Calling all conservative Californians (no, that’s not an oxymoron)

The New Neo Posted on by

I can remember when California was a wonderful state; it wasn’t all that long ago. But recent decades have seen a steep economic decline, with no end in sight.

Yes, the decline has coincided with the vast influx of immigration (legal and illegal) from Mexico and the rest of Latin America, as well as a shift ever and ever leftward politically. The two are not completely unrelated, of course. Now, as this article describes, the state is effectively a one-party state, with Democrats so dominant and a Republican Party so marginal that it is largely irrelevant or embarrassing.

As with most one-party systems, the trend is towards corruption, special interests, and ever-escalating movement away from the middle. As these trends continues—and as the more conservative voters flee the state in response—the voting pool becomes more and more skewed:

Union members have an incentive to show up at the polls to protect their pay and pensions, and issue activists will vote for those who support their line. It just seems that the rest of us have given up.

It’s that “giving up” that makes a bad situation even worse:

As there is no real competition for power or for ideas, voter turnout, at both the local and state levels, has plummeted to the lowest levels on record. June’s primaries attracted barely 25 percent of the electorate, while the Los Angeles County turnout was just over 17 percent.

When I voted this month in my San Fernando Valley precinct, I brought my 9-year-old daughter, but she didn’t get to see democracy in action. She saw an empty church basement with a bunch of pleasant election workers sitting around with not much to do.

This lack of voter enthusiasm could be explained, in part, by a lack of competition between the parties statewide. But it goes deeper than that; even the nominally nonpartisan recent Los Angeles mayor’s race, while highly competitive, also broke modern records for low turnout.

It’s understandable. With no good candidates, why bother to vote? And yet it’s puzzling, too, because don’t people realize that the less they vote, the less likely the situation is to be improved? With such a low turnout, couldn’t a fairly small number of more conservative activists get together behind a better candidate in a local race and maybe even get that person elected by putting some time and energy into getting out the vote for them?

The problem is probably that people are so demoralized that they don’t see it as even possible, so why waste the effort? Apathy breeds defeat, which breeds more apathy the more widespread and entrenched it becomes. People must be saying, “So what if we manage to elect one or two more representatives for our side, when they only get swamped by a sea of blue once they reach the legislature? It’s a waste of time and money to try.” And then, as time goes on, more and more conservatives or even middle-of-the-roaders continue to leave the state for more business-friendly climes.

I don’t have the answer. But there’s something about that voter apathy that really gets me. I understand it; who wants to waste time in a quixotic and almost certainly losing battle? But unless that battle is fought, California remains lost, and it’s still a large and powerful state.

I fear that as California goes, so goes the nation.

You think I’m being too alarmist there? The way it works is this: as California itself becomes bluer and bluer, more people who are dissatisfied leave the state. But strangely enough they bring their politics with them; people who find California’s business climate too liberal and migrate for that reason still tend to be liberal compared to the population in their new states. They don’t seem to connect liberalism with the decline of California, and they vote reliably Democratic in the more conservative states to which they migrate, turning those states ever bluer over time.

This isn’t just happening in California and out west. It’s been part of the reason that people leaving Massachusetts or New York and heading out for states such as New Hampshire and Maine have helped to turn those states blue. Little New Hampshire, once a libertarian enclave, is now basically a blue state. New Hampshire is still business-friendly, and so small that the population affiliation can shift more easily, and libertarians have mounted a push to move there and take over the state—or you might say reclaim the state.

That won’t work with California (probably won’t even work with New Hampshire, either, although it has a chance). But I’d love to see Californians get more active in trying to at least give those conservatives who already live in California a few decent candidates to support, so that they might actually want to trouble themselves to go to the polls and vote.

Arrests made in the Jerusalem murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, 16

The New Neo Posted on by

I hadn’t written about this story yet because I kept waiting for less rumor and more official facts. There seem to be a few more available lately, although they come from an unnamed “official” rather being on-the-record announcements.

The facts so far as best I can determine: Mohammed Abu Khdeir, 16, of Jerusalum, was kidnapped and murdered by assailants. His killing was either due to burning, or the body was burned afterwards (unofficial reports are that he was burned alive, but it’s not clear whether that occurred). An anonymous official is quoted as having said that “there were six suspects and described them as young males, including several minors, all of whom lived in the Jerusalem area.”

More unnamed officials have been quoted as saying that the six suspects are Jewish and acted out of “nationalistic” motives. All the articles stating this seem to be using the same AP report from an unnamed official, mentioned also here.

So the identity of the perpetrators comes under the heading of rumor widely regarded as fact by the world at large. Indeed, it might end up being true. After all, Jews and Israelis have among their number people who murder, cheat, steal, lie, and all the other various sins and crimes of which human beings are capable. If this was a murder of a Palestinian by Israeli extremists it would not be the first time, either. For me, this horrific 1994 massacre comes to mind.

So we have established that some Israelis and some Jews can be guilty of brutal crimes. But why would this be a surprise? The real surprise is that it is so uncommon among them, and certainly much much less common than among their enemies. This is neither an apology nor an excuse for the times when it does happen, it is merely a factual statement that reflects statistics. However, as we all know, the world doesn’t look at it that way. That this is an exceedingly rare occurrence in Israel as compared to the Arab world is not the point. The point is to say “See, the Jews are just as bad or worse than the Arabs.” And the world will waste no time whatsoever doing exactly that.

If this crime was indeed perpetrated by extremist Jewish Israeli youths, they’ve done more to set back their own cause than if they had released a thousand armed terrorists into the army of radical jihad.

[NOTE: It often happens that when topics such as this arise, people say the Jews are judged more harshly because they are so high and mighty they call themselves the Chosen People. This is a common misunderstanding of what the phrase means. For an explanation, see this:

According to Jewish belief, Jews are the Chosen People because they were chosen to make the idea of one God known to the world…

Why do God and Abraham have this special relationship in the Torah? The text doesn’t say. It certainly was not because the Israelites (who later became known as Jews) were a mighty nation. In fact, Deuteronomy 7:7 states, “It is not because you are numerous that God chose you, indeed you are the smallest of people.”..

The concept of chosenness has often been misinterpreted by non-Jews as a statement of superiority or even racism. But the belief that Jews are the Chosen People actually has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. In fact, chosenness has so little to do with race that Jews believe the Messiah will be descended from Ruth, a Moabite woman who converted to Judaism and whose story is recorded in the biblical “Book of Ruth.”

Jews do not believe that being a member of the Chosen People gives them any special talents or makes them better than anyone else. On the topic of chosenness, the Book of Amos even goes so far as to say: “You alone have I singled out of all the families of the earth. That is why I call you to account for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2). In this way Jews are called to be a “light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6) by doing good in the world through gemilut hasidim (acts of loving kindness) and tikkun olam (repairing the world).

So one aspect of the idea of chosenness (a concept not accepted by all Jews) is that G-d (which is the way Jews traditionally write the name of the deity) holds them to a higher standard. The world, however, seems to have taken on that task, and holds them to a standard so high that it can never be met, while holding their enemies to virtually no standards at all.]

What kind of illusions does Obama have?

The New Neo Posted on by

From Peggy Noonan:

“The world seems to disappoint [Obama],” says the New Yorker’s liberal and sympathetic editor, David Remnick.

What kind of illusions do you have to have about the world to be disappointed when it, and its players, act aggressively or foolishly? Presidents aren’t supposed to have those illusions, and they’re not supposed to check out psychologically when their illusions are shattered.

Noonan’s column operates on the assumption that Obama was once engaged and now has “checked out” psychologically. Would that he had, but I don’t think so. As I read his behavior, he’s become angrier and more impatient, but that’s not at all the same as being disengaged. His disengagement is with even giving the pretense of going through the motions of trying to talk with the opposition, or talking respectfully about them, or caring about the will of the people of the United States, or reining in his intention to transcend the limitations of his constitutional powers.

But I will nevertheless try to answer Noonan’s question about what kind of illusions Obama has, because I think she is correct that he labors under certain illusions and that Remnick is also correct that Obama is disappointed with the world.

If you’re Obama, first and foremost is the illusion that you are always the smartest person in the room. That you can charm the birds off trees, that your mere presence will make things will work out (whatever your goal might be), that the public will always approve of you, and that none of this will require a whole lot of effort, hard work, or change in your way of operating or in your perceptions of things.

You have this illusion (expressed by Obama in 2006, so it wasn’t the result of getting a swelled head from having been president for a while):

I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters…I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.

And you have this one, expressed by Obama during the 2008 campaign:

Ironically, this is an area””foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain.

It’s ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know.

…So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa”“knowing the leaders is not important”“what I know is the people.

To Remnick, who seems a bit puzzled by Obama’s disappointment in the world (although probably not as puzzled as Noonan, who seems perpetually puzzled these days), I’d say that Obama has always been disappointed in the world, and bored by it, because it doesn’t always work the way he wants or validate his perception of himself. This boredom is not new, either. Valerie Jarrett, who knows Obama better than anyone in the world with the possible exception of his wife Michelle, has said it very clearly:

I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. ”¦ He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability ”” the extraordinary, uncanny ability ”” to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. ”¦ So, what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. ”¦ He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.

Or even too “talented” to do what ordinary presidents do.

[NOTE: Here’s a video of the Remnick quote.]

The bulldog Left

The New Neo Posted on by

They never never never give up.

After six and a half years of Obama, it’s still Bush’s fault. Bush seems to be the secular uncaused cause.

And critics of Obama are RACISTS, with a capital N-word—except the only person using it is the person attacking those critics:

The West View News, a monthly paper in New York’s West Village with a circulation of around 20,000, ran an op-ed from author James Lincoln Collier titled “N—-r in the White House.”

If the headline wasn’t strange and shocking enough, the New York Post reports that the op-ed is actually a pro-Obama piece, in which Collier argues that, “far right voters hate Obama because he is black.”

And the fictitious War on Women is only just getting started.

It’s no mystery why the left does this. They know they can’t win the rational argument with the right, so it’s best to stay away from it. They know that propaganda works, and it can crowd out the much more difficult-to-follow and tedious things known as logic and reason. They know human nature, and they know that human beings respond strongly to emotional appeals.

A huge thank-you to everyone who contributed!

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP]

I want to extend a heartfelt thank-you to everyone who donated to the blog. It’s a cliche, but words really can’t express how grateful I am. It helps me to go on doing this despite all the difficult news. Or maybe because of all the difficult news.

I deeply appreciate every donation, no matter how small. And I deeply appreciate everyone who comments, as well as all my readers, even the lurkers. You become part of the community here, and it means a lot to me.

I usually do two appeals a year for about a week apiece. But any time the spirit moves you, donations are just fine with me.

Abandoning the Obamacare employer mandate

The New Neo Posted on by

Now Democrats may be poised to abandon the Obamacare employer mandate, according to this article. They just won’t do it before the election of 2014:

More and more liberal activists and policy experts who help shape Democratic thinking on health care have concluded that penalizing businesses if they don’t offer health insurance is an unnecessary element of the Affordable Care Act that may do more harm than good. Among them are experts at the Urban Institute and the Commonwealth Fund and prominent academics like legal scholar Tim Jost…

Leading Democrats in Congress aren’t bolting from the employer mandate, at least not before the November election. But the White House has delayed it twice in the past year, dubbed it “not critical” and said it will be phased in more slowly when its begins next year.

The rule that businesses with more than 50 full-time workers offer them affordable health insurance has been a political headache from the start. The nonstop stream of headlines, however anecdotal, about businesses cutting jobs or shortening workweeks to skirt the coverage rules has constantly inflamed opposition to Obamacare.

Chris Jennings, a longtime health policy hand who helped the White House during the final implementation push, says the employer mandate has become a “political irritant” …

Estimates of the mandate’s worth to Obamacare financing range from $46 billion to more than $100 billion over a decade. That helps pay for coverage expansion. Getting a bipartisan deal to scrap the policy is one hurdle; an agreement on how to make up the money could be even harder.

Everything in the article could be summarized this way: Republicans were right all along about the employer mandate and its effects, and Democrats now realize that, too. But somehow in about 1500 words it can’t quite get that thought together and express it. It also seems pretty likely (although not mentioned either) that without the mandate, the CBO probably wouldn’t have scored the bill as fiscally okay and it might not have passed. But that’s water over the dam, right?

But the employee mandate is by no means the only part of Obamacare’s financial underpinnings that’s falling to pieces. This article contends that the whole thing is rotten through and through in terms of the money that was supposed to support it. That should be no surprise to anyone, either.

What a vile state of affairs.

Birth control: it’s free!

The New Neo Posted on by

Isn’t this wonderful?

More than half of privately insured women are getting free birth control under President Barack Obama’s health law, a major coverage shift that’s likely to advance.

…The share of privately insured women who got their birth control pills without a copayment jumped to 56 percent [in 2013], from 14 percent in 2012. The law’s requirement that most health plans cover birth control as prevention, at no additional cost to women, took full effect in 2013.

The average annual saving for women was $269.

What a wonderful guy that Obama is, and what wonderful people those Democrats are, giving me free birth control. Birth control that the Republicans and the religious fanatics at Hobby Lobby would deny me.

What’s that you say? Can’t hear you. Well, you don’t have to shout in my ear!! You say that somebody’s paying for it? What do I care, as long as I don’t have to? You say maybe I am paying for it, through increased premiums or taxes?

I knew it was too good to be true. Those greedy insurance companies, always trying to screw me.

Now, to get back to my own voice rather than whomever I was channeling just then (don’t know what came over me), let me add that I continue to be astounded at people’s financial ignorance. I’m no economic whiz, but I know that neither insurance companies nor the government—as kind-hearted and benevolent as both undoubtedly are; always thinking of us, never of themselves—give us things for free. Everything government does is paid for through taxes. I suppose if you pay no taxes it’s free to you, but even then, an insurance company is still (when last I checked) in the business to make money and not give things away.

The birth control mandate, by the way, was not voted on by Congress, not even by the convoluted machinations through which Obamacare itself was passed. The mandate, as well as its reduction in the extent of co-pays, was an administrative HHS decision, based in part on the recommendation of a medical panel known as the IOM [emphasis mine]:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mandates contraceptive coverage for all employers and educational institutions, even though the mandate itself is not included in the wording of the law(s) passed by Congress. The mandate applies to all new health insurance plans effective August 2012…

On January 20, 2012, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced a (then) final rule of an August 1, 2011 interim final rule on health insurance coverage with no cost sharing for FDA-approved contraceptives and contraceptive services (including female sterilization) for women of reproductive age if prescribed by health care providers, as part of women’s preventive health services guidelines adopted by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) for the Affordable Care Act. Male contraception is not eligible.

Regulations made under the act rely on the recommendations of the independent Institute of Medicine (IOM) in its July 19, 2011 report Clinical Preventive Services for Women: Closing the Gaps…

All of the birth control mandate lawsuits (and Hobby Lobby should more accurately be described as an abortifacient lawsuit) follow from that mandate by HHS, which followed from that report by the IOM. The lawsuits focused on the mandates’ anti-religious aspects, because that was the issue for those particular plaintiffs. But there are other possible objections, such as whether the government should be mandating that something like contraception coverage be “free” (that is, no direct and obvious consumer contribution) for anyone, and especially for those who can afford it, since so far as I can see there is no means test.

You can find the IOM report here. Basically, it seems that HHS asked the IOM to review “what preventive services are important to women’s health and well-being and then [recommend] which of these should be considered in the development of comprehensive guidelines,” and that’s exactly what the group did. Under their recommendations, HHS announced that:

…a full range of preventive services for women, including annual well-woman visits, screening for gestational diabetes, breastfeeding support, HPV testing, STI counseling and HIV screening, contraception methods and counseling, and screening and counseling for interpersonal and domestic violence, will be covered by new health plans without cost sharing.

This is both mandated and for the most part completely covered, so we are all paying for it, and it was never even subjected to a vote by Congress.

And dare I ask: what of men? I understand that only women can get pregnant, and this is a very important aspect of their health care that does not apply to men. But don’t things like HIV, contraception, domestic violence, and STIs apply to men? Do they not deserve some freebies too?

And what of the myriad other health problems we all face? If the socialist camel has gotten his nose in the tent regarding women’s reproductive care, why shouldn’t his whole body and then a whole herd of camels follow? The answer is, of course, that universal “free” coverage has always been the intention of the left. And getting the birth control mandate in there slyly and secretly was the way to go, because Obamacare probably would never have been passed if its designers and proponents had been upfront and put it in the statute itself.

[NOTE: In a somewhat-related post, blogger Bookworm—who’s a lawyer—very helpfully and clearly explains the Hobby Lobby decision, not as it’s been distorted and lied about, but as it’s actually written. She’s trying to get “progressives” to understand that what they’re shrieking about just isn’t so. I wish her the best of luck, but I don’t think lack of explanation is really the answer for most of them. However, if there are any rational people on your list, you might take a look and send it to them.]

[ADDENDUM: Please read this (hat tip: commenter “Ann”).]

Dana Milbank: it might be good for Obama if he loses the Senate

The New Neo Posted on by

And not because it will curb his worst excesses, either, and force him to compromise. No, Milbank thinks it could make America see what firebrands the Republicans are, and so they would applaud Obama’s continual efforts to check them by vetoing everything they pass. He sees “marauding conservatives” as possibly “driv[ing] Republicans to oblivion in 2016 and beyond.”

I suppose it could happen that way; never underestimate Republicans’ power to self-destruct. But it doesn’t seem to even occur to Milbank that if the 2014 election results in Republican control of both houses of Congress it could actually signify that voters want Republican solutions to the problems we face. That they are not happy with the excessive liberal turn the country has taken, and that they are disgusted with Obama’s lies and negativity as well as his actual policies.

Why would veto after veto help Obama? It could only help in the fevered minds of those such as Milbank, who are so convinced of the rightness of the liberal and leftist agenda that they cannot even conceive of the idea that Republicans and/or conservatives (not the same thing, of course) might have good ideas, and that they might even actually execute them in a way that would please the majority of the public. That their election might express the will of the people, and that the people might prefer they get a chance to try, rather than be thwarted by an unpopular president with a veto pen.

Happy Independence Day

The New Neo Posted on by

The Fourth of July is called the Fourth, but of course it’s also called Independence Day.

Independence, as in “The Declaration of Independence,” meant that we had severed our ties with England and were autonomous, although it took many long years of struggle before we established our own government and its Constitution. But “independence” has a meaning that’s, well, independent of that, with synonyms such as “self”“sufficiency, self-dependence, self-reliance, self-subsistence, self-support” and antonyms such as “dependence.”

Of course, in some sense we are all dependent on each other; no man (or woman) is an island. But there is a growing feeling in this country that we have a right to ask, or even to demand, of other people that they take care of us, not of their own free will as voluntary charity, but as a matter of law and compulsion. And not only when we are in dire straights—struck by serious hardships outside of our control—but also if we don’t happen to have as much money as they do, or as much as we would want, or if we just don’t feel like working.

Sometimes it seems as though some are celebrating Independence Day while others are celebrating Dependence Day.

And I’m by no means talking about one ethnic group or another. I’m talking about a mindset that knows no boundaries of that sort, and which has grown and grown in recent decades to encompass vast portions of the populace. It’s a mindset that will destroy us.

So, Happy Independence Day, in addition to Happy Fourth!

[NOTE: Eat that BBQ or those burgers or those hot dogs. It’s very nasty and rainy here today, so my burgers will be cooked indoors.]

Happy Fourth: to liberty!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post. It was written in the springtime some years ago, on a visit to New York. I thought it especially relevant today, though, because I see our liberties as increasingly threatened.]

I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.

When you approach the Promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is New York:

brookheights2.jpg

And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.

I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.

All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a preponderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.

The garden is more advanced from what it must be at my house, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyacinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees I don’t know the names of.

In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.

As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in 1965, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on every visit. So, what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth, restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.

I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.

The sight is intensely familiar to me—I used to see it very often when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.