Commerce and Philanthropy--Two Sides of the Same Coin

Hillsdale College has an economic symposium going on right now (Sunday through Tuesday), on “Money: History and Controversies.” They have two speakers each evening, with live streaming, and apparently viewable later, because I didn’t get to it until late Sunday evening.

The lecture series is found here.

The one I watched already was Steve Forbes, “How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy,” which is also the title of a book by Forbes. It was 45 minutes on monetary policy, followed by Q&A. Forbes suggested that, if you ever feel trapped between other passengers on an airplane and want a little extra room, just start a conversation on monetary policy—people will give you a wide berth. It’s not the most enthralling of topics. Nevertheless, he managed to keep it pretty interesting.

There was a large segment in favor of returning to the gold standard, and how that would work. Son Economic Sphere has told me in the past that gold is subject to market forces, and therefore not an ideal basis for money. However, I found Forbes’ logic fairly compelling. I don’t know enough to be able to reproduce the arguments both ways, but I do realize that monetary stability depends on the money supply exactly matching the creation of wealth, which it represents.

Forbes’ thinks that, while not ideal, gold is as stable as anything we have. If we set the price at, say, $1100 per ounce, then when it rises above that, we know money should be slightly looser (more dollars printed). If it goes under the price, then it should be slightly tighter (fewer dollars printed). Maybe so.

He pointed out that, since gold is an element, we don’t lose it. Whatever has been mined up to this point in history is still gold. It can be reforged, reformed. You might have bits of gold in a ring that was first used by ancient Egyptians. Gold is firm but malleable. It’s compact. In other words, there are reasons it has so frequently been used as money.

But what most got my attention was the final question and answer, which I’ve typed up below. It was positive and hopeful, which I think we can use.

Q: When Carter became president, inflation shot up to 18%. We thought we had joined the ranks of the banana republics. Then Reagan became president, and I thought, finally we have turned a corner; we are no longer on the road to serfdom. Now, 20, 30 years later, we are still firmly on the road to serfdom[i]. So even if we get a Reagan again, will it make any difference? Because, afterwards we’ll still go back to walking down the road to serfdom?

A: Steve Forbes: Question about how, after Reagan, could we be in the mess that we’re in today? And part of the answer is, we did not have then what you might call the base of intellectual understanding and ideas and advocates that we have today, that we did not have 35 years ago. And in terms, even among Republicans 35 years ago, there was sort of the feeling that government should play a real big role. And, yeah, we shouldn’t have inflation; we should cut tax rates. But they didn’t take it to the next step.

I think now, morally, people are beginning to realize that if you believe in free markets, you can’t just say they work. You also have to make the moral case for free markets. And that’s still a big task in front of us. That’s why I wrote a couple of books on it. Others are doing it. Numerous have done it for a number of years.

In essence, you succeed in free markets by meeting the needs and wants of other people. Even if you lust for money, you don’t get it unless you provide something that someone else wants.

Now, sometimes, as Steve Jobs said, when he was asked once, “Do you do marketing surveys?” and he famously replied, “No, because people don’t know what they want until we show them.” That’s part of entrepreneurship. You’ve tried something new; you don’t know if it’s going to work. People suddenly may discover they couldn’t live without it.

But, meeting the needs and wants of other people. And just keep in mind, philanthropy and commerce are often portrayed as polar opposites: you succeed in commerce; you make up for your sins by giving it away to philanthropy. They’re not polar opposites; they’re two sides of the same coin—meeting the needs and wants of other people. Different ways to do it, but same objective, which is why the US, the most commercial nation ever invented, is also the most philanthropic nation in the world.

Two sides of the same coin. We have to make that moral case.

There’s a lot more understanding of economics. There’s a lot more understanding about free markets today than there was 35 years ago, 60 years ago, 80 years ago. Now we know, more and more, that when you get these big economic crises, it’s not a sudden failure of free market or outbreak of greed. It is massive government policy error.

Now, I just want to say, it doesn’t excuse wrongdoing in free markets, or wrongdoing by bankers or anybody else. But, human nature hasn’t changed in thousands of years. People’s ability to do bad things preceded Adam Smith. Believe me, just look at the Bible, this is something that predated Adam Smith.

So, it’s a very good question. But now I think we are setting the foundation where, we get a good president, good. But what we want is understanding, as Hillsdale has tried to do, where even if you get a total mediocrity, the accepted wisdom is: Constitution, free markets, having a moral basis of a free society. When that happens, you don’t have to depend on a Reagan. When you have that kind of consensus. So we’ve got to get the consensus right, and not be dependent on particular outstanding individuals.

I highlighted that section near the end, because that got my attention. It coincides with my Spherical Model theory, that the political, economic, and social spheres interrelate. The goals are freedom, which we get from abiding by the US Constitution; prosperity, which we get from free markets (not to be confused with crony capitalism); and civilization, which we get from a moral people living moral lives, which includes strong families to pass along the way to civilization.

I like seeing evidence that we can make progress toward these things. Economically speaking, I think he is right that the understanding is getting through. When I was in college, I was blessed with free market teachers; they were somewhat rare in the late 70s. But now, with so much data to back it up, free market is the most likely kind of economic education you get in college. I’ve observed that change over the past decade and a half. So the hope seems real.

Our freedom, prosperity, and civilization are in trouble, but there’s reason to hope we can make the changes necessary to get them back. He’s right that we’ll need to defend the morality of free markets, that economy depends on meeting the needs and wants of people both through commerce and philanthropy—which requires a morally good people.

We need to express that viewpoint better. My writing here is an attempt toward that end. (See “Anything Evil about Capitalism, Part I, Part II, Part III. For the longer list of my economic posts see Best of Spherical Model Part II and More of the Best Part III.) 

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[i] He is referring to the classic book The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich Hayek, which details the dangers of attempting to control the economy.

Off-Year Election

There was an election Tuesday. This is an off year. That means lower turnout and less interest, generally, than a presidential election year, or even the every-two-year congressional elections. Texas had no statewide races. There were seven statewide ballot propositions—they all passed. Still, I think there are things we can learn from looking at this voting day.

Son Political Sphere worked as our Presiding Judge in our precinct. We had an Alternate Judge from the opposite party, and I joined as a clerk at noon through the rest of the day. We were entitled to hire several more clerks, but I thought there was a good chance we were overstaffed with just us three. Based on what I’d seen in past off years, I estimated we’d have maybe as many as 150 voters for the full day. In 2013 we had 113 on Election Day, which was slightly higher than surrounding precincts.

I expected spare time between voters to maybe finish reading a book. But I was wrong. We had a steady stream of voters all day long. The only times there was much of a line were at the 7:00 AM opening (people wanting to vote before heading to work) and around 5:00. I don’t know why it would be higher at 5:00 than nearer to closing. But it continued steady up through closing. We ended with more than double my estimate. That is in addition to the two weeks of early voting.

Harris County overall had a turnout of 26.9%, higher than any off year since 2003. Typical is between18-19%.

Unlike the City of Houston, we had nothing all that compelling on our ballot, just propositions and school board trustees. So why the heavy turnout?

We can’t say for certain, but a clue comes from voters’ questions:

Q: So, we don’t vote for the mayor? We don’t vote on the Houston issues?

A: No, we’re just outside the City of Houston, so we don’t vote on that.

This question came up all day long. In an ideal world people have prepared to vote. They’d have looked up their sample ballot and schooled themselves on the issues and candidates. And they would have noticed that they haven’t been paying the higher taxes of the city.

But in a less than ideal world, the voters go by what they’ve been hearing on the news and elsewhere. And the big issue this election was the HERO proposition in Houston. That’s the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, or, as it came to be called, The Bathroom Ordinance.

          photo from David Bro/Zuma Press/Newscom,found here

The ordinance itself, as others like it in other cities and states, doesn’t actually protect rights equally, as claimed. It adds burdens on society to make special allowances for certain classes. Controversially, these included the classifications of sexual orientation and gender identity. In other words, if a person in one of these special classes comes into your business and wants their special treatment, you’re subject to a lawsuit, leading to fines, jail terms, damages, etc., if you don’t grant them their special status.

There wasn’t a bigotry problem in Houston. There are essentially no cases in which people in these classes have been deprived of rights. They claim to guarantee things like city government and large corporations offering spousal benefits for same-sex couples (the same as they do for non-married heterosexual couples, by the way). The market has already provided the solution, without any government coercion needed.

But such an ordinance would go further, leading to more wedding services being sued, not for turning down service to homosexuals, but for turning down service to a wedding that goes against their religion. This danger is real and becoming more common. The HERO ordinance would have caused more coercion, not more protection of rights.

But where did it get the name The Bathroom Ordinance? The ordinance goes out of its way to accommodate transgendered individuals. That means, if a male person claims to “feel like” a woman on a given day, he must be allowed in women’s restrooms and locker rooms, or else the building owner or business is in violation of the law.

The problem comes when women object to having men in their private areas. These women are not reassured that they are safe from intrusion or rape or other danger; they are told they are in violation of the law. They are at fault for objecting to men watching them undress.

This is particularly alarming because there is no objective measure of whether a transgendered person qualifies to be an opposite gender—nothing but their personal say so. Not even their dress or appearance is required. So there is no way for women, or girls, to express their discomfort. They have no recourse but to suffer the danger. Knowing this, any male pervert could go into a woman’s restroom or dressing room and prey upon victims, and unless caught in the act of attack would have the defense that they “feel like” a woman that day.

The mayor and others pushing this through could have addressed this very reasonable concern. They chose instead to say that every person who felt uncomfortable with this danger was a bigot. Every man who waits outside the women’s restroom while his daughter uses the facilities would have no recourse if a six-foot-four burly bearded man followed his daughter into that restroom; he just gets branded a bigot.

Would the problem have been widespread? Probably not. Transgenders are an extremely small segment of society, and so are perverts. But that would be no reassurance to women whose sense of safety is ignored.

Also, suppose the law passed and affected schools. Suppose the rule says that any high school student can use the locker room that they feel suits them. Do you imagine that there will be any high school that does not experience some young man, dared by his buddies, to pretend to be transgendered to go into the girls locker room—because the schools can do nothing as long as he says he “feels like” a girl that day—will there be any high school that doesn’t have this privacy invasion? The law invites it. And the very fact that reasonable people see the result coming is met with, “You’re such a bigot!”

Well, it turns out that, even in the liberal City of Houston, the HERO proposition failed 61% to 39%. And people turned out in numbers we haven’t seen in more than a decade.

The claim that Houstonians are a bunch of homophobic bigots falls flat when you realize they elected lesbian Mayor Anise Parker three times (2-year terms; she is now term-limited out). In return for their tolerance, the Mayor pushed this ordinance through the City Council, against the will of the people.

The people responded by gathering tens of thousands of signatures to put repealing the ordinance on the ballot. Mayor Parker illegally threw out the signatures—and was slapped down by the state Supreme Court. She required the sermons and communications of local churches to go on a search for wording about homosexuality that she might not approve of—and was slapped down by the public outcry and the state Supreme Court. She also tried confusing wording on the ballot, but the Court slapped her for that as well and foiled that ploy.

She’s been slapped down again by this vote. But, while disappointed, she’s not defeated. The plan is to go forward, pushing the requirements of the ordinance through regulatory agencies, so it will find a back door into law, without any say by the people. Because she has no respect for the voice of the people. Elites are like that. And the pro-LGBT activists are among the most intolerant elites in our society today.

The HERO ordinance is similar to laws being promulgated across the country. They are referred to as ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) at the federal level, or generally as SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) laws. They are problematic, and pretty much never helpful. For example:

One case pitted a transgender employee with male DNA who sued after being denied permission to use the ladies’ restroom, a denial that resulted from complaints filed by female employees. The employer lost in the Minnesota Court of Appeals, but then prevailed in the Minnesota Supreme Court. Another case involved a male-looking person who sued and obtained a substantial settlement after being ejected from the ladies’ room in response to complaints by a female customer who that a man had just invaded the ladies’ room.[i]

It’s a no-win situation for the business owner, who must ignore the valid complaints of employees, including complaints about an intimidating or unsafe workplace, or valid complaints of customers who would rather not share changing rooms or restrooms with the opposite sex.

ENDA and SOGI laws have negatively affected employer speech. A Seattle business owner was charged for playing Christian radio in his workplace, a station where he advertised his business, because a homosexual employee complained this created a hostile work environment.[ii]

As Ryan Anderson says, “SOGI laws imperil religious liberty, privacy, economic freedom, and child welfare, creating more problems than they aim to resolve. They are a solution in search of a problem.”

Anderson said this in response to Tuesday’s election results, 

Don’t let the media demagogue and attack the people of Houston. Citizens there voted three times to elect Annise Parker, a lesbian, as mayor. They’re a tolerant city. But they drew the line when the city council voted to create special privileges based on sexual orientation and gender identity that could have been used to shutter faith-based adoption agencies; penalize florists, photographers, and bakers; and force businesses to allow biological males who identify as women into women’s restrooms and changing rooms.

Citizens in Houston organized against the city council and collected more than enough signatures required to put the issue to a vote of the people. But the mayor claimed that the majority of signatures were invalid and refused to put the issue on the ballot. Then she subpoenaed the sermons of five prominent pastors who helped lead the charge against the measure. After a public outcry, the mayor relented on the sermons, and a unanimous state Supreme Court said the signatures were valid and the citizens had to vote on the measure.

And the citizens won.

Matt Walsh wrote about a school in Illinois that is facing the wrath of SOGI laws. He makes the point that the homosexual/transgender lobby can never be appeased.

This Illinois case is incredible considering how far the school district went to accommodate the deluded young man. Administrators first changed the pronouns on official school records to reflect whatever sex the “transgender” is pretending to be. That wasn’t enough. They allowed boys to play on girl sports teams, needlessly endangering safety and providing an unfair advantage to the team with the cross dressing male. That wasn’t enough. They let “transgenders” use the bathrooms of their choice. That wasn’t enough. They even let the boy use the girl’s locker room. The only stipulation — the only attempt they made to offer the real girls some shred of privacy and decency — was to ask the boy to change and shower behind privacy curtains, which they had specially installed for him. That wasn’t enough.

The school, like most schools in the country, bent over backwards to grant enormous and unreasonable favors to a small and demanding branch of an already tiny demographic. They made girls give up their sport’s teams, their bathrooms, and most of their privacy in the locker room, but the one single concession they asked of the boy was that he use a curtain. It still was not enough. It is never enough.

It is not about tolerance. This lobbying force does not want to settle for tolerance, which they have had. And they certainly do not want to tolerate any difference of opinion. They want supreme control. Which leaves those who love freedom, prosperity, and civilization with the necessity of resistance and constant vigilance.

But the good thing about this election is, it shows that when people are made aware of the stakes, they vote in strength.

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[i] Hans Bader, “Employment Non-Discrimination Act Makes as Little Sense as Chemotherapy for a Cold,” Open Market (blog), Competitive Enterprise Institute, June 13, 2012, http://www.openmarket.org/2012/06/13/employment-non-discrimination-act-makes-as-little-sense-as-chemotherapy-for-a-cold/ . This reference is included in Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, digital location 2209.

[ii] Walter Olson, The Excuse Factory: How Employment Law Is Paralyzing America (New York: Free Press, 1997), 250. This is mentioned in Anderson’s book at digital location 2261.

Immigration vs. Invasion

We had a guest come for dinner the other night, from Kuwait. She is an electrical engineer working for an oil company, over here for training with Mr. Spherical Model’s company. And while she’s here, she wants to experience American culture. So we let her experience Halloween, including answering the door to little people in costumes, getting candy handed to them.

And we had time for conversation, between doorbell ringing. I will call her Ginn.

It’s always interesting to get the perspective of people visiting America. Kuwait is a friend to the US, since well before the Gulf War. And yet it is in the Middle East, where people, customs, and cultures are quite different—and their news sources are not necessarily friendly toward us.

Kuwait has an elected parliament. In theory this seems like a good thing. But in reality, it hasn’t led to more freedom, Ginn told us. Kuwait used to be a liberal Muslim country. Note: liberal in this context means less rule dominated, more open to variety in dress and lifestyle and belief. They allow women to drive (at least since the Gulf War). Women attended university classes with men—now they are separated. They are still allowed to shop at malls with men and women present, which isn’t allowed in Saudi Arabia generally, at least without male family members escorting any shopping women. They have a full variety of women’s dress, from all Western clothing, to Western clothing with hijab (head scarf)—which was our friend’s way of dressing—to full-length Eastern clothing, to full black burka. But pressure is growing toward more limitation.

The Parliament has been changing over the few decades it has existed, because of immigration. People from Saudi Arabia, whom she referred to as Bedouins, tent dwellers, have been invited to come in and get citizenship. These were much more religiously conservative (opposite of liberal) than the rest of the country.

There are two main branches of Islam: Shia and Sunni. She is a Shiite. The incoming immigrants were Sunni. This schism has existed since almost immediately after Mohammed’s death. I do not know the details, or really all the locations. But at least nowadays, much of Saudi Arabia is Sunni, much of Iraq is Sunni. Iran is Shia. Kuwait was more Shia, but it is now about equal, and trending toward Sunni with more immigration. In the world at large, I think she said about 2/3 of Muslims are Sunni, and 1/3 are Shiite.

She believes the Shiites are more reasonable, more modern, and more open. I don’t know how to generalize that. I remember a conversation with a young Sunni woman living here in Houston, who said Sunnis are open to any Muslim to come to their mosque, but Shiites won’t allow Sunnis to come to theirs, which made finding a place to attend more difficult for her. I think I have found that orientation more often than Ginn’s point of view. But I’m an outsider; I really don’t know.

Among the two types, there are also variations. In Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabis are the more controlling version, and that is spreading wherever they migrate to.

What Ginn described was a concerted effort to bring in immigrants who would be expected to vote a certain way—the Wahhabi way—so that their way would gain influence in Parliament. She thought that was worse than having a monarchy, which could at least be expected to maintain their previous freedoms.

We could see the parallel in our own country. Any country that wants to maintain its culture, and its freedoms, expects immigrants to become assimilated to that country’s culture. So encouraging an influx of low-income, uneducated, desperate aliens who can quickly gain citizenship and voting rights is a danger to the existing country and its culture. That seems obvious. It’s what our friend Ginn is seeing in her home country. It is what we see as a looming reality here in America.

In both cases, it looks like an actual plan of those who encourage the influx to do so with the intention of altering the culture and gaining power for a particular voting party—so that they can transform the existing country into something other than what it was.

A country that cares about its culture and survival wants its immigrants to be educated, skilled, and law abiding, with a desire to adopt the laws and culture of the country. They can bring their foods, crafts, and personality with them. But they shouldn’t be invaders overtaking a country; they should be willing to change, to adapt, and to adopt the new country as their own.

Conservatives in this country—those of us who want to conserve our Constitution, and the rights it protects—aren’t against immigrants. We welcome immigrants. We’re against invaders.

View from Inside

Eventually, here, I’m going to talk about last night’s GOP debate. But to get where I’m going, I need a little context.

In our church we often get told we should be the ones defining who we are—because if we don’t, others will. That’s why there’s so much on the website LDS.org, the many related sites and pages. I think that’s the right decision.

I made the mistake, some years ago, of starting my Sherlock Holmes reading with A Study in Scarlet, which may be an interesting story, but it was offensive to people of my faith, in the extreme, and was at its basic level wildly inaccurate about what we believe. Including what we believed during the time the story was about (late 1800s). The story couldn’t have happened. It isn’t conceivable to someone who knows the truth. Basic assumptions were so far off, I lost all respect for the great detective. I’ve still read several, plus the occasional movie or series. But I know he’s not infallible.

A similar experience happened when I read a Brad Thor book, The Lions of Lucerne, that had a section located in Park City, Utah. An elderly couple gets murdered by terrorists who want to use the couple’s home as a staging area for kidnapping the president. But the couple was Mormon, and several of the circumstances related to that. And because I am an insider, I knew that the things in the story couldn’t have happened. There was a pretty sizable list of errors in the relatively short segment of the book.

Both of the authors had clearly done research. Quite a lot. But they were critically wrong nevertheless.

A couple of weeks ago, Ben Carson’s religion came under scrutiny in the news. He’s a Seventh-Day Adventist. I liked Glenn Beck’s approach to understanding (Glenn Beck Radio, October 22, “A Look into Ben Carson’s Faith.” He went to the source, found a Seventh-Day Adventist spokesperson, had him on his show, so someone on the inside could define their beliefs for those of us wondering, from the outside. It was respectful and fruitful.

It’s hard for someone on the outside to understand how people on the inside think. That’s true for religion. Sometimes it’s true for ethnicity, but that has more to do with culture: how a person is raised, what is their common experience. It’s also true for major ideological belief systems: conservatives, and liberals/progressives/socialists/democrats. There’s not a useful term for that side. That’s why the Spherical Model perspective of southern hemisphere is useful. I’ll go ahead and use that term for them in the rest of this piece.

We watched in last night’s debate a cadre of southern-hemisphere partisan media reveal their disdain—because of their lack of understanding—of the Republican candidates. Their purpose was not to reveal who the candidates were, and what their stands on issues were, or their plans for our country. Their purpose wasn’t even to pit one candidate against another in an ill-advised attempt at increasing their ratings, as we’ve seen in the previous debates (including the disappointing Fox News debate).

Their purpose was to attack each candidate with Democrat party talking points, twisted untruths, sneering innuendos, and outright lies—and then expect the candidate to answer the implied question, “Because we know how awful you are, why don’t you leave the race in shame?”

These moderators are supposedly professional “unbiased” journalists. (Note: in today’s media, the term journalist almost always implies southern-hemisphere bias.) They were supposed to be specialists on the economy. Yet they favor big government, government control, and crony capitalism. They seem unaware that free-market economics works, every time it’s tried, because the data, common sense, and common experience support our side. They’re too ingrained in their own culture to even recognize that a legitimate point of view exists that doesn’t agree with them.

We have had moderator interference before. In fact, as Republicans, we assume that the moderator will be a hard Democrat (i.e., always or nearly always votes straight Democrat in elections). We’re used to that. But it used to be that they tried to hide it. I think Candy Crowley, who stepped in to “correct” Mitt Romney and support Obama in a question, still thinks she was being fair—even though all of us with a transcript or video of what Romney was referring to could prove Romney was right and Obama was obfuscating.

That was about Benghazi, shortly after it happened, in 2012, and shortly before the election. Would the election have gone differently if Romney had been allowed to hold the president accountable? We won’t know.

What I think we’re seeing now, however, is that what should have happened (but Romney was too nice to do) was a rebuttal: “I have memorized the transcript, Ms. Crowley. I am not wrong. And I will thank you to stop interfering in an attempt to favor your candidate.”

Last night we had a candidate who shifted the power from that tyranny-loving media. He organized an opportunity for substantive debate—despite the questions.

Ted Cruz saved the night. And he may have saved future debates from ever repeating that mess. It might get us the opportunity to refuse moderators who do not, and cannot, understand the conservative way of thinking.

[video no longer available]

I’d like to show the full context of Ted Cruz’s historical moment. So first, we’ll see the question and his full answer. Then we’ll see, side-by-side, what he’s referring to.

Carl Quintanilla: Senator Cruz, Congressional Republicans, Democrats, and the White House are about to strike a compromise that would raise the debt limit, prevent a government shutdown, and calm financial markets that fear another Washington created crisis is on the way. Does your opposition to it show that you’re not the kind of problem solver American voters want?

Ted Cruz: Let me say something at the outset: The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions: “Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?” “Ben Carson, can you do math?” “John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?” “Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?” “Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?”

How about talking about the substantive issues people care about? And Carl, I’m not finished yet. The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every fawning question from the media was, “Which of you is more handsome and wise?” And let me be clear...

CQ: You have 30 seconds left to answer, should you choose to do so.

Ted Cruz: Let me be clear. The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense, than every participant in the Democratic debate. That debate reflected a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.

And nobody watching at home believes that any of the moderators has any intention of voting in a Republican Primary. The questions that are being asked shouldn’t be trying to get people to tear into each other. It should be “What are your substantive issues that people want to hear?

CQ: For the record, I asked you about the debt limit, and I got no answer.

Ted Cruz: You want me to answer that question? I’m happy to answer that question.

(The moderators talked over him.)

Ted Cruz: You don’t actually want to hear the answer, John? You don’t want to hear the answer, you just want to give insults?

John Harwood: You used your time. Senator Paul…

Take note that the question asked wasn’t, “What is your approach to the debt limit?” as Villanova claimed. It was “Does your opposition show you’re not the problem solver the American people want?” That is a yes-or-no question, with an assumption of superiority behind it, arranged to be a no-win for the candidate. Ted Cruz recognized it for what it was, recognized the pattern of the evening (this was a half hour into the debate), and recalled multiple examples. Accurately and in order.

The media seems unaware of how extremely bright Ted Cruz is. He has an audiographic memory. He remembers what he hears, word-for-word.

JH to Trump: Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?

Cruz: “Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?”

Becky Quick to Carson: I’ve had a really tough time making the math work on this. You’d have to cut government by about 40% to make it work with a $1 Trillion dollar cut.

Cruz: “Ben Carson, can you do math?”

CQ to Kasich: You said yesterday that you were hearing proposals that were just crazy from your colleagues. Who were you talking about?

Cruz: “John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?”

CQ to Rubio: You’ve been a young man in a hurry ever since you won your first election in your 20s. Why not slow down, get a few more things done first, or at least finish what you start?

Cruz: “Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?”

JH: Governor Bush, the fact that you’re at the fifth lectern tonight shows how far your stock has fallen in this race, despite the big investment your donors have made.

Cruz: “Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?”

After the first question—“Tell us your greatest weakness,” disallowing “I work too hard” or “I’m a perfectionist,” which is pretty much no-win for the candidates as well, Cruz identified every stabbing question that had been asked up to that point. Without notes.

What happened from there was different. Not that the moderators had improved, but the candidates were now united in a cause—to get out their message. Not just their personal message, although there was that, but the message of conservatism. Fresh ideas, better approaches. Things other than, “Things are still bad, so let’s give more money to government.”

Anyone who claims Cruz is a divider ought to witness what he just accomplished. That is what the real Ted Cruz naturally does.

The candidates had better opportunities to express their ideas in this debate than in any previous. Time per candidate was more even (although Rand Paul yet again got short shrift). Trump didn’t dominate—either time-wise or using his overbearing presence to take over. He was milder, for him. Carly Fiorina got the most time, and she used it well, but she had no breakout moment. There were good moments for every candidate. Marco Rubio and Chris Christie had opportunities to let us see who they really are.

I also watched the pre-debate, including the four lower-tier candidates. As last time, Bobby Jindal was excellent. He could use the exposure the main debate stage shows. He certainly deserves it more than some of the main ten.

Here’s more evidence that the southern-hemisphere media can’t see what the rest of us see. The commentators that came on between the two debates opined that it was Lindsey Graham’s night—that he had more energy than they had ever seen. Even Larry Kudlow, the supposed “conservative” in that group, believed it was a Lindsey Graham win. In our house, we thought Graham had a couple of campaign ending moments, served up with whininess. One of the commentators believed that a couple of Graham soundbites would end up being the news stories of the following day.

They were, of course, wrong. Cruz’s call to talk about the substantive issues was the story of the day.

In the after shows, Cruz suggested to Sean Hannity of Fox that a good panel of debate moderators would be Hannity, Mark Levin, and Rush Limbaugh. I read a headline today that such a panel is being considered (I don’t know how seriously to take that). It would certainly be an improvement. They, at the very least, know what questions would lead to a clear view of what conservatives care about.

Word to Republican Chair Reince Priebus: Stop letting the opponent media define the Republican Party or conservatives. Control the moderator choice first, then offer up the debates to various outlets. If no “mainstream” source picks up something that could rival viewership of major sports events, let C-SPAN do it. Or The Blaze. Or stream live from a GOP website.

Let people a chance to get the information they want, and people will come. People who believe we are heartless, stupid, and bigoted have no business controlling the chance us to show who we really are. 

Truth Search: Benghazi

I spent some hours over the weekend listening to Thursday’s Benghazi hearing testimony of Hillary Clinton. I’m just a curious American. I’ve been waiting for three years so far to find out what happened in Benghazi, why it happened, and why we got told things that weren’t true about what happened.

I’m not a prosecutor, but I have some confidence in Rep. Trey Gowdy’s abilities to get at the truth. At last. Yes, there have been multiple hearings. As the Democrats on the committee told us multiple times. In fact, in these hearings, the Democrat committee members refrained from asking questions to Hillary Clinton and instead directed attacks at the committee head, Trey Gowdy—reminding us how many previous investigations there have been, and that this one has spent millions of dollars, and so far has found nothing, they claim. Rep. Elijah Cummings, pointed out in his opening comments, before questions had been asked of Ms. Clinton, that the committee hadn’t learned anything. Not helpful.

Rep. Trey Gowdy during committee
hearing Oct. 22, 2015
image from C-SPAN

During the entire questioning, no Democrat asked Hillary Clinton a useful question, with the possible exception of one that allowed her to go through the timeline of what happened in Benghazi that fateful night. Not that the committee needed her testimony for that; she wasn’t there, and the timeline of what happened on the ground was fairly well established—there’s a movie on the subject about to come out. But at least it showed that she was aware of enough details at this point, three years after the fact, to relate them.

There are a few points I noticed, and I’m wondering about. Sometimes I wonder why the media took no notice. Sometimes I wonder what Trey Gowdy knows.

One thing Rep. Gowdy said in an interview afterward, which I didn’t realize, was that he hadn’t subpoenaed Hillary Clinton to testify. She had been asked, and was willing. But that may mean that Trey Gowdy didn’t need her testimony at all, but was willing to use the opportunity as backup to what he knows from other sources. And there's always the chance he can add a perjury charge or two.

He also said that he had given her the option to do the testimony in private or public. Since her testimony wasn’t essential, he could go either way. But he prefers private for several reasons. One is that the testimony can cover classified information safely—in fact, if such questions come up in a public hearing, they must be held and asked later in private. Another is that the person testifying is often more likely to be candid in private, so the committee gets better information. 

In addition, in private hearings, the Democrats do none of the pontificating they do in public; they ask questions. It may be that their questions are designed to allow the testifiers to show themselves in the best light, but at least they’re questioned. They don’t, at all, direct criticism at the committee chair. When they do that in public, therefore, it is merely Democrat theater, and in no way relates to an attempt to find the truth, which is pretty obvious if you’re watching for reasons like mine.

So, if you want to go through this (links below), or any future, public hearing more quickly, simply fast forward through any Democrat questioner; you will miss nothing germane.

I was surprised to see that Hillary Clinton still claims the anti-Muslim video, which was never relevant to Benghazi, a fact known the day of the attack, was a possible cause they were concerned about with good reason. She emailed her daughter, and she told the President of Libya and the Prime Minister of Egypt, indicating clearly within 24 hours that she knew the video had nothing to do with the attack. They knew the attack was planned ahead, by an al-Qaeda-like organization, with names (Ansar al-Sharia) that proved to be involved.

She carefully parsed her words, and made sure the committee understood how carefully she had parsed them, when she said, “Some say…” that the video was the cause. She didn’t say she said so, just that some straw man said so. She and the administration did lead Susan Rice to declare on five TV interviews that the video was the cause, and spokesman Jay Carney to say the video was the cause. And the President said it multiple times, and Clinton herself said it several times—including when she met with families of the deceased and assured them that the makers of the video would be prosecuted, but did not promise that the actual known attackers would be prosecuted. So, using the phrase “some say…” doesn’t exactly explain why this known falsehood kept getting repeated.

After three years, we still don't know
what happened at the Benghazi consulate compound
Map found here

She kept trying to make it sound like that possibility was worth pursuing.[i] The video was claimed to be the cause of a spontaneous demonstration in Egypt—that’s what we were told that day—by the administration in response to that event, prior to the Benghazi attack hours later. In fact, Clinton claimed in her testimony Thursday that the video had been shown on Egyptian television, and that is why they feared it had farther reach and might spread.

But, if I remember correctly, that obscure video wasn’t the cause of the riot in Egypt; that was a preplanned event, weeks ahead, and announced the day before in the Egyptian press, in an attempt to release the Blind Sheikh. That the administration went video shopping was revealed in emails obtained in 2014 through a FOIA request persisted by Judicial Watch.

So the planned riot in Egypt had nothing to do with a video. And therefore it was an absolute known fact that the video had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack. Hillary Clinton knew this without question, and she just lied about it under oath.

One of the questions is why the ambassador was in Benghazi, known to be unsafe, when he had repeatedly requested greater security, since his installation as Libyan ambassador in May 2012. If it wasn’t safe in Tripoli, and was much less safe in Benghazi, what was he doing there? Hillary Clinton claims it was his call, but he was looking into whether a consulate should be opened in Benghazi.

Since within a month after the attack I’ve heard speculation that the administration was involved in gun running, and that was the purpose for the ambassador and the CIA to be in Benghazi, to see to a deal. This was verified in testimony in June, with the speculation Clinton could be subject to treason charges. 

I was surprised when this came up in the hearing. It was a blip. Clinton claimed that of course the administration wanted to see that weapons got into the right hands; all administrations would do so. So, in essence, she admitted that what had until recently been called a bizarre “conspiracy theory” is true, but she said it with an “of course” that led the media to let it go, as if we all knew and accepted this detail all along.

I don’t know what to make of this. I don’t know what Trey Gowdy makes of it either. But gun running is not a normal duty of an ambassador, and is particularly unwise in a country without an established secure government.

Speaking of lack of secure government, she admitted that the security personnel at the consulate were unarmed. She claimed this was normal. It is practice for consulates to trust security of the perimeter to the host country. But why would this would be the practice in a country in which even the citizens wouldn’t trust a weak or non-recognized government to protect them?

She kept saying that it was never recommended that the Libyan embassy be closed. She was sure if Ambassador Stevens had thought it necessary, he would have said so. But she fails to take responsibility for the ignored requests for increased security. 

In an uncomfortable moment, she laughed at the enterprising spirit of the ambassador for “fire sale” shopping—collecting barricades and other safety equipment from nearby closing embassies, since he wasn’t getting anything in response to his requests. (I think there were around 800 requests.) Despite her opening statement that she took responsibility, she said handling security requests was below her pay grade; underlings were tasked with handling security, and they never saw it necessary to bother her about the ambassador’s requests. We do not yet know why these people over security failed to answer the calls. Clinton tried blaming Congress for failing to provide funding, but that seems pretty empty. I'm assuming the committee is following up with the security division she referred to. There's may be among the subpoenaed materials the State Department has yet to provide.

She claims that Ambassador Stevens was a personal friend of hers. But there were zero emails between him and Clinton. She answered that by saying that she didn’t provide him an email address. And she didn’t do much business by email; she didn’t even have a computer in her office. The line of questioning about emails to her from Sidney Blumenthal (which were her emails, only recently revealed, and all related to Benghazi and Libya) showed that he had full and complete access to the Secretary of State, even though he had been refused any official status by the White House. But her “friend,” Chris Stevens, got no access.

She said she used phonecalls and other communications. So she was asked whether she had talked with Chris Stevens by phone after he was made ambassador to Libya. She answered that she was sure she had. On what occasion? When? She couldn’t recall. She was reminded that her phone logs show no calls between her and the ambassador. She shrugged that off as meaningless. He had a direct line to the State Department and could have called at any time. Again, ignoring the 800 or so requests for increased security.

It might be that acquiescing to increased security in Libya would have shown Obama's claim that al-Qaeda was weakened and nearly dissolved to be a lie. That’s an alternative to believing in the gun running scheme. I suppose both could be true simultaneously.

The reason she used a private email server is that private communications (i.e., unrelated to State Department work) are not subject to FOIA requests. She does not choose transparency, even when required by law. But what has been obtained is evidence that she did official work on that server, including classified work.

So she is known to have broken the law concerning making her State Department actions public. And she is known to have allowed multiple examples of classified information outside of a secure government location—a serious law every person with a security clearance understands. She is subject to jail time. 

She didn’t have to testify for this to be known. If there were an explanation that would have exonerated her, she would have provided it. That she did nothing but pretend it was all legitimate may play well in the press, but it will not convince a thorough prosecutor.

We know that many of the emails and resources subpoenaed have yet to be provided. The failure to provide requested information is the main reason the investigation continues. It may also continue because, if she were indicted and convicted in the near future, the president would pardon her, and there would hardly be an inconvenience in her campaign for president. She must be indicted, with rock solid evidence to convict. And it must come before she has any chance of becoming president but close enough to the end of the Obama reign to prevent him from pardoning. Otherwise she gets away scot-free. And the blood of those who lost their lives continues to cry out for justice.

If you want to experience the testimony yourself, C-Span has provided the entire day in four parts:

Part 1: http://www.c-span.org/video/?328699-1/hillary-clinton-testimony-house-select-committee-benghazi-part-1

Part 2: http://www.c-span.org/video/?328699-2/hillary-clinton-testimony-house-select-committee-benghazi-part-2

Part 3: http://www.c-span.org/video/?328699-3/hillary-clinton-testimony-house-select-committee-benghazi-part-3

Part 4: http://www.c-span.org/video/?328699-4/hillary-clinton-testimony-house-select-committee-benghazi-part-4

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[i] Note Hillary Clinton’s testimony at 27:50 minutes in Part 3 of C-Span’s recording. 

Sampling the Ballot, Part II

This is a simple, mostly non-partisan, off-year election. And yet we couldn’t get through the ballot in a single post. Sorry about that. Anyway, yesterday we covered Texas state propositions and Harris County propositions. What’s left on my local ballot are school board trustee elections.

School Board

There are four positions on the ballot for Cy-Fair Independent School District. Sometimes they’re called trustees, sometimes board members. CFISD had a “board candidate forum,” which is about two hours with the candidates, if you’d like to see for yourself. But on the ballot they are “trustee candidates.” It’s a “board of trustees,” so that includes it all, I guess.

To begin, I’m not a fan of our school board. I’m not a fan of public education, so add that in. But here we are, in one of the most conservative counties, in one of the most conservative states, in a section of the county that is among the most conservative sections. But our school board is notoriously tied to liberal policies, educational associations (not a good thing), and cronyism. Most of the board has been supported by a PAC, with rather large money, considering that school board positions are unpaid.

The other side will point out that they get awards—they are the most efficient; they are best liked by administrators. They are efficient because CFISD gets a lower per student allotment from the state than other school districts nearby and across the state, and they are required by law to balance the budget. So they are forced to be efficient. But let’s give props for that. If administrators like them, it might be just that they’re giving them everything they want, but that may not reflect at all on the classroom outcome.

In the forum, these six candidates appeared: Thomas Jackson, Christine Hartley, Darcy Mingoia (all current board members), Natalie Blasingame, Debbie Blackshear, and Pam Redd. There are four positions. Incumbents Thomas Jackson and Christin Hartley run unopposed for positions 1 and 2 respectively. Darcy Mingoia is running again for position 3 and is challenged by Dr. Natalie Blasingame. And the position 4 trustee is not running again, so the new candidates are Debbie Blackshear and Pam Redd. Positions 5, 6, and 7—John Ogletree, Don Ryan, and Bob Covey—are not up for re-election this year.

The easy way is to go in order. But I won’t; I’m starting with position 3. In addition to the forum, which I watched online after the fact, I saw them both in person at the most recent Tea Party meeting. I wrote about Darcy Mingoia last time she ran, in 2012. She was not my choice. She seems to be a decent person, more interested in the business end than the details of the classroom.

Darcy Mingoia, CFISD candidate, position 4
photo from Cypress Tea Party Facebook page

Last time around I was bothered that she (and nearly every candidate) got the order of priorities wrong. I think you’re accountable to the taxpayers and parents. The job is to get the best education possible for the money budgeted. You will want a good environment and good teachers in order to accomplish that. But doing the bidding of a teachers’ organization is the wrong approach. This time that question didn’t seem very relevant. She said, “Obviously we’re accountable to the taxpayers. But…” She’s certain they’re doing a very good job, and this is one of the best school districts around.

You lose me there. We looked at the school district info when we moved here and decided where to live. It was highly rated. But two years in, we found it so intolerable we pulled our kids out to homeschool for the duration (ten years). I haven’t been that tuned in to schools since, but we have a granddaughter in the local elementary school right now. It’s a new school, but it was built like all the others with open classrooms—even though that has been discredited everywhere for decades and has been proven painfully troublesome here in this district. It’s cheaper to build large rooms without walls. No matter that children have to remain quiet at all times, to avoid disturbing the other classes within earshot. Having a teacher or guest read a book aloud is iffy (I know from experience). 

Also, the elementary school still tells teachers whether a student is performing at grade level or below grade level. But if your child came in performing two grades above grade level, you don’t get any kind of grade to let you know they’re still progressing. I found the program for gifted students sub-par for high school, middle school, and elementary school. It appears that is still the case. (I want to add here that we're quite pleased with our granddaughter's main teacher; I haven't met her other teacher, but the parents have, and teachers are not a problem for us this year.)

Natalie Blasingame, CFISD candidate, position 4
photo from Cypress Tea Party Facebook page

Natalie Blasingame at least addressed the gifted challenge. She is in favor of adding options. Her big thing is dual-language schools—not to be confused with bilingual education, which is a way of teaching non-English students until they learn enough English to be more mainstreamed. Dual-language is an immersion program for teaching additional languages to English-speaking students. Her daughter attends a dual-language program, but it was not available in our district, so she goes elsewhere. (We’re watching a friend try this out in another state.)

She answered my question about gifted students by saying, the way it happens is by dealing with each student individually. Now, that is something that the schools truly need. I don’t know how they get there. But Dr. Blasingame has been an educator—a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and assistant superintendent. She at least knows the challenges from the trenches, and has looked at options. I think she would be the only board member with an education background, and I believe they said the first board member ever to have been an educator in the district.

So, in the Position 3 race, I’m voting for Natalie Blasingame.

Now, for the others. The short answer is, I’m not voting for anyone else.

Of course unopposed positions will get in without my vote. But they will do it without my feeling forced to say, “What a great job you’re doing!”

You may want to disagree. When Thomas Jackson first ran, it was with PAC money, and in connection with Mr. Ogletree, whom I see as the enemy of parents and taxpayers on the board. So I did not favor him. However, he presented himself well at the forum that year—and again in this year’s forum. He’s data oriented and very reasonable. I was leaning toward giving him my vote, but I was reminded that he was instrumental in pushing for the $1.2 Billion bond last year. That’s an incredibly sized bond, and was going to building more open classroom schools, and for a great many things that aren’t capital expenditures. I voted against it. It passed nevertheless (they almost always do).

Christine Hartley also ran with PAC money, and attached herself to other PAC candidates. I wasn’t convinced then that she was what our schools needed, and I’m sticking with that impression. I think she must make an incredible PTO president or Band Mom. She’s a pleasant person with a lot of energy. But she resents anything that challenges the god that is public schools: school choice, charter schools, private schools, homeschools. So, she may not be aware she declared me an enemy, but I recognized the categorization. So, again, she’s not getting my vote.

The Position 4 race has two newcomers. These are non-partisan positions. But I have been told that Pam Redd is considered a weak Democrat (has voted in at least one Democrat primary, but not a long steady record of doing so). Debbie Blackshear votes Republican. She spoke at a Tea Party meeting last month (which I missed). Pam Redd didn’t show; she later told our Tea Party president that she’d had a previous commitment. But that’s not what she’d said when she was scheduled to speak, and she didn’t get back to him to let him know she wouldn't make it. Since the main ways of reaching the public in person are at the forum and at our Tea Party, she blew off an important opportunity.

So Debbie Blackshear ought to be an obvious choice. But I found her unimpressive at the forum. And a friend suggested that some other business connections make her suspicious. I don’t know enough to be certain. It may turn out, if she wins, I will know her better upon re-election. But for now I’m not willing to give her a vote.

Here’s a little additional impression from the forum. School choice is important to pretty much any parent who has a slightly non-standard child: smart, shy, slow, active, reading challenged, etc. A parent can’t wait through a bad year in hopes the next year will be better. A parent has to get the child out of something that isn’t working and into something that might be a better fit.

There is one small “choice” option in this huge district: Windfern High School of Choice. They talked about it a lot. Two of the candidates (Christine Hartley and Pam Redd, I believe) have had a child go there.

There are three Windfern schools. Two of them are alternative schools—where students get sent as an option other than dropping out. Fighting, or other major infractions, or failure to do the work—students get sent to Windfern. It’s not their choice. But that is not the same Windfern—which is 1500 feet away from the other two.

This “choice” school is for 11^th and 12^th grade students who are struggling to keep up and graduate, and might do better in smaller classes with more personal attention; or it’s for accelerated graduates, those who want to graduate early. The emphasis is on getting graduated. The set-up is more like a community college (according to the website). A student has to be recommended to the school by a faculty member from their assigned school. It is unlikely that any child that isn’t trying to graduate early would know about it or ask for it; they get directed there.

There are 250-400 students in this school of choice. There are 113,689 students in the district this year. So, that’s .2-.3.5% of the students. There’s a “choice” for 2 or 3 students out of a thousand. So, almost no one has any “choice.” And what there is doesn’t compare to my homeschool, for example.

If that is this board’s idea of plenty of choice, we need people who think differently.