AmericaWantsToKnow.com

Why Sarah Palin quit

2009-07-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

Sherlock Holmes dropped by the America Wants To Know office this afternoon. The great detective may appear disinterested in fame and glory, but we have never known him to miss a curtain call.

"You were right," we said.

"Naturally," he replied.

It was September 14, 2008, early on a Sunday morning, when Sherlock Holmes had walked into our office carrying a magnifying glass and a copy of the Sunday New York Times and solved The Case of the Governor's Husband.

"The governor's damage-control effort may well succeed," Holmes said. "By the time the details of the scandal become public, the story of her resignation will be old news. She will point to her record and blame the accusations on the enemies she made by doing what was right for the people of Alaska. She will play the victim. She will talk about the future. It will be over in a week."

"Really?" we asked. "Would you guess that she has a future in politics?"

The flicker of a smile crossed Holmes' face. "I never guess," he said.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "The Case of the Governor's Husband."

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The voice of Speaker Boehner

2009-06-26T15:24:00.000-07:00

House Minority Leader John Boehner is on the House floor as this is written, reading highlights from a 300-plus-page amendment to the "American Clean Energy and Security" bill, otherwise known as climate-change cap-and-trade legislation, which was "dropped into the hopper" at three o'clock this morning.

Under the "custom of the House," the Minority Leader's remarks will be heard, regardless of time limitations on the debate.

He may be killing the bill right now. America Wants To Know just telephoned Rep. Brad Sherman's office (we're in his district) and his staffers said he has not yet decided how he will vote. "We're giving him a tally," said the person who answered the phone in the district office.

We called because the House website gave us an error message when we tried to e-mail.

Maybe the climate change bill will die on the floor tonight, never to be revived.

That would be a victory for all Americans, except the ones who make money from corrupt and idiotic government contracts and subsidies.

Copyright 2009

Win a free tidbits® puzzles book

2009-06-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

Calling all crossword puzzle and word game fans: tidbits® puzzles book #1 is now available at Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com.

You can also get it at any bookstore. Ask for ISBN 978-0-9823837-3-5 if they can't find it. They'll find it.

Here's a peek at the cover of tidbits® puzzles book #2:

The first ten people who guess the name of the painting that inspired the colors win a free tidbits® puzzles book. E-mail your guess to tidbits@ExtremeInk.com. (Hint: the artist's initials are VVG and you can browse paintings at Art.com.)

Thanks for playing our game! Visit tidbits® puzzles online every Sunday for a new puzzle.

Copyright 2009

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Mullahs retire from show business

2009-06-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

It was evident from Iranian "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Khamenei's public statements after the election that he wanted the world to accept Iran's regime and give it the same deference shown to repressive governments in places like China, Vietnam, and Egypt, just to name a few.

In his speech announcing that after further review, the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would stand, the Ayatollah repeatedly cited the voter turnout in Iran as evidence that the regime is legitimate.

So that was the plan: Hold a sham election in which both candidates had been selected by the "Supreme Leader," and then hold it up to the world as proof that Iran's government is a freely elected, legitimate expression of the will of a majority of the Iranian people.

There's a scene in the first Rocky movie in which Apollo Creed, the boxer who was supposed to defeat Rocky in a sham match and instead finds himself being pounded, complains to his corner man, "He don't know it's a damn show. He thinks it's a damn fight."

So it goes.

The people of Iran have succeeded in destroying the mullahs' plan to use the election as a means of solidifying their power and their international standing. Governments that had intended to find a way to do business with Iran, including ours, will find it very difficult to go forward with their plans.

It won't be easy for elected leaders to shake hands with a man who dropped lye from helicopters to get demonstrators off the streets.

The show's over.

Copyright 2009

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Just kill it

2009-06-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

Today's Washington Post reports that the Senate Finance Committee has hit on a compromise proposal for health care reform.

It would "require most people to buy health insurance."

Good luck with that.

Over in the House, they're looking for a trillion dollars to pay for the first ten years of the plan. So far, their favorite options are a "surtax on the rich," an "increase in the payroll tax," new taxes on "sugary drinks and alcohol," and "a national value-added tax" (that's a type of sales tax) of 3 percent.

Good luck with that, too.

How do you like it so far?

Maybe you'll like the Senate's funding idea better. They're leaning toward taxing employer-paid health insurance, meaning you would owe income tax on the cash value of your employer-paid benefits as if you had received that money as cash income.

Some Democrats are opposed to this because it would really hammer union members, whose health plans are excellent and very expensive.

Senator Max Baucus told reporters he's open to the idea of exempting from the tax any health benefits that are provided under a union contract.

Seriously? Non-union employees would have to come up with the money to pay taxes on their health benefits and union employees wouldn't?

Do you feel sick yet?

Have a glass of club soda and relax. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have never exhibited suicidal tendencies. One day you'll open the newspaper (or the iPhone) and there will be a stunning, staggering number in some government economic report, or there will be a stunning, staggering development in some international situation, or there will be a stunning, staggering harvest of vegetables on the White House lawn, and that will suddenly become THE REASON that health care reform must wait until... until... until after the 2010 elections.

Then it will be back where it started, on the campaign trail in Iowa and New Hampshire, just one more bottle of snake oil in the hands of a charismatic traveling salesman.

Copyright 2009

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Gazing into the future

2009-06-18T18:17:00.000-07:00

America Wants To Know brought out the fringed tablecloth and the crystal ball today and summoned our in-house Gypsy fortune-teller to answer a question about health care reform.

"What is it this time?" Madame Lyubitshka asked irritably. Gypsy fortune-tellers hate to be called away on poker night.

"I have an image in my mind," America Wants To Know said, "of Congressman Dan Rostenkowski. I see him surrounded by angry senior citizens who are pounding his car with sticks and umbrellas."

"I see," said the Gypsy.

"Can you track that down?" we asked.

Madame Lyubitshka seated herself at the little round table and passed her hands slowly over the crystal ball. "Yes," she said after a moment. "There he is."

Flickering in the glass was an image of the venerable Illinois congressman in his car, surrounded by a crowd of about a hundred senior citizens. They were jeering. Faintly we could hear shouts of "Liar, liar," "Chicken, chicken," and "We won't forget at election time."

Some of the seniors surrounded the congressman's car and briefly prevented him from driving away, pounding on the hood and the windows in anger.

"Where is he?" we asked.

Madame Lyubitshka peered into the crystal. "The Copernicus Center," she said. "Right in the middle of his district in Chicago. He was meeting privately with six senior-citizen groups and these people were waiting to speak with him. He promised to talk with them after the meeting, but instead he just ran for his car."

"What did they want to speak to him about?"

The Gypsy moved her hand over the crystal ball and stared deeply into the glass. "The new catastrophic care benefit in Medicare," she said. "They are very angry because they were asked to pay something for it. Come, see for yourself."

It was all there in the crystal. It was August, 1989. Congress had passed the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 to provide insurance for catastrophic illnesses and long-term nursing care. Eligible seniors were asked to pay a premium ranging from $4 per month to $800 per year, depending on income. And all hell broke loose when the government tried to collect.

"Sen. John McCain said he recognized the brewing backlash a year ago--after he got 30,000 responses to a questionnaire in which sentiment ran more than 3-to-1 against a catastrophic-insurance bill that was sailing through Congress with bipartisan support," the Gypsy read from a reflection inside the glass.

"When was this?" we asked.

"September 17, 1989," Madame Lyubitshka read. "This is a story by Dan Balz in the Washington Post."

"Read some more," we urged.

"Other members began to sense something was wrong earlier this year, then wrote off the anger to a few greedy old folks," she read, "But when House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski was surrounded by jeering senior citizens during the August recess, everyone on Capitol Hill knew they had a problem they could not avoid. Chalk up another victory to the power of the elderly."

"Is there more?" we asked.

"You know the rest," Madame Lyubitshka said. "The catastrophic care benefit was repealed by Congress because the people who were eligible for the benefit didn't want to pay for it. They wanted everybody else to pay for it."

"Do you mean to tell me that the health care benefit was actually passed by Congress and signed into law, and then as soon as people found out it was going to cost them money, Congress was forced to repeal it? After all that work and effort? How could that happen?"

Madame Lyubitshka appeared to fall into a trance. "We call Dan Rostenkowski," she wailed in a tremulous voice. She lifted her hand. There was a cell phone in it. "Area code 773-276-5575," she said. "He's out of jail now. He'll explain it to you."

Copyright 2009

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Frauds and Liars

2009-06-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

Karma. It's so slow.

That favorite saying of a friend was brought to mind last week as we watched car dealers complain to Congress that they were getting screwed.

The lawmakers listened sympathetically but didn't offer much help. Apparently the Gallup Poll hasn't uncovered any public support for a bailout of car dealers, other than a few dollars to pay for a headstone inscribed, What Goes Around, Comes Around.

In another championship display of prevarication, President Barack Obama devoted his weekly Internet and radio address to an explanation of how he plans to pay for his health care reform proposals.

He plans to pay doctors, hospitals, and drug makers less than they charge for their products and services.

Why didn't we think of that.

The next time you go to the grocery store, tell the manager you're only paying fifty cents a pound for beef, and it had better be sirloin because it's discriminatory to reserve the good stuff for people who can pay more for it. When he laughs at you, tell him he'd better play ball unless he wants to see his supermarket nationalized and his salary cut to a dollar a year.

How many Army divisions does Kroger have?

President Obama must be in real trouble on this health care reform bill because he has already gone to the old, reliable Washington lie: he can find the money to pay for it by "rooting out waste."

He couldn't have picked a worse week to fire Gerald Walpin, the Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service, who had the bad taste to root out $400,000 in waste in an AmeriCorps program run by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, an Obama ally and former NBA star.

There's no inspector general in the NBA, which might explain why commissioner David Stern gets away with what looks like the biggest rigging scandal since black-and-white quiz shows.

America Wants To Know became convinced last week that the cat is out of the bag when we heard the women at the hair salon chatting about the Lakers' loss in Game 3 of the NBA Finals, and how everybody knew that "they" weren't going to let the Lakers win four straight games because it would be boring and the ratings would tank.

We always get e-mail from friends who enjoy sports betting whenever there is an egregious call or non-call by an official, like the one in the Mavericks-Nuggets Western Conference Semifinals game on May 9, and whenever a player inexplicably shoots or doesn't shoot an uncontested basket at the end of the game that affects the point spread or the over-under.

This week someone sent us the news story about former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, presently serving a 15-month sentence for conspiracy and wire fraud in connection with sports gambling, being clubbed in the knee by an inmate who claimed to have ties to the New York mob. "Verbally, there was a comment made that they were going to shoot him in the head and break his knee caps," reported Donaghy's representative.

Donaghy, who is scheduled for release on October 24, is said to be writing a tell-all book on "how he picked those winners 70 to 80 percent of the time and about the knowledge of the special relationships that exist between referees, players and coaches."

Donaghy's representative, Pat Zaranek of Executive Prison Consultants, said the former ref's gambling problem should be seen in context. "To understand his addiction, what transpired, you have to understand what led up to it during his 13 years in pro basketball and the whole culture of what he perceived as fraud and manipulation in the NBA," he said.

If NBA commissioner David Stern is rigging the outcome of games, it appears that he's doing it with a sophisticated system of manipulating the officiating to get key players in foul trouble early and at the foul line late.

That would explain the peculiar sequence of events involving Lakers head coach Phil Jackson in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. Jackson gave an interview between the first and second quarters of the game and said there were some "bogus" calls in the first quarter that resulted in two fouls each for the Lakers' Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum.

The NBA fined Phil Jackson $25,000 for that comment. An additional $25,000 fine was assessed against the Lakers organization.

The league had already fined Jackson for comments about the officiating of a playoff game the Lakers lost to the Denver Nuggets, in which the Nuggets shot 49 free throws and the Lakers just 35. "We want the game to be fair and evenly played," Jackson said.

That cost him $25,000.

A reasonable person might think Coach Jackson makes these expensive public statements to let David Stern know that he knows, and that there is a limit to how much he'll play along with it.

Or it all could be theater to make it look good for the fans at home. Maybe everybody's in on it for the financial health of the sport.

In February, the NBA borrowed $175 million to help 15 struggling teams pay their bills. That's in addition to a "$1.7 billion league-wide credit facility," according to the New York Times. "The league uses its lucrative media contracts as collateral to secure loans for its clubs," the Times reported.

Lower ratings would mean less lucrative media contracts, which might lead to a disastrous financial meltdown of the whole wildly-leveraged operation.

That would explain it.

It would also explain this odd report in MediaPost.com last week. "As the NBA looks to get a better handle on its ratings, the league has reached a deal with TiVo to provide it with an analysis of viewing patterns based on second-by-second data," David Goetzl reported. "It's not just how many people watch, but information as to when viewers are likely to tune out during a blowout."

By coincidence, or maybe not by coincidence, Game 4 of the NBA Finals was very close after three key Laker players picked up two fouls each in the first quarter. The game was tied at the end of regulation and the Lakers edged out an overtime victory over the Orlando Magic, one of the teams that needed $10 million of that emergency loan in February.

"After the Game 1 blowout, what a thrilling series this has become," the ABC announcer remarked.

He was not fined by the league for that comment.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "NBA Fines and Finals," "NBA Commissioner caught cheating," and "Pete Rose: Yes I did."

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The real map of Israel

2009-06-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

Iran, a country that is neither free nor democratic, just held an election that was, arguably, neither free nor democratic. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man who has called for "a world without Zionism," was re-elected in a landslide.

Two Israeli officials, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and Vice Premier Silvan Shalom, expressed their concern that the election results underscore the threat Israel faces from Iran's nuclear ambitions.

On Google News, this story was illustrated by the map that is typically used to illustrate any story about threats to Israel's existence:

Here's a closer look:

That's Israel in the middle, with the dashed lines indicating the tiny little Gaza Strip on the left and the bigger, but still relatively small, West Bank in the center-right. That's Egypt to the left, Jordan to the right, Saudi Arabia next to Jordan and Syria just north of it.

Doesn't Israel look like a power player? Doesn't it look like Israel is a big presence in the region, throwing its weight around to crush the Palestinians and deny them the smallest sliver of land for their own state?

Look again. This is the same map, if you zoom out:

Can you see Israel? It's that little diamond-shaped outline in the center of the map. Look closely and you'll see the word "Israel," which juts out into Egypt because the text won't fit inside the borders of the country.

That little dot is Israel. That's all the land Israel has.

The Palestinians want a state, and U.S. President Barack Obama wants Israel -- not Jordan or Syria or Egypt or Lebanon or Saudi Arabia -- to give up land so they can have one.

Will the Palestinian state have the full sovereign powers of all other states around the world?

Will it have a military? An airbase? Treaties with other nations?

Will it renounce the goal, stated by the elected Palestinian leadership, of destroying Israel?

Details, details.

Did you know that the Israelis won the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in a war that was launched against them by neighboring countries?

More details.

It's just a distraction from the main point, which is that Israel is expected to volunteer for suicide in the name of "peace."

Don't expect that to happen.

"Never again" means "Never again."

There are enough Holocaust museums, thanks very much.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Sen. Joe Biden erases Israel," "Ayn Rand's advice and the Gaza Strip pullout," and "Why the Arab-Israeli peace process didn't/doesn't/can't work."

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tidbits® puzzle books are coming soon

2009-06-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

For everybody who's been writing to ask when tidbits® puzzles will be available in books, at last, there is an answer to your question.

SOON!

Here's a link where you can see the front and back covers of tidbits® puzzles #1, which will be published by the end of June. You'll be able to get it from Amazon.com and all the other online booksellers, or by special order in any brick-and-mortar bookstore.

ISBN: 9780982383735
Price: $6.95
Publisher: ExtremeInk Books
Pages: 108
Size: 5" x 8"

Tell your moms, tell your kids, tell your favorite puzzle people. Follow tidbits® puzzles on Twitter (@tidbitspuzzles) for updates on the release dates of future books in the series, which will be published before too long.

Thanks for doing tidbits® puzzles! (What's that? You're not doing tidbits® puzzles? Try them out at www.tidbitspuzzles.com!)

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Five ways to save California

2009-06-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

California voters recently defeated a slate of budget and tax tricks put on the ballot by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers, leaving the state budget in a hole so deep we've struck oil five times on the way down.

Governor Schwarzenegger suggested Friday that the answer might be a fifteen percent flat tax on everybody's income in order to keep up the payments to the millions of people who get checks.

This sounds like a good way to accelerate the outflow of people who pay taxes and the inflow of people who get checks.

A better way to save California is to overhaul the tax and regulatory structure, and keep overhauling it, until you'd have to be crazy not to start a business in California, instead of the opposite.

Of course, that's not going to happen.

Another way to save California is to fully exploit the natural resources of the state by drilling for oil and natural gas, and by exploring the use of desalination of ocean water to provide cities and farms with affordable access to adequate water supplies.

That's not going to happen either.

So here are five ways to save California without asking Californians to become rational on the subject of business or the environment.

Legalize Marijuana. The state already taxes alcohol and tobacco, and legalizing marijuana would open up another source of sin-tax revenue. Untold budget savings would result from freeing up police resources, courtroom time, and prison space. Pardoning all felons convicted of non-violent marijuana-related crimes would save the state the cost of their room and board. When the feds show up, the state should challenge the Controlled Substances Act in federal court on the grounds that it violates the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution to the states, or to the people. (More on that here.)

Legalize Gambling. Why should selected Indian tribes have a monopoly on gaming in the state of California? Legalize gambling statewide, or permit cities to legalize it within their borders, and enjoy the tax revenue from the kind of gaming resorts that spring up in the desert when the government stops prohibiting them. Energy-saving bonus: Less traffic on I-15 to Las Vegas.

Sue the Federal Government for the Cost of Illegal Immigration. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot deprive illegal immigrants and their children of a free public education or emergency medical care, but that doesn't mean state taxpayers have to carry the financial burden alone.

Charge for Public School. Even if the state asked parents to contribute only a token amount, like $200 per year, charging for public school would remind everyone that education has a value and ought to be appreciated, not blown off in favor of merrier pursuits. Of course, no one will agree to this. But it's still worth debating, if only to call attention to the fact that somebody's paying for what passes for public education in California.

End Busing for Desegregation. Children should attend a school that is a reasonable distance from their homes. Spending money on buses and drivers so kids can spend two to three hours a day on the freeway is irrational, wasteful, pointless, and racist. The warped idea that black and Hispanic children can only get a good education if there are white students in the class is something we should abandon, and not just for budgetary reasons.

In case you missed it, former California Governor Gray Davis was interviewed on CNBC this morning by Erin Burnett, who expressed her annoyance that California voters are constantly using the initiative process to limit the discretion of state government. "People are not going to give up the right to the initiative process," Governor Davis explained patiently, "They're never going to give that up, so just-- you have to live with it."

Give the teachers an award. At least one person in this state has learned something.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in "The Great Death-Defying California Recall Election" at www.SusanShelley.com. If you live in California and you'd like to sign a petition to recall Governor Schwarzenegger, visit http://www.totalrecall2009.com.

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Tabloid update: "Obama Gay Cover-up!"

2009-06-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

There's "World Exclusive Breaking News" in this week's Globe tabloid and you're in luck, America Wants To Know ran out of milk and tomatoes and happened to be in the grocery store check-out line this evening when the Globe swan-dived out of its rack and into our cart.

"Michelle's Mission: Put Out Gay Firestorm!" the tabloid declares across the top of pages 16 and 17.

This turns out to be yet another story about Larry Sinclair, the Chicago man who says he had sex and did cocaine with Barack Obama in the back seat of a limousine in 1999.

"In shockingly graphic language," the tabloid reports, "Sinclair describes performing oral sex on Obama in a limousine after meeting him in a Chicago nightspot in November 1999. He also describes how they used cocaine together in the car."

Mr. Sinclair also claims to have knowledge of a sexual affair between Barack Obama and Donald Young, the choir director of Obama's former church. Mr. Young, who according to Mr. Sinclair was openly gay, was murdered in December, 2007.

"The furious first lady has made it her mission to silence author Larry Sinclair," the Globe reports. He's an author because he has written a book called "Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies & Murder," which he said he plans to self-publish and release this month.

He's planning to self-publish because, according to the Globe, Michelle Obama had her "close friends and associates" contact publishers and tell them she would consider it a personal favor if they would "lay off this book."

The Globe says Mrs. Obama has launched a "secret but comprehensive campaign" to undercut the allegations in the book by staging photo ops that show her husband as a "macho man." Basketball, golf, that kind of thing.

And, the Globe's "insider" says, "They've even gone out of their way to set up photos of him with the cute 27-year-old White House receptionist."

Really.

We haven't seen those.

We did see photos of the Obamas' Broadway "date night" in Manhattan, and we noticed something kind of odd.

This is a photo of the Obamas before the big date, as they walked to the helicopter that would take them to the plane that would take them to New York:

This is a photo of the Obamas after the big date, as they walked to the jet that would fly them back to Washington:

Notice anything?

Once again. Before:

After:

One more time. Before:

After:

Does it look to you like those two people had one hell of a fight?

Look again. Before:

After:

Maybe they called the baby-sitter during intermission to see if everything was all right, and the sitter told them Mr. Gallup called.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with the previous posts, "Bush suicidal! McCain Dying! Obama Gay!" and "Suicidal Bush in Therapy!"

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What Barack Obama could learn from "Bewitched"

2009-05-31T09:34:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama took his wife Michelle out on Saturday night for what they like to call "date night."

They went to dinner and a show.

Dinner in New York City and a Broadway show.

The White House has a movie theater and a bowling alley, but that's only a romantic date if you're seventeen.

So they flew to New York in an Air Force jet, along with two planes carrying the staff and the White House press pool, the Marine One helicopter and the motorcade vehicles, at a cost the White House will not disclose.

Then they flew back to Washington, D.C.

There was no official business that required the president's presence in New York City. He just wanted to take his wife out for a nice evening in Manhattan.

Barack Obama is the president of the United States and if he wakes up in the morning and snaps his fingers for pancakes, there will be pancakes.

He could snap his fingers and say "In Paris!" and the U.S. Air Force would fly him to Paris.

The presidency is cool. It's just like a TV sitcom from the 1960s, "Bewitched" or "I Dream of Jeannie."

And just like a TV sitcom, it can be canceled rather abruptly if the ratings drop.

"Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" both used the same plot device: one lead character was always trying to stop the other lead character from using her powers.

Did you ever wonder why?

It's because the taxpayers don't want to go a trillion dollars into debt so their political leaders can gallivant around like fictional characters in a 1960s TV sitcom.

Actually, it was because the shows would get pretty tedious pretty quickly if the characters got everything they wanted whenever they wanted it.

But the point is the same.

Tick off the American people at your own peril.

Copyright 2009

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How judges with empathy kept Guantanamo open

2009-05-22T17:02:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, Senate Democrats ran like scared rabbits from President Obama's plan to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. They blocked funds for closing the detention facility, and they voted to prohibit any transfer of the prisoners to U.S. soil.

House Democrats were a week ahead of them.

You don't need a pollster on the payroll to know that the American people have no sympathy for the terror detainees and no interest in hearing about their due process rights in U.S. courts.

In a setting just dripping with irony, the president who has driven his new Dodge pick-ups over the constitutional rights of U.S. investors stood in front of the Constitution in a cavernous room at the National Archives Thursday and tried to explain the importance of adhering to the Constitution when dealing with foreign terror suspects.

Good luck with that.

The irony gets richer when you consider that President Obama's Guantanamo problem was caused by another one of his deeply held beliefs: the idea that Supreme Court justices should have "empathy" and experience with the real-life problems of average people.

Earl Warren was the governor of California when President Eisenhower named him to replace Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, who died suddenly of a heart attack in 1953. Warren had never been a judge, but he knew enough about 'the real-life problems of average people' to become the first person ever elected three times as governor of California.

At the time of Chief Justice Vinson's death, the Supreme Court was stalling a decision on the school desegregation cases. Vinson had been a vote against overturning Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 "separate, but equal" decision. He argued that the Court did not have the legal authority to ban segregation when Congress was on record as being in favor of the practice. "I don't see how we can get away from the long established acceptance in the District," he told his colleagues. "For 90 years, there have been segregated schools in this city."

The new chief justice saw it differently. "Personally," he told the other justices at their December 12, 1953, conference, "I can't see how today we can justify segregation based solely on race....my instincts and feelings lead me to say that, in these cases, we should abolish the practice of segregation in the public schools--but in a tolerant way."

Segregation, which was deliberately left in place by the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, presented unique constitutional and legal problems, and the Warren Court is justly admired for its impatient decision to abandon legal precedent and rescue generations of innocent Americans from second-class citizenship.

However, the Court's empathy didn't stop at segregation.

Chief Justice Warren's instincts and feelings were at work again in 1961, when the Court ruled (6-3) in Mapp v. Ohio that judges must throw out evidence that was illegally obtained, and in 1966, when the Court ruled (6-3) in Miranda v. Arizona that judges must throw out confessions if police had failed to read a suspect his rights.

These decisions, and others like them, were made under the "Incorporation Doctrine," a concept created by the Supreme Court over the course of the 20th century. It holds that some parts of the Bill of Rights are so fundamental to the idea of due process of law that they must apply to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment, which bars any state from denying due process of law to any person. Prior to the invention of the Incorporation Doctrine, the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states at all.

But while the Supreme Court was writing new rules to throw out evidence and confessions, something unexpected happened.

The public lost confidence in the justice system.

That's why President Obama can't close Guantanamo.

"Are we really going to insist that the jihadist with a suitcase nuke captured in Times Square be read his Miranda rights?" asked Sen. John Cornyn of Texas following President Obama's speech on Thursday, "Embracing a strategy in which the criminal justice paradigm is used to fight terrorism is misguided and reckless."

Reckless.

It's reckless to try a terrorist in a criminal court because he'll get off on some technicality. That's what a lot of Americans believe.

That's what the Bush administration believed.

That's what well-intentioned prosecutors believe when they violate the rules and withhold potentially exculpatory evidence from a defendant's lawyers. They believe they have the right guy in custody, and they believe the system will let him off on a technicality.

That's what a large proportion of the public believed when O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder after Judge Lance Ito ruled that the jury could not hear evidence that Nicole Brown Simpson feared her ex-husband was going to kill her, but could hear evidence that Detective Mark Fuhrman had used racist language while working with a screenwriter.

Some of the Guantanamo detainees may be innocent and wrongly accused, but Americans don't have confidence that a courtroom verdict of "not guilty" means the accused was, in fact, not guilty. Instead, they believe the defendant had the help of slick lawyers who knew all the angles and found some paperwork error that let a guilty person walk free.

Judges with empathy are responsible for this.

Ironic, isn't it?

"I believe the decision of the Court represents poor constitutional law and entails harmful consequences for the country at large," wrote Justice John Marshall Harlan in his Miranda dissent. "How serious these consequences may prove to be, only time can tell."

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: Source notes can be found in "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," available online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm. If you're interested in the subject of trade-offs between public safety and Constitutional rights, check out The 37th Amendment: A Novel, available from Amazon.com or by special order at any bookstore.

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Tabloid update: "Suicidal Bush in Therapy!"

2009-05-22T16:54:00.000-07:00

This week's Globe tabloid features the continuing saga of the secret separation of George and Laura Bush, with a new twist: "Suicidal Bush in Therapy," the cover yells from the checkstand, "After Telling Laura: I Can't Take Any More!"

Inside there's more evidence that Laura is the Globe's main source for these stories. She's pictured looking salon-perfect and smiling serenely. Her husband, that cad, is shown sitting on a tree stump in torn jeans and work gloves, his face spattered with flecks of dirt, wearing goofy-looking earphones and peering out from under a white cowboy hat with a beady-eyed, paranoid, purse-lipped stare.

He should call them and spill some dirt on Dick Cheney. Maybe they'd give him a better picture.

"Bush begs Laura to take him back!" says the inside headline, "Suicidal George in therapy as he fights to save his life and marriage."

The Globe says it has sources telling the magazine that our former president is "mired in such a deep depression that concerned family and friends fear he'll do something drastic."

Like the old joke says, it's a Depression when you lose your job.

According to the Globe, President Bush has become paranoid and convinced that President Obama is out to get him. That may not be paranoia, like the old joke says.

The Globe reported in April that "an alarmingly distraught Bush made a series of frantic midnight calls" to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but she was unable to "shake him out of it."

That's when, "in a fit of despair," the former president decided to talk to his wife. So he picked up the phone and called Dallas.

That's where she is. Laura's living in the $2 million home that her husband bought for her in Dallas. He's in Crawford. According to the Globe, that was the deal to avoid a public divorce after Laura "got fed up with her husband's out-of-control boozing," not to mention his "suspected" romance with Condoleezza Rice.

"Please take me back!" President Bush begged, according to the Globe's source. "It was just heartwrenching," the source continued, "He didn't know where else to turn. I think he finally realized his life was under control when Laura was there for him -- and he desperately needs that stability now."

The source further reveals that "Laura has never stopped loving him" and she's worried that he has become "a walking time bomb."

No need to waterboard Laura to find out his location, he's in Crawford.

Laura refused to take him back, telling him he "needed to help himself first," and that's why our former president is now seeing a therapist twice a week.

"I know that he's going," says the Globe's insider. "But no one knows exactly who he's seeing, where they're meeting or what sort of therapy he's getting. It's all very closely guarded."

Paging Dr. Melfi. Your two o'clock is here.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with "Laura Gets $15M Divorce Pay Off!"

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Step right up to see the Amazing Health Care Reform!

2009-05-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

If it wasn't so serious, it would really be funny.

Peter R. Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday explaining the urgency of reforming health care in the United States, and how President Obama proposes to move us "toward a high-quality, lower-cost system":

Much of the piece is a number-crunching whine about the unsustainable growth in the cost of Medicare, but the severity of a problem is not an argument for the efficacy of a proposed solution.

The solution proposed by the Obama administration is so offensive, obnoxious and un-American that no amount of whining about the severity of the problem will persuade anybody in the country to support it. The only question now is whether the organized interest groups that have prepared for this match-up will have to play the full nine innings, or whether they'll win on the slaughter rule.

"There are four key steps," Mr. Orszag explains:

1) health information technology, because we can't improve what we don't measure; 2) more research into what works and what doesn't, so doctors don't recommend treatments that don't improve health; 3) prevention and wellness, so that people do the things that keep them healthy and avoid costs associated with health risks such as smoking and obesity; and 4) changes in financial incentives for providers so that they are incentivized rather than penalized for delivering high-quality care.

Let's take these one at a time.

"Health information technology, because we can't improve what we don't measure." What he's talking about is digitizing everyone's medical records and transmitting the information to the U.S. government. Is it private? Is it secure? Is it accessible to snoopy government workers who'd like to pick up some extra money from the National Enquirer? For the sake of argument, let's grant the ridiculous premise that the government solves the problem of security. Do you want the government collecting and reviewing your medical records? Is it any of their business?

"More research into what works and what doesn't, so doctors don't recommend treatments that don't improve health." Unless you believe that people go to medical school to become golfers or murderers, you are probably wondering why a government budget official thinks doctors would recommend treatments that don't improve health. Doctors go through some of the most rigorous training of any profession in the United States. Peter Orszag believes that a government computer that collects everyone's medical records and crunches the numbers to determine the most successful "outcomes" is better suited than your doctor to determine the best course of treatment. Is that what you believe?

"Prevention and wellness, so that people do the things that keep them healthy and avoid costs associated with health risks such as smoking and obesity." This may not trouble the Obama administration, but a lot of Americans will object to the government demonizing them for smoking or wearing plus-size clothes. Is it any of the government's business what you eat or what you smoke or whether you drink or exercise? How much of this nanny-ing will Americans tolerate? Not too much, history suggests. The Republican Congress elected in 1994 began by ending the 55-mph speed limit and ended by banning online poker.

"Changes in financial incentives for providers so that they are incentivized rather than penalized for delivering high-quality care." By this Mr. Orszag appears to refer to the practice of paying doctors per procedure instead of per "outcome." Elsewhere in the piece he writes, "The president's budget also put forward a set of quality-enhancing changes in incentives in Medicare and Medicaid, such as paying hospitals less when they don't get patient treatment right the first time so we can reduce the number of patients who have to endure readmission to a hospital."

This is very disturbing. The premise here is that people are readmitted to a hospital only because the hospital didn't get the treatment right.

But medical treatment is not a right-answer versus wrong-answer question. It's a complicated, difficult task of evaluating competing risks and possible consequences. Patients don't always come into a doctor's office with a clean bill of health and one new problem. They have conditions and risk factors that make medical decision-making an enormous challenge for even the most experienced and skilled professionals. You've heard the lists of side-effects on those prescription drug commercials, right?

What Peter Orszag calls "a set of quality-enhancing changes in incentives" is a destructive, maybe deadly, interference with a doctor's best judgment about the right treatment for the patient in the office at that moment.

No government bureaucrat, no matter how smart, is qualified to dictate treatment decisions to any doctor, no matter how inept.

Then there are the unintended consequences.

One practical effect of paying doctors only for "good" outcomes will be a hideous, horrible medical system that forces seriously ill patients to search in vain for a doctor who will treat them. "Sorry, not taking on any new patients," is the answer that will be thrown in the face of a desperate patient seeking a second opinion or a last chance. If the outcome isn't likely to be "good," a doctor risks his own career and practice by lowering his quality "score" in the government's computers.

Maybe there soon will be more dermatologists and fewer cancer specialists.

Yes, and maybe pink elephants will climb to the top of the Washington Monument. None of this is going to happen because no matter how much the Obama administration insists that this must all be done by August, none of this is going to pass Congress.

And it shouldn't pass Congress. "Hurry, hurry, hurry" is the call of a carnival barker. What you see when you get inside the tent is never as good as it looked on the poster.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Insanity."

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Implausible deniability

2009-05-13T17:39:00.000-07:00

ABC News' George Stephanopoulos reported Sunday that John Edwards' campaign staffers had a secret pact to "blow up" his presidential campaign with revelations that he was secretly cheating on his cancer-stricken wife with filmmaker-wannabe Rielle Hunter.

There was a secret "doomsday" plan, unnamed former campaign officials said, to sabotage Edwards by destroying his campaign if it appeared that he was going to win the Democratic party nomination.

"They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign," Stephanopoulos reported.

So the 2010 campaign, or maybe the 2012 campaign, has begun.

John Edwards' former campaign officials are looking for work.

Everybody involved in this story is too smart to believe any of it.

George Stephanopoulos is helping his future sources redeem their reputation in Democratic circles by dutifully reporting that they never would have allowed an adulterer to become the nominee and then lose the election over character issues.

Because that's what would have happened if John Edwards had been nominated. A presidential candidate who cheats on his wife is reckless. A presidential candidate who cheats on his wife while she travels the country campaigning for him between chemotherapy treatments is a suicide bomber.

Does anybody believe that the campaign officials working for John Edwards would really have brought down his campaign after it was clear he was going to win the nomination?

Nice try, everybody. We've got your resume. We'll call you.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the 2008 post, "Tabloid update: Cover-ups!"

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GM goes Galt

2009-05-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

Did you notice anything strange in the news today about General Motors?

First, CNBC reported that the struggling automaker is considering moving its headquarters out of Detroit

Then the news broke that six top GM executives had sold their personal holdings of the company's stock, sending the share price to a 76-year low.

And then Automotive News revealed that General Motors plans to import and sell Chinese-built cars in the United States.

Taken together, these stories paint a picture of a silent, decaying factory, the empty shell of what once was a thriving engine of wealth and progress for investors, customers, and employees.

Have you read Atlas Shrugged yet?

Ayn Rand's original title for the 1957 book was "The Strike." The novel is the story of "the mind on strike," or what happens to a collectivist society when the men of the mind withdraw their services and disappear.

In the book, successful business owners, scientists, artists, and industrialists are secretly persuaded by an inventor named John Galt to walk away, and even to destroy their own companies, rather than have the product of their efforts seized for the "collective good."

At the end of the novel, John Galt tells off the looters and moochers in control of the government, and all the voters who put them there.

"When you failed to give recognition to man's mind and attempted to rule human beings by force," he says, "those who submitted had no mind to surrender; those who had, were men who don't submit."

You really ought to read it. Apparently the guys at GM did.

Copyright 2009

The Manny Show

2009-05-07T23:01:00.000-07:00

Not since Bob Fosse died has Hollywood seen such sophisticated choreography.

Major League Baseball announced Thursday morning that Los Angeles Dodgers star Manny Ramirez would be suspended for fifty games for failing a test for performance-enhancing drugs.

Manny Ramirez was ready with a statement. "Recently I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was OK to give me. Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy. Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility," the Dodgers star said.

The Dodgers were ready with a statement. "We support the policies of Major League Baseball, and we will welcome Manny back upon his return," the team said.

There will be no appeal, there will be no further investigation, there will be no refunds.

If not for Jose Canseco, we might never have known that everybody knew in advance this was going to happen.

About a month ago, the former Oakland A's and Texas Rangers slugger gave a speech to a half-empty auditorium at the University of Southern California, and Los Angeles Times reporter Kurt Streeter was there to report on it.

Canseco said he thought there was something fishy about Manny Ramirez. He wondered why, during the off-season, it had taken so long to sign one of baseball's premier hitters, and why he was signed to a brief two-year contract. He conjectured that baseball's team owners knew, or suspected, that Ramirez was using performance-enhancing drugs.

Canseco said he thought there was a 90 percent chance that Manny Ramirez's name was on the list of 104 players -- still anonymous -- that failed a drug test in 2003.

Kurt Streeter asked Ramirez for his reaction to Canseco's comments.

"He sat in front of his locker and gave me a deer-in-the-headlights gaze, a sly laugh, and a calm evasion," Streeter wrote on Thursday. "'I got no comment,' he said. 'Nothing to say about that. What can I say? I don't even know the guy.'"

That's not exactly a flat denial, but the reporter didn't press him.

"I wanted to believe," he wrote on Thursday, "We all do."

It's nice to believe, but it's better to know. After the Dodgers signed Manny Ramirez, they inexplicably passed up the chance to trade Juan Pierre. ESPN's fantasy baseball update on May 1 noted that "Juan Pierre may still have plenty of speed, but he's just not going to get to use it as long as he remains in the crowded Dodgers outfield. April marked his fourth consecutive month of fewer than 40 at-bats (20) and no more than two steals (he had one)."

Juan Pierre now takes over for Manny Ramirez in the outfield.

Coincidence? Or did Frank and Jamie McCourt know perfectly well what they were buying?

The Dodgers owners certainly got what they paid for: a surge in season ticket sales, a boost to merchandise sales, a hook for marketing, and a great start on the season.

And in July, when Ramirez is eligible to return to the line-up, the well-rehearsed story about an inadvertant use of a banned substance will let everybody pretend that nothing ever happened.

Let's face it, the owners don't care if Manny Ramirez used steroids.

And neither do the fans.

This is L.A. If drug use were an impediment to employment, even the governor would be out of work.

Baseball's tough new drug policy is nothing but a theatrical production for the benefit of the U.S. Congress, which threatened Major League Baseball with the loss of its anti-trust exemption if the sport failed to crack down on steroid use. (See "Barry Bonds' Big Asterisk")

The anti-trust exemption gives team owners a reprieve from the threat of federal prosecution for the normal business practices inherent in running a sports league. (See "Tackling the NFL.")

U.S. anti-trust laws were described by Ayn Rand in 1962 as "a haphazard accumulation of non-objective laws so vague, complex, contradictory and inconsistent that any business practice can now be construed as illegal, and by complying with one law a businessman opens himself to prosecution under several others."

You might remember that the anti-trust laws were used to charge Microsoft with the crime of giving its customers a free Internet browser.

Baseball team owners would rather spend their money on players than on lawyers, so they treasure that anti-trust exemption like the Hope Diamond.

If Congress wants a very strict steroid-testing program, that's what we're going to have.

"I know everybody is disappointed," Manny Ramirez said in a written statement.

"We share the disappointment," said Dodgers CEO Jamie McCourt.

"The toughest thing for Manny is how he disappointed everybody," said Joe Torre.

Bob Fosse would have won a Tony for this.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Jose Canseco's interesting threat," "The big leagues of lying," and "Alex Rodriguez and the big hurry."

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Woody Allen's good point

2009-05-04T22:19:00.000-07:00

Woody Allen is suing the American Apparel company for $10 million for using his image on its billboards and web site without his permission. The actor-director-writer does not endorse products in the United States and didn't authorize American Apparel to use his image in their advertising, but the company ignored his rights and put his image up on billboards in Hollywood and New York, where they attracted attention for a week before the company took the ads down.

Jury selection in the trial is scheduled to begin on May 18.

Now, get this.

American Apparel, in an attempt to prove to the court that Woody Allen's image isn't worth $10 million, wants to call Mia Farrow and her adopted daughter, also known as Mr. Allen's former longtime companion and current wife, respectively, to the witness stand. The company intends to prove in court, in detail, that Woody Allen's personal life has made him so unattractive to corporate advertisers that they would never in a million years pay him anything close to $10 million.

American Apparel's executives ought to be in jail for this, and their lawyer, Stuart Slotnick, shouldn't be too proud of himself either.

Regardless of what anybody thinks of Woody Allen's personal life, the company thought his image was valuable enough to plaster on their billboards and web site. The particular image they chose was from Mr. Allen's Oscar-winning film, "Annie Hall."

They used his image in their advertising without his permission.

Woody Allen's image is his own property, no one else's, to exploit for commercial purposes. If American Apparel moved into your house while you were out running errands, and you sued them to get it back, would it be a valid defense to tell the court that the house isn't worth as much as your lawsuit seeks? Would it be relevant evidence if pornographic pictures were found hidden in one of the dresser drawers?

No, it would not.

Woody Allen's likeness is his property.

Just like your house is your property.

Property rights matter. Property rights are the foundation of freedom.

If anyone with a whim can take your property from you and then ruin your life with disclosures in court, your freedom isn't worth the parchment it's printed on.

Theft of property ought to be treated as theft of property, and not as the starting point of a protracted negotiation for compensation.

If there's any justice in our justice system, the Manhattan judge hearing Woody Allen's case will tell American Apparel they can't call witnesses with the intention of smearing a man whose image they stole for their own financial advantage.

This kind of thing is dangerous.

It could turn a filmmaker into an Ayn Rand conservative.

By the time this lawsuit is over, Woody Allen might be directing the film version of "Atlas Shrugged."

They could do worse.

Copyright 2009

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Introducing ExtremeInk Books

2009-05-03T16:24:00.001-07:00

America Wants To Know is pleased to slip in a plug for ExtremeInk.com's new publishing imprint, ExtremeInk Books. The first title, "How to Make Money and Lose Weight: A simple guide for everyone" by Babe Lincoln, was published in paperback on May 1 and is now available from all online booksellers, or by special order from any bookstore.

We could tell you that this a great book for beginning investors, for teens and young adults, and for anyone who has ever been told lies by a salesperson on commission. We could tell you that this book is both humorous and serious. We could tell you that the chapter on "Why You Yo-Yo" is worth the price of the book, all by itself.

But you would suspect our motives.

So we'll just tell you that excerpts of the book can be read online at this link and that Babe Lincoln's new blog can be found at www.babe-lincoln.net.

And we'll tell you that Babe Lincoln and America Wants To Know have never been seen in the same room at the same time.

But that might be a coincidence.

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Harry Reid's interesting interview

2009-04-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

Just when it was starting to look like the Democrats were going to have a free hand to ram through any kind of legislation on any kind of subject, something interesting happened.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did a little promotional work for the paperback version of his book, "The Good Fight," which is coming out on May 5.

The paperback contains a new epilogue called "The Obama Era." In it, Senator Reid tells a story about the time Senator Barack Obama, then a freshman senator from Illinois, gave a speech on the floor about President Bush's war policy.

According to the Associated Press, Reid writes: "'That speech was phenomenal, Barack,' I told him. And I will never forget his response. Without the barest hint of braggadocio or conceit, and with what I would describe as deep humility, he said quietly: 'I have a gift, Harry.'"

The AP happens to know this because "A copy of the book's 15-page epilogue was provided to The Associated Press."

And just in case they didn't have time to read it, the Majority Leader gave them an interview.

"To be honest, my wife, she said, 'don't tell people that,'" Reid recalled. "She's afraid it could be taken the wrong way. But she's heard me tell lots of people that, and everytime she goes 'don't do that.' Now it's there for thousands of people to read."

Isn't that interesting?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants everyone to know that Barack Obama is a bragging, self-impressed, insufferable egomaniac.

He can describe it "as deep humility" all day long, he's not going to fool anybody in Washington.

Does it sound to you like Harry Reid has had just about as much as he's going to take?

It sounded a little like that at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue Wednesday night, when President Obama held a news conference to mark his 100th day in office.

Answering a question from the New York Times' Jeff Zeleny about what has "humbled" him the most during his time as president, Obama said this:

"Humbled by the — humbled by the fact that the presidency is extraordinarily powerful, but we are just part of a much broader tapestry of American life, and there are a lot of different power centers. And so I can't just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want or, you know, turn on a switch and suddenly, you know, Congress falls in line."

At last, some good news out of Washington.

Copyright 2009

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Jeff Immelt, Villain

2009-04-23T00:16:00.000-07:00

General Electric Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt parroted the White House line at the company's annual shareholder meeting in Orlando Wednesday, saying the economic downturn has "fundamentally reset" the way companies do business and capitalism itself.

The Associated Press reported that Immelt predicted the current recession "would ultimately lead to changes such as greater government involvement in business and a restructuring of the financial services sector that was a root of the crisis."

What's this?

He's awfully quick to accept the kind of government strangulation that businesses pay lobbyists tens of millions of dollars to avoid.

Why is the CEO of one of the world's largest companies talking like a vagrant pickpocket pleading for a lighter sentence?

Funny you should ask.

Just a couple of paragraphs later the AP tells us, "Profits at the company's GE Capital lending arm have fallen sharply as losses on loans like credit cards, commercial real estate and overseas mortgages have grown. GE lost its rare 'AAA' credit rating earlier this year due to GE Capital's woes."

That's plenty of reason for a CEO to be currying favor with President Obama. Every company in the financial industry is either pleading for bailout money or lobbying for mercy from regulators.

Yet there's more.

"GE has positioned itself for an economic recovery," the AP says Immelt told shareholders, "with a new focus on products that could capture some of what GE estimates is $2 trillion worth of government stimulus spending worldwide. That includes windmills and other clean energy equipment and new health care technology to better diagnose illnesses like Alzheimer's disease."

No wonder Jeff Immelt, capitalist, publicly agrees with the president that capitalism as we know it is dead.

Jeff Immelt is on his knees to President Obama because he wants GE to get bailout help, regulatory breaks, and some of that $2 trillion of your tax money that the government is about to start throwing around.

He really ought to move his headquarters to Pahrump, Nevada. It's legal there.

Obviously Jeff Immelt has made a judgment that his company's fortunes are best served by flattering government officials and becoming a docile, compliant, and wildly prosperous government contractor.

There's just one problem.

General Electric owns NBC. And CNBC. And MSNBC.

That's a problem.

MSNBC is regularly accused of political bias, most recently at today's GE shareholders meeting. "The crowd was very upset with MSNBC because of its leftward tilt," one attendee told the Hollywood Reporter. The trade paper reported that the shareholders' microphone was cut off during the "umpteenth" question about MSNBC's political bias.

Then there's CNBC.

CNBC is a business news channel watched by traders and investors around the globe. If you watch it regularly you may have noticed, as we did, that the on-air talent at the network has been shilling like a late-night pitchman since last September.

They shilled for the bailout, they shilled for green energy, they shilled for the stimulus package. Every day, it seemed, the once-reliable news anchors on that network sounded more and more like Paul Begala or Mary Matalin, glib advocates paid to get their talking points in before the commercial break.

But the anchors on CNBC have a lot of time to fill, and they can't fill all of it just by talking to each other.

That's where the trouble started.

Rick Santelli, reporting from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, couldn't take it anymore when President Obama announced his plan to help "struggling homeowners." He yelled out to the traders around him and asked if they wanted to pay their neighbor's mortgage on the house with the new bathroom addition. As the traders roared and applauded behind him, Santelli said he was organizing a tea party at Lake Michigan to protest the tax-and-spend-and-bailout policies of the government.

Maybe you saw the news on April 15, or maybe you were watching NBC, but there were an estimated 750 "tea party" protests across the country, all organized after Rick Santelli's rant was downloaded millions of times from the CNBC website and YouTube.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed the protests contemptuously as "Astroturf," meaning a phony grass-roots protest that actually was organized by a lot of paid lobbyists.

We'll see.

In the meantime, CNBC's anchors began to have more and more trouble saying something nice about the new administration's handling of the economy. Apparently on orders to sound more optimistic, Sue Herera spoke nervously of trying to find "silver linings" and Erin Burnett tried gamely to locate "crocuses" and "green shoots."

Sometimes it was pretty funny.

After Tim Geithner horrified the markets with his big unveiling of no specific plan to deal with toxic assets on bank balance sheets, CNBC's air was filled with interview after interview of business executives and financial professionals slamming Geithner as an amateur and an incompetent.

"That poor kid," one commentator said, speaking of the Treasury Secretary of the United States.

File that under "Don't help me."

A business news channel can't get around the fact that it has to report business news, and business is bad. The people interviewed on CNBC increasingly blamed the gloomy economic outlook on President Obama's real or potential plans for taxes, deficits, bank nationalization, health care reform, labor union muscle, and a cap-and-trade system to penalize energy use, not to mention his unilateral decision to fire the CEO of General Motors.

And then, it happened.

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt called CNBC on the carpet.

On April 16 the New York Post reported, "The top suits and some of the on-air talent at CNBC were recently ordered to a top-secret meeting with General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt and NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker to discuss whether they've turned into the President Obama-bashing network."

According to the Post's source, "It was an intensive, three-hour dinner" at NBC's New York headquarters. "There was a long discussion about whether CNBC has become too conservative and is beating up on Obama too much. There's great concern that CNBC is now the anti-Obama network. The whole meeting was really kind of creepy."

One topic discussed, the Post reported, was Rick Santelli's rant against the president's bailout program for overextended homeowners.

The Post's source told the paper that NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker was personally behind the meeting.

In the entertainment industry, where people get fired all the time for things that are totally out of their control--because this teen idol's sitcom was more successful than that teen idol's sitcom, or because more males age 18-34 watched the grotesque reality show than the grotesque autopsy show--the executives who make it to the top have one thing in common.

They know how not to get fired.

So NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker claimed to be the one who called the meeting to crack down on CNBC.

And GE Chairman Jeff Immelt, while confirming to angry shareholders that the reported meeting with CNBC did take place, piously said he "takes a hands-off approach to what is reported on the company's news networks."

They're not fooling anybody.

What they're doing is destroying the credibility of some very fine reporters and news professionals.

Capitalism will survive. But thanks to Jeffrey Immelt, NBC News has joined Tim Russert.

Copyright 2009

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Jamie Dimon, Superhero

2009-04-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is not cooperating.

He wants to repay the TARP money before President Obama is willing to accept it. "We could pay it back tomorrow," he said on Thursday, "We have the money."

And he just sold $3 billion in debt without the backing of the FDIC.

And he said his company would not participate in the new Public-Private Investment Program that the Treasury Department insists is the only way to deal with the problem of "toxic assets" on bank balance sheets.

"We manage and control our own assets," he said on a conference call.

Jamie Dimon doesn't want the government's help, or its input, or its stigma, or its grandstanding statements denouncing the banks for trying to hold customers to the contracts they signed.

"He has privately grumbled that it isn't fair or accurate to paint J.P. Morgan with the same brush as weaker banks," the Wall Street Journal reported. "He has been particularly irritated when customers demand financial breaks because the bank is operating with taxpayer money."

No reasonable person could blame him.

Every day, in congressional hearings and public statements, another government official expresses outrage on behalf of people who are finding it tough to pay their credit card debt or their mortgages or their car loans. The latest to join the chorus was White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, who said Sunday that President Obama will be "very focused, in a very near term, on a whole set of issues having to do with credit card abuses, having to do with the way people have been deceived into paying extraordinarily high rates that they wouldn't have paid if they knew what they were getting themselves into."

The president plans to support congressional efforts to "stop the marketing of credit in ways that addicts people to it," Summers said.

That kind of language makes the banks sound like evil drug dealers, ruthlessly corrupting your children with a free taste of pleasant poison.

It's no accident. It's part of a concerted attempt to divert public anger over government bailouts [Pennsylvania Democrat Paul Kanjorski said last fall the calls to his office were coming in fifty-fifty: half "no" and half "Hell, no"] into anger at bankers, anger which officials believe they can use to strong-arm banks into voluntarily agreeing to policies and practices that have never been signed into law. "My administration," President Obama told the nation's top bankers at a meeting in the White House state dining room late last month, "is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

At the start of that meeting, Jamie Dimon handed a $25 billion check to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in an attempt to repay the TARP money.

He was joking, ABC News reported.

They're never joking.

Jamie Dimon is not cooperating.

He refuses to feel guilty. He will not give the government what Ayn Rand called "the sanction of the victim." If President Obama wants to force the banks to keep TARP money so he can tell them who will get credit and on what terms, Jamie Dimon will not help him conceal the truth from voters, or from history.

America Wants To Know is Jamie Dimon's fan for life. In the interests of full disclosure, we'll tell you that we own a little bit of his stock, all his albums, and every issue of Tiger Beat magazine that ever had his picture on the cover.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "And the Emmy for best villain goes to...." and "Hank Paulson's casting call." You might also enjoy the chapter, "How to Lose Money with Credit Cards" in our friend Babe Lincoln's new book, "How to Make Money and Lose Weight." Use Amazon.com's "Search Inside the Book" program to look it up at this link.

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The affinity for Zimbabwe

2009-04-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

It's happening.

America Wants To Know warned in February that President Obama's gut-level decision to oust the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office was a sign that he harbored a deep anger over historical colonialism. We wondered if he believed Europe and Anglo-America owed the Third World the equivalent of damages for pain and suffering, and if that would take the form of support for various transfer payments from U.S. taxpayers to the governments of undeveloped nations, as well as high taxes to punish success in the belief that wealth is the rotten fruit of an old imperialist tree.

"We may learn a lot about President Obama's beliefs by observing his policy on Zimbabwe," we wrote then. "If he holds the premise that historical colonialism is the cause of Africa's current problems, he may offer Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe some kind of financial aid or technical assistance. He may believe the U.S. is morally obligated to try to bring the country's devastated economy back to life.

"If, on the other hand, President Obama holds the premise that private property is the indispensable foundation of prosperity, he will refuse to assist the regime of President Mugabe, who seized the land owned by white farmers and gave it to other people in the name of fairness."

On Friday, the U.S. State Department announced that it has lifted the travel advisory that warned Americans against visiting Zimbabwe.

And on Saturday, the Associated Press reported this: "The U.S. on Saturday praised Zimbabwe's unity government for making progress toward reform as the African nation celebrated the 29th anniversary of its independence from Britain."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commended Zimbabwe for "the efforts the transitional government has undertaken and the progress it has achieved toward reforms that will benefit the Zimbabwean people. The United States encourages the government to continue those important steps as it works for a more promising future for Zimbabwe."

The AP said Zimbabwe's state newspaper recently reported that the government "intends to relax media restrictions as part of a plan meant to restore basic rights."

If that ousted bust of Winston Churchill could talk, it might point out that Zimbabwe is "celebrating" its 29th anniversary of independence from freedom of the press and basic rights, like property rights, for example.

"More than half of Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people face imminent starvation," reported Associated Press writer Terry Leonard in 2002, "Its once vibrant economy teeters on the brink of collapse. More than 70 percent of its people live in poverty. Most are unemployed. They lack proper housing, basic health care, clean water, sanitation, electricity and quality education for their children."

Before you blame it on colonialism, read on:

In just five years, Zimbabwe has fallen from a relatively prosperous and stable country to one wracked by economic despair and government-sponsored political violence.

Zimbabwe government statistics indicate the economy has shrunk by 28 percent and per capita income has been cut almost in half to $380 a year.

Inflation last month reached an annual rate of 123 percent.

Despite a looming famine in southern Africa, Mugabe has continued with the seizure of 95 percent of the white-owned farmland, bringing to a standstill an industry that once helped feed southern Africa.

Four years later, journalist Douglas Rogers visited Zimbabwe and lamented the unemployment rate of 70 percent, inflation so rampant that the cost of a beer was $150,000, and the collapse of Zimbabwe's "once-sound infrastructure," resulting in fuel shortages and electricity cuts.

"How did Zimbabwe get to this point?" he wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "It began in the late 1990s when, in order to pay for a costly military incursion into civil war-torn Congo, President Robert Mugabe ordered the printing of vast amounts of money, and inflation climbed steeply.

"But it has reached today's levels only since the commercial farm invasions, in which 4,000 out of 4,500 white commercial farmers were kicked off their land, beginning in 2000. White farmers accounted for an estimated 60% of the country's foreign currency earnings through the export of tobacco and other crops. The invasions not only crippled domestic production, they scared away foreign investment. To dig itself out of debt and pay its bills, the government has simply printed more money."

On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that Zimbabwe is "is desperate for foreign aid."

Well, whose fault is that?

Doesn't matter. You're going to pay.

Secretary Clinton said Saturday the U.S. "has long stood with the people of Zimbabwe in their times of need and will continue to do so."

The fig leaf of a "transitional," "unity" government is all the Obama administration needs to start the flow of your tax dollars to prop up the feet of Robert Mugabe, who remains in power and fully committed to the land-seizure policies that have destroyed the economy of the country and countless lives.

Secretary Clinton has given the first hint of what's coming. The wealth that was created where property rights were protected is about to be siphoned off and sent to a nation that became impoverished after it stopped protecting property rights.

No doubt the White House will attempt to sell this to the U.S. taxpayer as the best way to prevent the African nation from becoming the next failed-state-haven-for-terrorists-who- want-to-kill-Americans. If collectivism was a theatre district, "Pay Them or They'll Kill You" would be its longest-running hit.

More evidence of this fresh thinking was on display today at the Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago, where President Obama explained his view that Cuba is more popular in Latin America than we are because of "the thousands of doctors from Cuba that are dispersed all throughout the region, and upon which many of these countries heavily depend."

"It's a reminder for us in the United States," the president told reporters, "that if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction, if our only interaction is military, then we may not be developing the connections that can, over time, increase our influence and have -- have a beneficial effect when we need to try to move policies that are of concern to us forward in the region."

President Obama continued, "it's so important that in our interactions not just here in the hemisphere but around the world, that we recognize that our military power is just one arm of our power, and that we have to use our diplomatic and development aid in more intelligent ways so that people can see very practical, concrete improvements in the lives of ordinary persons as a consequence of U.S. foreign policy."

Completely omitted from the president's discussion of ways to improve the lives of ordinary persons was any mention of trade.

Trade, which means voluntary transactions between willing parties to the mutual benefit of both, just doesn't interest him very much.

He's more interested in "development aid," which means money is taken from U.S. taxpayers by government officials and then given to government officials in other countries.

The people who most dependably benefit from "development aid" are the government officials, the campaign donors who get the inside track for the contract to build whatever the potentates decide to buy with your money, and the lobbyists who introduce them to each other.

If President Obama achieves his agenda, we can look forward to more of this kind of government deal-making in health care, energy, banking, manufacturing, and education. Private trade for goods and services will increasingly be crowded out by government standards and requirements, all in the name of returning the nation, someday, to economic prosperity.

It is more likely to turn us into Zimbabwe.

Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Barack Obama, angry colonial" and "Atlas Shrugged: Now playing in Zimbabwe," and in "Defending Capitalism" at SusanShelley.com.

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Tea parties with weapons

2009-04-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

Just for the sake of argument, suppose people were upset about taxes.

Hypothetically.

Suppose Americans were alarmed enough about rising government spending and debt to organize tax protests, even "tea parties," and forcefully express their opposition to the constant whining from various quarters that taxes are not high enough.

Hypothetically.

Is there anything that could be done about it?

Glad you asked.

Back in the late 1970s, California voters were so outraged over skyrocketing property taxes that they used the initiative process to pass Proposition 13, an amendment to the state constitution that slashed property taxes to 1 percent of the 1975 assessed value or most recent sale price, allowing just the slightest increase every year to pay for bonds approved by the voters for specific purposes.

To this day, people who make a living by coaxing money out of Sacramento are furious about it.

That's just too bad, because Proposition 13 has more public support than a redwood tree in the path of a strip mall developer.

What does this have to do with federal taxes?

Did you know that the U.S. Constitution can be amended?

Did you know that a brand-new amendment has the same force of law as if it had been part of the original Constitution in George Washington's day?

Of course you did.

But did you know that the Constitution can be amended by the legislatures of the states, without the approval of Congress, the president, the Supreme Court, or any of the fifty state governors?

"The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary," Article V of the U.S. Constitution begins, "shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof...."

Hypothetically, suppose the enraged "tea party" protesters gathering in cities across America on Wednesday were to decide to support anti-tax candidates for their state legislatures. Hypothetically, suppose these candidates got elected.

Suppose two-thirds of the state legislatures in the United States called a constitutional convention and proposed a flat-tax amendment.

Suppose the amendment cut federal income taxes to one percent of gross income.

Suppose the constitutional convention passed this amendment and sent it out to the states for ratification, and suppose three-fourths of the states ratified it.

Hypothetically.

The entire income tax code of the United States would go straight into the trash, and everyone in the country could stop thinking about it.

Every year, Americans would owe one percent of their income in federal income taxes.

And that's all.

You wouldn't have or need any deductions and you wouldn't have or need any tax shelters.

You could spend and invest without altering your decisions because of tax law.

It would be a good idea, hypothetically, for the amendment to include a provision that authorizes Congress to set the minimum income that would be subject to federal income taxes. For example, Congress might decide not to collect income taxes from people who earn the minimum wage for a forty-hour week.

Other than that, Congress would no longer have the power to reward and punish selected Americans by fiddling with the tax code every two years. Or every two months. Or every two hours.

If we used the amendment process to lock the tax code in place, taxpayers and investors would be able to make long-term plans without wondering what the law will be five years from now. The tax code would be out of reach of politicians of both parties.

That's because a constitutional amendment can only be changed with another constitutional amendment. A simple majority, even a two-thirds majority, in the House and Senate won't do it.

It's fine to carry signs and throw tea in the harbor, but if Americans really want a tax revolt, the constitutional amendment is the weapon that won the West.

Copyright 2009