The Press-Dispatch
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C-6 Wednesday, November 4, 2015 The Press-Dispatch OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Continued on page 7 Observations by Thomas Sowell Heritage Viewpoint by Edwin J. Feulner Environmental Protection Army? Hillary 2.0 Continued on page 7 Points to Ponder by Rev. Ford Bond The news is not good Hurray for CNBC A woman's perspective by Mona Charen Katiedid vs... by Katiedid Langrock Baby names Continued on page 7 Many people may share Senator Bernie Sanders' complaint that he was tired of hearing about Hillary Clinton's e-mails. But the contro- versy is about issues far bigger than e-mails. One issue is the utter disaster created by the Obama administra- tion's foreign policy in Libya, car- ried out by Hillary Clinton as Sec- retary of State. An even bigger issue is wheth- er high officials of government can ignore the law and refuse to pro- duce evidence when it is subpoe- naed. If they can, then the whole separation of powers – the checks and balances in the Constitution – gives way to arbitrary govern- ment by corrupt officials who are accountable to no one. This is not the first time Hillary Clinton has defied the law to cover up what she had done. When Bill Clinton was president, back in the 1990s, both he and Hillary devel- oped the strategy of responding to charges of illegal actions on their part by stalling and stonewalling when either courts or Congress tried to get them to produce doc- uments related to these charges. Hillary claimed then, as now, that key documents had disap- peared. Her more recent claim that many of her e-mails had been deleted was just Hillary 2.0. Only after three years of stalling and stonewalling on her part has the fact finally come out this year that those e-mails could be recovered, and now have been. By this time, however, Hill- ary and her supporters used the same tactics that both Clintons used back in the 1990s – name- ly, saying that this was old news, stuff that had already been inves- tigated too long, that it was time to "move on." That was Hillary 1.0. More re- cently Hillary 2.0 said, melodra- matically, "What difference, at this point, does it make? " One of the things that the for- mer Secretary of State was now trying to cover up was the utter disaster of the Obama administra- tion's foreign policy that she car- ried out in Libya. Having intervened in Libya to help overthrow the government of Muammar Qaddafi, who was no threat to America's interests in the Middle East, the Obama adminis- tration was confronted with the fact that Qaddafi's ouster simply threw the country into such cha- os that Islamic terrorists were now able to operate freely in Libya. Just how freely was shown in September 2012, when terrorists stormed the compound in Beng- hazi where the American ambassa- dor to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was staying. They murdered him and three other Americans who tried to defend him. Moreover, the terrorists did not even have to go into hiding after- wards, and at least one of them was interviewed by journalists. That's how chaotic Libya had become. Meanwhile, there was an Ameri- can presidential election campaign in 2012, and Barack Obama was presenting himself to the voters as someone who had defeated Al Qa- eda and suppressed the terrorist threat in the Middle East. Obviously the truth about this attack could have totally under- mined the image that Obama was trying to project during the elec- tion campaign, and perhaps cost him the White House. So a lie was concocted instead. The lie was that the attack was not by terrorists – who supposed- ly had been suppressed by Obama – but was a spontaneous protest demonstration against an Ameri- can video insulting Islam, and that protest just got out of control. Now that Hillary Clinton's e- mails have finally been recovered and revealed, after three years of stalling and stonewalling, they showed explicitly that she knew from the outset that the attack that killed Ambassador Stevens and others was not a result of some video but was a coordinated terror- ist operation. Nevertheless, Hillary 2.0, along with President Obama and nation- al security advisor Susan Rice, told the world in 2012 that the deaths in Benghazi were due to the vid- eo, not a terrorist organization that was now operating freely in Libya, thanks to the policy that got rid of the Qaddafi government. Yet that key fact was treated by Even those of us who have worked in Washington for many years and become accustomed to the inner workings of government can still be amazed by what lurks behind the curtain sometimes. Case in point: the Environmental Protection Agency. Most Americans have at least heard of the EPA, even if they have only a dim notion of what the agen- cy actually does. It tends to skate along under the radar, unless some- thing unusual happens, such as the toxic spill that turned the Colora- do's Animas River orange last Au- gust. Of course, what really made the spill unusual is that the EPA it- self caused it. Otherwise, Americans don't hear much about the agency. So many of them would probably be as unpleasantly surprised as I was by a new report by Open the Books, a nonprofit group that promotes gov- ernment transparency. Its look into the EPA's spending habits is alarm- ing, to put it mildly. The first thing that strikes you is the EPA's spendthrift ways. Even if times were flush and government coffers were overflowing (which is far from the case), the agency spends money like it's expecting the Second Coming next week. The Open the Books audit cov- ered tens of thousands of checks the EPA wrote from 2000 to 2014, with hundreds of millions going to- ward such things as luxury furnish- ings, sports equipment and "envi- ronmental justice" grants to raise awareness of global warming. The second thing that hits you is where the rest of the money goes. The headline of an op-ed by econ- omist Stephen Moore in Investor's Business Daily sums it up well: "Why Does the EPA Need Guns, Ammo, and Armor to Protect the Environment? " And not just a few weapons. Open the Books found that the agency has spent millions of dollars over the last decade on guns, ammo, body armor, camouflage equip- ment, unmanned aircraft, amphib- ious assault ships, radar and night- vision gear and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activi- ties. "We were shocked ourselves to find these kinds of pervasive ex- penditures at an agency that is supposed to be involved in clean air and clean water," said Open the Books founder Adam Andrzejews- ki. "Some of these weapons are for full-scale military operations." Among the EPA's purchases: • $1.4 million for "guns up to 300mm." • $ 380,000 for "ammunition." • $210,000 for "camouflage and other deceptive equipment." • $208,000 for "radar and night- vision equipment." • $ 31,000 for "armament train- ing devices." The list goes on. It's filled with the kind of equipment you'd expect to be purchased by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, not an agency osten- sibly designed to protect the envi- ronment. But as it turns out, armed, com- mando-style raids by the EPA are not unheard of. One such raid oc- curred in 2013, in a small Alaskan town where armed agents in full body armor reportedly confronted local miners accused of polluting local waters. Perhaps the agency is gearing up for more operations like that one? If so, the EPA wouldn't be all that unique. According to the Jus- tice Department, there are now 40 federal agencies with more than 100,000 officers authorized to car- ry guns and make arrests. They include the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Oceanic and At- mospheric Administration. The EPA audit underscores the need for serious budget cuts at the agency. In July, before the Colora- do spill and the Open the Books report, environmental policy ex- pert Nicolas Loris called on Con- gress to shrink the EPA's budget, and outlining several specific cuts that could be done immediately and with no detrimental effect on the environment. "The proposed cuts outlined here merely scratch the surface of a Several years ago I ran across an article by Michael S. Rozeff in which he asserts he had not voted since Eisenhower became president. This stance was the result of the sidelining of the [apparent] last true conservative Robert Taft's 1952 presidential bid. Eisenhower was the establish- ment's candidate who said he would be a Middle of the Road president; he would not undermine any New Deal program, but at the same time he would embrace no new extension of government. Rozeff felt this was the end of any hope to roll back the initiatives of Roosevelt's New Deal and Truman's Fair Deal. To Rozeff, the fix was in and vot- ing on the national level was futile. Further proof was Goldwater's run in 1964 which so angered the Rockefeller supports, they cam- paigned against their own candidate [Republicans for Johnson]. What brought this article back to mind was a recent column by one of my favorite economists Gary North, who routinely excoriates bogus eco- nomic theories and bad initiatives by Uncle Sam. His latest column [Crony World Govern- ment] caused me to scratch my brow. He writes "You may know of the Trans-Pa- cific Partnership agree- ment. No one in Con- gress has read it. No one is allowed to read it. The Guardian reports that WikiLeaks has released a sto- len version of it. Obama wants Con- gress to pass it. But, as with Obam- aCare, no one will be allowed to read it." "TPP is facing a rough ride through Congress where President Obama's opponents on the right argue the agreement does not do enough for business while oppo- nents on the left argue it does too much…Obama has pledged to make the TPP public but only after the leg- islation has passed." This is like deja vu all over again. Maybe North is onto something. Often events are signals in shifts the way political affairs are being done. What North does is to con- nect the dots and sug- gest change is on the way. North continues: "Democracy really is at the end of the road as a philosophy. I am not saying that we are headed back into total- itarianism… I am saying that a co- gent case for democracy as a system promoting discussion of proposed laws is over. It is a farce. We accept- ed Pelosi's original challenge: Con- gress would get to read the Obam- aCare bill after it was passed." Gulp-the nail in the coffin "We ac- cepted Pelosi's challenge." The process was tried and it worked. North writes later "Two things are worth mentioning. One, de- mocracy is a shell game now. Con- I never thought I'd be in this sit- uation. There are nine full months to think, obsess, make lists, cross out said lists and make new lists. So tell me how on earth any parent goes into labor not knowing what to name her child. I judge these parents. And I don't mean the parents who go to the hospital with a few names and pur- posefully wait to meet their baby before deciding which name best suits him or her. No, no, those par- ents have a plan. I mean the folks who are dumbfounded—the folks who can't decide because they are just thinking of names that sound pretty or trendy or untrendy in that hipster way that makes them all the more trendy. These so- called parents aren't considering meaning. They aren't properly ob- sessing over nicknames or what name looks best on a college ap- plication or scrawled across one of those incredibly small pieces of rice that girls used to wear in glass bottle necklaces back in the 1990s. I read a study about how two months af- ter the birth of their child, 40 percent of Americans regret the name they gave their child. By the time the child is 2 years old, the percentage rises to just over 50. The parents who walk in- to the hospital with- out a clue in the name department are to blame for that. I'm sure of it. They make me sick. Or, I should say, they did. But now I am one of them. My child is due on Halloween. I don't have a name. How did this happen? I was so prepared with my first child. His first and middle name both had personal stories behind them. Even now I say his name aloud and think, "Nailed it." But with the daughter-to-be, I got nothin'. And I'm blaming you, Mom and Dad. I'm blaming you. When you're named after a bug, a lot of pressure is put on what you will name your children. Half the population ex- pects me to name her SunCat Rainbow ThunderCloud. The other half expects me to name her Jane. I tend not to be one who does what is expect- ed, but that doesn't mean the im- mense pressure isn't felt. I'm fair- ly certain this is what David Bow- ie and Freddie Mercury were ac- tually singing about. I also blame this parenting fail on my husband. He will deny it un- til his last breath, but I think the Jeb Bush's campaign may be mortally wounded. Limping in the polls despite his massive war chest, he stooped (almost literally if you check the body language) to attack- ing Marco Rubio in an attempt to re- vive his fortunes. Rubio's response, suggesting that Bush had been "told" to attack him, seemed like a bull's-eye. Jeb Bush is an honorable man, a man raised to behave like a gentleman; but he was feeling desperate at Wednesday's debate, and tried to play against type. It failed utterly. Rubio was ready, and parried Bush's thrust by highlighting — for Bush and the audience — how very un- becoming the attack was. He made Bush look small, and you could al- most tell that Bush himself felt di- minished for doing it. This was not the "joyful" race he had envisioned. Is it really so shocking that Re- publican primary voters have turned their faces away from Jeb Bush? Though he was an outstand- ing governor of Florida, his election would represent something unprec- edented in American politics — a third president from one family. It bespeaks a wholesome anti-dy- nastic spirit in the elec- torate to say, "No. Two is the limit." Those were certainly my sen- timents. Nor did his donor base guarantee anything. Who was the best-financed Republi- can candidate in 1980? Not Reagan. Not even George H.W. Bush. It was John Con- nolly. He got exactly one delegate. On the other hand, since we're predicting his political demise, it's worth saying for the record that the anti-Bush vitriol among some on the right has been needlessly hysterical. There is nothing hateful about Jeb Bush or the Bush family. If they have a sense of entitlement, well, there are far worse things — like, oh, the flagrant corruption we find in the likely Democratic nom- inee. Many on the right are completely con- vinced that, cycle after cycle, the "Republican establishment" foists "moderate" nominees on an unwilling con- servative electorate. This is myth. Henry Olsen, my colleague at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, tracks election results with meticulous attention and observes that the reason moderates (Olsen actually calls them the "somewhat conservatives") get nominated is this: They get more votes. Though I wish the party were more conservative, and God knows I wish the country were more con- servative, the voters are in charge. In addition to Marco Rubio, Chris