Most of life isn't black and white, its grey. Thats especially true of history, politics and war.

The article below is a well crafted.

Its describes moral compromises made by some of our greatest presidents and challenges the hypocrisy of the liberal left.

all the best,



May 6, 2009
Sorry, History Is Just Not That Simple
By David Harsanyi

It's fun to be idealistic in a world of moral absolutes. I know because I'm a columnist. But when we start discussing history, things always seem to get complicated.

"The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart learned this recently when debating the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' president, Cliff May, about the harsh interrogation techniques administered during the George W. Bush administration.


When May asked Stewart whether he also considers Harry Truman to have been a war criminal for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the host answered yes. A few days later, however, Stewart apologized for his blasphemy, saying Truman's decision was, in fact, "complicated."

Things were indeed complicated. They are always complicated.

That's the point.

Please, don't get me wrong. For numerous reasons, I'm ecstatic that the United States triumphed over the forces of jackbootery during World War II. But staking moral claims on old wars is a bad idea for either side of this debate.

In fact, if Barack Obama believes, as he recently stated, that the nation "lost its moral bearings" under his predecessor, he will have a hard time defending any presidency.

After all, if waterboarding is a war crime, the dropping of an atomic bomb on a few hundred thousand innocent civilians surely deserves some serious consideration for rebuke. At the very least, it's a fair topic for discussion.

Just as surely, Franklin Roosevelt's presiding over the destruction of Dresden, which caused 30,000-40,000 civilians to be incinerated, is at least as terrible as long-term sleep deprivation.

If Bush deserves war crime status for holding terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay (which Obama has yet to close), then we safely can say that FDR merits more of a historical lashing for the forced internment of 100,000 Japanese-Americans to "war relocation camps."

If Bush is a war criminal for denying terror suspects habeas corpus, then what is one to make of Abraham Lincoln, who suspended habeas corpus for all American citizens during the Civil War? Or of President Woodrow Wilson, who backed the Espionage Act, which forbade Americans from using "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the government?

Because, if we buy the argument that the ends never justify the means, we can't give presidents passes. If you argue that times and morality have evolved, that situations have changed, or that some causes are greater than others, then you're offering up distinctions, and you should accept some, as well.

The need to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been debated for decades. When President Bill Clinton backed the NATO bombing of Serbia -- at least 500 civilians were killed by NATO, according to Human Rights Watch -- he claimed that the bombing was necessary to "deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians."

If that argument sounds familiar, it is because it is utilized all the time. Did the bombing of Serbia, Japan or Iraq save lives in the long run? Did the waterboarding of prisons save Americans from terror acts? I just wish a proponent would say, "We can't know for sure."

At this point, I can hear Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men" encapsulating the opinion of many: "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said 'thank you' and went on your way."

We shouldn't be on our way. In fact, history gives us a template to evaluate the complexities and morality of war.

And there are few absolutes.

Reach columnist David Harsanyi at dharsanyi@denverpost.com.

Property Rights are the cornerstone of capitalism and a cornerstone of democracy.

Property Rights protect the owners of property from confiscation of assets.
Without property rights there is no capitalism. People wouldn't invest for fear if they showed their wealth it would be taken by the politically powerful.

The Obama administration is doing this.

Protection of property rights is also a keystone of democracy. A robust private sector is necessary for democracy to work. If government controls everything there can be no personal liberty. People will fear to oppose governmental initiatives, as we see in Russia and China today.

So what has Obama done to undermine property rights?

We saw an early example of Obama's lack of respect for contracts and property rights when bonuses were paid to AIG employees. There were bonuses required by employment contracts. The government tried to get AIG to nullify the contracts and when told that was illegal, instituted a retroactive confiscatory 90% tax.

A second example of Obama's recent Tax initiative. Obama wants to stop U.S. citizens from banking in "tax havens", by forcing them to prove they are not doing anything illegal. If they do not, they are assumed to be doing something illegal and the full power of the law abuses them. This undercuts the principle of "innocent until proven guilty", the foundation of our legal system, another pillar of democracy.

A third recent example is the auto negotiations. Property rights are being violated here as well. By contract, owners, lenders, suppliers, employees etc of private firms all have "priorities" to claims on a firms assets if they go bankrupt. Bondholders are ahead of unions. But Obama is "stealing" money from the bondholders and giving it to his favored constituency, the auto unions.

Bondholder had $27 billion in claims and were offered 10% of the auto maker in compensation. The United Auto Workers, had $20 billion in claims and were offered $10 billion in cash and 40% of the auto maker. And remember the bondholders claims by law have priority. This is blatant theft.

Members of the Obama administration have also been accused of "strong arming" bondholders to protect their allies in the auto unions.

Of course the mainstream media, completely ignores missteps by the "chosen one". 

A senior researcher at the EPA [with a bachelors degree in physics from CalTech and a Ph.D in Economics from MIT with 38 years of experience in the EPA} tried to release a report saying the data being used for global warming studies was out of date.

World tempertures have now returned mid-20th century levels and may be dropping not rising.

The report was suppressed the by Obama administration for political reasons.

He went on to say, if there was global warming [which the scientific evidence currently disputes] the best way to combat it would not be regulation of carbon, but managing sea level rise or reducing solar radiation reaching the earth which would both be more cost-effective alternatives.

below find the link to the article and the article itself. [The article is by CBS News a "left wing" media outlet.]

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06/26/politics/p ...


June 26, 2009 11:09 PM
EPA May Have Suppressed Report Skeptical Of Global Warming
Font size Print Share 136 comments Posted by Declan McCullagh


The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."

The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be a independent review process inside a federal agency -- and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document.

Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, told CBSNews.com in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. "It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else," Carlin said. "That was obviously coming from higher levels."

E-mail messages released this week show that Carlin was ordered not to "have any direct communication" with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed that his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic.

"I was told for probably the first time in I don't know how many years exactly what I was to work on," said Carlin, a 38-year veteran of the EPA. "And it was not to work on climate change." One e-mail orders him to update a grants database instead.

For its part, the EPA sent CBSNews.com an e-mailed statement saying: "Claims that this individual’s opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This Administration and this EPA Administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making. These principles were reflected throughout the development of the proposed endangerment finding, a process in which a broad array of voices were heard and an inter-agency review was conducted."

Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT. His Web site lists papers about the environment and public policy dating back to 1964, spanning topics from pollution control to environmentally-responsible energy pricing.

After reviewing the scientific literature that the EPA is relying on, Carlin said, he concluded that it was at least three years out of date and did not reflect the latest research. "My personal view is that there is not currently any reason to regulate (carbon dioxide)," he said. "There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They're not going up, and if anything they're going down."

Carlin's report listed a number of recent developments he said the EPA did not consider, including that global temperatures have declined for 11 years; that new research predicts Atlantic hurricanes will be unaffected; that there's "little evidence" that Greenland is shedding ice at expected levels; and that solar radiation has the largest single effect on the earth's temperature.

If there is a need for the government to lower planetary temperatures, Carlin believes, other mechanisms would be cheaper and more effective than regulation of carbon dioxide. One paper he wrote says managing sea level rise or reducing solar radiation reaching the earth would be more cost-effective alternatives.

The EPA's possible suppression of Carlin's report, which lists the EPA's John Davidson as a co-author, could endanger any carbon dioxide regulations if they are eventually challenged in court.

"The big question is: there is this general rule that when an agency puts something out for public evidence and comment, it's supposed to have the evidence supporting it and the evidence the other way," said Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C. that has been skeptical of new laws or regulations relating to global warming.

Kazman's group obtained the documents -- both CEI and Carlin say he was not the source -- and released the e-mails on Tuesday and the report on Friday. As a result of the disclosure, CEI has asked the EPA to re-open the comment period on the greenhouse gas regulatory proceeding, which ended on Tuesday.

The EPA also said in its statement: "The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that document are included and addressed in the endangerment finding."

That appears to conflict with an e-mail from McGartland in March, who said to Carlin, the report's primary author: "I decided not to forward your comments... I can see only one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." He also wrote to Carlin: "Please do not have any direct communication with anyone outside of (our group) on endangerment. There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc."

One reason why the process might have been highly charged politically is the unusual speed of the regulatory process. Lisa Jackson, the new EPA administrator, had said that she wanted her agency to reach a decision about regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act by April 2 -- the second anniversary of a related U.S. Supreme Court decision.

"All this goes back to a decision at a higher level that this was very urgent to get out, if possible yesterday," Carlin said. "In the case of an ordinary regulation, these things normally take a year or two. In this case, it was a few weeks to get it out for public comment." (Carlin said that he and other EPA staff members asked to respond to a draft only had four and a half days to do so.)

In the last few days, Republicans have begun to raise questions about the report and e-mail messages, but it was insufficient to derail the so-called cap and trade bill from being approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rep. Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce committee, invoked Carlin's report in a floor speech during the debate on Friday. "The science is not there to back it up," Barton said. "An EPA report that has been suppressed... raises grave doubts about the endangerment finding. If you don't have an endangerment finding, you don't need this bill. We don't need this bill. And for some reason, the EPA saw fit not to include that in its decision." (The endangerment finding is the EPA's decision that carbon dioxide endangers the public health and welfare.)

"I'm sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the senior Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said in a statement. "But the EPA is supposed to reach its findings based on evidence, not on political goals. The repression of this important study casts doubts on EPA's finding, and frankly, on other analysis EPA has conducted on climate issues."

The revelations could prove embarrassing to Jackson, the EPA administrator, who said in January: "I will ensure EPA’s efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency." Similarly, Mr. Obama claimed that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over... To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life."

"All this talk from the president and (EPA administrator) Lisa Jackson about integrity, transparency, and increased EPA protection for whistleblowers -- you've got a bouquet of ironies here," said Kazman, the CEI attorney. 

Obama's economic policies are likely to fail. Unemployment will remain high. National deficits will bankrupt us without entitlement reform and a reduction in Obama's spending.

The first thing Obama did when he started his term of office was pass the economic stimulus package. A $787 billion waste of money.

It focused the stimulus on the wrong portions of the economy and pushed most of the spending into 2011 and beyond. The money is needed now in 2009 and 2010, but most of it is back loaded. [This was done to help Obama's reelection prospects in 2012, but has backfired.]

The second mistake was ignoring the "job creators". Small businesses produce over 70% of jobs in our economy. But Obama's stimulus didn't provide incentives for small businesses to create jobs.

In February of this year Obama said if the stimulus package was passes unemployment would peak at 8% in the downturn. In May it was already at 9.4% and rising. It will be in double digits by the fall and could be 11 or 12% by year end.

So why didn't Obama try to create incentives for small business to create jobs?

Obama promised to lower taxes on 95% of wage earners and increase them on the top 5%. But the top 5% includes the small business owners, those who create all those jobs. Not only has Obama not passed incentives for small business owners to create jobs, but he has promised to "increase" their taxes [by letting Bushes tax cuts on them lapse.]

Obama is also planning to increase the financial burden on small business through his environmental bill [increasing the cost of energy], his health plan [there will be new fees and mandates for small business to provide health care to employees] and other regulatory activities.

All of this ignores Obama's deficits. The deficit this year will be over $1.8 trillion. At no time in the next 8 years is Obama planning to get deficit spending below, Bushes highest level which was last year at $500 billion. Obama's average deficit for his two terms (if reelected), by his own accounting, is approximately $1 trillion per year. Bush's was approximately $300 billion. And Obama's numbers are optimistic. It will probably be much higher than $1 trillion per year average deficit.

But borrowing and spending so much the government drives up interest rates for all others including for the private sector. Small businesses the job creators are facing higher taxes, higher costs and higher interest rates. All of their financial incentives are to shrink not create jobs.

Your generation will be left with a much weaker economy, high deficits, a high jobless rate and the high taxes necessary to pay the deficits.

You have to get your generation "riled up" about the theft by my generation from yours. Thats what deficits are, intergenerational theft.

Young people like you must sound the alarm and stop Obama before he destroys our economy under his stewardship.

If you think I'm right, tell me. If you think I'm wrong tell me why?Obama's economic policies are likely to fail. Unemployment will remain high. National deficits will bankrupt us without entitlement reform and a reduction in Obama's spending.

The first thing Obama did when he started his term of office was pass the economic stimulus package. A $787 billion waste of money.

It focused the stimulus on the wrong portions of the economy and pushed most of the spending into 2011 and beyond. The money is needed now in 2009 and 2010, but most of it is back loaded. [This was done to help Obama's reelection prospects in 2012, but has backfired.]

The second mistake was ignoring the "job creators". Small businesses produce over 70% of jobs in our economy. But Obama's stimulus didn't provide incentives for small businesses to create jobs.

In February of this year Obama said if the stimulus package was passes unemployment would peak at 8% in the downturn. In May it was already at 9.4% and rising. It will be in double digits by the fall and could be 11 or 12% by year end.

So why didn't Obama try to create incentives for small business to create jobs?

Obama promised to lower taxes on 95% of wage earners and increase them on the top 5%. But the top 5% includes the small business owners, those who create all those jobs. Not only has Obama not passed incentives for small business owners to create jobs, but he has promised to "increase" their taxes [by letting Bushes tax cuts on them lapse.]

Obama is also planning to increase the financial burden on small business through his environmental bill [increasing the cost of energy], his health plan [there will be new fees and mandates for small business to provide health care to employees] and other regulatory activities.

All of this ignores Obama's deficits. The deficit this year will be over $1.8 trillion. At no time in the next 8 years is Obama planning to get deficit spending below, Bushes highest level which was last year at $500 billion. Obama's average deficit for his two terms (if reelected), by his own accounting, is approximately $1 trillion per year. Bush's was approximately $300 billion. And Obama's numbers are optimistic. It will probably be much higher than $1 trillion per year average deficit.

But borrowing and spending so much the government drives up interest rates for all others including for the private sector. Small businesses the job creators are facing higher taxes, higher costs and higher interest rates. All of their financial incentives are to shrink not create jobs.

Your generation will be left with a much weaker economy, high deficits, a high jobless rate and the high taxes necessary to pay the deficits.

You have to get your generation "riled up" about the theft by my generation from yours. Thats what deficits are, intergenerational theft.

Young people like you must sound the alarm and stop Obama before he destroys our economy under his stewardship.

If you think I'm right, tell me. If you think I'm wrong tell me why?

Our current policies on entitlements are unsustainable.

But Obama wants to attack every problem in American society except the one that will surely bankrupt us. [The data below is from Brookings, a Liberal think tank.]

Obama's spending and tax policies only worsen the situation.

This is an important article read it. Its your generation.

******************************************************


Future Prosperity Depends on 'New Contract' for Kids
By Mort Kondracke

President Barack Obama plans to tackle, one by one, the biggest problems threatening America's future prosperity, but he needs to fashion nothing less than "a new social contract between the generations."

That means, said Brookings Institution scholar Isabel Sawhill, gradually shifting the balance of federal spending from seniors to children to enable them to support both themselves and their elders in the future.


Investments in young people are necessary, she said, because, as a United Nations study found in 2007, American children rank 17th out of 21 major countries in material well-being, 21st in health, 12th in education and 18th in overall well-being.

The percentage of children who are overweight has risen from 6 percent to 18 percent in the past 30 years; reading levels of 17-year-olds are stagnant; a third of all kids fail to graduate from high school; and the proportion of children born outside marriage has tripled since 1970.

Sawhill is one of my favorite moderate-to- liberal budget experts and also co-director of Brookings' Center on Children and Families.

Besides social deficits, she said, youngsters face an enormous burden of paying the retirement costs of their elders.

If changes aren't made in current budget allocations, within 30 years just three entitlement programs primarily serving seniors - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - will rise from 8 percent of gross domestic product to 20 percent, eating up the entire federal budget.

To pay the cost, Sawhill said at a Brookings gathering last week, people in the lowest current tax bracket, who now pay 10 percent of their income, would have to pay 26 percent.

Those in the current 25 percent bracket would have to pay 66 percent, and those in the top bracket, currently paying 35 percent, would go to 92 percent.

It's a burden that is, as the saying goes, "unsustainable," but the longer an adjustment gets put off, the more difficult it will be to accomplish.

"The politics of this are terrible," she said, with AARP likely to oppose any shift in priorities, even though current retirees wouldn't be affected. Baby boomers would have to forgo some of the benefits promised them.

Last year, the Urban Institute and the New America Foundation estimated that the federal government spent 2.6 percent of gross national product on programs benefiting young people and 7.9 percent on the three big entitlement programs.

Sawhill used graphs in her presentation suggesting that, by 2042, the spending ratio for seniors over children will rise from 3-to-1 to 5-to-1.

Investing in children now - through health programs and early-childhood and other education programs - will make future adults more productive and enable the country to pay for retirement programs and the rest of its government services, she said.

And the burden needs to be lightened, she said, through reforms of Social Security, health care and the tax system.

The Obama administration plans to address all those issues one by one, yielding to Congressional leaders in rejecting the notion of a bipartisan commission to tackle all of them.

Sawhill recommended, for Social Security, a combination of raising the retirement age, encouraging people to work longer, means-testing benefits, mandating additional savings for retirement and raising the cap on payroll taxes.

She praised House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) for "courageously" proposing an early attack on entitlement reform, but noted that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) oppose it.

She generally supported the outlines of Obama health care reforms, including universal coverage, guaranteed access to insurance, subsidies to pay premiums based on income, efficiency and quality improvements and a revision of the provider payment system based on keeping people healthy rather than simply performing procedures.

Still, she said, to the extent that these measures can't pay for all the health care Americans want, the administration should consider a revenue source such as a value-added tax to make up the shortfall.

The administration is heavily relying on cost-cutting promises made by various elements of the health industry - insurance companies, doctors, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals - to save up to $2 trillion over the next decade.

But Sawhill said she thought the stakeholder's offer was merely "nice ... just a pledge," and said she was "skeptical that it was anything beyond politics."

"The likely scenario," she said, "is that we'll expand coverage but we won't contain costs." Her doubts are shared by Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who says he fears "we'll just cover more people and it will cost more. I pray I'm wrong."

The administration is not even considering some ideas proposed by Republicans to save money, such as giving health consumers an incentive to be cost-conscious, limiting awards in medical malpractice cases and means-testing Medicare.

Besides government policy, Sawhill said, there's a need for more responsible parenting in America to restore the "success sequence" whereby young people "graduate, work, marry and then have children."

"Right now," she said, "the sequence is all scrambled," and failure to adhere to it is "the new defining variable in American life."

Among persons who complete high school, work full time, wait until age 21 and marry before having children, only 2 percent are poor. Among those who fail to adhere to any of the norms, 76 percent are poor.

As she noted, all recent presidents have tried to promote family responsibility by using their "bully pulpit" and said Obama has been doing so, as well.

But the major item for government, she said, is to "gradually shift resources from older Americans to younger ones. It's not generational warfare. You're changing when in life you get the biggest benefits." It's a debate-reframing idea.