David Hogberg publishes a letter from the Council on Affordable Health Insurance to CBS, regarding CBS’ loose attachment to the facts of individual health insurance. Quite educational.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 25, 2007

An Open Letter to CBS News

Alexandria, VA –Today, the Council for Affordable Health Insurance released the following statement from Dr. Merrill Matthews in response to CBS’s report on the individual health insurance market.

An Open Letter to CBS News:

The recent two-part CBS investigative series on the individual health insurance market is so biased that it almost appears intended to mislead.

The series clearly tries to convey two messages: that it is very hard for people to buy a health insurance policy in the individual (i.e., non-group) market, and that if they are fortunate to be given a policy, that policy won’t pay for needed care.

Currently, there are nearly 18 million Americans who have policies in the individual market (the vast majority of people get their coverage either through their employer or the government). Couldn’t CBS find at least one who is satisfied with his coverage?

If nothing else, CBS could have asked me. My family had an individual policy for several years and was quite satisfied with it, and it had to cover a few relatively expensive therapies.

Or take the assertion, based on a Commonwealth Fund study, that 89 percent of those seeking coverage in the individual market were denied coverage or couldn’t afford it. How do those numbers correspond to reality? If nearly 90 percent can’t find or afford coverage in the individual market, and there are 18 million Americans currently with individual-market coverage, that must mean there’s some 160 million Americans — more than half the population — who tried to get individual coverage, but failed. However, there are 45 million uninsured Americans, and, as health policy people know, many of them are young and healthy.

I know your “investigative reporters” aren’t necessarily economists or math majors, but you really do need to pay a little more attention to the numbers.

A few years ago the Council for Affordable Health Insurance asked its member companies selling in the individual market to compile their rates of acceptance and rejection, and give those findings to a national accounting firm to protect anonymity. Here’s what we found:

* Nearly 70 percent of the applicants were issued a health insurance policy at standard rates;

* Only 7 percent were declined for medical reasons;

* Another 11.7 percent were declined for non-medical reasons, such as failing to fill out the application form completely or failing to send in a check with the application;

* And 12 percent were issued a policy either with some restrictions and/or a higher premium.

These are real people who received real coverage.

Of course, one of your primary messages is that health insurers deny coverage to uninsured applicants who have a medical condition. Can we expect you to do a follow-up story on life insurers who reject applications from people diagnosed with a terminal illness, or an insurer selling homeowners policies who deny coverage to someone whose house is burning down?

In any individual insurance market — whether health, life, auto, or property and casualty — insurers assess the status of the applicant; and they typically don’t issue coverage for some incident that has already occurred. And for a very good reason: If people could buy a homeowners policy after their house burned down, no one would buy it earlier. The insurance pool would be very small and very expensive.

Seven states have laws that require health insurers in the individual market to accept anyone who applies. The result? The policies are the most expensive in the country because the health insurance pool is very small since only sick people with expensive medical conditions choose to buy the coverage.

And you say nothing about people who might remain uninsured, wanting to save the money, and then try to game the system in order to get coverage. While that may be a small percentage of the applicants, it does happen.

Of course, the “uninsurables” do need access to health insurance, and 34 states have established high risk pools, which are primarily funded by assessing health insurers, to provide that coverage. Because these are state-created entities, some work better than others. But most state high risk pools provide the uninsurables with a choice of policies at premiums that, while higher than a standard policy, are much cheaper than if these individuals paid an “actuarially fair” premium.

By failing to include any of this material in your report, you convey a biased and negative impression of the individual health insurance market and the insurers that provide that coverage. Given the millions of people in the market, mistakes are surely made both
by insurers and applicants. But your report made no effort at being balanced.

It would be like an investigative reporter focusing on, say, the incidents surrounding Dan Rather and CBS’s reporting on the president’s military service. That development did not go well for CBS. Shouldn’t that error be weighed against the countless good stories to emerge from CBS News?

Unfortunately, the type of even-handedness you would want for yourself, you failed to provide the individual health insurance market. If CBS News is wondering why it is trailing in the polls, or why the public is increasingly going other places for their news, you might start with the way you approach your stories.

Merrill Matthews, Ph.D.
Council for Affordable Health Insurance

Since a conference of the British University and College Union voted yesterday 158-99 to send a resolution to its branches for “a comprehensive and consistent boycott” of all Israeli academic institutions to protest Israel’s “40-year occupation of Palestinian land,” an Israeli academic at the University of Haifa, Steven Plaut, surfaced a remarkable tongue-in cheek archeological find:

Posted 5/31/2007 02:27:00 PM
1. A CALL FOR BOYCOTT AND DIVESTMENT
by Steven Plaut
Prof. Haifa Univ.
We thought you would be interested in the following document, uncovered by archeologists in Britain. It is a statement that was issued by the Union of British University Lecturers in the year 1938, and was endoxrsed by the civil servants union of Canada, by the Presbyterian Church, and by a host of progressive Jewish professors.
In the interests of history scholarship and accuracy, we reprint the
document here in full:
A Call for Divestment in Czechoslovakia
From the Union of British University Lecturers February 12, 1938
Dear Learned Comrades:
The Union of British University Lecturers is calling upon lovers of
justice and peace throughout the world to boycott all official
institutions of Czechoslovakia and especially the Czechoslovak
universities. While we have tried other forms of persuasion, the racist regime in Czechoslovakia continues to abuse the human rights of the country.s ethnic Germans, denying the Sudeten Germans their right to self-determination.

As was declared by our representatives to the recent goodwill conference held in Berlin, sent there to express out friendship and understanding for the Reich.s peace proposals, we must unambiguously denounce the racist apartheid regime that has long been operating in Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak colonialists are illegally occupying the lands of the Sudeten Germans. This occupation must end.

In recent months the Sudeten victims of Bohemian occupation have launched a protest movement, which we fully endorse. Regretfully, some the victims of occupation have also engaged in terrorist activities directed against the Czechoslovak apartheid regime. We believe that blame for this should not be assigned to the victims of racism, the Sudetens, and understand the desperation that underlies these Sudeten German operations. Indeed, we urge peace-loving states and churches around the world to join the authorities in Berlin in providing funding to the political groups now operating among the Sudetens and representing them.

Recently, the main political group speaking on behalf of the Sudetens has been the Sudeten-German Party (SdP), headed by Konrad Henlein. While some in the world are justifying the Czechoslovak decision not to conduct negotiations with the SdP because of its openly nazi orientation, we demand that Czechoslovakia open immediate talks with it. After all, the SdP enjoys the popular support of the bulk of the Sudeten population and refusal to conduct negotiations with it is anti-democratic. And besides, who are the Czechs to dictate which party and leaders should represent the Sudeten people?

Oppressed people unfortunately often are forced into use of violence. And in this case, the Sudetens were victimized by Czechoslovak state terrorism and racism for well over a generation.

So what if Czechoslovakia has free and open elections, freedom of speech,and other manifestations of liberal democracy? We consider Czechoslovakia to be a phony democracy, with false freedoms existing only on paper, so long as the Sudeten Germans are second-class citizens. That is why we cooperate with the anti-apartheid groups and movements operating within the Third Reich, which are heralding the struggle against Czechoslovak oppression of Germans.

Sure, the Czechoslovak political leaders have offered to consider some forms of local autonomy for the Sudetens. But these offers are humiliating and amount to little more than the creation of German Bantustans for the Sudetens, who would continue to suffer from Czechoslovakian domination.

Why should the Sudetens be denied complete self-determination and the
control of their own state and army? Why are Sudetens any less entitled to statehood than Czechs and Slovakians? So what if the German Reich already controls most of Central Europe? That should not preclude the rights of the Sudetens to have their own state? Czechoslovakian universities must be boycotted because of their collaboration with the racist regime in Prague!

The universities continue to discriminate against Germans by conducting their classes in Czech, and by refusing to allow swastika banners to be hoisted on campus. We have also received reports that there were attempts in one university to expel a pro-German professor, although those attempts failed. Another university conducts courses in a satellite campus located inside occupied Sudetenland!

Accordingly, we believe that researchers and scholars at Czechoslovakian universities need to be taught a firm lesson. This can only be accomplished using the same divestment tactics that were so successfully utilized in other struggles, such as against the Italian conquest of Ethiopia.

Part of the statement for divestment includes this: .Czechoslovakia
continues to grab the lands of the Sudeten people for ever-expanding
Bohemian settlements, building Czechoslovakian-only roadways, and the
construction of a giant wall and fence that is confiscating a significant portion of the Sudeten land. 83% of the Sudetenland water has been taken for Czechoslovakian use, leaving Sudetens with desperate water shortages.

Czechoslovakia has destroyed the homes of more than 28,000 Sudetens in four and a half years. Hundreds of thousands of ancient fir trees and vast tracts of agricultural land have also been destroyed..

The Union of British University Lecturers has also voted for and hereby demands the divesting of funds from all companies that support the Czechoslovak occupation of the Sudeten Territories. Our resolution contains statements of action:
- That a committee be convened in the conference to create and maintain a list of companies that support in a significant way the Czechoslovak occupation of Sudeten territories. The list will be delivered to all university associations, conference churches and conference investment managers.
- We call upon Czechoslovakia, as well as the U.S. government, Britain, the government of Poland, and the newly-elected Sudeten leadership to respect all people and find solutions based on international law and human rights.
- We affirm the right of Sudeten Germans to freedom of movement in all lands, and believe that Prague should be declared an open city for people of all faiths and creeds.

Peace can yet be achieved. Boycott Czechoslovakia Now!

Leading British academics and organizations have commented thusly on the latest call for boycott:

But the decision taken at the inaugural UCU national conference in Bournemouth was condemned by the Russell group of research-led universities, the National Union of Students and organisations with an interest in Israel and academic free speech.
In a hard-hitting statement, the Russell group "rejected outright" the boycott call.

Its chairman, Prof Malcolm Grant, who is also president and provost of University College London, said: "It is a contradiction in terms and in direct conflict with the mission of a university.
"It betrays a misunderstanding of the academic mission, which is founded squarely on freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech.
"Any institution worthy of the title of university has the responsibility to protect these values, and it is particularly disturbing to find an academic union attacking academic freedom in this way."

Prof Grant promised that its universities "will uphold academic freedom by standing firm against any boycott that threatens it".
Meanwhile, the executive director of the International Advisory Board for Academic Freedom (IAB), Ofir Frankel, accused the union of allowing itself "to act as a one-sided player in Middle Eastern politics".

He said: "The IAB is amazed that the extremists that led their union to such an initiative decided not to discuss the option to pass this initiative to a vote of all 120,000 members, a decision that could have allowed the majority to rescue their union from this discriminatory action by reharnessing the values of academic freedom, discourse and debate, as their own general secretary suggested."

The chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, Jeremy Newmark, described the union's decision as "an assault on academic freedom" that "damages the credibility of British academia as a whole". He called for the union to organise a full membership ballot before introducing any boycott.

The decision by the UCU was also condemned by the Academic Friends of Israel, which accused the union of having "failed to support the wishes of its membership".

Criticism of the UCU decision also came from student organisations.
The president of the National Union of Students, Gemma Tumelty, said it did not support the principles behind an academic boycott of Israel because it "undermines the Israeli academics who support Palestinian rights". It also "hinders the building of bridges between Israelis and Palestinians".

She added: "Retaining dialogue on all sides will be crucial in obtaining a lasting peace in the Middle East. International academics have a lot to offer higher education students in the UK and a boycott of this specific country is extremely worrying.

Israel should not be another Czechoslovakia, surrendered to foes of freedom and sanity.

What do 1940, 1948, 1964, 2000, and 2008 have in common?

Answer: The United States was facing large-scale involvement in difficult wars, and wasn’t prepared militarily nor by our presidents. Indeed, our presidents elected in those years won by promising to keep us out of war, though responsible to know better.

Wait. How did 2008 get in there?

The United States still faces a long haul in Iraq and an even longer war over both the future of the Mideast and of our security at home, while the potential for conflict in Asia mounts with China’s rapidly expanding military capabilities and essential economic and humanitarian threats rise due to kleptocracies, whether bald-faced or ideologically cloaked, in Africa and Latin America.

Yet, aside from kicking the in-Iraq troop level or burdens about for immediate political points, some candidates are speaking about incremental troop-level increases but no candidate for 2008 is prominently talking about the truly large-scale military build-up needed. It’s just not politically expedient.

A new AEI publication on land forces points out the simple truths about required land forces:

The experience of the past five years has at least taught us how much is not enough. Through the post-9/11 years, the number of soldiers in the active-duty Army--regulars plus activated reservists--has hovered between 600,000 and 625,000. Fully 40 percent of this force is deployed abroad. Active Marine strength is 180,000; the Marines rely less directly on their reserves. This "total land force" of about 800,000 has been strained to its limits to sustain the demands of ongoing operations. And, as the "surges" in Iraq and Afghanistan make clear, there has been a long-neglected need for larger deployments; we have fought our wars on the cheap.

The Bush administration's plans for expansion, outlined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in January, do little to solve the basic problem. The Gates Plan would increase the size of the regular Army to 547,000; the best that can be said is that it might lighten the burden on the reserves, but the ability to sustain a surge level of effort would be very much in doubt. Also, the pace of the Gates Plan is slow: The expansion timetable stretches to 2012. Recently retired Army chief of staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, in his final congressional testimony, told the Senate that he had recommended a larger increase and a faster schedule, but that Gates rebuffed him. And in late April new Army chief Gen. George Casey revealed that he, too, wanted a faster timetable, directing his staff to "tell me what it would take to get it done faster."

The AEI author’s estimates of what’s needed:

Thus the most important step in fixing what's wrong with our land forces is to build a regular Army capable of conducting The Long War at a reasonable pace of deployments, without so completely engaging its own reserve components or the Marine Corps. A rough estimate would mean an active force of approximately 750,000 soldiers, still a smaller Army than at the end of the Cold War but an expansion roughly five times that envisioned by the Bush administration. Even at a faster pace of expansion such growth could well require the better part of a decade.

And the expense:

Many of the current estimates of the cost of expansion exclude these equipment costs. For example, a recent Congressional Budget Office study of the administration's expansion plans puts the annual increase at $14 billion by the time the Gates Plan is complete. Perhaps a better methodology, if still crude, is to use the Army's estimate of the cost of the "doctrinal" current force--that is, the force as it would be if it had all the right equipment, staffing, and resources--and do a proportional calculation. So if the cost of sustaining a force with an active component of 510,000 is, as estimated by the Army, $138 billion per year in 2008 dollars, then an Army half again as large is likely to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 billion per year. Again, the methodology is far from precise, but absent a better one, it serves as a benchmark. It's also a measure of the inadequacy of the current baseline budget: For 2007, before supplementals, the formal Army budget was $112 billion. I am not aware of a similar "doctrinal" cost estimate for the Marines, but it's a reasonable assumption that the gap between ends and means is similar.

And yet $200 billion is little more than one percent of America's annual gross domestic product. The question is not whether we can afford sufficient land forces, but whether we will choose to have them. In simple terms, the task is to restore the Army and Marine Corps to the manpower levels at the end of the Cold War.

Then, add hundreds of billions of dollars for the heavier and more advanced weapons and logistic capacities needed for the Navy and Air Force, including for their added roles in deterring or fighting possible major conflicts with a resurgent Russia or more aggressive China.

When we’re fighting at home about and unable to agree to either contain or to responsibly pay for new domestic programs and burgeoning entitlement programs, there’s little taste for full scale discussion and debate over this core national security issue.

As after 1940, 1948, 1964, and 2000 we’re likely to pay heavily in lost opportunities to deter war, decreased national security, consequent additional loss of lives, and divisive domestic bitterness after 2008.

What do you call someone who, in a single conference presentation, can call the U.S. an "empire without hegemony" that's engaged in a "monopolar imperial project," charge Middle East studies scholar Martin Kramer's book, Ivory Towers on Sand, with being an agent of "U.S. and Israeli intelligence," denounce David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Stanley Kurtz, and Campus Watch for "helping Bush in his crusading war against Islamic terrorism," and condemn Stanford's Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation for acting in "the service of national security"? (The very idea--scholars working to ensure the safety and future of their nation! Quelle horreur!)

You can call him Hamid Dabashi, one of the gang of illiberal radicals who make up Columbia University's disgraced faculty in its Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures program.

And you can read about his recent rant, as well as those of his fellow travelers, in "The Muddled Mess of Middle East Studies," published today at the American Thinker by my Campus Watch colleague, Cinnamon Stillwell.

But fair warning: while Cinnamon's prose is crisp and clear, I can't guarantee that you'll have the slightest idea what Dabashi and crew are talking about. But that'll put you in good company because, judging by their remarks, neither do they.

H/T, Martin Peretz.

Simply, Memorial Day is about remembering the ultimate sacrifices of our men and women in military service.

Memorial Day is not about using their memory to hash out current or past political disagreements about why and how.

Yet, that is what is happening, under the guise of remembering.

That dishonors those who lost their lives in service and those who served, and allowed to pass dishonors all who may serve as well as all Americans.

Memorial Day is not about us, our own personal aspirations, our courage, our ambivalencies, our agendas. Memorial Day is about humbly and regretfully honoring the loss of the personal aspirations, courage, ambivalencies, agendas of those fallen.

To turn Memorial Day into anything else is to trivialize that loss. To turn Memorial Day into about us instead of them is to place more importance upon ourselves than them.

Those who served or serve never refer to themselves as heroes or martyrs. Those who served or serve made a simple choice, indeed a difficult choice, that serving – with all its sacrifices and mortal conundrums – was for a greater moral purpose than their own comforts.

Those who served or serve recognized priorities above self or personal advantage.

Shouldn’t we?

The following are excerpts from a flurry of email correspondences between Barnard President Judith Shapiro and myself regarding the tenure bid of Assistant Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj. Originally I had sent a letter to President Shapiro imploring that she do the right thing and deny tenure to this academic impostor who passes off a political agenda demonizing the State of Israel and its legitimate historic roots, as if it were methodical archaeological scholarship. Shapiro replied to my letter initiating the correspondence on an “unbecoming” note comparing me to the bumbling patsy, Mr. Collins in Jane Austin’s novel Pride and Prejudice, and SUNY Trustee Candace de Russy to her lordship, the blue-blooded Lady Catherine. This was all aimed at throwing up a smoke screen in order to divert attention from the serious issue of El-Haj’s upcoming tenure decision, since there seems to be a lack of credible defenses available to contest allegations of El-Haj’s scholarly falsehoods and slander of a distinguished archaeologist. One positive development that came out of this will be future meetings between Candace de Russy and Shapiro. Candace will try to convince her to deny tenure to El-Haj on the basis of faulty and misleading scholarship. For those intent on writing to President Shapiro, feel free to do so despite her whining about the “hysteria it is generating”. This may be one of those rare incidences of a bona fide academic debate taking place representing both sides of the coin, with input from genuine scholars, the Va’ad ha-Emet, which seems to send the academic establishment flying off into a tailspin.

JS: I find your communication somewhat strange, since Candace de Russy is certainly more than able to speak for herself. The effect of your letter is thus very much like Mr. Collins talking about Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I can assure you that I am aware of the materials you mention.

PO: I was really taken aback by your reply and I expected something a little more considerate from a president of Barnard. I’m glad to hear that you know your Pride and Prejudice, but I do hope you know your Near East history as well. The issue I’m concerned with is a little more serious than British fiction. The concern I addressed in my letter to you wasn’t fiction. It was about one of your professors who is palming off fiction as if it were scholarship. I would think twice about who you are brushing off so quickly, since you have no idea whether or not I am a donor or what connections I have with the alumni. By the way, since you neglected to acknowledge it in your reply, I am speaking on behalf of those who are unable to speak for themselves for fear of recriminations. This scenario doesn’t sound much like a venue for the free exchange of ideas and opinions to me. I will continue to pursue this further.

JS: Well, at this point I can thank you for your original message in that Candace de Russy and I are now in direct contact and are looking forward to getting together. Fortunately, she was less offended (and more amused) by my response than you were. I know that you must have a very high regard for her, but must stand by my original observation; your message came across as presumptuous rather than respectful, which might be useful for you to understand for the future. In terms of what you say about others you are representing: the idea that you are speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves strikes me as hyperbole. Somehow, quite a few people have found it possible to comment publicly on Professor El Haj's work - one way or the other - without fearing for their safety or professional welfare. Indeed, peer review, which is basic to the tenure process, depends upon just that kind of public, professional speech. You may be sure that I take the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian crisis very seriously myself, but I take a dim view of the way it is being mobilized in this context. Whatever the merits of this tenure case one way or the other, I find the level of hysteria it is generating to be totally inappropriate. The fact that many of the communications I have received on this case have come to me anonymously is especially ironic, since one of the main criticisms these nameless people are making of Professor Abu El-Haj's work is that she cites anonymous sources. In terms of your being taken aback by the tone of my message: I will admit that my rhetorical style is indeed somewhat unusual for a college president, but most people seem to enjoy it. It does keep them awake, which is not an accomplishment all college presidents can claim. I will, in turn, point out that claiming you might be an important donor or have ties to influential alumnae was not the best note to strike, at least not for me. Better to take the high road than the low road. But, all of this aside, I do wish you the best in your own work.

PO: It was my own intention originally to call your office to speak with you directly. Your secretary invited me to express my concerns in writing, which is the reason behind the detailed letter. I just wanted to set the record straight on this. You mentioned that many of the communications you received were anonymous. Then I fail to understand why you should also say that my speaking on their behalf strikes you as hyperbole. Despite claims to the contrary, the coercion of those with pro-Israel views is a fact of campus life that leaves good professors out of the conversation and living in fear for their livelihoods. The few bold enough to speak out receive death threats as the moderate Alan Dershowitz often does. An open forum in Manhattan hosted by the American Jewish Congress dealt with these issues of the hostile climate of intimidation at Columbia revealed in the documentary Columbia Unbecoming which incidentally was initiated by Barnard students. Several professors testified that any Columbia faculty member who openly supports Zionism is marginalized, ostracized and denied tenure. I trust that you are also aware of this phenomenon. That said, I’m pleased that you’ll be meeting with Candace, and I look forward to some productive discussions taking place.

JS: To clarify and provide some additional information: I do not myself believe that the people who are getting in touch with me anonymously truly need to do so. Nadia Abu El-Haj has also received death threats from those opposed to her work. I might also note, since you invoke the David Project, that I have not received a single student complaint about her teaching, advising, mentoring, or anything that has gone on in the classroom. There are indeed places where Jews or Zionists are endangered and marginalized, but Morningside Heights in the year 2007 does not happen to be one of them. Given the strength of the Jewish community at Barnard, it is, in fact, unbecoming - to use a familiar word - for members of the Jewish community to cast themselves in the role of victims here.

PO: I've been away for a couple of days, but I did want to take a moment to thank you for your consideration of my original letter, although we did get off track a bit from my original intent. My main concern is El-Haj's tenure bid and all the rest is smoke and mirrors. I trust you'll do the right thing for Barnard College’s academic repute regarding the upcoming decision.

Paul Mirengoff of Powerline blog is ticked off at “having my intelligence or my character insulted,” by accusations of nativism or political advantage in his considerations of the Immigration Bill.

I’m even more insulted by the lack of competent analyses of impacts and costs that proponents and crafters of the Bill have failed to provide. Without that, those trying to prudently and fairly consider the Bill are left adrift and subject to anecdotal or emotional appeals. What data there is is mostly inferential, but not directly tied to the Bill.

Hopefully, the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis, not due until after most of the debate and votes on amendments has occurred, will help clarify. But, until then, we do have to rely upon what we have.

I’ve pointed out the studied negative effects on Blacks and other low-skill citizens from low-skill immigrants. I’ve pointed out the negative effects on our own values from undue exploitation of some guest-workers.

What about the impacts on those citizens who are more advantaged?

A study published yesterday compares the effects of immigration in Canada, where there is more of a tilt toward screening in the educated and skilled, compared to the U.S.

Immigration has depressed wages in both Canada and the U.S., but has also reduced wage inequality in this country, while widening the gap in the U.S.

Those are the key findings of a Statistics Canada study released Friday which found that a significantly higher proportion of immigrants to Canada than the U.S. are highly educated, increasing the supply of such workers, but lowering their earnings.

Immigration was a factor in a seven-per-cent drop in real wages of highly educated workers in Canada between 1980 and 2000, the report said.

Low-skilled workers in Canada have also gained relative to high-skilled workers, because the share of low-skilled workers in the labour force has declined, it said.

While the earnings gap between high school dropouts and university educated workers increased to nearly 45 per cent from 38 per cent in Canada over the past two decades, in the absence of immigration that gap would have widened to nearly 50 per cent, it calculated.

In the U.S., however, immigrant labour is concentrated among low-skilled workers depressing their wages, and less so of highly-skilled workers, which served to magnify growth in US wage inequality, the report said.

In 2001, about four in 10 individuals with more than an undergraduate university degree were immigrants in Canada compared to only two in 10 in the U.S., it noted….

A 10-per-cent change in the labour supply due to immigration resulted in a three-to-four-per-cent change in earnings in the opposite direction, it found.

Mexico, however, lost workers to emigration. And, as a result, wages there went up.

"Mexico provides a mirror image of the impact of emigration in a source country," the report said.

Between 1980 and 2000, immigration increased the male labour force by 13.2 per cent in Canada and 11.1 per cent in the U.S., while Mexico experienced a 14.6-per-cent loss.

David Frum comments at National Review: “Do you suppose there would be equal enthusiasm for open immigration in the upper reaches of American life if it were our standard of living that was being squeezed?” From across the political spectrum, Matthew Yglesias at Atlantic Online wonders, “Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand the rationale for doing away with the EB-1 "alien of extraordinary ability" visa, as the immigration compromise seems to. Are we worried that the immigration of foreign rock stars, CEOs, and nobel prize winners is going to unduly depress the wages of our home grown superstars?”

The richest and most successful citizens may be insulated, and benefit from cheaper labor in their businesses and around the house, and properly point out that the Immigration Bill does not sufficiently tilt toward the highly skilled or those skills more needed.

The middle-class is more impacted in job insecurity and salaries by high-skill immigrants, while also benefiting from cheaper gardeners, cleaners and nannies, as well as from generalized economic growth engendered from importing highly skilled inventors and entrepreneurs.

In short, there are inevitable consequences for all of us from the Immigration Bill. It seems to me that our poorest are most negatively impacted. Further, we may not be doing Mexico a favor by extracting those who could press for reforms there, and add their vigor to its economy.

My economic preference, based on higher predictable contributions and lower direct costs, is for more of a tilt toward the skilled and educated from abroad. My emotional empathy is strong for the opportunities for the less advantaged to excel here and their progeny to advance. However, in a modern economy that has less need or routes for advancement for the low-skilled than early in the 1900’s, importing a disproportionate number of such is of less benefit to our economy or to them, and at tremendous budgetary costs that crowd out other needs and, via increased taxes, may depress our future growth and jobs engine.

Norm Coleman’s amendment to the Immigration Bill, requiring local law enforcement to cooperate with federal authorities and laws on illegal immigration, was defeated today 49 to 48. The amendment didn’t require local law to engage in raids or such, just report findings in their ordinary course of duties to federal enforcement. Two Republican Senators didn’t show up to vote, which may have shifted the balance.

A reader sends me this excerpt from the Mexican immigration law:

Check out Mexico’s Ley General de Población [“General Law of Population” – the body of law governing Mexican immigration], Capitulo III, Articulo 73:
Ley General De Población
Capítulo III Inmigración
ARTÍCULO 73
Las autoridades que por ley tengan a su mando fuerzas públicas federales, locales o municipales, prestarán su colaboración a las autoridades de migración cuando estas lo soliciten, para hacer cumplir las disposiciones de esta ley.

For you non-Spanish speakers, that means:
“The authorities who, by virtue of law, exercise a mandate for public enforcement [the police] at federal, local or municipal level, shall provide cooperation to immigration authorities when said immigration authorities request it, to comply with the provisions of this law [the General Law of Population].”

So Mexican police are required by law to cooperate with immigration authorities - and they do. The standard procedure: when Mexican police capture illegal aliens, they turn them over to immigration authorities, where they are processed and deported to countries of origin.

Newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy’s seriousness about modernizing France’s competitiveness is demonstrated in taking on the sacred cow of French higher education. His efforts will surely lead to front-page photos of demonstrating students. His efforts should, also, be closely watched by Americans who are interested in the quality of our higher education.

The Associated Press reports to “recapture its economic luster and key role in international affairs” campuses are “shaping up as the first battleground for Sarkozy's grand plans for reform.”

High dropout rates, antiquated resources and funding cuts have so plagued the Sorbonne , like universities across France , that its president, Jean-Robert Pitte, is calling for an overhaul of the university system. He wants to make admission selective and sharply increase tuition, measures critics call "Americanization."

French universities "don't correspond to the needs of the economy, to French society, and even less to Europe and the world," Pitte said in an interview. "I'm pragmatic. I watch what happens elsewhere, and I'm for borrowing what works best."…

The challenges start with egalitarian rules that govern French universities. Imposed after the student and worker uprising of 1968, they offer any student with a high school diploma a free education. Financial barriers were to be leveled with generous grants.

Nearly 40 years later, the free and democratic universities are producing far fewer graduates than their much more costly counterparts in the United States. In 2005, 14 percent of adults had a university education in France, compared to 29 percent in the United States, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

[Sorbonne president] Pitte says the French system just produces dropouts. Forty-five percent of Sorbonne students do not complete their first year, and 55 percent do not earn a degrees. Without entrance standards, there is a "selection-by-failure" that squanders resources and professors' time on students who "have no real chance of success," he said.

Recommended:

Pitte wants to limit the numbers of students in disciplines that have few job opportunities upon graduation, and introduce annual tuition fees of $4,000.

"Nobody should be prevented from doing university studies," said Pitte. But to let students who aren't cut out for it into the system "is criminal."

Several experts in higher education I consulted could not point me at a compilation of core curriculums and of “multicultural,” or basket-weaving courses in American colleges. I wrote about the decreasing returns from increased investments in higher education, saying:

The cure for higher education lays in elimination and avoidance of useless majors and academics, the revolt of taxpayers and parents, and continuation of present trends which place a compensation worth on academics that will decline more compared to other occupations.

Maybe, France will lead the way.

In a superb send-up of the media's interpretation of the Pew poll on American Muslims, Iowahawk reports (with relief) that "Midwest Lutherans Largely Reject Violence."

Best lines:

Although a majority 87% of respondents agreed that "The world should be brought to submission under global Lutheran conquest and eternal perfect rule," there was a great deal of disagreement on the means to accomplish it. More than 95% supported "pancake breakfasts" and "popcorn fundraisers," but support dropped to less than 80% for "cow tipping" and "T-P'ing infidel houses." Support dropped even more dramatically for more violent means of conquest, such as "suicide bombing" (28%), "decapitation" (24%), and "running over Presbyterians with my Ski-Doo" (23%).

"Taken as a whole, the results show that Midwest Lutherans emphatically support a moderate, mainstream path to world domination," said Kohut. "These folks are well-assimilated into the broad fabric of American society, and unless you are Presbyterian, there is probably very little here to cause concern."

Iowahawk's satirical look at the Pew poll comes in light of attempts by some U.S. government organs, including Radio Free Europe and the State Department, to put a positive spin on the results, which showed that 26 percent of young American Muslims favor or might favor suicide bombings to defend Islam. Only 40 percent of American Muslims believe that Arabs were responsible for 9/11. Overall, 80 percent of American Muslims condemn suicide bombings for any reason--a figure that, while welcome in the context of the audience surveyed, would surely cause great alarm if it reflected the sentiments of any other religious group--hence the effectiveness of Iowahawk's post.

The Congressional Budget Office won’t have an estimated calculation of the costs of the proposed Senate Immigration Bill until after Memorial Day.

The price tag for this bill is expected to be extremely high, but sources told FOX News that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office will not have an estimate ready until after Memorial Day, something that could fracture the bill's already fragile support.

I wrote a few days ago:

I’ve searched mainstream, online, think-tank, and interest-group sources over past days for informed data-rich analyses of the proposed bill, to find relatively little.

The $2.5-trillion estimated present dollar future impact, over approximately 18-years, of low-education immigrants offered by Robert Rector has caught much attention. That comes out to about $139-billion per year. Rector sums up the core choice before the Congress:

U.S.immigration policy should encourage high-skill immigration and strictly limit low-skill immigration. In general, government policy should limit immigration to those who will be net fiscal contributors, avoiding those who will increase poverty and impose new costs on overburdened U.S. taxpayers.

Recent proposed legislation in the Senate will do exactly the opposite.[2] By granting amnesty to illegal immigrants (who are overwhelmingly low skilled) and creating massive new "guest worker" programs that would bring millions of additional low-skill families into the nation, such legislation, if enacted, would impose massive costs on the U.S. taxpayer.

In prior posts, I’ve discussed the negative impact of low-skill immigrants upon earnings of low-skill Blacks and the exploitation of low-skill guest workers. These indirect costs of the Immigration Bill, upon citizens and upon our values, deserve weighty consideration.

Yet, as yesterday’s Senate vote against eliminating the guest-worker portion of the proposal shows, only 34 favoring the elimination, there’s little stomach among Senators for facing the financial or decency burdens imposed.

Ed Morrissey, still on the fence, parses the Rasmussen poll results on the Immigration Bill. There's another core choice that our Senators must face:

Since I still have a membership at Rasmussen, I have access to the crosstabs -- and they tell a very interesting story. Not a single demographic in the study favors this proposal, except under Race:Other. Democrats oppose it 51-28. Republicans oppose it 47-25. Men and women both clearly oppose it. Only people ages 30-39 come close to overcoming opposition, 34-32 in opposition.

But when the subject turns to border security, the numbers turn even more dramatic. Every single demographic -- race, gender, age, and political orientation -- has majorities that show border security as "very important". The only one below 60% is Race:Other again, but almost all of the others score in the 70s or higher. While a number of demographics score the importance of legalizing illegal aliens as at least somewhat important, it carries far less enthusiasm than border security.

The data is so compelling, one has to wonder why Congress hasn't realized that they could offer a win for everyone by focusing exclusively on border security as an entrée to immigration reform. They literally would please every possible constituency by doing so, and would almost overnight dial down the emotion over the rest of the issue. Only in DC could the governing class be so out of touch with the national mood.

Perhaps our Senators can read, and care about, those numbers.

One of the major components of the proposed Immigration Bill is the enlargement of the guest worker program, to up to 400,000. One concern is, particularly with unsure enforcement provisions throughout the Bill, whether guest workers would comply with returning to their home country. As great a concern is the extent to which guest workers depress wages for low-skill Americans. Both of these concerns are being debated in the Senate today.

North Dakota Democrat Sen. Byron Dorgan's amendment would eliminate the guest worker program entirely. The amendment offered by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, would cut the program in half.
Many Democrats don't like the program because they think it drives down wages for American workers and creates a permanent underclass of immigrant workers.
Republicans generally favor a strong guest worker program because businesses say they need the labor.

Whatever the outcome, whatever the number of guest workers, more attention needs to be paid to the rights of guest workers while here.

The Southern Poverty Law Center points out in a major report:

Under the current system, called the H-2 program, employers brought about 121,000 guestworkers into the United States in 2005 — approximately 32,000 for agricultural work and another 89,000 for jobs in forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction and other non-agricultural industries.

These workers, though, are not treated like "guests." Rather, they are systematically exploited and abused. Unlike U.S. citizens, guestworkers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who "import" them. If guestworkers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation.

Federal law and U.S. Department of Labor regulations provide some basic protections to H-2 guestworkers — but they exist mainly on paper. Government enforcement of their rights is almost non-existent. Private attorneys typically won't take up their cause.

Bound to a single employer and without access to legal resources, guestworkers are:
· routinely cheated out of wages;
· forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs;
· held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents;
· forced to live in squalid conditions; and,
· denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel recently put it this way: "This guestworker program's the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery."

In my opinion, it’s bad enough that we American consumers profit from importation of cheap goods produced in labor conditions that we won’t accept at home of American workers. I’m aware of the beneficial effects for Americans’ budgets and comforts, and that even such labor is preferable to none in many of those countries and may increase future opportunities. But, I’m also in solidarity with my grandparents who worked in Lower East Side sweat shops and a distant cousin who organized the ILGWU. Improving their conditions actually accelerated their ability to later improve themselves further, in keeping with the American Dream that they passed on to their children and grandchildren.

Importing unacceptable conditions into America is even more unacceptable than tolerating them abroad.

Below are the recommendations from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Some may be excessive or need adjustments, but read them for yourselves, and consider whether most are the basic decency required. Also, consider whether they would alleviate much of the concerns about unfairly depressing wages for Americans, by justly leveling the field. As to American employers and consumers, profits based on undue exploitation are not a right and a small percentage increase in produce prices is not an undue burden.

I. Federal laws and regulations protecting guestworkers from abuse must be strengthened:
· Guestworkers should be able to obtain visas that do not tie them to a specific employer. The current restriction denies guestworkers the most fundamental protection of a free labor market and is at the heart of many abuses they face.
· Congress should provide a process allowing guestworkers to gain permanent residency, with their families, over time. Large-scale, long-term guestworker programs that treat workers as short-term commodities are inconsistent with our society's core values of democracy and fairness.
· Employers should be required to bear all the costs of recruiting and transporting guestworkers to this country. Federal regulations should be consistent with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Arriaga v. Florida Pacific Farms. Requiring guestworkers to pay these fees encourages the over-recruitment of guestworkers and puts them in a position of debt peonage that leads to abuse.
· Entities acting as labor brokers for employers that actually use the guestworkers should not be allowed to obtain certification from the Department of Labor to bring them in. Allowing these middlemen to obtain certification shields the true employer from responsibility for the mistreatment of guestworkers.
· Congress should require the Department of Labor to promulgate labor regulations for H-2B workers that are comparable to the H-2A regulations. It is unconscionable that H-2B workers do not have even the minimal protections available to H-2A workers.
· Congress should require employers to pay at least the "adverse effect wage rate" in all guestworker programs to protect against the downward pressure on wages. Guestworker programs should not be a mechanism to drive wages down to the minimum wage.
· Congress should eliminate the barriers that prevent guestworkers from receiving workers' compensation benefits. Workers currently must navigate a bewildering state-by-state system that effectively blocks many injured workers from obtaining benefits.
· Guestworkers should be protected from discrimination on the same terms as workers hired in the United States. Permitting employers to "shop" for workers with certain characteristics outside of the United States is offensive to our system of justice and nondiscrimination.
II. Federal agency enforcement of guestworker protections must be strengthened:
· Congress should require that all employers report to the Department of Labor, at the conclusion of a guestworker's term of employment and under penalty of perjury, on their compliance with the terms of the law and the guestworker's contract. There currently is no mechanism allowing the government to ensure that employers comply with guestworker contracts.
· Employers using guestworkers should be required to post a bond that is at least sufficient in value to cover the workers' legal wages. A system should be created to permit workers to make claims against the bond. Guestworkers, who must return to their country when their visas expire, typically have no way of recovering earned wages that are not paid by employers.
· There should be a massive increase in funding for federal agency enforcement of guestworker protections. Guestworkers are the most vulnerable workers in this country, but there is scant government enforcement of their rights.
· The Department of Labor should be authorized to enforce all guestworker agreements. The DOL takes the position that it does not have legal authority to enforce H-2B guestworker contracts.
· The Department of Labor should create a streamlined process to deny guestworker applications from employers that have violated the rights of guestworkers. Employers who abuse guestworkers continue to be granted certification by the DOL to bring in new workers.
III. Congress must provide guestworkers with meaningful access to the courts:
· Congress should make all guestworkers eligible for federally funded legal services. H-2B workers are currently not eligible for legal aid services.
· Because of the unique challenges faced by guestworkers, the restriction on federally funded legal services that prohibits class action representation should be lifted.
· Congress should provide a civil cause of action and criminal penalties for employers or persons who confiscate or hold guestworker documents. This common tactic is designed to hold guestworkers hostage.
Congress should provide a federal cause of action allowing all guestworkers to enforce their contracts.

Among those who do not benefit from the immigration of those with low-skills, mostly from Mexico and Central America, are low-skill Blacks.

The May 2007 NBER Digest from the National Bureau of Economic Research summarizes the research:

"Remarkably, as far as we know, no study has examined if there is a link between the resurgence of large-scale immigration and the employment and incarceration trends in the black population," co-authors George Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, and Gordon Hanson write in Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities: The Response of Wages, Employment, and Incarceration to Labor Supply Shocks (NBER Working Paper No.12518). The authors are careful to point out that even without increased immigration, most of the fall in employment and increase in jailed black men would have happened anyway. Nevertheless, the racially disproportionate effects of immigration on employment are striking….

The observed correlations suggest that immigration is an important underlying factor influencing the observed trends. In particular, their analysis finds that a 10 percent rise in immigrants in a particular skill group significantly trimmed the wages of black and white men alike. For African-Americans, the decline was 3.6 percent. For whites, it was actually slightly higher: 3.8 percent. Beyond that, however, the black-white experience differed markedly, especially for low-skilled workers. Take employment rates: from 1960 to 2000, black high school dropouts saw their employment rates drop 33 percentage points –– from 88.6 percent to 55.7 percent -- the authors found in their analysis of census data from 1960 to 2000. The decrease for white high school dropouts was only roughly half that –– from 94.1 percent to 76.0 percent.

One reason, the authors argue, is that black employment is more sensitive to an immigration influx than white employment….

That same immigration rise was also correlated with a rise in incarceration rates. For white men, a 10 percent rise in immigration appeared to cause a 0.1 percentage point increase in the incarceration rate for white men. But for black men, it meant a nearly 1 percentage-point rise.

Why would a boost in immigration effectively put more men, especially black men, behind bars? The authors put forward a straightforward theory: immigration causes wages and employment to fall for black workers. When this happens, some of those workers –– especially those with the lowest skills -- turn to crime to increase their income. …

The authors stress that immigration is only one factor in the worsening labor situation of low-skilled African-American men. "The 1980-2000 immigrant influx, therefore, generally ‘explains' about 20 to 60 percent of the decline in wages, 25 percent of the decline in employment, and about 10 percent of the rise in incarceration rates among blacks with a high school education or less," they write.

There’s, obviously, more at play here than immigration’s effect on low-skill Blacks. But, there’s still a considerable impact upon low-skill Blacks. Among the costs of any liberalization in immigration, there should be an accounting of such costs as these imposed upon citizens.

UPDATE: Neil Munro, at National Journal, provides a useful overview of the contending politics of the issue within the Black community and among Democrats.

[Below is the text of my most recent column for the Washington Examiner.]

This week, editors at the Chronicle of Higher Education assigned 11 writers and education leaders the following task: “If you were giving the commencement address at Virginia Tech this year, what is the core of the message you would like to leave with the graduates?”

The responses published by the Chronicle reveal the disturbing degree to which multicultural obsessions have come to dominate American higher education and the utter inability of many of this community’s most prominent leaders to make credible moral distinctions between good and evil.

Faced with barbaric violence wrought by profound mental illness that was allowed to fester and explode in a dysfunctional mental health and justice system, our academic elite have little to offer aside from politically correct platitudes.

Not one participant expressed the comforting hope that the slaughtered might now be living in eternity with their creator — God, heaven and like concepts being passé in these towering intellectual circles.

Among the invitees was University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, who made international headlines last November when, at her annual Halloween costume party, she posed for a photo-op with a student dressed as a Palestinian suicide bomber.

Were the editors of the Chronicle offering her a chance at redemption, or do they simply have a profoundly ironic sense of humor? Either way, Gutmann evinced the same moral obtuseness that last year blinded her to the egregiousness of making light of indiscriminate massacres of the innocent.

Gutmann believes that the good will win out, but only if we’re open to a life spent in the pursuit of a caring community: “We can gather the strength to move forward in the face of even the greatest adversity, but only by supporting one another, by pursuing justice and by being caring citizens of a caring community.”

One wonders if supporting another should have involved attacking the attacker, or passing more stringent laws for treating mental illness, including parental notification in such dangerous cases, adolescent notions of student rights be damned.

Added Gutmann: “When people from the most diverse backgrounds are bound together by caring communities, uncommon strength can arise from an unspeakable tragedy. For however fragile human life may be, the human spirit — when bound together in a humane community — is far, far stronger than cynics and skeptics are willing to admit.”

So, a diverse and humane community is caring and strong when it pursues community in a caring and humane way. Would you like some circumlocutions to go with that?

Edward J.W. Park, who teaches Asian Pacific American Studies at Loyola Marymount, titled his address “I Hope He’s Not Korean.” Park shows no compassion for the victims, whom he barely mentions, in his narcissistic immersion into identity politics:

“[A] Latino student quietly shared his anxiety: ‘God, I hope it’s not a Latino.’ Then we heard that the first two victims had been an African-American man and a white woman. ‘I hope it isn’t a black person,’ an African-American colleague told me in the mailroom. ‘If it is, we’re going to catch hell.’ ”

And: “ ‘I hope he’s not Vietnamese’; ‘I hope he’s not Filipino.’ The list went on.”

Park, whose career rests on categorizing Americans by ethnicity, concludes his address, with no irony intended, by imploring students to “see beyond racial and ethnic labels.”

Surpassing Park’s rhetorical substitution of imagined victims for real corpses is Karla Jay’s slander of American troops in Iraq. A professor of “English and women’s and gender studies” at Pace University, Jay wrote: “So, too, can the graduating and current students of Virginia Tech, including the more than 700 members of its cadet corps, now understand how violence and terror affect the innocent. More than 200 Iraqis, also guiltless bystanders, were blown up the very same week of the murders at Virginia Tech in senseless, brutal acts of terror. … If we treat individuals or groups of people as our enemies, those people have no choice but to be our enemies. If we hate them, they will demonize us.”

So those Iraqis were killed by foreign jihadists and other Iraqis because we Americans have declared murderous terrorists to be our enemies?

Clearly, with so much pablum being passed off as wisdom by academic elites, parents and students can no longer expect to hear in the typical college address any genuine insight into the central question of how one should live.

The latest Immigration Bill proposal bears an uncomfortable similarity to 9/11. It hits most’s consciousness and public attention as if from out of the blue, despite many years of visible causes and effects, and this remedy is even more hastily pushed, despite some’s warning and most’s realization that the strategy and costs were inadequately understood.

Like 9/11, the proposed Immigration Bill exposes many underlying fissures in our society, in our modes of public information, and between our legislators and the governed. It could represent an opportunity for reforms in these, as well as for more careful consideration of the immigration issues raised.

That’s as far as necessary to take the analogy to stop and consider whether the Immigration Bill and the speedy adoption process as proposed are reasonable. I believe not, not only because of improvements that can and should be made in the bill itself, but also because of the missed opportunities as to process.

There’s majority consensus as to providing fair access to residency and citizenship. There’s majority consensus as to providing reliable border security and employer controls. The two majorities overlap somewhat, but are distinct over which should come first. In this bill, via the fast Z-visas, normalization of status comes first, and confidence in avoiding the next 12-million illegals is not provided.

I’ve searched mainstream, online, think-tank, and interest-group sources over past days for informed, data-rich analyses of the proposed bill, to find relatively little. I’m sure many are working diligently on this, and should be given a chance to publish and be evaluated. In the meantime, most of the discussions have either been too general or only concerned with portions or about the politics of the bill. Our modes of public information have not been themselves adequately prepared in the details and financials of immigration.

In part, this absence of useful public information is due to the closed door negotiating among our politicians in Washington, not providing lead-time to analysts. Neither have our politicians accompanied their proposed bill with estimates of cost, both legislative and among those affected. This feeds justifiable skepticism as to whether those unknown costs, likely to be huge, will be affordable or appropriated and what effect they may have on other programs and priorities. The urging of some politicians to accept the proposal speedily, nonetheless, only enrages even many of those favorably disposed, at the disregard for an informed public.

I understand arguments for compromise, or for relative political strength, but those are insufficient to mold either a majority around this bill as proposed or to adequately resolve issues raised.

I believe that immigration and security improvements are necessary. Worthwhile ones will better emerge from a better, more informed, and more respectful and democratic process.

We don’t need another Iraq mess, here at home.

Civil discourse is being well-informed, engaging in courteous communication, and being open to considering or, at least, respecting other points of view, and having the humility to be open to changing information and conclusions. Better understanding and peaceful progress emerges, in a dynamic and democratic process.

By contrast, aside from the profane and intolerant, there’s the elitist view of discourse, self-labeled as “rational” by Al Gore and some fellow Democrats, that intrudes the government, and political power, into deciding which discourse deserves to be heard.

I wrote about one variant of this power-grab earlier this week, the use of Democrats of the “Fairness Doctrine As Political Intimidation.”

Today, on the anniversary of his 1000th post, oft-quoted by me, Democrat campaign law expert Bob Bauer, extends the analysis:

On this anniversary day, the subject is one to which these postings return with fair frequency: the fashionable trepidation over failed democratic "discourse" and the urge, through regulation, to bring it back to life. This is the view that speech has gone bad, imperiling good government: and that in government action to improve speech lies the road to salvation. Regulated political speech becomes the stated condition of sound policy and good government.

This seems quite wrong-headed….

Bauer presents Al Gore’s case (common to many others):

Gore says many of the usual things, about the evils of television and the horrors of declining newspaper readership. Like others with his outlook on the dilapidated state of national discourse or "conversation," he is certain that the citizen is misinformed, the victim of deliberate lies and her own indolence. There is a wealth of facts which will yield the "truth" if reason—real logic applied to hard information—is brought to bear in analyzing them. Nothing less than the "truth" is within our grasp if only we would employ the tools of reason, availing ourselves of facts. There are right answers and wrong ones and we can have the right ones to each of the major and complex questions facing our nation and world—specific questions of national security or climate policy and also, breathtakingly, the more abstract, loftier challenges of "human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness." But we must not be ignorant, illogical and unreasonable when we have the choice of being well-informed and logical and reasonable….

Some who think as Gore does are blunt in the statement of their purposes. Dennis Kucinich, for example, would like to exhume the Fairness Doctrine, demanding balance from broadcasters in the treatment of contemporary policy issues. As Kucinich told Lou Dobbs (another man of reason) in January, he, too, is worried about protecting the "marketplace of ideas. That's what the First Amendment is all about." It is clear to him that the market is failing, because the public has chosen poorly, on Iraq and free trade, having been starved of the facts and reasonable argument necessary for the correct conclusions. "How could we have the trade policies which we have, for example, if there was a free and uninhibited exchange of ideas over NAFTA and GATT and the WTO?" Well-informed and reasonable people would never have agreed to such travesties!

However, Bauer points out:

This is elite judgment masquerading as populism. The people need elite protection, against themselves and those who habitually con them: protection against the excesses and distortions of the speech market. Bad speech, the unreasonable and poorly supported kind, must be molded into "discourse." Speech is the raw material that government can process into healthy discourse. Discourse is the lingua franca of good policy. It is the way to truth.

To his credit, Gore has made his case to the public on the issues he cares about with films and books. He has spoken, written and filmed his points. Others can judge whether, on those issues, he has been well-informed and reasonable. In his analysis of "what has gone wrong in our democracy," he is not.

I’m not a scientist, and have environmental leanings, so I’m willing to believe that there are possible dangers from global warming. But, unlike politicians jumping on a bandwagon, I’m still open to varying viewpoints, particularly when informed scientists move toward skepticism, others toward dismay at the argument, and others decry a stifling of scientific discussion. The huge costs of transforming the world’s economies, and effects on those most poor, require more consideration than just calling for radical government programs, indeed as this study points out some alternatives are far more benign and salutary.

The Wall Street Journal reminds us of scientific humility and caution:

Every dogma has its day, and we've lived long enough to see more than one "consensus" blown apart within a few years of "everyone knowing" it was true. In recent decades environmentalists have been wrong about almost every other apocalyptic claim they've made: global famine, overpopulation, natural resource exhaustion, the evils of pesticides, global cooling, and so on. Perhaps it's useful to have a few folks outside the "consensus" asking questions before we commit several trillion dollars to any problem.

Instead, with some exaggeration, but not offbase, Bloomberg TV reviewer says of a typical network program on global warming, “You'll find more dissent at a North Korean political rally than in this program, which would have benefited from contrarian views…”

To win an argument, one may stifle opposition, or engage in civil discourse. I prefer the latter, and am concerned that those now in Congressional and media power miss the distinction, in regards to global warming as to so many other critical issues to our future.

It took me an hour just to scan the text of the proposed Immigration Bill. Reading, studying, analyzing it all would take dedicated weeks at a minimum. There’s the first problem with it: It’s being rushed through Congress without due deliberation and understanding. For an issue that not only affects the 12 or so million illegals here but the other 300 million Americans, and the future economics and culture of the country, that’s too hasty.

My first impression of the Immigration Bill is that it contains most of the principles, or parts thereof, that conservatives have sought: Qualifying for citizenship rather than automatic amnesty; Shifting priorities toward those with education and skills that can contribute most, rather than the uneducated and elderly who cost more than they contribute; Stricter enforcement of employer hiring; Increased border security. Notably missing is restriction of automatic citizenship to those born here, which is an enormous loophole for those seeking to stay along with their children. In the border states, many pregnant Mexicans purposely come across to give birth here.

I’m struck that most of these principles are dependent on future appropriations or mere administration certifications. There’s little reason to have faith in these future requirements occurring with adequacy or stringency. Some portions may occur, but less than even the minimal included in the Bill. I could go along with the Bill if these requirements were sufficiently pre-funded in the Bill, with a 2/3rd’s or so vote by Congress required to reduce the appropriations and, similarly, to find the certifications adequate. Short of that, I do have to fall in with skeptics who expect much less enforcement than promised.

As to the 12-million illegals here now, they’re here and there’s no prospect of expelling them. The uneducated have less prospect of meeting the new qualifications of obtaining regular qualifying employment, but there’s little prospect of their leaving as long as there’s a huge off-the-books economy for the unskilled, and as long as even that is better than where they come from. They will continue to arrive in droves.

The educated and skilled may have arrived illegally, but their normalization at least will contribute to our competitive economy.

This Bill, as it appears, seems to have its primary justification in fixing politics, for the varying benefit of Democrat and some Republican politicians (pandering to or insulating from Democrat-leaning pro-illegals lobbies, respectively), than in actually solving the problems of too many ill-suited uneducated immigrants whose impact on our economy is less desirable, and of their economic impact on citizens whose opportunities and wages are consequently depressed.

Will I go bonkers if the Bill passes as presently written? No. Even having the shift in principles is better than now. But, it doesn’t seem by much, without included funding guarantees. And, Republican officeholders who hypocritically say otherwise are transparently denigrating themselves and further reducing the allegiance of those voters who esteem integrity.

Mark Tapscott is a Republican’s conscience, repeatedly reminding us of a core principle, fiscal probity. Without fiscal responsibility much of conservatism wanders adrift not only in acquiescence to runaway, unaffordable spending that squeezes out basic duties of government-- like in defense, education, roads --but as well in misprioritizing spending to the neglect of or harm to productivity building and morality strengthening.

Tapscott takes time today from his day job as editorial page editor for the Examiner to post at his blog of the need for a new second party, steeped in conservative policies. Tapscott and I remember all too well being in distinct minorities in 1964, supporting Goldwater, he in Oklahoma and I in Brooklyn. We share similar disappointments now.

Because they could mold it into an anti-establishment, insurgent party of outsiders, the GOP was the conservatives' chosen vehicle for attaining political power and implementing their vision of limited government, individual liberty, economic freedom and national security, beginning in 1960.

But for a number of reasons the GOP is no longer the insurgent party of rebellion against the Liberal Democrats and the Big Government Establishment. Much of the GOP congressional caucus has become part of the same establishment and has zero interest in being anything else.

Similarly, there are legions of GOP political operators for whom the expansion of bureaucracy and proliferation of earmarks simply mean more jobs when a Republican is in the White House and a steady flow of lobbying contracts and related opportunities regardless of who is chief executive.

That is why the party lost its majority in November and why its prospects for ever again regaining control of Congress and the White House as an insurgent political force are slim and none. The GOP has lost the ability to present itself credibly as the party of change in Washington.

Tapscott concludes:

I remain of the "Tapscottian" view that America is ripe for the creation of a new, genuinely conservative second party, but so far nobody on the Right has stepped forward to lead the way. Maybe no one ever will. It's so hard to think outside the box the Republican Establishment has kept conservatives in for so long.

Mark and I corresponded this morning about his post. I confessed to being torn between practical politics and beliefs, “confounded by my social democrat upbringing,” the last finding important benefits in compassion and aid to the downtrodden. I emphasized that doesn’t require giveaways but, rather, cost-effective use of resources and prioritization of needs.

That’s where conservative policies generally triumph, when clearly proven as more cost-effective.

Cost-effective, however, as a rousing political slogan only works at conventions of accountants.

Political pragmatism, a variant of cost-effective, is a common hesitancy to conservative rebellion, which works among political activists.

Principled leadership, however, resonates with Americans.

The “Republican establishment” has not kept conservatives in a box. Conservatives control the Republican Party. Conservatives have kept themselves in a box of their own making, being politically pragmatic. However, being conservative also means being cost-effective and that means reforming their investment, not abandoning it or trashing it.

Republican politicians, who after all, or before all, largely exist to be elected and wield power, need to be led, and with the reasonable expectation of winning. The most damning criticism among Republicans of George Bush is that he hasn’t led or has repeatedly reversed course after stirring Republicans to another course.

The acceptability to most Republicans of most of the diverse field of 2008 candidates, even when veering from conservative social policy preferences, clearly demonstrates that their willingness to take and keep principled positions is preferred, as is their superior ability to communicate. The Republican frontrunners outpoll the Democrat likelies, even despite Iraq. That shows more Americans are aligned with the more moderate and conservative policies that dominated the past generation’s politics. Only a third of the electorate are redistributionist and extreme relativists, the other third of conservatives and third of independents emphasizing the benefits of work and basic morality.

So, Mark, a new second party is not needed, just reaffirming and insisting upon what brought us to the party to begin with. Have faith, and couple it with action.

In preparation for the 2008 elections, Democrats in Congress are trying to intimidate radio and TV broadcasters into including more Democrat views into their programs.

They are trying to resurrect an antiquated Federal Communications Commission regulation, the Fairness Doctrine, to require that opposing sides be presented to arguments. The Fairness Doctrine emerged at a time of very few radio, then TV, stations. Although in 1969 the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality, in 1974 the Supreme Court did conclude the Doctrine "inescapably dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate", and in 1984 that a scarcity of airwaves argument was by then flawed as a multitude of stations emerged and were expected. In 1985 the FCC ceased to support a Fairness Doctrine, and formally scrapped it in 1987. The number of radio stations has doubled since 1970, the former three networks’ TV stations are now challenged by over 500 alternatives, and the Internet carries a wide-diversity of views.

At root of the current push by Democrats is, as conservative columnist Geoge Will observed, “The illiberals' transparent, and often proclaimed, objective is to silence talk radio.” Why? “By trying to again empower the government to regulate broadcasting, illiberals reveal their lack of confidence in their ability to compete in the marketplace of ideas, and their disdain for consumer sovereignty—and hence for the public.”

There’s little likelihood of the Democrats succeeding in resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine, over the objections of station owners and civil libertarians, not to mention conservatives who benefit from talk radio. But, that’s not Democrats’ expectation. They expect to intimidate timid station owners into presenting more Democrat views, regardless of consumer preferences, and to reduce the presentation of conservative views where they are predominant in talk radio.

Both the Kennedy and Nixon administrations used the Fairness Doctrine for intimidation:

Telecommunications scholar Thomas W. Hazlett notes that under the Nixon Administration, "License harassment of stations considered unfriendly to the Administration became a regular item on the agenda at White House policy meetings." (Thomas W. Hazlett, "The Fairness Doctrine and the First Amendment," The Public Interest, Summer 1989, p. 105.) As one former Kennedy Administration official, Bill Ruder, has said, "We had a massive strategy to use the fairness doctrine to challenge and harass the right-wing broadcasters, and hope the challenge would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue." (Tony Snow, "Return of the Fairness Demon," The Washington Times, September 5, 1993, p. B3.)

Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief and political editor, Howard Fineman, writes today:

The goal? To level the media playing field [in radio talk shows] in time for the 2008 election.

Jay Ambrose, former director of editorial policy for the Scripps Howard newspapers, likens the Democrats’ Fairness Doctrine efforts to the McCain-Feingold restrictions on political campaigning:

When Congress passed this law previously upheld by the court, its sponsors called it reform, but others note it was something else instead: a means of cutting off discourse that the politicians themselves find both unpleasant and career-threatening.

Campaign law counsel to the House and Senate Democrats, Bob Bauer, similarly raised the issue of the Fairness Doctrine’s relation to McCain-Feingold:

It seems reasonable, however, to take note of the mounting revolt against the assumption that some types of corporations—"media corporations"—have the latitude to crusade in favor of specific candidates and causes when the same opportunity, sought by other corporations or by associations or individuals, is highly restricted and State-supervised…. these laws are related: they represent choices made by the State—"constitutive choices," as Paul Starr has referred to them—which are fundamentally political nature…

[B]ecause how citizens view the government’s treatment of speech—the perceived relationship of the rulers to the ruled—is heavy with consequence for the credibility of representative institutions. Any problem that develops here is not waved away by questioning motives or by replying with learned constitutional and legal expositions. It is only made that much worse.

Conservatives criticize the MSM, network TV, metropolitan newspapers and major wire services, as liberal and often incompetent. Yet, I’ve never heard a conservative calling for the government to regulate what the MSM can broadcast or publish, nor have I heard of Republican organizations threatening lawsuits against them to intimidate changes. There’s a respect for traditional liberal values of competing with ideas, rather than imposing government dictates.

That’s a key distinction to keep in mind. George Will properly labels the Democrats upside down concept of fairness “illiberal.”

President Judith Shapiro
Office of the President
Barnard College
3009 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
Email: jshapiro@barnard.edu

I write as a former adjunct from SUNY and CUNY colleges to express my concerns regarding the upcoming tenure bid of assistant professor of anthropology, Nadia Abu El-Haj. I understand that the tenure committee will be meeting shortly and I wish to speak on behalf of my colleague, SUNY Trustee Candace de Russy as well as a number of concerned scholars and students in the field of biblical anthropology, archaeology of the ancient Near East and toponymy, who wish to remain anonymous fearing recriminations from their colleagues due to the antagonistic political environment on their respective campuses.

Recently a group of scholars calling themselves the Va’ad ha-Emet (Truth Committee) appealed to Dr. de Russy for her help in publicizing their statement regarding the tenure bid of El-Haj. Their statement was consequently published in articles in FrontPage Magazine and National Review Online, which are enclosed for your reference.

The Va’ad ha-Emet vehemently opposes granting tenure to El-Haj on the basis of the flawed and politically driven scholarship in her recent book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. They charge that the author fails to meet the minimal academic standards on the basis of her lack of familiarity with previous scholarship in the field, her use of unnamed sources and unsourced statements, her failure to understand the value of evidence, her unfamiliarity with Hebrew resulting in evasion of serious research in the subject matter and misrepresentation of nuanced words, as well as the unfounded slander of preeminent archaeologist David Ussishkin of Tel Aviv University, the head of the Jezreel Valley excavations, who was the target of El-Haj’s uninformed accusations that he intentionally destroyed historical Islamic remains to suit the state agenda. Ussishkin defends his credibility against her personal attacks by distinguishing his own legitimate methodology from her lack of valid methodology, revealed by her failure to study the excavation reports, failure to consult with him or any of the excavation project directors, and the subsequent use of hearsay, unnamed participants and student volunteers to support her erroneous assertions.

Another academic who prefers to remain anonymous who wrote for a Solomonia.com blog discussed the basis of Barnard’s criteria for granting tenure to young scholars who have little respect for hard evidence and “reject a positivist commitment to scientific methods…” Instead El-Haj’s scholarship is “rooted in…post structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism and critical theory…. and developed in response to specific postcolonial political movements.” El-Haj’s book, the basis of the scholarship upon which Barnard will form its tenure decision, is a politically driven polemic based on unsubstantiated assertions and hearsay. This tome, cloaked in cosmetic scholarship, professes: “What was considered to have been ancient Jewish national existence and sovereignty in their homeland” is “a tale best understood as the modern nation’s origin myth…pure political fabrication.” This scholarship clearly does not fall in the realm of social science or archaeology, but postcolonial politics as El-Haj herself asserts, based upon philosophical approaches that seek to deconstruct not only the sacred cows of Western Civilization but the very legitimacy of the State of Israel as well.

Dore Gold, Israeli ambassador to the U.N. from 1997-1999, calls this recent phenomenon Temple Denial. According to Ambassador Gold, the 2000 Camp David Summit was the event that triggered this political movement to wipe out Israel’s historical origins. At the summit Arafat asserted that Solomon’s Temple of Jerusalem never existed which shocked Prime Minister Barak as well as President Clinton and the other delegates. It was the postcolonial political movement that El-Haj was responding to, as she herself asserted, which portrays Israel as a European colonial power that marched into the Middle East in the late 19th and 20th centuries and seized the land from its native inhabitants. Temple Denial, the belief that there never was an ancient Kingdom of Israel or Judah, spread all over the Middle East becoming commonplace in academic settings, seminars and lecture halls. The secular universities of Europe summarily joined in, since they tended to reject the historicity of the Bible anyway, and this germ continued to spread to the world. This political academic movement was intended to promote the justice of the Palestinian cause, by causing doubt in the legitimacy of Israel’s roots. Thus the Arab position in the battle for the control of Jerusalem could prevail by portraying Israel as a recent foreign imperialist with no historical record. Two years later El-Haj published her book, which added momentum to the growing academic syndrome expunging Jewish roots from the Middle East, which was a milestone for the Palestinian cause. Politicization of academic disciplines in the social sciences, especially archaeology and anthropology is easily accomplished as high standards of responsible and evidence-based scholarship give way to the political agendas of campus pressure groups. Of course one is free to advocate for the Palestinian or any other cause, but to do so concealed in the framework of dispassionate research and scholarship is unconscionable and dangerous.

It is distressing that Barnard would consider granting tenure to a scholar who has deliberately allowed her politics to surmount responsible science. Dr. de Russy laments the make-up of the committee that will decide on El-Haj’s tenure, since one of its members, Barnard Art History Professor Keith Moxley seems to dismiss fact and scientific evidence in the face of “political convictions” and writes approvingly of “the abandonment of an epistemological foundation for history” and “that historical arguments will be evaluated according to how well they coincide with our political conviction.”

It is even more distressing to me that some distinguished insiders do not have a voice in academia today. Instead they need to clandestinely appeal to “unsolicited outsiders” such as Dr. de Russy, Barnard alumni, and bloggers in order to communicate their scholarly opinions out of fear of reprisals. This is a shameful commentary on the state of intellectual diversity and openness on such campuses as Barnard and Columbia that are supposed to be bastions of the free and open exchange of scholarly ideas and opinions. Instead, academics who dare to express such unpopular viewpoints as pro-Zionist perspectives are roundly demonized, marginalized and denied tenure, while second-rate scholars such as El-Haj are endorsed and readily granted tenure by willing peers, as we shall see. Rather we hope that Barnard will uphold it’s outstanding reputation as a fortress of high academic standards and evidence-based scholarship by denying tenure to this academic impostor.

For many months, those close to the prosecution of the Haditha Marines have engaged in selective leaks to the media that have reflected negatively on those there and above, and in the U.S. and around the world as evidence that our mission in Iraq is a bloodthirsty evil endeavor.

At Saturday’s Article 32 (grand jury-type hearing to consider charges) at Camp Pendleton of a legal officer charged with negligence for not investigating the incident further, a previously unrevealed bit of exculpatory evidence emerged.

Throughout the week, officers all up the chain of command testified that the deaths at Haditha were considered collateral damage to action against insurgents. This was played by the media as indicating blasé attitudes toward civilian deaths, although it may also excuse the lower ranking Captain whose Article 32 hearing is underway.

Saturday, the following testimony was heard:

Eight of the 24 people whom Marines are accused of killing in Haditha, Iraq, were described yesterday as insurgents by a defense attorney and a Marine liaison officer during a pretrial hearing.

Randy Stone Defense attorney Charles Gittins said the eight were identified by human and electronic intelligence. They were not mentioned by name.

The eight were among five men ordered from a car and shot to death and four men killed in a home cleared by Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, said Gittins, who is representing Capt. Randy Stone at a pretrial hearing at Camp Pendleton. Stone is charged with failing to investigate and properly report the killings.
Last week, Capt. Jeffrey Dinsmore, the intelligence officer for the battalion, testified that “it's fairly well established through the (unmanned aerial vehicle) coverage that there were insurgents in those homes,” referring to the homes where civilians were killed.
Gittins' comments outside court were supported by Maj. Dana Hyatt, a Marine liaison officer in Haditha, who testified yesterday under a grant of immunity that four men that Marines killed inside one of three houses that the Marines cleared were insurgents. If proved, the developments could complicate the prosecution of three Marines charged with murder in the November 2005 incident.

“Obviously this will make a difference,” said Tom Umberg, a former military defense counsel, prosecutor and judge. “It's a fact favorable to the defense. I think it adds a new dynamic to what the Marines did. It may affect whether their actions were reasonable.”

John Hutson, former judge advocate general for the Navy and now president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., agreed that this could help the defense.

“If it is true and one-third are insurgents, it would certainly be complicated to explain how these guys should have been able to differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys,” Hutson said.
“It gives the defense the argument they were looking for.”

Another newspaper near Camp Pendleton reported:

Word throughout the chain of command was that even though the dead included two women and five children slain inside their homes, the "NKIAs" as the Marines call noncombatants killed in action, were victims of crossfire and nothing more….

According to intelligence reports that the Marine Corps has never released, several of the people inside were insurgents, as were some of the men from the car, Stone's attorney Charles Gittins said outside of court Saturday.

A Marine Corps spokesman, Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, later said he could not comment on any classified material that may give a full accounting of the number of dead determined to be insurgents….

Relatives of four men killed in a third house got no payment because those men were believed to be insurgents, Marine Maj. Dana Hyatt testified Saturday.

Hyatt also said no payments were made to relatives of the five men killed as they were held at gunpoint when they emerged from a car minutes after the bombing. No money went to their survivors because of a never-verified report that the car contained weapons indicating those men were insurgents.

We’re waiting for the NYT’s and others on the Haditha prosecution leak list to pick up on this.

Sunday’s New York Times features former Army Major General John Batiste’s reasoning for appearing in a TV ad the NYT’s describes as “openly challenging President Bush on his management of the war.” The ad says:

“Mr. President, you did not listen,” General Batiste says in new television advertisements being broadcast in Republican Congressional districts as part of a $500,000 campaign financed by VoteVets.org. “You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps. I left the Army in protest in order to speak out. Mr. President, you have placed our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will act now to protect our fighting men and women.”

Batiste tells the NYT’s:

General Batiste said he chose to go public with his critique of the war effort only after 30 years of honoring the Army’s rules of silence. He said it was that time commanding 22,000 troops in combat, in 2004 and 2005, that convinced him that American fighting in Iraq was short of vision as well as troops.
“There was never enough. There was never a reserve,” he said. “Again and again, we had to move troops by as many as 200 miles out of our area of operations to support another sector. We would pull troops out of contact with the enemy and move them into contact with the enemy somewhere else. The minute we’d leave, the insurgents would pick up on that, and kill everybody who had been friendly.”
General Batiste was among a handful of retired generals first calling last year for the resignation of Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary. He says he realizes lending his name to television advertisements aimed at the president and Republican members of Congress in an election cycle is different.

It’s far more than “different.” General Batiste has chosen to align himself with the very organizations and people who do not believe or are unwilling to support efforts to counter the very threat that Batiste says is primary.

As described by General Batiste, the message is not antiwar; it argues that continuing the war in Iraq as a civil, sectarian conflict that cannot be won by outside forces is crippling the Army and the Marine Corps. It does not deny the danger of violent Islamic extremism, he says, but contends that the war in Iraq prevents the armed services from preparing to battle other global security threats.
And it says that if terrorism, and especially terrorists armed with unconventional weapons, truly threaten America’s very survival, then the rest of the country — not just the military — should be called to sacrifice.

Of course, the New York Times doesn't explore the groups that Batiste has chosen as meriting his advocacy.

VoteVets.org is a front group for the Democratic Party, and cooperates with MoveOn.org in its anti-Iraq war efforts. VoteVets.org Chair Jon Stoltz worked for John Kerry in 2004.
As MSNBC reports:

The VoteVets advisory board includes Democratic National Committee member and former Al Gore adviser Elaine Kamarck and Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic House candidate in Illinois last year.
The ad campaign is being paid for by the VoteVets 501(c)(4), but the group also has a political action committee, which in last year's election targeted Republicans, spending, for example, $45,000 to defeat Sen. George Allen of Virginia.

MSNBC says the source of funding for VoteVets.org can’t be ascertained because “One alluring feature of using these tax-exempt groups is that - unlike campaign committees - the donations to a 501(c)(4) are anonymous and unlimited in amount. A single donor could, under cover of the 501(c)(4)'s anonymity, give $20 million or $200 million to pay for political ads.”

Stoltz claims his VoteVets is a 501(c)(4), the IRS code section for a tax-exempt organization "primarily engaged in promoting in some way the common good and general welfare of the community." MSNBC quotes the VoteVets saying its 501(c)(4) "primarily focuses on nonpartisan education and advocacy on behalf of troops, veterans and their families." But, as MSNBC points out, all of its targeted Senators and Congressmen are Republicans, while ignoring Democrats who opposed the Democrats’ cut-and-run votes. “The group chose not to target these Democrats.”

As Politico reported, VoteVets.org is cooperating with MoveOn.org in funding an Oliver Stone hit ad against Republican supporters of the Iraq involvement.

It was announced as liberal opponents of the Iraq war stepped up attacks on Republican congressional lawmakers who voted against a timeline for redeploying troops with letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and, this week, the launch of new TV ads.
A broad coalition of war opponents spent the congressional recess rousing the locals in dozens of Republican swing districts in 24 states.

As I traced in a series of posts (the latest here, with links to its predecessors) the roots of VoteVets.org lays in a joint effort by extreme Left blogger Kos and Democrat Chair Howard Dean.

In the 2006 elections, FactCheck called the VoteVets ad “a nasty tactic” and that VoteVets.org chair “Soltz simply misstates history.”

Not only is VoteVets.org a Democrat Party front, but is deeply enmeshed with the most radical fringes of the Democrat Party. And, its sham 501(c)(4) claim is an abuse of tax-exempt status.

Batiste, despite protestations, is either a liar or a fool. But, there’s little doubt that he has voluntarily chosen to lay down with dogs, and that he gets up with fleas.

UPDATE: Steve Bainbridge may be a professor of corporate law but his practical experience in that area lags behind his with wine. Over the years I’ve had friendly correspondence with him from my many years of practical experience in corporate finance and operations management to add to his understanding. However, when it comes to Iraq and war, our views have markedly differed, but he has no practical experience with those subjects. He has chosen to malign me as attacking any military veteran disagreeing with President Bush. Perhaps, if he actually read what I wrote he would see that I gave full expression to Batiste’s view, without negative comment. It is the associations that Batiste has chosen, with those who in effect oppose any defense whenever it practically comes down to it, and do so with a Leftist domestic political agenda, that I criticize. Thirty-one years of Army experience are no excuse for his behavior, indeed with those who oppose even his own expressed views in favor of a “surge” and recognizing the existential threat from extremist jihadism, and bring into question his judgment and integrity. Bainbridge should more carefully drink his wine, rather than spit it at others. Bainbridge's judgment and integrity also suffer.

Except for a few diehard statists, few suggest anymore that the nationalized healthcare offered in Canada and Western Europe are superior alternatives to our own. Not only are their wait-lines longer and care inferior, but they’ve had to greatly increase premium taxes and co-pays to even keep that afloat.

This healthcare analyst, for example, dissects the false numbers put forth by Ezra Klein’s defense of Canada, and again here. I posted about the British Medical Association admitting rationing of care in England. An authoritative Swedish report has Western Europeans access to the latest cancer drugs lagging far behind the U.S. In Germany, where national percent of GNP spent on medical care is approaching that in the U.S., German co-pays now are 10% or more, on top of the high taxes for medical care, and “Of 2000 hospitals, only 33 are medical centers with capability of handling more complex cases,” according to the Director of a major German academic medical center.

So, they point at the Veterans Administration as a domestic example of superior medical care, at less cost. Sorry, again.

No doubt, VA care is far, far improved from my post-Vietnam days. (It would be hard to get worse.) Washington Monthly extolled it as presently “The Best Care Anywhere,” and Newsweek later featured a similar story.

This theme was picked up by those favoring a nationalized healthcare system in the U.S. as demonstrating it is achievable. However, pointing out just a few of the flaws in the argument, I wrote in the Examiner:

The Newsweek article on the revamped Veterans Affairs hospital system, “The Best Medical Care in the U.S.,” is cited as what can be done by government, but as the article makes clear, it required “the military way of medicine,” a