The Problem: High Debt, Not Low Debt Ceiling

            As I write, there looms what we are told by our political and economic masters is a looming economic crisis, unless we raise to $16.7 trillion or so the nation’s debt ceiling (that’s $16,700,000,000,000, boys and girls). Here’s where we stand:

            Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday declared House Speaker Boehner’s Bill - purportedly an attempt to deal responsibly with the problem - dead on arrival in the Senate. Yet to date Reid has failed to pass a Bill of his own (probably a good thing). 


            Back at the White House ranch, our feckless Community Organizer-In-Chief broods. The “Enlightened One” who swept into office three years ago promising to bring us together and move beyond the acrimony of the past, now presides over an even more bitterly divided nation whose divisions and acrimony he himself has exacerbated. Even now he engages in an unseemly blame game, pointing fingers all round and hectoring Congressional Republicans and members of the Tea Party, while all the while failing to lead by, among other things, presenting a plan of his own. His current approval rate is an all-time low of 40%; 34% among Independents. The peevishness of this most radical of Presidents may, ironically, be attributable to this most bourgeois of reasons: the perceived crisis has caused the Great Golfer to miss his regular tee-times.

            Of course, one must question whether there really is a crisis, or, if one determines that there is, whether it might actually be a salubrious to pass through one. As I observed earlier in the week: 

“I’ve noticed that many of the "prudent" establishment types now criticizing the influence of the Tea Party and warning Americans of dire consequences should we fail to raise the debt ceiling are people who depend upon government themselves. I’ve also noticed that they are many of the same people who have been propagating many of the wrong-headed predictions that have worked against the common good since the end of WW II, such as: that Soviet Communism is morally equivalent to democratic capitalism and is here to stay; that the Berlin Wall is never coming down in our lifetime so we need to make the best deal we can with Communist regimes world-wide; that Mao, Stalin, Fidel Castro, and so many others are not Communist despots but merely benign "agrarian reformers"; that if we only stopped the war in Vietnam and spent the money on America's inner cities, poverty would disappear; that government exists to help us and solve our problems; that drug use among adults is harmless and victimless; that the sexual revolution will not involve any human road kill; that feminism is not an assault on femininity; that Ronald Reagan is not Presidential material and, if elected, will recklessly initiate WW III; that the epidemic of AIDS engulfing the homosexual community will soon engulf the married heterosexual community unless confiscatory taxes are imposed upon the latter in favor of the former; that planet earth will soon be gripped by a nuclear winter; that planet earth will soon be gripped by man-made Global Warming; that planet earth will soon be gripped by world-wide famine as a result of the population explosion; that Y2K will eat our computers and lead to societal convulsions; and that abortion will soon be widely accepted as it does not involve the taking of innocent unborn human life.”

            I would suggest that there is a crisis all right, but the avatars of the status quo in Washington have it all wrong: the problem lies with the high debt, not with the low debt ceiling.   

            America’s economic data, at once lurid and sobering, can be seen, dynamically, by accessing the US Debt Clock through the following link: http://www.usdebtclock.org/. [Warning!! It will make your hair itch and your children's hair grey.]

            Here’s all you need to know. The nation’s current debt ceiling is $14.294 trillion. Because our “leaders” have irresponsibly spent more than they have taken in for all but 12 of the past 76 years, our national debt currently stands at right around that figure, which represents about 95% of the economy. (Anyone who thinks the government will not spend right up to its debt limit is delusional, which makes so cynical President Obama’s technically correct statement that raising the debt ceiling does not necessarily mean that the federal government will spend the money. The government will because it can, and because it has always done so.) 

            In terms everyone can understand, a national debt of this amount means: a $46,000 lien on every U. S. citizen and a $130,000 lien on every U. S. taxpayer. It also means that under the Great Golfer’s proposed 2012 budget, the U. S. will have to pay over $6 trillion in interest payments alone over the next 10 years. By 2021, over 80% of the projected annual deficit will constitute interest on the national debt, and 89% of all money collected by the government will be used to pay for only four budget items: (i) interest on the national debt, (ii) Medicare, (iii) Medicaid, and (iv) Social Security obligations.  Put another way, in ten years, 89 cents of every dollar collected will be spoken for, leaving our “leaders” with only 11 cents to divvy up among such things as defense, space, education, agriculture, etc.   

            But the 14.2 trillion national debt is only part of the problem. Even were we to pay it down to zero overnight, we would still have to deal with the annual deficit, whose trajectory is unsustainable (just like the public sector stimulus jobs created by the Obama Administration). With an annual budget of $3.6 trillion, and a deficit of $1.4 trillion, it is a function of the hallucinatory detachment of the political class that Boehner’s Bill, which reduces spending by $900 billion over ten years (a mere 6.2% of the national debt) is deemed excessive and “absolutist” by such Democrats as John Kerry.

            But whatever the scope and contours of the crisis, one thing can be said: the people who created it are, by and large, unwilling or incapable of solving it.

            And who are these people? Answer: the selfish and near-sighted members of the political class who have run our government and presided over the political fortunes of this country for the past 40+ years. That class consists, first, of our elected officials in Washington who have clung to power, privilege, and pleasure while failing stunningly in their responsibilities to manage the people’s money and advance the common good. (Democrats are the biggest culprits, but Republicans like both Bushes, Dole, McCain, Cheney, McConnell, etc.  also share in the blame.) Then there are the craven members of the Fourth Estate, the acolytes of our elected “leaders”, who, instead of speaking and writing truth, are themselves corrupted by power and seek above all else access to those who have it and the perquisites that accompany such access. And, finally, there are the “Black Ops” lobbyists who roam the corridors of power in alligator shoes, securing favorable treatment for the ruling class in the labyrinthine provisions of a tax code that, in its pornographic complexity and monumental unfairness, constitutes an affront to free men and women.

            One of the great things that can be said about the Tea Party Movement and its resilience is that members of this supercilious political class, who once viewed members of the Tea Party with derision and contempt, now view them with fear and dread.

            I say three cheers for the Tea Party. They have forced a day of political and economic reckoning upon a Pharisaical class of parasites that is long overdue.  

The Community Organizer On The Debt Ceiling

            “In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But, instead of using it to pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts.” [Emphasis supplied.]

            These words of President Obama expressed without emphasis at the very beginning of his address to the nation last night were overlooked by every commentator, news analyst, and talking head by whom I was assaulted immediately after the speech. 

            I do not know why this was so. These words reveal more about the problems we as a people confront than almost any others uttered by a politician this year.

            Think about it. A supposedly intelligent President in a nationally televised address articulated a twisted vision of federal revenue that conflates tax cuts with federal spending. This is truly stunning. What’s worse is that he could do so using Orwellian doublespeak, blithely uttering these words in the ordinary course. Worst of all is that the professional political class (in which I include the punditocracy, Left and Right) were apparently so inured to the concept that not a single talking head or commentator challenged the President on it.

            Let’s deconstruct the italicized language. For starters, any budget surplus consists of your money. It was, after all, extracted from you by a confiscatory and pornographically complex tax code favoring the rich, the powerful, and the dishonest. The decision to return some of that money to its rightful owners (i.e., the American taxpayers) in the form of tax cuts is only proper. A surplus, by definition, means that the government took more from the people than was necessary. Put another way, the taxpayer was overcharged for the cost of government for that tax period. The only thing for a just government to do is to pay the money back.

            But in the minds of caviar collectivists and Beltway habitués like President Obama, the repatriation of money to the taxpayer in the form of tax relief is the equivalent of spending the money on the Department of Education, or on the Department of Agriculture, or on legislative "fact-finding trips" and other junkets, or on earmarks like the $13.5M spent on the “World Toilet Summit” in Belfast, Ireland. (Think I’m joking? See for yourself: http://www.tnr.com/slideshow/politics/79332/crazy-earmarks?7)

            It is a natural human impulse to cling to the familiar, to ideas, habits, and practices in which large numbers of people are invested politically, intellectually, and economically. The establishment alarmists have by now already succeeded in stampeding even Speaker Boehner to embrace the view that unless the debt ceiling is raised, the sky (which to our “leaders” has always represented the limit of the debt they are willing to assume) will fall. So expect, yet again, some sort of unholy “deal” that continues to impoverish us and our children and grandchildren, even as it sustains the Beltway nabobs in a lifestyle (Cadillac health care, cushy pensions, hot and cold running perquisites) that you and I pay for but in which we do not share. 

But had I plenipotentiary power, there would be a lowering, not a raising, of the debt ceiling, even if the whole Temple of Doom came tumbling down as a result. Then we could build it back up again, as free people. 

On The Debt Ceiling Debate: Is The Sky Falling If The Sky Is Not The Limit?

What exactly do we Americans think real change looks like when it finally arrives?  

Do we believe it is something that just happens, without personal struggle or pain, or without a summons into the unknown and the uncertain? 

Do we think change consists of one of our megalomaniacal politicians with nice hair, an Ivy League degree, and presidential ambitions standing in front of a TV camera mouthing sweet-sounding bromides off a Teleprompter while all the while enjoying a lifetime pension, Cadillac health care, and caviar paid for by the U. S. taxpayer?

I’ve got news for us: the only change worthy of the name is brought about by men and women who have faith, courage, and the willingness to suffer at the personal level to bring change about. 

And frankly, outside the Tea Party, I don’t see many of these types of people in Washington, or on Meet the Press, or on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times.

What I do see among the American professional political class and their acolytes in the mainstream media are a lot of well-off, well-fed, selfish gasbags, at once desirous of fame yet fearful of failure, and unwilling to make personal sacrifices themselves. 

And these are our "leaders"?   

Now to the Debt Ceiling debate.

I’ve noticed that many of these "prudent" establishment types now warning Americans of dire consequences should we fail to raise the debt ceiling are people who depend upon government themselves. I’ve also noticed that they are many of the same people who have been propagating for years many of the wrong-headed predictions that have worked against the common good since the end of WW II, such as: that Soviet Communism is morally equivalent to democratic capitalism and is here to stay; that the Berlin Wall is never coming down in our lifetime; that Mao, Stalin, Fidel Castro, and so many others are not Communist despots but merely benign "agrarian reformers"; that if we only stopped the war in Vietnam and spent the money on America's inner cities, poverty would disappear; that government exists to help us; that drug use among adults is harmless and victimless; that the sexual revolution will not involve any human road kill; that Ronald Reagan is not Presidential material and, if elected, will start WW III; that the epidemic of AIDS engulfing the homosexual community will soon engulf the married heterosexual community unless confiscatory taxes are imposed upon the latter in favor of the former; that planet earth will soon be gripped by a nuclear winter; that planet earth will soon be gripped by man-made Global Warming; that planet earth will soon be gripped by world-wide famine as a result of the population explosion; that Y2K will eat our computers and lead to societal convulsions; and that abortion will soon be widely accepted as it does not involve the taking of innocent unborn human life. 

These same faithless “Chicken Littles” are now predicting that America will experience calamity unless both the debt ceiling and taxes are raised.

My senior citizen's advice is this: Be Not Afraid. Let the whole corrupt temple come tumbling down, and let it happen now, on the Great Community Organizer's watch. Once that occurs, take advantage of the crisis to implement long overdue political and economic reforms, the cornerstone of which should be the wholesale scrapping of our existing Internal Revenue Code, whose pornographic complexity and inherent unfairness favors the rich, the powerful, and the dishonest, while at the same time discouraging honest labor and creating an untaxed underground economy estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

There are no Utopias, but replacing our melanoma of a tax system with something simpler and more fair, to which the simple, the honest, the hard-working, and the patriotic can repair, would work wonders. A fairer and simpler tax code would satisfy those on the Left who wish to soak the rich, increase revenues, shrink the defense budget, level the playing field, target large corporations, preserve essential social programs and save the middle class. At the same time it would please those on the Right who seek job creation, assistance to small businesses, revenue for national defense, the preservation of essential programs, reduced government, and preservation of the middle class.

The reform could either a simple flat tax, or, even better, a consumption tax - where the tax is paid for at the point of purchase and where, say, the first $30k per year per person in food, clothing, and shelter is exempt. A tax on consumption would encourage savings. It would also capture income from the tax-avoiding and tax-deferring rich. (A dodger like Senator John Kerry might still try to avoid paying his fair share by having his $7M yacht built in New Zealand; but I’m certain that revenue bloodhounds like Tim (“Pay Your Fair Share) Geitner would track him down.) 

Billionaires like Warren Buffet, the Koch brothers, and Bill Gates who can afford to hire batteries of tax accountants and tax lawyers to help them avoid paying taxes would no longer enjoy such advantages over the rest of us who cannot afford to hire such people. 

Isn’t that the American Way? 

Best of all, a point-of-purchase consumption tax would focus the public’s mind wonderfully on the true cost of government, by interposing the real cost of that government immediately between the consumer and his purchase. Put another way, the universe of taxpayers would now be coterminous with the universe of consumers, which is manifestly not the case today. Each time a citizen downloaded a video game or an iTunes, or purchased golf clubs, he would pay a tax to the feds. It wouldn’t take long for him to realize just how expensive all this government is. There would be an immediate peaceful uprising among the citizens of your country, and the size of government would shrink overnight. 

Bottom line: Hold the line (on the debt ceiling). Stand by for some heavy rolls. But after the squall and some sensible reform, look forward to fair winds and following seas.   

Storming the Bastille of the Debt Ceiling

Many of the articles analyzing the drama underway in Washington draw almost exclusively upon "prudent" Beltway establishmentarians, and, in so doing, completely miss the larger historical point. 

Is there a sentient being out there besides these captive establishment reporters and the people for whom they write who doesn't recognize that the country is in dire economic straights, that federal spending has been out of control for decades, that the generation of our children and grandchildren are being impoverished by the mountain of debt run up by our so-called "leaders" who promise all things to all people in order to buy their votes, and that the incremental, temporizing, selfish, half-measures advanced by the Beltway parasites of both parties have done nothing to alleviate the problems, indeed have exacerbated them? 

Then come to the capital and spend a few days walking around observing for yourself the vast panorama of sprawling bloat, sickening waste, and truly stunning third-world inefficiency that characterizes the federal government at all levels. You might even peruse the Report of the Grace Commission, whose snapshot of governmental waste and mismanagement in the 1980s, bad as it was then, seems downright quaint by today's numbers. 

It is Bastille Day in France. The outrage that animated the citizens of Paris on July 14, 1789 is not unique to them. Many Americans feel something of the same spirit today and, wishing to throw off the yolk of an ancien regime that has failed them, hope that the long-awaited day of reckoning and liberation is finally at hand. 

And pray, what do "progressives" who speak of change (but want higher taxes and a higher debt ceiling) think real change would look like? I can tell you this: it will not be wrought by those who nod sagely and prescribe the same old failed policies (largely to maintain their own prerogatives and incumbency) as we plummet towards the abyss. Real change involves risk and suffering. And it cannot be achieved by resorting to the same old gimmicks and fears that brought us to this point. 

There was a sea change last November when millions of Americans voted for pain and change rather than for comfort and listless drift. If we summon the courage to cut the fat out of government and not raise taxes, the debate on the debt ceiling won’t matter; conversely, if we do not, whatever we do regarding the debt ceiling won’t save us. 

All The News That Fits

The story on the front page of yesterday's New York Times by A. G. Sultzberger heralding, in Messianic tones, the arrival of a female abortionist in Wichita, Kansas two years following the shooting Dr. George Tiller (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/us/10abortion.html?ref=todayspaper) offers a rare opportunity to examine that frontier where Left-wing ideology, pro-abortion fanaticism, journalistic mediocrity, nepotism, and management of news rub up against each other.

The subject of the article is one Dr. Mila Means, a physician whose family medical practice is struggling financially and who begins performing abortions to assist her cash flow. Well, at least she's honest about her motives.

With the National Organization for Women (all twenty of them) and now the New York Times championing her, this thinly capitalized abortionist is now offered as the courageous poster girl for "abortion rights", although one senses that even the Times is squeamish about her selection. Why?

Well, in addition to her status as an abortionist-for-pay and failed doctor, Dr. Means has other liabilities too, that even the rhapsodic Times reporter (more on him in a moment) can't prevent leaking out. According to the article, Dr. Means was once a "regular churchgoer" who taught abstinence classes "to Christian youths" (natch). She now claims this was all the result of "religious brainwashing" (And her current views are the result of ...?) The article doesn't mention whether Dr. Means has children of her own, but we are told that she is divorced from her husband, who was not only gay and bipolar, but also a family friend, and a former patient. The good doctor admits to marrying her ex so that he could hop on her  health insurance, and presumably pay the good doctor for her services provided to him. (As they say on Wall Street: It's not about the money; it is the money.) This curious arrangement resulted in an investigation and reprimand by a state medical board. Odder still, Doc Means appears always to be broke, and is a regular check-bouncer and frequently sued by by her own credit card companies and, one suspects, other creditors as well. One hundred (100) of her patients have left her. In addition to all this, Dr. Means is, - how to say it? - neither dainty nor prepossessing; in a battle of the poster children between her and the Gerber baby, she'd lose every time.

And the Times criticizes Michelle Bachman for her alleged "nuttiness"?

Anyway, the author of this article is a twenty-nine year old supposed Wunderkind named A. G. Sulzberger, scion of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the paper's legendary founder, grandson of owner/publisher "Punch" Sulzberger, and son of the paper's current publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger. Despite these liabilities, "A" (or shall we call him "Paunch") managed to vault over many other aspiring reporters (no doubt on his own merits) and now, at the tender age of twenty-nine (29), finds his by-line appearing regularly in his daddy's paper above the fold on page one. This is true journalistic merit. And these are the people who complain regularly about nepotism in the Bush family and corporate glass ceilings (Pop Quiz: name two successful women who have made it to the top in newspaper publishing who were not related to the paper's founder).

To top it all off, the "paper of record", in a rare move for a front-page article, decided not to include a "Comments" section for the on-line version of this article, thus protecting little "Paunch" from the slings and arrows of readers who might criticize for whatever reason either the ideology or the fact-challenged nature of the article.

The motto of the Times is "All the news that's fit to print."

It should be: "All the news that fits."

On Urban Violence

Today's Boston Globe contains a letter by one Virginia M. Allen of Hyde Park chastising the City for its failure to spend everyone's money on something called the "ShotSpotter" gunshot detection system as an antidote for gun violence:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2011/07/09/to_stem_tide_of_violence_city_must_expand_its_gunshot_detection_system/

Poor Mrs. Allen. 

Tacitus observed thusly: "A corrupt society has many laws."

I propose a modern corollary: "A debased liberalism resorts to money and technology."

To amend slightly a self-evident progression: Guns don't kill people. The absence of a ShotSpotter system doesn't kill people. People kill people.

Do Lincoln or Concord have ShotSpotter systems?

Here’s another question: Would the “progressive” citizens of Newton, Brookline, or Cambridge countenance for an instant violent conduct by marauding, gun-wielding black or white youths in their communities?

Hardly. They would instead react like liberals who have been mugged (i.e., like conservatives) and deploy instantly sensible, illiberal measures to end the crime so that ordinary citizens would not have to live in fear.

The ACLU would howl (natch). So what? ACLU lawyers get paid to howl. 

Look. After nearly fifty (50) years of expensive “War on Poverty” programs and solid liberal representation by all-democrat-all-the-time Congressional and Senatorial delegations, Boston's ghetto communities are aflame with drugs, guns, and violence.

Why? Because they are suffering from the terminal effects of what the late Senator Moynihan called "the soft bigotry of low expectations”: that thoroughly discredited amalgam of feel-good, 1960s notions that if white society were to impose its standards of common decency on black neighborhoods, then somehow white society would be behaving in a repressive, colonialist, or racist manner.

But I’ve got news for guilty white liberals: blacks too wish for the same standards of common decency to prevail in their neighborhoods.  

The short and long term answers to gang violence are actually fairly simple and straight forward.  

Short term: cops know who the bad guys are, and Massachusetts has one of the strictest gun control laws in the country. Put the two together and, consistent with Constitutional requirements of due process, put the bad guys in jail. 

“But”, you say, “the ACLU will howl.” Again I say: “Relax. ACLU lawyers only get paid if they are howling.”

The long-term answer: be not afraid to teach in families and schools the enduring values that made America once a great nation, not shying away from the principal axiom “In God We Trust.”

Again you say: “But the ACLU will howl!” Again I say: “So what?”

Be not afraid.

And I hear a rich black chorus behind me answering: “Amen!”

Not In My Back Yard

Today's Boston Globe features a front page story about proposed cuts to Massachusetts teaching hospitals under a bipartisan proposal to reduce the federal deficit by reigning in Medicare costs:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/07/08/medicare_cuts_may_fall_hard_on_boston_teaching_hospitals/.

This sensible initiative has provoked the usual howls from the usual suspects.

Even were we experiencing an era of prosperity, by what twisted moral calculus do we justify taking tax dollars from hard working farmers in Iowa or fishermen in Alaska or coal miners in West Virginia and sending the money - after a night out on the town in Washington, D. C. (business expense) - to a Commonwealth whose hospital costs are already 56 percent above the national average?

But we are no longer prosperous. As a result of decades of mismanagement by our political and business “leaders”, and improvident spending at all levels of government, America has entered a new Era of Civic Impoverishment and Diminished Expectations, so that there is less justification now than ever for this sort of federal largesse.    


Who is so isolated today from the burdens of his countrymen that he does not recognize the terrible day of reckoning that is at hand? (Answer: Senators Kerry and Schumer, for two, caviar collectivists living in the past who are blindly and reflexively fighting the proposed cuts, thus providing an additional reason to support them.)


The way out of the mess begins with recognition and application of one of the iron rules of economics: unless people pay for what they use, they tend to use too much.  

This rule applies to Massachusetts teaching hospitals as surely as it does to the beneficiaries of farm, tobacco, ethanol, and gas and oil subsidies that we in New England correctly deplore. Instead of selfishly circling the wagons to protect subsidies to our own bloated special interests, we in Massachusetts should be practicing what we preach to the rest of the country, and setting a good example to boot.

Tweedle Dum vs Tweedle Dee

Today's Boston Globe brings news of a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston by NAGE (the National Association of Government Employees) against officials of the Massachusetts Department of Probation: 

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/06/probation_union_sues_over_hiring/. The Complaint alleges that Probation violated the law by hiring and promoting Probation employees based upon political considerations rather than merit. 

Both sides in this dispute deserve each other's throats.

On the one hand there is NAGE, a wholly superfluous public employee union whose reason for existence has been superseded by that vast panoply of civil service, anti-discrimination, civil rights, and workplace safety legislation that protects public employees in areas of hiring, wages, working conditions, job evaluation, job promotion and termination.

In fact, the term "public employee union" is well on its way to becoming a verb, whose various shades of meaning are as follows: 1. To stifle productivity or innovation; 2. To provide security for the mediocre; 3. To work inordinately slowly at a non-essential function; 4. To work in a desultory manner achieving lackluster results. Example: "My kids like to "public employee union" the chores I give them on Saturday morning."

As for the Department of Probation defendants, it could be that the political hires and promotions overseen by Team O’Brien actually resulted in the hiring and promotion of a superior personnel than those who would have been hired and promoted under the Procrustean criteria imposed by NAGE, criteria that tend to favor seniority and racially approved categories over strict merit. (Can you say U.S. Post Office? Can you say MBTA? Can you say RMV? How about DPW?)

But I doubt it. Like all the other encrustations of state government that have built up like barnacles on the Massachusetts ship of state over the years, the Department of Probation is a dumping ground for politically well-connected hacks and the churlishly incompetent.

If the lawyers representing the litigants on both sides of this dispute have a work ethic and skill set that is in any way representative of those whom they represent, presumably both sides will lose.

Is DSK a member of the Duke Lacrosse team?

The latest disclosures/leaks tending to undercut the credibility of the victim in the notorious DSK sexual assault case are nearly all originating from the Office of the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr. As such, they are the sort of leaks and disclosures that usually presage the outright dismissal of the criminal case itself.

Here's the dynamic: as facts develop, the headline-grabbing case that headline-grabbing prosecutors thought would be a "lay down" morphs into a very difficult case that may actually have to be tried with uncertain results against a well-financed defendant with better and scrappier lawyers than the DAs office can muster. As reality dawns, the bowels of politically ambitious boy and girl prosecutors congeal. With visions of Marcia Clark, Chris Darden, and perhaps even Robert Nifong dancing in their heads, the cry goes up: What to do?

The answer is obvious: just "dirty-up" the single-mom immigrant from Guinea by leaking damaging information about her a lap-dog reporter or two (yes, they do exist) and, once she becomes a full-fledged scapegoat, dismiss the indictment. Nolo problemo.

It appears from my reading that this is what is happening, so that we have now reached the stage in this bedroom farce known in France as L'Affaire DSK" where any criticism one makes against anyone involved has validity.

DSK is clearly no day at the beach. As even French journalists have been forced to admit, the man once described as "Le Grand Seducteur" is, in reality, a highly-functioning pervert whose whose criminal sexual activity (if we are to believe the progressive revelations of female colleagues) cut a pervasive swath through French womanhood while his enablers in the French press looked the other way. Sound familiar? Well, that past has finally caught up with him, as it usually does (viz. Spitzer, Weiner, Clinton, JFK, and on and on). Even if vindicated in the Manhattan case, DSK is more in need of a clinical psychiatrist than a running mate. If French Socialists are so desperate as to consider accepting DSK back into a leadership position, then Socialism is even more bankrupt than I thought, and may even qualify for IMF assistance.

As to the government's principal complaining witness, she appears to be something less than the tower of integrity in whom the prosecution and police reposed such implicit trust when they made their high-profile arrest of DSK on the tarmac back in May. Worse, she is beginning to resemble the Duke lacrosse accuser. This is not to say that she is not a victim. Her description of the actual assault at the Sofitel may be accurate and unwavering. Even if it is not, liars are entitled to be protected against rape. But this immigrant from Guinea who consorts with criminals and other unsavory characters is clearly not the ideal rape victim upon whom to build a case against a high-profile defendant and his "dream team" defenders.

Which brings me to District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. This boy-prosecutor (how many cases has he tried?) has two and only two honorable choices: he should either man up and take this challenging case to trial (lead-chairing the case himself, rather than relying upon some poor assistant DA to clean up his mess for him), or else Vance should simply dismiss the case and resign. There really is no middle ground. That is because one of two things is true: either the DA's office under Vance blundered monumentally, perhaps even to the point of prosecutorial misconduct, in its "fire, ready, aim" approach to this case, or else it did not.

If the former, Vance and his office have worked irreparable harm upon a man who, though a manifest pig, is, despite that, entitled to justice and due process in this case.

If the latter, then the victim deserves her day in court, and the public as well deserves to have vindicated its right to be protected from such depredations as DSK is accused of perpetrating. As pigs are entitled to justice, so too are liars and less than perfect victims.

By the way, the conning, spinning, unrealistic and self-serving statements coming out of the DAs office by such as girl prosecutor Joan Illuzi-Orbon ("It would have to be that I believed every word that came out of her [the victim's] mouth [before taking the case to trial] ...." is nonsense. By that test few cases would ever see a jury.

Bulletin to Team Vance: There are rarely perfect victims and there are rarely perfect defendants. Dismiss the case, or dismiss yourself.

Declaration of Independence

Declaration of Independence

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

       When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

         We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

         He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

         He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

         He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

         He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

         He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

         He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

         He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

         He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

         He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

         He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

         He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

         He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

         He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

         For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

         For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

         For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

         For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

         For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

         For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

         For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

         For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

         For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

         He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

         He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

         He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

         He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

         He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

         In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

         Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

         We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Reflections on France and Independence Day

During a recent ten (10)-day holiday in France, a country whose preparation and presentation of food is, like so many other aspects of French culture (art, architecture, design, fashion, and on and on), quite simply unsurpassed among the nations of the earth, I was intrigued and pleased that I did not encounter a single chef, food handler, or ingredient preparer who wore plastic gloves.

Nor did I see a single jar of Purel.

Despite this conspicuous national flirtation with bacteria, I found that every morsel of French food that entered my mouth was savory, bursting with taste and flavor, and delicious. Moreover, I contracted no disease. (By the way, I saw no fat French, and everybody smoked.)

Comparisons are odious, but I think it proper to ask on this Fourth of July weekend: Why do the French succeed with their "unsafe" food practices, while we Americans fail (and, worse, look ridiculous doing so) with so many of our antiseptic ones?

The answer, I think, extends beyond the world of cuisine. The fact is that living well in a way that is truly human requires the exercise of operative faith.

Take foie gras. One need not like, nor even admire, but one must certainly respect a culture that long ago took steps to discover that if you take a goose, nail its feet to a board, force-feed it corn until its liver bursts, then you may not merely eat that goose's liver but offer it to the gourmands of this world as an exquisite delicacy.

But this gastronomic delight, so counter intuitive and seemingly violative of all reason, required operative faith in order to be discovered, a renunciation of the human impulse to control everything all the time and a belief that there is more to life than that which can be immediately seen, measured, or weighed. And it is this virtue that we in America, with our fanatical obsession with controlled, sanitized, antiseptic, safe-at-all-costs living arrangements, seem to be lacking, to an inhuman degree. From the ubiquitous Purel dispensers and plastic gloves, to 24 x 7 helmeted kids, to trampolines with padded sides, to sunscreen uber alles, to anti-smoking Puritanism, to fetishistic preoccupation with "safe" sex, to the "lifestyle nag" and the helicopter parent, we are increasingly becoming a faithless nation of sissies.

As our blessings are contemplated this Independence Day weekend, we in "the land of the free and the home of the brave" might ask ourselves this question: what am I doing at the personal level to reaunthenticate the heritage of the Founding Fathers?

It is not a heritage based upon fear, faithlessness, and the nanny government. It is one based upon the twin exhortations of "In God We Trust" and "Be Not Afraid".