By Nicholas Stix
Originally published on April 24, 2000, in A Different Drummer.
Last month, it was Lady Hillary's Secret Service detail smacking around six journalists at New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade, and the mainstream news outlets killing the story. Yesterday, it was an INS SWAT team knocking journalists at Elian's uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez,' house to the ground, holding guns to their heads to keep them from doing their jobs, and ... mainstream news outlets again killing the story. Big Media told of the protesters getting maced and smacked around, because the protesters are the "bad guys," and they were just getting their just desserts. "Out of the way, bitch!" Out of the way, ink-stained kvetches. Out of the way, everyone.
Gee, journalists getting smacked around -- what a shame. Oops, but it's the Clinton's palace guard doing the smacking. It's hard to know who to cheer on. But I can't get excited about anyone stopping journalists from doing their job, even when they're giving the business to my left-of-Stalin colleagues. Granted, these are people who spit, when they hear the name, "Nixon." And yet, if the government can smack around journalists of one persuasion, it can do it to those on the other side of the fence, as well.
But what are we to make of Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder claiming, immediately after the raid, that no weapons were involved? Thank goodness, Associated Press photographer Alan Diaz trespassed, hopping a fence, so that we could see the most shocking picture of the year, and know quota king Eric Holder for the liar he is.
And so, we are left without a videotape. Maybe next time, we won't have so much as a report. The scary thing is, politicians learn from each other, across party lines.
In New York, for instance, Rudy Giuliani learned from his predecessor, David Dinkins, that you can "reduce" welfare by simply getting clients to sign up for much more remunerative, federally-financed social security disability (SSI) payments, instead. SSI isn't counted as welfare. Voila! Welfare magically went down a few points.
Then, Rudy came up with his own innovation, the crime report reduction policy. Some major felonies -- including murders and rapes -- simply were not reported to the press, and many other crimes were defined down -- felony assaults became misdemeanors, and misdemeanor assaults became non-crimes. Voila! That knocked a few points off the crime rates.
Giuliani knew that journalists tend to live in such an insular world, traveling around Manhattan in their taxicabs, that they have no idea what the real situation is in the slums, anyway. The funny thing is, though Giuliani's press tactics have been free of force, he is treated by the New York press corps as a Hitler wannabe.
Giuliani's "press management" worked so well, that according to a trauma nurse at Brookdale Hospital, shootings and stabbings actually did go down. Brookdale is in Brooklyn's East New York section, which since the 1980s has consistently led the city in murders. My take on this is that first off, bad guys bought into the liberal media vilification of Giuliani's police as storm troopers, and found crime less attractive. And when people heard the trains were much safer, they started riding them in much greater numbers, which itself became a deterrent to criminals.
Alas, one casualty of the numbers war was Giuliani's Transit Bureau chief, Kenneth Donoghue. Donoghue was caught radically undercounting subway crime, and forced to resign in January, 1998.
We are soon going to have a new president. Should George W. Bush win the election, he will be sorely tempted to use the Clintons' (not to mention, Giuliani's) tactics. Should Al Gore win, he'll think, NIKE-style, "Just do it."
News editors and producers might stand up to a President Bush II. After all, he's a Republican. In the case of a President Gore, they'll take the abuse and come back for more. Either way, this new precedent is bad news all around.
(I had originally published this piece at a free, bcity.com Web site, whose host, znet.com, shut down in May, 2001. That was the best Web site I ever had; not only was it free, but it was idiot-proof, and provided a free hit counter. And I got something like 80,000 hits in the first twelve months, much better than I've ever done since. It was, of course, too good to be true.
I didn't see the piece again, until I found it today at a google news group, via google's "Groups" search function.)
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Bush: ‘Read My Lips –
No New Amnesty’
By Nicholas Stix
The Bush-Senate amnesty plan is the ultimate in taxation without representation. It is revolutionary in its provocation and in its consequences. Perhaps we should stop calling the plan’s patron President Bush, and instead start calling him King George.
Amnesty:
“A general pardon granted by a government, especially for political offenses.
“an act of clemency by an authority (as a government) by which pardon is granted esp. to a group of individuals
“n 1: a period during which offenders are exempt from punishment 2: a warrant granting release from punishment for an offense [syn: pardon] 3: the formal act of liberating someone [syn: pardon, free pardon] v : grant a pardon to (a group of people)”
Immigrants are Our Future
I didn’t watch the President’s May 15 national performance. I had a choice between napping with my son (“The children are our future”) and napping through the Liar-in-Chief (‘Immigrants are our future’). But the transcript of his current lies is all over the ‘Net.
When George Herbert Walker Bush was the Republican presidential nominee for the first time, in 1988, he told the Republican National Convention, “Read my lips: No new taxes.” It became his most effective campaign slogan, and one of the keys to his electoral victory.
But Bush the Elder ended up violating his campaign promise, and raising taxes. And so, on Election Day 1992, his base responded variously by staying at home or by voting for third-party candidate Ross Perot, which brought about the election of Bill Clinton.
Come on Down!
Bush the Younger fancies himself much smarter than his father. Thus, he did not announce, during either of his presidential campaigns, his plan to grant an amnesty to what now amounts to over 20 million illegal immigrants plus their parents plus their children plus their siblings plus anyone who will pay them to say they are blood relatives, much less his plan to bring in another 200 million legal immigrants over the next 20 years, or to mention the tidal wave of new illegal immigration (another 100 million?) this amnesty would bring about. He knew it would cost him the election, if he did. And so, he bided his time.
Well, George W. Bush still isn’t taking any chances, and so when he finally did announce his amnesty plan, he did the equivalent of saying, ‘Read my lips: No new amnesty.’ (“What I have just described is not amnesty.”) He figures that if he lies enough about his planned amnesty, people won’t figure it out until it’s too late. “Too late,” meaning after the coming fall elections. And to sweeten the pot for his social and religious conservative base (or as Karl Rove would call it, "the suckers"), he will propose a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
This is all a word game. Bush is simply calling amnesty by other names: “temporary worker program,” “rational middle ground,” etc. He insists that he seeks amnesty, er, rational middle ground only for veteran criminals, but not for rookies.
“That middle ground recognizes that there are differences between an illegal immigrant who crossed the border recently and someone who has worked here for many years, and has a home, a family, and an otherwise clean record.”
And yet, as Bush well knows, under the plan he champions and the Senate just passed on Thursday, we will end up with amnestied, naturalized, “temporary workers”; amnestied, naturalized, recently arrived illegals; and amnestied, naturalized, long-term illegals.
That Burning Sensation
The man who for years portrayed himself as a straight talker, is peeing on our leg, and telling us that it’s raining.
I voted for George W. Bush in 2000, and again in 2004. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
But I am not going to keep going down the same road. I have learned certain lessons, one of which is that, as with assertions made by the New York Times, I no longer accept as true anything the President says, unless and until I have found triple independent corroboration for it.
In a sophistic sense, I suppose President Bush can tell himself that his proposal isn’t really an “amnesty” for “illegal immigration,” because, along with immigration law and America’s borders, he is eliminating the very concept of American citizenship. No legal citizens, no illegal immigrants.
The President says he is sending 6,000 National Guardsmen to the Mexican border, but he is sending them unarmed, forbidding them from guarding the border or interdicting foreign invaders, and in fact, not stationing them on the border at all, but rather in offices, where they will do “paper work.” (Yeah, probably reading the daily newspaper.)
But that’s just a stopgap. Mr. Bush’s plan is, by the end of 2008, for the 6,000 do-nothing National Guardsmen to be replaced by 6,000 new, do-nothing Border Patrol agents. That’s over $400 million of nothing per year, courtesy of the American taxpayer.
At least in the old East Bloc, where people only acted like they were working, the state only acted like it was paying them. (Yes, George W. Bush has driven ne to find relative virtues in communist totalitarianism!)
If El Presidente gets to force his plan on what is still known as the American people, there will be no more American citizenship and no more America.
If Citizens Didn’t Exist, We’d Have to Invent Them
And yet, there will still have to be something. The ruling elites will need something to distinguish themselves from the rest of those whose pockets they’re busy picking. And so, there will still be illegal immigration in-between serial amnesties that will occur every few years, because the elites will demand ever cheaper baby sitters, gardeners, cooks, cleaning ladies, dog walkers, car washers, etc. The elites’ll show how morally superior they are to us paupers who can’t afford illegal servants, by periodically demanding amnesty for their servants. This will also endear them to the servants. Then, as soon as the newest mass amnesty goes through, they’ll fire their newly legalized servants, and replace them for even less with new illegals. (‘I’m sorry, Maria, but I just can’t afford you anymore.’)
In order to distinguish themselves from commoners (the people living in the shadows aka the people formerly known as Americans), members of the ruling elite will in all interactions with strangers make sure to mention their “immigrant” employees. Thus, if a member of the elite smacks a commoner who got in her way on the street in front of the Free Range Chicken Mart, when the police come she’ll mention that she must call her immigrant employees to tell them she’s being held up, so the cops will know to arrest her victim, instead of her. (That’s assuming the cops even speak English.)
The commoners will also be identifiable by virtue of their being increasingly dressed in rags, but not the chi-chi kind that costs thousands of dollars.
Soy Un Yahoo
Neocon godfatherette William Kristol has his own word for commoners: “Yahoos.”
Echoing the Liar-in-Chief, and apparently cognizant that consistency is one of the three laws of lying, Kristol denies that the Bush amnesty plan is, in fact, an amnesty plan. Unfortunately, however, like President Bush, Bill Kristol seems unaware of the first law of lying: Plausibility.
On Thursday, the Senate passed, 62-36, its own version of the President’s Treason Plan, known variously as the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act” (CIRA) and as S. 2611.
At this rate, George W. Bush’s greatest political achievement will obtain in having rescued Bill Clinton from historical infamy. The Clintons’ reign of crime looks better with each passing day.
Taps?
On Memorial Day, in honoring our war dead, from the Revolutionary War unto today’s War on Terror, we say “Lest we forget.” At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln exhorted, “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
In the new dispensation according to George W. Bush, however, those men did die in vain. For all of the father and the son’s New World Order philosophical commonalities, the father is a patriot, who during World War II was the Army Air Corps’ youngest bomber pilot. I just can’t see the Old Man simply giving away our patrimony. Bumbling and stumbling and dropping it, perhaps, but not consciously, deliberately, surrendering it.
And yet, if the House goes along with the Senate, and the People permit it, this Memorial Day will prove to have been a time to grieve for America itself.
The new Bush plan is the ultimate in taxation without representation. It is revolutionary in its provocation and in its consequences. Perhaps we should stop calling the plan’s patron President Bush, and instead start calling him King George.
(Reader Michael R. Mallinson has pointed out that many illegals ”don't pay taxes and are thus are in the enviable position of enjoying representation without taxation.”)
Let’s consider Abe Lincoln’s words once more:
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
We the People survived a civil war, but can we survive George W. Bush?
The Bush-Senate amnesty plan is the ultimate in taxation without representation. It is revolutionary in its provocation and in its consequences. Perhaps we should stop calling the plan’s patron President Bush, and instead start calling him King George.
Amnesty:
“A general pardon granted by a government, especially for political offenses.
“an act of clemency by an authority (as a government) by which pardon is granted esp. to a group of individuals
“n 1: a period during which offenders are exempt from punishment 2: a warrant granting release from punishment for an offense [syn: pardon] 3: the formal act of liberating someone [syn: pardon, free pardon] v : grant a pardon to (a group of people)”
Immigrants are Our Future
I didn’t watch the President’s May 15 national performance. I had a choice between napping with my son (“The children are our future”) and napping through the Liar-in-Chief (‘Immigrants are our future’). But the transcript of his current lies is all over the ‘Net.
When George Herbert Walker Bush was the Republican presidential nominee for the first time, in 1988, he told the Republican National Convention, “Read my lips: No new taxes.” It became his most effective campaign slogan, and one of the keys to his electoral victory.
But Bush the Elder ended up violating his campaign promise, and raising taxes. And so, on Election Day 1992, his base responded variously by staying at home or by voting for third-party candidate Ross Perot, which brought about the election of Bill Clinton.
Come on Down!
Bush the Younger fancies himself much smarter than his father. Thus, he did not announce, during either of his presidential campaigns, his plan to grant an amnesty to what now amounts to over 20 million illegal immigrants plus their parents plus their children plus their siblings plus anyone who will pay them to say they are blood relatives, much less his plan to bring in another 200 million legal immigrants over the next 20 years, or to mention the tidal wave of new illegal immigration (another 100 million?) this amnesty would bring about. He knew it would cost him the election, if he did. And so, he bided his time.
Well, George W. Bush still isn’t taking any chances, and so when he finally did announce his amnesty plan, he did the equivalent of saying, ‘Read my lips: No new amnesty.’ (“What I have just described is not amnesty.”) He figures that if he lies enough about his planned amnesty, people won’t figure it out until it’s too late. “Too late,” meaning after the coming fall elections. And to sweeten the pot for his social and religious conservative base (or as Karl Rove would call it, "the suckers"), he will propose a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
This is all a word game. Bush is simply calling amnesty by other names: “temporary worker program,” “rational middle ground,” etc. He insists that he seeks amnesty, er, rational middle ground only for veteran criminals, but not for rookies.
“That middle ground recognizes that there are differences between an illegal immigrant who crossed the border recently and someone who has worked here for many years, and has a home, a family, and an otherwise clean record.”
And yet, as Bush well knows, under the plan he champions and the Senate just passed on Thursday, we will end up with amnestied, naturalized, “temporary workers”; amnestied, naturalized, recently arrived illegals; and amnestied, naturalized, long-term illegals.
That Burning Sensation
The man who for years portrayed himself as a straight talker, is peeing on our leg, and telling us that it’s raining.
I voted for George W. Bush in 2000, and again in 2004. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
But I am not going to keep going down the same road. I have learned certain lessons, one of which is that, as with assertions made by the New York Times, I no longer accept as true anything the President says, unless and until I have found triple independent corroboration for it.
In a sophistic sense, I suppose President Bush can tell himself that his proposal isn’t really an “amnesty” for “illegal immigration,” because, along with immigration law and America’s borders, he is eliminating the very concept of American citizenship. No legal citizens, no illegal immigrants.
The President says he is sending 6,000 National Guardsmen to the Mexican border, but he is sending them unarmed, forbidding them from guarding the border or interdicting foreign invaders, and in fact, not stationing them on the border at all, but rather in offices, where they will do “paper work.” (Yeah, probably reading the daily newspaper.)
But that’s just a stopgap. Mr. Bush’s plan is, by the end of 2008, for the 6,000 do-nothing National Guardsmen to be replaced by 6,000 new, do-nothing Border Patrol agents. That’s over $400 million of nothing per year, courtesy of the American taxpayer.
At least in the old East Bloc, where people only acted like they were working, the state only acted like it was paying them. (Yes, George W. Bush has driven ne to find relative virtues in communist totalitarianism!)
If El Presidente gets to force his plan on what is still known as the American people, there will be no more American citizenship and no more America.
If Citizens Didn’t Exist, We’d Have to Invent Them
And yet, there will still have to be something. The ruling elites will need something to distinguish themselves from the rest of those whose pockets they’re busy picking. And so, there will still be illegal immigration in-between serial amnesties that will occur every few years, because the elites will demand ever cheaper baby sitters, gardeners, cooks, cleaning ladies, dog walkers, car washers, etc. The elites’ll show how morally superior they are to us paupers who can’t afford illegal servants, by periodically demanding amnesty for their servants. This will also endear them to the servants. Then, as soon as the newest mass amnesty goes through, they’ll fire their newly legalized servants, and replace them for even less with new illegals. (‘I’m sorry, Maria, but I just can’t afford you anymore.’)
In order to distinguish themselves from commoners (the people living in the shadows aka the people formerly known as Americans), members of the ruling elite will in all interactions with strangers make sure to mention their “immigrant” employees. Thus, if a member of the elite smacks a commoner who got in her way on the street in front of the Free Range Chicken Mart, when the police come she’ll mention that she must call her immigrant employees to tell them she’s being held up, so the cops will know to arrest her victim, instead of her. (That’s assuming the cops even speak English.)
The commoners will also be identifiable by virtue of their being increasingly dressed in rags, but not the chi-chi kind that costs thousands of dollars.
Soy Un Yahoo
Neocon godfatherette William Kristol has his own word for commoners: “Yahoos.”
Echoing the Liar-in-Chief, and apparently cognizant that consistency is one of the three laws of lying, Kristol denies that the Bush amnesty plan is, in fact, an amnesty plan. Unfortunately, however, like President Bush, Bill Kristol seems unaware of the first law of lying: Plausibility.
On Thursday, the Senate passed, 62-36, its own version of the President’s Treason Plan, known variously as the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act” (CIRA) and as S. 2611.
At this rate, George W. Bush’s greatest political achievement will obtain in having rescued Bill Clinton from historical infamy. The Clintons’ reign of crime looks better with each passing day.
Taps?
On Memorial Day, in honoring our war dead, from the Revolutionary War unto today’s War on Terror, we say “Lest we forget.” At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln exhorted, “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
In the new dispensation according to George W. Bush, however, those men did die in vain. For all of the father and the son’s New World Order philosophical commonalities, the father is a patriot, who during World War II was the Army Air Corps’ youngest bomber pilot. I just can’t see the Old Man simply giving away our patrimony. Bumbling and stumbling and dropping it, perhaps, but not consciously, deliberately, surrendering it.
And yet, if the House goes along with the Senate, and the People permit it, this Memorial Day will prove to have been a time to grieve for America itself.
The new Bush plan is the ultimate in taxation without representation. It is revolutionary in its provocation and in its consequences. Perhaps we should stop calling the plan’s patron President Bush, and instead start calling him King George.
(Reader Michael R. Mallinson has pointed out that many illegals ”don't pay taxes and are thus are in the enviable position of enjoying representation without taxation.”)
Let’s consider Abe Lincoln’s words once more:
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
We the People survived a civil war, but can we survive George W. Bush?
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
October Surprise, Part II:
“Dr. Spin” Flips the Rand Report
By Nicholas Stix
November 3, 2000
George W. Bush's “Texas Miracle” in education is a “myth.” We know that, because Dr. Stephen P. Klein said so. Dr. Klein is the lead researcher of the report, “What Do Test Scores in Texas Tell Us?,” released on October 24 by the prestigious, "nonpartisan" Rand Corporation.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, ABC News, and a host of other prestigious, "nonpartisan" news organizations, have repeated Klein's charges.
Stephen Klein's Rand report examines dramatic claims made by Texas education officials and Gov. George W. Bush. The Texans had reported that on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), public school children showed gains in reading and math that were triple the gains made by their peers nationally. During the period in question, 1994-98, nationally the racial gap, whereby black and Hispanic children lagged far behind their white peers, widened. According to Texas officials, however, their state's gap was narrower to begin with, and black and Hispanic Texas children had come close to erasing it altogether.
In the October 25 Los Angeles Times, reporter Duke Helfand quoted Stephen Klein as charging that, “The soaring test scores in Texas do not reflect real improvement in students' ability to read and do math. Texas is doing better than the rest of the country in some areas, but nowhere near the miracle. It's a myth.”
Duke Helfand wrote further, that “The findings [from the National Assessment of Educational Progress] led the analysts to suggest that the widely ballyhooed gains on Texas' own tests may have been the result of extensive test preparation, a low standard for passing and some cheating prompted by pressure the system puts on teachers and administrators.”
Based on the press accounts and my own experience as an educator, I was tempted to believe Klein. But then I read and re-read his report, which made a disbeliever out of me.
Many education reporters don't seem to read the reports they write about. Apparently, they read only the press releases, and talk to the reports' authors and PR flacks. In other words, they consent to being used by spin campaigns. I've found that the actual reports often fail to prove, and at times even contradict the claims made by the press releases, “spokespersons,” and even the authors themselves. The Klein report is no exception.
Keep in mind, that while the Klein report never uses the phrase “test fraud,” the report has no point, except as an extended (if unfounded) allegation of massive test fraud in Texas.
For a point of reference, let's consider another recent case in which test fraud was alleged. Last December, New York City Board of Education Special Commissioner Edward Stancik published a report, “Cheating the Children: Educator Misconduct on Standardized Tests,” charging that conspiracies of teachers, administrators, and staffers in 32 public schools all over the city had been engaging in massive test fraud.
The tests in question were high-stakes, standardized exams, just like the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). The phrase “high-stakes” means that students' promotions and graduation, and educators' careers depend on the results.
The most popular method was for teachers to have children write their answers on scrap paper. The teachers would then correct the children, before having them write their "final" answers in their test booklets. Some teachers and administrators would “prompt” pupils, telling them, “That's wrong.” Others would “explain” questions, while some would simply tell the children the proper answers, or distribute typed “cheat sheets.” One teacher wrote the conclusion to a student's essay. An ambitious Manhattan teacher, Dennis Rej, made wholesale erasures on his students' examination “bubble sheets,” and entered the correct answers. Some enterprising educators managed to procure the actual exams in advance, which they then used to prep their students.
One teacher from Queens, Robin Smith, told investigators, “everyone does this and I never had a problem with it before.”
The investigation resulted in fifty-two New York City teachers and administrators being suspended for test fraud.
The 66-page Stancik report was full of smoking guns. Enjoying the cooperation of outraged teachers in the affected schools, the investigators had gotten eyewitness testimony, and gathered (and published photographs of) physical evidence such as “bubble sheets” full of erasures, essays in which a child's handwriting gave way to an adult's, and “cheat sheets.”
I searched Stephen Klein's report for smoking guns, but found only smoke and mirrors. No cheat sheets, no sheets full of erasures, no advance copies of exams, no eyewitness testimony, no cooperating educators.
Dr. Stephen Klein turns out to be a spin-doctor.
What he engaged in, was a textbook, three-step spin-doctoring campaign. What he didn't engage in, was research.
Klein sought to create an atmosphere of doubt about the Texas Miracle; exploit that atmosphere to rationalize undertaking what was not a research report at all, but in the words of Bush campaign communications director Karen Hughes, a “14-page opinion paper … [that] directly contradicts every credible, nonpartisan scientific evaluation, including Rand's own official study”; and then, confident that few prominent reporters would read his “report,” go in for the kill, as if his claims had actually been proven.
Step one: In a major Washington Post story in April, Klein suggested that the TAAS was fraudulent. He claimed that this was based on his research, but according to Rand's current story, Klein had just begun his research on TAAS in the spring.
Since Washington Post reporter John Mintz was writing an anti-Bush story, he didn't demand any proof of Klein's insinuations. And in getting a lengthy story published in one of the most influential newspapers in America, Klein could rest assured that most major media outlets would assimilate his claims.
Step two: In Klein's “report,” he observes that, “For example, the media have reported concerns about excessive teaching to the test,” as justification for his study. He neglected to reveal to the reader that HE WAS THE SOURCE of the media reports. (Disguising one's own previous statements as independent corroboration is a basic form of scholarly and journalistic fraud.)
As John Mintz reported in the April 21 Washington Post, six months before the Klein report's release, “‘We knew something strange was going on,’ Klein said. He believes that, without meaning to, Texas officials design TAAS tests so they're vulnerable to Texas teachers' coaching.”
Step three: The moment the “report” was released, Klein again spoke to reporters at major news organizations. Playing off the momentum he had built up in steps one and two, he denounced the Texas Miracle as a “myth.”
We cannot discount the help that mainstream media organizations gave Stephen Klein.
In July, the Rand Corporation had published a major, 250-page study, by a team led by David W. Grissmer, Improving Student Achievement: What NAEP State Scores Tell Us, that supported Texas officials' claims.
As thorough and well-documented as the Grissmer study was, Rand released it four months before the election, but somehow it didn't get much coverage. Conversely, Rand released the Klein paper exactly two weeks before the election, and it got tremendous play.
As we'll see tomorrow, the structure of the Klein “report” is much like that of the Klein spin campaign. In lieu of evidence, Stephen Klein uses suggestion and innuendo, and then, acting as if he had proved that which he only insinuated, he piles on ever more dramatic suggestions and innuendoes. Another favored technique has him equivocate in his use of terms such as “coaching,” “cramming,” and “test preparation,” so that they mutate from innocent, even positive words into euphemisms for “cheating.”
Sandra Stotsky, a veteran researcher at the Harvard School of Education (but don't hold that against her!), is the Deputy Commissioner of Academic Affairs and Planning of the Massachusetts Department of Education. She is the author of, among other works, Losing Our Language: How Multicultural Classroom Instruction is Undermining Our Children's Ability to Read, Write, and Reason.
Arguably the foremost scholar of “K-12” reading curricula, Dr. Stotsky had earlier been commissioned to perform her own study of TAAS' reading component, and found it wanting. Stotsky said that since her study, the TAAS reading component had reportedly been reformed.
Of Klein's Rand study, Sandra Stotsky remarked, “There are various groups attacking Bush, because it's Bush. It's a political thing. … [The Klein report] destroyed their academic reputation. They shot their own person [David W. Grissmer]. It made Rand look terrible.”
Unfortunately, Stephen Klein is more interested in manipulating reality, than in discovering and describing it. That's why I call him, “Dr. Spin.”
Originally published in Toogood Reports.
November 3, 2000
George W. Bush's “Texas Miracle” in education is a “myth.” We know that, because Dr. Stephen P. Klein said so. Dr. Klein is the lead researcher of the report, “What Do Test Scores in Texas Tell Us?,” released on October 24 by the prestigious, "nonpartisan" Rand Corporation.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, ABC News, and a host of other prestigious, "nonpartisan" news organizations, have repeated Klein's charges.
Stephen Klein's Rand report examines dramatic claims made by Texas education officials and Gov. George W. Bush. The Texans had reported that on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), public school children showed gains in reading and math that were triple the gains made by their peers nationally. During the period in question, 1994-98, nationally the racial gap, whereby black and Hispanic children lagged far behind their white peers, widened. According to Texas officials, however, their state's gap was narrower to begin with, and black and Hispanic Texas children had come close to erasing it altogether.
In the October 25 Los Angeles Times, reporter Duke Helfand quoted Stephen Klein as charging that, “The soaring test scores in Texas do not reflect real improvement in students' ability to read and do math. Texas is doing better than the rest of the country in some areas, but nowhere near the miracle. It's a myth.”
Duke Helfand wrote further, that “The findings [from the National Assessment of Educational Progress] led the analysts to suggest that the widely ballyhooed gains on Texas' own tests may have been the result of extensive test preparation, a low standard for passing and some cheating prompted by pressure the system puts on teachers and administrators.”
Based on the press accounts and my own experience as an educator, I was tempted to believe Klein. But then I read and re-read his report, which made a disbeliever out of me.
Many education reporters don't seem to read the reports they write about. Apparently, they read only the press releases, and talk to the reports' authors and PR flacks. In other words, they consent to being used by spin campaigns. I've found that the actual reports often fail to prove, and at times even contradict the claims made by the press releases, “spokespersons,” and even the authors themselves. The Klein report is no exception.
Keep in mind, that while the Klein report never uses the phrase “test fraud,” the report has no point, except as an extended (if unfounded) allegation of massive test fraud in Texas.
For a point of reference, let's consider another recent case in which test fraud was alleged. Last December, New York City Board of Education Special Commissioner Edward Stancik published a report, “Cheating the Children: Educator Misconduct on Standardized Tests,” charging that conspiracies of teachers, administrators, and staffers in 32 public schools all over the city had been engaging in massive test fraud.
The tests in question were high-stakes, standardized exams, just like the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). The phrase “high-stakes” means that students' promotions and graduation, and educators' careers depend on the results.
The most popular method was for teachers to have children write their answers on scrap paper. The teachers would then correct the children, before having them write their "final" answers in their test booklets. Some teachers and administrators would “prompt” pupils, telling them, “That's wrong.” Others would “explain” questions, while some would simply tell the children the proper answers, or distribute typed “cheat sheets.” One teacher wrote the conclusion to a student's essay. An ambitious Manhattan teacher, Dennis Rej, made wholesale erasures on his students' examination “bubble sheets,” and entered the correct answers. Some enterprising educators managed to procure the actual exams in advance, which they then used to prep their students.
One teacher from Queens, Robin Smith, told investigators, “everyone does this and I never had a problem with it before.”
The investigation resulted in fifty-two New York City teachers and administrators being suspended for test fraud.
The 66-page Stancik report was full of smoking guns. Enjoying the cooperation of outraged teachers in the affected schools, the investigators had gotten eyewitness testimony, and gathered (and published photographs of) physical evidence such as “bubble sheets” full of erasures, essays in which a child's handwriting gave way to an adult's, and “cheat sheets.”
I searched Stephen Klein's report for smoking guns, but found only smoke and mirrors. No cheat sheets, no sheets full of erasures, no advance copies of exams, no eyewitness testimony, no cooperating educators.
Dr. Stephen Klein turns out to be a spin-doctor.
What he engaged in, was a textbook, three-step spin-doctoring campaign. What he didn't engage in, was research.
Klein sought to create an atmosphere of doubt about the Texas Miracle; exploit that atmosphere to rationalize undertaking what was not a research report at all, but in the words of Bush campaign communications director Karen Hughes, a “14-page opinion paper … [that] directly contradicts every credible, nonpartisan scientific evaluation, including Rand's own official study”; and then, confident that few prominent reporters would read his “report,” go in for the kill, as if his claims had actually been proven.
Step one: In a major Washington Post story in April, Klein suggested that the TAAS was fraudulent. He claimed that this was based on his research, but according to Rand's current story, Klein had just begun his research on TAAS in the spring.
Since Washington Post reporter John Mintz was writing an anti-Bush story, he didn't demand any proof of Klein's insinuations. And in getting a lengthy story published in one of the most influential newspapers in America, Klein could rest assured that most major media outlets would assimilate his claims.
Step two: In Klein's “report,” he observes that, “For example, the media have reported concerns about excessive teaching to the test,” as justification for his study. He neglected to reveal to the reader that HE WAS THE SOURCE of the media reports. (Disguising one's own previous statements as independent corroboration is a basic form of scholarly and journalistic fraud.)
As John Mintz reported in the April 21 Washington Post, six months before the Klein report's release, “‘We knew something strange was going on,’ Klein said. He believes that, without meaning to, Texas officials design TAAS tests so they're vulnerable to Texas teachers' coaching.”
Step three: The moment the “report” was released, Klein again spoke to reporters at major news organizations. Playing off the momentum he had built up in steps one and two, he denounced the Texas Miracle as a “myth.”
We cannot discount the help that mainstream media organizations gave Stephen Klein.
In July, the Rand Corporation had published a major, 250-page study, by a team led by David W. Grissmer, Improving Student Achievement: What NAEP State Scores Tell Us, that supported Texas officials' claims.
As thorough and well-documented as the Grissmer study was, Rand released it four months before the election, but somehow it didn't get much coverage. Conversely, Rand released the Klein paper exactly two weeks before the election, and it got tremendous play.
As we'll see tomorrow, the structure of the Klein “report” is much like that of the Klein spin campaign. In lieu of evidence, Stephen Klein uses suggestion and innuendo, and then, acting as if he had proved that which he only insinuated, he piles on ever more dramatic suggestions and innuendoes. Another favored technique has him equivocate in his use of terms such as “coaching,” “cramming,” and “test preparation,” so that they mutate from innocent, even positive words into euphemisms for “cheating.”
Sandra Stotsky, a veteran researcher at the Harvard School of Education (but don't hold that against her!), is the Deputy Commissioner of Academic Affairs and Planning of the Massachusetts Department of Education. She is the author of, among other works, Losing Our Language: How Multicultural Classroom Instruction is Undermining Our Children's Ability to Read, Write, and Reason.
Arguably the foremost scholar of “K-12” reading curricula, Dr. Stotsky had earlier been commissioned to perform her own study of TAAS' reading component, and found it wanting. Stotsky said that since her study, the TAAS reading component had reportedly been reformed.
Of Klein's Rand study, Sandra Stotsky remarked, “There are various groups attacking Bush, because it's Bush. It's a political thing. … [The Klein report] destroyed their academic reputation. They shot their own person [David W. Grissmer]. It made Rand look terrible.”
Unfortunately, Stephen Klein is more interested in manipulating reality, than in discovering and describing it. That's why I call him, “Dr. Spin.”
Originally published in Toogood Reports.
October Surprise?
The Texas Testing Controversy
By Nicholas Stix
October 31, 2000
(Just before the 2000 presidential election, the socialist MSM, which was willing to do anything to help get Democrat candidate and then-Vice President Al Gore elected pressident, sprung two traps -- "October Surprises" -- on Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican candidate. The SMSM first published and broadcast reports that Bush had been arrested for driving while intoxicated over twenty years earlier, and then, on October 24, promoted a new "report" that insinuated that the "Texas Miracle" (Bush's phrase) in education was due to massive, institutionalized test fraud.)
Was George W. Bush caught cheating in school?
That's what four researchers at the prestigious Rand Corporation, a non-profit, education research organization based in Santa Monica, California, are claiming. In a report released on October 24, "What Do Test Scores in Texas Tell Us?," Stephen P. Klein, Laura S. Hamilton, Daniel F. McCaffrey and Brian M. Stecher suggest that there's something rotten in the state of Texas, and that the "Texas miracle" of educational progress, is really so much Texas bull.
Based on 1990-98 testing figures, Texas education officials had reported gains in reading, writing, and math among Texas public school children that tripled those made in the same subjects by children across the nation. And unlike the rest of the U.S., in which the racial educational gap between whites on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics on the other, has in recent years been growing, in Texas it was shrinking.
Texas Gov. George Bush dubbed the reported gains "the Texas miracle," and made them a pillar of his Presidential candidacy.
(The national figures I referred to above were those of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the closest thing we have to a uniform, national educational exam, which is given in 44 states. The Texas figures were from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), which is unique to Texas.)
Immediately, one thinks: My, what a coincidence, just two weeks before Election Day. And only three months after a different team at the same Rand Corporation had published a major study, which wholeheartedly praised and endorsed Texas' educational progress.
Suspicious coincidences aside, the question is, Did Texas educators cheat, and fudge the results of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS)? My initial judgement was that beyond partisan politics, we might never know the truth. But it didn't look good.
But accompanying the report, before it could even be criticized, Rand President James Thomson issued a combative press release insisting, "We don't produce findings for political reasons, we don't distribute them for political reasons, and we don't sit on them for political reasons. This is a scrupulously nonpartisan institution. He did protest too much.
As I read the report, I searched for evidence of cheating, of fraud, of misconduct ... and found none. Not one shred. What I found instead were loads of speculation, innuendo, and language weasely enough to fertilize all the onion fields in southern California.
And then I examined the orchestration of the media attacks on George W. Bush's education record going back months before the report's release, led by, among others, the "lead researcher" of the October 24 report, Stephen Klein, and I realized that there was no "aside" beyond the "coincidences." George W. Bush was the recipient of a political hit, pure and simple.
The guilty parties are, first and foremost, Rand Corporation "researchers" Stephen P. Klein, Laura S. Hamilton, Daniel F. McCaffrey and Brian M. Stecher, and Rand President James Thomson.
But they had help. Help came from, among others, Walt Haney, a Boston College professor of education, researchers Linda McNeil of Rice University and Angela Valenzuela of the University of Texas, and Washington Post reporter John Mintz, who provided the aforementioned players with the platform from which they initially attacked the TAAS. (Mintz, however, is the most morally ambiguous figure here, because he is a hero, too. Information he provided was crucial to this story.)
Walt Haney is a leader of the cabal of anti-testing ideologues among the radical professors who control virtually all of the nation's major teacher education programs, and which is now making inroads in independent testing and research organizations. Linda McNeil and Angela Valenzuela are likewise members of the "test bashing" cabal, in the phrase coined by education critic Richard Phelps. Politically, these professors are what is euphemistically referred to as "liberal" in some circles, "multicultural" in others, and what I call "racial socialist," since they combine socialism and racialism.
As we shall see, A) the "research" claiming to disprove the Texas Miracle is laughably incompetent and biased; B) the new report is contradicted by a much more thoroughly researched Rand report that was published just three months earlier, and whose lead author, David W. Grissmer has sharply criticized Klein & Co.; C) Rand Corporation President James Thomson's statement in defense of Klein, et al., has all of the credibility of New York Yankees manager Joe Torre's defenses of his pitcher, Roger Clemens,' attempts to maim the New York Mets' Mike Piazza; D) the leaders of academia's anti-testing subculture, e.g., Walt Haney, in Richard Phelps' words, "never met a test they liked"; E) and finally, we shall see the context of this "research"; a campaign — itself characterized by contradictory and outrageous statements — by anti-testing zealots to discredit George W. Bush's Presidential candidacy, and win the election for Vice-President Al Gore.
And yet with all that said, Gov. George W. Bush is not going to come out of this debacle smelling like the yellow rose of Texas, either. As we shall see, the TAAS is not without thorns. So pay attention, because there will be a test — on November 7th!
Originally published in Toogood Reports.
October 31, 2000
(Just before the 2000 presidential election, the socialist MSM, which was willing to do anything to help get Democrat candidate and then-Vice President Al Gore elected pressident, sprung two traps -- "October Surprises" -- on Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican candidate. The SMSM first published and broadcast reports that Bush had been arrested for driving while intoxicated over twenty years earlier, and then, on October 24, promoted a new "report" that insinuated that the "Texas Miracle" (Bush's phrase) in education was due to massive, institutionalized test fraud.)
Was George W. Bush caught cheating in school?
That's what four researchers at the prestigious Rand Corporation, a non-profit, education research organization based in Santa Monica, California, are claiming. In a report released on October 24, "What Do Test Scores in Texas Tell Us?," Stephen P. Klein, Laura S. Hamilton, Daniel F. McCaffrey and Brian M. Stecher suggest that there's something rotten in the state of Texas, and that the "Texas miracle" of educational progress, is really so much Texas bull.
Based on 1990-98 testing figures, Texas education officials had reported gains in reading, writing, and math among Texas public school children that tripled those made in the same subjects by children across the nation. And unlike the rest of the U.S., in which the racial educational gap between whites on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics on the other, has in recent years been growing, in Texas it was shrinking.
Texas Gov. George Bush dubbed the reported gains "the Texas miracle," and made them a pillar of his Presidential candidacy.
(The national figures I referred to above were those of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the closest thing we have to a uniform, national educational exam, which is given in 44 states. The Texas figures were from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), which is unique to Texas.)
Immediately, one thinks: My, what a coincidence, just two weeks before Election Day. And only three months after a different team at the same Rand Corporation had published a major study, which wholeheartedly praised and endorsed Texas' educational progress.
Suspicious coincidences aside, the question is, Did Texas educators cheat, and fudge the results of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS)? My initial judgement was that beyond partisan politics, we might never know the truth. But it didn't look good.
But accompanying the report, before it could even be criticized, Rand President James Thomson issued a combative press release insisting, "We don't produce findings for political reasons, we don't distribute them for political reasons, and we don't sit on them for political reasons. This is a scrupulously nonpartisan institution. He did protest too much.
As I read the report, I searched for evidence of cheating, of fraud, of misconduct ... and found none. Not one shred. What I found instead were loads of speculation, innuendo, and language weasely enough to fertilize all the onion fields in southern California.
And then I examined the orchestration of the media attacks on George W. Bush's education record going back months before the report's release, led by, among others, the "lead researcher" of the October 24 report, Stephen Klein, and I realized that there was no "aside" beyond the "coincidences." George W. Bush was the recipient of a political hit, pure and simple.
The guilty parties are, first and foremost, Rand Corporation "researchers" Stephen P. Klein, Laura S. Hamilton, Daniel F. McCaffrey and Brian M. Stecher, and Rand President James Thomson.
But they had help. Help came from, among others, Walt Haney, a Boston College professor of education, researchers Linda McNeil of Rice University and Angela Valenzuela of the University of Texas, and Washington Post reporter John Mintz, who provided the aforementioned players with the platform from which they initially attacked the TAAS. (Mintz, however, is the most morally ambiguous figure here, because he is a hero, too. Information he provided was crucial to this story.)
Walt Haney is a leader of the cabal of anti-testing ideologues among the radical professors who control virtually all of the nation's major teacher education programs, and which is now making inroads in independent testing and research organizations. Linda McNeil and Angela Valenzuela are likewise members of the "test bashing" cabal, in the phrase coined by education critic Richard Phelps. Politically, these professors are what is euphemistically referred to as "liberal" in some circles, "multicultural" in others, and what I call "racial socialist," since they combine socialism and racialism.
As we shall see, A) the "research" claiming to disprove the Texas Miracle is laughably incompetent and biased; B) the new report is contradicted by a much more thoroughly researched Rand report that was published just three months earlier, and whose lead author, David W. Grissmer has sharply criticized Klein & Co.; C) Rand Corporation President James Thomson's statement in defense of Klein, et al., has all of the credibility of New York Yankees manager Joe Torre's defenses of his pitcher, Roger Clemens,' attempts to maim the New York Mets' Mike Piazza; D) the leaders of academia's anti-testing subculture, e.g., Walt Haney, in Richard Phelps' words, "never met a test they liked"; E) and finally, we shall see the context of this "research"; a campaign — itself characterized by contradictory and outrageous statements — by anti-testing zealots to discredit George W. Bush's Presidential candidacy, and win the election for Vice-President Al Gore.
And yet with all that said, Gov. George W. Bush is not going to come out of this debacle smelling like the yellow rose of Texas, either. As we shall see, the TAAS is not without thorns. So pay attention, because there will be a test — on November 7th!
Originally published in Toogood Reports.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Please and Thank You
By Nicholas Stix
“Do this! Do that! Hurry up!... There’s just no good help any more.”
Imagine you could go through life surrounded by indentured servants on whom you depended, yet to whom you never had to say “Please” or “Thank you.”
In the cartoon series, The Backyardigans, five imaginative little children turn a backyard into exotic locales. In “The Secret of the Nile,” set in ancient Egypt, “Princess Tasha” sings “I love being a princess,” because her “servants” (slaves) must be at her beck and call. As the servants tell us, in asides, “Princess Tasha never says ‘Please’ … or ‘Thank you.’”
When the Nile suddenly dries up, the Sphinx teaches Princess Tasha the secret of the Nile: You must always say “Please” and “Thank you.” When the princess finally shows gratitude to her servants, the Nile is replenished.
America today has millions of real-life Princess Tashas – but they haven’t been enlightened by the Sphinx. (Enlightened by the Sphinx?! Oh, well.) One wealthy seven-year-old tells his illegal immigrant nanny, “You are our slave!” A privileged six-year-old, herself a Chinese-born adoptee, tells her immigrant nanny, “I’m going to tell my mommy to fire you!”
The Princess Tashas have picked up the attitude of their employer-criminal parents, who have come to believe that they are above the law.
Although you’d never know it from the feds’ refusal to enforce the law, knowingly hiring illegal immigrants is a crime. The parents of the princes and princesses are also guilty of tax evasion, for not withholding taxes for their illegal employees and not paying their portion of the employees’ taxes.
In one of the many stealth amnesties already in force, when an illegal is regularized in an “adjustment of status,” as per Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), he has to pay all of the back taxes he owes, totaling thousands of dollars, plus a $1,000 fine. His former employers are never dunned for the back taxes, or forced to pay statutory fines, much less prosecuted.
If the government collected outstanding back taxes, fined, arrested and prosecuted such employer-criminals, our illegal immigrant problem would be reduced to manageable levels, with most of the unemployed illegals heading home – to the nations to whom they are loyal.
Many journalists and editors are longtime members of the employer-criminal class. They rely on illegal immigrants to clean their homes, raise their children (they consider child-rearing beneath them), cook their meals, mow their lawns, and walk their dogs. No wonder media folk choose not to report honestly on immigration, and seek to demonize those who respect America’s laws as “racists,” “nativists,” and “xenophobes.”
America’s upper classes – Left and Right alike – have used illegal immigrants to wage class war on the rest of America.
The employer-criminals not only economically displace American workers, enrich themselves by paying illegals below-market wages and engaging in tax evasion, and pick working Americans’ pockets by forcing them to pay the cost of educating, giving medical treatment to, and jailing their illegal employees and the latter’s families, but the employer-criminals add insult to injury by demonizing the very people they are disenfranchising.
Indeed, in a social world in which one must always worry about being denounced for “racism,” white, working-class Americans constitute just about the only group that upper-middle and upper-class American criminals can disparage without worrying about who might overhear them.
Oddly enough, millions of illegals have themselves become Princess Tashas, imitating their lawless employers. Across America, between late March and early May, over one million illegals marched, some of them several times, demanding citizenship while hoisting high Mexican flags, and turning American flags upside down, or burning them, and viciously assaulting Americans who disagreed with them. While announcing that their loyalty will always be to Mexico, they said that they are the “real” Americans, and that as part of their revanchist Reconquista, they will expel all white Americans.
And why shouldn’t illegals be arrogant? After all, their most powerful supporter dishonestly refers to them as “citizens.”
Mexico has a zero tolerance policy towards illegal immigrants; is America any less of a nation, or less deserving of respect?
Illegal immigration propagandists insist that the economy will collapse without illegals, but in fact it is only the criminal economy of employers of illegals that would collapse. Were the law enforced, employers would have to pay the sort of wages that they paid before they decided to cut them by half or more and disenfranchise the American working class. Americans would then return to those jobs.
The Federation of American Immigration Reform calculated that an amnesty and guest worker program would cost state and local governments $61.5 billion more per year in social services by 2010, bankrupting many of them. And that was before President Bush presented, in his May 15 speech, his amnesty/guest worker plan, which would, according to an analysis by the staff of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R, AL), let in over 200 million legal immigrants – several times more than FAIR had countenanced – over the next twenty years alone. And that’s still not counting the next tidal wave of illegals that Bush’s plan will encourage, if it is enacted.
Bear Stearns economists Robert Justich and Betty Ng (who, by the way, support illegal immigration) have estimated that illegal immigration may already be costing the tax base $65 billion annually. And since most amnestied immigrants would be low-wage workers, they would ultimately pay no federal taxes or even get refunds via the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Since the ruling elites have no intention of damming up the flow of illegals, just as the three million illegals granted amnesty in 1986 begat the 20 million (Justich and Ng's number) that now demand amnesty, these 20 million will beget yet another 50 million to 60 million in twenty years’ time. And that is without counting the millions of relatives of amnestied illegals who will come through chain migration.
America will face a revolutionary mix of ever-growing population pressure, declining wages, inflationary housing prices, inequality, interethnic strife, budget deficits and political instability.
America is a nation of immigrants, but not of illegal immigrants. And while demography may be destiny, a free nation chooses its own demography.
Thank you.
“Do this! Do that! Hurry up!... There’s just no good help any more.”
Imagine you could go through life surrounded by indentured servants on whom you depended, yet to whom you never had to say “Please” or “Thank you.”
In the cartoon series, The Backyardigans, five imaginative little children turn a backyard into exotic locales. In “The Secret of the Nile,” set in ancient Egypt, “Princess Tasha” sings “I love being a princess,” because her “servants” (slaves) must be at her beck and call. As the servants tell us, in asides, “Princess Tasha never says ‘Please’ … or ‘Thank you.’”
When the Nile suddenly dries up, the Sphinx teaches Princess Tasha the secret of the Nile: You must always say “Please” and “Thank you.” When the princess finally shows gratitude to her servants, the Nile is replenished.
America today has millions of real-life Princess Tashas – but they haven’t been enlightened by the Sphinx. (Enlightened by the Sphinx?! Oh, well.) One wealthy seven-year-old tells his illegal immigrant nanny, “You are our slave!” A privileged six-year-old, herself a Chinese-born adoptee, tells her immigrant nanny, “I’m going to tell my mommy to fire you!”
The Princess Tashas have picked up the attitude of their employer-criminal parents, who have come to believe that they are above the law.
Although you’d never know it from the feds’ refusal to enforce the law, knowingly hiring illegal immigrants is a crime. The parents of the princes and princesses are also guilty of tax evasion, for not withholding taxes for their illegal employees and not paying their portion of the employees’ taxes.
In one of the many stealth amnesties already in force, when an illegal is regularized in an “adjustment of status,” as per Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), he has to pay all of the back taxes he owes, totaling thousands of dollars, plus a $1,000 fine. His former employers are never dunned for the back taxes, or forced to pay statutory fines, much less prosecuted.
If the government collected outstanding back taxes, fined, arrested and prosecuted such employer-criminals, our illegal immigrant problem would be reduced to manageable levels, with most of the unemployed illegals heading home – to the nations to whom they are loyal.
Many journalists and editors are longtime members of the employer-criminal class. They rely on illegal immigrants to clean their homes, raise their children (they consider child-rearing beneath them), cook their meals, mow their lawns, and walk their dogs. No wonder media folk choose not to report honestly on immigration, and seek to demonize those who respect America’s laws as “racists,” “nativists,” and “xenophobes.”
America’s upper classes – Left and Right alike – have used illegal immigrants to wage class war on the rest of America.
The employer-criminals not only economically displace American workers, enrich themselves by paying illegals below-market wages and engaging in tax evasion, and pick working Americans’ pockets by forcing them to pay the cost of educating, giving medical treatment to, and jailing their illegal employees and the latter’s families, but the employer-criminals add insult to injury by demonizing the very people they are disenfranchising.
Indeed, in a social world in which one must always worry about being denounced for “racism,” white, working-class Americans constitute just about the only group that upper-middle and upper-class American criminals can disparage without worrying about who might overhear them.
Oddly enough, millions of illegals have themselves become Princess Tashas, imitating their lawless employers. Across America, between late March and early May, over one million illegals marched, some of them several times, demanding citizenship while hoisting high Mexican flags, and turning American flags upside down, or burning them, and viciously assaulting Americans who disagreed with them. While announcing that their loyalty will always be to Mexico, they said that they are the “real” Americans, and that as part of their revanchist Reconquista, they will expel all white Americans.
And why shouldn’t illegals be arrogant? After all, their most powerful supporter dishonestly refers to them as “citizens.”
Mexico has a zero tolerance policy towards illegal immigrants; is America any less of a nation, or less deserving of respect?
Illegal immigration propagandists insist that the economy will collapse without illegals, but in fact it is only the criminal economy of employers of illegals that would collapse. Were the law enforced, employers would have to pay the sort of wages that they paid before they decided to cut them by half or more and disenfranchise the American working class. Americans would then return to those jobs.
The Federation of American Immigration Reform calculated that an amnesty and guest worker program would cost state and local governments $61.5 billion more per year in social services by 2010, bankrupting many of them. And that was before President Bush presented, in his May 15 speech, his amnesty/guest worker plan, which would, according to an analysis by the staff of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R, AL), let in over 200 million legal immigrants – several times more than FAIR had countenanced – over the next twenty years alone. And that’s still not counting the next tidal wave of illegals that Bush’s plan will encourage, if it is enacted.
Bear Stearns economists Robert Justich and Betty Ng (who, by the way, support illegal immigration) have estimated that illegal immigration may already be costing the tax base $65 billion annually. And since most amnestied immigrants would be low-wage workers, they would ultimately pay no federal taxes or even get refunds via the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Since the ruling elites have no intention of damming up the flow of illegals, just as the three million illegals granted amnesty in 1986 begat the 20 million (Justich and Ng's number) that now demand amnesty, these 20 million will beget yet another 50 million to 60 million in twenty years’ time. And that is without counting the millions of relatives of amnestied illegals who will come through chain migration.
America will face a revolutionary mix of ever-growing population pressure, declining wages, inflationary housing prices, inequality, interethnic strife, budget deficits and political instability.
America is a nation of immigrants, but not of illegal immigrants. And while demography may be destiny, a free nation chooses its own demography.
Thank you.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Are the Mets on Strike Against Their Fans?
By Nicholas Stix
During tonight’s otherwise inspiring, 4-3 victory over the Yankees, a development caused concern in this observer. When Carlos Delgado hit a three-run homer in the fourth inning, to turn a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 Mets lead, the Mets faithful (there were thousands of Yankees fans who had also managed to sneak in) at Shea Stadium gave the lefthanded-hitting first baseman a long ovation, seeking a curtain call from Delgado. And yet, Delgado ignored the fans.
The next batter, David Wright, also hit a home run, but the fans did not clamor for a curtain call from him.
In years past, when the fans clamored for a curtain call, the Mets always obliged them. Always.
And so it remained, until April 6. That night, Carlos Beltran hit a big home run, to break an 0-for-9 beginning to his second season with the Mets, after signing the biggest free agent contract ($119 million for seven seasons) to join the team in 2005, and being a bust. He was paid $17 million per season to bat third, knock in 110 or more runs, and score 110 or more runs, as per his career stats. Instead, he knocked in only 78 runs and scored only 83, numbers that might justify a $2 million contract in today’s inflated major league baseball market. Beltran is lucky he wasn’t arrested and tried for grand larceny.
The fans had booed Beltran mercilessly at the beginning of the season, and reportedly had begun booing him late last season. But if you want the big bucks and the cheers when you produce, you have to accept the boos when you don’t.
Beltran evidently doesn’t see it that way. The camera caught him glowering as he walked in the dugout immediately following the home run, shaking his head that he would not give the fans a curtain call. The camera then caught 47-year-old player-monument-unofficial coach Julio Franco go to Beltran and talk to him once, twice, and even a third time, before Beltran would deign to quickly wave a helmetless hand to the fans from the dugout, to another huge round of cheers.
Since then, although the Mets’ MLB.com Web site has frequently featured one of Beltran’s rare smiles (perhaps from last year?), a scowl has been almost frozen on his face.
Beltran’s hostility, and Delgado’s snub of the fans bring back an issue that keeps coming up with Latin players – which team are they playing on? The team whose uniform they wear, or some invisible Latin Nation team of players who are paid by different organizations in different cities? You see it when Hispanic players flagrantly violate age-old rules against fraternization with opposing players and coaches on the field before games, when they set themselves up as a team-within-the-team (e.g., Manny Ramirez and Pedro Martinez in Boston) and when they snub their own non-Latin teammates for Latin players from opposing teams after the game.
The most obscene case I know of Latin chauvinism (so far) came three years ago, when Sammy Sosa’s corked bat exploded in a game when he hit a ground ball, and exposed Sosa to all the world as a cheater. Sosa was suspended for eight games, but rather than take his punishment like a man, he lied about the cheating, claiming that the corked bat was one he usually used to entertain the fans during batting practice, and then appealed his sentence, getting it reduced to seven games. At the time I wrote,
Prior to the 2005 season, New York magazine published a puff piece on the Mets by feature writer Chris Smith, “Los Mets,” claiming that it was now a Latin team. “How Omar Minaya ensnared players like Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran to create a new Latin dream team.”
At the time, Smith’s claim was bogus. The team had only two Latin starting position players, shortstop Jose Reyes and newly signed centerfielder, Carlos Beltran. Its starting first baseman (Doug Mientkewicz), third baseman (David Wright), and catcher (Mike Piazza) were all white. Its starting second baseman (Kaz Matsui) was Japanese. Its leftfielder (Cliff Floyd) and rightfielder (Mike Cameron) were both black. Its starting rotation had two Hispanic pitchers, newly signed free agent Pedro Martinez and Victor Zambrano, the latter for whom they had traded late in the previous season, but the above-named players certainly did not make them a “Latin” team. The New York magazine writer, Smith, was clearly guilty of Hispandering.
This year, however, with Minaya’s acquisitions of slugging starting first baseman Carlos Delgado, starting right fielder Xavier Nady, and relief pitchers Duaner Sanchez and Jorge Julio, and manager Willie Randolph’s decision to start the since-injured Anderson Hernandez at second base, the team opened the season with a majority-Latin starting lineup. Minaya also signed several Latin bench players -- Julio Franco, Jose Valentin, and Endy Chavez this year, in addition to Ramon Castro, whom he signed last year. (Last year he also signed second baseman Miguel Cairo, who this year returned to the Yankees.)
Minaya has put together a good team; it would be an even better one, if its starting rotation could stay healthy. But is he biased against non-Latin players, and is the team he put together hostile towards its predominantly white fan base? Is Omar, like so many decision-makers in today’s America, looking to elect a new, non-white base? Things are not looking good for Minaya, in either case.
Although Carlos Delgado is an American by birth, he had long snubbed the playing of “God Bless America” during ballgames, by refusing to stand for the song. He claimed it was due to his opposition to the War in Iraq, a claim that the socialist MSM has let him get away with. In fact, the singing of “God Bless America” didn’t begin with the War in Iraq; it began with the first game played after 911 had caused the 2001 baseball season to be temporarily suspended.
(Delgado is from Puerto Rico, and was opposed to the U.S. Navy using the island of Vieques for live ammo naval maneuvers, a practice that was ended, to the detriment of the nation’s military readiness. However, Delgado has never opposed the millions of dollars in show-no jobs that Puerto Ricans continue to make from the now useless U.S. Navy base in Vieques.)
One of the reasons why Hispanic players feel emboldened to insult the people who pay them tens of millions of dollars to play a boy’s game, is due to politically correct whites who encourage Hispanic racism and anti-Americanism, in order to insult American whites who love their country.
One such white enabler is Dave Zirin, a columnist at The Nation magazine.
Carlos Delgado’s acceptance of the fact that Fred Wilpon is the Mets owner and thus that Wilpon, who loves his country, gets to determine team policy, upset to no end Zirin, who had wanted to politically exploit Delgado. In the same editorial in which Zirin recounted how Delgado suffered no consequences from his previous corporate masters when he snubbed the playing of the song, Zirin complained that Delgado was now giving in to his corporate masters. (No logic, please, we’re leftists.)
Zirin desperately insults Fred Wilpon’s son as “baby-boy,” the Wilpons as “little more than mosquitoes,” and conscripts Roberto Clemente for his jihad. He takes for granted that Fred Wilpon should pay Carlos Delgado $13.5 million this season, while letting his new player humiliate him and his country before millions of fans watching the game on TV.
(It is hardly surprising, then, that Zirin would seek to cut Babe Ruth down to size, in order to try and inject Barry Bonds with humanity.)
Zirin claimed, histrionically, that the necessity of Delgado sticking it to his boss and the New York fans was a matter of democracy, social justice, and freedom of speech. I am not aware of him ever defending the right of employees of leftwing enterprises (including universities and public schools) to dissenting “freedom of speech,” “democracy,” and “social justice.”
If the Mets don’t get some sense in a hurry, and start treating their fans with some respect, it might be curtains for the team from Flushing. After all, the local Latin population is not exactly stampeding to buy Mets tickets.
And remember, guys, fans can go on strike, too.
During tonight’s otherwise inspiring, 4-3 victory over the Yankees, a development caused concern in this observer. When Carlos Delgado hit a three-run homer in the fourth inning, to turn a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 Mets lead, the Mets faithful (there were thousands of Yankees fans who had also managed to sneak in) at Shea Stadium gave the lefthanded-hitting first baseman a long ovation, seeking a curtain call from Delgado. And yet, Delgado ignored the fans.
The next batter, David Wright, also hit a home run, but the fans did not clamor for a curtain call from him.
In years past, when the fans clamored for a curtain call, the Mets always obliged them. Always.
And so it remained, until April 6. That night, Carlos Beltran hit a big home run, to break an 0-for-9 beginning to his second season with the Mets, after signing the biggest free agent contract ($119 million for seven seasons) to join the team in 2005, and being a bust. He was paid $17 million per season to bat third, knock in 110 or more runs, and score 110 or more runs, as per his career stats. Instead, he knocked in only 78 runs and scored only 83, numbers that might justify a $2 million contract in today’s inflated major league baseball market. Beltran is lucky he wasn’t arrested and tried for grand larceny.
The fans had booed Beltran mercilessly at the beginning of the season, and reportedly had begun booing him late last season. But if you want the big bucks and the cheers when you produce, you have to accept the boos when you don’t.
Beltran evidently doesn’t see it that way. The camera caught him glowering as he walked in the dugout immediately following the home run, shaking his head that he would not give the fans a curtain call. The camera then caught 47-year-old player-monument-unofficial coach Julio Franco go to Beltran and talk to him once, twice, and even a third time, before Beltran would deign to quickly wave a helmetless hand to the fans from the dugout, to another huge round of cheers.
Since then, although the Mets’ MLB.com Web site has frequently featured one of Beltran’s rare smiles (perhaps from last year?), a scowl has been almost frozen on his face.
Beltran’s hostility, and Delgado’s snub of the fans bring back an issue that keeps coming up with Latin players – which team are they playing on? The team whose uniform they wear, or some invisible Latin Nation team of players who are paid by different organizations in different cities? You see it when Hispanic players flagrantly violate age-old rules against fraternization with opposing players and coaches on the field before games, when they set themselves up as a team-within-the-team (e.g., Manny Ramirez and Pedro Martinez in Boston) and when they snub their own non-Latin teammates for Latin players from opposing teams after the game.
The most obscene case I know of Latin chauvinism (so far) came three years ago, when Sammy Sosa’s corked bat exploded in a game when he hit a ground ball, and exposed Sosa to all the world as a cheater. Sosa was suspended for eight games, but rather than take his punishment like a man, he lied about the cheating, claiming that the corked bat was one he usually used to entertain the fans during batting practice, and then appealed his sentence, getting it reduced to seven games. At the time I wrote,
Sammy Sosa's two most vociferous defenders have been retired, Cuban-born slugger Jose Canseco, and Dominican superstar pitcher Pedro Martinez of the Boston Red Sox. Imitating the style of black race hustlers, Canseco and Martinez have attacked American whites as "racist" for criticizing Sosa's cheating.
Canseco is engaging in a form of racial demagoguery that is increasingly common among white Hispanics, who are notorious for priding themselves – among other Hispanics, in Spanish – on their whiteness. However, in public, the same proudly white Hispanics declare themselves "persons of color," and shamelessly race-bait non-Hispanic whites.
Martinez, who is brown, has been Sosa's most aggressive defender, suggesting that he would assault a writer critical of Sosa, and demanding that baseball apologize to Sosa.
Prior to the 2005 season, New York magazine published a puff piece on the Mets by feature writer Chris Smith, “Los Mets,” claiming that it was now a Latin team. “How Omar Minaya ensnared players like Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran to create a new Latin dream team.”
At the time, Smith’s claim was bogus. The team had only two Latin starting position players, shortstop Jose Reyes and newly signed centerfielder, Carlos Beltran. Its starting first baseman (Doug Mientkewicz), third baseman (David Wright), and catcher (Mike Piazza) were all white. Its starting second baseman (Kaz Matsui) was Japanese. Its leftfielder (Cliff Floyd) and rightfielder (Mike Cameron) were both black. Its starting rotation had two Hispanic pitchers, newly signed free agent Pedro Martinez and Victor Zambrano, the latter for whom they had traded late in the previous season, but the above-named players certainly did not make them a “Latin” team. The New York magazine writer, Smith, was clearly guilty of Hispandering.
This year, however, with Minaya’s acquisitions of slugging starting first baseman Carlos Delgado, starting right fielder Xavier Nady, and relief pitchers Duaner Sanchez and Jorge Julio, and manager Willie Randolph’s decision to start the since-injured Anderson Hernandez at second base, the team opened the season with a majority-Latin starting lineup. Minaya also signed several Latin bench players -- Julio Franco, Jose Valentin, and Endy Chavez this year, in addition to Ramon Castro, whom he signed last year. (Last year he also signed second baseman Miguel Cairo, who this year returned to the Yankees.)
Minaya has put together a good team; it would be an even better one, if its starting rotation could stay healthy. But is he biased against non-Latin players, and is the team he put together hostile towards its predominantly white fan base? Is Omar, like so many decision-makers in today’s America, looking to elect a new, non-white base? Things are not looking good for Minaya, in either case.
Although Carlos Delgado is an American by birth, he had long snubbed the playing of “God Bless America” during ballgames, by refusing to stand for the song. He claimed it was due to his opposition to the War in Iraq, a claim that the socialist MSM has let him get away with. In fact, the singing of “God Bless America” didn’t begin with the War in Iraq; it began with the first game played after 911 had caused the 2001 baseball season to be temporarily suspended.
(Delgado is from Puerto Rico, and was opposed to the U.S. Navy using the island of Vieques for live ammo naval maneuvers, a practice that was ended, to the detriment of the nation’s military readiness. However, Delgado has never opposed the millions of dollars in show-no jobs that Puerto Ricans continue to make from the now useless U.S. Navy base in Vieques.)
One of the reasons why Hispanic players feel emboldened to insult the people who pay them tens of millions of dollars to play a boy’s game, is due to politically correct whites who encourage Hispanic racism and anti-Americanism, in order to insult American whites who love their country.
One such white enabler is Dave Zirin, a columnist at The Nation magazine.
Carlos Delgado’s acceptance of the fact that Fred Wilpon is the Mets owner and thus that Wilpon, who loves his country, gets to determine team policy, upset to no end Zirin, who had wanted to politically exploit Delgado. In the same editorial in which Zirin recounted how Delgado suffered no consequences from his previous corporate masters when he snubbed the playing of the song, Zirin complained that Delgado was now giving in to his corporate masters. (No logic, please, we’re leftists.)
Zirin desperately insults Fred Wilpon’s son as “baby-boy,” the Wilpons as “little more than mosquitoes,” and conscripts Roberto Clemente for his jihad. He takes for granted that Fred Wilpon should pay Carlos Delgado $13.5 million this season, while letting his new player humiliate him and his country before millions of fans watching the game on TV.
(It is hardly surprising, then, that Zirin would seek to cut Babe Ruth down to size, in order to try and inject Barry Bonds with humanity.)
Zirin claimed, histrionically, that the necessity of Delgado sticking it to his boss and the New York fans was a matter of democracy, social justice, and freedom of speech. I am not aware of him ever defending the right of employees of leftwing enterprises (including universities and public schools) to dissenting “freedom of speech,” “democracy,” and “social justice.”
If the Mets don’t get some sense in a hurry, and start treating their fans with some respect, it might be curtains for the team from Flushing. After all, the local Latin population is not exactly stampeding to buy Mets tickets.
And remember, guys, fans can go on strike, too.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Gentlemen, Get Out Your Asterisks:
Bonds Hits Tainted 714th Home Run to “Tie” Babe Ruth
By Nicholas Stix
Published 2:53 a.m., 21 May 2006
Updated 4:15 p.m., 21 May 2006
Barry Bonds hit his “714th” home run yesterday, against the Oakland A’s.
On Fox, Tim McCarver was even more pathetically pc than usual. “And you’d think there’d be positive thoughts behind that home run, but there are almost as many negative ones.”
McCarver was talking about other people’s thoughts, not his own.
I don't know if it is due to the greater relative freedom local broadcasters have (at least to pontificate over non-home team players) over national corporate drones, but Gary Cohen, one of the regular Mets announcers at cable's Sports Net NY, has engaged in some straightforward commentary about Bonds, based on what is known about the Bonds case.
The only solace we can take from Bonds' case is that he (probably) isn't going to pass Hank Aaron. On the other hand, I half-wish Bonds would make a serious run at 755, because it would either force the phonies in the Commissioner's Office and Congress to confront Bonds' reported perjury, tax evasion, and purchase (via barter) and use of illegal substances, or would humiliate them.
(Bonds reportedly got his illegal drugs from Victor Conte, who ran the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) for free, in exchange for making celebrity endorsements for Conte’s worthless zinc-magnesium supplement, “ZMA.”)
On the eve of the season, Sports Illustrated’s Jacob Luft quipped,
When the book Game of Shadows : Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports was published in March, it corroborated what any honest baseball fan by then already knew to be true: That Bonds’ late-career home run and slugging percentage records, and yearly batting averages that were up to 80 points higher (.370) than the lifetime batting average the then 13-year veteran had had from before he “bulked up,” Miami Herald sports columnist Greg Cote satirized Bonds thusly,
When a baker's helper is caught (or confesses to or refuses to testify under oath about) committing crimes – including crimes involving illegal drugs – the authorities arrest and prosecute him. Why is it that the authorities have consistently said they aren't interested in prosecuting players for buying (or bartering for) and using steroids? According to Game of Shadows authors Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Bonds also committed perjury, by denying steroid use to a federal grand jury, and tax evasion, by earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash for signing baseballs at memorabilia shows, and not declaring the income to the IRS.
Oh, I just remembered – most of the laws that apply to you and me don't apply to professional athletes.
And yet, Pete Rose not only was
prosecuted for income tax evasion, but went to prison for it. And unlike Bonds, Rose had nothing to show for his crimes. Rose was a compulsive gambler who lost millions of dollars betting on sports. The tax evasion charges were because he sometimes won on his bets, although he lost much more frequently. (Because the bets were illegal, Rose didn’t get to deduct his losses from his taxes.)
Let’s see. Pete Rose commits tax evasion on net losses, and goes to jail. Barry Bonds allegedly commits tax evasion while making a tidy net profit, and isn’t even charged.
What, pray tell, distinguishes Barry Bonds from Pete Rose?
But if Barry Bonds approached Hank Aaron's magic number, would the authorities stand back and allow him to make a mockery of baseball's most hallowed record? Probably, because they are scared to death of being called racists. But Hank Aaron wouldn’t remain quiet.
Did you ever see what Frank Robinson looked like in his playing days? I'd long ago forgotten, but during a recent game on TV, the producers showed a video of Robinson, in his 15th or 16th season (1970 or 1971), hitting a home run in the World Series for the Orioles. He didn't have a drop of fat on him, and was much leaner than today's leading sluggers. He was Perfectly Frank. Nothing about him came from an illegal syringe, cream, fluid or pill.
Speaking of Frank Robby, I stand with him on the record books: The entire statistical career record of a player who was caught at any time using steroids should be erased.
That practice needs to be applied to the career stats of Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Jose Canseco and players to be named later.
Robinson earned every one of his 586 dingers, and is still in fourth place on the list of legitimate All-Time Home Run leaders, behind only Aaron, Ruth, and Mays.
In a scorched-earth attempt to defend Bonds, some folks have claimed “everybody’s doing it.” They seem to think that such a defense will intimidate critics. But it merely calls forth an equally scorched-earth response: If the seemingly Herculean feats of a generation of ballplayers in comparison to their predecessors are based on fraud, then we need to erase that generation from the record books.
But the “everybody’s doing it” crowd are liars. Look at Greg Maddux’ body over the years, and tell me he’s been on the juice. Or Pedro Martinez’ spindly build in younger days, and his current combination of boniness and paunchiness.
There are a number of other great, veteran players of recognizably human dimensions: Mariano Rivera. Manny Ramirez. Derek Jeter. Tom Glavine. Carlos Delgado.
The Legal All-Time Home-Run List (Top 20) reads as follows:
Hank Aaron, 755
Babe Ruth, 714
Willie Mays, 660
Frank Robinson, 586
Harmon Killebrew, 573
Reggie Jackson, 563
Mike Schmidt, 548
Mickey Mantle, 536
Ken Griffey Jr. , 536 (active)
Jimmie Foxx, 534
Ted Williams, 521
Willie McCovey, 521
Eddie Mathews, 512
Ernie Banks, 512
Mel Ott, 511
Eddie Murray, 504
Lou Gehrig, 493
Fred McGriff, 493
Stan Musial, 475
Willie Stargell, 475.
By Nicholas Stix
Published 2:53 a.m., 21 May 2006
Updated 4:15 p.m., 21 May 2006
Barry Bonds hit his “714th” home run yesterday, against the Oakland A’s.
On Fox, Tim McCarver was even more pathetically pc than usual. “And you’d think there’d be positive thoughts behind that home run, but there are almost as many negative ones.”
McCarver was talking about other people’s thoughts, not his own.
I don't know if it is due to the greater relative freedom local broadcasters have (at least to pontificate over non-home team players) over national corporate drones, but Gary Cohen, one of the regular Mets announcers at cable's Sports Net NY, has engaged in some straightforward commentary about Bonds, based on what is known about the Bonds case.
The only solace we can take from Bonds' case is that he (probably) isn't going to pass Hank Aaron. On the other hand, I half-wish Bonds would make a serious run at 755, because it would either force the phonies in the Commissioner's Office and Congress to confront Bonds' reported perjury, tax evasion, and purchase (via barter) and use of illegal substances, or would humiliate them.
(Bonds reportedly got his illegal drugs from Victor Conte, who ran the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) for free, in exchange for making celebrity endorsements for Conte’s worthless zinc-magnesium supplement, “ZMA.”)
On the eve of the season, Sports Illustrated’s Jacob Luft quipped,
“Palmeiro, Sosa, McGwire, Bonds. That's your cast for George A. Romero's next B movie, Zombies from the Steroid Era.”
When the book Game of Shadows : Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports was published in March, it corroborated what any honest baseball fan by then already knew to be true: That Bonds’ late-career home run and slugging percentage records, and yearly batting averages that were up to 80 points higher (.370) than the lifetime batting average the then 13-year veteran had had from before he “bulked up,” Miami Herald sports columnist Greg Cote satirized Bonds thusly,
Bonds has denied the allegations in the book, denied the existence of the book itself, denied he has ever ingested anything into his body at any time, including oxygen, and also denied his name is Barry Bonds.
When a baker's helper is caught (or confesses to or refuses to testify under oath about) committing crimes – including crimes involving illegal drugs – the authorities arrest and prosecute him. Why is it that the authorities have consistently said they aren't interested in prosecuting players for buying (or bartering for) and using steroids? According to Game of Shadows authors Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Bonds also committed perjury, by denying steroid use to a federal grand jury, and tax evasion, by earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash for signing baseballs at memorabilia shows, and not declaring the income to the IRS.
Oh, I just remembered – most of the laws that apply to you and me don't apply to professional athletes.
And yet, Pete Rose not only was
prosecuted for income tax evasion, but went to prison for it. And unlike Bonds, Rose had nothing to show for his crimes. Rose was a compulsive gambler who lost millions of dollars betting on sports. The tax evasion charges were because he sometimes won on his bets, although he lost much more frequently. (Because the bets were illegal, Rose didn’t get to deduct his losses from his taxes.)
Let’s see. Pete Rose commits tax evasion on net losses, and goes to jail. Barry Bonds allegedly commits tax evasion while making a tidy net profit, and isn’t even charged.
What, pray tell, distinguishes Barry Bonds from Pete Rose?
But if Barry Bonds approached Hank Aaron's magic number, would the authorities stand back and allow him to make a mockery of baseball's most hallowed record? Probably, because they are scared to death of being called racists. But Hank Aaron wouldn’t remain quiet.
Did you ever see what Frank Robinson looked like in his playing days? I'd long ago forgotten, but during a recent game on TV, the producers showed a video of Robinson, in his 15th or 16th season (1970 or 1971), hitting a home run in the World Series for the Orioles. He didn't have a drop of fat on him, and was much leaner than today's leading sluggers. He was Perfectly Frank. Nothing about him came from an illegal syringe, cream, fluid or pill.
Speaking of Frank Robby, I stand with him on the record books: The entire statistical career record of a player who was caught at any time using steroids should be erased.
That practice needs to be applied to the career stats of Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Jose Canseco and players to be named later.
Robinson earned every one of his 586 dingers, and is still in fourth place on the list of legitimate All-Time Home Run leaders, behind only Aaron, Ruth, and Mays.
In a scorched-earth attempt to defend Bonds, some folks have claimed “everybody’s doing it.” They seem to think that such a defense will intimidate critics. But it merely calls forth an equally scorched-earth response: If the seemingly Herculean feats of a generation of ballplayers in comparison to their predecessors are based on fraud, then we need to erase that generation from the record books.
But the “everybody’s doing it” crowd are liars. Look at Greg Maddux’ body over the years, and tell me he’s been on the juice. Or Pedro Martinez’ spindly build in younger days, and his current combination of boniness and paunchiness.
There are a number of other great, veteran players of recognizably human dimensions: Mariano Rivera. Manny Ramirez. Derek Jeter. Tom Glavine. Carlos Delgado.
The Legal All-Time Home-Run List (Top 20) reads as follows:
Hank Aaron, 755
Babe Ruth, 714
Willie Mays, 660
Frank Robinson, 586
Harmon Killebrew, 573
Reggie Jackson, 563
Mike Schmidt, 548
Mickey Mantle, 536
Ken Griffey Jr. , 536 (active)
Jimmie Foxx, 534
Ted Williams, 521
Willie McCovey, 521
Eddie Mathews, 512
Ernie Banks, 512
Mel Ott, 511
Eddie Murray, 504
Lou Gehrig, 493
Fred McGriff, 493
Stan Musial, 475
Willie Stargell, 475.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
The Generals, Donald Rumsfeld, and the High Cost of Free Speech
By Nicholas Stix
Pt. I: Seven Days in May: Rumsfeld and the Generals
Regulated Speech
Commissioned military officers do not have the right or the privilege of criticizing their civilian bosses.
That may come as a shock to most Americans under the age of fifty, relatively few of whom have served in the military, and most of whose teachers and professors have refused to teach them any military history, much less military law. But Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) decrees,
A court-martial is a trial in a military court. A guilty verdict on charges of violating Article 88 could result in a stripping of one’s rank, the revocation of one’s pension and other retiree benefits, and even a prison sentence.
Indeed, no fewer than four commissioned officers – two Air Force generals and two Marine Corps officers – were punished for violating Article 88 in statements they made during the 1990s against President Clinton. One of the generals variously called Pres. Clinton “gay-loving,” “womanizing,” “draft-dodging,” and “pot-smoking.”
Although Article 88 was enacted in 1950, it is a revised version of a regulation that has governed the Army since 1764, in colonial times.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Pres. Bush's critics, who had no problem with the punishment of Pres. Clinton’s military critics, have all suddenly developed amnesia, both about those earlier cases, and about military law.
In 1999, Lieutenant Colonel Michael J. Davidson, then the Chief for Administrative & Contract Law of the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate, Third U.S. Army/U.S. Army Forces Central Command wrote, “The Military Judges’ Benchbook posits that contemptuous ‘means insulting, rude, disdainful or otherwise disrespectfully attributing to another qualities of meanness, disreputableness, or worthlessness.’”
As in calling someone "arrogant” and "abusive" (retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste about Secretary Rumsfeld) or “incompetent” (retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, also about the Secretary).
Generals Batiste and Newbold are two of the eight retired generals who have publicly criticized President Bush. The others are Army Major General (two stars) Paul Eaton, Maj. Gen. John Riggs, and Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr.; and Marine Corps Lieutenant General (three stars) Paul van Riper, General (four stars) Anthony Zinni; and finally, Army Gen. Wesley (not to be confused with Ramsey) Clark.
Col. Davidson explains further that although no retired officer has ever been brought up on charges of violating Article 88, according to the UCMJ, even being retired fails to protect a commissioned officer from the military law’s strictures.
In other words, commissioned military officers do not enjoy the First Amendment rights that the rest of us take for granted.
The Unfairness of Life
But many readers will complain, “That’s unfair!” Indeed, it is. But as President John F. Kennedy famously observed, “Life is unfair.” Our men in the combat arms bear a greater responsibility than do ink-stained kvetches like me, a responsibility that unfortunately is not counterbalanced by greater liberty.
Thus have those who have ignored military law, while implicitly promoting the notion that the generals have a First Amendment right to attack the Administration, caused as much grief as the generals themselves.
And so, PENUSA was not helping matters when it supported retired Army Maj. Gen. John Riggs last year, after Riggs criticized the Administration, and ended up busted a rank and cashiered.
PENUSA is part of PEN, a leftwing organization that supports freedom of expression for writers around the world, and has to my knowledge been evenhanded in supporting writers muzzled by dictators of the Left and the Right alike. But John Riggs wasn’t a writer being suppressed by a dictator; he was an active duty soldier violating military law. The folks at PENUSA really need to consult those rules before protesting. By contrast, the Baltimore Sun’s Tom Bowman had to know what he was doing when he first interviewed and quoted Gen. Riggs, and when after the latter’s cashiering, Bowman defended him without mentioning Article 88. “Staff military mischief-maker” might be a better title for Bowman than staff military reporter.
We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ Laws
The worst offender of all has so far been Richard Holbrooke, who served for a time as Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the UN. Holbrooke’s fans have always told of how brilliant he is, but such encomiums were belied by an April 16 Washington Post op-ed, “Behind the Military Revolt,” in which Holbrooke combined New York Times-style “Rumsfeld Must Go” boilerplate with the claim that many generals, retired and active-duty alike, have among themselves created a movement against Rumsfeld, and therefore … Rumsfeld Must Go. (Holbrooke has a monthly gig at the Post.)
Holbrooke opens,
The only distinction Holbrooke provides between the MacArthur-Truman and Rumsfeld-generals debacles, is that today more than one general is guilty of insubordination. Otherwise, I have to surmise that Holbrooke only thinks Truman was right, because he was a Democrat.
The foregoing paragraph stands the truth on its head. The generals attacking Rumsfeld don’t resent him because he has stood in the way of a re-examination of strategy; rather, they hate him because he did re-examine strategy.
“Memorable” is not quite the word I would use.
Holbrooke makes four points – one explicit, and three implicit. His explicit point is that the rule against publicly attacking the commander-in-chief is an informal thing. His implicit points are that it is normal and acceptable for flag officers [generals and admirals] to privately condemn the Secretary of Defense and the President and Vice President; that it is normal and acceptable for generals to organize politically in opposition to their civilian superiors, if they so wish; and that flag officers have a veto right over defense secretaries, and since (he claims) many retired and active-duty flag officers have organized against the Administration, the President must yield to their will, and fire Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
First of all, generals may not organize politically. Not even retired generals, but certainly not active-duty flag officers. As Washington Times editor-columnist Tony Blankley pointed out, the UCMJ has two laws covering such organizing among commissioned officers: Article 134 regarding all non-capital “disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces …” (“non-capital” means that violating the article may not cost the violator his life) and Article 94 regarding “mutinous sedition,” which is a capital offense (i.e., violating the article may cost the violator his life). The UCMJ states,
The rule about not attacking the President is hardly informal; as I showed above, it is codified in military law as Article 88, applies equally to attacks against the Secretary of Defense, and covers private expressions of contempt, as well.
Holbrooke’s implicit position that flag officers have a veto right over defense secretaries, and thus that President Bush must yield before the will of mutinous, seditious generals, violates the bedrock constitutional principle of civilian control of the armed forces. If flag officers were granted a veto right over secretaries of defense, they would next demand such a right over presidents. We would then find ourselves under a military dictatorship, be it formal or de facto.
Had Republican politicians supported Gen. MacArthur against Pres. Truman, the Republic would have suffered a constitutional crisis. Richard Holbrooke seeks to help provoke just such a crisis today.
The proper response by a commander-in-chief to a mutiny among flag officers, is not to sacrifice his secretary of defense to appease their appetite for power. Rather, one sets up wiretaps on all telephones used by or called by suspects; keeps all suspects under surveillance; and when one is ready to strike, executes search warrants on all of their properties and offices, and arrests them all. Then, one gives them a fair trial, afterwards executing or sentencing them to life in prison.
That’s assuming, of course, that Holbrooke isn’t lying about his general friends, and trying to bluff Bush into cashiering Rumsfeld. Holbrooke is apparently capable of anything. As his fans will tell you, he’s a brilliant man.
What Richard Holbrooke has done is tear up the U.S. Constitution and the UCMJ, for the sake of his political party’s short-term, expedient advantage. For such seditious behavior, he deserves to be named to the editorial board of the New York Times.
I don’t know what is worse; that the Washington Post published an op-ed in favor of mutinous sedition, or that it published a piece of propaganda that so misrepresented military law and the Constitution.
The movement in support of the eight generals has been motivated by rank opportunism. The generals’ supporters have refrained from mentioning what happened to Bill Clinton’s military officer critics. Apparently, the generals’ supporters think that they can turn the top levels of the officer corps into a political sniper unit for use against Republican presidents, but then shut it down again, once a Democrat gets elected. Such a strategy is bound to misfire, in leading to attacks on Democrat presidents, as well, while corrupting the senior officers’ corps, hurting morale in the ranks, and leading to military law being held in contempt and becoming even more a matter of expediency in practice than it already is.
The Dictatorship of Civilian Rule
It apparently hasn’t occurred to the old warhorses attacking Secretary Rumsfeld that they are suggesting that civilian authority is the problem, and that the generals should be in charge. Historically, according to the Hollywood Left’s paranoid style of American politics, that threat has always been posed by the Right, which seeks to engineer coupes d’etat against liberal Democrat presidents. But when is the last time the Hollywood Left got anything right?
That threat, imagined in movies like Dr. Strangelove, Seven Days in May, and Fail Safe, interestingly all released in 1964, existed only in the fevered minds of Lefties who were reacting with license and vengefulness to their new-found freedom, following the recent ending of the Hollywood blacklist.
The Separation of Military and State
Unlike the fictional constitutional principle of separation of church and state, one of the pillars of the American system is that civilians rule the military, not the other way around. The other way around, is called a military dictatorship. That’s what the Hollywood Left warned us about for forty-odd years. But now, with some military tired of civilian rule under Republicans, the Left has forgotten its “principles” and its warnings.
In the John Frankenheimer/Rod Serling 1964 political thriller, Seven Days in May, a group of five flag officers led by fascist Air Force Gen. “James Matoon Scott” (Burt Lancaster) who are opposed to a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets which they believe jeopardizes America's security, signed by liberal President “Jordan Lyman” (Fredric March), whom they consider a weakling, conspire to seize power in a coupe d’etat using the media.
The conspiracy is uncovered by Marine Corps Col. “Martin ‘Jiggs’ Casey” (Kirk Douglas), who goes to Pres. Lyman with his suspicions. Any real-life senior officer today engaging in or contemplating sedition would do well to carefully consider the fictional Col. Casey’s words.
President Jordan Lyman: I know what Scott's attitude on the treaty is, what's yours?
Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey: I agree with General Scott, sir. I think we're being played for suckers. I think it's really your business. Yours and the Senate. You did it, and they agreed so, well, I don't see how we in the military can question it. I mean we can question it, but we can't fight it. We shouldn't, anyway.
President Jordan Lyman: Jiggs, isn't it? Isn't that what they call you?
Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey: Yes, sir.
President Jordan Lyman: So you, ah, you stand by the Constitution, Jiggs?
Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey: I never thought of it just like that, Mr. President, but, well, that's what we got and I guess it's worked pretty well so far. I sure don't want to be the one to say we ought to change it.
President Jordan Lyman: Neither do I.
Where do today’s real-life generals stand?
Pt. I: Seven Days in May: Rumsfeld and the Generals
Regulated Speech
Commissioned military officers do not have the right or the privilege of criticizing their civilian bosses.
That may come as a shock to most Americans under the age of fifty, relatively few of whom have served in the military, and most of whose teachers and professors have refused to teach them any military history, much less military law. But Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) decrees,
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
A court-martial is a trial in a military court. A guilty verdict on charges of violating Article 88 could result in a stripping of one’s rank, the revocation of one’s pension and other retiree benefits, and even a prison sentence.
Indeed, no fewer than four commissioned officers – two Air Force generals and two Marine Corps officers – were punished for violating Article 88 in statements they made during the 1990s against President Clinton. One of the generals variously called Pres. Clinton “gay-loving,” “womanizing,” “draft-dodging,” and “pot-smoking.”
Although Article 88 was enacted in 1950, it is a revised version of a regulation that has governed the Army since 1764, in colonial times.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Pres. Bush's critics, who had no problem with the punishment of Pres. Clinton’s military critics, have all suddenly developed amnesia, both about those earlier cases, and about military law.
In 1999, Lieutenant Colonel Michael J. Davidson, then the Chief for Administrative & Contract Law of the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate, Third U.S. Army/U.S. Army Forces Central Command wrote, “The Military Judges’ Benchbook posits that contemptuous ‘means insulting, rude, disdainful or otherwise disrespectfully attributing to another qualities of meanness, disreputableness, or worthlessness.’”
As in calling someone "arrogant” and "abusive" (retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste about Secretary Rumsfeld) or “incompetent” (retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, also about the Secretary).
Generals Batiste and Newbold are two of the eight retired generals who have publicly criticized President Bush. The others are Army Major General (two stars) Paul Eaton, Maj. Gen. John Riggs, and Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr.; and Marine Corps Lieutenant General (three stars) Paul van Riper, General (four stars) Anthony Zinni; and finally, Army Gen. Wesley (not to be confused with Ramsey) Clark.
Col. Davidson explains further that although no retired officer has ever been brought up on charges of violating Article 88, according to the UCMJ, even being retired fails to protect a commissioned officer from the military law’s strictures.
In other words, commissioned military officers do not enjoy the First Amendment rights that the rest of us take for granted.
The Unfairness of Life
But many readers will complain, “That’s unfair!” Indeed, it is. But as President John F. Kennedy famously observed, “Life is unfair.” Our men in the combat arms bear a greater responsibility than do ink-stained kvetches like me, a responsibility that unfortunately is not counterbalanced by greater liberty.
Thus have those who have ignored military law, while implicitly promoting the notion that the generals have a First Amendment right to attack the Administration, caused as much grief as the generals themselves.
And so, PENUSA was not helping matters when it supported retired Army Maj. Gen. John Riggs last year, after Riggs criticized the Administration, and ended up busted a rank and cashiered.
PENUSA is part of PEN, a leftwing organization that supports freedom of expression for writers around the world, and has to my knowledge been evenhanded in supporting writers muzzled by dictators of the Left and the Right alike. But John Riggs wasn’t a writer being suppressed by a dictator; he was an active duty soldier violating military law. The folks at PENUSA really need to consult those rules before protesting. By contrast, the Baltimore Sun’s Tom Bowman had to know what he was doing when he first interviewed and quoted Gen. Riggs, and when after the latter’s cashiering, Bowman defended him without mentioning Article 88. “Staff military mischief-maker” might be a better title for Bowman than staff military reporter.
We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ Laws
The worst offender of all has so far been Richard Holbrooke, who served for a time as Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the UN. Holbrooke’s fans have always told of how brilliant he is, but such encomiums were belied by an April 16 Washington Post op-ed, “Behind the Military Revolt,” in which Holbrooke combined New York Times-style “Rumsfeld Must Go” boilerplate with the claim that many generals, retired and active-duty alike, have among themselves created a movement against Rumsfeld, and therefore … Rumsfeld Must Go. (Holbrooke has a monthly gig at the Post.)
Holbrooke opens,
The calls by a growing number of recently retired generals for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have created the most serious public confrontation between the military and an administration since President Harry S. Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951. In that epic drama, Truman was unquestionably correct -- MacArthur, the commanding general in Korea and a towering World War II hero, publicly challenged Truman's authority and had to be removed. Most Americans rightly revere the principle that was at stake: civilian control over the military. But this situation is quite different.
The only distinction Holbrooke provides between the MacArthur-Truman and Rumsfeld-generals debacles, is that today more than one general is guilty of insubordination. Otherwise, I have to surmise that Holbrooke only thinks Truman was right, because he was a Democrat.
Rumsfeld's famous “long screwdriver,” with which he sometimes micromanages policy, now thwarts the top-to-bottom reexamination of strategy that is absolutely essential in both war zones.
The foregoing paragraph stands the truth on its head. The generals attacking Rumsfeld don’t resent him because he has stood in the way of a re-examination of strategy; rather, they hate him because he did re-examine strategy.
In the tight world of senior active and retired generals, there is constant private dialogue.
… it is also clear that the target is not just Rumsfeld. Newbold hints at this; others are more explicit in private. [Holbrooke is saying here that he has spoken privately with generals attacking the President and Vice President]. But the only two people in the government higher than the secretary of defense are the president and vice president. They cannot be fired, of course, and the unspoken military code normally precludes direct public attacks on the commander in chief when troops are under fire. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course … [Holbrooke cites generals McClellan and Singlaub] But such challenges are rare enough to be memorable, and none of these solo rebellions metastasized into a group, a movement that can fairly be described as a revolt.)
“Memorable” is not quite the word I would use.
Holbrooke makes four points – one explicit, and three implicit. His explicit point is that the rule against publicly attacking the commander-in-chief is an informal thing. His implicit points are that it is normal and acceptable for flag officers [generals and admirals] to privately condemn the Secretary of Defense and the President and Vice President; that it is normal and acceptable for generals to organize politically in opposition to their civilian superiors, if they so wish; and that flag officers have a veto right over defense secretaries, and since (he claims) many retired and active-duty flag officers have organized against the Administration, the President must yield to their will, and fire Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
First of all, generals may not organize politically. Not even retired generals, but certainly not active-duty flag officers. As Washington Times editor-columnist Tony Blankley pointed out, the UCMJ has two laws covering such organizing among commissioned officers: Article 134 regarding all non-capital “disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces …” (“non-capital” means that violating the article may not cost the violator his life) and Article 94 regarding “mutinous sedition,” which is a capital offense (i.e., violating the article may cost the violator his life). The UCMJ states,
A person who is found guilty of attempted mutiny, mutiny, sedition, or failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court- martial may direct.
The rule about not attacking the President is hardly informal; as I showed above, it is codified in military law as Article 88, applies equally to attacks against the Secretary of Defense, and covers private expressions of contempt, as well.
Holbrooke’s implicit position that flag officers have a veto right over defense secretaries, and thus that President Bush must yield before the will of mutinous, seditious generals, violates the bedrock constitutional principle of civilian control of the armed forces. If flag officers were granted a veto right over secretaries of defense, they would next demand such a right over presidents. We would then find ourselves under a military dictatorship, be it formal or de facto.
Had Republican politicians supported Gen. MacArthur against Pres. Truman, the Republic would have suffered a constitutional crisis. Richard Holbrooke seeks to help provoke just such a crisis today.
The proper response by a commander-in-chief to a mutiny among flag officers, is not to sacrifice his secretary of defense to appease their appetite for power. Rather, one sets up wiretaps on all telephones used by or called by suspects; keeps all suspects under surveillance; and when one is ready to strike, executes search warrants on all of their properties and offices, and arrests them all. Then, one gives them a fair trial, afterwards executing or sentencing them to life in prison.
That’s assuming, of course, that Holbrooke isn’t lying about his general friends, and trying to bluff Bush into cashiering Rumsfeld. Holbrooke is apparently capable of anything. As his fans will tell you, he’s a brilliant man.
What Richard Holbrooke has done is tear up the U.S. Constitution and the UCMJ, for the sake of his political party’s short-term, expedient advantage. For such seditious behavior, he deserves to be named to the editorial board of the New York Times.
I don’t know what is worse; that the Washington Post published an op-ed in favor of mutinous sedition, or that it published a piece of propaganda that so misrepresented military law and the Constitution.
The movement in support of the eight generals has been motivated by rank opportunism. The generals’ supporters have refrained from mentioning what happened to Bill Clinton’s military officer critics. Apparently, the generals’ supporters think that they can turn the top levels of the officer corps into a political sniper unit for use against Republican presidents, but then shut it down again, once a Democrat gets elected. Such a strategy is bound to misfire, in leading to attacks on Democrat presidents, as well, while corrupting the senior officers’ corps, hurting morale in the ranks, and leading to military law being held in contempt and becoming even more a matter of expediency in practice than it already is.
The Dictatorship of Civilian Rule
It apparently hasn’t occurred to the old warhorses attacking Secretary Rumsfeld that they are suggesting that civilian authority is the problem, and that the generals should be in charge. Historically, according to the Hollywood Left’s paranoid style of American politics, that threat has always been posed by the Right, which seeks to engineer coupes d’etat against liberal Democrat presidents. But when is the last time the Hollywood Left got anything right?
That threat, imagined in movies like Dr. Strangelove, Seven Days in May, and Fail Safe, interestingly all released in 1964, existed only in the fevered minds of Lefties who were reacting with license and vengefulness to their new-found freedom, following the recent ending of the Hollywood blacklist.
The Separation of Military and State
Unlike the fictional constitutional principle of separation of church and state, one of the pillars of the American system is that civilians rule the military, not the other way around. The other way around, is called a military dictatorship. That’s what the Hollywood Left warned us about for forty-odd years. But now, with some military tired of civilian rule under Republicans, the Left has forgotten its “principles” and its warnings.
In the John Frankenheimer/Rod Serling 1964 political thriller, Seven Days in May, a group of five flag officers led by fascist Air Force Gen. “James Matoon Scott” (Burt Lancaster) who are opposed to a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets which they believe jeopardizes America's security, signed by liberal President “Jordan Lyman” (Fredric March), whom they consider a weakling, conspire to seize power in a coupe d’etat using the media.
The conspiracy is uncovered by Marine Corps Col. “Martin ‘Jiggs’ Casey” (Kirk Douglas), who goes to Pres. Lyman with his suspicions. Any real-life senior officer today engaging in or contemplating sedition would do well to carefully consider the fictional Col. Casey’s words.
President Jordan Lyman: I know what Scott's attitude on the treaty is, what's yours?
Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey: I agree with General Scott, sir. I think we're being played for suckers. I think it's really your business. Yours and the Senate. You did it, and they agreed so, well, I don't see how we in the military can question it. I mean we can question it, but we can't fight it. We shouldn't, anyway.
President Jordan Lyman: Jiggs, isn't it? Isn't that what they call you?
Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey: Yes, sir.
President Jordan Lyman: So you, ah, you stand by the Constitution, Jiggs?
Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey: I never thought of it just like that, Mr. President, but, well, that's what we got and I guess it's worked pretty well so far. I sure don't want to be the one to say we ought to change it.
President Jordan Lyman: Neither do I.
Where do today’s real-life generals stand?
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Blacks’ Collective Delusion/Race Mania
By Nicholas Stix
Steve Sailer writes,
A better phrase already exists: collective delusion. I also like the phrase, race mania. If you want a phrase that is less derogatory, and can apply to positive or benign and malign outlooks, then there's "collective consciousness," not to be confused with Jung's "collective unconscious." "Egocosmos" doesn't work, because it is too subjective, in suggesting that it is the private project that an individual has for his group. But this is clearly not the case with blacks (and is much more pervasive than black "media culture"). And yet, none of the phrases I offered has that ironic edge Sailer is looking for. From his own list, "vanity paradigm" fills the bill much better than "egocosmos."
But in describing the mental state that apparently binds the majority of blacks in America today, I'm not looking to be cute or edgy or sound like Tom Wolfe. I'm looking to accurately describe what I observe of the behavior of blacks of the most diverse social statuses, and of the mentality that makes honest dialogue with blacks an impossibliity. And that brings me back to the terms I suggested: Collective delusion and race mania.
What say you?
Steve Sailer writes,
Better buzzwords for Tom Wolfe's "fiction-absolute:" A reader suggests the following potential replacements for Wolfe's important concept that "Each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world--so ordained by some almighty force--would make not that individual but his group . . . the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles."
Hopefully one of these buzzwords for "fiction absolute" might pull it off:
Vanity paradigm
Group-hype
egocosmos
hypeomology
This little insight would explain much about why Black-American media culture so adamantly condemns assimilated, by-the-book blacks as "acting white". If a critical mass of blacks decides to abide by the White egocosmos, it will damage the credibility of its black counterpart, and thus compell (eventually) blacks to accept being in second place in the dominant paradigm. Thus where going by the book might be the better individual strategy, the preservation of group vanity requires the instillment of an alternative paradigm reflecting the endowments of African-Americans, where they come in first and whites in second.
Any other suggestions?...
A better phrase already exists: collective delusion. I also like the phrase, race mania. If you want a phrase that is less derogatory, and can apply to positive or benign and malign outlooks, then there's "collective consciousness," not to be confused with Jung's "collective unconscious." "Egocosmos" doesn't work, because it is too subjective, in suggesting that it is the private project that an individual has for his group. But this is clearly not the case with blacks (and is much more pervasive than black "media culture"). And yet, none of the phrases I offered has that ironic edge Sailer is looking for. From his own list, "vanity paradigm" fills the bill much better than "egocosmos."
But in describing the mental state that apparently binds the majority of blacks in America today, I'm not looking to be cute or edgy or sound like Tom Wolfe. I'm looking to accurately describe what I observe of the behavior of blacks of the most diverse social statuses, and of the mentality that makes honest dialogue with blacks an impossibliity. And that brings me back to the terms I suggested: Collective delusion and race mania.
What say you?
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Barry Bonds Fan Says Writer Has "Put the Black Man Through So Much Suffrage"
By Nicholas Stix
The following letter came on May 12 from a linguistically, morally, and mentally-challenged Barry Bonds fan. The fan was responding, after her fashion, to my column, "Barry Bonds, Racist." And no, I did not make this up.
From: Ramonah807@aol.com
Subject: Barry Bonds
You are an idiot. Why are you trying to convince the american public that Barry Bonds is a bad guy. Why don't you waist your energy on real journalism. Write about important issues, like the war on Iraq, and leave Barry Bonds alone.
I don't blame Barry Bonds for thinking that way about White America. Face it you racist idiot. You have put the black man through so much suffrage that they hate your guts.
Why don't you mention that Babe Ruth was a drunk, womanizer, abondoned his adopted children, ate everything in sight. Your article sounds so hypocritical. Let it go. Just because Barry doesn't want to be your friend, you don't have to badmouthed him that way.
And why wasn't steroids a big issue when McGuire did it? Let me guess. Was he white? And in a society where the government is shoving drugs down are throat, your article is so ridiculous. As if this country does not do drugs. Please.
Angry Citizen.
The following letter came on May 12 from a linguistically, morally, and mentally-challenged Barry Bonds fan. The fan was responding, after her fashion, to my column, "Barry Bonds, Racist." And no, I did not make this up.
From: Ramonah807@aol.com
Subject: Barry Bonds
You are an idiot. Why are you trying to convince the american public that Barry Bonds is a bad guy. Why don't you waist your energy on real journalism. Write about important issues, like the war on Iraq, and leave Barry Bonds alone.
I don't blame Barry Bonds for thinking that way about White America. Face it you racist idiot. You have put the black man through so much suffrage that they hate your guts.
Why don't you mention that Babe Ruth was a drunk, womanizer, abondoned his adopted children, ate everything in sight. Your article sounds so hypocritical. Let it go. Just because Barry doesn't want to be your friend, you don't have to badmouthed him that way.
And why wasn't steroids a big issue when McGuire did it? Let me guess. Was he white? And in a society where the government is shoving drugs down are throat, your article is so ridiculous. As if this country does not do drugs. Please.
Angry Citizen.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Seven Days in May:
Rumsfeld and the Generals
By Nicholas Stix
Imagine that a cabal of top officers is conspiring to mutiny and topple civilian control of the military in the United States of America. If it sounds like a movie, it's because it already is one - John Frankenheimer's 1964 political thriller, Seven Days in May.
But if a leading Democrat insider is to be believed, what was once the stuff of paranoid Hollywood potboilers may have come true, though not exactly according to the dog-eared script.
Eight retired generals have so far publicly criticized Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for being insensitive and not playing well with others. They say their old boss has got to go, and the aforementioned Democrat heavyweight has made the veiled threat that many more flag officers are waiting in the wings, to resign and attack the Secretary, should Rumsfeld fail to walk the plank. (The term "flag officers" refers to the highest class of rank in each service branch - admirals in the Navy, and generals in the Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force.)
The retired generals in question are Army Major General (two stars) Paul Eaton, Maj. Gen. John Riggs, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., and Maj. Gen. John Batiste; and Marine Corps Lieutenant General (three stars) Gregory Newbold, Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper, General (four stars) Anthony Zinni; and finally, Army Gen. Wesley (not to be confused with Ramsey) Clark. (Once Gen. Clark saw the bandwagon start pulling out, he jumped on at the last moment, and may need care for a sprained or broken ankle.)
The Paranoid Style
There is a tradition which I call, borrowing from historian Richard Hofstadter, the paranoid style in Hollywood politics. According to the paranoid style, which was born in the Cold War, not the Soviet Union nor Red China, but the American military is the ubiquitous "clear and present danger" to democratic government and world peace.
In the paranoid style, it is always rightwing generals (and the occasional, rightwing colonel) who seek to unseat a liberal president via a military coup, or who would go over such a president's head, in order to "drop the big one" on the Russkies, "and see what happens."
The Hollywood nightmare never was close to coming true. And yet, if Bill Clinton's former ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke is to be believed, we are in the midst of a full-fledged "generals' revolt."
Does Not Play Well with Others
Rumsfeld is "arrogant" and "abusive," according to retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste.
Is that a criticism or a compliment, General? Most generals consider such terms part of their job description. Pot, kettle, General; pot, kettle.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, the first to call for Rumsfeld's resignation in the March 19 New York Times, spoke of the latter's "unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower."
But did Gen. Eaton complain about the feminization of the military that has accompanied and accelerated its greater reliance on technology? Are you kidding? Even in retirement, he's scared to death of taking on feminist activists like Lory Manning and Claudia Kennedy.
According to Gen. Eaton, Rumsfeld has also "shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. . . . Mr. Rumsfeld must step down."
I have myself criticized the handling of the war, and Rumsfeld specifically, going back to April 16, 2003, just after Baghdad fell, and anarchy reigned. I complained that the American military was behaving in a multicultural fashion, and thus making global fools of us.
Although the Marines were in Baghdad, looters were running wild without fear of them. The looters somehow knew the Marines would not do their job.
The way to deal with looters is to declare martial law and shoot them. (The order doesn't much matter. Once looters see their fellows begin to drop, they'll understand that martial law has been declared; declare martial law without shooting anyone, and no one will take you seriously, until the shooting starts.) But the military - make that the White House - was afraid of the backlash from the Arab and Marxist world (that would be in far-flung, communist outposts like West 43rd Street), from images of American fighting men shooting Arab looters being broadcast around the world. I say, such images would have earned our boys the only sort of respect our enemies understand.
But although Rumsfeld spouted some nonsense at the time about anarchy and looting being the way free people act ("freedom's untidy"), the man who is responsible for the prosecution of the war is our commander-in-chief. It was George W. Bush who was so solicitous of our enemies' sensibilities. If you have a beef with Bush, say so. Don't use Rumsfeld as a proxy.
Imagine if FDR or Harry Truman had called up Tojo and Hitler, to ask if our war plans met with their respective approvals.
Needs to Get in Touch with His Feminine Side
Contra Rumsfeld: He has too much "swagger," as in "My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions — or bury the results." That's according to retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who attacked the Secretary in a Time magazine essay and whose "sole motivation, pure and simple, [is] the servicemen and women and their incredible families." Incredible.
Say what you will about Donald Rumsfeld, but he's no chicken hawk. He's an old Navy flier. And a military man - much less a Marine - who despises swagger?! I hope Gen. Newbold isn't one of those feminists who think our warriors should wear flowers in their helmets.
What I found striking about Gen. Newbold's criticisms of Secretary Rumsfeld was how unstriking they were - they could have been a cut-and-paste job of New York Times editorials from the past three years. Just as the Times has pre-written obituaries for famous people that require only that the cause, time, and place of death be added, it has "Rumsfeld Must be Fired" boilerplate editorials which only require that they be updated with the most recent controversy to make it seem as if the newspaper's demand were a response to events, as opposed to a standard, constant demand.
The Problem with Political Generals
Newbold says that we invaded Iraq based on faulty intelligence, but that line of attack was only invented by Bush's political enemies to sandbag him. Before we went in, everyone, even chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix believed that Saddam Hussein had tons of biological and chemical weapons (BCW), including thousands of tons of liquid anthrax alone. That we didn't find the BCW can't be used retroactively to claim that the intelligence stunk, if no one, anywhere, knew that at the time. Besides which, I am not convinced that we won't eventually find BCW stockpiles in Iraq, or find that they were shipped out to neighboring Baathist Syria.
Another point of attack for Gen. Newbold is that Rumsfeld & Co. didn't rethink strategy. But Rumsfeld and his men did rethink strategy, for better or worse, and that is what angered so many flag officers who despise the Secretary. They disagreed with Rumsfeld on his strategic emphasis on a more high-tech, leaner military. Well, guess what? In our constitutional system, the military is run by civilians; civilians are not run by the military. Generals do not get to choose their civilian superiors; those civilian superiors do, however, get to choose our generals. That's the difference between a liberal democracy and a military dictatorship, a difference the news and entertainment media have both been very keen on, whenever a Democrat has sat in the White House.
On one point, Gen. Newbold undermines his own and his comrades' criticisms of Rumsfeld as refusing to tolerate dissent from flag officers.
"Army General John Abizaid, head of Central Command, has been forceful in his views with appointed officials on strategy and micromanagement of the fight in Iraq--often with success. Marine Commandant General Mike Hagee steadfastly challenged plans to underfund, understaff and underequip his service as the Corps has struggled to sustain its fighting capability."
So much for the suits refusing to listen to, and punishing any of the uniforms who disagreed with them.
Look, I'm not denying that Rumsfeld is an SOB, and I probably wouldn't last one day working for him. But do you really want a nice guy running Defense? And I'm not a military man, either. Imagine how Gen. Newbold or any of his cronies would respond to an enlisted man complaining the same way about his commanding officer, as they have been complaining about the Secretary of Defense. They'd laugh the man out of the service - after court-martialing him and sending him to Leavenworth for a stretch.
My point isn't to say that Gen. Newbold is a Democrat opportunist; I wouldn't know where his party loyalty lies. But I do think he is an opportunist. I think he grasped at certain talking points because they were the socialist MSM's conventional wisdom, and guaranteed him a hearing.
Had he instead said something like, 'The Bush Administration's obsession with a high-tech military deploying fewer boots, is inseparable from the inability of the voluntary military to meet its troop strength needs during a protracted war or wars, and its increasing reliance on female personnel who are then deployed in manners in violation both of Pentagon regulations and of military discipline, esprit de corps, and fighting ability,' do you think he'd have gotten a spread in Time magazine? If Newbold is so courageous, and claims that the Marines were undermanned, why won't he follow his criticism to its logical and political end, and call for the reinstatement of the draft?
Similarly, if he had admitted that the problem with disorder in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam wasn't the lack of boots on the ground, but the orders to engage in multicultural, powder-puff pacification that had Marines standing around, watching Iraqi thugs loot at will, Time's editors would have said, "Don't call us, we'll call you," hung up the phone, and said to each other, their eyes rolling, "What a fascist!"
The problem with political generals is that they are ... political.
Grounds for Zinnicism
Retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni has said, "We are paying the price for the lack of credible planning, or the lack of a plan ... Ten years worth of planning were thrown away; troop levels dismissed out of hand ... These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policy made back here. Don't blame the troops," and "Poor military judgment has been used throughout this mission."
Wait a minute. Either we had ten years of planning, or we had no plan. Zinni sounds like a propagandist trying to hit all the confused mental states of Bush-haters. I don't like the President, either, but I don't get hysterical about it ... yet.
Oh, well. Zinni's an old Clinton hand, so it's hardly surprising that he should criticize his political opponent. Indeed, according to New York Times reporters
David S. Cloud, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, in a surprisingly balanced article, the newest Fire Rumsfeld! campaign is being "spearheaded by, among others, General Zinni ..."
I don't know the other flag officers' party affiliation, though I'm sure they'd all say, "Independent." They're no politicians. Right.
Future generals imbibe politics at their mothers' breasts. And they didn't get where they are by not being able to figure out which way the wind is blowing.
The most interesting and disturbing case is that of Maj. Gen. John Riggs. Unlike his colleagues, he did not wait until retirement to criticize his civilian bosses, although that criticism was at the time less dramatic than it has since become.
In 2004, then-Lt. Gen. Riggs told Baltimore Sun reporter Tom Bowman that the Army was inadequately manned.
Soon thereafter, the Army initiated two separate investigations of the General, who was suspected of having violated regulations governing the use of civilian contractors, and of having had an adulterous love affair with one such civilian contractor.
In the UCMJ, adultery is a crime for which the punishment may include "confinement for one year, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and a dishonorable discharge." These days, however, adulterers are rarely prosecuted. If the affair was in the past, knowledge of it may impede one's career, as in the case of Gen. Joseph Ralston, who lost out on becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after admitting to having had such an affair. If the adultery is flagrant, however, and is continued despite the service member being ordered to end it, and the member in question lies about continuing the affair, as in the case of feminist Air Force Lieut. Kelly Flinn, one may be separated from the service.
Some readers will no doubt be shocked that adultery is still a crime in the UCMJ. If you don't like the laws, you can have them changed, but you cannot flaunt them at will, or encourage military personnel to flaunt them. Not unless, that is, your goal is to destroy military discipline.
The charge of adultery against Gen. Riggs was dismissed for lack of evidence (though the General's wife divorced him soon thereafter), while the charge of improper use of a civilian contractor for jobs that must be carried out by military officers, was upheld. The rebuke was so mild, however, that it was reportedly not even entered into the General's record. And yet, Army Secretary Les Brownlee demoted Lt. Gen. Riggs one full rank down to major general, costing the 39-year veteran - who had begun as a 19-year-old enlisted man - his honor and $10,000-15,000 per year in pension pay, and ordered him to immediately resign from the Army.
Gen. Riggs' supporters have argued that the real motivation behind the Army's actions was retaliation for his having publicly criticized Secretary Rumsfeld, and that Riggs should not have been demoted for an offense that was not even worthy of a mention in his personnel record.
Now, I'm the last guy in the world to relish stomping on a man who entered the service as a 19-year-old enlisted man, who served for almost forty years, and who made it all the way to three stars. But then-Lt. Gen. John Riggs had to know that he was slitting his own throat. He knew the rules. Why didn't he press his point with his civilian superiors in private - and then resign, if they ignored him, before shooting off his mouth?
Two possible reasons for Gen. Riggs' demotion and forced resignation stand out: 1. Although the Army couldn't prove he'd had an affair with the civilian contractor, it may have been convinced that he had done so, and made him pay the only way it could; or 2. The Army cashiered Gen. Riggs for his remarks to the press. According to the UCMJ, Secretary of the Army Brownlee would have been perfectly justified in firing Gen. Riggs for his remarks, though if that was the Secretary's motivation, he showed cowardice in conjuring up the contractor story.
The Pentagon is well aware that more than a few reporters covering the Pentagon hold the UCMJ in contempt, and that they and their editors have no intention of enlightening their readers about how military law diverges from the laws governing civilians. In addition, most mainstream socialist media outlets would lionize anyone who, in embarrassing a by them hated Republican administration, served the media's political objectives. Meanwhile, Gen. Riggs' supporters have been less than honorable or honest as flag officers in their defenses of him, in focusing solely on the charge of his misuse of a civilian contractor.
Fragging the Secretary
While I am tempted to believe that personal and collegial loyalty to Gen. Riggs plays a role in some Army generals' call for Rumsfeld's dismissal, a lot of these guys clearly have hated Rumsfeld's guts for some time.
In any event, hating your superior is no excuse for violating military law. (Otherwise, the communists who call on enlisted men to "frag" their commanding officers are in the right.) I see in the revolt of the generals yet another case of cowardice, and of the decline in military discipline, esprit de corps, and respect for military law. ("Fragging" involves murdering your commanding officer, typically by tossing or rolling a hand grenade at him from behind.)
The Point of Decision
As Michael Gilbert wrote in the April 23 Tacoma, WA News Tribune,
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Bill Harrison "said [the generals would] have more credibility with the public if they had stepped forward when they were still on active duty."
"We're taught in the Army that we are supposed to argue to the point of decision. Once the decision's been made, there are two things we can do: We can support the decision, or if we disagree, and it's a point of principle, we can resign."
If they thought Rumsfeld was leading us into folly, yet were so easily intimidated by him that they kept their own counsel, as they now say they did, they didn't deserve to be generals. And so they screwed up twice - in not disagreeing with Rumsfeld face to face while they were active duty and could influence him, and in now attacking him via the press. Indeed, is the admission by a military leader that he was intimidated by the Secretary of Defense an occasion to complain about the Secretary, or rather to make an embarrassed apology for one's own shortcomings?
When one man keeps quiet when he's supposed to talk, and starts running his mouth when it's too late, you call him a royal screw-up. (You know what I mean, but this is a family Web site.) What we have here is a gang of royal screw-ups.
Ed O'Keefe of ABC News reported that Gen. Richard Myers, who recently retired as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "repeatedly contested the recollections of the six generals who have spoken out against Rumsfeld. In press accounts, Newbold maintained that his pre-war criticism made Myers and others 'uncomfortable.' But on 'This Week,' Myers rebutted, 'That's not my memory of it; I never felt uncomfortable about anything Gen. Newbold said.... If there are people ... who have not spoken out,' Myers said, 'shame on them.'"
Myers told ABC News' ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "We gave [Rumsfeld] our best military advice. ... If we don't do that, we should be shot."
Sounds good to me, and not because Myers is a general. I've liked the guy for some time, particularly since he locked horns with Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN), who sought to bully him and demagogue the truth during the Senate's Abu Ghraib hearings two years ago.
Next column: But what about the military's First Amendment rights?
Technorati tags: law,
politics,
terrorism
Imagine that a cabal of top officers is conspiring to mutiny and topple civilian control of the military in the United States of America. If it sounds like a movie, it's because it already is one - John Frankenheimer's 1964 political thriller, Seven Days in May.
But if a leading Democrat insider is to be believed, what was once the stuff of paranoid Hollywood potboilers may have come true, though not exactly according to the dog-eared script.
Eight retired generals have so far publicly criticized Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for being insensitive and not playing well with others. They say their old boss has got to go, and the aforementioned Democrat heavyweight has made the veiled threat that many more flag officers are waiting in the wings, to resign and attack the Secretary, should Rumsfeld fail to walk the plank. (The term "flag officers" refers to the highest class of rank in each service branch - admirals in the Navy, and generals in the Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force.)
The retired generals in question are Army Major General (two stars) Paul Eaton, Maj. Gen. John Riggs, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., and Maj. Gen. John Batiste; and Marine Corps Lieutenant General (three stars) Gregory Newbold, Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper, General (four stars) Anthony Zinni; and finally, Army Gen. Wesley (not to be confused with Ramsey) Clark. (Once Gen. Clark saw the bandwagon start pulling out, he jumped on at the last moment, and may need care for a sprained or broken ankle.)
The Paranoid Style
There is a tradition which I call, borrowing from historian Richard Hofstadter, the paranoid style in Hollywood politics. According to the paranoid style, which was born in the Cold War, not the Soviet Union nor Red China, but the American military is the ubiquitous "clear and present danger" to democratic government and world peace.
In the paranoid style, it is always rightwing generals (and the occasional, rightwing colonel) who seek to unseat a liberal president via a military coup, or who would go over such a president's head, in order to "drop the big one" on the Russkies, "and see what happens."
The Hollywood nightmare never was close to coming true. And yet, if Bill Clinton's former ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke is to be believed, we are in the midst of a full-fledged "generals' revolt."
Does Not Play Well with Others
Rumsfeld is "arrogant" and "abusive," according to retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste.
Is that a criticism or a compliment, General? Most generals consider such terms part of their job description. Pot, kettle, General; pot, kettle.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, the first to call for Rumsfeld's resignation in the March 19 New York Times, spoke of the latter's "unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower."
But did Gen. Eaton complain about the feminization of the military that has accompanied and accelerated its greater reliance on technology? Are you kidding? Even in retirement, he's scared to death of taking on feminist activists like Lory Manning and Claudia Kennedy.
According to Gen. Eaton, Rumsfeld has also "shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. . . . Mr. Rumsfeld must step down."
I have myself criticized the handling of the war, and Rumsfeld specifically, going back to April 16, 2003, just after Baghdad fell, and anarchy reigned. I complained that the American military was behaving in a multicultural fashion, and thus making global fools of us.
Although the Marines were in Baghdad, looters were running wild without fear of them. The looters somehow knew the Marines would not do their job.
The way to deal with looters is to declare martial law and shoot them. (The order doesn't much matter. Once looters see their fellows begin to drop, they'll understand that martial law has been declared; declare martial law without shooting anyone, and no one will take you seriously, until the shooting starts.) But the military - make that the White House - was afraid of the backlash from the Arab and Marxist world (that would be in far-flung, communist outposts like West 43rd Street), from images of American fighting men shooting Arab looters being broadcast around the world. I say, such images would have earned our boys the only sort of respect our enemies understand.
But although Rumsfeld spouted some nonsense at the time about anarchy and looting being the way free people act ("freedom's untidy"), the man who is responsible for the prosecution of the war is our commander-in-chief. It was George W. Bush who was so solicitous of our enemies' sensibilities. If you have a beef with Bush, say so. Don't use Rumsfeld as a proxy.
Imagine if FDR or Harry Truman had called up Tojo and Hitler, to ask if our war plans met with their respective approvals.
Needs to Get in Touch with His Feminine Side
Contra Rumsfeld: He has too much "swagger," as in "My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions — or bury the results." That's according to retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who attacked the Secretary in a Time magazine essay and whose "sole motivation, pure and simple, [is] the servicemen and women and their incredible families." Incredible.
Say what you will about Donald Rumsfeld, but he's no chicken hawk. He's an old Navy flier. And a military man - much less a Marine - who despises swagger?! I hope Gen. Newbold isn't one of those feminists who think our warriors should wear flowers in their helmets.
What I found striking about Gen. Newbold's criticisms of Secretary Rumsfeld was how unstriking they were - they could have been a cut-and-paste job of New York Times editorials from the past three years. Just as the Times has pre-written obituaries for famous people that require only that the cause, time, and place of death be added, it has "Rumsfeld Must be Fired" boilerplate editorials which only require that they be updated with the most recent controversy to make it seem as if the newspaper's demand were a response to events, as opposed to a standard, constant demand.
The Problem with Political Generals
Newbold says that we invaded Iraq based on faulty intelligence, but that line of attack was only invented by Bush's political enemies to sandbag him. Before we went in, everyone, even chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix believed that Saddam Hussein had tons of biological and chemical weapons (BCW), including thousands of tons of liquid anthrax alone. That we didn't find the BCW can't be used retroactively to claim that the intelligence stunk, if no one, anywhere, knew that at the time. Besides which, I am not convinced that we won't eventually find BCW stockpiles in Iraq, or find that they were shipped out to neighboring Baathist Syria.
Another point of attack for Gen. Newbold is that Rumsfeld & Co. didn't rethink strategy. But Rumsfeld and his men did rethink strategy, for better or worse, and that is what angered so many flag officers who despise the Secretary. They disagreed with Rumsfeld on his strategic emphasis on a more high-tech, leaner military. Well, guess what? In our constitutional system, the military is run by civilians; civilians are not run by the military. Generals do not get to choose their civilian superiors; those civilian superiors do, however, get to choose our generals. That's the difference between a liberal democracy and a military dictatorship, a difference the news and entertainment media have both been very keen on, whenever a Democrat has sat in the White House.
On one point, Gen. Newbold undermines his own and his comrades' criticisms of Rumsfeld as refusing to tolerate dissent from flag officers.
"Army General John Abizaid, head of Central Command, has been forceful in his views with appointed officials on strategy and micromanagement of the fight in Iraq--often with success. Marine Commandant General Mike Hagee steadfastly challenged plans to underfund, understaff and underequip his service as the Corps has struggled to sustain its fighting capability."
So much for the suits refusing to listen to, and punishing any of the uniforms who disagreed with them.
Look, I'm not denying that Rumsfeld is an SOB, and I probably wouldn't last one day working for him. But do you really want a nice guy running Defense? And I'm not a military man, either. Imagine how Gen. Newbold or any of his cronies would respond to an enlisted man complaining the same way about his commanding officer, as they have been complaining about the Secretary of Defense. They'd laugh the man out of the service - after court-martialing him and sending him to Leavenworth for a stretch.
My point isn't to say that Gen. Newbold is a Democrat opportunist; I wouldn't know where his party loyalty lies. But I do think he is an opportunist. I think he grasped at certain talking points because they were the socialist MSM's conventional wisdom, and guaranteed him a hearing.
Had he instead said something like, 'The Bush Administration's obsession with a high-tech military deploying fewer boots, is inseparable from the inability of the voluntary military to meet its troop strength needs during a protracted war or wars, and its increasing reliance on female personnel who are then deployed in manners in violation both of Pentagon regulations and of military discipline, esprit de corps, and fighting ability,' do you think he'd have gotten a spread in Time magazine? If Newbold is so courageous, and claims that the Marines were undermanned, why won't he follow his criticism to its logical and political end, and call for the reinstatement of the draft?
Similarly, if he had admitted that the problem with disorder in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam wasn't the lack of boots on the ground, but the orders to engage in multicultural, powder-puff pacification that had Marines standing around, watching Iraqi thugs loot at will, Time's editors would have said, "Don't call us, we'll call you," hung up the phone, and said to each other, their eyes rolling, "What a fascist!"
The problem with political generals is that they are ... political.
Grounds for Zinnicism
Retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni has said, "We are paying the price for the lack of credible planning, or the lack of a plan ... Ten years worth of planning were thrown away; troop levels dismissed out of hand ... These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policy made back here. Don't blame the troops," and "Poor military judgment has been used throughout this mission."
Wait a minute. Either we had ten years of planning, or we had no plan. Zinni sounds like a propagandist trying to hit all the confused mental states of Bush-haters. I don't like the President, either, but I don't get hysterical about it ... yet.
Oh, well. Zinni's an old Clinton hand, so it's hardly surprising that he should criticize his political opponent. Indeed, according to New York Times reporters
David S. Cloud, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, in a surprisingly balanced article, the newest Fire Rumsfeld! campaign is being "spearheaded by, among others, General Zinni ..."
I don't know the other flag officers' party affiliation, though I'm sure they'd all say, "Independent." They're no politicians. Right.
Future generals imbibe politics at their mothers' breasts. And they didn't get where they are by not being able to figure out which way the wind is blowing.
The most interesting and disturbing case is that of Maj. Gen. John Riggs. Unlike his colleagues, he did not wait until retirement to criticize his civilian bosses, although that criticism was at the time less dramatic than it has since become.
In 2004, then-Lt. Gen. Riggs told Baltimore Sun reporter Tom Bowman that the Army was inadequately manned.
Soon thereafter, the Army initiated two separate investigations of the General, who was suspected of having violated regulations governing the use of civilian contractors, and of having had an adulterous love affair with one such civilian contractor.
In the UCMJ, adultery is a crime for which the punishment may include "confinement for one year, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and a dishonorable discharge." These days, however, adulterers are rarely prosecuted. If the affair was in the past, knowledge of it may impede one's career, as in the case of Gen. Joseph Ralston, who lost out on becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after admitting to having had such an affair. If the adultery is flagrant, however, and is continued despite the service member being ordered to end it, and the member in question lies about continuing the affair, as in the case of feminist Air Force Lieut. Kelly Flinn, one may be separated from the service.
Some readers will no doubt be shocked that adultery is still a crime in the UCMJ. If you don't like the laws, you can have them changed, but you cannot flaunt them at will, or encourage military personnel to flaunt them. Not unless, that is, your goal is to destroy military discipline.
The charge of adultery against Gen. Riggs was dismissed for lack of evidence (though the General's wife divorced him soon thereafter), while the charge of improper use of a civilian contractor for jobs that must be carried out by military officers, was upheld. The rebuke was so mild, however, that it was reportedly not even entered into the General's record. And yet, Army Secretary Les Brownlee demoted Lt. Gen. Riggs one full rank down to major general, costing the 39-year veteran - who had begun as a 19-year-old enlisted man - his honor and $10,000-15,000 per year in pension pay, and ordered him to immediately resign from the Army.
Gen. Riggs' supporters have argued that the real motivation behind the Army's actions was retaliation for his having publicly criticized Secretary Rumsfeld, and that Riggs should not have been demoted for an offense that was not even worthy of a mention in his personnel record.
Now, I'm the last guy in the world to relish stomping on a man who entered the service as a 19-year-old enlisted man, who served for almost forty years, and who made it all the way to three stars. But then-Lt. Gen. John Riggs had to know that he was slitting his own throat. He knew the rules. Why didn't he press his point with his civilian superiors in private - and then resign, if they ignored him, before shooting off his mouth?
Two possible reasons for Gen. Riggs' demotion and forced resignation stand out: 1. Although the Army couldn't prove he'd had an affair with the civilian contractor, it may have been convinced that he had done so, and made him pay the only way it could; or 2. The Army cashiered Gen. Riggs for his remarks to the press. According to the UCMJ, Secretary of the Army Brownlee would have been perfectly justified in firing Gen. Riggs for his remarks, though if that was the Secretary's motivation, he showed cowardice in conjuring up the contractor story.
The Pentagon is well aware that more than a few reporters covering the Pentagon hold the UCMJ in contempt, and that they and their editors have no intention of enlightening their readers about how military law diverges from the laws governing civilians. In addition, most mainstream socialist media outlets would lionize anyone who, in embarrassing a by them hated Republican administration, served the media's political objectives. Meanwhile, Gen. Riggs' supporters have been less than honorable or honest as flag officers in their defenses of him, in focusing solely on the charge of his misuse of a civilian contractor.
Fragging the Secretary
While I am tempted to believe that personal and collegial loyalty to Gen. Riggs plays a role in some Army generals' call for Rumsfeld's dismissal, a lot of these guys clearly have hated Rumsfeld's guts for some time.
In any event, hating your superior is no excuse for violating military law. (Otherwise, the communists who call on enlisted men to "frag" their commanding officers are in the right.) I see in the revolt of the generals yet another case of cowardice, and of the decline in military discipline, esprit de corps, and respect for military law. ("Fragging" involves murdering your commanding officer, typically by tossing or rolling a hand grenade at him from behind.)
The Point of Decision
As Michael Gilbert wrote in the April 23 Tacoma, WA News Tribune,
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Bill Harrison "said [the generals would] have more credibility with the public if they had stepped forward when they were still on active duty."
"We're taught in the Army that we are supposed to argue to the point of decision. Once the decision's been made, there are two things we can do: We can support the decision, or if we disagree, and it's a point of principle, we can resign."
If they thought Rumsfeld was leading us into folly, yet were so easily intimidated by him that they kept their own counsel, as they now say they did, they didn't deserve to be generals. And so they screwed up twice - in not disagreeing with Rumsfeld face to face while they were active duty and could influence him, and in now attacking him via the press. Indeed, is the admission by a military leader that he was intimidated by the Secretary of Defense an occasion to complain about the Secretary, or rather to make an embarrassed apology for one's own shortcomings?
When one man keeps quiet when he's supposed to talk, and starts running his mouth when it's too late, you call him a royal screw-up. (You know what I mean, but this is a family Web site.) What we have here is a gang of royal screw-ups.
Ed O'Keefe of ABC News reported that Gen. Richard Myers, who recently retired as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "repeatedly contested the recollections of the six generals who have spoken out against Rumsfeld. In press accounts, Newbold maintained that his pre-war criticism made Myers and others 'uncomfortable.' But on 'This Week,' Myers rebutted, 'That's not my memory of it; I never felt uncomfortable about anything Gen. Newbold said.... If there are people ... who have not spoken out,' Myers said, 'shame on them.'"
Myers told ABC News' ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "We gave [Rumsfeld] our best military advice. ... If we don't do that, we should be shot."
Sounds good to me, and not because Myers is a general. I've liked the guy for some time, particularly since he locked horns with Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN), who sought to bully him and demagogue the truth during the Senate's Abu Ghraib hearings two years ago.
Next column: But what about the military's First Amendment rights?
Technorati tags: law,
politics,
terrorism
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