This should be interesting

Here and elsewhere, I've seen or heard some variation of this, "You never hear about stories where a black cop shoots a white kid." Now that I've seen it umpteen times, it sounds like one of those dog whistle messages that only a certain segment are able to hear because they are attuned to sources delivering that message. Let's be clear though, MSNBC is no slouch when it comes to delivering similar messages. The messenger here is not really the point.

When I lived in Chicago, plenty of black people were killed by the police and it wasn't national news. Why? IMO, there are a few reasons. First, it's not shocking. In the rough, all black neighborhoods, violence is a daily occurrence that seldom gets coverage unless there is a political gain to be made, whether it is by those who want to perpetually describe blacks as animals, or by those who wish to make a point that nobody cares about those communities. Second, when a black person is killed in Chicago, there aren't riots. No riots, no story. I think more than anything else, this is why we hear so little nationally about police shootings regardless of the race of the officer or the deceased.

Observations and Questions

I've wondered why white people don't riot when they perceive an injustice and I'd love to hear the theories here on why that is. I do believe of, course, that part of the reason is because white people seldom get hassled to the extent that black people do. Once in my life, I did get pulled over when I was in my teens and was driving my beater car through a rich suburb. Aside from that, I've never been questioned or just stopped by police and asked what I was doing, and I also have never been stopped and frisked, "just because". Whether someone believes the stops are justified is relevant I guess, but I wonder what any of us would feel like if we were stopped 3-4 times a week, every week, every year, on and on. On the surface, I think most of us tell ourselves that the blacks wouldn't be hassled so much if they weren't breaking the law so much. Below the surface, I don't think many of us really give this issue much thought at all. This is not an invitation to start a hyperlink war of biased articles.

In comparison to black people,  I also think white people are very quick to disown those they consider "white trash". When some tatted up idiot doing meth gets gunned down robbing a store, I think few white people feel any sense of pity, regardless of how crappy life may have been for that individual. Nor do they feel any sense of pity when a similar looking guy gets into a minor altercation and gets his ass kicked for lipping off to a police officer who arrives to sort things out. White people, I believe, generally trust the police because they seldom have a bad encounter with one for anything other than a traffic ticket.

I haven't read everything in the reports yet, and I don't have a rioting sense of outrage. I'm not surprised the officer wasn't indicted and I don't think he wasn't indicted out of a sense of racism. IMO, I believe that when the officer got out of his car, he fully intended to kill this kid, whether it was out of racism or not is immaterial to me. I believe it was premeditated, but there is absolutely no way to prove that. Undoubtedly, there is a failed government policy angle to be described that I'm confident someone will cover that in exhaustive detail for us. Be that as it may, I'll ask the question anyway, when you see people erupt like they did in Ferguson, do you ever ask yourself why they are so outraged and consider for just a second if they might have some bigger reasons that have nothing to do with the event allegedly sparking the outrage?

Missing MANPADS, continuing corruption, and a clear conflict of interest.

The Benghazi Whitewash from the House Intelligence Committee By Larry Johnson on November 22, 2014 at 1:27 PM in Current Affairs. Much of the media is celebrating the new report from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Committee as a vindication for the Obama Administration. Well, it is not. Only one little problem, you have to read the report like a lawyer in order to understand the meat of the matter.   There are six key findings. The first is typical of the obfuscation: The Committee first concludes that the CIA ensured sufficient security for CIA facilities in Benghazi and, without a requirement to do so, ably and bravely assisted the State Department on the night of the attacks. Yes, but the response was delayed because the Chief of Base refused to give immediate clearance to launch a rescue mission: The security contractors — Kris “Tanto” Paronto, Mark “Oz” Geist and John “Tig” Tiegen — spoke exclusively, and at length, with Fox News about what they saw and did that night. Baier, Fox News’ chief political anchor, asked them about one of the most controversial questions arising from the events in Benghazi: Was help delayed? Word of the attack on the diplomatic compound reached the CIA annex just after 9:30 p.m. Within five minutes, the security team at the annex was geared up for battle, and ready to move to the compound, a mile away.          “Five minutes, we’re ready,” said Paronto, a former Army Ranger. “It was thumbs up, thumbs up, we’re ready to go.” Modal Trigger But the team was held back. According to the security operators, they were delayed from responding to the attack by the top CIA officer in Benghazi, whom they refer to only as “Bob.” So, yes, most of the CIA personnel at the annex acted bravely and honorably. But even the HPSCI report acknowledges that at least 21 minutes passed AFTER the five minutes it took for the security team to be geared up for battle before the CIA contractors were give the green light to go to the aid of their besieged State Department colleagues (additionally, they may not have been given the "green light". They may just have gone). Left unexplained, why did the Chief of Base choke? More important, was he ever held accountable for this delay?

Number Two: Second, the Committee finds that there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks. In the months prior, the IC provided intelligence about previous attacks and the increased threat environment in Benghazi, but the IC did not have specific, tactical warning of the September 11 attacks. Yes and no. This is not good news for Obama. It is especially bad news for Hillary Clinton. The report also explicitly states: Prior to the Benghazi attacks, the CIA provided sufficient strategic warning of the deteriorating threat environment to U.S. decision-makers, including those at the State Department. We now know for certain that Hillary Clinton, with the assistance of Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, denied requests from Embassy Tripoli for additional security assets and resources in Libya. The report also makes this misleading claim (again, think like the damn lawyers who wrote this): In the months prior to the attacks, the IC provided intelligence about previous attacks and the increased threat in Benghazi, but it did not have specific, tactical warning of the September 11 attacks. The CIA was conducting no unauthorized activity in Benghazi and was not collecting and shipping arms to Syria. The CIA ensured sufficient security for CIA facilities in Benghazi and was able to assist the State Department in Benghazi. Pay close attention to the phrasing. 1) “The CIA was conducting no unauthorized activity in Benghazi.” A true statement. As Seymour Hersh reported in the London Review of Books, eight members of the House and Senate had been briefed on the Libya operation: The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation. The former intelligence official explained that for years there has been a recognised exception in the law that permits the CIA not to report liaison activity to Congress, which would otherwise be owed a finding. (All proposed CIA covert operations must be described in a written document, known as a ‘finding’, submitted to the senior leadership of Congress for approval.) Distribution of the annex was limited to the staff aides who wrote the report and to the eight ranking members of Congress – the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republicans leaders on the House and Senate intelligence committees. This hardly constituted a genuine attempt at oversight: the eight leaders are not known to gather together to raise questions or discuss the secret information they receive. Technically, it was an “authorized” operation. In reality, most members of Congress knew nothing of the operation.    Here’s the other whopper: "...and was not collecting and shipping arms to Syria." Yes, the CIA was neither “collecting nor shipping the arms.” That was being done by Brits, Turks and Arabs from the Gulf. I also know personally of one American who was hired by a British firm who convinced the man that he was a non-official cover officer of the CIA. This man was in Benghazi, did collect MANPADS (the acronym stands for “Man-Portable Air Defense Systems”) and turned them over to a British citizen who was part of the company he worked for. The critical question is to define the precise nature of the CIA’s role in supporting and monitoring the clandestine effort to arm the rebels in Syria. This was not only a CIA operation; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was fully informed on the details and the goals of the operation.    Third finding: Third, the Committee finds that a mixed group of individuals, including those affiliated with Al Qa’ida, participated in the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, although the Committee finds that the intelligence was and remains conflicting about the identities, affiliations, and motivations of the attackers. In contrast to the original claims of the Obama Administration (and later the New York Times), the attack was carried out by people with direct ties to Al Qaeda. That’s one of the reasons that the Obama team fought so hard to keep this out of the 2012 Presidential election. Obama insisted that Osama was dead and Al Qaeda on the run. Nope. Al Qaeda was over-running a US diplomatic and intelligence facility in Benghazi.    Fourth finding: Fourth, the Committee concludes that after the attacks, the early intelligence assessments and the Administration’s initial public narrative on the causes and motivations for the attacks were not fully accurate. Okay. HPSCI finds a very diplomatic way to say that the Obama Administration lied about Benghazi. Their phrasing reminds me of the White Star Line’s comments on the Titanic’s first and last voyage: “The Titanic failed to arrive in New York’s port on time.” As the HPSCI folks would say, that’s “not fully accurate.”    Fifth finding: Fifth, the Committee finds that the process used to generate the talking points HPSCI asked for-and which were used for Ambassador Rice’s public appearances-was flawed. HPSCI asked for the talking points solely to aid Members’ ability to communicate publicly using the best available intelligence at the time, and mistakes were made in the process of how those talking points were developed. This finding alone underscores the corruption of the HPSCI report. “Flawed?” That’s akin to describing the January 1986 Challenger Space flight as “flawed.” What is indisputable from the email record of the process used to produce the now infamous talking points was that politics was inserted into the intel process. Now, the Obama Administration is not the first to try to use political pressure to influence and alter intelligence judgments. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, both Bushes and Clinton have all done it in some form or fashion. But we do not have to rely on second hand evidence that Obama and his team did this. We have the documentary evidence which, even the House Intel Committee concedes, shows a manipulation of the intelligence for political purposes.     Last, and certainly not least: Finally, the Committee found no evidence that any officer was intimidated, wrongly forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement or otherwise kept from speaking to Congress, or polygraphed because of their presence in Benghazi. The Committee also found no evidence that the CIA conducted unauthorized activities in Benghazi and no evidence that the IC shipped arms to Syria. This too is a dishonest and nuanced conclusion. The key phrase is, “because of their presence in Benghazi.” All true. It ignores the men and women who were directly working the issue in Washington, DC and other places. Those men and women were polygraphed. They were threatened. They were intimidated. Why? To cover up the lie that the Obama Administration knew nothing about arms shipments to Syrian rebels, was doing nothing to support the activities of Saudi Arabia and Turkey to move weapons to Syria and that Al Qaeda had nothing to do with the attack. It was during and immediately after the attack that the Obama White House and the Clinton State Department engaged in a deliberate effort to cover up the truth. This whitewash from Mike Rogers does nothing to refute those lies. What needs to be looked at is Mike Rogers’ conflict of interest. It appears that his wife, Mimi, was part of a company that was involved in this clandestine operation. According to Judicial Watch: No issue has dominated Rep. Roger’s time as committee chairman more than Libya. Protests against Muammar Gadhafi’s regime began in February 2011. In March, NATO air strikes commenced and the U.S. named Christopher Stevens as special envoy to the Benghazi-based Libyan opposition. By August, the end of the Gadhafi regime was in sight. The Associated Press reported that the CIA and State Department were “working closely” on tracking down the dictator’s vast arms stockpiles, including chemical weapons, yellowcake uranium, and some 20,000 shoulder-fired missiles known as MANPADS. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told the AP that Mr. Stevens was working with officials in Benghazi on how to track down the weapons.   By early October 2011, concern over missing MANPADS was growing. Prized by insurgent forces and terrorists, MANPADS are capable of shooting down attack aircraft — or a civilian plane. “We have reports that they may in fact have crossed borders,” Mr. Rogers told USA Today, criticizing the Obama administration for a lack of urgency. “I have some concerns we may      be a little bit late.” By the end of the month, Gadhafi was dead. Less than a year later, Mr. Stevens — by then Ambassador Stevens would be dead too, killed with three other Americans in an attack on the Benghazi stations of the State Department and CIA. Benghazi became a full-blown crisis. Chairman Rogers emerged as one of the Obama administration’s sharpest critics, hammering it for a lack of transparency. Libya also was an area of activity for Aegis, Ms. Rogers’ company. As Rep. Rogers assumed control of the Intelligence Committee, an Aegis subsidiary, Aegis Advisory, began setting up shop in Libya. “Aegis has been operating in Libya since February 2011,” noted an Aegis Advisory intelligence report aimed at corporate clients. The report, marked “Confidential,” notes the company’s ability to provide “proprietary information [and] expert knowledge from our country team based in Tripoli.” Security was part of the Aegis package, too. “Aegis has extensive links in Libya which can be leveraged quickly to ensure safe passage,” the report noted. In 2012, Al Jazeera reported    that Aegis was hunting bigger game in the country, “seeking a $5 billion contract to guard Libya’s vast and porous borders.” Aegis declined to respond to Judicial Watch’s questions about Libyan border security contracts. Ms. Rogers’ rise at Aegis was swift. A former press aide to Ambassador Paul Bremer in Iraq and an assistant commissioner for public affairs at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, she was named executive vice president when the U.S. branch opened in 2006. She was promoted to president in 2008 and added the position of CEO in 2009. In 2011, Ms. Rogers was named vice chairman of the company’s board of directors. In December 2012, she left Aegis and joined the law firm Manatt as a managing director for federal government affairs. Aegis took a particular interest in events in Benghazi. One recipient of Aegis Advisory’s Libya briefings was Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, the global intelligence and consulting firm. According to Stratfor documents obtained by Wikileaks, Aegis’s Libya briefings were circulated to Stratfor’s confidential “alpha list.” The alpha list “is a repository for most of the intelligence that comes in,” a Stratfor analyst wrote in an email released by Wikileaks. “The first rule of the alpha list is that you don’t talk about the alpha list.” This report illustrates the continuing corruption of Washington. Mike Rogers, the co-author as it were by virtue of his position as Chair of HPSCI, has a clear conflict of interest. Rather than recuse himself, it appears he has helped try to whitewash what remains a bloody stain on the Obama Administration’s foreign and intelligence policy. Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm with expertise combating terrorism and investigating money laundering. Mr. Johnson works with US military commands in scripting terrorism exercises, briefs on terrorist trends, and conducts undercover investigations on counterfeiting, smuggling and money laundering.  Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management.

GrandMa.... You didn't make that Thanksgiving dinner!

NOVEMBER 27, 2014 by JOSEPH S. DIEDRICH

Nobody knows how to make Thanksgiving dinner. Despite its ubiquity in homes across the country, no single individual could ever articulate all the know-how required to produce a Turkey Day meal. It is a miracle and a mystery.

At first, this claim sounds improbable. Don’t lots of people know how to make Thanksgiving dinner? After all, almost every family has a talented cook who prepares it. Maybe Grandma labors in the kitchen all day long. She goes in with a raw bird and a sack of sweet potatoes. Eight hours later, she emerges with a veritable feast.

To be sure, Grandma plays a role. Her recipes and cooking techniques transform basic ingredients into cohesive dishes. She is certainly the proximate cause of our bounty. Take a closer look, though, and there’s much more than meets the eye.

Thanksgiving dinner is made of several components: turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, corn, squash, pumpkin, milk, butter, and so on. Grandma buys each of these raw ingredients from the grocery store. Think about what it takes to run such a store. Contemplate all the unsung heroes — all the hands that contribute to a successful market. The butcher cleans, defeathers, and prepares the turkey. The baker bakes numerous loaves of bread to be cubed for dressing. Shelf stockers display produce. Clerks transact Grandma’s purchase. A bagger bags her items. Thanksgiving dinner depends on the successful interaction of every one of them, each with unique skills.

Of course, none of the ingredients starts at the grocery store. Each one comes from a different farm: potatoes from Idaho, cranberries from Wisconsin, corn from Nebraska, and milk from California. In addition, Grandma uses 12 — 12! — spices to flavor her dishes, none of which originated in the United States. Grandma is talented. But do you really think she knows how to extract nutmeg from the Myristica fragrans tree in the Banda Islands?

The squash is grown on a large farm in southern Georgia. Farming is an incredibly complicated process; not even the farmer could articulate how to farm. He uses an irrigation system designed in California and built in Mexico. His tractor, assembled in China, contains an engine from Milwaukee. Do you have any clue how rubber tires are vulcanized and shaped? Neither does the farmer.

Back at Grandma’s house, she uses a refrigerator, an oven, and countless other tools. A well-educated engineer designed every appliance. The engineer drew blueprints and submitted them to a manufacturer. The manufacturer employed thousands of laborers, each with a specialized job on the assembly line. The oven was assembled with a precise mixture of steel, metal, and plastic. Before the assemblymen ever laid their hands on the machine, miners unearthed ore and oil. Innumerable refiners, smelters, welders, molders, salesmen, accountants, managers, and assistants of all kinds aided in the production of Grandma’s oven.

Consider all those who played a role in transportation. Ship captains, pilots, overnight truckers: Thanksgiving dinner couldn’t happen without them. Given the nature of their employment, they all drink gallons of coffee every day. Don’t forget about the coffee bean roasters. They contributed, too.

Do you still doubt my original assertion? Grandma knows her role in final preparation, and she knows it well. The same goes for the individual grocers, farmers, miners, manufacturers, and everyone else who helps make it all happen. Millions upon millions of people work together — often unwittingly — to bring Thanksgiving dinner to the table. It’s a vast web of interrelated choices and actions. In the end, no single person knows — or could know — how to make dinner.

Thankfully, that lack of knowledge stops no one. They act without the foggiest of idea of the final destination or the ultimate purpose of the fruits of their labor. More importantly, each member of the chain is necessary; not a single step could be dispensed with, or else Thanksgiving dinner would never exist. While no one knows how to make it, every contributor adds an essential, specialized piece. What’s more, each individual contributes without necessarily knowing of, caring about, or wanting the final product.

Many readers may have noticed the obvious homage to “I, Pencil,” a famous essay by FEE’s founder Leonard Read. What he wrote about the pencil can apply to anything we enjoy through trade, including Thanksgiving dinner:

There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work.

Thanksgiving dinner results from the “millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding.” No one knows how to make it. No one conceives of it or forces it into being. Yet it still happens.

On Thanksgiving, be thankful for the benevolence of voluntary commercial exchange. No other force in the universe is equally responsible for our prosperity. Nothing else is more fundamentally human — or more delicious.

http://fee.org/the_freeman/detail/i-thanksgiving-dinner

Chuck Schumer: Passing Obamacare Was a Mistake

Democrats made a mistake by passing President Barack Obama’s health-care law in 2010 instead of focusing more directly on helping the middle class, third- ranking U.S. Senate Democrat Charles Schumer said today.

“Unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them” in electing Obama and a Democratic Congress in 2008 amid a recession, Schumer of New York said in a speech in Washington. “We took their mandate and put all our focus on the wrong problem -- health care reform.”

Schumer said Democrats should have addressed issues aiding the middle class to build confidence among voters before turning to revamping the health-care system. He said he opposed the timing of the health-care vote and was overruled by other party members.

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“The plight of uninsured Americans and the hardships created by unfair insurance company practices certainly needed to be addressed,” the senator said. “But it wasn’t the change we were hired to make” in the 2008 election.

Schumer’s comments represent an unusual public intra-party critique of the way Obama’s signature legislative achievement was enacted. The senator spoke at the National Press Club to analyze the results of this month’s election, when Republicans took control of the Senate and increased their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

High Ground

Democrats’ pro-government posture “has the natural high political ground” when the middle class is frustrated as voters were before this month’s congressional election, Schumer said. At the same time, he said, Republicans were encouraging distrust toward government.

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“That doesn’t mean we always win,” he cautioned. “When we don’t present a coherent, believable pro-government plan and message -- when we allow government to mess up -- we can easily lose.”

To win in 2016, “Democrats must embrace government, not run away from it,” Schumer said. Voter discontent will continue until one of the political parties convinces middle-class Americans that it has an agenda for helping them, he said.

The Blue Wall

Does it exist? Is republican support getting Broader or just deeper. During the election the republicans made no real gains in the blue states of the country. The Republicans will in all probability lose the Senate in two years. Adding New Hampshire and Virginia to the mix there does exist a "Blue Wall". The blue wall is a series of states almost guaranteed to go "Blue" in the 2016 Presidential election. These states add up to 270 electoral college votes exactly what is needed to elect a president.


Here's the story:




The Democrats have a lock on the White House
By

DarrellDelamaide

Politics columnist

The ‘Blue Wall’ virtually guarantees an Electoral College win in 2016

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — President Barack Obama has probably long since abandoned the hope he expressed in the stirring 2004 convention speech that catapulted him to national prominence: This country is not divided into red states and blue states.
But he might be comforted by the controversial analysis from a Republican analyst that there is now a “Blue Wall” block of states that virtually guarantees a Democrat will win the presidential contest in 2016 and for the foreseeable future.
Chris Ladd, a moderate conservative who blogs for the Houston Chronicle, has mounted a compelling argument that the seemingly smashing victory of the Republicans in the midterm elections is merely the prelude to a “spectacular, catastrophic failure” in 2016.
“It became apparent from the numbers last week that no Republican candidate has a credible shot at the White House in 2016,” Ladd concludes, “and the chance of the GOP holding the Senate for longer than two years is precisely zero.”
Ladd argues that Republican support grew deeper, but not broader, in the 2014 midterms as the party swept the traditional red states but made no inroads in blue states, which now include New Hampshire and Virginia.


In his initial post-election analysis, Ladd was not firmly decided about Virginia, but concluded in a subsequent blog that if Republicans could not oust a Democratic incumbent like Mark Warner even in a midterm year with everything going for them, then the state belongs behind the Blue Wall.
This means that these firmly blue states, the Blue Wall that Ladd is describing, account for 270 electoral votes — the number needed to be elected president. Firmly red states, by contrast, add up to only 149.
In short, a Republican candidate can win only by capturing all nine swing states and flipping a dyed-in-the-wool blue state, which Ladd considers virtually impossible.
“This means that the next presidential election, and all subsequent ones until a future party realignment, will be decided in the Democratic primary,” Ladd writes.
This analyst sees the midterm elections confirming a trend that has been growing over the past two decades.
“Republicans are disappearing from the competitive landscape at the national level across the most heavily populated sections of the country,” he says, “while intensifying their hold on a declining electoral bloc of aging, white, rural voters.”


Ladd buttresses his argument with several other observations. Democrats have consolidated their support in those parts of the country that generate most of the country’s wealth outside the energy sector, he notes.
Almost half the Republican congressional delegation comes from the former Confederacy. (“Total coincidence,” Ladd adds tongue in cheek. “Just pointing that out.”)
Every major Democratic ballot initiative, like minimum wage increases, won, even in red states, while every personhood amendment failed.
Ladd treats as an anomaly that some new governor candidates won in states that vote blue for president. “Their success was very specific and did not translate down the ballot at all,” he says. These candidates, such as Bruce Rauner in Illinois, did not run on social issues, Obama or opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
There has been, needless to say, considerable pushback on Ladd’s view of the Blue Wall, including from leftist commentators. These critics attribute greater significance to governors like Republican Scott Walker in blue Wisconsin, and are not willing to accept the blueness of Virginia, for instance, as anything like permanent.
They want to average out red and blue in the four presidential elections since 2000, whereas Ladd perceives a trend going in one direction. They don’t believe, as Martin Longman put it in the Washington Monthly, that things are as “static” as Ladd maintains, and argue that “the Blue Wall is not as impenetrable as it may seem.”
Whether or not there is a Blue Wall, it is the reason that Ladd gives for this shrinking Republican base that is perhaps more telling.


In an age of disruptive technologies and “staggering challenges” that is “built for Republican solutions” given the party’s “traditional leadership on commercial issues,” the GOP is missing the target, he says.
“What are we getting from Republicans?” Ladd asks rhetorically. “Climate denial, theocracy, thinly veiled racism, paranoia, and Benghazi hearings.”
Despite efforts new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to be conciliatory, he will not be able to hinder what Ladd predicts will be “intense, horrifying stupidity” in the next two years.
Perhaps there is a new Ronald Reagan out there transformative enough to break down that Blue Wall, though Reagan was hardly an overnight success and there is no sign of anyone even close to his charisma at this point.
Until then, the notion of a Blue Wall may indeed be as predictive as this Republican analyst believes.

Proclamation of Thanksgiving

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.
Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival." She explained, "You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution."
Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale's request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey's Lady's Book. George Washington was the first president to proclaim a day of thanksgiving, issuing his request on October 3, 1789, exactly 74 years before Lincoln's.
The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.
Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

Trust and cooperation between law enforcement and citizens are the keys to a stable society

How 200-year-old police principles could have helped Ferguson
By

JamesH. Davis

                     

Police in Ferguson, Mo., used military equipment to impose order following the shooting of an unarmed black teenager in August. Their actions seemed to break a principle developed by Sir Robert Peel in 1829: ‘A civilian police that prevents crime and disorder is much preferable to repression of crime by military force and draconian legal punishment.’

The death of Michael Brown and the subsequent protests in Ferguson, Mo., have been analyzed almost exclusively through a racial lens, and race is clearly a critical element of the story.
But Ferguson also provides damaging evidence of an equally dangerous problem: America has a clear and increasingly corrosive divide between citizens and police forces throughout the nation.
A grand jury Monday night declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Brown, who was unarmed when shot Aug. 9.
Whatever your views, the fact is that large portions of our populace believe that a sworn police officer ordered a young man to his knees in the middle of the street and shot him six times in cold blood. The fact that they do illustrates a staggering low in public confidence in the police, and nowhere is that confidence lower than in economically disadvantaged communities like Ferguson, where many Americans see the police as a public-safety nuisance rather than as a solution.
Just as the power of the government rests on the consent of the governed, a set of guidelines developed nearly 200 years ago used by one of the world’s first professional police forces suggests that the power of the police rests on the consent (and cooperation) of the policed. These “Peelian Principles,” first delineated by British Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel in the development of London’s first professional police force in 1829, are still taught in almost every entry-level criminal justice college course in America today.


Too many jurisdictions seem to have forgotten to actually use them.


There are the extreme cases: In my nearly 30 years in law enforcement, including time working on anti-corruption probes as a Chicago-based FBI agent, I’ve seen some remarkably bad behavior among law-enforcement officers. The FBI squad I supervised arrested 20 police officers in less than two years, mostly for the armed robbery of individuals the police had identified as being involved in criminal conduct. While in uniform, these officers would take product and cash from drug dealers or rob high-stakes card games, knowing the victims would have nowhere to turn.
Those rogue cops were well-known in the community for their illegal activities. They even wore their reputations as badges of honor.
Clearly, bad cops do exist.
But it’s also true that blatantly bad cops are a statistical anomaly. And the vast majority of police officers are honest and well-intended men and women who risk their lives on a daily basis to keep the rest of us safe.
So how do we begin to bridge this destructive divide between citizens and officers?
Perhaps it’s a return to these nine Peelian Principles. Here is the essence of each:

A civilian police that prevents crime and disorder is much preferable to repression of crime by military force and draconian legal punishment.

A police force’s power to fulfill its functions is dependent on public approval and respect of the police’s existence and actions.

Securing the public’s cooperation with the work of the police force is critical for the police to be effective.

The more help the police can get from the public, the less the threat of physical force is needed to achieve police objectives.

Police must consistently seek public favor by demonstrating even-handed enforcement of the law, and through courtesy, good humor and a willingness to make personal sacrifices in service to the public, regardless of the wealth or social standing of the individuals involved.

Police should use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion and warnings are insufficient to obtain an individual’s co-operation — and then only the absolute minimum degree of physical force needed.

Police should always maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police.

Police officers must refrain from seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary or the state. It’s not the job of the police to judge guilt or punish the guilty.

Police officers must always recognize that the acid test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not high-visibility police actions in dealing with them.

Of course, principles alone won’t turn around public sentiment about law enforcement in America today.
If police forces want broad-based legitimacy and support, the onus is on them to begin to build bridges. Principles like those above can lead the way.

Attacks on U.S. Embassies

I Googled embassy attacks and was amazed to find the following from Politifact.com:


Here is a chronology of the deadly terrorist attacks on United States embassies, consulates and traveling U.S. personnel during the presidency of George W. Bush. The list below does not include foiled attacks or those that did not result in fatalities (other than those of the attackers). The descriptions for each incident are excerpted from the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database.
Dec. 15, 2001: Unidentified assailants gunned down a Nepalese security guard of the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Jan. 22, 2002: Two assailants attacked the American Center in Calcutta, India. Five policemen died, and 15 others were injured in the attack.
March 20, 2002: A car bomb exploded near the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru, killing nine people and injuring 32. The U.S. State Department reported no American casualties, injuries, or damage.
June 14, 2002: A suicide bombing in front of the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, left 12 dead and 51 injured.
Nov. 9, 2002: The security supervisor for the U.S. embassy in Nepal was shot dead at his house in Kathmandu. Maoist rebels claimed responsibility for the incident.
May 12, 2003: In a series of attacks, suicide bombers blew themselves up in a truck loaded with explosives in a complex that housed staff working for U.S. defense firm Vinnell in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (The contractors worked out of the U.S. embassy.) At least eight Americans were killed in the incident. Al-Qaida was suspected responsible for the incident. This was one of three attacks, involving at least nine suicide bombers and suspected to have involved 19 perpetrators overall.
July 30, 2004: Two people, including a suicide bomber, were killed and one person was injured as a suicide bomber set off an explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The Israeli Embassy and the Uzbekistan Prosecutor General’s Office in Tashkent were also attacked in related incidents.
Oct. 24, 2004: Edward Seitz, the assistant regional security officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, died in a mortar or possible rocket attack at Camp Victory near the Baghdad airport. An American soldier was also injured. He was believed to be the first U.S. diplomat killed following the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Nov 25, 2004: Jim Mollen, the U.S. Embassy’s senior consultant to the Iraqi Ministers of Education and Higher Education, was killed just outside the Green Zone in Baghdad.
Dec. 7, 2004: Gunmen belonging to al-Qaida in the Arabian Penninsula stormed the U.S. Consulate in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, triggering a bloody four-hour siege that left nine dead. One American was slightly injured in the assault.
Jan. 29, 2005: Unknown attackers fired either a rocket or a mortar round at the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. The strike killed two U.S. citizens and left four others injured.
Sept. 7, 2005: Four American contractors employed with a private security firm supporting the regional U.S. embassy office in Basra, Iraq, were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy. Three of the contractors died instantly, and the fourth died in a military hospital after the bombing.
March 2, 2006: An unidentified driver detonated a car bomb while driving past the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killing a himself, a U.S. Consulate worker and at least three others.
Sept. 12, 2006: Islamic militants attacked the U.S. embassy in Damascus, Syria, with hand grenades, rifles, and a vehicle rigged with explosives. One guard and the four attackers died.
July 8, 2007: Two Iraqi U.S. Embassy workers were killed when the wife went to deliver a ransom for her husband who had been kidnapped in Baghdad. One of the couple's bodyguards was killed in the failed ransoming.
Jan. 14, 2008: A bomb hidden on a north Beirut highway hit a U.S. Embassy vehicle, killing at least three Lebanese bystanders. The car's Lebanese driver and an American at a nearby school were wounded.
March 18, 2008: Al-Qaida's wing in Yemen, Jund Al-Yemen Brigades, fired between three and five mortar rounds toward the U.S. embassy, but instead they hit a girls’ school nearby, killing a guard and a schoolgirl and injuring 19 others in Sanaa, Yemen.
July 9, 2008: Four unknown gunmen killed three Turkish police at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
Sept. 17, 2008: Suspected al-Qaida militants disguised as security forces detonated vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, fired rocket propelled grenades, rockets and firearms on the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen. A suicide bomber also blew himself up at the embassy. Six Yemeni police, four civilians (including an American civilian), and six attackers were killed while six others were wounded in the attack.
Nov. 27, 2008: A Taliban suicide car bomber targeted the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing four civilians in addition to the suicide bomber and wounding 18 others. The embassy was hosting a Thanksgiving Day event as Americans and other foreigners were arriving at the venue at the time of the attack.

Ferguson Verdict Explodes Media's Lying Racial Narrative

by Ben Shapiro

On Monday night, the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri freed Officer Darren Wilson from the possibility of indictment over his shooting of 18-year-old black man Michael Brown. The prosecutor before the grand jury, Robert McCulloch, explained why the indictment had been rejected: the evidence, both physical and eyewitness, supported Wilson’s case that he had acted in self-defense.

McCulloch added pointed criticism of the media that drove the case in the first place, ripping the “insatiable appetite” of social media and “non-stop rumors” driven by it. The initial accounts pushed by social media, McCulloch said, were “filled with speculation and little, if any, solid or accurate evidence.” But he saved his harshest criticism for the media machine itself: “The most significant challenge encountered in this investigation has been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something, for anything, to talk about, followed closely behind with the non-stop rumors on social media.” McCulloch finished by stating that evidence mattered, and that no one’s life should be decided based on “public outcry or for political expediency.”

The lecture was well-deserved.


Just as the media did during the George Zimmerman trial and in the aftermath of Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin, the media attempted to cram the square peg of the Wilson-Brown shooting into the round hole of white police racism. That meant portraying Brown as the latest sainted racial victim; this time, rather than the Trayvon Martin narrative of hoodies, Skittles, and iced tea, the media hit upon the notion that Brown was a “gentle giant.” The Brown family, Al Sharpton, MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, and other major media outlets ran with the story that Brown was a “gentle giant” who wouldn’t hurt a fly.


Then, it turned out that Brown had robbed a convenience store minutes before his altercation with Wilson.


Similarly, the media trotted out the story of Dorian Johnson, Brown’s friend, who said that Brown held his hands up in surrender after being shot in the back, and that Wilson executed Brown. The entire media ran with that one originally; the lie spawned an entire “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” movement. Of course, it later turned out that Johnson had helped Brown rob the store, and that all available autopsy evidence contradicted Johnson’s story.


But never mind: the media had somehow turned the true story of Michael Brown – the story of a 6’5”, 289-lb. 18-year-old strong-arm-robbing a convenience store, confronting a police officer and attempting to take his gun, running away, turning back to charge that officer, and being shot multiple times – into the story of Emmett Till. Never mind that there was not a single shred of evidence suggesting that Wilson targeted Brown based on race; never mind that Brown matched the description of the robbery suspect because he was the robbery suspect; never mind that Brown attacked an officer twice. No, this was a pre-ordained narrative for the media: white racist police officer strikes down young black unarmed man. The result of that overwrought and outright false media-generated controversy: extended riots in Ferguson.


The story beat the facts. So the media ran with the story.


So did President Obama. In 2013, Obama told America that Trayvon Martin could have been his son; in this case, Obama told the United Nations that riots in Ferguson represented America’s nasty racial legacy.


As the grand jury verdict neared release, the media built up the story. We were warned of riots if Wilson escaped indictment; Erin Burnett of CNN said that such a verdict would be the “nuclear option.” Nancy Grace of Court TV helpfully added that Michael Brown’s height did not “mean he was a violent teen.” And the Brown family attorney, Benjamin Crump, openly stated that the grand jury was corrupt, long before the verdict.

Predictably enough, the Michael Brown case fell apart the moment it hit the legal system. It turns out, as Robert McCulloch said, that evidence still trumps media hype in the legal system – at least sometimes.


Now the media, humiliated yet again, riot. Ezra Klein of Vox.com asked, with the legal insight of a mentally malfunctioning goldfish, whether Michael Brown had an advocate in the grand jury hearing (the answer: that’s not how grand juries work). Fellow non-lawyer Chris Hayes of MSNBC lamented that the grand jury procedure was “so far removed from normal criminal procedure it’s unrecognizable.” The New York Daily News considered this obscene first mock-up headline: “Killer Cop Goes Free.”


With the media breathlessly covering the riots they helped to stoke in Ferguson, rioters set the city aflame. Shots were fired; protesters threw batteries, rocks and bottles; stores were looted. The media feigned head-shaking rue. Meanwhile, President Obama explained that Americans who ignored all the evidence to convict Wilson were reacting in “understandable” fashion – because, as always, evidence means nothing the left when in conflict with feelings and perception of victimhood.


Truthfully, the angry and sullen reactions of those who wanted Wilson tried are understandable. They’re understandable because most Americans live in the evidence-free narrative created by malicious media liars, and the politicians they enable. They live in the evidence-free world of the political left, which maintains that America remains deeply racist, that every white cop is Bull Connor, and that every black man shot by police is a Selma marcher. So long as they live in that world, racial reconciliation will remain a dream, and racial polarization will remain a tool of the political and media elite to sell papers, raise cash, and drive votes.

 http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/11/24/Media-narrative-implodes-Michael-Brown


This artical speaks A LOT to why we have the racial divisivness that exists in America today and, being honest with themselves....  the left knows it.  From youth that are raised and taught by people who have learned a victim mantality to a segment of the white population who are so self loathing that nothing less than the extinction of the white race, including their own family memebers is an unspoken goal.  Of course their are still white racists and they clearly show themselves in both word and deed but not all people who come into conflict with a black is a racist any more that a man that finds himself in an argument with a woman or a gay is a serial abuser or a homophobe.

Obama Is Damaging Hillary’s Chances

Mrs. Clinton’s popularity has plunged, and she is increasingly trapped by her former boss’s record.



The president with Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, at a 2012 cabinet meeting. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

By 

DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN And

PATRICK H. CADDELL

Nov. 23, 2014 5:00 p.m. ET

451 COMMENTS

President Obama ’s high-risk immigration gamble may have severe consequences for Washington, the country and the Democratic Party, most of all Hillary Clinton .

Mrs. Clinton’s putative bid for the Democratic presidential nomination is already running into trouble. The national exit poll from the recently completed midterm elections showed her with less than a majority of voters (43%) saying she would make a good president. When pitted against an unnamed Republican candidate, Mrs. Clinton lost 40% to 34%.

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Those grim numbers followed on a September WSJ/NBC poll showing a plunge in Mrs. Clinton’s favorability rating, to 43%, from 59% in 2009.

And that was before President Obama launched a defiant post-midterm campaign discarding political compromise and unilaterally doubling down on his unpopular policies. As a candidate, Mrs. Clinton would likely inherit a damaged party—and as a former member of his administration, she would struggle with the consequences of Mr. Obama’s go-it-alone governance.

The latest indication of the president’s politically damaging approach was his move on Thursday to unilaterally grant amnesty to an estimated five million illegal immigrants. A Rasmussen poll released Nov. 18 found that 53% of likely voters opposed the amnesty without congressional approval, while 34% approved. Moreover, 62% of those polled said that the president lacks the legal authority to take the action without congressional approval, and 55% said Congress should challenge the executive order in court.

That’s a problem for Democrats, who will be asked to defend the president, as they have had to do with other Obama policies, like the Affordable Care Act, that lack the support of most Americans.

Another source of trouble for Democrats: The proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which is enormously popular—59% of Americans are in favor, 31% against, according to a Pew poll this month. With the project so heavily favored, the president could score an easy win by backing the pipeline, but instead he has aligned himself with the elitist, environmentalist left led by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer.

Mr. Obama’s willingness to disregard the public’s wishes will hurt Mrs. Clinton in particular. The president’s former secretary of state is already struggling to forge an independent identity without disowning the president. It will be almost impossible for Mrs. Clinton to directly oppose him over the next two years, though she will certainly continue to try to distance herself from Mr. Obama, as she did during her summer book tour. But if the president continues to lose the support of Democrats and moderates—as Mrs. Clinton has—she might have no alternative but to shelve her presidential ambitions.

If she does run, Mrs. Clinton could face a challenge from liberal populist Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Mrs. Clinton has struggled to adopt a populist mantle. The challenge was nowhere more in evidence than when she appeared in Massachusetts with Ms. Warren in October, awkwardly urging the crowd: “Don’t let anybody tell you that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” She later explained that the line hadn’t come out right.

Mrs. Clinton will have to work harder than that to dispel the impression among liberal Democrats that she is, as the line goes, the “candidate from Goldman Sachs , ” having numerous ties to the institution. The threat to a Clinton campaign from a Democratic rival running to her left, as Mr. Obama did in 2008, increased last week when populist former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb announced he is setting up an exploratory committee for a 2016 presidential bid.

Mrs. Clinton will also have to contend with her role as the architect of “HillaryCare” in the 1990s, a clear forerunner to the Affordable Care Act, which was not popular with Americans when it was passed and now has the approval of only 37%, according to a recent Gallup poll.

It appears that Mrs. Clinton is trying to have it both ways on immigration by supporting President Obama but saying that the only lasting solution is congressional action. And on Keystone, she has been missing in action.

And if that weren’t enough, foreign policy—which should be a selling point for the former secretary of state—will be a minefield. The president seemingly has no coherent strategy to deal with Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria, no coherent strategy for dealing with Russian PresidentVladimir Putin ’s bellicosity in Eastern Europe, and no coherent strategy for dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. Regardless of whatever news emerges from the Nov. 24 deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran, this story will drag on for ages, as the mullahs would prefer.

All of these foreign-policy dead zones have roots in Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, when she logged hundreds of thousands of miles without alighting on any significant successes. The Republican takeover of the Senate may bring fresh attention to her role in the deadly debacle in Benghazi, Libya, with victims that included U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

With President Obama now courting a constitutional crisis over his unilateral action on immigration reform, the Democratic Party is losing popularity by the day. The pressure is on Mrs. Clinton to separate herself from the partisan polarization and dysfunction in Washington while not alienating the liberal Democrats who dominate turnout in presidential primaries. She needs to distance herself from Mr. Obama without alienating his strongest supporters, but she also needs to develop a clear reason and logic for why she should be elected president—a logic that six years after she first declared her candidacy remains more elusive than ever.

Barack Obama could end up beating Hillary Clinton yet again.

Mr. Schoen, who served as a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is the author, with Melik Kaylan, of “The Russia-China Axis: The New Cold War and America’s Crisis of Leadership” (Encounter Books, 2014). Mr. Caddell served as a pollster for PresidentJimmy Carter 

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I wonder what Trey Gowdy is thinking today

Classic Washington way of doing things, release bad news on a Friday http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/21/politics/benghazi-attack-report/

From the article, "The final report, from Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, and ranking member Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Maryland, concludes there was no intelligence failure prior to the attack, no stand-down order to CIA operatives trying to go assist at the besieged consular building and found conflicting intelligence in the wake of the attack about the motive and cause, which were reflected in early public comments by the administration."

Is this over? Hell no it's not, but the outcome, determined several investigations ago, is not going to change. 

Racial Insanity part II

Thought this http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/19/usa-today-capital-download-with-tom-coburn/19263969/ was kind of an interesting link. Is this the new America? Everyone threatens to commit violence if they don't get an outcome they believe is correct?

Anatomy of a Failed Presidency

Here is an article which explores the nature of failed presidencies and applies it to President Obama. Using this predictive model, the author makes several interesting predictions about the up coming Presidential election and the lack of success in the remaining years of President Obama's administration. 


http://www.marketwatch.com/story/on-obama-and-the-nature-of-failed-presidencies-2014-11-19?page=1

Racial insanity.

EXCLUSIVE: Militant group offers cash rewards for 'location' of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson - and says ammunition will 'solve a lot of problems'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2840003/Militant-group-offers-cash-rewards-location-Ferguson-police-officer-Darren-Wilson-says-ammunition-solve-lot-problems.html

Converting to the Gold Standard

ISIS unveiled its plan for gold, silver and copper coins on Thursday in an effort to distance themselves from the West.


 The currency's value will be based on the actual worth of the metals.
 The plan to use the metal currency could work in theory, but it won't last long.

"They realize the international banking system is not very open to them," he said. "If they use paper currency, they'll have rampant inflation."


http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/14/investing/isis-currency-doomed/index.html?iid=Lead&hpt=hp_t2

Net Neutrality. Right out of the FDR regulatory playbook.

Opinion: The Case Against Net Neutrality

11/11/2014 2:50PM     

American Enterprise Institute Scholar Bret Swanson explains why imposing 1930s-era telephone regulations on Internet broadband providers would be a historic mistake.

 http://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-the-case-against-net-neutrality/040E9501-8673-457C-AA20-7A6EC2EF53E3.html

 

 "During the President’s official visit to China today, the White House issued a statement from the President saying that he supports government regulation of the Internet by reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1934.  This announcement follows on the heels of the ITU Plenipotentiary meeting, where Chinese member Houlin Zhao has been elected the new Secretary.  This statement is not only a terrible message for the US, but for the rest of world. Indeed, foreign authoritarian governments have been looking for justification to monitor networks and users under the guise of net neutrality and the “Open Internet.” Obama’s announcement could not be a better present to the leaders of China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia."

 

" Net neutrality would allow the government to determine how a scarce resource is allocated. "

 

 http://www.techpolicydaily.com/internet/eisenach-statement-white-house-intervention-fccs-open-internet-proceeding/

 

 

AEI scholars’ statements on White House intervention in the FCC’s Open Internet proceeding

by: The Editors
November 10, 2014 10:14 am

Communications

Internet

ObamaOpenInternet by Shutterstock

tags: FCC, net neutrality, Title II

The Obama Administration just announced its support for Title II reclassification of the Internet. While President Obama acknowledged the independence of the FCC in his controversial statement, his call for reclassification is a noteworthy intervention in ongoing rulemaking procedures. AEI’s scholars share their thoughts on the announcement’s implications for ISPs and consumers alike.
Jeffrey Eisenach:

The Federal Communications Commission was created to be an independent regulatory agency, above and beyond the reach of crass politics. The White House’s decision to intervene in an ongoing rulemaking makes a mockery of any sense of independence or impartiality. A legitimate case can be made that a decision as large, and as lacking in statutory basis, as the FCC’s intervention in the net neutrality matter is correctly a matter for politicians, not bureaucrats.   To the extent that is the case, however, there is only one legitimate route, and it starts in the Congress, not the White House. If the FCC bows to pressure from the White House on this issue, the agency’s reputation will suffer a terrible stain.

Bret Swanson:

The Internet in the US has thrived almost beyond imagination under a multi-decade, bipartisan stance of policy restraint. Imposing Title II telephone regulations on the wildly successful US Internet would be a historic economic blunder.

Roslyn Layton:

During the President’s official visit to China today, the White House issued a statement from the President saying that he supports government regulation of the Internet by reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1934.  This announcement follows on the heels of the ITU Plenipotentiary meeting, where Chinese member Houlin Zhao has been elected the new Secretary.  This statement is not only a terrible message for the US, but for the rest of world. Indeed, foreign authoritarian governments have been looking for justification to monitor networks and users under the guise of net neutrality and the “Open Internet.” Obama’s announcement could not be a better present to the leaders of China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Read my articles about this here and here.

Daniel Lyons:

Title II reclassification would impose upon a vibrant Internet a legal regime designed in the 1930s to control the old AT&T monopoly. Indeed, the proposed ban on paid prioritization is more stringent than the obligations we once shackled on Ma Bell. The White House’s proposal to homogenize broadband Internet access is inconsistent with an increasingly diverse marketplace and would deprive Americans of countless innovative business models currently proliferating worldwide. Individualized bargaining allows for experimentation and testing of potentially more efficient business models that could get consumers the content and services that they need better than existing practices. Broadband policies turn upon a host of highly technical issues, in both fixed and wireless markets, that cannot be reduced to political sound bytes. This is why these policy decisions are firmly vested in the hands of an independent agency with the technical expertise to understand the nuances of these policies, insulated from the very political pressure that the White House is attempting to bring to bear on the Commission. There are numerous potentially pro-consumer alternatives to one-size-fits-all broadband access. Whatever rules the Commission ultimately adopts should allow for innovation that provides consumers with the services they desire online, wherever that innovation occurs in the Internet ecosystem.

Richard Bennett:

Overall broadband quality in the United States is better than broadband quality in all comparable nations thanks to the facilities-based competition model that we’ve followed since the Clinton Administration. President Obama’s desire to abandon our home-grown policy framework in favor of the approach used in the worst-performing nations such as Italy and France amounts to snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory and compromises the FCC’s legal independence. It’s unfortunate that the White House refuses to put the well-being of the American people above the wishes of misguided and poorly informed activists.

Mark Jamison:

The Administration’s announcing how it wants the Federal Communications Commission to decide on Title II regulation of the Internet does not bode well for broadband in the US. The FCC is an independent agency for a reason, namely to keep politics at arm’s length from critical infrastructure investment. Studies over the past 20 years have confirmed what Congress knew 80 years ago when it developed the agency: Politicians like to expropriate the value of infrastructure for their own political ends, and this hurts customers by scaring off investment. An independent agency is intended to stand between politics and investment by regulating under the law through a fact-oriented, transparent process. Whether the Internet has utility and common carriage features that merit Title II treatment is an issue for Congress or for the FCC, deciding under its statutory authority and subject to judicial review.

For more from our scholars on Title II and net neutrality, see our archives here and here.

- See more at: http://www.techpolicydaily.com/internet/eisenach-statement-white-house-intervention-fccs-open-internet-proceeding/#sthash.HtNhaXdM.dpuf

 

 

AEI scholars’ statements on White House intervention in the FCC’s Open Internet proceeding

by: The Editors
November 10, 2014 10:14 am

Communications

Internet

ObamaOpenInternet by Shutterstock

tags: FCC, net neutrality, Title II

The Obama Administration just announced its support for Title II reclassification of the Internet. While President Obama acknowledged the independence of the FCC in his controversial statement, his call for reclassification is a noteworthy intervention in ongoing rulemaking procedures. AEI’s scholars share their thoughts on the announcement’s implications for ISPs and consumers alike.
Jeffrey Eisenach:

The Federal Communications Commission was created to be an independent regulatory agency, above and beyond the reach of crass politics. The White House’s decision to intervene in an ongoing rulemaking makes a mockery of any sense of independence or impartiality. A legitimate case can be made that a decision as large, and as lacking in statutory basis, as the FCC’s intervention in the net neutrality matter is correctly a matter for politicians, not bureaucrats.   To the extent that is the case, however, there is only one legitimate route, and it starts in the Congress, not the White House. If the FCC bows to pressure from the White House on this issue, the agency’s reputation will suffer a terrible stain.

Bret Swanson:

The Internet in the US has thrived almost beyond imagination under a multi-decade, bipartisan stance of policy restraint. Imposing Title II telephone regulations on the wildly successful US Internet would be a historic economic blunder.

Roslyn Layton:

During the President’s official visit to China today, the White House issued a statement from the President saying that he supports government regulation of the Internet by reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1934.  This announcement follows on the heels of the ITU Plenipotentiary meeting, where Chinese member Houlin Zhao has been elected the new Secretary.  This statement is not only a terrible message for the US, but for the rest of world. Indeed, foreign authoritarian governments have been looking for justification to monitor networks and users under the guise of net neutrality and the “Open Internet.” Obama’s announcement could not be a better present to the leaders of China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Read my articles about this here and here.

Daniel Lyons:

Title II reclassification would impose upon a vibrant Internet a legal regime designed in the 1930s to control the old AT&T monopoly. Indeed, the proposed ban on paid prioritization is more stringent than the obligations we once shackled on Ma Bell. The White House’s proposal to homogenize broadband Internet access is inconsistent with an increasingly diverse marketplace and would deprive Americans of countless innovative business models currently proliferating worldwide. Individualized bargaining allows for experimentation and testing of potentially more efficient business models that could get consumers the content and services that they need better than existing practices. Broadband policies turn upon a host of highly technical issues, in both fixed and wireless markets, that cannot be reduced to political sound bytes. This is why these policy decisions are firmly vested in the hands of an independent agency with the technical expertise to understand the nuances of these policies, insulated from the very political pressure that the White House is attempting to bring to bear on the Commission. There are numerous potentially pro-consumer alternatives to one-size-fits-all broadband access. Whatever rules the Commission ultimately adopts should allow for innovation that provides consumers with the services they desire online, wherever that innovation occurs in the Internet ecosystem.

Richard Bennett:

Overall broadband quality in the United States is better than broadband quality in all comparable nations thanks to the facilities-based competition model that we’ve followed since the Clinton Administration. President Obama’s desire to abandon our home-grown policy framework in favor of the approach used in the worst-performing nations such as Italy and France amounts to snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory and compromises the FCC’s legal independence. It’s unfortunate that the White House refuses to put the well-being of the American people above the wishes of misguided and poorly informed activists.

Mark Jamison:

The Administration’s announcing how it wants the Federal Communications Commission to decide on Title II regulation of the Internet does not bode well for broadband in the US. The FCC is an independent agency for a reason, namely to keep politics at arm’s length from critical infrastructure investment. Studies over the past 20 years have confirmed what Congress knew 80 years ago when it developed the agency: Politicians like to expropriate the value of infrastructure for their own political ends, and this hurts customers by scaring off investment. An independent agency is intended to stand between politics and investment by regulating under the law through a fact-oriented, transparent process. Whether the Internet has utility and common carriage features that merit Title II treatment is an issue for Congress or for the FCC, deciding under its statutory authority and subject to judicial review.

For more from our scholars on Title II and net neutrality, see our archives here and here.

- See more at: http://www.techpolicydaily.com/internet/eisenach-statement-white-house-intervention-fccs-open-internet-proceeding/#sthash.HtNhaXdM.dpuf