployment. Citing academic studies, some by economists in the Obama administration, I estimated that extending benefits to 99 weeks had raised the unemployment rate by about two points. (The CEA's 1.7 percentage point estimate invokes the same math, but without explanation.)

The long duration of benefits alleviates the pressure to accept a less-desirable job too quickly; as a result many people spend longer between jobs. That boosts unemployment rates because more people wind up being recounted, time and again, in monthly surveys.

Pakistani minister urges Obama to declare himself caliph so that "all the problems of the Muslim world would be solved"

The caliph in Sunni Islam is the symbol of the supranational unity of the Muslims, and is the successor of Muhammad as the military, political, and spiritual leader of the Islamic community. There hasn’t been a caliph for nearly 90 years, but now Pakistan’s Minister of State for Industries, Ayatullah Durrani, has a novel idea for just the right man for the job: Barack Obama!

The caliphate was abolished in 1924 by the secular Turkish government; foremost on the agenda of Islamic supremacists worldwide is its restoration. Hamstringing that effort, however, has been the lack of a candidate who would be acceptable to everyone concerned. The elusive one-eyed Islamic cleric who leads the Taliban in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar, was declared caliph—Emir al-Momineen, or Leader of the Believers—by his followers in 1994.

Omar went to the Shrine of the Respectable Cloak of Muhammad in Kandahar, climbed up onto its roof, and wrapped himself in the Muslim prophet’s cloak, to the jubilation of his followers below. But Omar's claim to the caliphate has been complicated by a number of matters since then—notably the toppling of the Taliban from state power by American forces—and his claim to the caliphate has been acknowledged by only one group outside Afghanistan: Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a group formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat—a name that shares none of the U.S. government’s delicacy about identifying Islamic preaching as a not infrequent source of jihad violence.

The restoration of the caliphate is foremost on the agenda of the global mujahedin because, according to Islamic law, the caliph alone can declare offensive jihad against infidel nations—which is why Osama bin Laden and other jihad theorists cast all the present actions of Islamic jihadists as defensive.

Islamic supremacists also see the abolition of the caliphate as the loss of the unity of the umma, the Islamic community worldwide; they see a divided Islamic umma as a weakened one, subject to buffeting and humiliation from colonialist and neo-colonialist powers.

And so Durrani, a member of Pakistan’s governing People’s Party, said: “The time is approaching fast. Barack Hussein Obama must act now. This is a golden opportunity, Muslims badly need it.”

He added that on the Muslim feast of Eid-ul-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan and falls this year on September 11, Obama should offer the prescribed Eid prayers and seize the moment to declare himself caliph. “In this way,” said the starry-eyed Durrani, “all the problems of the Muslim world would be solved.”

How Brooklyn College creates a new class of American victims

The faculty at Brooklyn College chooses one book each year that will be required reading for nearly all incoming freshmen. This year's choice, "How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America," has generated controversy.

Up front and for the record: President Karen Gould and her professorial force are free to assign whatever works they choose - even if academic excellence takes second place to offering students an unchallenging, feel-good bonding experience.

But that freedom comes with the responsibility to provide inquiring minds with the straight goods about the literature they've been ordered to read. Here, by all the evidence, Brooklyn College has failed.

"How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?" was written by Moustafa Bayoumi, an English professor at the school. The book is a collection of seven profiles of Arab-American youths living in Brooklyn after 9/11. Each is a victim in one way or another.

Akram works in his family's East Flatbush bodega, which one resident boycotts because "they support Bin Laden"; Rasha and her family are roused from bed and held in detention as suspected terrorists, then released; Sami, a Marine, deploys to Iraq, where fellow soldiers call him a terrorist because of his background.

College officials say the book is in line with previous selections, such as Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes." In their telling, the reading is meant to mirror the diversity of the student body, particularly its immigrant experience.

But to treat Bayoumi's book as nothing more than an anthology of coming-to-America stories is supremely false advertising. This is not a memoir, but a polemic.

Bayoumi chose the profiles to support his argument that social attitudes have combined with the effects of U.S. foreign policy to deprive Muslims and Arab-Americans of civil rights, with the effects felt most severely by the young.

Green hysteria kills another U.S. company, to China's benefit

WINCHESTER, VA. - The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.

The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs.

"Now what're we going to do?" said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful.

During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas.

What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.

The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.

Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.

Consisting of glass tubes twisted into a spiral, they require more hand labor, which is cheaper there. So though they were first developed by American engineers in the 1970s, none of the major brands make CFLs in the United States.

"Everybody's jumping on the green bandwagon," said Pat Doyle, 54, who has worked at the plant for 26 years. But "we've been sold out. First sold out by the government. Then sold out by GE. "

Doyle was speaking after a shift last month surrounded by several co-workers around a picnic table near the punch clock. Many of the workers have been at the plant for decades, and most appeared to be in their 40s and 50s. Several worried aloud about finding another job.

"When you're 50 years old, no one wants you," Savolainen said. It was meant half in jest, but some of the men nod grimly.

Labor unions are following the GEICO formula

If the college bubble is going to burst, who will do the pinprick?

Now that speculation about the higher education bubble is percolating throughout the blogosphere, it's time to ask questions that may have broad relevance.

What, exactly, is the college bubble?

It's the inflation in student tuition and fee payments resulting from the penchant of politicians to approve any new scheme that allows them to pose as champions of education at election time. New student aid programs. Relaxation of repayment schedules for student loans. Pell grants.

Politicians will vote for anything that promises more help for more students.

Once the generous new laws have been enacted, colleges and universities raise their tuition and fee schedules, raking off much of the new booty for salary and benefit increases for faculty and administrators.

Any new money that's left is used to hire more professors of postmodern studies, who will identify new classes of societal victims whose damaged psyches must be repaired by more years of higher education.

This script has been followed for decades, resulting in more and more students pursuing more and more screwball majors on more and more dumbed-down campuses.

What, exactly, is going to blow up this tried and true formula?

In the subprime housing bubble, it was actual defaults on real mortgages that triggered collapse.

In Holland, in the 1630s, tulipmania flourished because it took seven years to grow a blossom from seed. At the height of the bubble, farms changed hands for a single tulip bulb.

Eventually, the greater fool principle asserted itself. One day, the greater fool failed to show up at the tulip market, and the last fools were stuck with the hugely overpriced bulbs.

In higher education, it's hard to find a plausible trigger for collapse, but there are some candidates.

Corporations and institutions could adjust their specifications and look for new hires in other locales. They also could drop their demand for degrees and settle for proof of competence by examination.

My bet is that the humble community colleges, which supply solid education at modest cost without the marxist indoctrination, will score a slow, grinding knockout.

The elite colleges will endure a sputtering shrinkage that will produce a new crop of victims for liberal educators and the Democrat Party to celebrate: twenty-somethings who were deprived of elite education by an evil ruling class that cares only about its own excessive profits.

This is an unacceptable outcome because it leaves little to write about.

Snyder holds 2-to-1 lead over Bernero for Michigan governor

Another poll of Michigan voters released this morning shows Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Snyder with a huge lead -- 53% to 26% -- over Democratic rival Virg Bernero.
The poll of 600 likely voters by Mitchell Research & Communication of East Lansing found Snyder ahead among men (61%-23%), women (46%-28%) and independents (54%-13%). It was conducted August 25-29, and has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

The Mitchell poll is the latest in a series of post-primary surveys which show the Republican businessman with a commanding lead over the Democratic mayor of Lansing.

But Mitchell cautioned that Michigan remains a very competitive state for Democrats, and he expects the margin to close as election day approaches. The last Republican to win atop the ticket in Michigan was former Gov. John Engler in 1998. Bernero came back to win the Democratic primary in August after trailing House Speaker Andy Dillon by double digits in earlier polls, Mitchell said.

Welfare for illegals will cost LA County $600m in 2010

As the mainstream media focuses on a study that reveals a sharp decline in the nation’s illegal immigrant population, monthly welfare payments to children of undocumented aliens increased to $52 million in one U.S. county alone.

The hoopla surrounding last week’s news that the annual flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. dropped by two-thirds in the past decade overlooked an important matter; the cost of educating, incarcerating and medically treating illegal aliens hasn’t decreased along with it, but rather skyrocketed to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually.

Those figures don’t even include the extra millions that local municipalities dish out on welfare payments to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, commonly known as anchor babies. In Los Angeles County alone that figure increased by nearly $4 million in the last year, sticking taxpayers with a whopping $52 million tab to provide illegal immigrants’ offspring with food stamps and other welfare benefits for just one month.

That means the nation’s most populous county, in the midst of a dire financial crisis, will spend more than $600 million this year to provide families headed by illegal immigrants with welfare benefits. In each of the past two years Los Angeles County taxpayers have spent about half a billion dollars just to cover the welfare and food-stamp costs of illegal immigrants. Additionally, the county spends $550 million on public safety and nearly $500 million on healthcare for illegal aliens.

About a quarter of the county’s welfare and food stamp issuances go to parents who reside in the United States illegally and collect benefits for their anchor babies, according to the figures from L.A. County’s Department of Social Services. Nationwide, Americans pay around $22 billion annually to provide illegal immigrants with welfare perks that include food assistance programs such as free school lunches in public schools, food stamps and a nutritional program (known as WIC) for low-income women and their children.

Elitist educators want parents to surrender control of their collegiate offspring, and the New York Times is on their side

The New York Times recently advised parents of incoming college freshmen to drop their kids off, “back off,” “walk away,” and “move on” so that their “students can develop independence.”

In the article, parents who don’t hop in the car, return home and consider their parenting over are dismissed as “super-involved” or “over-involved” and are described as “Velcro parents,” “helicopter parents,” or “baby-on-board parents.”

Some colleges join in the derogatory attitude toward parents, going so far as to advise limiting phone calls and text messages. Some provide not-so-subtle indications that parents are not to “meddle.”

According to the New York Times, the University of Minnesota holds a separate reception for parents so that their sons and daughters can meet their roommates and negotiate dorm-room space without the parents around. Grinnell College has the new students sit on one side of the gymnasium and the parents on the other with all speakers talking to the student side— a symbolic way of putting parents in their place.

These attacks against parenting are an attempt to intimidate parents into surrendering their influence to that of supposedly “superior” intellectuals and professional “educators” who know what’s best for our children.

Thomas Sowell: Even Karl Marx recognized that "crackbrained meddling by the authorities" can "aggravate an existing crisis"

When people learn that you are an economist, they often want you to predict which way the economy is going. There seem to be more than the usual number of calls for such predictions lately. But an economist should be more aware than others are of how hazardous such predictions can be.

One reason is that what happens in the economy is affected by what politicians do in Washington-- and who can predict what politicians will do?

However, let me go out on a limb, and try to predict what politicians will not do.

What would probably get the economy recovering fastest and most completely would be for the President of the United States and Congressional leaders to shut up and stop meddling with the economy. But it is virtually impossible that they will do that.

Think about telling all the millions of people who have lost their jobs, their homes or their businesses: "I really messed you up but, hey, nobody's perfect. So I'm going to leave things alone now." In fact, that would be hard even to tell yourself.

If the stimulus isn't working, the true believers have to believe that it is only because it hasn't been tried long enough, or with enough money being spent.

There are always calls for the government to "do something" when things are going bad. Those who make such calls have almost never bothered to check out what actually happens when the government does something, as compared to what happens when the government does nothing.

It is not just free market economists who think the government can make a mess bigger with its interventions. It was none other than Karl Marx who wrote to his colleague Engels that "crackbrained meddling by the authorities" can "aggravate an existing crisis."

The history of the United States is full of evidence on the negative effects of government intervention. For the first 150 years of this country's existence, the federal government did not think it was its business to intervene when the economy turned down.

All of those downturns ended faster than the first downturn where the federal government intervened big time-- the Great Depression of the 1930s.

There are two conflicting assumptions about what happened during the Great Depression. The most popular assumption, especially among politicians, is that the market failed and the government had to intervene to save the economy.

Another assumption is that the market went down and was on its way back up when federal intervention sent it down again and led to massive unemployment. If you don't let facts get in the way, you can just pick whichever assumption you like-- and the first assumption wins that popularity contest, hands down.

But, if you look at the facts, they go like this: Unemployment never hit double digits in any of the 12 months following the big stock market crash of 1929 that is often blamed for the massive unemployment of the 1930s. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the October 1929 crash, and then began drifting downward.

Unemployment was down to 6.3 percent by June 1930, when the first big federal intervention occurred. Within six months, the downward trend in unemployment reversed and hit double digits for the first time in December 1930.

White House is trying to make the U.S. subservient to the world's worst man-made disaster - the United Nations

The Obama administration has included the Arizona state immigration law in a report of human rights abuses to the United Nations, that collective negation of humanity and home to the worst human rights abusers in the world.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer struck back Friday, demanding that the reference to Ariozna's immigration law be taken out of the State Department's report to the UN's human rights commissioner. Brewer wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton saying that the inclusion of Arizona in the UN report was "downright offensive." Brewer said -- and she was right -- that "the idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review' by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional."

First Barack Obama attacked America by suing Arizona for passing a law that merely reflected federal immigration law. And now this.

Decades before the post-American president took office, Ayn Rand saw the UN for what it was, and what every free person should have known it was -- and it has only gotten worse since then: "Psychologically, the U.N. has contributed a great deal to the gray swamp of demoralization -- of cynicism, bitterness, hopelessness, fear and nameless guilt -- which is swallowing the Western world." That, of course, is just the kind of guilt Obama and his cronies play upon. This guilt and demoralization was largely due to Communism in those days; now, the "gray swamp" is still there, but it stems from Islam.

Barack Obama is an internationalist, and this has more ominous implications for American sovereignty. As soon as he became president, he took decisive steps to submit American sovereignty to the will of international bodies.

Legal expert M. Edward Whelan III has spelled out the implications of this. He explains that transnationalists, among whom Obama and many of his appointees must clearly be numbered, "aim in particular to use American courts to import international law to override the policies adopted through the processes of representative government."

Whelan is the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the former general counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. "What transnationalism, at bottom, is all about," he explains, "is depriving American citizens of their powers of representative government by selectively imposing on them the favored policies of Europe's leftist elites."

Whelan wrote this before Obama reported Arizona to the UN, and the Arizona case bears him out fully. Obama's latest attack on America may shock Americans, but readers of my book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America nod their heads in recognition. It's all in the book: the relinquishing of American sovereignty and Obama's internationalism.

Toxic Obama will be in Milwaukee today; Sen. Feingold won't

Today, President Obama is flying to Milwaukee to mark Labor Day at a union picnic ("Laborfest"), at a far smaller venue than he used when marking the same event in 2008. Don't worry about a rambunctious crowd, protest signs, or any other indignities, though. Admission is by ticket only, with unions in charge of distribution.

Even more curious is the absence of left wing Senator Russ Feingold, facing re-election this year, and not showing a lot of strength in the polls. Patrick McIlheran, columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has a witty column on the visit:

It's quite a party: Parade organizers were still looking for volunteers to help carry the giant protest puppets of the Earth Goddess and such. Pity, then, that Russ Feingold, the incumbent Democratic senator in a neck-and-neck race, can't hang out with the president.

Many presidents fall in public esteem by mid-term, but with Obama, the change is more fundamental. What put him in office certainly wasn't experience, nor was it any explication of the agenda that, now revealed, has frightened off one in four of his voters. Rather, it was that he was the great center hope, a man to unite factions and span fissures. That's gone, say polls. The center no longer hopes in him, and so when he appears in a state where his party's senatorial and gubernatorial candidates are in deep trouble, he can appear only before a crowd heavy on AFSCME and SEIU.

Another way putting it is that Obama has been discovered to be a fraud. Once trust is lost, it is never easily regained. This is the stark reality of Democrat politics; their standard-bearer is toxic. The only thing that can save the Democrats' fortunes is GOP incompetence and untrustworthiness. So, regrettably, all is not gloom for the Democrats.

Republican Young Guns in House take steps to muffle George W. Bush and advance a new conservative template in Congress

Calling themselves the Young Guns, three members of America's House of Representatives are about to publish a template for new era of Republican domination in Congress.

With the economy failing to live up to President Barack Obama's hopes for a strong recovery - unemployment remains just below ten percent - Republicans are poised for major gains on Nov 2, when all of the House and a third of Senate seats is contested in midterm elections.

The president has scrambled to stave off defeat over the economy and will this week launch measures designed to boost small businesses.

He will ask Congress to increase and extend a tax credit for research and development, as a way of boosting job creation, an administration official said yesterday. He is also likely to propose to use tax cuts for the rich passed by Mr Bush which are about to expire for further tax breaks for business.

Many polls and pundits say the Republicans will gain the 39 seats needed to win back control of the House of Representatives but just fall short of winning back the Senate.

But doubts linger that the party can take advantage of the favourable winds as it struggles to persuade voters that it has changed significantly since it lost power in 2006.

A recent NBC poll found only 24 per cent of voters saw the party in a positive light.

The Young Guns book recognises "high profile ethics lapses" and "an inability to rein in spending or even slow the growth of government" led to a breakdown in trust in the party.

During the previous Republican rule, Tom DeLay, the former majority leader in the House, was prosecuted for money laundering and violating campaign finance laws, though he was never convicted. Several other members of Congress were embroiled in scandals involving favours for lobbyists.

"The fact is, we had our chance, and we blew it," wrote co-author Eric Cantor, the party's chief whip.

Critics have pointed out that Mr Cantor, 47, from Virginia, was a member of the party's leadership during the era he is now criticising.

The Young Guns programme run by Mr Cantor and his colleagues and co-authors Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan is designed to find new, reliable conservative candidates.

Leaked excerpts indicate that it poses a challenge to the party's most senior leaders.

My  take:

Bush, a phony conservative,  forced real conservatives to take this step by elbowing his way back to the national stage with a book that will be published shortly after the November election. Stand by for pre-election excerpts. The only plausible explanation for this timing is that Bush and his publisher want to sell books and he wants to resume a role in national politics.

If he were to succeed, the Republicans could kiss any "new era" story line goodby. During his eight years in office, Bush expanded government and increased government spending horrifically, while also plunging the United States into seemingly endless war in the Middle East. Economist Joseph Stiglitz has just calculated that the Iraq war alone - a war of choice - has cost the U.S. more than $3 trillion, several times the amount of government estimates.

As he attempts to put the best face on his decisions with a book about his decision-making, that book inevitably will muddle the message planted so vigorously by conservative voters and the Tea Party: it's time for the fake conservatives to step aside and allow real conservatives to govern. Judging by polls, that is what a majority of voters want, as well.

The renewed presence of George Bush on the national stage can not help that endeavor. He undoubtedly is aware of this, and his timing may have an ulterior motive - to undercut the prevailing conservative message of the Tea Party and many voters and prevent the Republican Party from making a hard right turn.

A hard right turn might deprive his brother, Jeb, and perhaps a nephew or two, of a chance at the White House.

The answer to public education's funk is fierce competition

American spending on public education, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled over the last three decades. What did taxpayers get for their money?

The average math and reading scores of American 17-year-olds have not improved since the early 1970s, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress long-term trend assessment.

Twice the money. Zero progress.

Yet students in other countries have been improving their test scores.

The Program for International Student Assessment 2006 measured the math and science literacy of 15-year-olds in 29 countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The results? American students placed in the bottom quarter in math and in the bottom third in science.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, "We are lagging the rest of the world, and we are lagging it in pretty substantial ways."

The current public education system is not preparing Americans to succeed in the increasingly competitive global economy. In the U.S., this will lead to growing unemployment rates, a decline in Gross Domestic Product, unsustainable levels of national debt, and reduced military capability.

U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, said last week that the single biggest threat to national security is the national debt.

The estimated $600 billion in interest on the national debt in 2012 that American taxpayers will have to pay is "one year's worth of defense budget" Mullin said. He predicted that the defense budget will eventually be cut to facilitate the "wave of debt."

In addition to endangering the U.S.'s economic and national security, low educational attainment also imposes societal and personal costs.

Societal costs include higher unemployment, higher crime, lower income tax revenues, and higher social welfare payments.

Personal costs include lower lifetime earnings and life expectancy. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, estimated lifetime earnings are about $1.2 million for high school graduates and $2.1 million for college graduates. Also, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that life expectancy increases when educational attainment increases.

Those who argue that the solution is more money for public schools have had three decades to test their theory. Increased spending has not led to improvement. American test scores have remained flat since the early 1970s even though per-pupil spending, adjusted for inflation, went from $4,489 in 1970-1971 to $10,041 in 2006-2007 -- an increase of 124 percent.

American per-pupil spending in 2006 was 41 percent higher than the OECD average of $7,283, and yet American students still placed in the bottom quarter in math and in the bottom third in science among OECD countries.

Clearly, increasing spending further is unlikely to improve test scores. "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" is how Einstein defined insanity.

George Soros, NAACP and other leftists taking on Tea Party

(George) Soros and the foundation left have launched a website designed to go after the growing Tea Party movement. Teapartytracker.org will post video interviews and blog entries gathered by folks on the false left who never grow weary of demonstrating their outrage over the very idea of a grassroots political effort overthrowing establishment Democrats and Republicans in the district of corporate criminals.

Teapartytracker.org will be sponsored by the NAACP, Think Progress, New Left Media and Media Matters for America. Think Progress is a George Soros operation connected to John Podesta’s Center for American Progress. Podesta is Clinton’s former chief of staff. Media Matters for America is the brainchild of a MoveOn consultant and Podesta’s Center for American Progress. Soros is a major supporter of MoveOn.

On July 13, the NAACP unanimously passed a resolution repudiating the Tea Party for alleged racism. The resolution followed accusations that the Tea Party had accosted members the Congressional Black Caucus as they traipsed the district of criminals mall on their way to vote for Obamacare, a grand larceny scam cooked up by large corporations. “Civil rights icon John Lewis was spit on, while Congressman Emanuel Cleaver was called the ‘N’ word and openly gay Congressman Barney Frank was called an ugly anti-gay slur,” a press released issued by the NAACP claims.

On April 1, Infowars.com provided evidence that protesters in fact did not spit on Missouri Democrat Emanuel Cleaver or did they hurl racial epithets at members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Cleaver later said a Tea Party protester did not spit on him intentionally. “All I’m saying is we all have to defuse it, and I think it is not in my best interest or in the best interest of this nation to stoke it,” he said on March 30 during a Fox News interview.

The NAACP and the Soros-funded anti-Tea Party operation, however, do not share Cleaver’s desire to defuse the situation. Instead, they plan to extract as much political mileage from the fictitious incident as possible.

In July, Soros’ Think Progress stitched together a video purporting to show that the Tea Party is chock full of racists.

Recall “Crash the Tea Party,” an effort exposed earlier this year, designed to portray the Tea Party as racists and reactionary throwbacks. Tea Party hating liberals “couldn’t sell the transparently nonsensical idea that Tea Partiers are just a bunch of racists, homophobes and morons, so the Crash the Party agents on the Left are infiltrating the Tea Party in order to pose as a bunch of racists, homophobes and morons,” Mark Tapscott wrote for the Washington Examiner on April 11, 2010.

In addition to so-called liberals attempting to discredit the Tea Party movement, a gaggle of anarchists also announced an effort to disrupt rallies in April.

According to Infoshop News, an anarchist website and forum, the Tea Party movement is “a coalition of conservatives, anti-Semites, fascists, libertarians, racists, constitutionalists, militia men, gun freaks, homophobes, Ron Paul supporters, Alex Jones conspiracy types and American flag wavers,” and because of this mischaracterization they should have their right to protest against the government disrupted.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz puts Iraq war cost at $3 trillion plus

Writing in these pages in early 2008, we put the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war at $3 trillion. This price tag dwarfed previous estimates, including the Bush administration's 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war.

But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low. For example, the cost of diagnosing, treating and compensating disabled veterans has proved higher than we expected.

Moreover, two years on, it has become clear to us that our estimate did not capture what may have been the conflict's most sobering expenses: those in the category of "might have beens," or what economists call opportunity costs. For instance, many have wondered aloud whether, absent the Iraq invasion, we would still be stuck in Afghanistan. And this is not the only "what if" worth contemplating. We might also ask: If not for the war in Iraq, would oil prices have risen so rapidly? Would the federal debt be so high? Would the economic crisis have been so severe?

The answer to all four of these questions is probably no. The central lesson of economics is that resources -- including both money and attention -- are scarce. What was devoted to one theater, Iraq, was not available elsewhere.

The Iraq invasion diverted our attention from the Afghan war, now entering its 10th year. While "success" in Afghanistan might always have been elusive, we would probably have been able to assert more control over the Taliban, and suffered fewer casualties, if we had not been sidetracked. In 2003 -- the year we invaded Iraq -- the United States cut spending in Afghanistan to $14.7 billion (down from more than $20 billion in 2002), while we poured $53 billion into Iraq. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, we spent at least four times as much money in Iraq as in Afghanistan.

It is hard to believe that we would be embroiled in a bloody conflict in Afghanistan today if we had devoted the resources there that we instead deployed in Iraq. A troop surge in 2003 -- before the warlords and the Taliban reestablished control -- would have been much more effective than a surge in 2010.

Why did owner of Ground Zero mosque site reject higher offers?

The original owners of the Ground Zero mosque site mysteriously spurned dozens of higher bids before selling the prime downtown real estate at a bargain-basement price.

The Pomerantz family, which had owned the building since the late 1960s and fielded offers after the patriarch died in 2006, rejected at least one bid that was nearly four times what prospective mosque builder Sharif El-Gamal eventually paid, The Post has learned.

El-Gamal did offer what could be viewed as a sweetener to his $4.8 million bid in July 2009 -- a job as a property manager for a son of the family, Sethian Pomerantz.

New York developer Kevin Glodek was livid when he found out the building sold for a fraction of what he offered in 2007 -- $18 million cash -- and wondered whether money changed hands under the table, according to sources close to the deal.

Glodek and his partners wanted to build a 60-story condo tower with retail space on the Park Place site, had inked a purchase agreement and even had keys to the existing building, according to sources and documents obtained by The Post.

But Kukiko Mitani -- whose late husband, Stephen Pomerantz, owned the property -- and her brother-in-law, Melvin Pomerantz, a trustee to the estate, went silent at the end of 2007 and Glodek's deal disappeared, sources said.

Glodek, who owns the ChefsDiet food delivery service and several Manhattan properties, declined to comment.

The property is now at the heart of one of the most divisive issues in the country -- whether it should be the location of a $100 million mosque and community center. The location two blocks from Ground Zero has been called insensitive, and questions have been raised about whether extremists will help fund the project. Recent polls show that 70 percent of New Yorkers want it moved.

El-Gamal had his eye on the property for years before buying it in 2009.

He was not alone in his interest, with some 30 offers showered on the Pomerantz family in what was an overheated downtown real-estate market in 2007, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

Yet Mitani previously told The Post the building, a former Burlington Coat Factory store that was damaged in the 9/11 attacks, was a tough sell. She said she was in debt and desperate to unload it after her husband's death and insisted she had no buyers other than El-Gamal.

Some of the offers were a mere flash in the pan, but others were legitimate, including a $17 million cash deal from one developer, the source said.

The attraction in this hot market was buying real estate that could be demolished, the source said. A second downtown mosque, not affiliated with El-Gamal, considered spending $18 million for 45-47 Park Place in early 2008.

But the Pomerantz family -- for reasons that remain unclear -- rejected the offers.

They took 70 percent less from El-Gamal than what Glodek offered.

This was a considerable drop even given the 30 percent decline in market values at the time, said Michael Falsetta, executive vice president of Miller Cicero, a real-estate appraisal firm not involved in the deals.

"That makes us suspicious," he said.

Rasmussen Reports puts Barack Obama at new low of -23

Freedom Ride for 10 soldiers imprisoned over actions in Iraq

When President Obama said it was time to turn the page on Iraq, he should have also declared his intention to close the book on the lingering, festering injustices the U.S. government has perpetrated on ten American veterans of the Iraq war still incarcerated in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth.

As noted in this column before, these Americans are the war's forgotten men, soldiers trapped by restrictive, legalistic rules of engagement on a ultra-fluid battlefield where the enemy knew no rules. For killing this enemy and, it must also be admitted, surviving to live another day, these soldiers were sentenced to terms ranging from ten to forty years.

In other words, for the rest of their young lives.

Allen West, himself a retired Army lieutenant colonel and veteran of both Desert Storm and the war in Iraq, has not forgotten these men. West, the Republican candidate for Congress in Florida's 22nd District, is speaking this Labor Day weekend at the first, and, it is hoped, last Leavenworth Ten Freedom Ride, a parade past the Leavenworth military prison to draw attention to the plight of the Ten, resulting in their freedom.

West himself could almost have been among them. Back in 2003 as a battalion commander north of Baghdad, West fired his pistol near the head of a uncooperative Iraqi under interrogation who was believed to be withholding information about an assassination plot and ambush of West and his troops.

The man talked. West and his men encountered no more ambushes for the next two months until West was relieved of his command and charged with improper interrogation methods, charges that could have drawn a prison sentence.

"I know the method I used was not right, but I wanted to take care of my soldiers," West testified at his 2003 Article 32 hearing (similar to a preliminary grand jury hearing). When asked if he would alter his behavior under similar circumstances in the future, West replied: "If it's about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can."