Category Archives: Government

Update II: Make Me Thankful: Don't Enlist!

Criminal Injustice, Government, Homeland Security, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Military, Political Correctness, Terrorism

The excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”:

“Instead of tough, immediate action against every cog in the military machine that promoted, pampered and palliated the mass murderer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, victims got a commission of inquiry.

Or in Pentagon speak, ‘a broad 45-day review.’

The state’s response to the slaughter at Fort Hood of 13 of its own by a Muslim Army psychiatrist, who also wounded more than 30 in the shootings at the Texas military post on Nov. 5, will be met, first, with more bureaucracy – more salaries for more slackers – and, thereafter, with a brick-thick report! …

Thinking of enlisting? You’ll be fighting not for country and countrymen; but will be granting a banal bureaucrat a lien on your life.

As for the inquiry cobbled together to stop future Hasans:

Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, a fictitious, but oh-so-real character in the brilliant British satires ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister,’ would agree with me when I say that government commissions are where accountability goes to die.”

The complete column, now on WND.COM, is “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”

Update I (Nov. 27): A correction to our friends over at the Libertarian Republican’s blog post: I’ve made it abundantly clear that it is not merely the military under Obama that suffers the afflictions highlighted in “Make Me Thankful: Don’t Enlist!”, and in “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program”—but the military, period.

Hozanas to the generic Hasan were the norm during Bush’s reign over the Army.

Patriotic Americans, as highlighted in “Take this, Mr. President, For Ramos and Compean,” were prosecuted and persecuted with equal zeal under Genghis Bush.

In the waning years of Bush’s G-d-awful term, I offered a flip-side argument: “Support The Draft … for politicians and bureaucrats”:

Having expatiated against the illegal, immoral and unconstitutional Iraq war from its inception, I’d recommend a different course of action in furtherance of freedom. For one, crying for the carping consular staff is a bad idea. They seem to want to enjoy the favors of office without bearing the burdens—to pick and choose those policies they are prepared to promote.

Creating a risk-free workplace for the already privileged government employee will do nothing to curb the State’s endless exploits. Coddling its recruits won’t place a dampener on government’s callous, confiscatory practices. The riskier the stakes faced by the political class, the better. Let as many of them as possible shoulder the consequences of the Iraq policy. Force more of the state’s pen-pushing laptop bombardiers to the empire’s fronts. Then, perhaps, will we witness policy changes that percolate down to The People.

Update II: The response to this column, public and personal, has been better than I had hoped. To think of the filthy hate mail I used to get when I wrote against the Iraq war for all those years!

If in writing this column, I’ve helped to save one life — then that is more of a reward than I could have hoped for. As is written in the Talmud (and plagiarized by Islam), “Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” [Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a)]

Update II: Wear A Turban, Not A Tux (Transparency)

Barack Obama, Celebrity, China, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Government

Wikipedia: “A state dinner is a dinner or banquet paid by a government [read: taxpayers] and hosted by a head of state in his or her official residence in order to renew and celebrate diplomatic ties between the host country and the country of a foreign head of state or head of government who was issued an invitation.”

In the tradition of celebrating “crap countries” (Ali G. vernacular), BO’s first state dinner is in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Why not? One of BO’s first major addresses as president was delivered in “Egypt’s capital, early in June. There, the president prostrated himself before the Muslim world, offering up prolix praise for the religion of peace.”

President Bush hosted a glittery gala for the same Singh only four years ago.

You the taxpayer most certainly cannot press your nose against the White House windows to get a glimpse of the well-fed, celebrity guests. You’ll have to be content to read about them HERE.

To give credit where its due, when asked “about the tense relationship between India and Pakistan,” Obama said “it was not the role of the United States to intervene and solve such problems.”

That’s all well and good, but then what is he doing beefing up American presence in Afghanistan?

Update I: On the other hand, here’s the neoconservative foreign-policy perspective on Indian-American bond from The Heritage Foundation, chief of which is “the Indo-Pakistani regional rivalry,” terrorism, and, of course, an acknowledgment of the Chinese threat:

“President Obama rightly took advantage of an opportunity to reaffirm ties to India and recognize the U.S.-India partnership as one of the “defining partnerships of the 21st century.” The two countries now need to follow through on their leaders’ pronouncements on a range of issues including education, trade, health, energy, defense, nuclear nonproliferation, space, and the environment.” …

“President Obama hopefully took the opportunity in his private meeting with Singh to provide reassurances that the U.S. is attuned to Indian strategic concerns vis-à-vis China, particularly their ongoing border disputes and Chinese efforts to extend its influence into South Asia. Over the last three years, China has increasingly pressured India over their disputed borders by questioning Indian sovereignty over the state of Arunachal Pradesh and by stepping up probing operations along different parts of their shared frontier.”

Update II (Nov. 25): Transparency. Don’t expect it. Yesterday, the adoring sycophants at CNN—in particular, Anderson Cooper’s fittingly dim sidekick—were salivating for footage from BO’s party, only to be told by a fawning colleague that the administration was not allowing the press to take pics of the prez and his party. Feasts and festivities amid hunger and hardship across the country don’t make for the best optics.

Updated: Explosive Expose on Government Schools Published

Education, Government

James Ostrowski, prominent libertarian and tea party movement leader, has published his second book, Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids: What You Need to Know. The book urges parents to pull their children out of the schools to escape crime, drugs, promiscuity, political correctness, indoctrination, and academic mediocrity. “This book provides the tea party movement with a strategic roadmap to restore the Jeffersonian vision of individual liberty that is the very essence of America,” he writes.

Ostrowski was led to write the book out of anger that his own kids’ parish school closed in 2006. At the present rate, private schools are doomed as a poor economy and rising tuitions squeeze out working class parents who are already forced to pay large sums for failing government schools.

The fate of the nation is tied to the future of K-12 education, Ostrowski argues: “The grand result of our experiment with government schools is a population ill-prepared to deal with the present crisis in America. . . . they are utterly unequipped to deal with the harsh new reality that the regime is failing and the nation is in the process of economic collapse.”

Another excerpt: “Government schools are truly the foundation of big government today. They supply the funding and the troops [the teachers unions] and they drum the ideology into your children, five days a week for thirteen years. Finally, they render many children less able to survive without constant support and direction from the government. Their message is that people cannot live in freedom and they fulfill that prophecy with each graduating class.”

After reviewing 50 years of failed efforts to reform the schools through the political process, Ostrowski argues that the only feasible option is direct citizen action: a massive simultaneous withdrawal of children from the schools.

James Ostrowski is a trial and appellate lawyer in Buffalo, New York. He was on presidential candidate Ron Paul’s legal staff last year. His policy studies have been published by the Hoover Institution, the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the Cato Institute. His articles have been used as course materials at numerous colleges and universities including Brown, Rutgers and Stanford. He taught a course in the Constitution at Canisius College and has been a guest lecturer at the University at Buffalo Medical School.

Presently he is an Adjunct Scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and columnist for LewRockwell.com. He is editor of the libertarian blog, PoliticalClassDismissed.com and founder and president of the Jeffersonian think tank, Free New York, Inc.

He is the author of the 2004 anthology, Political Class Dismissed, dubbed the “bible of the Upstate NY tax revolt.”

The book is for sale at Amazon.

Update: Jim Ostrowski will gladly answer any of your questions about his new book. So go ahead.

Weapons For The GOP Punditocracy

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Economy, Government, Healthcare, libertarianism, Media, Republicans, Socialism

The excerpt is from my new WND.Com column, “Weapons For The GOP Punditocracy”:

“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is advancing on the country with an $848 billion health-care bill in hand, which he hopes to bring to the Senate floor before he and cohorts go on holiday.

Yet the swiftest arrow in the Republican punditocracy’s Obamacare quiver remains this:

If the government can’t pull off the ‘Cash For Clunkers’ scam, how will it handle health care?

Or this:

If government can’t manage the gallery of the grotesque – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – how will it run a sixth of the economy?

When all else fails to persuade, they galvanize the argument from Hitler. Taking their cues from Rush Limbaugh, it is not uncommon for Republican commentators to pair B. Hussein’s health care with Hitler’s hobby horses: smoking bans, abortions, euthanasia and eugenics.

Hitler and the mismanagement by government of Medicare and Medicaid (but not of the military) – this is the Republican commentariat’s repertoire of riffs.

Anything but First Principles, with which the GOP has an oil-and-water relationship.” …

The complete column is “Weapons For The GOP Punditocracy.”

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THE SECOND EDITION of my first book, Broad Sides, One Woman’s Clash with a Corrupt Culture, is now back in print with bonus material and reviews.

Pre-order your copy, or copies, HERE in time for Christmas and Hanuka.

Broad Sides will be available shortly from Amazon.