The Swarm or the Anti-Bread Maker
By Yulia Latynina

The Reality of how Russia functions today:

Adam Smith

1.1. According to Adam Smith, when an individual acts in his own self-interest in a free market, the result is an increase in the benefit of all. When a baker bakes bread he’s not thinking of the general social good, he’s thinking about personal profit. But as a result of his actions there is an increase in the general welfare.

It is easy to see that this correlation between personal and general welfare is not always present in society. The marauders that pillage a city, reaping personal benefit, do nothing to increase the social welfare. A bureaucrat who exploits the benefits of his position in order to buy himself a higher one does not increase the general welfare. Throughout history there were many societies where it was more beneficial to be a pillager than a bread maker.

1.2. A society where it is profitable to be a bread maker is a free society.

A society where it is more profitable to be a marauder becomes an un-free society.

1.3. In Putin’s Russia it is disadvantageous to be a bread maker. It is more profitable to be a fire or medical inspector or a tax auditor who monitor the bread maker. The Russia of Putin is a serious case of a closed and un-free society.

Economic  Degradation

2.1. All un-free societies suffer from economic degradation. Rather than producing, everyone wants to control the producer. The baker who is trying to bake his bread or an entrepreneur attempting to organize the production of cell phones are demonstrating irrationality in their economic enterprises. Instead of maximizing their profits, they are maximizing their vulnerability. The bureaucrat best demonstrates rational behavior when he extorts a bribe from the businessman.

The simplest economic endeavor is no longer practical. It has been replaced by importing because the transactional expenses of any imported product are less than the transactional expenses of its production. The merchandise that is produced in the country is only that which cannot be produced abroad. For instance, stores or airports will still be maintained because a Muscovite will not buy milk in a shop in Warsaw.

2.2. One of the specifics of an economy during a period of degradation is its inability to develop high technology. Sophisticated technology is the most volatile part on an economy. You cannot have development in nanotechnology in a Byzantium-like country.

Motivational Degradation

3.1. An equally important consequence is “Africanization,” that is, a degradation of social motivation and expectations. The motivation to “build a career in a company” is replaced by “finding a more profitable position.”

Levels of education begin falling and that which simulates one to move forward disintegrates. If a federal judge makes $5,000 per month, there is no rational reason to get an education if, in this country, you are paid $500. As such, integrity and a good education becomes an economically absurd activity.

3.2. The fallout of this motivational disincentive results in a degradation of the educational system. One illustration of this degradation is reflected at the “International Branch of Moscow University Law School in Geneva.” The existence of this educational facility became known only after four of its students organized a sport car race in Geneva of Ferraris and Lamborghinis. The head of the “international branch” was a certain Mr. Gasanov, who just several years prior, was arrested in Moscow University for stealing ten million dollars from the government of Azerbaijan. According to the Moscow University website, the courses at the Geneva branch were taught in the Russian language.

One can only guess about the quality of the diplomas given out by this institution. Most amazing is not that these rich, young ignoramuses couldn’t get into Oxford or Harvard, but that their parents did not even think it necessary.

Here’s another example: upon completion of work at the “Seliger Camp” (for exceptional children) in 2006, top graduates were given an opportunity to receive practical education at “Gasprom” (Russia’s energy monopoly) or with the administrative staff of the President. In comparison, the government of Georgia pays for a university education of any high school student who graduated in the top ten percent of the class.

This cancer of low motivation destroys not only today’s society, but future societies as well.

Degradation of the Ruling System

4.1. In a closed society every level of every part of the ruling system, whether it’s a Department or an Agency evolve into governmental corporations, whose purpose is to expand the territory from which they can then extort bribes.

The strategic damage that these tactics influence society, as a whole, is not taken into account. Let’s take, for example, the Ministry of Finance. How is the Russian budget structured?

It is structured in a way that maximizes power for each bureaucrat of a department and for the Ministry of Finance over the entire country. The fact that regional governors, who receive funds from the central government, are not interested in developing a local tax base and do what they can to alienate and self-appropriate local businesses is of little concern to the Ministry of Finance. As a group their only motivation is that the more the governors depend on them in the center, the more windfall there will be for the center and each of them personally. In this controlled society every ruling level attempts to maximize, to the fullest, its potential to steal.

4.2. In addition, the individuals in ruling system stop carrying out even the orders that come from the top. As an example, consider the building of the sports facilities in Sochi (a future Olympics site) – Putin’s personal project. The work there is moving very slowly. Two groups of bureaucrats (who are in constant conflict) are demanding large kickbacks from each contractor. If only one group gets the kickbacks, the other could stop the entire project. But, if both get paid, the money they are demanding will preclude any possibility of making a profit on the Games.

In February 2008, Vladimir Putin visited Botlih and demanded that a military road be built there which he characterized as “one more access corridor to Georgia.” He stressed that this road should be able to handle “heavy military equipment.” However, in August 2008 the road, which would give access Georgia from a third direction, from Southern Ossetia and Abhazia, as well as from Dagestan, was not being built for a very simple reason – thievery.

4.3. This system behaves as if every bureaucrat, and not only Putin, is himself the center of this so-called ruling system. Everyone wants to decide everything.

Degradation of Law Enforcement

 5.1. The American economist, Arthur Laffer, once noted that when taxes reach a certain threshold the ability of the government to collect them begins to decline. This is known as the “Laffer Curve.” It appears that such a threshold also exists when it come to criminal behavior. Dimitry Kamenschik, co-owner of the Domodevo airport, calls this barrier the “penitentiary threshold.”

5.2. In a country where criminal violations exceed the penitentiary threshold, crime investigation becomes meaningless. Law enforcement groups not only stops preventing crime, but also become part of the problem by committing crimes themselves.

5.3. A system is not defined by mistakes. A system is defined by its reaction to mistakes. At present, when a police officer or bureaucrat commits a crime, the system tries to come to his defense.

5.4. As a result, the crime is no longer seen as a crime, but, rather, as a privilege afforded to a bureaucrat.

5.5.  Secondly, law enforcement officials stop doing that which they are supposed to do, i.e. conduct criminal investigations. It is believed that the MVD and prosecutors don’t do their job in not punishing the higher-ups. That is not so. It is system itself, which does not work.

Here is a simple example: on the 20^th of March, 2009, a courier was robbed in 24 seconds on the tarmac of Vnukova Airport by a group of unknown armed men. He was carrying 43 million rubles ($1,075,000) in cash from Mahachkaly. Airport police routinely robbed such couriers, but this time when it became known that an investigation had begun, the robbers became “unknown persons,” though airport security knew them very well. Let me remind you that Vnukova is a government airport. It could well have happened that instead of well-armed robbers, the airport could, just as easily, been breached by terrorists, intent on capturing the airplane of Vladimir Putin.

Elections under Vladimir Putin’s “managed democracy” have become grimly predictable affairs. Rampant fraud and bans on all but fringe or manufactured opposition parties have ensured that Putin’s United Russia Party routinely triumphs in a landslide, with Putin then trumpeting the results as a vindication of his authoritarian regime. This weekend’s parliamentary elections largely followed this script but with a surprise ending: United Russia failed to capture even 50 percent of the vote, a major setback considering its blatant manipulation of the election and one that highlights the extent of the Russian public’s discontent with the country’s corrupt one-man, one-party rule.

That this weekend’s election was a mockery of fairness goes without saying. Serious opposition parties were prohibited from taking part, while governors and mayors across the country were issued specific quotas for votes that they were required to meet. There were countless reports of young people being transported from voting station to voting station so that they could vote multiple times. So extensive was the vote rigging that some regions of Russia reported election turnout exceeding 140 percent. Elsewhere, United Russia claimed support that echoed the fixed elections of the Soviet-era. In Chechnya, the domain of Kremlin-installed dictator Ramzan Kadyrov, United Russia claimed 99.5 percent of the vote.

While party apparatchiks rigged the vote, Russia’s state-owned television stations, the source for most of the national news, churned out a steady stream of pro-Putin propaganda. One notable target was Golos, Russian for “voice,” the country’s sole independent election monitor. Harassed by police and smeared as traitorous by the media, Golos was also the victim of cyber-attacks, which shut down the organization’s web site, including an online map that allowed people across the country to report voting violations. The websites of the country’s few remaining independent media, such as the radio station Ekho Moskvy, were also shut down, as was LiveJournal, Russia’s leading blogging host.

Considering the efforts expended by United Russia to engineer its latest landslide, it is all the more notable that it not only failed to achieve it, but actually lost votes, with some of the largest losses coming in the major cities. In St Petersburg, Putin’s hometown, United Russia garnered just 34 percent of the vote. Overall, the party won less than 50 percent of the vote, down from 64 percent in 2007. In a low-turnout election, the majority of Russians who voted gave their support to the only other parties available, mostly communist and extreme nationalist parties.

It’s hard to see the results as anything but a rebuff of Putin. While the prime minister has enjoyed high approval ratings, inflated by the absence of a critical press and any curbs on political opposition, there are signs that he may have overreached in recent months. In September, Putin announced that he would seek the presidency again, meaning that that he could be in power until 2024. That announcement was not unexpected. It has been widely understood that Putin’s decision to yield the presidency to his former deputy Dmitri Medvedev was a temporary arrangement, one that would allow Putin to maintain his grip on power from behind the scenes. Nonetheless, Putin’s accompanying statement that the decision had been made long ago was startling in its brazenness and confirmed that any hopes Russians may have had of political reforms were hollow.

This popular post was originally published April 8, 2011.

In a stunning development, a clerical error in Wisconsin has transformed what many expected to be a long, ugly legal battle favoring the Left into an almost certain victory for the Right, outraging leftists like Michael Moore, to the point where the radical “documentarian” has stopped bothering to hide his disdain for the democratic process.

The intense Wisconsin Supreme Court race between the incumbent Republican, Justice David Prosser, and his Democrat challenger, state DNR enforcer JoAnn Kloppenburg, ended Wednesday with the latter declaring victory based on the Associated Press’s calculation of a 204-vote lead. Prosser didn’t budge, and most predicted an onslaught of recounts and vote fraud litigation to ensue.

But on Thursday evening we learned that Waukesha county clerk Kathy Nickolaus had erroneously passed on the county’s data to the AP without the numbers from the city of Brookfield, which shifted the lead to Prosser by more than 7,000 votes. Leftists are predictably outraged that hijacking the judiciary to thwart Governor Scott Walker’s public-sector union reforms won’t work after all, though none have topped the overreaction of Moore, who tweeted last night:

Republicans created the rule: “Whoever declares victory first, wins!” When will Obama Justice Dept impound ballots and stop the shenanigans?

Much has been said about the totalitarian impulse and anti-constitutionalism behind modern leftism, but rarely is it expressed so overtly by one of their own. Moore wants the federal government to forcibly prevent the certification of a state election and give the office to someone based strictly on her own, premature and entirely unofficial, declaration of victory?

Wow. I don’t think I even need to say anything more to explain how mind-blowingly horrendous his position is.

Moore’s man-of-the-people act has never quite rung true, but after this he can’t even pretend to value such niceties as democracy, the rule of law, or ensuring that every vote is counted. He has truly and irrevocably dropped the pretense of being anything other than a would-be tyrant.

As for Nickolaus and allegations of pro-Prosser funny business: yes, Nickolaus has been rightly criticized for blunders in the past, but the imaginative lefties crying foul right now are bound to be disappointed for several reasons.

In a stunning development, a clerical error in Wisconsin has transformed what many expected to be a long, ugly legal battle favoring the Left into an almost certain victory for the Right, outraging leftists like Michael Moore, to the point where the radical “documentarian” has stopped bothering to hide his disdain for the democratic process.

The intense Wisconsin Supreme Court race between the incumbent Republican, Justice David Prosser, and his Democrat challenger, state DNR enforcer JoAnn Kloppenburg, ended Wednesday with the latter declaring victory based on the Associated Press’s calculation of a 204-vote lead. Prosser didn’t budge, and most predicted an onslaught of recounts and vote fraud litigation to ensue.

But on Thursday evening we learned that Waukesha county clerk Kathy Nickolaus had erroneously passed on the county’s data to the AP without the numbers from the city of Brookfield, which shifted the lead to Prosser by more than 7,000 votes. Leftists are predictably outraged that hijacking the judiciary to thwart Governor Scott Walker’s public-sector union reforms won’t work after all, though none have topped the overreaction of Moore, who tweeted last night:

Republicans created the rule: “Whoever declares victory first, wins!” When will Obama Justice Dept impound ballots and stop the shenanigans?

Much has been said about the totalitarian impulse and anti-constitutionalism behind modern leftism, but rarely is it expressed so overtly by one of their own. Moore wants the federal government to forcibly prevent the certification of a state election and give the office to someone based strictly on her own, premature and entirely unofficial, declaration of victory?

Wow. I don’t think I even need to say anything more to explain how mind-blowingly horrendous his position is.

Moore’s man-of-the-people act has never quite rung true, but after this he can’t even pretend to value such niceties as democracy, the rule of law, or ensuring that every vote is counted. He has truly and irrevocably dropped the pretense of being anything other than a would-be tyrant.

As for Nickolaus and allegations of pro-Prosser funny business: yes, Nickolaus has been rightly criticized for blunders in the past, but the imaginative lefties crying foul right now are bound to be disappointed for several reasons.

In Chicago politics, there’s an old term for the publicly subsidized pay-offs and positions meted out to the corruptocrats’ friends and special interests: boodle.

In the age of Obama, Hope and Change is all about the boodle. So it was with the stimulus. And the massive national service expansion. And the health care bill. And the financial reform bill. And the blossoming job-trading scandals engulfing the White House.

There’s always been an ageless, interdependent relationship between Windy City politicos and “goo-goos” (the cynical Chicago term for good government reformers). Chicago-style “reform” has always entailed the redistribution of wealth and power under the guise of public service. And it has inevitably led to more corruption.

In March 2010, this column first took note of allegations by Democrats Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff that the White House had offered them jobs in exchange for dropping their respective bids against Obama-favored incumbent Sens. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and Michael Bennet in Colorado. White House legal counsel Bob “The Fixer” Bauer’s attempt to bury questions about the Sestak affair with a Memorial Day weekend document dump failed. So has the attempt to make Rahm Emanuel-enlisted former president Bill Clinton the sole scapegoat.

Bauer’s memo mentions “efforts” (plural, not singular) to woo Sestak. But the White House refuses to divulge what offers besides Clinton’s were extended to Sestak. Moreover, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has now denied that Team Obama was involved in the one Clinton offer that has been publicized — an unpaid appointment on an intelligence board for which Sestak was ineligible.

After months of silence, Romanoff finally stepped forward last week to acknowledge that the White House had dangled several positions before him, too. He released e-mails detailing not one, not two, but three different paid positions offered by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina — whose boss, Emanuel, was subpoenaed this week by impeached former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois to testify in his Senate pay-for-play corruption trial.

So, can I say “I told you so” now?

In July 2009, when “Culture of Corruption” was first released, liberal critics scoffed:

How could you possibly write a 400-page book about Barack Obama’s rotten administration when he’s only been in office six months?!

When I proceeded to rattle off case after case of Chicago-style back-scratching, transparency-trampling and crooked special interest-dealing in the new White House, liberal critics such as “The View’s” Joy Behar interjected:

B-b-b-but what about Bush? Why don’t you write a book about Bush? Wha-’bout-Bush? Wha-’bout-Bush? Wha-’bout-Bush?

When I pointed out that I had reported extensively on cronyism in the Bush era (see Harriet Miers, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security), and when I further pointed out that while the Bush-bashing market overflowed, there remained a massive vacuum of critical analysis of Obama, liberal critics sputtered:

So what? Doesn’t every administration have corruption?

When I patiently explained that no other administration in modern American history had set itself up as loftily as the Hope and Change reformers had done, or when I cited endless examples of Obama’s broken promises on everything from lobbyists to transparency to Washington business as usual, liberal critics changed the subject again:

RACIST FASCIST EVIL FOX NEWS RIGHT-WING HATE MONGER!

Two major job-trading scandals plus the start of the Blago trial this past week — on top of a year’s worth of uninhibited White House wheeling and dealing, broken transparency pledges, Justice Department stonewalling and brass knuckle-bullying of political opponents — have finally turned the once-derided thesis of my book “Culture of Corruption” into conventional wisdom.

Obama sold America a Chicago-tainted bill of goods. A nation of slow learners is finally figuring it out.

Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies” (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com

What is Tom Friedman’s deal with the People’s Republic of China? During a recent appearance on Meet the Press, he praised Beijing’s hybrid capitalist-statist-nationalist-communist dictatorship by asking, “What if we could just be China for one day? I mean, just, just, just one day…where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions…on everything from the economy to environment.” He caught himself before drifting too far into his daydream of a PRC-style, command-and-control America, reassuring his fellow panelists, “I don’t want to be China for a second…But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions.”

This isn’t the first time Friedman has gushed about the PRC and its orderly, ends-justify-the-means system. During the 2008 Olympics, he offered a paean to the PRC that sounded sadly similar to the commentaries of Western academics, journalists and other elites who used to travel to Moscow and report back about the virtues of Soviet central planning.

“The energy coming out of this country is unrivaled,” Friedman declared as the Beijing Games came to a close. “China did not build the magnificent $43-billion infrastructure for these games, or put on the unparalleled opening and closing ceremonies, simply by the dumb luck of discovering oil. No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work,” he cheered.

“I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years,” he continued. “China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.”

According to Friedman, “The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train….Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world?”

Well. Where to begin?

Once upon a time, in the late 1990s, when Friedman was the pied piper of globalization, he understood that America’s military might served an essential global purpose and was anything but a drain. “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist,” he observed. “And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe…is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

Indeed, America has countless more global responsibilities than the “Middle Kingdom”—fighting al Qaeda and its kindred movements being just one—and is expected to act more responsibly when carrying out those responsibilities than Beijing, which has no qualms about cutting deals with Sudan or Zimbabwe, or propping up the most backward regimes on earth (see North Korea and Burma).

As to all the glitzy glamour and martial order that made Friedman swoon during the 2008 Olympics, Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reminds us that China is not all it appears. Pei notes that “Beijing’s brand of authoritarian politics is spawning a dangerous mix of crony capitalism, rampant corruption and widening inequality.” Pointing to “an incestuous relationship between the state and major industries,” Pei details an eye-opening swirl of troubles:

-“An average of 140,000 party officials and members were caught in corruption scandals each year of the 1990s.” But only 5.6 percent were criminally prosecuted.

-In 2004, 170,850 party apparatchiks were implicated in corruption, and just 2.9 percent were prosecuted.

-The party appoints 81 percent of the CEOs who run China’s state-owned industries.

-In this land of supposed socialist equality, income disparity has increased by 50 percent since the 1970s, “making China one of the most unequal societies in Asia.” In fact, less than one percent of households control more than 60 percent of China’s wealth.

-Government spending has fallen from 36 percent of all healthcare expenditures to less than 15 percent.

None of this should come as a surprise. The PRC doesn’t care about its subjects—only about expanding its power. Recall that Beijing used the Olympics as a pretext for forcibly evicting 1.5 million people from their homes to complete those mass-construction projects that made Friedman’s jaw drop. Due to Beijing’s pre-Olympics preparations, a Center on Housing Rights and Evictions report named “China among the world’s top three housing rights violators.”

Beijing also used the Olympics as an opportunity to stamp out dissent, arrest reporters and block websites. Internet giant Google knows what that’s like. For years, Google officials have been wrestling with Beijing and with their own corporate conscience over what to do about PRC censorship. They recently made the right decision, drawing Beijing’s wrath.

How does China’s ends-justify-the-means regime affect the rest of us? First, and perhaps most worryingly, Beijing is leveraging its external economic power and internal political control to build a military force that can directly challenge the United States. On the strength of its booming economy, China’s military budget was nearly 10 times larger in 2005 than it was in 1989, and roughly doubled between 2005 and 2009, with a 14.9-percent increase last year.

Unchecked by internal dissent or the constraints of conscience, Beijing wants to be the dominant force in its neighborhood and is developing naval, air and space assets to attain that objective. And the U.S. military is standing in the PRC’s way. Hence Beijing’s constant barrage of cyberattacks, maritime incidents and spy probes; unparalleled naval buildup; and menacing missile deployments.

This is just a glimpse of what the PRC’s “national mobilization” can achieve.

Second, China’s central government regularly bullies or murders its weakest subjects: opening fire on peasants protesting land confiscations in Dongzhou, forcibly evicting thousands around Beijing, bulldozing churches in Shaanxi Province, battering nuns who get in the way, raiding “house churches,” cordoning off entire villages to arrest pastors, smothering Tibet.

But Friedman is quick to remind us that Beijing’s benevolent masters give their people “sleek airports” and “magnetic levitation trains.”

Third, China’s state-controlled economy churns out products that endanger innocent lives. The cases are numerous, ranging from contaminated drugs to toxic toothpaste to poisonous baby formula. But the best-known cases involve lead-tainted toys.

Some 20 million toys manufactured in China were recalled in 2007, after it was discovered that they contained unacceptable levels of lead. Just how high is “unacceptable”? The Consumer Product Safety Commission sets the acceptable level of lead at 600 parts per million (ppm), but in 2007 scientists found lead levels between 2,700 ppm and 39,000 ppm in Chinese-made items.

Toys are not the only dangerous import from China. The Associated Press reports that at least 81 deaths and 785 “severe allergic reactions” have been traced to contaminated heparin “made from ingredients imported from China.” It appears that a Chinese plant was cutting corners to save money on the drug, using what The Baltimore Sun calls a “chemical modified to look like heparin’s main ingredient.”

And the list goes on: 53,000 Chinese babies were poisoned by formula tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics production. Back here in the States, 450,000 tires made in China were recalled because their treads were separating at highway speeds.

Because of the “incestuous relationship between the state and major industries” described by Pei, Beijing cannot claim innocence or feign ignorance. Indeed, this is a government with the power and wherewithal to “authorize the right solutions,” according to Friedman.

Fourth, China’s autocratic regime—the one Friedman wants to emulate “just for a day”—depends on a slave-labor system known as laogai to churn out all those cheap and dangerous exports. An estimated 4-6 million people are rotting away in the laogai prison camps, serving out varying years and degrees of penance to the state Mao erected. Laogai prisoners produce everything from bottled water and tea to electronics and toys. The Laogai Research Foundation identified 1,100 laogai camps in its 2006 report.

This is the natural endpoint of what Freidman calls “concentrated state power,” without all those irritating checks and balances that protect individual freedom.

Speaking of checks and balances, a decade ago Friedman actually argued that “it’s Madison, not Mao, who’s winning the day” in China. That’s Madison as in James Madison, author of our constitution. Madison’s system of checks and balances was designed not to empower the state, but to protect the individual from the state, to check the whims of those in power, to ensure that the government’s means and ends are justified.

It may be slow or “suboptimal,” but it’s superior to Beijing’s way.

Alan W. Dowd writes on defense and security issues.

The New York chapter of mighty, mighty ACORN is now mighty, mighty NY Communities for Change.  It doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?

As the national ACORN organization attempts to scam Americans by rebranding scandal-plagued local chapters, what will become of the New York educational institutions that share the ACORN name?

Will ACORN Community High School and ACORN High School for Social Justice continue to bear the name of a group associated with corruption, dishonesty, and fraud?  Or will students and parents step up and demand more dignified names for these schools?

Perhaps I shouldn’t give them any ideas. The ACORN High School for Social Justice might be preferable to the Cloward-Piven Institute of Community Organizing or the Che Guevara Revolutionary Arts Academy.

—–

Follow Jenn Q. Public on Twitter and read more of her work at JennQPublic.com.

I always assumed our nation would treat our own missionaries better than foreign terrorists who have tried to massacre us.  Once again the Obama administration is changing assumptions as they attempt to change America.

Shortly after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, countless Americans looked for a way to help.  A group of 10 baptists – mostly from two Southern Baptist (SBC) churches in Idaho – headed to Haiti in hopes to assist as many orphans as they could.  Their plan was not well planned or orchestrated.   The group gathered up 33 children with plans to take them to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic for aid.

The mission team was apparently ignorant of laws about taking children over Haiti’s border and were arrested on January 29th for kidnapping.  They have been awaiting trial for two weeks now in a Haitian prison.  The attempted good Samaritans could face up to fifteen years for their actions.

How is the Obama administration helping?  They are letting a broken and battered Haiti try the 10 Americans.  Somehow a government famous for corruption BEFORE it was torn to pieces by a natural disaster is going to do an adequate job of trying U.S. citizens.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the case “is a matter for the Haitian judicial system”.

Excuse me?  What was that?  The very mastermind behind 9-11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), is offered a New York City show trial by this administration; but we will not ask the Haitian government to let us try our own people?  You have to be kidding me.

America has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Haiti to help them in their time of need.  Surely we could ask for this favor.  To make matters worse, Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN recently that his government would consider transferring the 10 Americans for a U.S. trial.  The only stipulation seems to be that our government must make the request.  As of today, we have yet to make the request.

Hillary, Obama, somebody – get on the phone!  Our own people are in desperate need of American justice.  Why go to such great effort to give that justice to terrorists and not our own citizens?  My mind can’t even get around that logic.

The media is barely covering the bloody situation in Mexico, but the war against the drug lords there should be of the utmost concern to Americans. As high levels of violence and corruption continue to plague Mexican society, the U.S. needs to brace for a flood of narcotics, arms, and people seeking refuge crossing the border.

The drug war has resulted in about 17,000 deaths over the past three years, and Mexico has claimed the title of the country in the hemisphere with the highest number of journalists killed on its soil. To put that in perspective, about 1000 American soldiers have died fighting the war in Afghanistan since 2001. About 4400 Americans have died in Iraq since 2003.

A quick look at the resume of Teodoro Eduardo Garcia Simental, a top drug lord captured this month responsible for horrendous amounts of barbaric violence in and around Tijuana, shows the brutal nature of the conflict. He and his partners destroyed the bodies of hundreds of their victims by submersing them in tubs of acid, many of whom were kidnapped and held for ransom.

The New York Times describes the conflict as follows:

“When it comes to gore, Mexico’s drug traffickers seem to compete among themselves for the title of most depraved. One will chop off the heads of victims. Another will string dead rivals from bridges or burn their genitals. Recently, hit men removed the face from a dead man and sewed it onto a soccer ball.”

The capturing and killing of top figures in the drug trade in recent months has not had an immediate impact. The Official Secretary of the Federal Judiciary in Veracruz City was found beheaded with a message carved into her chest this month. January of 2010 has doubled the previous January as having the record of the highest number of murders in Tijuana with 70 people having lost their lives.

January 10 made the record for the bloodiest single day in the conflict, with 69 assassinations in nine states, beating the previous number of 57. Ciudad Juarez has been named by the Citizen Council for Public Security as the most violent city in the world, with an average of 191 murders per 100,000 residents.

The affects of the war in Mexico are not limited to that country. It is spreading to El Salvador, which is considering establishing a curfew, a mandatory closing time for businesses, and allowing the searching of homes without warrants. A dozen people on average were killed every day in the tiny country in 2009. The other Central American countries are experiencing a similar rise in criminal and violent activity.

The inability of the government to bring stability and opportunity to its people is causing desperate measures to be implemented. Military offensives usually reserved for foreign wars are taking place on home soil. Possession of small quantities of drugs for “personal use” has been legalized, including heroin, cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamine. There is even talk of prosecuting those who glorify the drug lords in pop culture.

It also affects the War on Terror. It is now known that the Colombian narco-terrorist group known as FARC, with Venezuelan backing, has partnered up with Al-Qaeda elements in West Africa. The Chavez government’s involvement in narcotics trafficking means they can use the drug lords to destabilize the hemisphere and expand their business opportunities. Terrorist groups and other non-state actors will benefit from having a new colleague that can help them ship people and supplies into the U.S. and engage in illicit fundraising, as Hezbollah already has.

People from countries known to be strongholds for extremist groups are being caught entering Latin America in order to reach the United States. Four Somalis have been found hiding in a tractor trailer in Honduras. In Colombia, 71 illegal aliens from Somalia and Eritrea were intercepted by the authorities in early January. The smuggling business, instability and poor control of America’s southwestern border provides an open opportunity for those wishing to do us harm.

This internal strife should cause Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and Senator John Kerry to reconsider their assurances in March of last year that Mexico was “in no danger of becoming a failed state.” The conflict is becoming closer to resembling a guerilla war, and if the drug lords succeed in carving out mini-states for themselves, the U.S. will see the chaos and criminal activity they cause spill over the border.

It has been three months since I joined the ranks of the treadmill army. I want to make sure that I’m in shape when I’m forced to walk through the new body scanner at the airport. My routine consists of 45 minutes of pure torture and utter boredom. The machine that I use has a display that counts down the minutes for you. Its square, red text tries to cheer you on with…”Only blank more minutes to go!”

I’ll never get used to the concept of walking and running for miles but never getting anywhere. I am always haunted by the image of George Jetson screaming “Jane! Get me off this crazy thing!” The upside to my daily visit to the health club is that I have the opportunity to watch to watch twelve T.V. screens at the same time. It is during these workouts that I analyze the world from the picture drawn by these 12 screens.

With “Only 38 more minutes to go!”, I caught a glimpse of former President Bill Clinton on screen 3. I switched over from the Travel Channel and listened as he answered a reporter’s question about the future of Haiti. Clinton looked like he was on the campaign trail as he rattled off a Christmas list of lefty, eco-friendly solutions. He talked up the opportunity to make Haiti better that it was, with green jobs , sustainable farming, reforestation, and an end to the corruption that has hamstrung the nation for generations.(To find out more go to: Bill Clinton: It Will Take Years to Rebuild Haiti- Newsweek.com)

Sounds great, right? Just one more question: Who’ going to pay for all of this?

Haiti lies in ruins and the rebuilding effort is going to be a massive and expensive undertaking. The eyes of the world are focused on relieving the human suffering caused by the earthquake. Donations of money and supplies will soon reach the victims, but how long will it last? Do we have the resources or attention span to rebuild Haiti? The United States economy has suffered the equivalent of the Haitian earthquake and we are far from recovering. President Obama has promised 100 million dollars to the relief effort that we must heap on top of our Mt. Everest deficit.  Moreover, did I miss the transformation of New Orleans into a green utopia?

There is no question tht we should assist the people of Haiti. But plans for turning Haiti into an island Shangri-la financed by the U.S. Government may be a case of too many people in the lifeboat. A pinch of reality is needed. Haiti’s recovery will happen- it has natural resources and beaches that are desirable. The evacuation of people from Port-au-Prince appears to be the immediate solution. Once the rubble has been cleared, there will be a natural rebuilding as Haitians return home with ideas and plans to rebuild their lives. Flooding Haiti with “free” money will only rekindle political corruption and diminish the chance for a stable nation. Instead, America should export our two most valuable resources- freedom and capitalism. Let’s actually apply the words “organic” and “sustainable” and see what we can grow with charity and hard work. One last question: Did I miss the rebuilding of the Twin Towers?

Sometimes the treadmill display congratulates me for making it to the end of my workout before the show that I’m watching is over. It’s a bit of a dilemma for me to choose between watching and walking or putting an end to my suffering. I usually finish watching- I hate not knowing how things end. I like to reach conclusions about things; it makes me feel like I’m getting somewhere.

Related posts:

1. FOX: Green Jobs Czar not sure what "green jobs" are
2. Haiti: Thousands Dead after Massive Earthquake
3. Communist Green Jobs Czar Van Jones and His Meddling Ways

Terrorism is the weapon of the weak. The Taliban proved that once again last Monday with its attack on the government quarter in central Kabul. The attack killed 12 people, including seven terrorists, and left 71 people wounded. One of the dead was a five-year old boy that the Taliban fatally shot.

The main target of the latest Taliban assault on Kabul was the central bank, located next to the presidential palace. A suicide bomber tried to enter the bank but was shot by security before he could get inside. Other terrorists seized a shopping mall, ordering all vendors to leave, before taking up positions on the top floor and shooting it out for several hours with Afghan security forces before being killed. But the Taliban showed its particular revolting talent for death and destruction a few blocks away, where another suicide bomber detonated a vehicle disguised as an ambulance in front of the Ministry of Education, setting off a whirlwind of debris.

The purpose of the attack, like most other terrorist operations, was to get the attention of the international media. The Taliban are very media savvy and know that by targeting the well-protected government quarters in a city hosting a lot of foreign journalists, they would achieve their goal of capturing headlines worldwide, at least for a couple of days.

By penetrating Kabul’s defenses and staging such spectacular assaults (this is the third Taliban attack in the capital since last October), the Taliban also hoped to appear more powerful in the eyes of the world press than they really are. As one observer wrote, “The Taliban are using terrorism as a means of communication.”

Some in the media did fall for the Taliban’s propaganda line. The New York Times, for example, headlined its story about Monday’s assault, “Kabul Attack Shows Resilience of Afghan Militants”. In reality, it was Kabul’s inhabitants who were the resilient ones. The Times later reported merchants returned to their booths in the shopping mall and were conducting their business the day after the attack.

A Canadian national newspaper, The Globe And Mail, mistakenly saw in the Taliban assault a weakening of the Afghan presidency, titling its report, ‘The War at Karzai’s door: Kabul strike shows a leader losing grip.”

But rather than a show of strength, last Monday’s suicide attack was actually a sign of Taliban weakness. After nearly ten years the Taliban have not made any headway militarily in expelling the foreign troops from Afghanistan, let alone make good on their annual promise to capture Kabul. And due to the professionalism and toughness of NATO and American soldiers, the Taliban rarely stand up to them in battle, relying instead on IEDs and suicide bombers.

While suffering a disproportionate number of casualties of their own, the Taliban have also inflicted only a low rate of casualties on American troops. In Afghanistan, casualties have never been as high as they were in Iraq at the Iraq war’s worst point and are only a third the rate of those of Vietnam and World War Two.

IEDs and Kabul-like suicide attacks will also, like in Iraq, never gain the Taliban a military victory. One military analyst calls Islamic suicide bombers “an overrated tool”, saying they are reminiscent of Japan’s kamikazes that also sought to demoralize an overpowering enemy, but also failed. Unlike the Taliban’s suicide bombers, though, the kamikazes only attacked military targets.

Some Western media analysts stated the Taliban on Monday were also sending “a clear message” to the Afghan people that their government can’t protect them, since it can’t even protect itself from attack.

However, what concerned Kabul’s inhabitants after the Taliban assault, according to a New York Times story yesterday, was not their future security but rather the fact that bribery may have allowed the terrorists to bypass all the security checkpoints leading to their city. Corruption, they believed, is the only explanation for how the terrorists were able to enter the city with all their military equipment. “The government has police, intelligence guards and army soldiers in all the crossroads, so how can these people get in?,” wondered one Kabul resident, quoted in the Times story.

A report released on Tuesday by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), confirms that corruption is not only the main concern among Kabul’s inhabitants, but of all Afghans countrywide. More than security or unemployment, a UNODC survey showed the bribes ordinary Afghans are forced to pay government officials, teachers, doctors and judges are their chief complaint.

The average bribe, according to the report, is about $160; and Afghans on average paid a bribe two out of every five times they dealt with a government employee. In all, Afghans pay an astounding $25 billion annually in bribes, a quarter of their country’s economic output. “Bribery is a crippling tax on people who are already among the poorest the world’s poorest,” said the UNODC’s executive director.

It is here, in the area of corruption, that an analyst for the military news publication Strategy Page says the “real battle” in Afghanistan is being fought. The daily struggle against “poverty, illiteracy, ignorance and corruption” is the “real war.” But this all-important side of the conflict is not being covered by a foreign media distracted by the noise of battle.

It is this aspect of the war, however, that will probably decide the fate of Afghanistan. Such corruption left unchecked will cause Afghans to lose all confidence in their institutions to the point where the United Nations has warned it could topple the government. It is also this corruption and grinding poverty that supplies the Taliban and drug gangs with “a steady stream” of gunmen.

The Obama administration should be put almost unbearable pressure on President Karzai at the upcoming Afghanistan security conference in London next week to tackle the corruption morass. An honest, efficient government is the most important factor in Afghanistan moving forward, both militarily and economically, as well as a guarantee Afghanistan will not return to the terrorist state it once was.

On January 9, Hugo Chavez announced that two Venezuelan F-16s had been dispatched to intercept a U.S. P3 maritime patrol aircraft in his country’s airspace, presenting it as another example of American aggression. In reality, Chavez is trying to push back against U.S. anti-narcotics efforts because he knows that it will expose him as a drug king pin whose business is helping terrorists and poisoning Western societies.

As widely reported, Venezuela supports the Marxist narco-terrorist group called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, commonly referred to as FARC. This group has been found to be working with Al-Qaeda drug traffickers in West Africa, three of which were extradited to the U.S. in December. Faced with increased interceptions of cocaine from Latin America directly to the U.S., the Venezuelans and their Colombian allies are instead transiting via West Africa.

“All of the aircraft seizures that have been made in West Africa, and we’ve made about a half a dozen of them, had departed from Venezuela. If you look at the range and refueling requirements, that’s the place you have to fly from,” Jay Bergman, the Drug Enforcement Agency’s director for South America’s Andean region told MSNBC.com.

Venezuela has become the number one supplier of cocaine to the U.S., Spain, and Colombia, with the amount increasing by four times between 2004 and 2007. Over half of the cocaine in the United Kingdom, and possibly as high as two-thirds, arrives via Venezuela. Since Chavez has come to power, the number of drug-related arrests in Venezuela has fallen dramatically, at one point to less than one-tenth of the number before he came to power.

The Venezuelan also uses FARC and its drug networks to support other forces friendly to their anti-American cause. As Iran and Chavez have gotten closer, so has Hezbollah with the FARC and Venezuelan officials. After Jose Manuel Zelaya was ousted from power in Honduras, it was claimed by the Honduran Foreign Minister that Zelaya and Chavez had been collaborating in sending cocaine to the U.S.

“Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds…and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking…We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it,” he said.

This cannot be attributed to widespread corruption in Latin America. This is a calculated effort on the part of Chavez’s government. In September 2008, the Treasury Department blacklisted three senior Venezuelan officials for their involvement in supporting FARC and their drug activity. This included the head of Venezuela’s military intelligence, the head of their overall intelligence community, and a former interior and justice minister.

On January 21, 2008, the White House’s drug czar dismissed the notion that the drug trafficking in Venezuela was not necessarily a government enterprise.

“Where are the big seizures, where are the big arrests of individuals who are at least logistical coordinators? When it’s being launched from controlled airports and seaports, where are the arrests of corrupt officials? At some point here, this is tantamount to collusion,” he said.

Chavez is doing this because it works. It is a good intelligence tool, as it allows for the penetration of enemy institutions, and is a great fundraiser for covert activities and terrorists. Venezuela and their allies are able to profit off of the self-induced damage of Western drug addicts, and can use drug trafficking to support forces that wreak havoc upon their enemies.

Although no direct evidence of Venezuelan government support for Mexican drug gangs is available, their overall support for narcotics trafficking to the U.S. undoubtedly helps them wage war. In 2005, Mexico and Venezuela severed ties and recalled their ambassadors after Chavez accused President Vicente Fox of being a “puppy” of the U.S. and threatened him, saying “Don’t mess with me, sir, because you’ll get stung.” Although ties were restored in 2007, Mexico is still governed by the same political party as Fox under President Felipe Calderon, an opponent of Chavez.

Chavez has reacted to U.S. concern over this activity with dismissal. In 2005, he ended all cooperation with the Drug Enforcement Agency. He has actually accused the DEA of being the ones behind the drug trafficking in his country, and has minimized their presence to only two agents by not renewing their work visas. Chavez has publicly opposed the War on Drugs, describing it in 2006 as “an excuse that imperialists have used for several years to penetrate our country, trample our people and justify a military presence in Latin America.”

Venezuela is not merely supporting drug trafficking due to corruption, make money, and support its FARC ally, but as an instrument of policy. And there should be a price to pay for that policy.

An excerpt from that article in Columbia demonstrates that the man who has been put in charge of protecting Americans against Muslim terrorism - because he went to Columbia and graduated magna cum laude, and went then to Harvard Law School, and clerked for Stephen Breyer, and because he then decided, so the story goes, impelled by a rush of patriotic fervor after the 9/11/2001 attacks, to go to work for the government - is frighteningly ill-prepared for his task. If we are to take his words seriously, he knows nothing about the ideology of Islam, and is perfectly content to parrot the apologetic nonsense that once might have been dismissed as silly, then as it continued became infuriating, and now, when it is spouted by those who are supposed to be capable of protecting us, is terrifying.

Leiter is merely the Democratic equivalent, in his mental makeup and banality, to the Republican-voting Forty Under Forty honored by some local Chamber-of-Commerce, photographed along with other awardees as they proudly accept their plaques. Listen, then, to Michael Leiter, aged 40, well-degreed but essentially uneducated, in charge of protecting us when we get on a plane, as he who has taken "a leadership role" in the "war against terrorism" or against "violent extremists" or "isolated violent extremists" shows he knows nothing about the ideology of Islam, nothing about the duty and aim of Jihad (the struggle to remove all obstacles to the spread and then the dominance of Islam), nothing about the varied instruments of Jihad (a word he does not use, and which for him in any case would mean only the "terrorism" of those "violent extremists"), nothing, really nothing at all. Well done, Columbia and Harvard Law School. I wonder what the educational equivalent of "an empty suit" would be; possibly Jacques Barzun, former Professor and Provost at Columbia, could even now suggest a word.

Here's Michael Leiter:

More than 50 percent of terrorism victims in 2008 were Muslim, which is a very powerful reminder that this is not about the West being at war with Islam. This is Al-Qaeda completely perverting a wonderful, peaceful religion, leading to death and suffering for Muslims in many parts of the world. . . Al Qaeda's ultimate goal is to establish a caliphate across the Middle East into North Africa, and into parts of Asia, and expel the U.S. and Westerners and Israel from that caliphate. This is still at the core of their mission; they believe this, and they believe it very strongly. ... There are a wide variety of drivers (political corruption, lack of a political voice and a lack of economic opportunity) behind why a 19 year old in Yemen or Somalia or Islamabad or Morocco would identify with Al Qaeda.

The U.S. is not at war with Islam. Al Qaeda is at war with Islam. The U.S. and Muslim -majority countries throughout the world are actually a partnership, and that partnership involves combating Al-Qaeda, but also building hope inside those countries.

Where should we start? "Building hope" inside Muslim countries? Oh, we know what that means. That means we Infidels, and especially we Americans, hoping to ignore for as long as we can the facts about what Islam inculcates, and determined not to grasp the fact that the economic backwardness and political despotism of Muslim states, indeed their social, intellectual, and moral failures, too, can be attribured to Islam, are going to keep transferring huge sums that we need so desperately into Muslim lands. Why, the news is that Yemen is now to be the latest recipient of American largesse. That largesse, of course, always provides a new source of money for the corrupt regime in power - and all Muslim states in question have corrupt regimes in power. And the more the local Muslim rulers have, thanks to American and other aid, from which to help themselves, the more outraged the populace becomes, and the more that populace turns to the only solution that can possibly make sense to a deeply Muslim population - which is to regard the corrupt rulers as "Infidels" and to demand, as a "solution" to their corruption, more, and truer, Islam.

The Michael Leiters (Columbia '91, Harvard Law '94, clerked for Mr. Justice Breyer) will not take the time - they have lost the habit of real study and thought, if they ever had it - to sit down and study the texts, and grasp, really grasp, those texts, and the tenets derived from them, and how they are reinforced in the minds of Muslims, and how Islam, as a collectivist faith, a Total Belief-System, is not the same as any other "religion" (as smiling George Bush appeared to think, and "religion" had saved him). It is completely different in its view of the insignificance of the individual, who is merely a "slave of Allah," brought up in the habit of mental submission and obedience to Authority, textual and political. Leiter does not grasp the nature of Muslim apologetics, of Taqiyya and Tu Quoque, and does not ask himself what the goals of Jihad are, or why that matters. He is narrowly interested, it seems, only in that group we call Al Qaeda, when there are hundreds of Muslim groups that employ terrorism as their chosen instrument of Jihad, with many sub-groups, groupuscules, and lone individuals also capable of employing terrorism as their instrument of Jihad. He perhaps has never read the Qur'an, with a guide (so much of it is "incondite" as Carlyle said, so much is confused, so much of it requires a Guide To Understanding). I hesitate to ask if he understands what the significance of the Hadith and Sira are, or if he can list ten of the most important episodes in Muhammad's life, or why that matters so much.

He is, in short, one more of those Victims, who thinks himself a Victor, of the dismal American educational system, that requires so little, and where one simply jumps from prestigious rock to rock, like a trained mountain goat - first from Columbia, in his case, and then to Harvard Law, until you manage to reach the summit, where there are other mountain goats, who have made the same leaps in the same rock-to-rock fashion, and now they are lazily grazing. No one wants to admit he hasn't really been educated, and still worse, has never acquired the habit of thought and study that matters of supreme importance require. Instead, he relies on "experts." But who are the "experts"? And what does it tell us when we rely on "terrorism experts" who dine out, for example, on having interviewed Bin Laden in a cave ten years ago, and who, in the past ten years, have given no sign of studying Islam, or grasping, for example, how trivial is Al Qaeda to the Western world compared to what is now happening in Western Europe? There the Jihad is advancing with the deployment of the Money Weapon (mainly by the sinister Saudis, with their tribal dances, all daggers and dishdashas, and their sneers of cold command), well-financed and carefully-targeted campaigns of Da'wa, and - most important - demographic conquest.

Oh, you will say. That's not part of his, Michael Leiter's, portfolio. He's supposed to concentrate on the terrorist threat. He's supposed to concentrate on Al Qaeda. He's supposed to concentrate on the terrorist threat from a handful of "violent extremists" who are in Al Qaeda and whom we have been tracking, and will continue to track, until we get our man or men. And then we can all breath a great sigh of relief, and it will all be practically over, just as long as we keep young Muslims well supplied with money (the Muslim oil states have received more than twelve trillion dollars since 1973 alone, but it would be insulting to ask them to share in the effort - they've done quite enough for us, as our "staunch allies," already). They need that money so that they won't feel that sense of hopelessness that, of course, might lead them to become "violent extremists," which is something Muslims who are feeling bad tend, it seems, to do.

Never mind that the deaths of Al-Zawahiri and of Bin Laden would mean little, that the running around after them is a misplaced effort, that the real theatre of the worldwide war of self-defense against Jihad is in Western Europe, and the weapons of Jihad that have proven most effective are not terrorism but--let it be repeated again and again - deployment of the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest. This is all beyond the Michael-Leiters of this world, on the slopes or off.

But it is not beyond everyone. A great many people in this country have not been ignoring what each day throws up, around the world, in news of Muslim attacks on all sorts of non-Muslims, physically in Muslim lands, and attacks in other ways, attacks on the legal and political institutions, the laws and customs and social understandings and arrangements, in lands where Muslims have been allowed to settle but that are still dominated by non-Muslims. All these attacks are part of the same goal, which is to ensure that all obstacles to Islam are removed, and that everywhere Islam clearly dominates, and Muslims clearly rule.

Alumni magazines, after all, are in the business of publishing puff-pieces about alumni, to make other alumni feel good and send money now, or contact the ever-helpful Development Office which will help you have income for life now, and a great tax benefit, or possibly smilingly help walk you through the estate-tax details of being able to "remember Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Princeton (your university's name here) in your will." So it was no surprise - it was probably a Command Performance - for "Columbia" to publish a piece on Michael Leiter that did not take issue with his nonsense. But among the infuriated alumni who did read what Leiter had to say, was Dr. Harold Reisman, of Carlsbad, California, who was prompted to write a letter taking issue. Here's an excerpt:

Mr. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, was interviewed (Summer, 2009). He must have read the Qur'an, Hadith and Sira and knows that vast tracts of the foundational religious texts of Islam concern the dar al-harb, attacks on kafirs, the need for war, rules of war, methods of warfare, dealing with male and female captives, slavery, treatment of subjugated peoples and division of the spoils. Words and aggressive acts of Mohammed account for over 80 percent of the doctrine of Islam. Just how did Islam expand so far and so fast within two centuries of its founding? Yet Mr. Leiter states that Al-Qaeda is ". . . completely perverting a wonderful, peaceful religion..." I suppose it is de rigueur for current government officials to consider Islam a religion of peace. But why, I wonder, do we have to be repeatedly reminded of this counterfactual belief over and over again?

Now who would you rather have in charge - not merely "taking a leadership role" - of the security of our transportation system? Would you choose Michael Leiter, Columbia '91 and Harvard Law '95, his background concolorous with that of so many of the Bright Young Things in the Obama Administration who have Gone To Washington to Help Their Country, and who still think about Islam, apparently, what one another thinks? Or would you agree with me, and would you feel a lot safer if someone else were chosen to replace Leiter, someone who grasped the nature of Islam without which no effective measures against Muslim terrorism, or other forms of Jihad, can be taken -- someone say, such as Dr. Harold Reisman, of Carlsbad, California?

When Fidel Castro’s brother Raul assumed the reigns of power from Cuba’s ailing dictator nearly two years ago, hopes ran high that the transition would usher in a new era of political reform inside the communist country. But recent reports suggest that so far from improving the lot of the Cuban people, Raul’s government has introduced new forms of repression and corruption. As the new year begins, Cuba is facing its worst economic crisis in 20 years, even as political repression persists and the promised “structural” reforms have never materialized. For most Cubans, another difficult year looms.

Perhaps the best guide to understanding what has happened in Cuba since Raul’s takeover, and what lies ahead, comes from a November report from Human Rights Watch. Titled “New Castro, Same Cuba,” the 123-page report examines the conditions inside Cuba since Raúl Castro took power.

The report was difficult to produce. The Cuban regime, though it sat for years on the U.N.’s “Human Rights Commission,” prohibits any human rights agency, including HRW and even the International Red Cross, from visiting any of Cuba’s 200 plus prisons (under the Batista government deposed by Fidel Castro, Cuba had 12 prisons). So the HRW’s Nik Steinberg visited Cuba and conducted his study secretly, interviewing Cubans in 7 of the island’s 14 provinces. “We wanted to put on the table where Cuba stands on human rights,” he said in a recent interview with the Miami Herald.

“In July 2006, Fidel Castro handed control of the Cuban government over to his brother Raúl Castro” summarizes the HRW report:

“As the new head of state, Raúl Castro inherited a system of abusive laws and institutions, as well as responsibility for hundreds of political prisoners arrested during his brother’s rule. Raúl Castro’s government has used draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who have dared to exercise their fundamental freedoms. Scores of political prisoners arrested under Fidel Castro continue to languish in Cuba’s prisons. Rather than dismantle this repressive machinery, Raúl Castro has kept it firmly in place and fully active. ”

Particularly alarming to Human Rights Watch is the “judicial process” employed by Raul’s regime for the continued repression. HRW reports:

“Raúl Castro’s government has relied in particular on a provision of the Cuban Criminal Code that allows the state to imprison individuals before they have committed a crime. This ‘dangerousness’ provision is overtly political, defining as “dangerous” any behavior that contradicts socialist norms.”

Cuban dissidents have corroborated accounts of this new repression. “The wave of repression we witnessed on Dec. 10th is the worst we’ve seen in this country in decades.” reported Elizardo Sanchez, President of the (dissident) Cuban Commission on Human Rights, this December. In a smuggled report, Cuban dissident González Leiva adds that during an attempted march commemorating “Universal Human Rights Day,” on December 19, hundreds of Cubans were arrested and beaten by regime goons.

The HRW report fully backs the findings of two polls conducted secretly in Cuba recently by dissident groups. One poll was by El Centro de Información sobre Democracia and the other by Alianza Nueva Nación. The groups interviewed 1000 Cubans in 9 of the nation’s 14 provinces and found that 70 percent not only report that their (precious few) freedoms have diminished under Raul, but that life in general has become harsher: there is less food available; more regime corruption; and more economic hardships in general.

It’s not just political freedom that has worsened under Raul rule. The economy has also suffered. In 2009′s Index of Economic Freedom, the Heritage Foundation had already found Cuba as more economically repressive under Raul than under Fidel. Under Raul’s rule, Cuba slipped down 1.1 notches to number 155, where it runs almost neck-and-neck with North Korea. For many Cuba watchers, the HRW report and the dissident appeals are no surprise.

If the HRW report has a weakness, it is that it fails to recognize that many of the repressive features now seen under Raul have existed in some form since it fell under communist control For instance, the Stalinist detention provision HRW sees employed in today’s Cuba in fact dates back almost half a century to Che Guevara‘s stint as the “brains of the Cuban Revolution” (as Time magazine crowned him in a 1960 cover story). As Cuba’s chief prosecutor and executioner, Guevara had instructed his judicial subalterns that “judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. We execute from revolutionary conviction.” And indeed they did. “We send to Guanahacabibes people who have committed crimes against revolutionary norms,” explained Guevara. Guanahacabibes was a forced-labor camp in extreme western Cuba. “It is hard labor” said Guevara, “the working conditions are harsh.”

Likewise, the HRW report notes that “fear is a central part of the Cuban government’s strategy.” True enough, but again, this dates back not just to recent pre-Raul rule, but to the initial days of Castroism, half a century ago. “Terror is an essential political instrument,” instructed Che Guevara to his “revolutionary tribunals.” “Only hypocrites refuse to acknowledge this. We must establish the pedagogy of the paredon (firing squad)” Televised firing-squad executions were one element of this “pedagogy.” Even earlier, during the guerrilla skirmishing in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra, Che had written in his diaries, “Now comes a period when terror will be exercised against the peasants.”

A more serious error in the HRW report is its condemnation of the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. This embargo has long been a talking point of the regime, distracting attention from its role in brutalizing the Cuban people and destroying the country’s economy. But when it comes to the “U.S. bloqueo,” the vast majority of Cubans part ways with Human Rights Watch. They know full well who runs Cuba, and how, and that that is the real reason for their persistent penury.

Cuba is a military dictatorship in the most genuine sense of the term. Raul Castro and his military cronies have been running Cuba for over a decade and doing quite well in the process. Of the nineteen members of Cuba’s politburo, nine are military men. This is more than the typical Soviet-bloc state had, or the Soviet Union itself. One Raul Castro crony, General Julio Casas Regueiro, does much of this running, controlling 300 different “companies” (state agencies often in partnership with foreign investors) in Cuba under a holding company named GAESA.

Another typical company is the Corporacion Gaviota, headed by Raul Military crony General Luis Perez Rospide. Gaviota started operating in 1990. The Cuban military’s Gaviota tourism group, is a corporate umbrella encompassing, Aerogaviota SA, (airlines) Almest SA Hoteles Gaviota,(hotels) Gaviota Tour, (bus touring company), Marinas Gaviota, (marinas), Tiendas Gaviota, (tourist souvenir stores, restaurants) Parques Naturales Gaviota, (national parks, museums). Thanks to this monopoly, the government and its allies prosper, while the Cuban people are no better off.

In a presentation on November 18 at a hearing by the House Foreign Affairs Committee debating travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Simmons, a recently retired Defense Intelligence Agency Cuba specialist, explained the issue in detail. He showed how Raul Castro’s military owns virtually every corporation involved in Cuba’s tourism industry, the regime’s top money-maker.

The presentation also revealed something that goes a long way towards explaining the Raul Castro regime’s confident entrenchment. Last year Cuba enjoyed record tourism revenues: 2.35 million tourists leaving $2.7 billion in military-regime coffers, and precious little else due to the regime’s tourist apartheid, where Cubans (especially darker-skinned ones) are strictly segregated at billy-club and gun-point from tourist areas, except as waiters, maids, bellhops, shoe-shine boys, foot masseuses, etc.

With this tourist revenue windfall, ongoing for over a decade, Cuba’s ruling military robber barons are making a killing. Why would they voluntarily upset their own apple carts by democratizing the system and opening it to competitors? Given that they’re the only ones in Cuba with guns, who’s going to challenge them? On this question, neither the HRW, which misguidedly recommends an end to the U.S. travel ban, nor the legion of foreign experts on Cuba, can provide a clue. The more things change in Raul Castro’s Cuba, the more they remain the same.

[...] Following long-standing Shiite attitudes toward non-Muslims, Iran's revolutionary leader Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini once declared that "the following eleven are unclean: first urine, second feces, third semen, fourth corpses, fifth blood, sixth dogs, seventh pigs, eighth non-Muslims, ninth wine, tenth beer, and eleventh the sweat of a camel which has consumed impure food." Khomeini had gone on to add, "every aspect of a non-Muslim is unclean."

Yes Montazeri, once cast aside by the revolutionary elites, did become a fierce critic of the theocratic regime. As the years went by, he also was more open to extending additional rights beyond those of medieval-like dhimmi or protected status to non-Muslims in Iran. However, he did not sway from the orthodox Shiite perception that non-Muslims are impure. He merely suggested that any non-Muslim could make himself or herself "pure through chaste, Muslim-like, behavior."

Montazeri's comments on members of other faiths may seem more tolerant than ones by Khomeini or other ayatollahs like Ahmad Jannati who compared non-Muslims to "animals roaming the Earth and engaging in corruption." Yet the religious minorities in Iran see little theological difference and only a marginal pragmatism among the various Shiite views. Montazeri's opinion was characterized by one Iranian Christian clergyman as "rubbing salt into our wounds."...

Islamist elements in Pakistan’s military unhappy with President Asif Zardari are reported to be plotting to remove their country’s civilian government and replace it with a military dictatorship.

Two days after General David Petraeus, chief of US Central Command, dismissed fears of an imminent military coup, Pakistan’s defense minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, was prevented Thursday evening by border officials from leaving the country to visit China. According to one report, there are 248 such names on the border authorities’ list, including other high-ranking government members, of Pakistanis now denied exit rights.

The ostensible reason for Mukhtar’s detainment was that he, and other ministers of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), is facing corruption charges and a possible jail term. Last Wednesday, Pakistan’s Supreme Court struck down the amnesty, called the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), which protected them and 8,000 other bureaucrats from prosecution, reviving old charges. The Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the 2007 NRO amnesty that paved the way for Zardari’s murdered wife and then PPP leader, Benazir Bhutto, to return to Pakistan.

With the Supreme Court’s ruling, several ministers are now expected to resign, endangering the survival of the Zardari civilian government. Opposition parties are also calling for Zardari himself to step down, but he has presidential immunity from prosecution. The Supreme Court’s NRO ruling, though, is expected to leave Pakistan’s president open to legal proceedings regarding his eligibility as a candidate in last year’s election.

Columnist and former Pakistani activist Tarek Fatah writes that “religious right–wing backers of the Taliban and al Qaeda” in Pakistan’s military-industrial complex are behind this destruction of the Zardari government by legal means.

“Working from within the government, military intelligence was able to coax a junior minister to release a list of supposedly corrupt politicians and public officials in the country,” wrote Fatah. “Leading them was Mr. Zardari himself – notwithstanding the fact that before he was elected president, he had been imprisoned for more than a decade by the military without a single conviction.”

Zardari came to office a year ago last August, taking over from disgraced military ruler Pervez Musharraf who resigned under threat of impeachment. Musharraf had come to power after staging the last military coup against a civilian president in 1999. Pakistan has been ruled by military leaders for about half of its 62 year history, so military takeovers are almost a part of the political fabric.

Army rule usually lasts about a decade before a civilian government is re-established which lasts an almost equal length of time. The current military threat to civilian rule is somewhat unusual, as Zardari has been in office only a year and four months.

A main reason for the military coups, though, is that the civilian politicians’ corruption and incompetence eventually become too ruinous for the country.

What is also unusual is the military’s current method for re-establishing itself in power. In the past, tanks would simply roll up to the president’s residence and eject him from office by force. The military’s strategy this time, it appears, is to let the courts take down the government, which gives the destruction of civilian rule a semblance of legality that would evoke less criticism from the western democracies. In the resulting political turmoil, the army could then seize power, appearing as a force of stability and law and order.

One reason for the military’s dissatisfaction with the Zardari government is that the war against Islamic extremists in Pakistan is not popular in some sections of the army, bureaucracy and Pakistan’s powerful intelligence service, the ISI. According to a story in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, Islamic radicals “have permeated the state apparatus and society to such an extent that they are now an integral part of them.” This made Zardari’s going to war against the Taliban a risky venture, since a backlash that could paralyse the government could ensue. The ISI is also unhappy that Zardari has been trying to root out the Islamist elements in its midst.

Some military people also regard the Taliban as a strategic asset to be used in any future war with India and as well as for giving Pakistan strategic depth in Afghanistan. The Taliban are regarded as excellent irregular fighters. The army already used them in the 1947 war against India when, under the leadership of Pakistani officers, they almost conquered Kashmir.

Zardari’s desire to make peace with India has also made him enemies in the military. Since independence in 1947, Pakistan has fought three major wars with India. Some in the military regard this showdown as the reason for the army’s existence and do not want it to end. To his credit, one observer states Zardari wants peaceful relations with all neighboring countries, since he knows economic growth in Pakistan is not possible without “peaceful borders.”

Fatah writes that the last straw for the military in its decision to go after the Zardari government was when the US Congress passed the Kerry-Lugar bill last September that would see billions of dollars in aid flow to Pakistan. The problem was the generals would not be able to get their hands on it, like it did in the past under Musharraf, as the money is to go through civilian channels. Fatah describes what was at stake for the generals if they let the US Congress’s decision to bypass them go unchallenged: “If they do nothing, they lose their veto power over government policymaking, domestic as well as foreign.”

What the generals did do, according to Fatah, was to get the pro-Taliban media to launch a frenzied campaign, “claiming that Mr. Zardari had sold out to the Americans and the Indians.” And probably not coincidentally, American diplomats are now experiencing official harassment.

The fall of President Zardari would pose a very serious problem for American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Zardari recognised the danger the Islamic radicals pose and has vigorously pursued their destruction in Pakistan’s tribal areas. A change in the Pakistani government may very well see a change in that policy, which would constitute not only a serious setback but a defeat in the war against militant Islam.

An eagerly anticipated ACORN report that whitewashes the group’s lawbreaking and corruption was unveiled yesterday. ACORN ordered the sham study as political cover in September after videos surfaced showing its employees abetting child prostitution.

I participated in listen-only mode in the teleconference call in which the allegedly independent “audit” was released. I regret it was difficult to make out what the players were saying. That’s because as the left ferociously circled the wagons, all the creaking wheel noises in the background drowned out much of what was said.

One the main points that ACORN ally/former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger (pictured above) and ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis were trying to make was that ACORN and ACORN Housing are separate entities.

Because ACORN Housing and ACORN are different organizations neither is responsible for the other, they argued. In other words, ACORN is not responsible for the ACORN Housing employees caught on video encouraging prostitution and tax fraud, and vice versa, they reasoned.

This is, of course, patent nonsense and rhetorical misdirection. So said Elizabeth Kingsley, ACORN’s lawyer, in an internal legal memo last year.

Kingsley faulted ACORN for “thinking of all these different corporations as part of the family.” ACORN affiliates “have wanted to maintain that they are not ‘affiliated,’ ‘related,’ or ‘controlled’ by or with each other, for various legal purposes, while allowing actual control to be exercised in a highly coordinated manner.” She criticized ACORN for “trying to pretend that these groups are not connected to one another.”

So much for the notion that ACORN’s affiliates, including ACORN Housing, are free of interference from above.

Tax liens pending against ACORN Housing provide more proof that it is run by ACORN headquarters. Currently, 25 tax liens pending against ACORN Housing list the organization’s address as 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana, the former funeral home that until recently served as ACORN headquarters. Those 25 tax liens were issued by California, Indiana, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania,  and Texas.

Yet ACORN Housing says its home address is 209 West Jackson Boulevard in Chicago, Illinois.

ACORN Housing (AHC) has also been in trouble in the past for using government money for partisan activities.

“AmeriCorps members of AHC raised funds for ACORN, performed voter registration activities, and gave partisan speeches. In one instance, an AmeriCorps member was directed by ACORN staff to assist the [Clinton] White House in preparing a press conference in support of legislation.” (”Report on the Activities of the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities During the 104th Congress,”  Report 104-875, January 2, 1997)

And while ACORN Housing may have helped some poor people obtain mortgages they otherwise wouldn’t have qualified, that help came at an enormous social cost.

That’s because it helped to convince banks to loosen underwriting standards for mortgages. ACORN Housing even bragged about strongarming banks into accepting food stamps as income on loan applications.

Financial tomfoolery like including food stamps on loan applications was encouraged by the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which opened banking to ACORN-style agitation that over time weakened underwriting criteria and helped to alter the culture of financial institutions in the U.S. This 1977 law, whose enactment ACORN lobbied for, punishes lenders for limiting loans to wealthier, more creditworthy markets, a practice called “redlining.” It gives banking regulators discretionary authority to make trouble for banks that fail to lend enough money to “underserved” minority communities.

After the CRA went into effect, Saul Alinsky-inspired groups such as ACORN used the law to get into the shakedown business. Rev. Jesse Jackson egged them on at an ACORN “banking summit” in 1992, asking rhetorically, “Why did Jesse James rob banks? Because that’s where the money was.”

The shaking down of lenders intensified when then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin presided over the Clinton administration’s effort to put the CRA on steroids. Banks began to make risky subprime loans and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aggregated them for sale in the secondary market as mortgage-backed securities. These practices made it easier for banks to give in to ACORN’s demands to originate more and more doomed mortgages because they knew they could offload their high-risk debt on quasi-governmental suckers Fannie and Freddie, which were under intense political pressure to service the subprime market.

In other words, ACORN Housing, which ACORN supporters now defend as a well-intentioned branch of the ACORN empire, bears partial responsibility for the subprime mortgage meltdown.

Don’t expect ACORN or Congress to actually investigate the activities shown in the undercover videos or the group’s culpability in the nation’s economic woes anytime soon.

Related posts:

1. ACORN's Foreclosure Fraud
2. ACORN's Blackmailing of Banks
3. Strongarming the Banks

For the entire Jesse Jackson profile, click here.

Some noteworthy facts about Jesse Jackson:

In September the legendary activist Jesse Jackson criticized Congress for de-funding the notoriously corrupt ACORN, in the wake of revelations about that organization’s involvement in corruption of the highest magnitude. More recently he said,“You can’t vote against [government-run] healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

Jackson has long been in the vanguard of political and social activism in the United States.  Over the years, he has repeatedly threatened businesses and corporations with boycotts, racially biased criticism, and (implicitly) outright violence, if they refused to yield to his demands (for “racial justice”) and to enrich him or his organizations.

Professing to detect racism in virtually every sector of American society, Jackson has lamented “the corporate lockout” which he says has kept blacks “out” of so many professions and industries. He has likened the former apartheid regime of South Africa to the allegedly intractable discrimination that persists against blacks in “South Carolina.”

When California voters passed Proposition 209, which eliminated racial preferences from the admissions policies of the state’s university system, Jackson charged that California schools were “cleansing” themselves of black students.

Similarly, when the Supreme Court ruled that gerrymandered voting districts (which were drawn on racial rather than geographic lines so as to virtually guarantee the electoral victories of minority candidates therein) were unconstitutional, Jackson predicted that the Court’s decision (which mandated the redrawing of the districts on geographic lines) would cause “a kind of ethnic cleansing” in Congress.

Jackson had trumpeted this same theme as a guest speaker at Louis Farrakhan‘s Million Man March in Washington, DC.  “Now we have the burden of two Americas: one-half slave and one-half free,” he said. Explaining that blacks were “yearning to breathe free,” he exhorted those in attendance to break out of their “shackles” because no one would “free” them voluntarily. “Slave masters never retire,” he said. “Oppressors never retire.”

A longtime admirer of former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Jackson once said: ”Viva Fidel! Viva Che [Guevara]! Castro is the most honest and courageous politician I’ve ever met.”

For the entire Jesse Jackson profile, click here.

Since taking office last January, President Obama has been able to blame the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan on the last administration, insulating himself from criticism. No longer. After his speech to Army cadets at the West Point academy on Tuesday night, Afghanistan is now clearly Obama’s war.

On balance, as said ably by Jacob Laksin, the President’s speech hit the right notes. He has taken a firm stand against the anti-war Democratic establishment and has repudiated the most defeatist branches of America’s left-wing.  This represents a clear break from the President’s past positions, and he should be praised for taking this difficult but necessary step, which leans against not only the prevailing wishes of his own party, but of the war-weary American electorate at large. Bravo, Mr. President.

Obama himself is clearly aware of the enormity of the challenge that he has now made his own. His address was well written, but the President’s normally outstanding oratorical skills were AWOL during the speech, which was delivered capably, but without the powerful charisma Obama is rightly known for. In short, he said all the right things, but it was clear that his heart was not it in. After months of delay, when the Administration no doubt desperately sought other options, Obama has made the right decision, but with obvious reluctance.

Now that the decision has been made and a further 30,000 American troops committed to the battle, attention must be turned to Obama’s plan itself, which is not without problems. An issue of particular concern is the reliability of the central Afghan government in Kabul. Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, was recently returned to power after what can only be loosely termed an election. The vote has been widely derided by international observers as having been illegitimate, hobbled by credible allegations of substantial electoral fraud. Karzai’s fraudulent victory, combined with his reputation for corrupt, ineffectual leadership, has eroded the patience of his Western backers.

Obama addressed the failings of the Karzai government in his speech last night, giving public voice to America’s frustration. The President said that American funding would henceforth go directly to the ministers and provincial governors most capable of delivering tangible positive results. This was clearly a barely veiled warning to Karzai — shape up, or the funding stops. While it is true that the endemic corruption of the Afghan government is a major concern, anything America and its allies do that undermines Karzai’s authority is ultimately self-defeating.

For better or for worse, the ability of the Allies to withdraw from Afghanistan depends upon being able to standup the Afghan security forces. But in order for these forces to function as effective, professional combat troops rather than mere brigands, there must be a central authority capable of controlling them. The Anbar Awakening, where Iraqi tribal militias joined with American forces in defeating the Iraqi insurgency, has been cited as a model to follow in Afghanistan, but it must be recalled that despite obvious problems, Iraq has developed a functional central government that is now working to absorb the militias into the country’s broader military and political institutions.

Unless Afghanistan develops a similar unifying federal force, any provincial governor or tribal leader favored with Western dollars and weaponry, instead of being a stabilizing force, will become yet another faction in Afghanistan’s already dangerously disunited societal fabric. President Obama is right to call attention to Karzai’s lamentable record of fraud and corruption, but put bluntly, America is stuck with Karzai, and Obama must not cut off his own nose to spite Karzai’s face.

Also worrisome were the President’s remarks on funding the war. While he was right to say that an open-ended commitment to the war there was “not sustainable” and honestly warned that his proposals would cost the American taxpayer an additional $30-billion dollars a year, the stated desire to rein in costs while working to reduce America’s federal deficit rang somewhat hollow when spoken by the man overseeing unprecedented federal spending. If President Obama had said that America could not afford the $30-billion, that would have been shortsighted, but arguably true. In the case of this Administration, however, there is every reason to believe that every penny not spent on winning in Afghanistan would instead be wasted pursuing one of the left’s social engineering schemes, whether that be socialized medicine or a ruinous cap-and-trade climate change policy.

Some members of the President’s party have in recent weeks spoken publicly about introducing a war tax to fund the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, and continuing operations in Iraq. It is true that the massive debts being run up by Congress are alarming, but the prospect of introducing a new tax in the midst of an economic crisis, while still pursuing open-ended spending projects domestically, is absurd to the point of insanity. The President would have done American taxpayers a great service by using the West Point speech as an opportunity not just to wax philosophic about his desire to build America, but to explain exactly what steps he would take to keep America safe while balancing the books and returning the country to a sound fiscal footing. Recall that the extra $30-billion a year represents a mere 3% of the forecasted trillion-dollar deficit. Clearly, Afghanistan is not the primary threat to America’s economic wellbeing. Congress is.

President Obama has taken the first steps necessary to enable a victory in Afghanistan, despite significant political risk and no doubt ferocious resistance from his own party. He should be commended for his courage, but must also be reminded that the toughest choices are still ahead.

AG: ACORN Embezzlement Totaled $5M, Not $1M

An internal review by ACORN’s board of directors found that $5 million was embezzled from the community organization, far more than previously reported

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

BATON ROUGE, La. — An internal review by ACORN’s board of directors found that $5 million was embezzled from the community organization, far more than the previously reported amount of $1 million, according to documents released Monday.

The new amount was reported in a subpoena from the investigation by Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported. It is unclear if the money was taken from state, federal or private funds, according to the subpoena.

ACORN Chief Executive Officer Bertha Lewis said the new embezzlement allegation is “completely false.” She said she would comment further after she and ACORN attorneys have a chance to review the subpoena, which was released Monday.

Caldwell issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to ACORN International then-President Wade Rathke and his brother, Dale Rathke, who kept the group’s books. Those subpoenas targeted possible violations of state employee tax law, obstruction of justice and violations of the Employee Retirement Security Act.

The attorney general made inquiries in June into alleged embezzlement within ACORN that happened 10 years ago. The group last year dealt with an internal dispute and a lawsuit involving accusations that Dale Rathke made nearly $1 million in improper credit card charges in 1999 and 2000. Rathke’s brother and a donor repaid the money.

via AG: ACORN Embezzlement Totaled $5M, Not $1M – Political News – FOXNews.com .

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