“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
"I have made the statement I am going to make on this. I don't have anything more to say about it."
Republicans have asked for the interrogation briefing memos to be declassified. Obama has selectively declassified some. Thursday, House Democrats blocked a Republican effort to form a special committee to investigate Pelosi's allegation that CIA officials misled her.
The speaker said she does not intend to continue discussing the matter publicly. At the end of a news conference on accomplishments of the Democratic Congress, she stammered her way to her newly found rectitude.
Pelosi then decide to get 12 time zones removed from Washington and go for a week-long trip to China. No doubt the air force will be flying her there.
Sure bring the worst of the worst Islamic terrorists to US jails so that they can become stars to the tens of thousand of blacks who annually convert to Islam in US prisons. That will help our standing with the left in Europe.
Plot renews fears of radical Islam in prison By ERIC GORSKI and RACHEL ZOLL – NEW YORK (AP) —
The arrest of four Muslim ex-convicts in an alleged homegrown terror plot in the Bronx is renewing fears about the spread of Islamic extremism in the nation's prisons. At least two of the four men suspected of plotting to bomb synagogues and shoot down military airplanes converted to Islam behind bars. The alleged mastermind is also a convert, and the fourth man identified himself as a Muslim when he entered prison.
Islam has had a strong presence in U.S. prisons for decades, and many chaplains and corrections officials credit the faith, when taught properly, with being a stabilizing force that can help inmates turn their lives around.
But this week's foiled plot is not the first terror scheme implicating Muslim convicts, and it comes despite reports of progress in screening chaplains and materials on Islam in the prison system.
"Basically, the threat is real," said Paul Rogers, past president of the American Correctional Chaplains Association. "Prisons have unstable people and people who are on the edge of a lot of different things. The radical elements of any religion can be emphasized."
Those fears were heightened this week as lawmakers debated the fate of detainees if President Barack Obama shutters the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said terror suspects brought to the U.S. could end up "radicalizing others" or plan attacks on the country. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Obama would do nothing to endanger the public and decried "fear-mongering about this."
The four defendants in the New York terror case had been in and out of prison.
Laguerre Payen said he converted to Islam in prison, but a Muslim prayer leader who counseled him when he got out said he had a poor understanding of the faith. Onta Williams had registered as a Baptist in prison, but his uncle said he converted to Islam inside. David Williams and James Cromitie had registered as Muslim in prison, according to correction officials. Payen appears to be a Haitian citizen, while the three others are Americans. The Williamses are not related.
Mitch Silber, a top New York Police Department intelligence analyst, said inmates converting to Islam are so common that he and his colleagues call it "Prislam." Though many drop the faith once they are out, for some "the conversion sticks" and can fuel anger toward the United States, said Silber, co-author of the 2007 NYPD report "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat."
Just as young people can be radicalized by "cut-and-paste" readings of the Quran on the Internet, new inmates may get a distorted view of Islam from gang leaders or other influential inmates, according to "Out of the Shadows: Getting Ahead of Prison Radicalization," a 2006 report by the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute and the University of Virginia Critical Incident Analysis Group.
Several imams used the term "Jailhouse Islam" to describe a form of Islam in prison that incorporates gang loyalty and violence, the report said.
Many states are doing a better job of screening the reading material that comes into prisons, Rogers said. But other problems arise when there are no qualified chaplains or volunteers.
"Sometimes inmates rely on other inmates, and it's sort of the prison way," Rogers said. "They turn to someone they trust, their 'celly' or someone in their cellblock, and put them on a pedestal as someone who has more knowledge about the religion. He could be spreading knowledge, or could be spreading ignorance." Inmates who were radicalized in prison include:
_ Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, who converted to Islam behind bars and was recruited at a mosque to become a mujahedeen fighter, authorities said. Prosecutors accused him of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb," but he was convicted of unrelated terror support charges.
_ Richard Reid, a British citizen and follower of Osama bin Laden, who was a prison convert in England and became involved with militants after he was freed. He pleaded guilty in 2002 to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes. He is now serving a life sentence at a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.
_ A group of prisoners in California who converted to Islam and were arrested in 2005 on charges of plotting behind bars to attack military sites, synagogues and other targets.
Islam took hold in U.S. prisons in the 1940s, when members of the Nation of Islam were held for refusing to fight in World War II. Malcolm X was one of their most famous prison recruits.
The religion spread when Muslim inmates successfully sued for more freedom to practice their faith. Get-tough sentencing laws enacted in the 1980s filled prisons with large numbers of blacks and led to another spike in conversion. By this time, many blacks who once were in the Nation of Islam embraced mainstream Islam instead.
Some inmates gravitate toward Islam out of resentment over being locked up, said Jimmy Jones, a Muslim chaplain and volunteer in Connecticut prisons.
"The argument being made is that some people are being taught core values in jail that are turning them into jihadists. This is outrageous," Jones said. "It's not Islam that turns them against America. If you track them back, they had some resentment already going on."
Jones said Connecticut and New York correction officials have barred "The Noble Quran," a Saudi translation of the Muslim holy book. An appendix in the book is titled "The Call to Jihad (Holy Fighting in Allah's Cause)." But Jones argued that the threat of extremism from prison conversions has been exaggerated.
"I think this is another form of fear-mongering," he said. "The guys I know who come out of prison, they have many issues, and that's not one of them."
Harry Dammer, a criminologist at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania who studies religion in prisons, said there is no clear evidence that the Islam taught or spread in U.S. prisons are the forms of Islamic militancy on display in the Bronx case. "I would say that yes, of course, there are extremists around, but they are few and far between," Dammer said, "and they are not supported by imams and chaplains in prisons."
Associated Press Writers Michael Hill in Newburgh, N.Y., and Tom Hays in New York contributed to this story. Gorski reported from Denver and Zoll from New York.
Right on. (I hate that affected Britishism,"spot-on")
UPDATE: Cheney cleaned Obama's Mickey Mouse watch. The press is in high gear defending Obama, but they know Cheney nailed his skinny ass. The beat goes on.
As goes California, so goes the nation? There may be lessons on health care as well.
Remember a couple of years ago when the EU masters and rulers were shocked and dismayed that the voters in France and Holland had the lack of political sophistication to accept the constitution beginning crammed down their throats? The statists went near hysterical in trying to comprehend the rejection and plotted to go around the voters. History is repeating itself in California.
The left is mobilizing to undo votes it does not like. No pictures of purple fingers here. You cannot get much further away from California than New York City and still be in the US, but the New York Times realizing the political impact of voter rejection of more and more taxes, jumps into the fray. Read it.
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May 21, 2009 California, a Broke State, Reels as Voters Rebuff Leaders
Direct democracy has once again upended California — enough so that the state may finally consider another way by overhauling its Constitution for the first time in 130 years.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger returned home from a White House visit on Wednesday to find the state dangerously broke, his constituents defiant after a special election on Tuesday and calls for a constitutional convention — six months ago little more than a wonkish whisper — a cacophony.
As the notion of California as ungovernable grows stronger than ever, Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has expressed support for a convention to address such things as the state’s arcane budget requirements and its process for proliferate ballot initiatives, both of which necessitated Tuesday’s statewide vote on budget matters approved months ago by state lawmakers.
“There could not be more of a tipping point,” said Jim Wunderman, chief executive of the Bay Area Council, a business group that moved forward on Wednesday with plans to push for a constitutional convention. “We think the interest is going to grow by orders of magnitude now.”
More immediately, Mr. Schwarzenegger met with legislative leaders to begin the painful process of slashing state spending after voters rejected five ballot measures intended to balance the budget through a combination of tax increases, borrowing and the reallocation of state money.
The only ballot measure to succeed was one that prevented lawmakers and constitutional officers from getting raises in times of fiscal distress, a sort of chin-out electoral scowl by voters, who will now probably see their health care systems, schools and other services erode. On Friday, the state controller, John Chiang, and the treasurer, Bill Lockyer, are expected to appear before lawmakers and warn them that the state is nearly unable to pay its bills.
With the special-election results in, the California Citizens Compensation Commission moved Wednesday to impose an 18 percent pay cut for all elected officials, while the Bay Area Council began its campaign to rewrite the Constitution to address some of its more crippling rules and give more financial control to localities. The constitutional effort was immediately embraced by the San Francisco mayor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is a 2010 candidate for governor, and some political experts suggested that the movement might be perfectly timed.
“The majority of Californians say the state is headed in the wrong direction,” said Mark Baldassare, the president of the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan polling organization. In a March poll of 2,004 residents, two-thirds said the Constitution should be altered, Mr. Baldassare said.
“I think that we could be at a crossroads here, “ Mr. Baldassare said. “People in California don’t feel they have the government we need in the 21st century.”
The last time California held a constitutional convention was in 1878-79 when the state’s founding constitution was rewritten, though a state commission made revisions to the document in the 1960s and 1970s. Such a convention would have to be done, of course, through a ballot initiative.
In the meantime, the unpleasant exercise of renegotiating the state budget — the third time this fiscal year — must be done by June 30 in order to realize the full value of any cuts.
Facing a $21.3 billion budget deficit, Mr. Schwarzenegger is requesting a $6 billion loan from the federal government, and has proposed a variety of politically unpalatable cuts, including commuting prisoners’ sentences, taking away health insurance from some poor children, reducing aid to community colleges and eliminating a large chunk of financing for shelters that serve children and women who have been abused.
The Legislature, controlled by Democrats, will hold public hearings on the governor’s proposals next week and come up with its own suggestions, which would probably affect fewer vulnerable residents and avoid jeopardizing the loss of federal education and health care money that requires a state match.
While California has suffered the same fate as much of the nation — high unemployment, large numbers of foreclosures, general economic sluggishness — its budget woes are greatly exacerbated by its odd and in many ways outmoded way of doing business.
The ballot initiative process — in which legislators or independent groups ask voters to mandate how the state’s money is spent or not spent — has become at times an exercise in fiscal self defeat, with voters moving to earmark money for one special program one year, only to contemplate undoing their own will a few elections later.
The state’s legislative districts are highly gerrymandered, leaving the Legislature influenced by the political fringe of both parties and unable to agree on practical budget matters or much else. State senators represent roughly a million people each, larger than most Congressional districts, leaving them out of touch with local needs. Further, the state is one of only three requiring a two-thirds majority vote in the Legislature on taxes and budgets, which leads to partisan fighting and long delays.
All of this came into play in the special election on Tuesday.
“There was a both-sides-against-the-middle aspect,” said Bruce Cain, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, “reflecting the wide differences between Democrats and Republicans on the budget; a general disgust with the Legislature and the governor; ballot fatigue; and weariness with voting for yet another budgetary patch.”
California passed a budget in February contingent on the ballot measures’ winning approval. Even before Tuesday’s vote, the state was $5.8 billion newly in the hole because revenues had continued to plummet over the spring. Institutions that rely on state money have already begun to adjust in ways large and small.
The Los Angeles Superior Court will now close once a month. Dental care at Feather River Hospital in Paradise, near Sacramento, will cease on July 1. The Santa Clarita fireworks show this Fourth of July will be 10 minutes shorter.
“The state funds 94 domestic violence emergency shelter programs,” said Nicole Shellcroft, a former director of a targeted shelter in the Antelope Valley. “With this cut, the majority of them disappear.”
When he took office six years ago, Mr. Schwarzenegger promised to bring badly needed systemic change to state government. Though he has not delivered on that promise, he has laid more groundwork for it than his predecessors. He persuaded voters to let an independent panel redraw the legislative districts, which may well erode the partisan chokehold many candidates have had on parts of the state.
Also, if his ballot proposal to conduct open primaries in the state prevails at the polls next month, political change in Sacramento could be profound.
Here is a modest suggestion. It has been reported that China is engaging with Brazil to discriminate against the free use of US currency in their mutual trade. China is all for the idea and there are several other countries with similar notions.
It seems as if the Chinese have too many dollars. I want to help.
Being a big picture kind a guy I was just thinking, why not expand the deal to health care. Here is how.
Let any country that engages in trade that overtly discriminates against the free flow of US dollars earn the privilege of paying a 25% tariff on all of their goods and services that enter the US. The tariff will be in place for one year and will increase by an additional 5% for each year the practice continues. It will decrease by 5% each year after the practice stops. The proceeds will go for supplemental health insurance for the needy.
China will soon enough not have to worry about excess dollars.
I would make the move. Only with increased domestic industrial activity can America end dependancy on foreign capital and perpetual deficits. The money merchant model of Wall Street assumed ever expanding technology innovation and the recycling of the excess savings of Germany, Japan and China. That era has ended. The US can re-industrialize rapidly and do so behind selective tariffs if necessary.
The carriers are there to remind people who is boss.
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AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD Telegraph Asia will author its own destruction if it triggers a crisis over US bonds Japan beware, crashes have a habit of bringing regime change
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Last Updated: 6:03PM BST 17 May 2009
ET TU TOKYO? If Washington is counting on Japan to act as last-resort buyer of US dollar bonds, it may have to think again. Masaharu Nakagawa, finance chief of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), told the BBC that his country should not purchase any more US debt unless issued in yen as "Samurai" bonds, akin to "Carter bonds" in 1978. This is the sort of petulance that tends to emerge in the late phase of slumps (1840s, early 1930s) when mass lay-offs provoke a populist backlash and hotheads run away with the agenda. Mr Nakagawa later played down the comments, calling them private thoughts, but the genie is out of the bottle.
We have come to assume that Japan under the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will always cleave to America, if only to safeguard US protection against Chinese naval expansion. Backed by Washington after the war as a rural counterweight to the urban left, the LDP has held an almost unbroken grip on power since 1955.
But crashes have a habit of bringing regime change. Brian Reading, a Japan veteran at Lombard Street Research, predicts a "seismic shock" over the next four months as voters rebel.
"With unemployment heading for 5 million by end-year, something must happen," he said.
The tremors from Japan follow near-weekly fulminations from Beijing, which suspects that Washington is engineering a stealth default on America's debt by the trickery of quantitative easing. This was put bluntly in February by Luo Ping, head of China's banking commission: "We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion, we know the dollar is going to depreciate." Premier Wen Jiabao picked up the theme more politely, asking whether the "massive amount of capital" lent to the US was still safe. Since then the People's Bank has floated ideas for a world currency.
China and Japan together hold 23pc of America's $6,369bn federal debt. This has caused alarm on the US talk radio circuit, but fears of imminent "dollardämmerung" and a collapse of American economic power may prove far off the mark. Who ultimately holds a gun to the head of whom?
If Asia's leaders give free rein to frustrations and crater the US bond market, they will ensure their own political destruction. Japan already risks descent into demographic death, deflation, and debt atrophy (its public debt is nearing 200pc of GDP). China's regime depends on perma-boom for post-Maoist legitimacy. Could it survive the wrath of jobless graduates and rural migrants if it provokes America into erecting trade barriers, killing the globalisation goose that lays the golden egg?
American can if necessary retreat into its vast home market and rebuild its industrial base, well-armed with 12 aircraft carrier battle groups.
The last 12 months should be lesson enough that Asia cannot yet stand on its own two feet. Its mercantilist export model remains a "high-beta" play on the West, to use trader parlance.
Japan's industrial output has fallen 34pc. China's exports are down 23pc.
Ray Maurer, from Qatar's QNB Capital, said China may be too busy closing factories it should never have built to challenge US primacy over coming years.
"China is not going to be a juggernaut until it creates a viable economy based on home consumption. It's just a tiger, living a myth," he said.
Lombard's Charles Dumas says the "super-savers" (China, Japan, Germany) have warped their own economies by relying on exports and, therefore, on perpetual debt build-up by the West.
"Their currencies are due to decline against the dollar as weak US recovery throws a few scraps from its table, over which the world's exporters will have to scrabble, cutting their prices and currencies in the process. The US is not, and is not about to become, Argentina or Zimbabwe," he said.
Let us not forget how we got here. Japan amassed a quarter trillion dollars of US bonds from January 2003 to March 2004 in a frantic effort to drive down the yen and stave off deflation. It has not yet won that battle. Producer prices fell to minus 3.8pc in April, a 22-year low.
China's holdings of US bonds are a consequence of its own policy of holding down the yuan to boost exports. Beijing may rage about America's "helicopter" stimulus, but what would have happened to the factories of Guangdong if the Fed had not taken emergency action or if the US Treasury had allowed the banks to collapse? China wants it both ways.
The world economy has long been running on fumes. The debt appetite of the Anglo-sphere and Club Med kept demand afloat, concealing excess capacity. The deformed interplay of Asia's Confucian model and Western consumption ran unchecked, until the imbalances blew up.
Yet it is easier to blame Uncle Sam, subprime, and friendless bankers. A folk tale has captured political discourse everywhere, from Beijing, to Tokyo, Moscow, and Berlin. If they are foolish enough to act on this self-serving illusion, they will pay the higher price.
Everyone in the United States, every illegal immigrant, every visitor to the US, every child, and every old person has health care. Everyone of the alleged forty million uninsured will get free medical care if they need it and show up at a hospital. 85% of all Americans have a paid insurance plan. 85% is a big number. Imagine being right in the market 85% of the time, or have an 85% chance of recovering from cancer, or a president with an 85% approval rating.
Many of the uncovered 15% have made the economic decision not to pay for insurance because they do no want to. They know they will be covered in an emergency. I pay for my own insurance and pay 100% of the policy for everyone who works for me. That is my choice. It gives me an advantage to get people who I want to work for me. If the government wants to coerce the remaining 15% to get insurance that is fine with me.
They could start by deducting premium payments from any and all government assistance payments being made to the uncovered individual.
I would wager that many of the uninsured drive without auto insurance. It would take little to put insurance information on a drivers license and have all licenses swiped at the pump at the time of purchase. No insurance on the driver and/or the car, let them pay an extra buck or two or three per gallon, and be insured for the time it takes them to use a tank of gas. They will soon see the value of a private insurance plan.
Other than that let the lying bastards in the government mind their own business and leave the rest of us alone.
