The Press-Dispatch
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Opinion C-2 Wednesday, February 27, 2013 The Press-Dispatch Observations by Thomas Sowell Guns and pensions A nation���s choice between spending on military defense and spending on civilian goods has often been posed as ���guns versus butter.��� But understanding the choices of many nations��� political leaders might be helped by examining the contrast between their runaway spending on pensions while skimping on military defense. Huge pensions for retired government workers can be found from small municipalities to national governments on both sides of the Atlantic. There is a reason. For elected officials, pensions are virtually the ideal thing to spend money on, politically speaking. Many kinds of spending of the taxpayers��� money win votes from the recipients. But raising taxes to pay for this spending loses votes from the taxpayers. Pensions offer a way out of this dilemma for politicians. The energy potential of ���fracking��� By Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D. Say you were a politician and there was a clean and abundant domestic energy source���one that has the potential to create jobs and revitalize local economies. Would you do more to encourage it? Silly question, you may be thinking. Why wouldn���t you do more to encourage it? Well, this scenario is more than hypothetical. I���m talking about natural gas, which is proving in these energy-hungry times to be more of a boon every day. The United States has plenty of it, and thanks to technological advancements in directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, it���s more accessible than ever. Fracking involves shooting a mixture of water and chemicals deep underground to release the trapped natural gas. Certain states have been using this technique for years, and very successfully. They have sensible rules in place to ensure that companies obtain the gas in an environmentally responsible manner. Yet the Department of Energy has been delaying decisions to allow companies to export natural gas. Moreover, antifracking governors such as Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Democrat, have been doing their best to oppose it. The Empire State has held up new permits for the past four years. Now state officials, citing environmental concerns, have called for yet another round of public health analysis, which likely will bring more public comments, although they already have nearly 80,000. The delay supposedly will keep the state from being sued by anti-fracking activists. By taking more time, Mr. Cuomo claims, the state has a better chance of avoiding lawsuits. More likely, it���s a matter of stonewalling by opponents who hope the issue goes away. Whatever the reason, there is a certain irony to hearing the environment used as an excuse to oppose fracking. Natural gas, because it burns more cleanly than coal, reduces carbon emissions by a significant amount. There are other upsides as well. Consider Pennsylvania and Ohio, which are reaping the benefits of fracking. In Pennsylvania, this type of gas extraction has been under way since the 1960s, with nearly 100,000 oil and gas wells fracked and no instances of contamination of groundwater. The same clean record is true for Ohio, where more than 70,000 oil and gas wells have been fracked since the 1960s. All this activity helps Continued on page 3 The no-spin zone���by Bill O���Reilly The big con Please listen up. We are all being conned by the Obama administration. This year, the American taxpayer will fork over about $571 billion to pay for educating children in the nation���s public schools. All told, the country spends close to $16,000 per student every year on primary through college education. That���s the highest per-student spending rate in the world. However, according to President Obama, it���s not enough. He wants more tax dollars, especially for ���early education.��� He said so in his State of the Union address, and it drew big-time applause from his crew. Of course we need to spend more on education. And anyone who opposes that hates kids! The centerpiece of the president���s early-education vision is the ���Head Start��� program, which has been in place since 1965. Over the past 48 years, the feds have spent close to $200 billion on Head Start. But there���s one big problem: The program is not working. According to a recent study by the Department of Health and Human Services, by the end of third grade, Head Start children remain academically disadvantaged compared to their same-age peers. So why did the president not mention that? Why is he still pounding the drum for more funding for a program that is not cutting it? The answer is social engineering. Obama will not say this, but one of his devoted followers, Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz, will. What the left really wants is to redistribute income through the public education system. In a recent New York Times column, Stiglitz called for the following: ��� More spending on preschool education. ��� More spending on before- and after-class programs. ��� More entitlements to ensure that pregnant women are protected from ���environmental hazards.��� That means increased payments to prospective moms for better food, housing and medical care. And the topper: ��� Direct cash payments to parents of poor children who make sure their kids participate in school programs and show up for class. If that ever comes to be, America essentially will be paying parents to parent. It is all about control. Obama believes the deck in America is stacked against the poor and wants to get lower-income citizens as much cash and as many entitlements as he can. Masking those payments under ���more money for education��� is a clever way to do that. It is certainly true that poor children have a much tougher academic road than affluent kids. And smart educational policy can close that gap. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told me the reason Head Start is not delivering is that it doesn���t concentrate enough on reading. In many school districts, it is primarily a babysitting service. As a former high school teacher and a student in a class of 60 urchins at St. Brigid���s grammar school, I know that education is all about discipline and motivation. Disadvantaged students need extra attention, a stable school environment and enough teacher creativity to stimulate their imaginations. Those things are not expensive. But that���s not all of what federal education spending is about, is it? It���s also about redistributing income. We are being conned big time. And it���s the kids who suffer the most because of it. Points to ponder���by Ford Bond Goddess of Greed In a gesture that Idaho state senator John Goedde claims was a backhand toward the state education board, a bill was introduced to make reading and passing an exam on Ayn Rand���s Atlas Shrugged a graduation requirement. He wanted to send a message to the board on changing the graduation requirements in Idaho, but does not plan on pressing ahead with his bill. Much was said in the last election about Ayn Rand, her ideas, and those who public- ly have acknowledged her influence. Among those are former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (friend and mentor), the late President Ronald Reagan, Commentators Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and Republican vicepresidential candidate Paul Ryan. Those who espouse hyper-capitalism often point to Ayn Rand���s books as a catalyst for their self-directed success. Let each of us remember that a book is only words and has no intrinsic power; what gives it power A woman���s perspective���by Mona Charen Hagel proves Obama won���t stop Iran Does it matter that a nominee for secretary of defense doesn���t particularly care for American power? Speaking to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2007, Sen. Chuck Hagel revealed the kind of prejudices regarding American military strength most frequently found in the pages of the Nation magazine or among protesters at Occupy rallies. Distancing himself from Republicans he regarded as too bellicose, Hagel said, ���Rather than acting like a nation riddled with the insecurities of a schoolyard bully, we ought to carry ourselves with the confidence that should come from the dignity of our heritage, the experience of our history, and from the strength of our humanity, not from the power of our military.��� This is a familiar leftist critique of America, a psuedo-psychological analysis of our foreign policy as a form of pathology. For a certain set of people, the problems in the world are never (fill in the blank): Soviet aggression and expansionism, communist repression and adventurism or Islamic radicalism and terror. No, the problem is always America���s neurotic need to throw its weight around, alienating benign foreign powers and creating discord and trouble. Whereas fair-minded people the world over consider the Islamic Republic of Iran to be a terror-sponsoring gangster regime, Sen. Hagel described the Iranian regime at his confirmation hearing as an ���elected and legitimate��� government. A friendly Democratic senator later offered him an avenue for retreat, which he grabbed, saying, ���What I meant to Creating pensions that offer generous retirement benefits wins votes in the present by promising spending in the future. Promises cost nothing in the short run��� and elections are held in the short run, long before the pensions are due. By contrast, private insurance companies that sell annuities are forced by law to set aside enough assets to cover the cost of the annuities they have promised to pay. But nobody can force the government to do that��� and most governments do not. This means that it is only a matter of time before pensions are due to be paid and there is not enough money set aside to pay for Continued on page 3 say���should have said���it���s recognizable.��� What regime isn���t ���recognizable���? What solicitous Democrats cannot obscure is that Sen. Hagel has a long record of softness toward Iran. He voted against designating Al Quds a terrorist entity, advised direct negotiations with the mullahs, opposed sanctions, and suggested that a military response to Iran���s nuclear program is not a ���viable, feasible, responsible option.��� In a 2007 speech, he praised Iran���s cooperation with the U.S. in Afghanistan and noted that our two nations had found ���common interests.��� From these, Hagel continued, ���emerged common actions working toward a common purpose.��� This is sheer fantasy���disturbing enough in a U.S. senator but profoundly unsettling in a secretary of defense. Just two months before Hagel sprinkled these rhetorical rosebuds at the mullahs��� feet, an Al Quds force had attacked our forces in Karbala, Iraq. We were not at war with Iran (or not consciously). Time magazine reported the ambush: ���In the back of two of the vehicles were the four Americans. One of them was alive, though barely. Handcuffed, he had been shot in the back of the head, but he was breathing. The other soldiers were already dead. One had taken bullets in both legs and his right hand, and at some point the kidnappers had torn open his body armor and fired bullets into his chest and torso. Two others were handcuffed together, with one���s right hand joined to the other���s left. Two shots in the face and neck had killed one. Four bullets in the chest had killed the other.��� The Al Quds terrorists had stolen all of the men���s ID tags. Before dying, one of them had scrawled his name in the dust of the jeep. Hagel is not worried about a nuclear Iran. In his 2008 book, he notes blithely, ���The genie of nuclear weapons is already out of the bottle no matter what Iran does.��� In that same year, Hagel proposed that the State Department open an ���interests section��� in Tehran. Before the Hagel nomination, we lived with the polite fiction that President Obama was determined to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. The president has reiterated this position consistently since 2007. Mr. Hagel demonstrated confusion about it during his confirmation hearing, mumbling, ���We have no position on containment.��� For clarity, Sen. Carl Levin (another helpful Democrat) corrected Hagel. ���We do have a position on containment, and that is, we do not favor containment.��� As recently as last September President Obama said, ���Make no mistake: A nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained. . . . The United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.��� But who can take that boilerplate seriously now? The president has nominated a man for defense secretary who warms the heart of the terror regime in Tehran, a man who despises U.S. power, a man who opposed not just military action but even sanctions against Iran. That the president refuses to withdraw this nomination makes nonsense of his repeated pledges to thwart Iran���s nuclear ambitions. If ever a nomination were filibuster worthy, this is it. are the beliefs that (often) the reader holds that are found resonating from the pages. It would do Christians good to read Ayn Rand���s opus maximus Atlas Shrugged, for within the pages one would find the written foundation of the greed that our civilization is captivated by and should recognize her beliefs are at odds with the tenants of historical Christianity. Rand founded the school of thought known as objectivism; whose central tenants are ���reality exists independent of consciousness; the purpose of life is the pursuit of one���s own happiness; an effective society embraces individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism.��� In other words, a person should live with his/her own selfinterest at heart as he/she satisfies his/her desires. Christian charity to Rand is non-existence, and she would agree with the Social Darwinist that to help the downtrodden is counterproductive. In her work Man���s Rights, Rand writes ���there is no such thing as a right to a job���there is only a right of free trade, that is: a man���s right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him . . . no right to a fair wage or a fair price if no one chooses to pay it, to hire a man or to buy his product.��� As one observer opined, ���what happens to Lazarus in the New Testament, how does one apply the Beatitudes, would we help the poor if we lived in the world of Ayn Rand?��� The answer is you don���t. Calamity is the fault of the victim. Ludwig von Mises, an apostle of the Austrian school of economics surly agreed with Rand when he wrote that Jesus was the evil seed. In his work Socialism: An economic and Sociological Analysis, he wrote, ���Jesus words are full of resentment against the rich, and the apostles are no meeker in this respect. The Rich man is condemned because he is rich, the Beggar praised because he is poor. The only reason Jesus does not declare war against the rich and preach revenge on them is that God has said ���revenge is mine.��� Sadly, Mises is wrong Continued on page 3 The P Dispatch ress- MR. AND MRS. FRANK HEURING, PUBLISHERS ANDREW G. HEURING, EDITOR JOHN B. HEURING, ADVERTISING MANAGER Wednesday, February 27, 2013 Entered at the Post Office in Petersburg, Indiana for transmission through the mails as Periodical Mail, Postage paid at Petersburg, Indiana. Published weekly. Change of Address���Subscribers changing addresses will please give old address as well as new one along with phone number. We cannot guarantee prompt change unless this is done. Postmaster: send changes to Post Office Box 68, Petersburg, Indiana 47567-0068. Phone 354-8500 ��� FAX���354-2014 P.O. BOX 68, PETERSBURG, INDIANA 47567 E-mail���subscribe@pressdispatch.net (604-340)