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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Criminal Suppression of Evidence
President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and other leaders of the Democrat/Socialist Party are guilty of criminal suppression of evidence that makes the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill unnecessary, as well as ferociously expensive for all of us.
My thanks to Frank Madarasz, who alerted me to this article on the Investor’s Business Daily website.
A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill?
This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters’ arguments.
The sham of global warming plays no real part in Democrat/Socialists’ rational designs. We are confronting an example of destructive religious fundamentalism, a fundamentalism of the same materialistic type that permitted liberals in the 1920s and 1930s to applaud Lenin and Stalin when they liquidated tens of millions of Russians in the name of progress toward social justice.
As in the Soviet Union, Democrat/Socialists’ motivation is to restructure the economy of the United States in conformity with the social-justice designs of liberal-progressive-socialist planners and social engineers. Democrat/Socialists want to have the power to decide which industries survive and which will be driven into oblivion.
In the simplest terms, Democrat/Socialists wish to impose tyranny far more severe than that of Parliament and George III in 1776.
Their goal is the power to dictate to you the kind of automobile you must buy, the way your home must be built, how hot or cold you may be, and what kinds of jobs you will be permitted to hold….after, of course, much increased Federal taxes and rampant inflation will have taken away your retirement savings and any estate assets you may have intended to withhold from the political state for your heirs.
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Monday, June 29, 2009
Judge Sotomayor’s Indefensible Decision
In addition to the fact that the original decision in the New Haven firefighters’ case was not in compliance with Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the City of New Haven, Connecticut, is guilty of blatant perjury. White firefighters were denied their clear rights to promotion in response to local political extortion.
Read Firefighters Case: What Really Happened, published on the National Journal website.
THE MORE YOU EXAMINE THE NEW HAVEN AFFIRMATIVE-ACTION CASE, THE MORE INDEFENSIBLE IT LOOKS.
by Stuart Taylor
Saturday, June 13, 2009
I admire many things about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, especially her deep compassion for underprivileged people. I may well support her confirmation to the Supreme Court if her testimony next month dispels my concern that her decisions may be biased by the grievance-focused mind-set and the “wise Latina woman” superiority complex displayed in some of her speeches.
But close study of her most famous case only enhances my concern. That’s the 2008 decision in which a panel composed of Sotomayor and two Appeals Court colleagues upheld New Haven’s race-based denial of promotions to white (and two Hispanic) fire-fighters because too few African-Americans had done well on the qualifying exams.
The panel’s decision to adopt as its own U.S. District Judge Janet Arterton’s opinion in the case looks much less defensible up close than it does in most media accounts. One reason is that the detailed factual record strongly suggests that—contrary to Sotomayor’s position—the Connecticut city’s decision to kill the promotions was driven less by its purported legal concerns than by raw racial politics.
Whichever way the Supreme Court rules in the case later this month, I will be surprised if a single justice explicitly approves the specific, quota-friendly logic of the Sotomayor-endorsed Arterton opinion.
Judge Jose Cabranes, Sotomayor’s onetime mentor, accurately described the implication of this logic in his dissent from a 7-6 vote in which the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit refused to reconsider the panel’s ruling.
“Municipal employers could reject the results of an employment examination whenever those results failed to yield a desired racial outcome—i.e., failed to satisfy a racial quota,” Cabranes wrote.
The Sotomayor-endorsed position allowed such a “race-based employment decision,” Cabranes added, even though the New Haven exams were “carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality” and even though the city had neither found nor tried to find a more job-related test.
The Cabranes dissent and the voluminous factual record that was before the Sotomayor panel flatly contradict the widely stated view that her position was justified by evidence that the exams were not job-related and that they discriminated against blacks in violation of the “disparate-impact” provisions of federal civil-rights law.
In fact, neither Sotomayor nor any other judge has ever found that the exams—one for would-be fire lieutenants, one for would-be captains—were invalid or unfair. Nor has any judge found that allowing the promotions would have violated disparate-impact law.
Rather, the Sotomayor-endorsed position was that under 2nd Circuit precedents, New Haven’s discrimination against high-scoring whites must be upheld based solely on the fact that disproportionate numbers of blacks had failed to qualify for promotion and might file a disparate-impact lawsuit—regardless of whether they could win it.
The decision to kill the promotions was driven less by purported legal concerns than by raw racial politics.
Indeed, the evidence shows that the promotions would have been lawful and that any disparate-impact suit by blacks was doomed to fail.
Disparate-impact law—as codified by Congress in 1991—specifies that an employer whose qualifying exam or other selection criterion produces a racially disparate impact can be held liable for unintentional discrimination only if (1) the test is not “job-related ... and consistent with business necessity,” or (2) the employer is presented with and refuses to adopt another, similarly job-related test with less disparate impact.
But the unmistakable logic of Sotomayor’s position would encourage employers to discriminate against high-scoring groups based on race—no matter how valid and lawful the qualifying test—in any case in which disproportionate numbers of protected minorities have low scores, as is the norm.
Such logic would convert disparate-impact law into an engine of overt discrimination against high-scoring groups across the country and allow racial politics and racial quotas to masquerade as voluntary compliance with the law.
Speaking of racial politics, even the Sotomayor-endorsed Arterton opinion found that there was evidence from which a jury could infer that, as the plaintiffs contended, “city officials worked behind the scenes to sabotage the promotional examinations because they knew that, were the exams certified, the mayor would incur the wrath of ... influential leaders of New Haven’s African-American community.”
The victims of the city’s discrimination included lead plaintiff Frank Ricci. Like other plaintiffs, he studied for months, for as many as 13 hours a day, in 2003 to prepare for the combined written and oral exam that he hoped would win him a promotion. He also spent more than $1,000 buying the books that the city had suggested as homework and paying to have them read onto audiotapes. (Ricci is dyslexic.) And he got one of the highest scores.
I sketch below some of the evidence belying the Sotomayor panel’s assertion in its own strangely sketchy opinion that the city “was simply trying to fulfill its obligations” under disparate-impact law when it blocked the promotions. This and other evidence show that the exams were fair—although not perfect (no exam ever was or ever will be)—and that the city’s decision was driven by racial politics, not by any desire to comply with the law.
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The Origin of President Obama’s Fascist State Corporatism
The origin of President Barack Obama
President Obama’s economic programs bear close resemblance to the 1920s Fascist State Corporatism of Benito Mussolini.
The Federal government has nationalized banks and automobile companies, firing executives, deciding what products will be manufactured and where, and commanding banks to lend money to poor credit risks. Cap-and-trade “green” legislation will force a massive increase in energy prices for the industrialized nation between the heavily liberal-progressive-socialist East and West Coasts, along with the loss of many thousands of manufacturing jobs. Ever more detailed regulation of our daily lives is being imposed across many sectors of the economy.
After imposition of the President’s procrustean global warming policies, government will become the major generator of new jobs. This is what Friedrich von Hayek called The Road to Serfdom.
The essence of President Obama’s political and economic program was summarized in a book published just before the start of Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign. That book, Mr. Stuart Chase
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Sunday, June 28, 2009
Spiritual Disciplines
Breaking the strongholds of darkness depends upon developing spiritual disciplines in our lives.
Sunday’s sermon by Pastor Dan Gardner at the Cohocton Assembly of God Church was on the message of Matthew 17:14-21:
14 When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. 16 I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.”
17 “O unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” 18 Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment.
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”
20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
21 But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.
Why are we, like the disciples who were unable to heal the young epileptic, unable to place full faith and trust in God? Why is there so little evidence in our lives of the power of God? How are we to be ambassadors to the world for the Gospel?
18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. (2 Corinthians 5: 18-20)
Jesus, in the passage from Matthew, shows us the way.
First, we must have faith, the tangible evidence that God is consistent with His Word.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1 KJV)
Faith is not about abstractions. To bolster your faith, as young David did when Goliath confronted the Israelites, look around you and search your memory for the specific things that God has done to bless you in your own life.
32 David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”
33 Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth.”
34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”
?Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you. (1 Samuel 17:32-37)
Second, our prayers must become an ongoing communion with God that establishes a relationship. Prayer must be more than mechanical recitation. We must pray continually for God’s guidance and the opening of our hearts to the impulses of the Holy Spirit, telling us what we ought to do to lead good lives and to help others in their times of need.
That sort of relationship with God is what shines through to others when we deal fairly with them. It’s not a matter of education or worldly prominence, as Jesus’s disciples demonstrated:
1 The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. 2 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. 3 They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. 4 But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand.
5 The next day the rulers, elders and teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. 6 Annas the high priest was there, and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander and the other men of the high priest’s family. 7 They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them: “By what power or what name did you do this?”
8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people! 9 If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, 10 then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. 11 He is ” ‘the stone you builders rejected,
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Saturday, June 27, 2009
If the Supreme Leader Wants It, Who Are We To Question it?
At the time the House voted on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, there was only one copy of it available on the House floor. No one outside the committee had read the 1,200-page bill, and, only hours before the floor vote, the committee had dropped a 300-page amendment into the hopper.
See High Theater: Cap-and-Trade Sneaks By.
Democrat/Socialists Declare War on the American Economy.
Read the full article.
Perspective on the Estate of Marriage
Read David P. Goldman’s It Takes a Congregation, on the First Things website.
What The Democrat/Socialist Congress Is Doing To You
Passage of the destructive Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill will cause huge cost increases to all of our manufacturing industries, which will be passed on to us as consumers. This air-head “green” legislation amounts to imposition of the largest tax increase in our history, as well as the permanent loss of millions of productive jobs.
Among other things, it guarantees accelerated exporting of manufacturing jobs to China, India, and other Asian nations. Spain’s decisively negative experience shows that creation of “green” jobs means only that government will grow ever larger, ever more intrusive, and ever more tyrannical.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
A Socialist Preview
If you want to see what President Obama’s proposed budgetary policies will do to the nation, read about what those same polices have already done to New York, New Jersey, and California, states that formerly were paragons of prosperity.
Democrat/Socialist Foreign Policy Sensitivity
In the 2004 presidential campaign, Senator John Kerry castigated President Bush for his alleged unilateral, cowboy diplomacy. In the 2008 campaign, President Obama promised a foreign policy that would listen to the concerns of other nations. All of that now appears to be nothing more than propaganda to con liberal-progressive-socialist voters.
Having promised Jewish voters during the presidential campaign his undying fealty to Israel, the President has already repudiated firmly established diplomatic promises to Israel and joined with Muslim jihadists to blame Israel for Middle East political turmoil.
Now the Democrat/Socialist Congress, with no demurrer from President Obama, is threatening to bludgeon nations that don’t conform to our diktats regarding the farce of purported man-made global warming.
Even the New York Times, the journal of record for American socialism, has taken note of this latest unilateral, strong-arm, foreign policy initiative.
A House committee working on sweeping energy legislation seems determined to make sure that the United States will tax China and other carbon polluters, potentially disrupting an already-sensitive climate change debate in Congress.
The Ways and Means Committee’s proposed bill language would virtually require that the president impose an import tariff on any country that fails to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions…
...associations that represent importers and multinational corporations are raising red flags, warning that the language could lead to trade wars, hurt the United States’ ability to export low-carbon technology and harm consumers.
National Review reports:
Despite indications that much of President Obama’s agenda is meeting intra-party skepticism all over Capitol Hill, there is one policy nexus where congressional leaders are still doggedly determined to move the country left: energy and the environment. Speaker Pelosi will reportedly allow a vote on the controversial Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” legislation at the end of this week.
And it gets even better. Not content to tempt political fate by imposing huge carbon taxes on the American middle class, Democrats have added a provision which imposes stiff tariffs on our trading partners if they don’t adopt aggressive carbon restrictions of their own.
You heard correctly: progressives have authored a bill that earns the mortal enmity of domestic energy consumers and our most crucial trading partners at the same time. Economy-killing climate policies and a trade war - together at last!
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