Eleven Southern states are home to more than 500 groups that promote hate speech, according to a detailed breakdown by the Southern Poverty Law Center. But it’s California that is home to the largest number of organizations that preach hate, the center found.
The SPLC tracks 939 active groups that promote racial, ethnic or religious segregation or hate. The eight types of hate groups the center has identified include white nationalists, black separatists, neo-Confederates, Christian identity, skinheads, Ku Klux Klans and neo-Nazis, along with a handful of miscellaneous groups.
What getting older will do to you:
At 42, I see movies differently than I did as a kid. Ferris Bueller is now the story of a hard-working principal just trying to do his job. — @JElvisWeinstein
We’ve written a lot about the dangers of shipping extra-flammable oil in flimsy rail cars that are prone to puncture and explode. Turns out you can blame a fair bit of the problem on billionaire investor Warren Buffett. As the Sightline Institute’s blog reports, “Arguably, he is the single most important person in the world of oil-by-rail.”
It doesn’t take much scrutiny to see that oil trains get special treatment. After all, if a jet plane has a battery fire problem, regulators immediately pull it from service and will ground the entire fleet until the manufacturer makes modifications to reduce the risk of fire. If an auto regularly bursts into flame upon impact, the feds issue a recall and mandate retrofits for all the cars with the defect. Yet despite explosion after deadly explosion—and safety report after federal safety report—government regulators, at the urging of the industry groups that represent Buffett’s holdings, have allowed unsafe DOT-111s tank cars to haul crude oil and ethanol.
A recent study found that many Americans are lost when it comes to tech-related terms, with 11% saying that they thought HTML — a language that is used to create websites — was a sexually transmitted disease. [...]
• 27% identified “gigabyte” as an insect commonly found in South America. A gigabyte is a measurement unit for the storage capacity of an electronic device. [...] • 23% thought an “MP3″ was a “Star Wars” robot. It is actually an audio file. • 18% identified “Blu-ray” as a marine animal. It is a disc format typically used to store high-definition videos.
The Stockman campaign defied convention, often spectacularly so. He made what the Dallas Morning News called a “rare public appearance” on January 14, and then he disappeared. He wasn’t seen for days, during which time he missed 17 consecutive votes and his House office refused to say where he was. Then his staff switched gears, revealing that he had been in Russia, Egypt, and Israel and chiding American reporters for not paying attention to a press conference he’d held overseas. He came back in time for the State of the Union, only to theatrically storm out midway through.
His campaign office was literally condemned. His staff, such as it was, refused to alert reporters to upcoming public events, which may have been because there weren’t any.
According to a new analysis published in Environmental Research Letters, roughly 136 of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s 720 World Heritage Sites, including the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, the Tower of London, and much of Riga, Naples, Venice, and St. Petersburg, will be underwater within the next 2000 years. That’s assuming just a 3-degree Celsius temperature increase over that time period (a full list of the sites is available in the paper).
“We’ve got a crack team of lawyers, and trust me, if this was U.S. government property we’d be going after it.” Richard Kelly, who wrote a book on the San Francisco Mint, sees a further issue with the dates of the uncovered coins—they’re stamped 1847 to 1894, and he thinks ones taken from the mint would be dated nearer to 1901.
“We assume from the times and all the records that they were new coins [taken]. Back then, once coins were printed they flew out of the mint.”
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, it’s Joan McCarter day! Topics: Bachmann haz a sad about Jews; CIA watches their watchers; GunFAIL “Where Are They Now?”; AMA, minimum wage, immigration roundup; Reid vs Koch & Lindsey Graham’s Benghazi freakout.
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Who in his right mind wants more State? More politicians? More bribes for politicians? More fines, more law, more prison? More Bush, more Hillary, more lies, more war?
Time to wake up people! Regulation is what Big Business lobbies for all the time: it’s killing small and medium business, who don’t have the resources to comply.
80 Years of more regulation, more welfare has done nothing to end Plutocracy. 1% owns 43% of all assets! 50% of Americans have net zero assets or less!
Marxism was invented to consolidate Plutocratic control of the economy in the State, a World State, ultimately. Regulation is their tool.
Now consider this: - Usury redistributes up to 2 Trillion per year from the poorest 90% to the richest 10% in the US alone. - Even if you have no debts, you lose 40% of your income to Usury passed on in prices. - The Federal Reserve handed out 16 Trillion in easy credit to International Banks in 2008/2009. It cannot account for 9 Trillion of these. - The Federal Reserve is handing out 1 Trillion a year to the ultra rich in exchange for their busted derivatives. - Because of this ALL economic ‘growth’ of the last five years has gone not to the 1%, not to the 0.1% but to the 0,01%. - Banking crises have happened and happened again for centuries now. - Capitalism started in Amsterdam with the Amsterdamsche Wisselbank, the first major Central Bank in history. Its owners moved to Britain, where they founded the BoE in 1694, through which they ruled the world for centuries. Bretton Woods saw the migration of that class to the US. - Interest-free credit is a total no-brainer. YOU can have an interest free mortgage tomorrow. - Banks are the main sponsors of both the Dems and GOP. The left is no better than the right. - All major banks own each other and most Transnationals. It’s one massive, global cartel that owns all Governments.
So: if we have such a bleeding heart for the poor, when are we going stop palliating their wounds, caused by interest on loans of money, and actually DO something about their plight?
When are we going to tar and feather these maniacs in Wall Street and beyond?
When are we going to man up and relinquish our childish political affiliations of our younger years?
When are we going to circulate local currencies? Reform the monetary system?
The video below depicts an FSA Jihadist encouraging children to slaughter infidels. Bear in mind that these are the very terrorists that Zionist puppet Obama and his NATO whores are funding with your tax dollars. Our Zio controlled media refuses to expose the Fake Syrian Army’s ties to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist scum. Terrorists like this are brainwashing another generation of children to adhere to the lifestyle of Wahhabi hellholes like Saudi Arabia.
The Zionist controlled regimes of the West continue to fund these terrorists to wage a proxy war against the legitimately elected government of Syria. The goal of the Zionist puppet master is to eliminate another nation that resists the Terrorist State of Israel.
The FBI has just released its hate crime statistics report for 2012, and the numbers show that we as a nation still have a way to go toward alleviating these crimes that have such a devastating impact on communities.
For the 2012 time frame, law enforcement agencies reported 5,796 hate crime incidents involving 6,718 offenses, down from 2011 figures of 6,222 incidents involving 7,254 offenses. Also during 2012, there were 7,164 hate crime victims reported (which include individuals, businesses, institutions, and society as a whole), down from 7,713 in 2011.
48.3 percent of the 5,790 single-bias incidents were racially motivated, while 19.6 percent resulted from sexual orientation bias and 19 percent from religious bias.
Of the 7,164 hate crime victims, 55.4 percent were victims of crimes against persons and 41.8 percent were victims of crimes against property. The remaining 2.8 percent were victims of crimes against society (like drug offenses, gambling, and prostitution).
39.6 percent of the victims of crimes against persons suffered simple assaults, while 37.5 percent were intimidated and 21.5 percent were victims of aggravated assault. (Law enforcement also reported 10 murders and 15 rapes as hate crimes.)
An overwhelming majority—75.6 percent—of the victims of crimes against property were victimized by acts of destruction, damage, and/or vandalism.
Of the 5,331 known offenders, 54.6 percent were white and 23.3 percent were black.
Recent Changes to Hate Crime Data Collection
Beginning in January of this year, new UCR data collection methods allowed law enforcement to get even more specific when submitting bias motivation information. For example, as a result of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act, agencies can now report on crimes motivated by “gender identity” bias and “crimes committed by, and crimes directed against, juveniles.” And a federal directive enabled our UCR Program to expand and/or modify its data collection categories for race and ethnicity. (This enhanced 2013 hate crime data will be published in 2014.)
FBI’s Role in Combating Hate Crimes
In addition to our annual hate crime report—published to help provide a more accurate accounting of the problem—the FBI is the sole investigative force for criminal violations of federal civil rights statutes. As a matter of fact, hate crime is the number one priority in our civil rights program, and during 2012, we opened some 200 hate crime investigations.
But in addition to our investigations, we also work closely with our state and local partners on their investigations—offering FBI resources, forensic expertise, and experience in identifying and proving hate-based motivations. We participate in hate crime working groups around the country to help develop strategies that address local problems. And we conduct training for local law enforcement, minority and religious organizations, and community groups to reduce civil rights abuses.
Students at Langley High School in Langley, Virginia (All photos Richard A. Bloom)
Forget what you’ve read about the “Me, Me, Me Generation.” Here are four things you probably don’t know about the 95 million Americans born between 1982 and 2003:
Millennials, in general, are fiercely committed to community service.
They don’t see politics or government as a way to improve their communities, their country, or the world.
So the best and brightest are rejecting public service as a career path. Just as Baby Boomers are retiring from government and politics, Washington faces a rising-generation “brain drain.”
The only way Milliennials might engage Washington is if they first radically change it.
The first three conclusions are rooted in hard data I’ll share below. For a least a decade, experts have struggled to understand why civic-minded Millennials are rejecting public service and politics. Beyond the why, I wanted to understand what it means: What happens to U.S. politics over the next two or three decades if the best and bright of the next generation abandon Washington? So I talked to them – at elite public high schools in suburban Washington and Boston, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School for Government, and on Capitol Hill. In all, I conducted more than 80 interviews with Millennials as well as pollsters, demographers, and generational experts. They brought me to my fourth conclusion: What Millennials have in store for the political system is revolutionary. Maybe worse.
“They’ve been told all their lives to wait in line,” former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says. “But they’re of a mind to say, ‘OK, while I’m waiting in line I’ll blow your stuff up.”
You’ve heard the knocks against Millennials. They’re narcissistic, coddled, and lazy, not to mention spoiled. But there’s more to their story. The largest and most diverse generation in U.S. history is goal-orientated, respects authority and follows rules. Millennials are less ideological than their Baby Boom parents (more on that later) and far more tolerant. In addition to famously supporting gay rights, polls show they are less prone to cast negative moral judgments on interracial marriages, single women raising children, unmarried couples living together and mothers of young children working outside the home. While their parents and grandparents preferred to work alone, young Americans are team-oriented and seek collaboration. Wired to the world, they are more likely than past generations to see the globe’s problems as their own. Millennials are eager to serve the greater community through technologies, paradoxically, that empower the individual.
Speaking of technology, Millennials witnessed, embraced, and in some cases instigated massive disruptions of the music, television, movie, media, and retail industries. The most supervised and entitled generation in human history, they have no patience for inefficiency, stodgy institutions or the status quo. Consider what they could do to politics and government.
***
The good news is they want to serve.
“The Millennials have arrived, and they could rescue the civic health of our nation after decades of decline,” says John Bridgeland, CEO of Civic Enterprises, a national-service think tank. One of the nation’s foremost authorities on civic engagement, Bridgeland believes Millennials will be the next Greatest Generation, because, like the generation anointed by Tom Brokaw, they are products of an era of economic crisis and war, and are committed to community service.
The path to service usually goes like this: A Millennial’s parents fret that their precocious daughter can’t compete in a global economy without admission to a prestigious university. Volunteerism looks good on college applications, so twice a week they drive her to the local food pantry, where, starting in elementary school, she stocks shelves. When she gets to high school, community service is a requirement, because the superintendent’s appraisals are tied to college-admission rates.
Over time, a funny thing happens: The child actually likes community service. Data shows Millennials continue to volunteer into adulthood. Their reasons range from the practical (“It’s a great way to catch up with friends and help people,” a Concord, Massachusetts, high-school student told me) to the spiritual (“It just makes me feel better about myself,” said a 23-year-old politico at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.).
The National Conference on Citizenship reported in 2009 that Millennials “lead the way in volunteering” with a 43 percent service rate, compared to only 35 percent for Baby Boomers. According to research conducted for Harvard’s Institute of Politics, more than one-third of Americans ages 18-29 report that they volunteered for community service in the last year. Among college students, the volunteerism rate is a remarkable 53 percent, of which 41 percent say they serve at least a few times a month. The IOP has found similar levels of service since the project began in 2000.
Millennials also have an outsized sense of purpose. “Young Americans are more concerned with the importance of their work than the salary attached to it,” according to a study by the Government Business Council, the research arm of The Atlantic’s sister publication Government Executive. “In the 2011 National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Student Survey, college students revealed that the ability to improve the community ranks almost as highly as a strong starting salary when searching for their first job.”
***
But how do they hope to serve? Matt Kissling teaches government at Langley High School, an elite public school in suburban Washington that caters to the sons and daughters of U.S. congressmen, ambassadors, and Cabinet members. If his students aren’t the best and brightest, they’re close enough. So I asked them: “How many of you volunteer in your community?”
Every student raised a hand.
“I teach autistic kids to ride horses,” Morgan Wallace said.
“Me, too,” said Ashley Morabito. They’re all chirping now:
“I work at a food pantry.”
“ … at my church.”
“Tutor reading …”
“… and teach English.”
“But how many of you think traditional public service is the best way to help your community and country?” I asked. “In other words, how many of you will make a career in politics or government?”
Not a hand went up. No chirping. Nothing — the only noise in the abruptly silent room was the electronic hum of a fluorescent light. Finally, Shayan Ghahramani, a student, whispered, “Is this a joke?”
It wasn’t. But it was telling. The Harvard IOP study, “Survey of Young Americans’ Attitudes Toward Politics and Public Service,” published on April 30, suggests Millennials are increasingly negative and cynical about the political process.
Nearly three in five young Americans agree that elected officials seem motivated by “selfish reasons,” an increase of 5 points since 2010.
Fifty-six percent agree that “elected officials don’t have the same priorities that I have,” a 5-point increase.
Nearly half agree that “politics has become too partisan,” up 2 points.
Nearly one-third agree that “political involvement rarely has any tangible results,” up 5 points.
More to the point, 47 percent of young Americans agree that “politics today are no longer able to meet the challenges out country is facing.” Only 16 percent disagree.
How deep is the disengagement? I spent two days at Harvard, and couldn’t find a single student whose career goal is Washington or elective office. One wouldn’t expect to hear this at the Kennedy School of Government. “Government and politics,” said graduate student Sara Estill, “holds little or no attraction for us.”
John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard’s IOP, said there was a moment between the reelection campaigns of George W. Bush and Barack Obama when the case could have been made to Millennials that government is transcendent. “But instead, they came of age in a period of polarization and gridlock,” said Della Volpe, who is otherwise sympathetic to Obama. “The president they supported could not overcome it.”
Kennedy School grad student Chike Aguh told me: “Politics just doesn’t seem relative to a lot of us and our world. Since the Great Society, tell me one big thing that has come out of Washington. Results are important to us, and sadly, politics isn’t a place for results.”
***
After World War II, millions of the young Americans who would be known as the Greatest Generation found work in swelling government bureaucracies. Many entered elective office. Millennials, however, are much less likely to exercise their sense of civic purpose through public service, and that’s bad news for good governance.
As Baby Boomers approach retirement, the federal government will need to hire more than 200,000 highly skilled workers for a range of critical jobs. A successful transition depends on the interest of the 95 million Millennials — a pool larger than the Boomers by nearly 20 million people. The Government Business Council recently reported that while Millennials make strong candidates for public service, fewer of them are pursuing government jobs than in past years. In short, they are opting out of government.
College students increasingly prefer the private sector, graduate school, or non-profit work, according to the Partnership for Public Service’s analysis of the 2011 National Association for Colleges and Employers Student Survey. In 2008, 8.4 percent of students planned to work for local, state, and federal governments after graduation. That number reached an all-time high of 10.2 percent during the 2009 recession, before dropping to 7.4 percent in 2010.
Now, just 6 percent of college students plan to work for public sector institutions, and only 2.3 percent want to work at the federal level.
And that’s just the bureaucrats. When top-shelf talent abhors politics, it stands to reason that the pool of political candidates gets shallower. “I want to change the world,” said grad student Brian Chialinsky at the Kennedy School. “I can’t do that in elective office.”
In their landmark books on Millennials, the sociologists Morley Winograd and Michael Hais compare young Americans today to other great “civic generations” that cycle through U.S. history every eight decades, starting with the Founding Fathers and including the generation that elected Abraham Lincoln and of course the Greatest Generation that won World War II. Raised in troubled times, “as adults, they focus on resolving social challenges and building institutions,” Winograd and Hais write in their recent Millennial Momentum. The authors believe Millennials have the makings to be the next great generation.
The trouble is that Millennials believe traditional politics and government (especially Washington) are the worst avenues to great things. They are more likely to be social entrepreneurs, working outside government to create innovative and measurably successful solutions to the nation’s problems, even if only on a relatively small scale. One is Matt Morgan, a Kennedy School student, who launched a website that helps readers respond to articles with political action. “There are so many problems Washington can’t fix that we can,” he says. Another is his classmate Sarah Estill, who wants to provide police departments with technology to fighting crime. “For my generation there are more ways we can effect change than in the past — more tools in the toolbox,” she said. “Why not use all of them?” A generation ago, government had a monopoly on public service. To Millennials, the world is filled with injustice and need, but government isn’t the solution. They have apps for that.
***
So will elite Millennials abandon Washington?
Nicco Mele believes so. A Kennedy School professor who oversaw the groundbreaking digital strategy for 2004 Democratic candidate Howard Dean, Mele said it’s already happening — and it’s a devastating development. “These kids are starting their own things at a rapid rate — in part because there isn’t much of a job for them in the old institutions,” he told me. “If you’re a super-talented, super-smart 22-year-old and it looks like you need to take an unpaid internship and lick envelopes to get into a field you’re interested in, forget it. Better to start something new.” Mele is an investor in ShoutAbout.org, Morgan’s website.
In a book he published this spring, The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath, Mele warns that governments, political parties, corporations and other national institutions are crumbling before the power of the individual and the “radical connectivity” of technology. “Should present trends go unchecked,” Mele writes, “it is easy to imagine a nightmare scenario of social breakdown.”
While that may be the extreme scenario, Mele and other experts on the Millennial Generation say they can easily envision a future without a two-party system. The GOP and (less likely) the Democratic Party could die. Government itself, Mele says, may shed its hierarchical 20th-century approach and evolve into a mere “platform” that creates room for groups of citizens to do start-up ad-hoc projects or for small government groups to provide services in a coordinated manner.
California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a forward thinker on digital-age governance, says a Millennial government will be peer-to-peer: ideas and actions bubbling up from citizens. “We need to acknowledge that for a whole generation of Americans under the age 30,” Newsom writes in his book, Citizensville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government, “their reality is not like the reality of the over-30s grew up with.”
This is what Steele had in mind when the former GOP chair told me to watch the scene in Iron Man 3 when Tony Stark takes a fistful of data about a criminal investigation and throws it onto a 3D screen, where it disaggregates into a collage of microbytes. Using these electronic puzzle pieces, Stark assembles a better picture of who carried out the crime and why. “That scene tells you all you need to know about what Millennials are poised to do to Washington,” Steele told me. “They are going to destroy the old silos, scatter their elements to the wind, and reassemble them in ways that make sense for them and the new century.”
Predicting the future of U.S. politics is risky business. But this much is certain: In a Millennial world, nothing will be sacred. “Millennials will produce radical reconstruction of civil institutions and government,” says Michelle Diggles, a senior policy adviser at the Democratic think-tank Third Way and an expert in demographics and generational politics.
Diggles is the first to admit that, contrary to conventional wisdom, her party does not have a lock on the youth vote — and thus Democrats are not immune to the withering forces of generational change. For instance, she says, 51 percent of Millennials believe that when government runs something it is usually wasteful and inefficient, up from 31 percent in 2003 and 42 percent in 2009: “Hardly a ringing endorsement for a bigger government providing more services.” There’s more: 86 percent of Millennials support private Social Security accounts and 74 percent would change Medicare so people can buy private insurance. Sixty-three percent believe free trade is a good thing. Only 38 percent of Millennials support affirmative action.
In 2008, President Obama spoke directly and successfully to the Millennial experience. But his inability to overcome polarization and gridlock has cost the president support among young Americans (even if they blame the GOP for Washington dysfunction). Not only did Obama’s share of the youth vote decline from 66 percent to 60 percent, but fewer young people participated (45 percent turnout in 2012 compared to 51 percent in 2008), according to Harvard pollster Della Volpe. The drop was most pronounced in swing states where Obama didn’t target and mobilize his voters.
Of course, young Americans tend to like the GOP even less. That’s why a plurality of Millennials (45 percent) describes their affiliation as independent this year, an increase of 6 points just since 2008. Winograd and Hais predict that the next generation of voters will reject traditional liberalism and conservatism. “The Millennial civic ethos,” they wrote, “will instead allow for both consensus and customization.”
Diggles agreed: “This tension – two parties thinking they are in the trenches dueling it out, and a burgeoning generation who reject trench warfare altogether is, for me, the key. Washington doesn’t get that change isn’t just a slogan. It’s about to become a reality.”
“Neither party,” she said, “gets what’s coming down the pike.”
What’s coming are kids like Shayan, the keen-minded Langley High senior who laughed at my question about public service. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen to government and politics when we get ahold of them.” he told me. “We’ll destroy them.”
Shayan paused to let me stew on that a bit before shrugging his shoulders as if to tell this Baby Boom reporter: It’s not the end of the world, old man – just the end of your world. “The thing about social institutions is when you destroy them,” Shayan said, “they get rebuilt eventually, in a different form for a different time.”
Abhorrence of Congress is not new. “To my mind,” Mark Twain wrote in a long-ago letter to the editor of a New York newspaper, “Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman.” That was in 1873. Twenty-four years later, Twain’s opinion of the denizens of Capitol Hill hadn’t modulated. Congress, he quipped, was the only “distinctly native American criminal class.”
It was Twain’s friend and biographer, Albert B. Paine, who documented another famous Twain witticism: “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
So there’s nothing novel about ridiculing the honesty and intelligence of the representatives we send to Washington — and the record shows that Americans were always predisposed to get the gag.
Today, however, it’s no joke. Barring a miracle, the 113th Congress will go down as the least-popular in history. This past week, the venerable Gallup polling organization reminds us that we are living in a time of unprecedented contempt for the elected officials that we, the people, send to Washington. The Gallup survey released Tuesday showed that 81 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job, with 14 percent approving.
This isn’t quite as low as last February, when 10 percent of respondents were positively disposed toward their elected representatives, but as Gallup reported, Congress is now on its way to a fourth straight year of sub-20-percent approval. To put this in perspective, no president has ever been below 20 percent; most don’t ever drop below 30.
Although a few mischievous pollsters have had fun revealing that Congress ranks below lice, cockroaches, colonoscopies and root canals, the commentariat views Congress’ unpopularity as a very bad thing.
Keith Lee Rupp, a former congressional aide, has posed the following question: “What happens when we are faced with another national crisis — a declaration of war, a need to investigate presidential wrongdoing on the scale of Watergate, or something the likes of which we haven’t faced before — and the institution we depend on doesn’t have the respect of one-tenth of the population?”
I’d argue that what Rupp fears has already happened. During George W. Bush’s second term, a sharp partisan divide developed in this country — and in the halls of Congress — concerning the wisdom of the war in Iraq. Launched by a Republican president, this war was not supported by either rank-and-filed Democrats or their elected officials. And Democrats in Congress do not seem interested in investigating the current administration’s stonewalling on Benghazi or the lies told by IRS officials about its harassment of conservative nonprofit groups.
This raises the question of whether something like the Senate Watergate Committee could even happen today. Richard Nixon was not investigated by congressional Democrats. He was investigated by congressional Democrats and Republicans.
But instead of discussing the implications of this polarization together, and agreeing to tackle them, Republicans and Democrats comfort themselves by asserting that their unpopularity is an illusion. Many of those who detest Congress are liberals perpetually peeved at House Speaker John Boehner and his fellow Republicans for undermining Obamacare and continually battling with President Obama. Another huge portion of the disillusioned includes conservatives who detest the direction of the Democratic-controlled Senate on issues ranging from illegal immigration to taxes. Compared with a poll on presidential popularity, then, the disaffected are essentially being double-counted.
Moreover, in the Senate, most conservative “red” states are represented by Republicans; most of the “blue” states by Democrats. Likewise, House members tend to be popular in their carefully tailored districts — even as the institution takes a beating. The real villain, therefore, is divided government. That’s what the members tell themselves, anyway.
When RCP congressional reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns asked Idaho Republican Rep. Raul Labrador about Congress’ unpopularity recently, he shrugged.
“If you look at every one of us individually, in our individual districts, I would bet you that every one of us — Democrats and Republicans – [has] a higher poll number rating than [Obama] does in any of our individual districts,” he said. “So I think that poll is actually meaningless because it means different things to different people. Republicans are going to be unhappy because we can’t get anything passed. Democrats are going to be unhappy because they can’t get their agenda passed. So, of course, the vast majority of American people are frustrated.”
Labrador is actually not accurate about Democratic districts — the president is quite popular there — although his broader point is accurate. Still, he and most of the rest of them are missing the big picture.
In Bill Clinton’s second term, the Republican-controlled House headed pell-mell into a presidential impeachment that was solidly opposed by two-thirds of the country. Here was the rub: When those GOP House members went home to their districts, they found passionate support for impeaching Clinton, and anger at any Republican who dared to demur. Gerrymandering, and its many ripple effects, is the true source of our discontent.
Abhorrence of Congress is not new. “To my mind,” Mark Twain wrote in a long-ago letter to the editor of a New York newspaper, “Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman.” That was in 1873. Twenty-four years later, Twain’s opinion of the denizens of Capitol Hill hadn’t modulated. Congress, he quipped, was the only “distinctly native American criminal class.”
It was Twain’s friend and biographer, Albert B. Paine, who documented another famous Twain witticism: “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
So there’s nothing novel about ridiculing the honesty and intelligence of the representatives we send to Washington — and the record shows that Americans were always predisposed to get the gag.
Today, however, it’s no joke. Barring a miracle, the 113th Congress will go down as the least-popular in history. This past week, the venerable Gallup polling organization reminds us that we are living in a time of unprecedented contempt for the elected officials that we, the people, send to Washington. The Gallup survey released Tuesday showed that 81 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job, with 14 percent approving.
This isn’t quite as low as last February, when 10 percent of respondents were positively disposed toward their elected representatives, but as Gallup reported, Congress is now on its way to a fourth straight year of sub-20-percent approval. To put this in perspective, no president has ever been below 20 percent; most don’t ever drop below 30.
Although a few mischievous pollsters have had fun revealing that Congress ranks below lice, cockroaches, colonoscopies and root canals, the commentariat views Congress’ unpopularity as a very bad thing.
Keith Lee Rupp, a former congressional aide, has posed the following question: “What happens when we are faced with another national crisis — a declaration of war, a need to investigate presidential wrongdoing on the scale of Watergate, or something the likes of which we haven’t faced before — and the institution we depend on doesn’t have the respect of one-tenth of the population?”
I’d argue that what Rupp fears has already happened. During George W. Bush’s second term, a sharp partisan divide developed in this country — and in the halls of Congress — concerning the wisdom of the war in Iraq. Launched by a Republican president, this war was not supported by either rank-and-filed Democrats or their elected officials. And Democrats in Congress do not seem interested in investigating the current administration’s stonewalling on Benghazi or the lies told by IRS officials about its harassment of conservative nonprofit groups.
This raises the question of whether something like the Senate Watergate Committee could even happen today. Richard Nixon was not investigated by congressional Democrats. He was investigated by congressional Democrats and Republicans.
But instead of discussing the implications of this polarization together, and agreeing to tackle them, Republicans and Democrats comfort themselves by asserting that their unpopularity is an illusion. Many of those who detest Congress are liberals perpetually peeved at House Speaker John Boehner and his fellow Republicans for undermining Obamacare and continually battling with President Obama. Another huge portion of the disillusioned includes conservatives who detest the direction of the Democratic-controlled Senate on issues ranging from illegal immigration to taxes. Compared with a poll on presidential popularity, then, the disaffected are essentially being double-counted.
Moreover, in the Senate, most conservative “red” states are represented by Republicans; most of the “blue” states by Democrats. Likewise, House members tend to be popular in their carefully tailored districts — even as the institution takes a beating. The real villain, therefore, is divided government. That’s what the members tell themselves, anyway.
When RCP congressional reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns asked Idaho Republican Rep. Raul Labrador about Congress’ unpopularity recently, he shrugged.
“If you look at every one of us individually, in our individual districts, I would bet you that every one of us — Democrats and Republicans – [has] a higher poll number rating than [Obama] does in any of our individual districts,” he said. “So I think that poll is actually meaningless because it means different things to different people. Republicans are going to be unhappy because we can’t get anything passed. Democrats are going to be unhappy because they can’t get their agenda passed. So, of course, the vast majority of American people are frustrated.”
Labrador is actually not accurate about Democratic districts — the president is quite popular there — although his broader point is accurate. Still, he and most of the rest of them are missing the big picture.
In Bill Clinton’s second term, the Republican-controlled House headed pell-mell into a presidential impeachment that was solidly opposed by two-thirds of the country. Here was the rub: When those GOP House members went home to their districts, they found passionate support for impeaching Clinton, and anger at any Republican who dared to demur. Gerrymandering, and its many ripple effects, is the true source of our discontent.
Given the Department of Justice’s current track record – the IRS Scandal, Fast and Furious, subpoenaing the press, and other law bending activities – it is not surprising that it would reach inside its own organization and blatantly overstep the First Amendment rights of employees.
John Tate is the President of Campaign for Liberty, a grassroots lobbying organization dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a noninterventionist foreign policy.
Governor Bob McDonnell is a shining example of why Virginians are fed up with politicians in both parties. McDonnell campaigned in 2009 on a platform of smaller government and low taxes, even telling voters, “I have no plans to raise taxes.” Yet last weekend, Governor McDonnell went back on his pledge in order to ram through a devastating $ 6.1 billion transportation tax increase on all Virginians.
Whereas once Virginia Republicans campaigned on eliminating the car tax, many voted last weekend to increase the titling tax on new car sales by 43% and raise personal property taxes by a whopping 23%. They also raised taxes on every single man, woman, and child in Virginia by increasing the sales tax, with residents in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads even paying an additional amount on top of the new rate for the rest of the state. McDonnell apparently believes the nearly $ 350 million combined state and local property taxes Virginia collects each year isn’t enough.
Governor McDonnell also claims this bill will reduce gas prices, but the new wholesale tax on gas paid by distributors is guaranteed to be passed on to consumers through rising prices at the pump.
All in all, Governor McDonnell’s bill raised state sales taxes, car taxes, regional sales taxes, vehicle and personal property taxes, vending machine taxes, heavy equipment taxes, commercial taxes, hotel taxes, hybrid vehicle taxes, and diesel fuel taxes. For those keeping score at home, that is ten different tax hikes, courtesy of a Governor who, as previously stated, won office proclaiming he had no plans to raise taxes.
This comes at a time when Virginians are already struggling under a still-rocky economy, increased taxes, and stifling regulations coming from Washington. We already saw our paychecks shrink in January with the two percent payroll tax increase, and higher health care premiums due to ObamaCare are threatening to make health care even more unaffordable.
Complicit Republicans coaxed on by “Tax Hike Bob” were so eager to usher in this massive tax increase that they were even willing to sell out to the Democrats and open the door to making Virginia a willing accomplice in ObamaCare by expanding Medicaid. Not only is Medicaid a bad deal for taxpayers – it already consumes a quarter of Virginia’s budget and is growing faster each year – it is a bad deal for enrollees. A study by the University of Virginia found that individuals on Medicaid had worse health care outcomes than even patients who had no insurance at all.
Higher costs for worse outcomes? Governor Bob McDonnell said yes, hurting taxpayers and the poor in the process.
But Tax Hike Bob wasn’t content to grab more from taxpayers’ wallets through Richmond alone. McDonnell’s deal also depends on increased revenue from Congress raising taxes on all Americans by passing the Internet Sales Tax Mandate and imposing costly regulations on our nation’s job creators.
The current proposal in Congress would require Internet companies to collect sales taxes for states in which they have no physical presence. And if that revenue never materializes by the end of 2015, the wholesale gas tax will go up further to cover the difference. Conveniently for tax-raisers, there is no mechanism to reverse this increase if Congress instead passes an Internet Sales Tax Mandate in 2016 or beyond.
Virginia taxpayers deserve better. Voters elected Bob McDonnell in 2009 because they were worried about massive spending and taxes and wanted someone they thought would limit government interference in their lives. He has now become the poster child for hypocritical politicians who will say anything to attain power. McDonnell’s campaign rhetoric of not raising taxes has morphed into hardworking Virginians being left to pay the price for his sellout as he exits office.
It is abundantly clear Governor McDonnell has ambitions for higher office. He campaigned heavily for Mitt Romney in Iowa and other early primary states last year and was often whispered to be a Vice Presidential contender. But if the Governor thinks voters will conveniently forget about his massive tax hike, he is mistaken. Campaign for Liberty and other groups will be here to remind them.
Unfortunately for Tax Hike Bob, what he views as his legacy is only an albatross he will be forced to wear around his neck in shame.
At 42, I see movies differently than I did as a kid. Ferris Bueller is now the story of a hard-working principal just trying to do his job.
Real Currencies – by Anthony Migchels
