The Press-Dispatch
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OPINION others of things that they themselves are doing, especially when their own sins are worse. Academics love to say that businesses It is fascinating to see people accusing are not paying enough to people who work for them. But where in business are there people who are paid absolutely nothing for strenuous work that involves risks to their health? In academia, that situation is common. It is called college football. How often have you watched a big-time college football game without seeing someone limping off the field or being carried off the field? College athletes are not to be paid be- cause this is an "amateur" sport. But foot- ball coaches are not only paid, they are of- Demoting America's staunchest ally cent trip to Great Britain? Without question, it was visiting Margaret Thatch- er. The former prime min- ister, whose wise leader- ship restored her country to greatness, played an in- dispensable role in help- ing the West win the Cold War. Her staunch com- mitment to conservative principles never fails to inspire. While I was in Britain, The highlight of my re- By Ed Feulner length about his pre- decessor Winston Churchill, but never even mentioned Lady Thatch- er. The leader of Brit- ain's Conservative party only had eyes for Obama. He lauded the president's "strength, moral author- ity and wisdom" and his "spectacular command of our shared language." Name a world hotspot: Obama has pursued the smartest policy—to hear the starry-eyed prime minister tell it. Indeed, according to Cameron, the president David Cameron, the cur- rent prime minister, was in the United States on an official visit with Pres- ident Obama. At least, I think it was an official vis- it. From their much-pub- licized attendance at an NCAA basketball game to the gushing praise Cam- eron lavished on his host at every turn, it played more like an extended campaign ad. Cameron spoke at an official visit are ex- pected. But this was so over the top that even liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank found it a bit much. For- mer Prime Minister Tony Blair was derided as Pres- ident George W. Bush's "poodle," Milbank re- minded readers, and now "a similar dynamic is de- veloping. This time, Cam- eron seems to be serving as Obama's guard dog, defending his American master against the Mitt Romneys and the Rick Santora." The prime min- ister had become a "cam- paign-year prop." Of greater concern is "has pressed the reset button on the moral au- thority of the entire free world." Compliments during Wednesday, March 28, 2012 The Press-Dispatch Observations by Thomas Sowell Academic hypocrisy ten paid higher salaries than the presidents of their own universities. Some make over a mil- lion dollars a year. Academics also like to accuse businesses of consumer fraud. There is indeed fraud in business, as in every other aspect of hu- man life—including academia. When my academic career began, half a century ago, I read up on the academ- ic market and discovered that there was a chronic over-supply of people trained to be historians. There were not nearly enough academic posts available for peo- ple who had spent years acquiring Ph.D.s Continued on page 3 Obama money The no-spin zone—by Bill O'Reilly social controversy by interviewing some welfare recipients who told her on camera that they believe they're entitled to "Obama money." That is, welfare checks. Some of those Pelo- si spotlighted are young men who are not even looking for work. They have plenty of excuses for that. But the bot- tom line: They want money handed to them, and stuff you if you don't like it. Also, some of these men have multi- ple children by multiple "baby mamas." Again, their posture is blank you if you don't approve. That attitude appalls many hard- working folks, but truthfully, there al- ways have been layabouts, and there al- ways will be. But now, in some circles, it's almost stylish to be a parasite. Re- cently, Mitt Romney was confronted by a heckler in Illinois who said: "What about pursuit of happiness? You know Ohio and a bells and whistles state dinner do not erase a track record of major insults by the Obama administration since it took office," Nile Continued on page 3 the harm that Cameron's obsequiousness is inflict- ing on the role that the U.S.-British partnership plays in the world. Be- cause if President Obama has hit the reset button on anything, it's the "special relationship," that unique alliance between two na- tions that has done so much to protect and pre- serve freedom globally over the last century. And he should be called on it. "A basketball trip to Alexandra Pe- losi, Nancy Pe- losi's daughter, has unleashed a firestorm of Filmmaker what would make me happy? Free birth control!" Whereupon Romney shot back: "If you're looking for free stuff . . . vote for the other guy. That's what he's all about, OK. That's not what I'm about." And therein lies the theme of the 2012 presidential campaign. This has not been a good week for President Obama. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has pro- jected that Obamacare will cost about $50 billion more than last year's projec- tion. In addition, the president's bud- get for 2013 will add another $9.6 tril- lion in debt over a 10-year period. This is not exactly the austere spending the nation desperately needs. But Obama is unswayed. He is run- ning as a "provider" and believes there are enough Americans who want free stuff to catapult him to victory in No- vember. Of course, the president is not going to openly endorse the nanny state. In- stead, he will demand that the rich pay "their fair share" and hope voters buy into the insinuation that they are get- ting screwed by the economic system and, therefore, it is perfectly permissi- ble to want payback in the form of gov- ernment entitlements. That's just mak- ing things "right." The labor unions are pounding that drum very hard. Speaking on public broadcasting, SEIU board member Stephen Lerner said: "I think there's never been a more exciting time . . . (to) really talk about redistributing wealth and power." Again, the theme being that America is an unjust society that needs a socialistic overhaul, and now is the time to make that happen. And Lerner may be on to something. C-2 Presently, we are a nation adrift. We are deeply divided on the fundamen- tals: capitalism, the power of the feder- al government, the rights of the have- nots. These are the things the upcom- ing election will address. It really is all about "Obama money," which is really our money. How much should be spent, and where should it go? The battle lines are drawn. At stake: the future of the USA. men did what they were trained to do, kill, and they dealt with the cognitive dis- sidence related to the act. What more should we ex- pect? ed an article "On Killing" where I discussed behavior of a group of Marines that had been videoed urinating on a corpse in Afghanistan. I took the title from David Grossman's book On Kill- ing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society in which he discuss- es the mechanisms used to prompt men to kill and the long term consequences of combat. I concluded that these A few months back, I post- Revisiting on Killing Points to ponder—by Rev. Ford Bond Well, I have been forced to rethink my conclusion. Within a week, two readers had emailed me suggesting that my analysis was myo- pic, and it did not take into account the larger cultural pressure of law and order and the proliferation of vio- lent video games in Ameri- can culture. Here is what one female reader, a retired teacher, emailed me: "I just got a chance to read your article. Something that you did not mention which I think makes this latest generation of sol- diers different than those who fought in Vietnam. To- day video games are very popular now, almost a must have for young people. Not Obama and the Future Fallacy A woman's perspective—by Mona Charen community college, President Obama indulged one of the left's favorite van- ities—the claim to represent "the fu- ture." His topic was energy. The pres- ident warned against Republicans who want "an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past." He compared today's Republicans who are less enthusiastic than he about govern- ment subsidies for "wind, solar and bio- fuels," to the "flat earth society" and to President Rutherford B. Hayes, who supposedly disdained the telephone. The president had Speaking to students at a Maryland those students chuckling and grinning and feeling smugly superior to be- nighted Republicans who are so stuck in the past. They always were; look at Hayes! You'd think that by now during the Cold War that if we didn't want to be on the "wrong side of histo- ry," in Sen. Christopher Dodd's words, we'd stop opposing the communist in- surgencies. Now the president would like to per- ly—for its obtuseness. Similarly, Democrats were certain gy. "German policymakers indicat- ed last week that they planned to cut once-generous subsidies as much as 29 percent . . . Britain and Italy have made similar moves, and in January, Spain abandoned its subsidies altogether." Remember Obama's invocation of suade us that the fuels of the future are "green" sources such as solar, wind, biomass and so forth. On multiple oc- casions, the president has warned that other nations are racing ahead of us to develop green technologies and green energy sources. The stimulus bill contained $2.3 bil- lion in tax credits for "green" manufacturers. But Obama wants us to join just as the oth- ers are coming to their senses. Kenneth P. Green, writing Obama might have been chastened about histori- cal claims. He's the one who told us that America invented the automobile and that John F. Kennedy had met with Nikita Khrushchev when we were on the brink of nuclear war. Actually, Kennedy met Khrushchev a year be- fore the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the car was invented in Germany. And far from dismissing the telephone, Hayes embraced the new technology and was the first president to have one installed at the White House. If Obama had a better command of history, he'd be embarrassed to per- sist in the forwards/backwards, past/ future meme for which he has such a weakness. He'd know, for example, that the story of Lincoln Steffens vis- iting the Soviet Union in 1919 and pro- claiming, "I have seen the future and it works" is remembered now ironical- sidies. A 2009 study found that since 2000, Spain has spent 571,138 euros for each green job created. The same study estimates that Spain lost 2.2 pri- vate sector jobs for every one of those so-called green jobs. Since then, Spain has been backing away from this de- bacle. According to Bloomberg News: "Spain halted subsidies for renew- at The American, notes that Obama pin-up, Spain, (lauded by Obama as a "worldwide lead- er in renewable energy") is in "full retreat" from its solar sub- able energy projects to help curb its budget deficit and rein in power-sys- tem borrowings backed by the state that reached 24 billion euros ($31 bil- lion) at the end of 2011. 'What is today an energy problem could become a fi- nancial problem,' Industry Minister Jo- se Manuel Soria said in Madrid." Across Europe, reports the Wash- ington Post, governments are cutting way back on subsidies to solar ener- Chinese progress on solar technolo- gies in his bid for subsidies to Solyn- dra and the rest? It seems the Chinese were grinding out those solar panels mostly in response to European de- mand—an artificial demand that relied almost entirely on the subsidies of Eu- ropean governments. David Baldock, of the Institute for European Environ- mental Policy, told the Post, "Govern- ments aren't always good at knowing how to profile their subsidies against market conditions." Hmm. Remove the "always" from that sentence, and you're getting somewhere. Europe is backing away from green and preteens who spend hours a day playing at kill- ing and besting their fic- tional enemies—fixated on improving their scores and moving up in game levels— all in very realis- tic animation. Is it any wonder that they are ready for combat and able to destroy the flesh and blood of an enemy who is so like the ones they have already encoun- tered on their game screens? They are already trained to be killers with a kill or get killed philosophy ingrained in them from an early age. I have watched my grandson, nephew and other boys con- centrating and pulled into the game with such intensi- ty that they are hardly able to be torn away from their game systems even to eat— the game their constant companion to the exclusion of almost everything else in their lives." There is a lot of truth in the games in arcades like a few decades ago but games that are centered on killing and violence; many are even called "war games." "They are sold to teens what she just wrote. The military routinely uses vid- eo game simulations to train combat soldiers. In a larger sense, this is a process of de- humanizing the enemy and psychologically transform- energy subsidies because they are a waste of precious resources. The Eu- ropeans are also aware, though no one discusses it much, that all of their sub- sidies haven't reduced Europe's pro- duction of CO2 one whit. Because of the EU-wide system of emissions trad- ing, the emissions credits earned by solar and wind plants in Germany and elsewhere have simply gone to older, dirtier plants in Eastern Europe. Facing devastating deficits and shrinking populations, Europe is re- thinking its embrace of the green en- ergy "future." As Miranda Schreurs, director of the Environmental Policy Research Center at the Free Universi- ty of Berlin told the Post, "Everybody knows we can't go the way we've been going . . . It'll break the bank." Well, not "everybody." Not President Obama. MR. AND MRS. FRANK HEURING, PUBLISHERS ANDREW G. HEURING, EDITOR The Press- Dispatch JOHN B. HEURING, ADVERTISING MANAGER Wednesday, March 28, 2012 Entered at the Post Office in Petersburg, Indiana for trans- mission through the mails as Periodical Mail, Postage paid at Petersburg, Indiana. Published weekly. 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. Change of Address—Subscribers changing addresses P.O. BOX 68, PETERSBURG, INDIANA 47567 E-mail—news@pressdispatch.net (604-340) Phone 354-8500 • FAX—354-2014 Pike and Surrounding Cos. ......$ 10.00 $15.00 $25.00 $45.00 Elsewhere in Indiana ................ 14.00 Outside Indiana ............................18.00 SUBSCRIPTION RATES 3 mos. 6 mos. 1 year 2 years 19.00 28.00 27.00 43.00 49.00 75.00 ing them into nothing more than an image on a screen that needs to be neutralized. Another reader, a pastor wrote, "You might end with the line from High Noon when the preacher is asked to help form a posse that is being organized to kill the outlaws headed to town. He declines to get involved and replies the Bible says, 'Thou shalt not kill, but we pay someone to do the killing for us, I can't give you an answer.'" Nowhere in the cated living in peace and to subjugate oneself to the higher powers. Nowhere will you find Jesus advocat- ing an "eye for an eye," but He gave a new command- ment to "love one's neigh- bor as thyself." That is the sum of the mat- New Testament are Christians urged to pick up a sword and use vi- olence, and from Jesus through the apostles all advo- ter for Christians. We need law and order and to defend our nation; but at the same time, we cherish love, peace, and the brotherhood of man. Theologians call this ten- sion theodicy, the existence of evil. How are we to just- ly deal with threats to our lives, family, and nation in a Christian sense? Fred Reed, a freelance journalist who writes of his Continued on page 3