Crush Liberalism

Liberalism: Why think when you can “feel”?

Bloomberg wants to pay the poor to try and live right

From FNC (h/t Kanaka Girl):

Poor residents will be rewarded for good behavior — like $300 for doing well on school tests, $150 for holding a job and $200 for visiting the doctor — under an experimental anti-poverty program that city officials detailed Monday.

The rewards have been used in other countries, including Brazil and Mexico, and have drawn widespread praise for changing behavior among the poor. Mayor Michael Bloomberg traveled to Mexico this spring to study the healthy lifestyle payments, also known as conditional cash transfers.

In New York, the two-year pilot program with about 14,000 participants will use private funds Bloomberg has raised because he did not want to spend government money on something that is highly experimental. More than $43 million has been raised toward the $53 million goal, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs said.

The theory behind cash rewards is that poor people are trapped in a cycle of repeated setbacks that keep them from climbing out of poverty. A person who doesn’t keep up with his vaccinations and doctor’s visits, for example, may get sick more often and struggle to stay employed.

Bloomberg, a billionaire Republican, said he believes paying people in such circumstances to make good decisions could help break those patterns. The program “gives New Yorkers in poverty a financial incentive to look ahead and make decisions that will improve their prospects for the future,” he said in a statement.

Seems like a patently ludicrous idea. However, something even stupider follows:

But some critics have raised questions about cash reward programs, saying they promote the misguided idea that poor people could be successful if they just made better choices.

“It just reinforces the impression that if everybody would just work hard enough and change their personal behavior we could solve poverty in this country, and that’s not reflected in the facts,” said Margy Waller, co-founder of Inclusion, a research and policy group in Washington.

Wow. Just “wow”. The idea that poor people could be successful if they made better choices is “misguided”? Poor people changing their self-destructive personal behavior wouldn’t help get them out of poverty? Simply astonishing!

No wonder this lady served as a domestic policy adviser to Bubba! She reinforces leftist politicians’ warped and perverted view that people are simply unable to help themselves out of their predicaments and need the heavy hand of Big Mama Government to provide for them for the rest of their lives. After all, keep a person dependent on government, and you’ve got a guaranteed Democrat voter for the rest of that person’s life (and, in the case of Democrats, even after that person is dead).

June 19, 2007 Posted by | Bloomberg, economic ignorance | Leave a Comment

"Mr. President, tear down that fence!"

A most excellent column by Janet Folger. Here are a couple of excerpts, but please read the whole (short) column:

Mr. President, tear down that fence! I’m not talking about the fence around our borders; they never got around to finishing that. I’m talking about the fence around the White House. Hey, if you’re going to lead us to vulnerability, at least lead by example.

And those sharpshooters on the roof? They’re fine. They look all official and everything, but the new immigration-like policy is: They’re not allowed to shoot anyone. And if one of those men in black happen to interfere with someone committing criminal trespass (make that an “undocumented White House visit”) they’ll be in a cell right next to Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who committed the very same crime while patrolling the U.S. border.

In fact, from now on, in accordance with the new “lead by example” amendment to the Senate immigration bill, all trespassers will get instant amnesty for themselves and their families – and be allowed to pitch a tent right there on the White House lawn. Federal courts will also entertain discrimination lawsuits for those who’ve been denied access to the Lincoln Bedroom and whose funds don’t accommodate an office that’s oval.

Oh, and that White House dinner in the State Dining Room? Break out the presidential china all the way back to the Washington administration, because in addition to heads of state, you’re going to have a few (million) more guests. They’d also like a piece of what’s left of the twins’ college fund. We can’t possibly penalize the children of these undocumented tourists.

What about the security risk to the commander in chief? Look, we can’t possibly round up all the people in America who dislike the president. Don’t be naïve. It’s just not feasible. Quit fear-mongering.
…
Mr. President: You do not have our permission to break the bank to fund the Amexican Dream. Not unless you first lead by example and tear down the White House fence.

June 19, 2007 Posted by | illegal immigration | Leave a Comment

Duke lacrosse fallout

Brilliant column by Thomas Sowell:

The disbarment of Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong should be just the first step in remedying the gross and cynical fraud of last year’s “rape” case against Duke University lacrosse players.

Not only is Nifong still liable to civil lawsuits from the three young men whose lives he tried to ruin, and criminal prosecution for his obstruction of justice and making false statements to a judge, there are many other people who disgraced themselves in hyping a lynch mob atmosphere when this case first broke last year.

The New York Times, which splashed these Duke students’ pictures on the front page, along with inflammatory charges against them, and went ballistic on its editorial page, carried the story of Nifong’s disbarment for prosecuting them on page 16.

The 88 Duke University faculty members who took out a hysterical ad, supporting those local loudmouths who were denouncing and threatening the Duke students, have apparently had nothing at all to say now.

Not only did many Duke University professors join the lynch mob atmosphere, so did the Duke University administration, which got rid of the lacrosse coach and cancelled the team’s season, without a speck of evidence that anybody was guilty of anything.

This is one of the few times when Jesse Jackson is speechless, even though he was loudly supporting the bogus “rape” charges last year.

A local civil rights activist even had the gall to accost the mother of one of the accused students at Nifong’s disbarment hearings to say that she still believes they were guilty.

The sad and tragic fact is that the civil rights movement, despite its honorable and courageous past, has over the years degenerated into a demagogic hustle, promoting the mindless racism they once fought against.

Although the committee that disbarred Michael Nifong said many things that needed to be said, they muddied the waters by saying that Nifong may have deceived himself before he deceived others.

Nothing that District Attorney Nifong did suggests that he ever thought these players were guilty or that he ever intended to bring them to trial.

The photo lineup presented to the stripper was so completely different from standard procedure that it was virtually an invitation for a judge to throw out any identification resulting from it — and without that identification, there was no case.

This was not about winning a case. It was about winning an election.

Nifong could not allow a standard lineup to be used to have the accuser identify her alleged attackers, or else her unreliability would have been exposed early on, depriving him of a case to use to get the black vote in his election.

There is not the slightest reason to believe that Nifong was deceived or mistaken. He was not some kid fresh out of law school. He had decades of experience as a prosecutor. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Nor was the New York Times a naive ingenue in these matters. It had backed Al Sharpton’s fraudulent accusations of rape in the Tawana Brawley case, which had the same politically correct elements of a black woman accusing white men of rape.

Nor were the 88 Duke faculty members who promoted a lynch mob atmosphere naive. Most were from departments promoting the “race, class, and gender” vision of victimhood.

This case served their purposes. That trumped any question about whether the charges were true or not.

Don’t expect any of these people to recant or apologize. But be aware of how wide and how deep the moral dry rot goes.

That such people are teaching students at an elite university is a chilling thought. That they promote a campus atmosphere where political correctness trumps the search for truth is painful.

That such attitudes and such atmospheres are not peculiar to Duke University, but are common on elite college campuses from coast to coast is a time bomb with the potential to destroy individuals and ultimately undermine the whole society.

Personally, I think these Duke boys ought to do like Richard Jewell and sue the MSM outlets (especially the NYT) for their over-the-top piling-on. It worked for Jewell, though considering how the MSM worked this Duke case, one sees that the MSM learned nothing from the Jewell situation.

June 19, 2007 Posted by | bigotry, Duke lacrosse, media bias, political correctness, shameful | Leave a Comment

Criminal aliens turning to arson to avoid detection

But…but…they just want to come here for a better life to do the jobs that Americans won’t do! From the Washington Times:

U.S. Border Patrol agents seeking to secure the nation’s border in some of the country’s most pristine national forests are being targeted by illegal aliens, who are using intentionally set fires to burn agents out of observation posts and patrol routes.

The wildfires also have resulted in the destruction of valuable natural and cultural resources in the National Forest System and pose an ongoing threat to visitors, residents and responding firefighters, according to federal law enforcement authorities and others.

In the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, with 60 miles of land along the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Forest Service firefighters sent in to battle fires or clear wild land fire areas are required to be escorted by armed law enforcement officers.

Armed smugglers of aliens and drugs have walked through the middle of active firefighting operations, the authorities said.

The Border Patrol’s Tucson, Ariz., sector, which encompasses most of the Coronado National Forest, has the highest incidence of cross-border violators in the nation. Nearly 500,000 illegal aliens were apprehended last year — more than 30,000 a month. In addition, nearly 100,000 pounds of marijuana, with a street value of $200 million, was seized as it was hauled through the Coronado National Forest.

Last month, the Border Patrol — in a single operation targeting illegal aliens causing what Forest Service officials called “significant damage” to the Coronado National Forest — apprehended more than 300 illegals along just a three-mile section of Arizona-Mexico border and confiscated 600 pounds of marijuana in a 10-day period.

At least five fires were set below a Border Patrol observation post during the operation in an effort to burn the agents out, according to a Forest Service report. The fires were extinguished, and no one was arrested.

Wildfires are being set by alien and drug smugglers, authorities said, to create a diversion in an attempt to gain undetected access across the border. The fires correspond to a dramatic rise in assaults against Border Patrol agents — up more than 100 percent over last year.

“Criminal activity by both illegal immigrants and citizens in forests near the border is a threat to members of the public trying to use their public lands and to our employees trying to manage these lands,” Tina J. Terrell, a Forest Service supervisor told a House subcommittee in May.

She said law enforcement personnel have been assaulted, threatened with weapons and shot at, and their vehicles have been rammed by cross-border violators. Because of the remoteness of the area, she said, timely assistance from other law enforcement agencies is not always possible and communications limitations and active interference with radio frequencies in Mexico create additional safety risks.

Yeah, let’s give these vermin some “guest worker” visas so they’ll leave our national forests (and agents) alone, right?

June 19, 2007 Posted by | illegal immigration | Leave a Comment

Suicide bombers coming to U.S. & Europe?

From ABC News:

Large teams of newly trained suicide bombers are being sent to the United States and Europe, according to evidence contained on a new videotape obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

Teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany were introduced at an al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9.

A Pakistani journalist was invited to attend and take pictures as some 300 recruits, including boys as young as 12, were supposedly sent off on their suicide missions.

The tape shows Taliban military commander Mansoor Dadullah, whose brother was killed by the U.S. last month, introducing and congratulating each team as they stood.

“These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places,” Dadullah says on the tape. “Why shouldn’t we go after them?”

Our friends on the left will no doubt see this as mere “fearmongering” by the evil emperor Dubya. We’re not in danger, nothing to see, move along…

June 19, 2007 Posted by | religion of peace | Leave a Comment

   

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